Posted by softrockcookie
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:33:00 GMT
with update! (see below)
It’s my second time now within 3 months that I spend my time in Vorarlberg to support the YS Vorarlberg (Sozialistische Jugend Vorarlberg) in their election campaign and in their attempt to build a strong Marxist youth organisation.
This time I do not only work and discuss with people that are already comrades or are willing to become a comrade, but also with many undecided young people and workers who are going to vote for the regional parliament (Landtag) on Sunday, 20th septembre. We participate in the election campaign with our own candidate, Lukas Riepler (24), the chairman of the YS Vorarlberg. His election program is based upon the demands of the students’ and apprentices’ movement in spring, “We will not pay for the capitalist crisis!” and differs in some important points from that of the SPÖ.
My impressions of the electoral campaign are marked by ambivalent observations but also by extreme caution (for the political development in Austria).
- Foreign workers and young people are extremely friendly to us and favor our programme, studying it intensively and giving us positive feedback.
- Native workers and especially young apprentices have a huge aversion against the SPÖ (Socialdemocratic Party of Austria) and its programme. They are oftenly unfriendly and will eventually vote for the reactionary and enterprise-friendly FPÖ (“Freedom” Party of Austria).
- School students are somewhat ambivalent. Those who are more interested in politics (mostly students from higher, not-work-oriented, general schools) reject the FPÖ and their racist propaganda. The others also tend to reduce next to everything to “foreigners out!”. Generally, foreign students have a far more positive approach to us than Austrians.
This is shocking, because most of the native young workers do not care about politics and see none but one problem in society: foreigners. Any other topic doesn’t really matter to them (at least not at the moment). They don’t see that the FPÖ has nothing left for the apprentices. It is quite shocking that they are going to vote for a party that will not create any jobs for them or has to offer them anything.
However, there are groups of youngsters who make more far-sighted conclusions about society and the future and who are also in the apprentices’ schools or at work places. These people will in the future stand on the forefront of the working class movement and will at the right time build a base amongst their colleagues who are not yet open for socialist politics.
For more information and our election program, read YS Vorarlberg online (in German) !
Update from 14th novembre 2009
As things are changing rapidly and the YS Vorarlberg intervening rightly in different movements and political events, they can manage to render the situation explained above. Right now, they are beginning with the establishment of committees in schools, as well as gaining support in “polytechnical schools” (apprentices’ schools).
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Posted by softrockcookie
Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:38:00 GMT
Considering the discussion inside the IMT the last week in an international gathering of Marxists, I had to point out some things obvious to me. I won’t give any references here to the internal discussion documents, because they are not for public discussion while they’re not the official organisational position.
In the discussion, there are two main positions:
- The document put forward by the IS that states that China is already capitalist and restauration has succeeded.
- The oppositional document that states that China remains a deformed workers’ state.
Both documents, while having their good sides, have major errors and make wrong considerations. Let’s see why.
About the economy of China
In my believe, I consider the paper of the IS very good and it shows that not majorly facts and figures about the Chinese economy can be the main basis for this discussion, as we don’t have any credible sources. Whom are you going to believe? The Chinese department for statistics? The Chinese press? Or maybe the foreign press? There are many different facts and figures about the Chinese economy, and we can only estimate what is true.
As for the opposition, to claim that the private sectors of the Chinese economy help to strengthen the state-owned sector and that the Chinese have somehow perfected the socialist accumulation with this is quite speculative and very possibly nonsense. That nowadays more Chinese have a relatively good quality of life is also due to the proletarisation of the farmers, and does not mean that they improved the life of the masses by pure political means – the opposite is the case: there is no social security networks or working rights like they existed in the Soviet Union. Fred Weston correctly stated in his final speech that the poor are getting poorer and the rich get richer, like they do in capitalist countries. In a recent discussion with a girl from China via MSN Messenger she stated that the contradiction between rich and poor is for her the main economic issue. I also think that the state sector could grow “with the help of” the private sector. However, important regional and national strata of the government pull in the direction of privatisation of many main industries and enterprises, but oftenly fail because the workers there would strike and cut off the officials’ heads.
About the politics of China
Directly, but contradictionally linked to the question of the Chinese economy is logically the question of the Chinese politics and society. While stating very good why China can be considered capitalist, the IS document makes a major error in one of its demands. It demands that the Chinese workers should be helped in bringing down the Communist party! This is quite outrageous! Never in the history of our tendency we held the position to destroy the Communist party. Not in the USSR or Eastern Europe then, not in Cuba nowadays and not in any other country where there existed or exists a Communist party which did never claim power. Why do they say this? Because they wrongly claim that the Communist party is just a prelonged arm of the state apparatus! How can they claim this? What is a party? A party is an agglomeration of people with somewhat the same interests. Today in China there are also many (if not all) capitalists within the party (which the opposition paper denies, but in Austria we also have many capitalists inside the social-democratic party). It’s now more of a “people’s party” or a nationalist (very nationalist!) party indeed. There are careerists and bureaucrates within the Chinese Communist party like they exist in every party around the world (because there is no Marxist democratic centralist mass party). There are not just people from the government and officials in there, but also normal workers and other strata of society.
Even if there are no clear figures about the membership of the party, official figures state there are 76 million people inside the party now, which makes it the biggest party in the world. Official figures state that the bureaucracy are “only” 26 million people. Most of the party members see themselves as Maoists, as most of the Chinese still love their former “Great Chairman”. Many simple workers hate the bureaucracy of the party (while at the same time being a party member) for having disbanded “Maoism” or “Marxism”. But what’s the problem? We have the same here with social-democratic and Communist parties. Has the international the approach as to destroy the parties by any means and at any cost? Definately not! It is an outrageous sectarian left-radical approach towards the Chinese Communist party, which nobody can ever understand.
The IS states in their answer to the opposition document that all contacts we have made say that we are far too kind to the party and government bureaucracy. Yes, and we shouldn’t be! But that’s not the reason why we shouldn’t try to win over people from inside the Communist party as well for our position. We do so in every (capitalist) country, so why not in China? In China everything can be discussed openly. Over 300 million Chinese can be contacted over the internet, email, instant messenging and so on. You will not be brought to jail for criticising the government. Most of the death sentences are spoken out against corrupt people and criminals, but not because of another opinion.
To go inside the Communist party makes the point even easier, for as a party member you can’t be put into jail. To become a member you just have to have the will for it, be Chinese, and have a two month lasting “political education” and evaluation by the party. If we meet left-redical Chinese young people who don’t want to enter the party because of its bureaucracy then we also shouldn’t work inside the Austrian socialdemocracy…!
It is another thing if one points to foreign journalism and websites. Foreign journalists are not really treated that good in China because they started to spread lies about China in the Western media. Eventually, every government can block and filter homepages if they consider the content to be offending or inappropriate, which is – concerning China – very often the case. But that has nothing to do with the possibility of relatively freedom of speech (like in any other country), especially for Marxist positions.
My conclusions
In short, my standpoint is explained that way: I think that China is capitalist and therefore a social revolution and not just a political revolution is needed. This can also be done by reformation of the Chinese Communist party, in which democratic discussion is permitted, on basis of a Marxist programme. (By the way, how else could it be that a national party meeting lasts for weeks if everything is already decided anyway?) Many important enterprises can be “democraticised” because they are state-owned. Others can be nationalised under workers’ control? Have we not demanded this also in capitalist countries that there should be a peaceful revolution through parlament? Yes, sir!
It is much easier for us to win party members because already most of the Chinese people consider themselves Maoists/Marxists (whatever that could mean). That’s a perfect situation for poltical work in China.
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Posted by softrockcookie
Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:18:00 GMT
In Iran, as you all might have heard, a revolution is going on, provoked by the clumsy victorial fraud caused by Ahmadinejad. The masses are on the street, and it is only a factor of if the police and military will side with them AND if the worker’s will enter a massive (general) strike. If so, the fate of both the Ayatollah regime and Ahmadinejad would be sealed.
As the organisation I belong to, the International Marxist Tendency, has already covered the issue with numerous articles in English and Farsi, which find their widespread distribution automatically in Iran via blogs, websites, as well as newspapers and leaflets, I will link them here too.
English:
Farsi:
For all further information I’ve created a topic called “Iranian Socialism” in the navigation bar! Click the links for further articles in English and Farsi!
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Posted by softrockcookie
Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:04:00 GMT
“Draw a distinction” was one of the major prerequisites for Luhmann’s sociology and a most important method of Talcott Parson’s action (system) theory.
In Luhmann’s system theory, not the scientist, but the system itself goes in the direction of independence, self-control and self-consciousness. It says systems evaluate and check environmental processes themselves and therefore declare themselves as an own (cognitive) system. But what happens if someone tries to render or change such a system? Following Luhmann’s theory, it mainly depends on the possible penetration and acceptance of the system itself to be changed. If the attempts to change a system will succeed is not to be known a priori.
However, in practice we can see that systems change all the time – with, through or against other systems, although these processes are not easily to be seen or estimated at first. Systems can authoritative be changed, destroyed and (re-)built by human beings, if the necessary means for these processes are available.
In social systems, Individuals are only on the basis of ideas which correspond to the material conditions able to win over the masses. The masses must be the social basis for a system change and none other (especially no elements who are dominant or conform in/with the existing system).
What is also true about reality is that “history knows all forms of peculiar transformations [of society]”, which also means that a certain political, social, economical or cultural system does not necessarily lead to a corresponding equivalent system in another strata.
- Example 1: The New Economic Policy of Lenin after the civil war. Here the dictatorship of the proletariat through the soviets in which the Bolsheviks still had a majority ruled society (which represented the political system), while there had to be concessions to the capitalist elements in the Russian economic system.
- Example 2: The („free“) market economics can also exist under a political dictatorship. The government of Pinochet in Chile or in some way Putin’s Russia can be listed here.
- Example 3: Any kind of bonapartism, where political rule („the rule of the sword“) is somewhat independent and (totally or pretty) contradictory to the economic and cultural basis.
- Example 4: Stalinism as a (centralised) planned economy without any possibility of democratic intervention by the working class in neither economics nor politics nor culture.
However, i believe that a rational, progressive change in all parts of society can only be achieved by a genuine democratic Marxist position for any part of society.
Logically, the economy is the approximative material basis for the rule of capitalism, because it is the economy from where all the privileges, influences and power of the capitalists stem from. With these, they can (more) easily change the other systems in their will – or better: they were able to do so rather good in the past.
In today’s phase of capitalism only total reactionary or discredited ideas find themselves on the cultural-ideological strata of society, for example postmodernism or reprints (e.g. caricatures) of Fascism and Liberalism, as well as unmarxian “renewals“ of Marxism…
The problem of postmodernism itself is not that it proclaims “the end of history”, but that every scientist (no matter if he/she is an economist, physicist, sociologist…) wants his/her science to end with his/her discovery and theory. To make this possible, they construct their theories in such a way that no counter-argument is really possible if one steps up to (or rather: drops down on) the plain of that theory. The same is somewhat true for Luhmann’s theory. Popper would call this anti-scientific per se – interesting enough that Popper defended Luhmann for obvious reasons (Popper was also an anti-materialist and anti-Marxist).
On the social level of society the conflicts and contradictions are as open to see as never before. Mostly such conflicts, because there is no genuine Marxist leadership (in the world working class movement), get channeled in other ways by the bourgeoisie to be then split and destroyed.
The “historical interests of the working class” is not a construct of Marx and Engels which they sucked out of their thumbs. The workers themselves get conscious of them through their own experiences from economical and/or political conflicts. Marxists can get easily in touch with these experiences and generalise them, as well as take them to a higher level.
What is also true is that the economy alone doesn’t solve political, cultural or social problems per se if it gets altered, but it can lay the necessary basis for a change in the other major system parts as well. If these stimuli will have contradictory or harmonic effects on the other system parts cannot be foreseen yet, because there are too few successful historical examples.
Luhmann’s theory contains good methods for the logical and structural view on systems and their comparison with each other. However, it provides not enough to be used as a (political or practical) philosophy. The insight theory of his theory is completely idealistic (“we can’t really grasp the full of reality, but only describe it”). Therefore, prognoses are not possible. In reality, prognoses are possible, for example through an objective and honest study and evaluation of past and recent events (what is done by Marxists).
There are also other approaches from which Luhmann’s theory can be encountered. For example, the philosophical basis of this theory, its idealistic insight theory, which says that no statement about reality (and history, the future and so on) can be made. The whole of the theory is only describing (the state of the system) and not really dynamic, it only describes systems as far as they function anyway. How would he explain the developments inside the Russian society from 1917-91 or the processes inside the Communist Parties before and thereafter?
Luhmann’s theory seems to be an antithesis to Habermas’ Theory of Communication. This is also a petty bourgeois university professor’s theory with the same idealistic philosophical core. It is itself another form of “change the thinking and thereby change society”, namely “change the communication and thereby change society”. A capitalist would have his laugh about it. Suffice it to say that Luhmann’s theory of development consists mainly of “the development of communication”. Alan Woods points out the overemphasizing of communication and words in his book “Reformism or Revolution – Marxism and socialism of the 21st century – Reply to Heinz Dieterich” :
For the intellectual, the only reality consists of words. For him, it is really the case that ‘in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.’ The idea – or more correctly, the prejudice – of the intellectual that imparts to words a supernatural significance, is merely a reflection of the real conditions of existence of the intellectual. In postmodernism narrative is everything, and we can only know the world through the words of individuals. Here language appears not as a phenomenon that connects people with the world and each other but something that separates and isolates. It is a barrier, beyond which we can know nothing. (...)
The intellectual’s mystification of words is therefore not new. It has its roots in the division between mental and manual labour. But it has acquired its ultimate expression in modern bourgeois philosophy (...) (Woods 2008, p. 39)
Following Luhmann, no system can be changed from the outside, but only by itself. However, what if the (majority of the) people (or masses) who constitute the system want to (consciously) change it? In the past, we have seen that they are able to do so, if the necessary leadership with the right programme gains a mass support, or if the class balance on a world scale pushes the leaders to the one or the other side.
Luhmann got a very important impetus for his theory by Humberto Maturana’s “autopoiesis” theory, which mainly references biological systems such as the eye. It might work quite well for biological systems such as human bodies and organs, which really regulate themselves as long as they function normally. However, the regulation processes in nature are very different from the non-natural system of capitalism, which doesn’t regulate itself through markets, but eventually produce over-production crises like the one which we are going through now – and which can only be regulated by a total wreckage of productive forces on a world scale (probably through wars or mass unemployment). This is very different from the „harmonic“ natural regulation processes.
Almost 55 years ago, in one of his best works, Georg Lukacs wanted to explain the specifics of German philosophy and its development in his book called “The Destruction of Reason”. In this, he also takes a short critic of German sociology. Let us read what he states:
These two crises [of the economic school of Ricardo in England and of Utopian socialism] and most of all the solution of both in the form of the creation of historic materialism and Marxist political economy set an end to the bourgeois economy as a basic science for the insight into society. Two poles developed: the first one is the new bourgeoise vulgar economy, also called subjective economy, a specialised discipline which renounces to explain social phenomena and which sees as its main target to get the surplus value theory out of the economic science; the second one is a human science without economics: sociology.
Of course, sociology first had the goal to become an universal science for society (Comte, Spencer). She therefore tried to find another basis for itself in the natural sciences and not in economics.” (Lukacs 1953, p. 461-462)
He then explains why and how the sociology is related to progressive thought and therefore needed another basis than economics. He continues:
However, precisely because it is entangled with the progress thought, sociology cannot hold itself as a universal science. Very soon it drifts into a natural scientific, mostly biological explanation, which follows the socio-economical development of the bourgeoisie, into an enemy of progress, into partly reactionary ideologies and methodologies. The greater part of it turns to peculiar investigations. It becomes a pure singular science, which doesn’t touch questions about the structure and development of society. (...) The social agnosticism as a form of the defense of ideological hopeless positions gets a – unconsciously functioning – methodological organ. This process has big similarities with the action of the capitalist bureaucracy – it solves unfitting uncomfortable questions by pushing acts from one office to the other without end and no office claims to be competent enough to take the objective decision. (Lukacs 1953, p. 462-463)
All in all it is to say that Luhmann’s theory is a bad, somewhat postmodern attempt to create a far better general sociological theory. One could explain many social phenomena with it, e.g. why the political system can’t influence the university system positively/directly. On the other hand, the explanations need a bunch of argumentative creativity, without which it is not plausible anymore. The reason for this is quite clear: reality doesn’t develop in fixed categories – categories can only be a helping schema for explanation, but nothing more. As long as a method or philosophy (or sociology) doesn’t take into account dynamics and development, it must necessarily fail…
Further questions to be solved:
- Why are systems just evaluative systems of communications?
- Ok, systems exist (for Luhmann, compared to Parsons) – but only in form of communications?
- What about systems of society as a whole?
- What about early human societies without (sophisticated) communication?
- Can only systems themselves explain their function?
Literature:
Woods, Alan (2008): Reformism or Revolution, London: wellred books [online version]
Lukacs, Georg (1953): Die Zerstörung der Vernunft, Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag [german edition, translations by the blog author]
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Posted by softrockcookie
Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:28:00 GMT
Due to the catastrophic election results yesterday, which ended in a vast loss of both SP and PP and provided a 6-7% increase of Austrian’s populist right-wing parties, the FP and the Alliance Future Austria (BZOE), the options for a new government are rather small…
Four options are thinkable of which are:
- First case – bloc of bourgeoise parties: The black, blue and orange party would be in government like in the first 5 years of this decade and make policies which heavily deconstructs our working conditions, freedom and equalization rights, as other social systems (pension, health, education etc.)
- Second case – red and blue coalition: This is an option stressed by FP leader HC Strache himself and not so unthinkable of. However, a coalition with the fascists would only destroy or furthermore “wreck” the traditional working class movement and therefore end in a split of the party. Unfortunately, to wreck the labour movement has been a target of fascists ever since and everywhere.
- Third case – red minority government: This would be a government like quasi in the last two months, where the ammandments are getting majorities by the willing parties present. This is dangerous and could end in a political stand-still. However, it is the only possibility to firstly regain the trust of the masses and secondly gives time to start off an organised socialist left within the party and the movement.
- Fourth case – red-black government of the “defeated” big parties: the change of leadership within the PP has led to a situation where red-black could be an option, most of all because of the friendship of Proell and Faymann, which is politically irrelevant. The PP would in this case demand to fully carry through their programme (also because of the economic crisis which is currently unfolding) and drag themselves and the SP further down.
As i advocate the third option, I also refer to this article on marxist.com :
The GP which I don’t talk of here is at the moment (most of all) irrelevant politically and in the terms of the media. However, a minority government could be joined by the GP also, which is not essentially necessary for a minority is a minority…
Description:
Red – SP – Socialdemocratic Party – (left-)reformist
Black – PP – People’s Party – Conservative
Blue – FP – Freedom Party – (extreme) right-wing
Orange – BZOe – Alliance Future Austria – right-wing / “moderate” bourgeoise split of FP
Green – GP – Green Party – ecologic/left-liberal
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