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A Perfect Socialist?
Topic Started: 5 Dec 2014, 17:50 (358 Views)
Guertonia
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So I have been thinking about this lately and I figured I would post it here and see what some of our residents had to say on the matter, especially since we have some very well informed and intelligent citizens in our great region.

My question is this; Can a person who has never been a member of a lower class or the working class be a true socialist? My father has worked as a tile setter for 30 years and a lot of the ideas that I hold dear came from watching him get jerked around by companies and contractors during the recession where we were eating frozen chicken patties every night because thats all we could afford. But don't get me wrong, I am proud of our struggle because I honestly feel that it was that 2 year span that I grew up and became the person I am now and its from this experience that I have come to the conclusion that without facing the injustices of the American system that you cannot truly be an effective socialist.

Now, just to be clear, this "truly effective socialist" is merely a hypothetical, ideal person and in no way do I claim to be a better socialist than someone else, I just think that if you haven't seen capitalism from the bottom than you cannot know how to fix it.

So with that being said, I would love to hear what my fellow DSA neighbors think about this idea.
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Defwa
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All it takes is an eye for objectivity and anyone can be a good socialist.
I think the people that come from the top of society might actually be better considering the desires of those who come from the bottom aren't always pure. They might see their poverty as some slight against them and call for revenge. Then Russia happens.
Someone wealthy seeing unfairness might be more inclined to understand that some parts of social stratification are necessary without going out of control.
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Herrebrugh
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I'd consider Friedrich Engels a socialist...
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Eenheid, Vrijheid, Solidariteit
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Borq
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Well, Marx was rich. Wasn't he?
So, why not?
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Guertonia
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Marx and Engels were political theorists, and never had a chance to apply communism to anything but paper. I'm talking about an individual who would be a socialist today with an understanding of the modern world and not the world of the 19th Century. Defwa brings up a good point and I would agree that you wouldn't want someone who lives in squalor to rise to the top of a movement as they may have revenge on mind instead of reformation.
Edited by Guertonia, 7 Dec 2014, 19:19.
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Herrebrugh
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Guertonia
7 Dec 2014, 19:18
Marx and Engels were political theorists, and never had a chance to apply communism to anything but paper. I'm talking about an individual who would be a socialist today with an understanding of the modern world and not the world of the 19th Century. Defwa brings up a good point and I would agree that you wouldn't want someone who lives in squalor to rise to the top of a movement as they may have revenge on mind instead of reformation.
You asked whether someone who has never been a member of a lower class or the working class can be a socialist. We named prominent examples of two clear socialists who never were members of the working class. Quite the contrary, according to Marxist thought, Engels could be called a capitalist. I don't see how the time-frame would change the question.
Edited by Herrebrugh, 7 Dec 2014, 19:23.
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Lemur Isles
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I think this is a good letter written by Trotsky on the subject, "How Revolutionaries are Formed": http://www.workersliberty.org/node/9290

Worth Highlighting


Essentially, what I think makes a perfect revolutionary is someone who makes the greatest possible sacrifices of both time and financial resources to building the working class movement in opposition the rule of capital. Their contribution can either come in the form of political agitation, industrial unionism, and of course theory.

I think anyone from any background can become a good socialist, though they have to prove it through their involvement with the movement. As Trotsky pointed out in the letter, petty bourgeois professionals (like lawyers, in this case) are limited in the time they can give, and so can't be considered truly active revolutionaries. Not that these people should be shunned from the movement, of course, the contribution of sympathisers outside the ranks of the proletariat is welcome, but they are secondary in the struggle.

Though Marx came from a petty bourgeois background, he was still a really important revolutionary, devoting his life to developing theory on understanding capitalism, and how to overcome it. Same with Engels, Lenin and Trotsky (the contribution of the latter two was obviously more practical, though not necessarily more important). Of course, all the aforementioned leaders are no more or less important than all the socialists whose names we'll never know that dedicated themselves to the cause.
Edited by Lemur Isles, 7 Dec 2014, 23:46.
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Guertonia
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Thanks for the great response Lemur! And I apologize Herreburgh, I guess I didn't specify. Well than at the risk of sounding stupid I will pose another question; Is a revolution/revolutionaries necessary for socialism to take hold of a government? It was always my understanding the Social Democracy came from a gradual and slow shift from capitalistic policy to more socialistic policy by the people of a nation. Or is that term used as a catch all for any change that takes place in a government?
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Herrebrugh
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Social democracy, at least in its current state, generally isn't a socialist ideology in so far that it does not aim for the workers' control of the means of production. I personally consider social democracy to be a sort of weak left liberalism. It is not something I'd be comfortable with building upon as a socialist.

I do not think revolution is the only way for a country to become socialist, though. Indeed, it could probably come about through democratic means. Both ways require different tactics, however.
Edited by Herrebrugh, 8 Dec 2014, 17:03.
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Lemur Isles
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To answer your question about Social Democracy, Guertonia, I think it is useful to look back to the history of the Second International (aka, the Socialist International). http://www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/

I apologise in advance for the history lecture!

It was founded in the 1880s as an international organisation of different socialist parties. The most important, and largest of these parties was the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD). Social Democracy in those days was actually explicitly Marxist, and the party was founded under such principles (and was illegal too, while Bismarck was Chancellor). However, within the party, different currents emerged.

The right wing current is what is known as reformist, they believed that the tasks of the movement was to institute reforms to the existing state structure by passing laws in the parliament. Additionally, the right wing was also open to forming coalitions with non-workers' parties. This broke with the principle of independent action by the working class, which is essential for building socialism according to Marxist theory. One well known figure of the right was Eduard Bernstein, who wrote a book about how an evolutionary road to socialism would be achieved. Rosa Luxemburg wrote a well known rebuttal, called "Reform or Revolution".

On the other end of the spectrum, was the left wing of Social Democracy, which included people like Rosa Luxemburg, and Karl Liebnechkt in Germany, (and the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party in Russia). The left believed that while it was important to win seats in the parliament for reaching a broader working class audience, it was but a tool in the overall struggle. They also believed that the existing state structure was bourgeois, and needed to be overthrown and replaced with a new state beholden to the working class. Since the left did not agree with the constitutional order, they were open to the idea of insurrection.

In the centre, there were people like Karl Kautsky, who believed that the Socialists had to win a parliamentary majority in the existing parliament in order to bring about socialism. Unlike the right, however, they rejected class collaborationism and coalition with bourgeois parties.

Then, WWI broke out. Previously to this, the Second International parties had agreed that in the event of the great imperialist war which they knew would come, they would refuse to fight their comrades in other countries and would call a general strike, halting the war effort. Unfortunately the leadership of the different parties broke their promise, and lined behind "their own" bourgeoisie in the wave of patriotic fervour. It was mainly the right wing of Social Democracy, who held most of the leadership positions that allowed this to happen. The most dramatic instance of betrayal in Germany was when the SPD deputies voted for the war credits in the Reichstag (except for Karl Liebknecht).

The reason for this betrayal, is that the labour bureaucracy was elevated above the rest of the working class movement, being relatively better off, especially those in parliament, who weren't accountable to the membership. Actively opposing the war would have meant the removal of these privileges and repression and imprisonment by the state for anti-war propaganda. As well as that, it was an opportunistic move since initially the masses would have supported the war (not by the end of it, however).

Meanwhile, in Russia, the Bolsheviks actively opposed the war from the beginning. To make a long story short, the February Revolution deposed the Tsar in 1917, due to the heavy casualties suffered by Russia in the war, and the long bread lines. The provisional government under Kerensky that replaced him proved little better however. The influence of the Bolsheviks grew in the Soviets. The Soviets were these worker councils in different cities in Russia that organically sprung up in the first (failed) 1905 revolution. This was the embryo of a new workers' state structure, alternate to the capitalist state. The Bolsheviks eventually won majorities in the Petrograd Soviet, and the Moscow Soviet, among others, and thus had a mandate to overthrow the provisional government and declare "All power to the soviets" (they did this in coalition with the left Social Revolutionaries, who represented the peasant majority outside of the cities).

The hope was that this would spark a Europe-wide revolution, which wasn't an unreasonable expectation considering the crisis brought on by the war. Workers councils sprung up, mainly in Hungary, Austria, and Germany. The Social democratic leaders either convinced the workers not to rise up, or some, like Ebert, the leader of the SPD actually went further and collaborated with the far-right Freikorps to shoot down the revolutionary workers, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered then.

Ultimately, the conservatism of the social democratic leaders led to the post war situation where fascism was able to rise, because the working class had been defeated. There's no way of knowing for sure, of course, but if the socialist leaders acted in a revolutionary manner, there could well have been an abrupt seizure of power by the working class in eastern and central Europe, quite possibly spreading beyond. This could also have rescued Russia from Stalinism, since the country wouldn't have been isolated - which is what allowed the bureaucratic degeneration to take hold in the first place.

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Right, so what is the main lesson here? I think it should be clear from the early failings of Social Democracy that the leadership of the workers' movement has to be accountable to the membership. To avoid the corruption of our reps, in the parliament and trade unions, they must be on the average industrial wage. Any extra salary they receive go to the party funds. All reps in the Socialist Party in Ireland do this. It's not just a matter of principal, but it has ramifications on their behaviour, and keeps them disciplined.

Additionally, our delegates must be re-callable, and they must vote in parliament in line with the policies as voted on by the membership of the party.

However - these are purely organisational questions, to try to stymie careerism and bureaucratisation of the leadership. In my next post, I will make the argument for why a reformist road to socialism wouldn't work, even if the comrades in parliament had the best of intentions, and were incorruptible. And this would be due to the inherent nature of the capitalist state.
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