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Wherever modern humans, living outside the narrow social mores of the clan, are allowed to pursue their genetic interests without constraint, they will hurt other people. They will grab other people's resources, they will dump their waste in other people's habitats, they will cheat, lie, steal and kill. And if they have power and weapons, no one will be able to stop them except those with more power and better weapons. Our genetic inheritance makes us smart enough to see that when the old society breaks down, we should appease those who are more powerful than ourselves, and exploit those who are less powerful. The survival strategies which once ensured cooperation among equals now ensure subservience to those who have broken the social contract.

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I do though hate that the terms Libertarian and Libertarianism have been usurped by these Ultra-Rightist Corporate Capitalist ideologues. The societies they propose would last like 5 minutes.

It is unfortunate that the term libertarian has been equated with capitalism since this term belongs to the socialist tradition.

How can one be a libertarian and support the wage slave system? The libertarian movement has always opposed private tyrannies like corporations and supported workers self-management. Libertarians throughout history have always called the renting of one person to another and the profiteering of this labour wage slavery. Libertarianism has always historically been part of the socialist movement. The term has only recently been taken up by laisser-faire capitalist thinkers and this only in the US and has sneaked in the rest of the English speaking world. Hopefully, leftists will defend true libertarianism since its history and that of its various overlapping branches (anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, anarchist communism, libertarian socialism, libertarian communism, libertarian syndicalism, libertarian Marxism, Left Marxism and Left Libertarianism) are very rich traditions of the worker's movement.

Here's what Chomsky said on the subject:

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The United States is sort of out of the world on this topic. Britain is to a limited extent, but the United States is like on Mars. So here, the term "libertarian" means the opposite of what it always meant in history. Libertarian throughout modern European history meant socialist anarchist. It meant the anti-state element of the Workers Movement and the Socialist Movement. It sort of broke into two branches, roughly, one statist, one anti-statist. The statist branch led to Bolshevism and Lenin and Trotsky, and so on. The anti-statist branch, which included Marxists, Left Marxists -- Rosa Luxemburg and others -- kind of merged, more or less, into an amalgam with a big strain of anarchism into what was called "libertarian socialism." So libertarian in Europe always meant socialist. Here it means ultra-conservative -- Ayn Rand or Cato Institute or something like that. But that's a special U.S. usage. There are a lot of things quite special about the way the United States developed, and this is part of it. There [in Europe] it meant, and always meant to me, socialist and anti-state, an anti-state branch of socialism, which meant a highly organized society, completely organized and nothing to do with chaos, but based on democracy all the way through. That means democratic control of communities, of workplaces, of federal structures, built on systems of voluntary association, spreading internationally. That's traditional anarchism. You know, anybody can have the word if they like, but that's the mainstream of traditional anarchism.

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According to the theory of Mr. Marx, the people not only must not destroy [the state] but must strengthen it and place it at the complete disposal of their benefactors, guardians, and teachers - the leaders of the Communist party, namely Mr. Marx and his friends, who will proceed to liberate humankind in their own Way. They will concentrate the reins of government in a strong hand, because the ignorant people require an exceedingly firm guardianship; they Will establish a single state bank, concentrating in its hands all commercial, industrial, agricultural and even scientific production, and then divide the masses into two armies -industrial and agricultural- under the direct command of the state engineers, who will constitute a new privileged scientific-political estate.'

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"Statehood and Anarchy," 1873; cited in P. Avrich, The Russian Anarchists (Princeton, N.J., 1967), pp. 93-94. link

These two strands of socialism one statist one anti-statist are still with us today in many debates on the left. In particular, they have given birth to two visions of Socialism:

one statist: A state in which the commanding heights of the economy are nationalized (with some referring to elements of workers control)

One anti-statist: A commonwealth based on federations of self-managed producer and consumer cooperatives or collectives.

And it's not just me. Anarchists don't consider themselves socialists, nor do socialists recognize them as such.

I agree with Lenin:

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It is not for nothing that international socialist congresses adopted the decision not to admit the anarchists. A wide gulf separates socialism from anarchism, and it is in vain that the agents-provocateurs of the secret police and the news paper lackeys of reactionary governments pretend that this gulf does not exist. The philosophy of the anarchists is bourgeois philosophy turned inside out. Their individualistic theories and their individualistic ideal are the very opposite of socialism. Their views express, not the future of bourgeois society, which is striding with irresistible force towards the socialisation of labour, but the present and even the past of that society, the domination of blind chance over the scattered and isolated small, producer. Their tactics, which amount to a repudiation of the political struggle, disunite the proletarians and convert them in fact into passive participators in one bourgeois policy or another, since it is impossible and unrealisable for the workers really to dissociate themselves from politics.

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But let is look at what Ilich Ulyanov is referring to here. The first international was pretty much dissolved by Mr. Marx, because he could not control it due to the two camps I mentioned above, Bakunin's camp was basically kicked out. Bakunin and company set up another international later to be dominated by anarcho-syndicalists. later, a second international was set up by reformist parliamentarian Marxists lead by Karl Kautsky and with internal opposition from a libertarian Marxist wing lead by Rosa Luxembourg. This second international was non-revolutionary and party oriented. The anarchists were basically barred since they did not support the bourgeois states and political parties but direct workers' action, they believed that reformism would never lead to socialism.

And now we must define what socialism is. In essence, the vast literature regarding this movement (until the arrival of Leninist theoretical corruption of Marxism, Marxism being one branch of Socialism only not the Scripture of the movement) meant one thing and one thing only that the Means of Produciton should be under the direct control of workers and that each worker should give according to ability and receive according to need. In essence, an egalitarian society which the economy was directly in the hands of the workers.

In essence, it is what anarchists such as Bakunin, Kropotkin (father of Anarchist Communism) wanted and this is why they considered themselves socialist.

Now, because of the second international, there was a divergence in nomenclature Socialist begain to refer to the Social Democratic Parties which were Marxist. A later split occured, when the parties that aligned themselves with Lenin's third international used the term Communist. Hence, a split happened between the Social Democrats and the Communists all of whom were Marxists. Finally, Social Democracy (begining with Eduard Bernstein's revisionism) again redefined itself into a non-Marxist reformist movment.

All of these branches from libertarian communsism to revolutionary marxism to social democratic reformism are part of the much larger socialist tradition.

What Lenin is talking about, individualistic anarchism is more propaganda than actual theory.

One must remember, that during the October revolution, the Anarcho-Syndicalist movement played a decisive role, and the workers moved quickly to collectivize their factories and lands and place them under their direct control via councils (soviets). Lenin and Trotsky moved swiftly to dissolve these incipient socialist institutions and place them under State control, the state being under their Party's dictatorhsip and their Party being under their own dictatorhsip of course once again in the name of the Proleteriat.

Lenin hated the anarcho-syndicalists since they wanted the economy to be under control of the rest of the 90% of the masses who were not members of the Bolshevik branch of the All -Russian Social Democratic Worker's Party (later to be dubbed Communist Party).

Lenin uses the term Socialist to refer to a mutant Statist version of socialism i.e. command economies under the control of a managerial class. So if we use socialism in that sense, than yes, Libertarians would not consider themselves socialists.

But if we want to be intellectually honest to the historical tradition of the workers' movement which sought to bring the economy, which it was responsible for creating, under it's own control, then what traditional anarchism (i.e. libertarian socialism) expoused was socialism.

For example, the anarcho-syndicalist CNT called its ideology Libertarian Communism and during the Spanish Revolution it lead a workers revolt resulting in people collectivizing the factories they worked in and the land they worked on and electing committees in general assemblies. Factories were federated at the local and regional levels. Each industry had representatives elected from each factory of a given industry to sit on local and regional councils. The idea was to create a National economic council where all the industries would be pulled together and where planning would be demoratically decided.

The libertarian socialist tradition (i.e. traditional anarchism) is not individualistic but based on solidarity. Lenin merely lies in his statement. Bakunin is clear:

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I am a fanatical lover of liberty. I consider it the only environment in which human intelligence, dignity, and happiness can thrive and develop. I do not mean that formal liberty which is dispensed, measured out, and regulated by the State; for this is a perennial lie and represents nothing but the privilege of a few, based upon the servitude of the remainder. Nor do I mean that individualist, egoist, base, and fraudulent liberty extolled by the school of Jean Jacques Rousseau and every other school of bourgeois liberalism, which considers the rights of all, represented by the State, as a limit for the rights of each; it always, necessarily, ends up by reducing the rights of individuals to zero. No, I mean the only liberty worthy of the name, the liberty which implies the full development of all the material, intellectual, and moral capacities latent in every one of us; the liberty which knows no other restrictions but those set by the laws of our own nature. Consequently there are, properly speaking, no restrictions, since these laws are not imposed upon us by any legislator from outside, alongside, or above ourselves. These laws are subjective, inherent in ourselves; they constitute the very basis of our being. Instead of seeking to curtail them, we should see in them the real condition and the effective cause of our liberty - that liberty of each man which does not find another man's freedom a boundary but a confirmation and vast extension of his own; liberty through solidarity, in equality. I mean liberty triumphant over brute force and, what has always been the real expression of such force, the principle of authority. I mean liberty which will shatter all the idols in heaven and on earth and will then build a new world of mankind in solidarity, upon the ruins of all the churches and all the states.

I am a convinced advocate of economic and social equality because I know that, without it, liberty, justice, human dignity, morality, and the well-being of individuals, as well as the prosperity of nations, will never amount to more than a pack of lies. But since I stand for liberty as the primary condition of mankind, I believe that equality must be established in the world by the spontaneous organization of labor and the collective ownership of property by freely organized producers' associations, and by the equally spontaneous federation of communes, to replace the domineering paternalistic State

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Traditional anarchism was based on this vision of libertarian communism...the word has been corrupted of course to either mean apathy, chaos or individualism much like communism was corrupted to mean Stalinism and socialism to mean statism.

[ 28 November 2007: Message edited by: Tom Vouloumanos ]

I think the title of the article is inaccurate. Libertarians often get a bad wrap because there are so many people who claim to be Libertarians and then proceed to do idiotic things that are anti-Libertarian; e.g. how can a Republican congressman or Senator in the US claim to be Libertarian then hand out billions of dollars in subsidies to corporate farmers, or neglect the environment by refusing to make polluters pay for the externalities they create which negatively affect numerous people? That’s not Libertarianism. Libertarianism is as much about responsibility as it is about the freedom to do what you like; it’s qualified with the caveat that you’re not free to do harm to others because doing so violates the rights and freedoms of those you do harm to. That’s a tough rule to live by and most people work hard to live by it I would say; but a lot of people don’t give it much thought unfortunately, and a significant number of people just downright ignore that principle and would rather do whatever it takes to benefit themselves – whether it’s at the expense of someone else’s well-being or not. In my experience, most people who profess to be Libertarians are only Libertarians when they figure it’ll work for them not because they actually value the prospect of having freedoms and the responsibilities that go with it.

I read the article by Monbiot which made a lot of good points; e.g. the fact that Matt Ridley is indeed a parasite. I don’t agree with Monbiot, however, in that real Libertarians are parasites; that’s like saying that real socialists are mass-murderers because Stalin let millions of his citizens die or because Saddam Hussein (who was supposed to be some kind of socialist as leader of the Baath Party) murdered his own citizens. Those kinds of comparisons are sensationalism based on self-interest and anger; Ridley pissed off Monbiot because he was a zoologist who ended up chairing a bank (how does a zoologist qualify to chair a financial institution exactly?) and reaping havoc on the finances of thousands of customers’ – therefore Monbiot makes the broad claim that all Libertarians are parasites because someone who called himself lf a Libertarian (and actually wasn’t) turned out to be nothing more than a selfish asshole who placed no value on personal responsibility but wanted all the benefits of personal freedom. I agree, Matt Ridley is a parasite, but he’s not a Libertarian. A true Libertarian wouldn’t demand a bail-out with taxpayer’s money, a true Libertarian wouldn’t allow him/herself to take people’s money (i.e. the bank’s customer’s money) and invest it poorly without ensuring that his costumers had full disclosure on the risks of losing their money so that his customers could make an informed decision about whether or not they wanted to invest their money (whether that was cash savings, stocks, bonds, etc) in a risky venture. Calling all Libertarians parasites is just as uncalled for as calling all socialists murderous dictators because of what Stalin and Hussein did.

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Okay, this is a really interesting thread, but I gotta admit that I’m getting a little lost in some of the philosophy. Libertarianism, Anarchism and Socialism just aren’t as clear cut as many of us would like to think; I know I’ve often been guilty of simplifying the concepts too much. But that’s extent to which I can contribute to a discussion on the roots of Libertarianism.

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With respect to the Monbiot and what he terms Libertarian (i.e. ultra-right corporatist capitalism), I would even go further and call them socio-paths. Their type of behavious is anti-social and their anarcho-capitalist model wouldn't last more than 5 minutes destroying itself and much else with it. I think these so-called 'libertarians' are not even worth debating, their so-called economic models have no support anywhere and are even to embarassing for the Wall Street Journal to support. They do serve one purpose and one purpose alone, namely, to serve as a counterbalance to the liberal establishment. The existence of freak shows like the O'Reilley Factor (on the reactionary FOX channel) or the Libertarian Party in the USA only serve to limit the debate within a capitalist paradigm basically making the New York Times and CNN sound progressive...but that is a whole other thread.

What I stated is that the word Libertarian belongs historically to the Left, it was part of the workers' movement and a strand within the socialist movement.

The socialist movement includes two branches, a statist branch and an anti-statist branch and various sub-branches. Marxism and Anarchism were the initial tendencies and they gave birth to various sub-branches. There are no definite exact lines and sometimes certain trends merge like the Left Marxism or Left Communism or Council Communism which is in the Rosa Luxembourg lineage overlaps with Aanarcho-Syndicalism. I was merely pointing out that the libertarian movement was part of the anti-statist branch of the socialist movement. It later was called Anarchism. Anarchism is not a set ideology, like the scientific socialism of Marxism, but merely a tendency against authority, in the economic, political and social spheres. It is not about disorder but about people mutually running their collective lives in higtly organized ways without authority. In essence, when someone exert authority, this authority has to prove its indispensible character, the onus falls on the authority if it cannot it must be disolved and replaced by another social structure.

Marxist and Anarchists traditionally wanted the same thing to overthrow capitalism. Marxists believed that the state would wither away eventually and be replaced by a new communist society, a vision that was never described. Anarchists believed that the state had to be overthrown in tandem with capitalism.

Modern libertarian socialist thought (anarcho-syndicalist) does not have the same strategy as in the past given the existence of new structures, transnational corporations which are a dark shadow cast upon the government. Serious anarcho-syndicalist trade unions actually prefer to empower the state against the power of corporate capital. A dilemna that did not exist in the past. This is why I think modern anarcho-syndicalists want to first overthrow the corporations then the state and not the other way around which would bring the worse form of tyranny.

I hope this clarifies things somewhat, but if you are confused, you have good reason. The words communism and socialism have been corrupted by power politics. I love these Chomsky quotes from the classic What Uncle Sam Really Wants:

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One can debate the meaning of the term "socialism," but if it means anything, it means control of production by the workers themselves, not owners and managers who rule them and control all decisions, whether in capitalist enterprises or an absolutist state. To refer to the Soviet Union as socialist is an interesting case of doctrinal doublespeak. The Bolshevik coup of October 1917 placed state power in the hands of Lenin and Trotsky, who moved quickly to dismantle the incipient socialist institutions that had grown up during the popular revolution of the preceding months -- the factory councils, the Soviets, in fact any organ of popular control -- and to convert the workforce into what they called a "labor army" under the command of the leader. In any meaningful sense of the term "socialism," the Bolsheviks moved at once to destroy its existing elements. No socialist deviation has been permitted since.

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The world's two major propaganda systems did not agree on much, but they did agree on using the term socialism to refer to the immediate destruction of every element of socialism by the Bolsheviks. That's not too surprising. The Bolsheviks called their system socialist so as to exploit the moral prestige of socialism. The West adopted the same usage for the opposite reason: to defame the feared libertarian ideals by associating them with the Bolshevik dungeon, to undermine the popular belief that there really might be progress towards a more just society with democratic control over its basic institutions and concern for human needs and rights. If socialism is the tyranny of Lenin and Stalin, then sane people will say: not for me. And if that's the only alternative to corporate state capitalism, then many will submit to its authoritarian structures as the only reasonable choice

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Another way of looking at it is seen in the political self-test “Political Compass” which attempts to provide an alternative to the old “left-right” political continuum with a grid system of Left vs Right and Libertarianism vs Authoritarianism
Though most would find something to criticize about this political grid system (and its suggested placement of some political leaders) it does offer a way of looking at “libertarianism” which, I would guess, would place most babblers in the “libertarian-left” quadrant of the grid.

political compass-analysis

[ 28 November 2007: Message edited by: contrarianna ]

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Originally posted by kropotkin1951:
Libertarian is an appropriated word now. I ended up on the bottom left side of that particular little exercise ( I think a link was posted a number of years ago) To me that is the anarchist quadrant not the libertarian. But that also is merely semantics.

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Left (communism,(collectivism))versus
Right (neo-liberalism(libertarianism))

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Monbiot said: "Wherever modern humans, living outside the narrow social mores of the clan, are allowed to pursue their genetic interests without constraint, they will hurt other people. They will grab other people's resources, they will dump their waste in other people's habitats, they will cheat, lie, steal and kill. And if they have power and weapons, no one will be able to stop them except those with more power and better weapons"

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Well said, George. Which brings us to the unrelenting cries from the right about Stalinists and Maoists, who the rightist propaganda machines have droned on to no end were the ultimate terrorists and enemies of freedom-loving people everywhere (ie. the Libertarian right's freedom to pillage and plunder the weakest and least militarized states for their own self-interests) If you're on the far left, then you refuse to be shaken by shrill accusations about which groups were traditionally anti-democratic terrorists. Whenever the bourgeoisie Liberal and Conservative order in the world was threatened by proletariat rebellion, the ruling elite could always rely on backchannel alliances with violent fascists and terrorist groups, from the Nazis to P2 and CIA interventions like Gladio in Italy. The right's association with murderous groups and their own terrorist machinations through Chiang Kai-shek's anti-communist league to the Pentagon's School of the Americas, the world's foremeost school for export of torture and terror, tends to go entirely unmentioned when proselytizing endlessly about the evils of Stalinism and Maoism, and who were really the end result of centuries of brutal imperial rule and unjustifiable mistreatment of generations of ignorant masses of people by a privileged few. Throughout the cold war, working class the world over didn't care if the Soviets were brutalizing anyone as long as capitalists understood where the Russian bear shat in the buckwheat.

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Originally posted by kropotkin1951:
Libertarian is an appropriated word now. I ended up on the bottom left side of that particular little exercise ( I think a link was posted a number of years ago) To me that is the anarchist quadrant not the libertarian. But that also is merely semantics.

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The very idea of a day to celebrate the struggles of working people is, in all the world EXCEPT for Canada and the U.S., celebrated on May 1. For anti-communist/anti-anarchist reasons this day was spurned by North American authorities and replaced by "Labour Day". And this is despite the fact that May Day was chosen as a day of celebration and honour over the struggle for the eight-hour work day, a key event of which was the police/provocateur bombing and the subsequent victims of judicial murder (the Haymarket Martyrs) in Chicago! Ideas that are dangerous to power, as Chomsky would say, become "controversial". So we have Labour Day instead of International Workers' Day.

The info about Marxism and Anarchism from M.Spector and Tom Vouloumanos is useful. However, there's been a lot of water under the bridge since Marx and Bakunin battled in out in the First International. I'm of the view that both anarchist and socialist traditions have working class origins/elements - so I agree with Tom V. on that score. Both, however, have been watered down/modified by the importing of views that are antagonistic to working people. I think the Marxist socialists have been the most clear about this problem and the most unequivocally partisan for a working class point of view and that's a big reason why I still identify with that tradition myself.

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:

People who call themselves Libertarian Socialists, at least in the Canadian/U.S. context, I take to be socialists who insist that they're not communists. Winnipeg's Nick Ternette, a fixture of the left in this city, comes to mind. What's also interesting about Nick is that he knows his theory, even Marxist theory, better than many Marxists I've met. Somehow, I find that amusing.

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Originally posted by RosaL:

Yes, I think you're right. And I think they're also implying that communists are Stalinists. (I suspect that an actual Stalinist would probably come out in the left libertarian quadrant of the test because of the presuppositions of the test.)

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I think the Marxist socialists have been the most clear about this problem and the most unequivocally partisan for a working class point of view and that's a big reason why I still identify with that tradition myself.

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In my view, I think the biggest problem with Marxst analysis is that it never dealt with the coordinator class which the anarchist tradition cringed in fear of. I think Marxism is popular amongst the intelegencia because it expouses a system in which the intellectual elite, the managerial professional class of engineers, administrators, professors, scientists will have a leading role. As such, workers assemblies and federated councils are detrimental to their own class interest. In Marxism, there remains an implicit hierarchy of a new class of coordinators which administer the economy. Its reliance on the state made it less apt for participatory structures. I feel that elites are drawn to Marxism because in essence, their class interest remains unchnaged. They are the managers within the private tyrannies of capitalist economies, they will be the managers of the new public assets within a democratically nationalized economy. Hence, Marx was quite silent regarding this potential coordinator class that Bakunin warned against. Maybe Marx didn't see the problem of the class he belonged to? Maybe he did not think the masses could self-manage themselves? This is why traditional anarchists saw the Marxist tradition as being paternalistic to the workers. In their view, the economy begins and ends with the worker. Starting from a producers collective. Workers elect a recallable committee. Comittees are federated at the local, regional, national and international levels via recallable delegates thereby avoiding bureaucratization. Anarchism has traditionally attacked bureaucratization becuase the new class of bureaucrats would again alienate the workers. Anarcho-syndicalists debated way into the night regarding new structures. They envisioned federated councils that would need expertise by accounting and scientific specialists, yet they worried about creating an entreched bureaucracy, so people performing such tasks would have to be rotated. The rise of leaderism and bureacracy was always closely watched by libertarian socialists. In essence, anarcho-syndicalism is steeped within the working class and as a movement it has always been seen as anithetical to to the power of the coordinator class, whether this class be of a liberal or a Marxist pursuasion.

Anarchists, as I have said already, don't call themselves socialists. In fact, they can't find any socialists that they don't have fundamental disagreements with; they write off anyone who believes in the necessity of socialist government as a "state socialist".

Anarchists have their own separate literature, their own separate organizational and political tradition, their own separate canon of theoreticians, and none of those overlap with the traditions and the theoretical canon of socialism. Their heroes are not our (i.e. socialists') heroes.

There is no real basis in historical fact or theory to call them an inherent part of the whole socialist tradition. They reject practically every aspect of socialism; historically, they have been at odds with the leading socialist movements on every important political and strategic question.

In fact if you peruse the abundant resources of anarchist writings on the web, both historical and contemporary, you will find that those writings spend 99% of their time explaining why they disagree with socialism.

Peter Kropotkin

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As to their economical conceptions, the anarchists, in common with all socialists, of whom they constitute the left wing, maintain that the now prevailing system of private ownership in land, and our capitalist production for the sake of profits, represent a monopoly which runs against both the principles of justice and the dictates of utility. They are the main obstacle which prevents the successes of modern technics from being brought into the service of all, so as to produce general well-being. The anarchists consider the wage-system and capitalist production altogether as an obstacle to progress. But they point out also that the state was, and continues to be, the chief instrument for permitting the few to monopolize the land, and the capitalists to appropriate for themselves a quite disproportionate share of the yearly accumulated surplus of production. Consequently, while combating the present monopolization of land, and capitalism altogether, the anarchists combat with the same energy the state, as the main support of that system. Not this or that special form, but the state altogether, whether it be a monarchy or even a republic governed by means of the referendum.

The state organization, having always been, both in ancient and modern history (Macedonian Empire, Roman Empire, modern European states grown up on the ruins of the autonomous cities), the instrument for establishing monopolies in favour of the ruling minorities, cannot be made to work for the destruction of these monopolies. The anarchists consider, therefore, that to hand over to the state all the main sources of economical life - the land, the mines, the railways, banking, insurance, and so on - as also the management of all the main branches of industry, in addition to all the functions already accumulated in its hands (education, state-supported religions, defence of the territory, etc.), would mean to create a new instrument of tyranny. State capitalism would only increase the powers of bureaucracy and capitalism. True progress lies in the direction of decentralization, both territorial and functional, in the development of the spirit of local and personal initiative, and of free federation from the simple to the compound, in lieu of the present hierarchy from the centre to the periphery.

In common with most socialists, the anarchists recognize that, like all evolution in nature, the slow evolution of society is followed from time to time by periods of accelerated evolution which are called revolutions; and they think that the era of revolutions is not yet closed. Periods of rapid changes will follow the periods of slow evolution, and these periods must be taken advantage of - not for increasing and widening the powers of the state, but for reducing them, through the organization in every township or commune of the local groups of producers and consumers, as also the regional, and eventually the international, federations of these groups.

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Syndicalism is the only path that will lead to worker control of the ecomnomy anything else will still have people other than workers making economic decisions, supposedly on their behalf.

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Originally posted by contrarianna:

I don't quite see that given the authoritarian nature of Stalinism. What are their presuppositions that would make you think so? Their placement of Stalin on the grid is almost as far on the "social" scale towards authoritarianism--fascism as it is on the "economic" scale towards collectivism.

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Yes, of course they placed Stalin there. But he didn't actually do the test. The tests they use for authoritarianism are not ones that would place Stalinists on that part of the grid, I don't think. It basically tests for "social liberalism" versus "social conservatism". I don't think that's particularly relevant to Stalinism. A Stalinist might answer those questions in much the same way as would a "social liberal", especially since the thing is multiple choice. (I'm only speculating. I don't actually know any Stalinists!)

[ 28 November 2007: Message edited by: RosaL ]

WRT the war on drugs, many find his stated policy to be humane, progressive and anti-establishment. This is true.

WRT the war on terror and preemptive policies of imperialism and colonialism, many find his stance to be humane, progressive and anti-establishment. Again, true.

But those are only 2 issues, what about the other 50-100 ? I tend to think that many unwittingly overlook his other policies, in the interest of seeing harmony, agreement & optimism with someone outside of their political camp.

1) Economic Policy : According to Libertarians, the US has too much socialism, too much welfare, too much taxation, and all of the US problems are to be blamed on the evil bloated gov't. Nothing could be more untrue. The US is predominantly capitalist/corporatist, and Libertarian policies would only give the extremely wealthy more power.

Instead, we should realize that the US problems are overwhelmingly due to underfunding of essential services, and a complete absence of socialism, or even semi-socialism. Contrast the US socio-economic statistics with those in Europe & Scandinavia. Then, contrast the US gov't infrastructure / implemented policies with those in Europe & Scandinavia.

Conclusion ? There is far too much authoritarian capitalism & corporatism in the US, and virtually no safety net for the poor.

2) Social Policy : He wants more entrenched gun rights and less legal abortions, though the latter sets him apart from many Libertarians. The rights and status of women & minorities are not needed to be seperately protected, according to him, even though their socio-economic statistics indicate otherwise.

3) Foreign Policy : Non-Interventionism sounds great, but with more capitalism & corporatism, the subsequent desire and temptation for manipulative foreign meddling certainly won't go away, and might just take another, less explicit, more insidious form.

While those don't represent a total analysis, I think it's important for those left of center to look far beyond the isolated issues which make him & Libertarianism seem humanitarian & appealing.

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Anarchists, as I have said already, don't call themselves socialists.

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Thank for that quote Kropotkin1951 regarding the anarchist tendency within the socialist movement.

Mr. Spector, were you aware that the organization that Bakunin set up within the First International was called the International Alliance for Socialist Democracy. That was the name of his faciton that got kicked out. The Anarchist tendency of the International called itself socialist. Here is its program

Anarchism is a cluster of doctrines and tendencies. But the most prevelant type of Anarchism was the collectivist type, (Bakunin, Kropotkin et al.). This movement was part of the socialist movements. Since Anarchism has a broad brush and is not a doctrine like Marxism, there are specific tendencies within it that are by the fat the most prevelant. Hence, the collectivist anarchism that belongs to the socialist movement has tendencies within it which overlap and are known as libertarian socialism, libertarian communism, anarchist communism and anarcho-syndicalism. All of which belong to the broad socialist movement. Now, if one defines socialism as Marxism of course Anarchism is left outside. I believe your define socialism as Marxism. But if you look into the socialist movement itself you will see that the libertarian socialists (anarchists/anarcho-syndicalists) played a major role within the broad socialist movement even being prevalent in the Fabian society (which later set up the British Labour Party). The libertarian strand was actually quite strong and its ideas were taken up by the broad socialist movement (guild socialism; autogestion etc.)

In time the Marxist branch of the socialist movement appropriate the use of the term socialism and defined it to mean nationalization (a state form of socialization) of the means of production. The anarcho-syndicalist tendency was decimated by the Bolsheviks in Russia and lost ground throughout the world.

The Take

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Originally posted by Tom Vouloumanos:
Mr. Spector, were you aware that the organization that Bakunin set up within the First International was called the International Alliance for Socialist Democracy. That was the name of his faciton that got kicked out. The Anarchist tendency of the International called itself socialist.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
Anarchists can't even recognize socialism when it hits them smack in the face. This particular anarchist "theoretician" doesn't even admit that a revolution took place in Cuba in 1959.

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"Cuba, the "Pearl of the Antilles," though by no means a paradise, was not, as many believe, an economically backward country. Castro himself admitted that while there was poverty, there was no economic crisis and no hunger in Cuba before the Revolution."

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In fact, it's fairly difficult to starve to death in most parts of Latin America where fruit literally hangs from the trees most of the year. So what Dolgoff is trying to establish with statements like the one above are unclear.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
You wouldn't happen to have an example a bit more recent, like say, within the past 100 years?

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Originally posted by M. Spector:

Anarchists, as I have said already, don't call themselves socialists. In fact, they can't find any socialists that they don't have fundamental disagreements with; they write off anyone who believes in the necessity of socialist government as a "state socialist".

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Originally posted by kropotkin1951:
Try my post above.

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The last such organization seems to have died with Bakunin. Anarchist organizations ever since have fallen over themselves to avoid being mistaken for socialists.

Naturally, as this thread has already demonstrated, it's not hard to find individual anarchists who pose as socialists, but that's not the example I was looking for.

[ 29 November 2007: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

2) Identify the fact that virtually any mixture of political/philosophical principles & influences are possible. Sometimes, it's in the form of a convoluted hodgepodge which may indeed run contrary to certain dominant historical patterns and formal academic assumptions.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
Thanks, I read your post, and the link in it, but didn't see any example of an anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist organization that calls itself "socialist" - i.e. expressly in its organizational name.

The last such organization seems to have died with Bakunin. Anarchist organizations ever since have fallen over themselves to avoid being mistaken for socialists.

Naturally, as this thread has already demonstrated, it's not hard to find individual anarchists who pose as socialists, but that's not the example I was looking for.

[ 29 November 2007: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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Possibly the reason you don't see the word anarchist in names has alot to do with the direct action campaign of terror against the rich and powerful. Bombing cafes were rich people congregate and assasinating Presidents can really hurt a brand name even if the people who carried out those acts were a small part of the overall anarchist movement.

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For anarchists, libertarian socialism, libertarian communism, and anarchism are virtually interchangeable. As Vanzetti put it:

"After all we are socialists as the social-democrats, the socialists, the communists, and the I.W.W. are all Socialists. The difference -- the fundamental one -- between us and all the other is that they are authoritarian while we are libertarian; they believe in a State or Government of their own; we believe in no State or Government." [Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti, p. 274]

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In this same link, it asked whether Anarchists are socialists. The answer is copied below (with the various references):

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Yes. All branches of anarchism are opposed to capitalism. This is because capitalism is based upon oppression and exploitation (see sections B and C). Anarchists reject the "notion that men cannot work together unless they have a driving-master to take a percentage of their product" and think that in an anarchist society "the real workmen will make their own regulations, decide when and where and how things shall be done." By so doing workers would free themselves "from the terrible bondage of capitalism." [Voltairine de Cleyre, Anarchism p. 32 and p. 34]

(We must stress here that anarchists are opposed to all economic forms which are based on domination and exploitation, including feudalism, Soviet-style "socialism" -- better called "state capitalism" --, slavery and so on. We concentrate on capitalism because that is what is dominating the world just now).

Individualists like Benjamin Tucker along with social anarchists like Proudhon and Bakunin proclaimed themselves "socialists." They did so because, as Kropotkin put it in his classic essay "Modern Science and Anarchism," "[s]o long as Socialism was understood in its wide, generic, and true sense -- as an effort to abolish the exploitation of Labour by Capital -- the Anarchists were marching hand-in-hands with the Socialists of that time." [Evolution and Environment, p. 81] Or, in Tucker's words, "the bottom claim of Socialism [is] that labour should be put in possession of its own," a claim that both "the two schools of Socialistic thought . . . State Socialism and Anarchism" agreed upon. [The Anarchist Reader, p. 144] Hence the word "socialist" was originally defined to include "all those who believed in the individual's right to possess what he or she produced." [Lance Klafta, "Ayn Rand and the Perversion of Libertarianism," in Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, no. 34] This opposition to exploitation (or usury) is shared by all true anarchists and places them under the socialist banner.

For most socialists, "the only guarantee not to be robbed of the fruits of your labour is to possess the instruments of labour." [Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, p. 145] For this reason Proudhon, for example, supported workers' co-operatives, where "every individual employed in the association . . . has an undivided share in the property of the company" because by "participation in losses and gains . . . the collective force [i.e. surplus] ceases to be a source of profits for a small number of managers: it becomes the property of all workers." [The General Idea of the Revolution, p. 222 and p. 223] Thus, in addition to desiring the end of exploitation of labour by capital, true socialists also desire a society within which the producers own and control the means of production (including, it should be stressed, those workplaces which supply services). The means by which the producers will do this is a moot point in anarchist and other socialist circles, but the desire remains a common one. Anarchists favour direct workers' control and either ownership by workers' associations or by the commune (see section A.3 on the different types of anarchists).

Moreover, anarchists also reject capitalism for being authoritarian as well as exploitative. Under capitalism, workers do not govern themselves during the production process nor have control over the product of their labour. Such a situation is hardly based on equal freedom for all, nor can it be non-exploitative, and is so opposed by anarchists. This perspective can best be found in the work of Proudhon's (who inspired both Tucker and Bakunin) where he argues that anarchism would see "[c]apitalistic and proprietary exploitation stopped everywhere [and] the wage system abolished" for "either the workman. . . will be simply the employee of the proprietor-capitalist-promoter; or he will participate . . . In the first case the workman is subordinated, exploited: his permanent condition is one of obedience. . . In the second case he resumes his dignity as a man and citizen. . . he forms part of the producing organisation, of which he was before but the slave . . . we need not hesitate, for we have no choice. . . it is necessary to form an ASSOCIATION among workers . . . because without that, they would remain related as subordinates and superiors, and there would ensue two. . . castes of masters and wage-workers, which is repugnant to a free and democratic society." [Op. Cit., p. 233 and pp. 215-216]

Therefore all anarchists are anti-capitalist ("If labour owned the wealth it produced, there would be no capitalism" [Alexander Berkman, What is Anarchism?, p. 44]). Benjamin Tucker, for example -- the anarchist most influenced by liberalism (as we will discuss later) -- called his ideas "Anarchistic-Socialism" and denounced capitalism as a system based upon "the usurer, the receiver of interest, rent and profit." Tucker held that in an anarchist, non-capitalist, free-market society, capitalists will become redundant and exploitation of labour by capital would cease, since "labour. . . will. . . secure its natural wage, its entire product." [The Individualist Anarchists, p. 82 and p. 85] Such an economy will be based on mutual banking and the free exchange of products between co-operatives, artisans and peasants. For Tucker, and other Individualist anarchists, capitalism is not a true free market, being marked by various laws and monopolies which ensure that capitalists have the advantage over working people, so ensuring the latters exploitation via profit, interest and rent (see section G for a fuller discussion). Even Max Stirner, the arch-egoist, had nothing but scorn for capitalist society and its various "spooks," which for him meant ideas that are treated as sacred or religious, such as private property, competition, division of labour, and so forth.

So anarchists consider themselves as socialists, but socialists of a specific kind -- libertarian socialists. As the individualist anarchist Joseph A. Labadie puts it (echoing both Tucker and Bakunin):

"It is said that Anarchism is not socialism. This is a mistake. Anarchism is voluntary Socialism. There are two kinds of Socialism, archistic and anarchistic, authoritarian and libertarian, state and free. Indeed, every proposition for social betterment is either to increase or decrease the powers of external wills and forces over the individual. As they increase they are archistic; as they decrease they are anarchistic." [Anarchism: What It Is and What It Is Not]
Labadie stated on many occasions that "all anarchists are socialists, but not all socialists are anarchists." Therefore, Daniel Guerin's comment that "Anarchism is really a synonym for socialism. The anarchist is primarily a socialist whose aim is to abolish the exploitation of man by man" is echoed throughout the history of the anarchist movement, be it the social or individualist wings. [Anarchism, p. 12] Indeed, the Haymarket Martyr Adolph Fischer used almost exactly the same words as Labadie to express the same fact -- "every anarchist is a socialist, but every socialist is not necessarily an anarchist" -- while acknowledging that the movement was "divided into two factions; the communistic anarchists and the Proudhon or middle-class anarchists." [The Autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs, p. 81]

So while social and individualist anarchists do disagree on many issues -- for example, whether a true, that is non-capitalist, free market would be the best means of maximising liberty -- they agree that capitalism is to be opposed as exploitative and oppressive and that an anarchist society must, by definition, be based on associated, not wage, labour. Only associated labour will "decrease the powers of external wills and forces over the individual" during working hours and such self-management of work by those who do it is the core ideal of real socialism. This perspective can be seen when Joseph Labadie argued that the trade union was "the exemplification of gaining freedom by association" and that "[w]ithout his union, the workman is much more the slave of his employer than he is with it." [Different Phases of the Labour Question]

However, the meanings of words change over time. Today "socialism" almost always refers to state socialism, a system that all anarchists have opposed as a denial of freedom and genuine socialist ideals. All anarchists would agree with Noam Chomsky's statement on this issue:

"If the left is understood to include 'Bolshevism,' then I would flatly dissociate myself from the left. Lenin was one of the greatest enemies of socialism." [Marxism, Anarchism, and Alternative Futures, p. 779]
Anarchism developed in constant opposition to the ideas of Marxism, social democracy and Leninism. Long before Lenin rose to power, Mikhail Bakunin warned the followers of Marx against the "Red bureaucracy" that would institute "the worst of all despotic governments" if Marx's state-socialist ideas were ever implemented. Indeed, the works of Stirner, Proudhon and especially Bakunin all predict the horror of state Socialism with great accuracy. In addition, the anarchists were among the first and most vocal critics and opposition to the Bolshevik regime in Russia.

Nevertheless, being socialists, anarchists do share some ideas with some Marxists (though none with Leninists). Both Bakunin and Tucker accepted Marx's analysis and critique of capitalism as well as his labour theory of value (see section C). Marx himself was heavily influenced by Max Stirner's book The Ego and Its Own, which contains a brilliant critique of what Marx called "vulgar" communism as well as state socialism. There have also been elements of the Marxist movement holding views very similar to social anarchism (particularly the anarcho-syndicalist branch of social anarchism) -- for example, Anton Pannekoek, Rosa Luxembourg, Paul Mattick and others, who are very far from Lenin. Karl Korsch and others wrote sympathetically of the anarchist revolution in Spain. There are many continuities from Marx to Lenin, but there are also continuities from Marx to more libertarian Marxists, who were harshly critical of Lenin and Bolshevism and whose ideas approximate anarchism's desire for the free association of equals.

Therefore anarchism is basically a form of socialism, one that stands in direct opposition to what is usually defined as "socialism" (i.e. state ownership and control). Instead of "central planning," which many people associate with the word "socialism," anarchists advocate free association and co-operation between individuals, workplaces and communities and so oppose "state" socialism as a form of state capitalism in which "[e]very man [and woman] will be a wage-receiver, and the State the only wage payer." [Benjamin Tucker, The Individualist Anarchists, p. 81] Thus anarchist's reject Marxism (what most people think of as "socialism") as just "[t]he idea of the State as Capitalist, to which the Social-Democratic fraction of the great Socialist Party is now trying to reduce Socialism." [Peter Kropotkin, The Great French Revolution, vol. 1, p. 31] The anarchist objection to the identification of Marxism, "central planning" and State Socialism/Capitalism with socialism will be discussed in section H.

It is because of these differences with state socialists, and to reduce confusion, most anarchists just call themselves "anarchists," as it is taken for granted that anarchists are socialists. However, with the rise of the so-called "libertarian" right in the USA, some pro-capitalists have taken to calling themselves "anarchists" and that is why we have laboured the point somewhat here. Historically, and logically, anarchism implies anti-capitalism, i.e. socialism, which is something, we stress, that all anarchists have agreed upon (for a fuller discuss of why "anarcho"-capitalism is not anarchist see section F).

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In this interview, Chomsky discusses the anarchist strand of socialism:

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ZV: In theoretical political science we can analytically identify two main conceptions of anarchism – a so called collective anarchism with Bakunin, Kropotkin and Makhno as main figures and which is limited to Europe, and on another hand so called individualistic anarchism which is limited to US. Do you agree with this theoretical separation, and in this perspective, where do you see the historical beginnings (origins) of anarchism in the U.S.

NC: The individualistic anarchism that you are talking about, Stirner and others, is one of the roots of -- among other things -- the so-called “libertarian” movement in the US. This means dedication to free market capitalism, and has no connection with the rest of the international anarchist movement. In the European tradition, anarchists commonly called themselves libertarian socialists, in a very different sense of the term “libertarian.” As far as I can see, the workers’ movements, which didn’t call themselves anarchist, were closer to the main strain of European anarchism than many of the people in the US who called themselves anarchists. If we go back to the labor activism from the early days of the industrial revolution, to the working class press in 1850s, and so on, it’s got a real anarchist strain to it. They never heard of European anarchism, never heard of Marx, or anything like that. It was spontaneous. They took for granted wage labor is little different from slavery, that workers should own the mills, that the industrial system is destroying individual initiative, culture, and so on, that they have to struggle against the what they called “the new spirit of the age” in the 1850s: “Gain Wealth, Forgetting all but Self.” Sounds rather familiar. And the same is true of other popular movements – let’s take the New Left movements. Some strains related themselves to traditional collectivist anarchism, which always regarded itself as a branch of socialism. But US and to some extent British libertarianism is quite a different thing and different development, in fact has no objection to tyranny as long as it is private tyranny. That is radically different from other forms of anarchism.

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Anyway, whether you consult Encycopedia Britannica or Wikipedia or Indopedia, Anarchism is always listed as a Branch of Socialism, much like Marxism, Leninism, Social Democracy and Democratic Socialism. They all derive from the same workers" movement.

What should we do if 25 international armies invade and try to put our former king back on the throne for us?

And then what should we do if some one of us determines that we should switch from agrarian to rapid industrialization in response to previous military threats costing us, say, 4 million lives?

There's a fair bit of repetition there Tom, and I hope you won't be too offended if I remark that it doesn't all hang together too well. But I've got some basic ideas out of it anyway. A few remarks of my own follow.

The anarchist reproach of the "state-ist" danger of Marxism is well known to most Marxists. I have yet, however, to find a satisfactory response by anarchists about the transition from today's capitalism to some post-capitalist or socialist society. It's not an idle question. We can all paint lovely pictures of an ideal society but the key question has always been: how to get there from here?

The Marxist tradition, beginning with old Karl himself, made careful study of every rebellion, every barricade stormed, every Bastille captured, every high water mark for the struggle of working people. When it comes to the state, Marx made as good a study he could of, e.g., the Paris Commune - which was the first working class government in history, long before the Russian Revolution of 1917 - and tried to generalize that experience to benefit workers everywhere. Even a failure is useful from such an enlightened point of view ... and, as we all know, the Paris Commune was drowned in blood and it would be many years before the working class of any country was in a position to break up a capitalist state and replace it with something new and different.

Lenin, I think, at least in September of 1917, did his best to continue this tradition of careful study and came up with what is, in my view, one of his greatest works. I mean State and Revolution. It really is a little gem and it is written in such a way that there should be no confusion about what the author means. The book is certainly dated in some ways, and we would naturally enough have a lot to say about strengthening democracy under socialism, and how long socialism might be expected to last, and so on, especially given our position of post-Stalinist hindsight. Nevertheless, Lenin's characterization of the difference between the Marxists and the Anarchists has yet to be "debunked" by anyone. I invite you to do your best in that regard.

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Lenin: The difference between the Marxists and the Anarchists consists in this: (1) the former, while aiming at the complete destruction of the state, recognize that this aim can only be realized after the abolition of classes by a Socialist revolution, as the result of the establishment of Socialism, leading to the withering away of the state; the latter want the complete destruction of the state within twenty-four hours, not understanding the conditions under which such destruction can be carried out; (2) the former recognize that when once the proletariat has won political power it must utterly break up the old state machinery, and substitute for it a new one consisting of an organization of armed workers, after the type of the Commune; the latter, while advocating the destruction of the state machinery, have alsolutely no clear idea as to what the proletariat will put in its place and how it will use its revolutionary power; the Anarchists even reject the utilization by the revolutionary proletariat of state power, the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat; (3)the former insist upon making use of the modern state as a means of preparing the workers for revolution; the latter reject this.

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If anarchists believe in a stateless society, then do they also not believe in organized society with democratic elections making way for central decision-making?

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Anarchist thought is varied but the most prevelant and most influential has been libertarian socialism (or lobertarian communism) expoused by Anarcho-Syndicalists. All socialists (including Marx and his followers) saw the nation-state as the expression of the Bourgeoisie that created it. They all wanted to eventually destroy. Marxists wanted to first take power of it and then it would wither aways as socialism turned into communism. Anarchists on the other hand wanted to overthrow it immediately with capitalism and hence, avoid the creation of a new class of managers who would curtail the workers' revolution.

Beforehand we must define what the state is. The state in the libertarian socialist mind is not the nation Since Libertatian Socialists believe nations exist and people of form common bonds starting with family, friends, then to neighbours and communities, then to linguistic or cultural groups covering regions. The State was not the country or the people it was the bureaucracy, the strucure and the institutionalized hierarchy which even if subject to votes was not participatory. The state belonged to the class who created it: the Bourgeoisie.

Libertarian socialists have discussed about what kind of society they wanted in some great detail. In fact, debates within the anarcho-syndicalist CNT were very heated about the social question. The Cenetistas were obsessed with what libertarian communism would look like.

Their vision of libertarian communism was based on two basic institutions the free municipality and the free synidicate. Everyone lived in a town, village, city. Everyon worked the land or in a factory. The basic human forms of organizations were already present.

Hence, every syndicate and every municipality would form a free unit controlled fully by its members.

The structure for the municipality would be the popular assembly. The assembly would meet periodically to decide in free votes various local issues. The assembly would elect a committe of recallable delegates who would execute the assemblies decisions. Their mandate would be short and well defined. Delegates to these committees would be able to serve not more than one mandate at a time. The assembly itself since it could not meet regularly because it was too large, would be broken down into seperate citizen's councils. Let us say a town of 5,000 people would have 50 councils of 100 people. These smaller units of 100 people would meet more regularly to review local affairs and they would elect a spokesperson who would meet with the committee. So the committee would meet with a council of 50 spokespersons on a regular basis.

But this is just for a small town, what about the region or the whole country.

Each popular assembly would elect a delegate who would represent their municipality, town, village or group of less populous villages at a regional federation. Let us say 100 municipalities formed a region. The regional council would be made up of each recallable delegate of the municipalities who are part of the region. Hence, the region would have 100 councilors. Each of this councilor is reponsible to the committee of the municipality and moves between these two bodies. The committee of the municipality confers with the 50 councilors who go back to their respective groups of 100 citizens.

As for the nation, let us say there are twenty regions. Each region has varying populations. Each regional council would send a number of its own delegates to a national confederation council. The number of delegates per region would be based on its proportion of the population. The delegates to the confederal council are also delegates to the regional council so they move between those two bodies. Now since these delegates were also also moving between the regional council and the committee of the municipality, there is too much moving right? So they, if elected to the confederal body could no longer be representatives of the municipality on the regional council, they would be replaced by new reps.

So, to recap, the confederal council has delegates. Each is recallable and responisble to a regional council. Each councillor of the regional council is responsible to the committee of the municipality. The committee of the municipality is responsible to spokespersons who are elected by smaller groups of the municipality and who form direct citizen councils made up of around 100 citizens or even less. Therefore, there is an organic relationship between all the levels.

The municipality would hold an assembly at least once a year to elect a committe and a regional representative. The local citizen councils of 100 citizens would meet montlhy to discuss and give feedback on local, regional and national issues.

The countries as we know them would be replaced by a Commonwealth of Confederated Communities.

Similar structures were applied to the economic sphere.

Each factory would elect a committee. Each industry in a locality would be federated into a local federation. The local federations would be federated into regional federations and the regional into confederal.

The economy was seen as having two branches, locality and industry. Hence, the structures would be industry based and geographically based. In other words there would be local, regional and national federations of the automobile industry as well as local regional and national federations of all producers. These parallel structures would form the national economic council. This is too long to explain in an already long post.

Now, in terms of specialists, and advisors. The anarcho-syndicalists had a constant fear of entrenched bureaucracy which would create fieddoms of power. Hence they believed that all specialists and advisors should be rotated between various councils, thereby avoiding the creation of a mangerial class.

As for a defense force. The CNT-FAI militias were a living example of a democratic military structure. Again, going into the details here would be too long.

In essence, the nation state would be replaced by a commonwealth of federated communities and producer collectives. The dream was to achieve such a structure at an international scale.

The scary thing about the anarchists is that they wanted direct citizen and worker control without leaderism, political parties, managers. An idea that sends a chill down the spine of all elites.

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Tom Vouloumanos: N. Beltov, I have to apologize that ... I was addressing [M.Spector's] remarks ... not yours ...

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The anarchist reproach of the "state-ist" danger of Marxism is well known to most Marxists.

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It was not only anti-statist, it was primarily a warning against a new ruling class: a new bureaucracy of technical experts, who had more empowering positions, greater authority and privilege, a coordinator class of the managerial elites who would administrate the apparatus for the "good of the workers". It was the bureacracy that anarcho-syndicalists abhored. This is why the promoted participatory structures like the ones I mentioned above.

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I have yet, however, to find a satisfactory response by anarchists about the transition from today's capitalism to some post-capitalist or socialist society. It's not an idle question. We can all paint lovely pictures of an ideal society but the key question has always been: how to get there from here?

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I think there are two parts to this questions or at least two answers. The first answer will deal with yesterday's anarchist response and the second will briefly deal with a modern radical response.

Yesterday's answer was much like the Marxist revolutionary answer: a well organized revolutionary organ will incite a popular violent revolt to ovethrow the system. The Marxists wanted a Party of the the working class to lead it, the Anarchists wanted it to be lead by the Labour unions who were organized along libertarian federalist lines described above. The unions would take over the places of work, popular assemblies would take over their neighbourhoods. These basic units would federate and confederate through the use of recallable delegates thus building the commonwealth. Anarchists were far more interested in the organizational aspects of the revolution since as Errico Malatesta said anarchims is organization, organisation and organization. The obsession of libertarian socialists with organization was due to the fact that they knew that without libertarian structures a new powerful class would easily arise above the proleteriat as has always happened during revulution. Kropotkin called revolutions a series of disequilibriums in which after a while a new equilibrium could be constructed. The role of anarchism is simply to avoid a new hierarchy from taking over during these disequilibriums and preventing authentic popular democracy i.e. direct rule of the people. Hence, how does one achieve direct rule of workers over indusstry and citizens over communities without new entrenched hierarchies? The answer is with great care in developping new organizational structures that reflect libertarian socialist ideals. That is that our organizations should reflect the society we want.

As for today's anarchists. Well I can not answer that question as I cannot answer it for revolutionary Marxists. Specifically, because I believe that classical proleterian revolutions are now impossible for many reasons. Secondly, the economic-state structure has now changed and we have a new entity that is a supra-state: the transnational corporation. The state-corporate nexus that exists today was not present during the time of Marx nor of the end of the libertarian socialist movement which basically was decimated after 1938.

I for one consider myself a socialist who has strong libertarian leanings. I am much closer to the thoughts of Noam Chomsky, Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert. They all identify with the libertarian socialist tradition but none of them prone the tacticts of the past. In general, the libertarian socialist tradition is not doctrinaire, it does not believe it has all the answers, modern anarcho-syndicalist unions like the spanish CGT say that in their charter. Empirical experiment is therefore paramount.

As to what kind of transition we can have today, well no one can fully answer that question and be sincere. What we need though are general tactics and strategy based on past lessons. For example, modern libertarian socialists may choose to actually strengthen the state since it is a counterweight to the corporation. The Brazilian workers used the expression "expanding the floor of our cage" i.e. the state is a cage but for now it protects us from even worse beasts that roam around, but we don't forget that is still our prison. Hence, I do not agree with many of the revolutionary leftists out there who still prone some sort of uprising (one may still occur in certain societies though). My own personal philosophy is that there are political strategies, via the parliamentary route and extra-political or civil society strategies. I think that classical Marxism and classical Anarchism are not sufficient in today's world. I have presented my views on this on babble before, my own thoughts on the subject are learning from the two schools I admire and that is reformist social democracy and revolutionary anarchosyndicalism. I am now opening another discussion so I will end my comments on this topic here and continue with the main theme.

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The Marxist tradition, beginning with old Karl himself, made careful study of every rebellion, every barricade stormed, every Bastille captured, every high water mark for the struggle of working people. When it comes to the state, Marx made as good a study he could of, e.g., the Paris Commune - which was the first working class government in history, long before the Russian Revolution of 1917 - and tried to generalize that experience to benefit workers everywhere. Even a failure is useful from such an enlightened point of view ... and, as we all know, the Paris Commune was drowned in blood and it would be many years before the working class of any country was in a position to break up a capitalist state and replace it with something new and different.

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Bakunin was also a student of the Paris Commune, a defining moment in the international socialist movement. During the Spanish Social Revolution of 1936, the lessons of the Paris Commune and the events of 1917 were in the minds of the anarcho-syndicalists (the conclusions were quite different of course). Again, anarchism was not a doctrinaire system, it was political tendency that based itself on the lessons of the past and on building new structures. Anarchists and Marxists saw different things because they differed on an important issue, namely, the managerial class (i.e. the bureaucracy). Marxists did not see this class, for Anarchists it was a principle theme. Anarchists did not believe that any other class other than the workers could liberate themselves. This is why the structures they came up with after 70 years of experiments and study were breathtaking and successful. Revolutionary Spain is the world's greates experience in worker self-management of industry and agriculture as well as citizen's participatory governance of villages, towns and cities, I presented some examples above on this.

Even their militias were highly organized. Anarchists were obsessed on how the revolution would be carried out. They did not just claim that the workers would rise up against the Bourgeoisie, they asked how would this be done. They debated long into the night regarding the actual revolutionary bodies should be organized. For them 1917 was a constant reminder that a socialist revolution can be swept up from above by the military. Therefore, they came up with a democratic militia of equals and this is how it worked:

10 militia men or women would voluntarily assemble and form an autonomous militia group. They wold elect a represenative, who would have no material priviliges that were greater than the other 9 militia men or women.

10 autonomous militia groups would form a centuria. The 10 recallable representatives would form a council of the centuria. The council of the centuria would elect a centuria representative.

5 centurias would form an agrupacion. The 5 recallable centuria representatives would form the council of the agrupacion and they would elect an agrupacion representative.

4 agrupacions would form a collumn. The collum would have a war committee made up by the 4 agrupacio representatives and a collumn leader and a military advisor who did not have a vote.

The collumn leader would be elected by the 4 councils of the agrupacion.

All votes would be a public show of hands. When one was a representative on a higher body they had to confer with the level they directly represented before taking a vote. Each representative was recallable by the level they represented. There were no insignias or saluting or heel clicking. Orders were given by a comrade to a comrade. No representatives had any material privilege that was greater than any one else.

The collumns were linked into a Confederation of militias. A highly organized structure that ensured that the revolution would be pursued along egalitarian lines thereby avoiding a new military hierarchy.

Hence, anarchists were quite obsessed with how the revolution would be carried out as well as how the new society would be structured.

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Nevertheless, Lenin's characterization of the difference between the Marxists and the Anarchists has yet to be "debunked" by anyone. I invite you to do your best in that regard.
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Lenin: The difference between the Marxists and the Anarchists consists in this: (1) the former, while aiming at the complete destruction of the state, recognize that this aim can only be realized after the abolition of classes by a Socialist revolution, as the result of the establishment of Socialism, leading to the withering away of the state; the latter want the complete destruction of the state within twenty-four hours, not understanding the conditions under which such destruction can be carried out; (2) the former recognize that when once the proletariat has won political power it must utterly break up the old state machinery, and substitute for it a new one consisting of an organization of armed workers, after the type of the Commune; the latter, while advocating the destruction of the state machinery, have alsolutely no clear idea as to what the proletariat will put in its place and how it will use its revolutionary power; the Anarchists even reject the utilization by the revolutionary proletariat of state power, the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat; (3)the former insist upon making use of the modern state as a means of preparing the workers for revolution; the latter reject this.
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I think either Lenin is lying or he cannot see a revolution without his own class leading it. Lenin was an elite and he did not believe that the masses can lead themselves without his guidance or that of the new state managers. Anarchists were clear and in 1917 the anarchist and libertarian Marxist (the school of Rosa Luxembourd) influence in the Russian Revolution was quite present, it was referred to as Anarchist Communism and it was very influencial in movements like the Makhnovists for example. Hence, the libertarian ideals of the workers and peasants of 1917 played a major role in them creating councils of self-managament (soviets) which were not as participatory as those in Spain of 1936 but quite advanced none the less. The soviets who were directly controlled by workers, peasants and soldiers were in fact crushed and placed under party control via the state apparatus. Lenin goes on and on about the proletaria taking over the state. But how? What structurres? Where are councils of workers in all of this? This is an utter lie, a euphemism to mean under the control of the Party, of the new managers. It is not true again, that the anarchists had no idea of what they wanted to put in the place of the state. Russia is the country of Bakunin and Kropotkin, again neighborhood councils federated by towns, discticts, citities and regions thereby defining a new commonwealth of civic self-management. The anarchust literature is quite clear on this.

Lenin ommits to tell us how the proletariat take over the state and how it withers away. Marx never said it either. The anarchists were always clear on this issue. They always mentioned structures and forms of organization that were participatory and based on seld management and presented in this post and on the above posts.

Stalin did not fall from outer space, he inherited the totalitarian state that Lenin and Trotsky created. The anarcho-syndicalist revolution of Spain did not fall from outer space either, the CNT-FAI inherited the studies of the passed and the insights of Bakunin and Kropotkin and Anselmo Lorenzo to build the structures they actually managed to create before the were destroyed by Stalinists. Stalin wrote in Pravda in 1937 that the anarcho-syndicalists would be decimated with the same vogor as they were in the USSR.

I think Lenin hated authentic socialism (i.e. socialism where the factories are under those who toil in them and not the managers) because of his own class interest as a member of the new ruling class, what Bakunin called the Red Bureaucracy. I think Lenin's analysis hides a deep rooted class interest and this is why he avoids speaking about structures and sticks to Marx's slip of the tongue (dictatorship of the proleteriat) convenient words to mean dictatorship of the Party under the rule of its self-appointed leaders. It is no wonder why Leninism has always been popular amongs the intelligentsia it is an ideology which places the academic elite in the driver's seat of society.

Hence, one cannot take Lenin's charactarization of Anarchism seriously, he misrepresented Anarchism even more than he misrepresented Marxism (and that it another thread altogether).

I hope I addressed some of the many complex points you raised.

[ 10 December 2007: Message edited by: Tom Vouloumanos ]

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Originally posted by Tom Vouloumanos:
I think Lenin hated authentic socialism (i.e. socialism where the factories are under those who toil in them and not the managers) because of his own class interest as a member of the new ruling class, what Bakunin called the Red Bureaucracy. I think Lenin's analysis hides a deep rooted class interest and this is why he avoids speaking about structures and sticks to Marx's slip of the tongue (dictatorship of the proleteriat) convenient words to mean dictatorship of the Party under the rule of its self-appointed leaders.

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John Spritzer seems to lump Stalin in with the power elites of the world for betraying worker's movements in Spain, France, Greece and Italy. The west was very aggressive themselves with CIA operations like "Gladio" However, I believe, and I haven't actually read the book, that Spritzer does attribute Stalin's fear of an outbreak of worker's socialism in western Europe to Stalin's protectionist attitude toward mother Russia. Spritzer suggests that Stalin was afraid of workers revolutions in Eastern and Western Europe(as well as Russia) because it would have been perceived by fascists as Soviet aggression and Soviet-inspired, and most important, as a pretext for fascist invasion of Russia part three or four or whatever. ~~ 50-83M dead and missing at the end of WWII, and Russia could not afford a repeat of that. And therefore dictatorial state socialism in one country(and the buffer nations) was Stalin's central aim. The Russian army was still strong enough to liberate Eastern Europe on their own and probably western Europe in time, which is what the west was afraid of. But Russia had no atomic bomb at the end of the war. And Stalin realized that air superiority belonged to the west. Stalin did advise North Korea to avoid war with U.S-UN forces at all cost because they were militarily too weak to provide meaningful support to communist North Korea at the start of the 1950's.

[ 10 December 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

1. Identifying the central role of labour unions in an anarchist social vision confuses organizations of economic self-defence by workers with political organizations of workers. These are not the same thing even if trade unions can and do play a role in political life. In Canada, for example, there are many fine trade unionists who "contract out" their political hopes to the NDP, a parliamentary party with no revolutionary aspirations whatsoever, and adopt a very narrow interpretation of the interests of working people. This approach, of course, is much more common in wealthier imperialist countries, like Canada, than in more impoverished countries where the creation of a "labour aristocracy" has a much more narrow base of possibility. Such people are unlikely to lead working people to political power that genuinely challenges the power of capital. This is why there exists a left that is to the "left" of the NDP; the issue of genuine working class power remains unaddressed in a serious way by such parties.

2. "The role of anarchism is simply to avoid a new hierarchy from taking over ..."

Well said. But I don't think you realize that this is hardly a compliment. Any new social class that takes power is likely to face violent resistance from the old power. And the old power, according to your own characterization, will be able to find an ally among the anarchists. I don't see that as a good thing.

3. "Errico Malatesta said anarchism is organization, organisation and organization."

I will bite my lip and refrain from making a sarcastic remark about anarchist "organization". However, please consider this: Fidel Castro said that a revolution that cannot defend itself is worthless. With what institutions does a revolution defend itself? Or don't you agree with Castro's sentiment?

4. "I believe that classical proletarian revolutions are now impossible for many reasons. Secondly, the economic-state structure has now changed and we have a new entity that is a supra-state: the transnational corporation. The state-corporate nexus that exists today was not present during the time of Marx ..."

Good grief. Marx predicted a global capitalism 150 years ago. The only thing missing was the term "globalization". Furthermore, many Marxists after his death made extensive study of capitalism as a global system in their own country and time and came to conclusions based on that analysis. Lenin is only one of many such theorists, frankly. Finally, working class institutions have played a key, not to say pivotal, role in those countries that currently take a socialist approach. Just look at Venezuela or Cuba.

It's rather odd that you would write off the effectiveness of working class revolutions when you claim that anarchists belong to the working class tradition. Have you completely given up on moving forward to some post-capitalist society? Perhaps there is some other mechanism of social change that you would like to outline here. I'm all ears. Of course I'm not limiting my vision of working class revolutions to a stereotype of barricade-storming, axe-wielding bezerkers. I hope you won't do the same.

5. "I for one consider myself a socialist who has strong libertarian leanings."

That's great .. but you're making your political approach sound like a shopping list with a "bit of this" and "a bit of that".

6. I really don't see how your description of decision making bodies in the Spanish Republic demonstrates any higher understanding than that of the Paris Commune. And it's not Bakunin or a famous anarchist who made the best study of that first working class government in history. It was Marx with his Civil War in France who did that. Read it if you haven't already and see if you still have the same opinions of Marx and Marxists.

7. "I think either Lenin is lying or he cannot see a revolution without his own class leading it."

I agree that Lenin was a partisan for a working class government. That's a point in his favour, however. If he was simply a partisan for the creation of a new technical or managerial elite, wouldn't it have been easier for him to take a more liberal approach, side with Kerensky and the like, and simply be an advocate of a more efficient capitalism? Then he wouldn't have had to go underground for the bulk of his adult life, no exile outside of Russia or in Siberia, and so on. This is really a primitive kind of argument you're making here; your claim reads as if you think that the guy you disagree with "is a liar" and therefore his arguments can be jettisoned because they're insincere. You still need to address the substance of the arguments. Is it really necessary for me to point this out?

The gist of your following remarks seems to be that undemocratic structures and the replacement of democratic institutions by the CPSU inevitably flowed from Lenin's ideas earlier expressed. You've failed to demonstrate a connection other than to note that the one thing followed after the other. Stalinism, however, was no more inevitable than Nazism. Yours is not a convincing argument at all and it regurgitates the usual official anti-communist lines by the political right.

In fact, the Revolution of 1917 was the culmination of an entire historical period in Russian history ... a period characterized by different kinds of struggle that were less successful and replaced by new kinds of struggle, a practice revolution in 1905, and so on. Its success, as well as the failures that followed are valuable lessons for any future working class that hopes to take power away from a capitalist class and form a new kind of society that is just, sustainable and peaceful as befits human beings.

8. "Lenin omits to tell us how ... the state ... withers away. Marx never said it either. The anarchists were always clear on this issue."

This is your best contribution. However, I think you're demanding some sort of super-human prescience from Marx, and the Lenin of 1917, to foresee the outlines of how this would come about. In fact, no one has solved this problem ... certainly not the anarchists, who don't even address the issue by their simple denunciation of any substantial state, revolutionary or not, and therefore (conveniently) avoid the question of how it might "wither away".

9. "Hence, one cannot take Lenin's characterization of Anarchism seriously, he misrepresented Anarchism even more than he misrepresented Marxism ... "

It's not clear to me that you have a really good understanding of Marxism to begin with ... to make such a judgment. But perhaps you would tell me that my understanding of anarchism is just as bad.

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1. Identifying the central role of labour unions in an anarchist social vision confuses organizations of economic self-defence by workers with political organizations of workers.

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Anarcho-Syndicalist organizations had dual structures. One was industry based the other was based on locality. Why? The one which was industry based would do the day to day work to fight for workers' rights within the existing system. The other that was locality based would have longer term revolutionary goals of overthrowing the system and more importantly replacing it with a new order based on the structures they had develloped wich they used. I wrote about this above:

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Similar structures were applied to the economic sphere.

Each factory would elect a committee. Each industry in a locality would be federated into a local federation. The local federations would be federated into regional federations and the regional into confederal.

The economy was seen as having two branches, locality and industry. Hence, the structures would be industry based and geographically based. In other words there would be local, regional and national federations of the automobile industry as well as local regional and national federations of all producers. These parallel structures would form the national economic council. This is too long to explain in an already long post.

Now, in terms of specialists, and advisors. The anarcho-syndicalists had a constant fear of entrenched bureaucracy which would create fieddoms of power. Hence they believed that all specialists and advisors should be rotated between various councils, thereby avoiding the creation of a mangerial class.

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The anarcho-syndicalist unions already had structures similar to the ones that would take over factories. Let us give the example of the largest anarcho-syndicalist organisation in history, the CNT:

The CNT was built up organically around the Catalan Regional Confederation of Labour, adding other regional confederations. Hence, the CNT became a loose collection of Regional Confederations, each Regional Confederation was broken down into comarca or Local Federations and finally into sindicatos or individual unions of workers from a common enterprise and vocation.

In typical syndicalist fashion, the CNT had a dual structure: the sindicatos were grouped into large occupational federations whose function was to struggle around economic grievances and working conditions; paralleling these vocational organizations, in every community and region the different sindicatos were grouped together, irrespective of trade, into local geographic federations whose function was revolutionary.

Hence, the sindicatos were immersed in both trade unionism as well as revolutionary anarchism. The workers of each individual sindicato would elect a council (or Junta) in a general assembly, these councilors were in direct contact with the workers they were elected by and their function was to merely coordinate union activities between worker assembly meetings of each union which were held every three months. Each union council would in turn delegate a few their peer councilors to a Local Federation Committee in order to coordinate activities with other unions of that district. Each Local Federation or comarca was autonomous and in fact it was a merely coordination body for a plurality of individual unions.

Each Local Federation would call general assemblies of all workers in order to elect delegates to a Regional congress of the various local confederations as well as to the National Congress of the whole CNT, both of which were held once a year at different times. The amount of delegates was proportional to the number of workers per Local Federation and their mandates were decided by the plenary assemblies that elected them. Mandated delegates at the Regional congress would elect a Regional committee and delegates at the National congress would elect a National Committee.

Assemblies and congresses were not rubber stamping affairs; some National congresses would last ten days in which delegates would actively debate within their regional caucuses within the confines of their mandates and then choose a spokesperson amongst them. Consensus and compromise were strived for but that was not necessary, decisions were taken by majority votes. Agendas for all congresses were prepared in a participatory manner between the individual union, as well as the local, regional and national structures to safeguard that a congress was not skewed one way or the other from on top.

The role of the National and Regional Committees was primarily correspondence, the collection of statistics, aid to prisoners and coordination at the national and regional levels respectively. The mandates of the National and Regional committees were decided during their respective congresses and all committee members were subject to recall. Decisions that were thought to be outside the jurisdiction of the Congresses or Committees were ignored by the local federations of unions since they were sovereign bodies. This impeded centralization. The only paid functionaries of the whole CNT structure were the general secretary of the National Committee and the secretaries of the Regional Committees, who can only hold that position for a year. This impeded bureaucratization. The National Committee would confer with the Regional Committees, these regional committees would confer with their local federation committees, the local committee members were also members of individual union councils, hence communication was organic, and finally the respective councils of the individual unions would be bound by the will of the workers in open assemblies. The most sovereign body was the individual sindicato where decisions were made final by the workers in face to face assemblies; these meetings could overrule any decision of a federal or confederal body. This impeded hierarchy. Yet, more often than not, since they had done away with hierarchs in their organization, the CNT workers (or cenetistas) voluntarily strived for coordination, consensus and compromise within the national confederation. This assured order.

It took many decades of experimentation to come up with this type of libertarian organization.

Now, when the revolution came. The structure was already set up.

So, the factories were taken up by their individual syndicatos. The elected Junta would now manage the factory. Most factories went further during the spain's revolutionary attempts. A factory of 300 workers was broken down into worker assemblies of 50 workers. That's 6 assemblies. Each elects a delegate. That's 6 delegates, they now have a factory committee that just doesn't take decisions it send each delegate to confer with the 49 other people they represent. Now the factories are federate by industry and by locality. How is this done. All the factories in industry "A" are federated in a given locality, the federated by region then confederated in the whole country. So there is a National Confederation of industry A. At the same time, the delegates to the local, regional and national committees of industry A meet with the other industries in their locality, region and at the national level. Let me be more explicit. The factories of industry A send representatives to a local federation of industry A. These reps confer back to each factory committee made up of delegates that are directly controlled by smaller sub-units of 50 workers of the factory. These delegates of industry A meet on a committee of industry A. The committee of industry A sends delegates to the local economic federation on which reps of all the other industries are present. This is repeated at the regional and national levels. So there is a parallel structure based on industry and locality that meets at every level and emulates the original structure of the unions before the revolution. The workers knew how to set this up because the already had experience.

This takes care of production (industrial and agricultural) but what about consumption.

The CNT had a sister organization called the FAI that was not a union but a political or social revolutionary organization.

The FAI was a loose collection of autonomous cells known as affinity groups made up of the most convinced, radical and revolutionary anarchists within a given neighbourhood or town. An affinity group rarely numbered more than 12 members. Members of an affinity group were friends who knew each other their whole life; the idea behind that structure was to foster personal ties and the independent spirit and initiative of each intimate group. Affinity groups met and debated with each other in cafés throughout Barcelona and other major Spanish cities and towns.

The FAI was also structured along confederal lines: the affinity groups in a locality were linked together via a Local federation and the Local federations in District and Regional federations, which were linked by a Penisular Committee, which was a mere administrative body. Assemblies of Local federations were convened regularly and they elected delegates to District, Regional and Peninsular congresses. The Local federations were sovereign and the affinity groups autonomous.

This structure provided the basis for the communal structure I described above:

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The structure for the municipality would be the popular assembly. The assembly would meet periodically to decide in free votes various local issues. The assembly would elect a committe of recallable delegates who would execute the assemblies decisions. Their mandate would be short and well defined. Delegates to these committees would be able to serve not more than one mandate at a time. The assembly itself since it could not meet regularly because it was too large, would be broken down into seperate citizen's councils. Let us say a town of 5,000 people would have 50 councils of 100 people. These smaller units of 100 people would meet more regularly to review local affairs and they would elect a spokesperson who would meet with the committee. So the committee would meet with a council of 50 spokespersons on a regular basis.

But this is just for a small town, what about the region or the whole country.

Each popular assembly would elect a delegate who would represent their municipality, town, village or group of less populous villages at a regional federation. Let us say 100 municipalities formed a region. The regional council would be made up of each recallable delegate of the municipalities who are part of the region. Hence, the region would have 100 councilors. Each of this councilor is reponsible to the committee of the municipality and moves between these two bodies. The committee of the municipality confers with the 50 councilors who go back to their respective groups of 100 citizens.

As for the nation, let us say there are twenty regions. Each region has varying populations. Each regional council would send a number of its own delegates to a national confederation council. The number of delegates per region would be based on its proportion of the population. The delegates to the confederal council are also delegates to the regional council so they move between those two bodies. Now since these delegates were also also moving between the regional council and the committee of the municipality, there is too much moving right? So they, if elected to the confederal body could no longer be representatives of the municipality on the regional council, they would be replaced by new reps.

So, to recap, the confederal council has delegates. Each is recallable and responisble to a regional council. Each councillor of the regional council is responsible to the committee of the municipality. The committee of the municipality is responsible to spokespersons who are elected by smaller groups of the municipality and who form direct citizen councils made up of around 100 citizens or even less. Therefore, there is an organic relationship between all the levels.

The municipality would hold an assembly at least once a year to elect a committe and a regional representative. The local citizen councils of 100 citizens would meet montlhy to discuss and give feedback on local, regional and national issues.

The countries as we know them would be replaced by a Commonwealth of Confederated Communities.

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Now these various councils would also act as consumer cooperatives and send delegates to the local, regional and national economic councils on which all industries were already represented. These structures would democratically plan the whole economy. This was the influence behind Parecon develloped by Albert and Hahnel. Now this was never set up fully, since the counter-revolution in Spain succeeded.

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These are not the same thing even if trade unions can and do play a role in political life. In Canada, for example, there are many fine trade unionists who "contract out" their political hopes to the NDP, a parliamentary party with no revolutionary aspirations whatsoever, and adopt a very narrow interpretation of the interests of working people. This approach, of course, is much more common in wealthier imperialist countries, like Canada, than in more impoverished countries where the creation of a "labour aristocracy" has a much more narrow base of possibility. Such people are unlikely to lead working people to political power that genuinely challenges the power of capital. This is why there exists a left that is to the "left" of the NDP; the issue of genuine working class power remains unaddressed in a serious way by such parties.

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This comment has nothing to do with any of the points I made. I think it is either moot or impertinent with the clarifications I have just given you.

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2. "The role of anarchism is simply to avoid a new hierarchy from taking over ..."

Well said. But I don't think you realize that this is hardly a compliment. Any new social class that takes power is likely to face violent resistance from the old power. And the old power, according to your own characterization, will be able to find an ally among the anarchists. I don't see that as a good thing.

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I would address this point from your citation:

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And the old power, according to your own characterization, will be able to find an ally among the anarchists.

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I don't know how you came to this understanding. Not at all. In fact, in Spain for example, the Bourgeoisie sided with the Communists against the workers' committees because they at least gave them to the central authority of the state and that placed them back into the hands of the former managers.

I don't know how you can draw such a twisted conclusion. Let me re-explain, the workers revolt, they need to control their revolution so they should not cede power to their self-appointed rulers since their leaders, the party the union boss, the military officers etc. who support this revolution will take over it and create a new society that will be under their control. The old power would probably side with these elites, since at least they might save some of their dissapearing power. Why would they side with the group that wants to do away with all hierarchies and set up these participatory structures I have explained, which don't allow anyone to be the paternalistic "Great People's Leader".

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3. "Errico Malatesta said anarchism is organization, organisation and organization."

I will bite my lip and refrain from making a sarcastic remark about anarchist "organization".

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Your remark has more to do with a misundertading of anarchist organizations. I have explained in very great detail how anarchists organized themselves in militias, revolutionary groups and labour unions. I have also given great detail about how these organizations helped create the alternative political and economic system based on citizen and worker control. These were very elaborate structures and they were debated and improved constantly. I was surprised by this statement, since I assumed you were not one who mistakingly equated anarchism with chaos and disorder. Plus I think I have exposed througout this thread the high level of organization which provided very sophisticated forms of effective participatory democracy. I was taken aback by it and felt like my ling detailed entries are either not being read or are misunderstood.

What is not organized about the structures I have exposed which are classical libertarian socialist.

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Fidel Castro said that a revolution that cannot defend itself is worthless. With what institutions does a revolution defend itself? Or don't you agree with Castro's sentiment?

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I don't undestand what you are saying. The revolutionary anarchists had a revolutionary body to fight with: the workers' militias. I reiterate what I exposed above:

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10 militia men or women would voluntarily assemble and form an autonomous militia group. They wold elect a represenative, who would have no material priviliges that were greater than the other 9 militia men or women.

10 autonomous militia groups would form a centuria. The 10 recallable representatives would form a council of the centuria. The council of the centuria would elect a centuria representative.

5 centurias would form an agrupacion. The 5 recallable centuria representatives would form the council of the agrupacion and they would elect an agrupacion representative.

4 agrupacions would form a collumn. The collum would have a war committee made up by the 4 agrupacio representatives and a collumn leader and a military advisor who did not have a vote.

The collumn leader would be elected by the 4 councils of the agrupacion.

All votes would be a public show of hands. When one was a representative on a higher body they had to confer with the level they directly represented before taking a vote. Each representative was recallable by the level they represented. There were no insignias or saluting or heel clicking. Orders were given by a comrade to a comrade. No representatives had any material privilege that was greater than any one else.

The collumns were linked into a Confederation of militias. A highly organized structure that ensured that the revolution would be pursued along egalitarian lines thereby avoiding a new military hierarchy.

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The revolution defended itself by those carrying it, the workers. But again, I really don't understand what you meant by your comment, this is why I am quoting my own post in length. The anarchists did not want to be lead by some sort of centralized military strucutre. In fact, when they had the chance, they basically began to dissolve their own revolutionary structure, the FAI, and began organizing militias. I am not sure I understood your question, so I am not sure I answered it.

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Good grief. Marx predicted a global capitalism 150 years ago. The only thing missing was the term "globalization".

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I agree, but that is not what I said, I said:

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Secondly, the economic-state structure has now changed and we have a new entity that is a supra-state: the transnational corporation. The state-corporate nexus that exists today was not present during the time of Marx

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I repeat, the state-corporate nexus. In Marx's time corporations were mere municipal organizations. The modern corporation as an economic entity appeared in the US and won its super human rights via the courts. It was a creation between capital and the state and its very intertwined with the state. This type of structure, of transnational state backed but popularly unaccountable entity did not exist. This is what I said. Actually, Marx talked about global capitalism, it was behind imperialism and imperialist wars, he didn't predict it, he saw it. He could not have predicred an organization that assumed so much power and unacountability so long ago, in which the bosses are faceless and which are so intertwined to the state. This isn't a criticism of Marxism or Anarchism, simply the acknowledgment of new factors.

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Furthermore, many Marxists after his death made extensive study of capitalism as a global system in their own country and time and came to conclusions based on that analysis. Lenin is only one of many such theorists, frankly. Finally, working class institutions have played a key, not to say pivotal, role in those countries that currently take a socialist approach. Just look at Venezuela or Cuba.

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Again, I don't know what point you are trying to make. I never said that modern Marxists don't exist or that Lenin was the only theorist. Actually, I think Marx belongs more the democratic socialist tradition, since in his latter days he thought that the parliamentary route was possible, hence, Karll Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein were much more classical Marxists than Lenin.

As for working class institutions it depends what we call a working class institution it also depends what kind of structures we prefer. Cuba and Venezuela have many differences. In Cuba there was a very popular guerrilla revolution lead by nationalists and socialists. Initially, there were supposed to be elections and Cuba was supposed to move from a fascist dictatorship to a parliamentary democracy. This did not heppen for political and historical reasons and became a system in which the economy was nationalized under the central authority of the government. The government was controlled by a single political party that had an leader that was never submitted to a popular vote. In Venezuela, we have a radical reformist President and Party that win elections and pass laws the majority supports. We have a mixed economy and experiments in participatory democracy as well cooperatives and state companies with worker co-management. Two differet situations.

Neither was a classical proleterian revolt in wich the workers themselves took over the industries and land and created councils to run them like in 1917 or in 1937 or earlier in the Paris Commune.

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It's rather odd that you would write off the effectiveness of working class revolutions when you claim that anarchists belong to the working class tradition. Have you completely given up on moving forward to some post-capitalist society? Perhaps there is some other mechanism of social change that you would like to outline here. I'm all ears. Of course I'm not limiting my vision of working class revolutions to a stereotype of barricade-storming, axe-wielding bezerkers. I hope you won't do the same.

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The fact that I don't think classical proletarian revolutions are now possible in the western advanced capitalists societies like ours does not mean that I don't believe in a post-capitalist society. I think we can achieve it by non violent means. Violence against those who wield nuclear weapons seems ludicrous to me. As for radical social change that is another debate and you may want to start a new thread on it, there is too much going on in this one to take that tangent.

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5. "I for one consider myself a socialist who has strong libertarian leanings."

That's great .. but you're making your political approach sound like a shopping list with a "bit of this" and "a bit of that".

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In any human affair one looks at what works, how it works what are the results. I may take a very scientific approach. There may be circumstances that have changed, one should take them into account. I think it is only logical. All of these philosophers said some pretty smart stuff, they said dumb stuff as well. Some actions worked better than other. I merely stay true to a few basic concepts, I really love human freedom. I believe people are smart enough to govern themselves. I believe people should share the wealth they collectively create. I don't think people should be submitted to coersion. I don't think violent revolution is necessary in our part of the world, I also think its conclusion would be devestating. I look at my values and go from there. I think any reasonavle person should do the same and not be a membe of any intellectual religion. But that is my approach only.

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6. I really don't see how your description of decision making bodies in the Spanish Republic demonstrates any higher understanding than that of the Paris Commune. And it's not Bakunin or a famous anarchist who made the best study of that first working class government in history. It was Marx with his Civil War in France who did that. Read it if you haven't already and see if you still have the same opinions of Marx and Marxists.

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I don't know what you mean about higher understanding. The Paris Commune was very influential to all socialists. I was merely showing how the Spanish Social Revolution had built on these ideas at on a far greater scale and on a more profoundly participatory way. It is imperinent to whether or not Bakunin or Marx best studied what occured in the Paris Commune. Bakunin may have admonished Marx's tactics and but he always called his analysis genius. He merely did not agree with the conclusions. I am not sectarian in anyway with regards to Marxism. I said it was flawed when it came to the analysis of the coordinator class. It was Bakunin did predicted the Red Bureaucracy, not Marx. But this does not remove the contribution of either. Again, I am not sure where you were going with this. I was simply showing how advanced the libertarian socialists were in Spain when it came to participatory structures.

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7. "I think either Lenin is lying or he cannot see a revolution without his own class leading it."

I agree that Lenin was a partisan for a working class government. That's a point in his favour, however. If he was simply a partisan for the creation of a new technical or managerial elite, wouldn't it have been easier for him to take a more liberal approach, side with Kerensky and the like, and simply be an advocate of a more efficient capitalism? Then he wouldn't have had to go underground for the bulk of his adult life, no exile outside of Russia or in Siberia, and so on. This is really a primitive kind of argument you're making here; your claim reads as if you think that the guy you disagree with "is a liar" and therefore his arguments can be jettisoned because they're insincere. You still need to address the substance of the arguments. Is it really necessary for me to point this out?

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A working class government that was not under the control of the working class but of a Party that undemocratically ran the country in the Name of the working class. This is what he created.

I never said he was insincere. He was very sincere and ready to die and sacrifice all. He really believed in his ideals and paid for them. That does not make him a democrat, that does not make him somebody who would support a system in which the workers' councils and the neighbourhood councils ran the society. We know that because he destroyed them along with Trotsky and created a Labour Army under their despotic authority. They were sincere. I said he was lying about anarchism or he really did not know about it because what he attributed was not true.

I don't know why you don't understand what I am saying. But the anarchists he was talking about wanted to overthrow capitalism and the state at the same time. They wanted to replace it by an anarchist communist system (that was the ideology of Russian Anarchists: Anarchist Communism). What did this mean? The factories would be under the direct democratic control of the workers. That is they would vote for a committee of recallable delegates to coordinate activities. The assemblies would meet regularly to set policy and review the work of the delegates. The committees of various factories would be federated into local workers' councils of recallable delagates. These councils were called soviets in Russian. The neighboorhoods would elect counclis or soviets in neihgbourhood assemblies which would be federated and so on and so forth up until the national level and hopefully inrernational. These direct people's councils would run society and the economy, That's what anarchists wanted to replace capitalist economics with and bureacratic states with. Either Lenin did not know this or he was lying. Since, he does not attack these structures and says that citizen popular assemblies are no good for this and that reason. For some reason or another he did not like them and preferred a tyranny under his rule and that of his Politburo. So yeah, he hated capitalism but he still liked elitism, his actions show this. Furthermore, he initially sided with Kerensky against the Soviets until he saw that the central government was useless and the soviets really had taken over. This is why he infiltrated the soviets and brought them under authoritarian control. Initially he promised elections that he lost and then basically declared a coup d'etat. Thereby, circumventing the workers revolution and placing the workers back where they belonged under the tutelage of new masters who told them what to do. In essence, it's what happened.

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The gist of your following remarks seems to be that undemocratic structures and the replacement of democratic institutions by the CPSU inevitably flowed from Lenin's ideas earlier expressed. You've failed to demonstrate a connection other than to note that the one thing followed after the other. Stalinism, however, was no more inevitable than Nazism. Yours is not a convincing argument at all and it regurgitates the usual official anti-communist lines by the political right.

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Stalin merely took advantage of the undemocratic structures that Lenin and Trotsky created. They built a state where the workers did not have a say in the running of the economy, where citizens did not have a say in the running of society, where non of the positions of power were subject to any popular vote of any kind and where the will of the Party was the will of the people and the will of the Party was in fact the will of the Politburo. So yes, Stalinism was much worse, at least during Lenin's time there was debate within the Communist Party, but it was within certain limits. Stalin just turned the whole machine into a rubber stamp. It would have been much more difficult for a Stalin to simply take power in that way had there been democratic structures. If Lenin believed in working class rule why wasn't there any? Why did not people have the right to their own directly elected councils. Why?

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In fact, the Revolution of 1917 was the culmination of an entire historical period in Russian history ... a period characterized by different kinds of struggle that were less successful and replaced by new kinds of struggle, a practice revolution in 1905, and so on. Its success, as well as the failures that followed are valuable lessons for any future working class that hopes to take power away from a capitalist class and form a new kind of society that is just, sustainable and peaceful as befits human beings.

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I agree all I said is that Lenin and Trotsky destroyed the incipient socialist institutions that grew out of it, the workers councils and the neighbourhood councils and placed everything under their and their Party's despotic control.

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8. "Lenin omits to tell us how ... the state ... withers away. Marx never said it either. The anarchists were always clear on this issue."

This is your best contribution. However, I think you're demanding some sort of super-human prescience from Marx, and the Lenin of 1917, to foresee the outlines of how this would come about. In fact, no one has solved this problem ... certainly not the anarchists, who don't even address the issue by their simple denunciation of any substantial state, revolutionary or not, and therefore (conveniently) avoid the question of how it might "wither away".

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Not true. The state is to be replace by a Commonwealth of autonomous self ruling communities that are federated locally, regionally and nationally. Since people of the same language may have an easier time building structures in which human oral communicaiton is required commonwealth would most likely represent national territories now covered by states. These commonwealths would not be full anarchist expressions until they have confederated with other like commonwealths on an international level. Hence, until that time comes they will have certain resemblances to states such as borders defended by militias which will allow that given territory to be unde the direct rule of its people. The state was not the territory covered by a national group that voluntarily associated but the bureacracy that ruled that territory. Anarchists were quite clear on this in theory and practice.

Lenin never spoke of any structures he was for which showed that the factories would belong to the workers and the land to the peasants. My feeling is not that he couldn't think of any, he grew up in a country in which revolutionary Anarchist Communism was well known, my feeling is that he did not like these types of structures and my personal guess, is that these structures went against his class interest, class is not only about wealth it is also about power over others.

There is nothing super human about saying what kind of structures you society will have. The anarchists, as I have demonstrated throughout did it and practiced it.

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9. "Hence, one cannot take Lenin's characterization of Anarchism seriously, he misrepresented Anarchism even more than he misrepresented Marxism ... "

It's not clear to me that you have a really good understanding of Marxism to begin with ... to make such a judgment. But perhaps you would tell me that my understanding of anarchism is just as bad.

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I never claimed to be an expert in any school of philosophy. I do though think that Lenin had many fundamental differences with Marx and that the "weakest chain in the capitalist link" argument as to how a feudal society could jump into a socialist one was one that Marx would have surely attacked. Marx's thoughts were deeply rooted in dialectic materialism and that the thesis - antithesis leading towards synthesis of Hegel was key to his revolutionary understanding of the class struggle. Lenin cut corners on this. Anarchists did not believe in any of this class evolution from slave, to feudal to bourgeois to socialist (synthesis and end of class struggle). Anarchists believed that in any society feudal or capitalist, the oppressed can overthrow their rulers and run it themselves. They did not need to have a bourgeous revolution first. This is why Lenin originally supported Kerensky, because the need of Bourgeois revolution first (he was a more orthodox Marxist then) he changed his opinion. Another major difference between Lenin and Marx is the role of the working class. Lenin created a Labour Army under his rule Marx would have cringed at the idea and at that use of the expression dictatorship OF the proleteriat to mean dictatorship OVER the proletariat. So Marxism-Leninism is an oxymoron. But you are correct, I have based myself mostly on secondary sources, which have a strong democratic socialist bias, like Michael Harrington.

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A final remark: It would probably be a good idea for you to read what today's socialists in power are actually saying and writing about their approach. Materials by and about the current Venezuelan Bolivarian 21st century socialism, under Hugo Chavez, would be a good start. They've had some recent setbacks but I have no doubt that their goal remains the same. Check out Monthly Review for a few articles and pay particular attention to the dialogue between Michael Yates and Hugo Chavez. Cheers.

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I am much more a student of democratic socialism and social democracy and I have always looked at what they have done and I am on my third book regarding the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela (Gregory Wilpert's book, which IMHO is the best thus far). I know Monthly review quite well and read on Venezuelanalysis regularly.

I have a very non-doctrinaire comparitive approach when it comes to alternatives to capitalism. I think any thoughtfull activist should.

[ 10 December 2007: Message edited by: Tom Vouloumanos ]

[ 10 December 2007: Message edited by: Tom Vouloumanos ]

ONE.

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Tom V: Anarcho-Syndicalist organizations had dual structures. One was industry based the other was based on locality. Why? The one which was industry based would do the day to day work to fight for workers' rights within the existing system. The other that was locality based would have longer term revolutionary goals of overthrowing the system and more importantly replacing it with a new order based on the structures they had develloped wich they used.

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The bolded section is just gooble dee gook. If you are asserting that there are political organizations and economic organizations of workers, and these organizations have separate and distinct tasks, then we are agreeing ... except that you are giving the name "union" to a political organization. I can't see any reason for this other than an antipathy to calling a political organization what it is; this is just playing with words and a waste of time.

TWO.

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Each factory would elect a committee. Each industry in a locality would be federated into a local federation. The local federations would be federated into regional federations and the regional into confederal.

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You can use the word "federation" as many times as you like and you won't get a flea hop closer to socialism (or "post-capitalism") . A description of a structure is no substitute for some sort of "plan" to build political organizations, coalitions, mass movements, etc. to the point where they have enough clout to make a difference. Is this really that hard to understand?

THREE.

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The economy was seen as having two branches, locality and industry. Hence, the structures would be industry based and geographically based. In other words there would be local, regional and national federations of the automobile industry as well as local regional and national federations of all producers. These parallel structures would form the national economic council. This is too long to explain in an already long post.

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Good grief. I'll just take your "word" for it, then, eh? Who's the haughty "elite" now?

FOUR.

Your lengthy discussion of the CNT decision-making procedures never actually gets into what it is they were deciding about beyond basic trade unions concerns. There is this:

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The role of the National and Regional Committees was primarily correspondence, the collection of statistics, aid to prisoners and coordination at the national and regional levels respectively.

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Where's the part about governing? It seems to be ... missing. There seems to be more discussion about preventing the creation of institutions that serve working people, by constantly moving people around, for example, than serious discussion of creating new institutions to replace the old, repressive institutions that need improving. This is what Lenin meant, I think, when he wrote that working people need practice with the existing state (in order to govern society themselves).

OK ... that's enough I think. Actually, I have to take back my preliminary remark in this post. There's a lot that's just incoherent, Tom. And I find it particularly disturbing that you weren't able to understand this:

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(me) Fidel Castro said that a revolution that cannot defend itself is worthless. With what institutions does a revolution defend itself? Or don't you agree with Castro's sentiment?

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... except by making reference to a workers' militia and another interminable contribution about structure. How will a workers' militia deal with aerial bombardment from planes made in advanced and highly organized factories, or blasts from tanks engineered with the latest techniques and heavily armored against the best shot in the best militia? Without a modern state the revolution would just be a sitting duck to a strong military power that had no qualms about "federations", "confederations", or anything else that stood in their way.

[ 10 December 2007: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

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The bolded section is just gooble dee gook. If you are asserting that there are political organizations and economic organizations of workers, and these organizations have separate and distinct tasks, then we are agreeing ... except that you are giving the name "union" to a political organization. I can't see any reason for this other than an antipathy to calling a political organization what it is; this is just playing with words and a waste of time.

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Sure you can call them a political organization as well, or a revolutionary organization or a a social movement or anything you like. I was merely putting things into a historical perspective. At the time a political organization was seen as wanting to take political power. The CNT did not want to take power per se in the way a party takes power that was called "political". It did not want to govern, it wanted to agitate in order to bring about a new form of self-government. This is what you fail to undestand conceptually. There is a difference between a political party that wants to take power and govern the from a central authority the state apparatus and an organization that wants to set up a different type of self-governing system in which people would directly take decisions.

That means that they did not want to rule in the name of anyone. They wanted the workers and the peasants to run the factories and the land directly themselves. They wanted citizens to run their communities directly, without parties. That's the major difference. They strucutred themselves to fight for more rights in the present system and they also structured themselves to prepare for the revolution.

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You can use the word "federation" as many times as you like and you won't get a flea hop closer to socialism (or "post-capitalism") . A description of a structure is no substitute for some sort of "plan" to build political organizations, coalitions, mass movements, etc. to the point where they have enough clout to make a difference. Is this really that hard to understand?

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Socialism means that the economy belongs to the workers. You are not comprehending. I showed how the CNT was structured before the revolution and I showed how the CNT help build the begining of what they called libertarian communism (which is socialist). The factories and the land would belong to all the workers collectively. They were not paying lip service to this. A workers' economy did not mean an economy under the hands of the state which was run by bureaucrats under the orders of a cental authority. No, it meant that the workers actually ran all the factories, that they were all self-managed. Ok, so we can all see how that can work in an coop, but what about a whole industry or a whole region. The federalist structure was basically the way that all of the economy would be planned. It would not be a bunch of commissars dictating to everyone else. Workers would decide what do to in the own factory. But what about the rest of the economy in the city. Well that what a federalist structure is for. Worker delegates would negotiate on regional councils and plan the output of the city and the region. But what about the country. The same thing worker delegates would negotiate the all industrial and agricultural output on national committees. The national committees would not be commissars but delegates to regional committees that would have to go back and confer with what the regions need or want. Then the regional delegates would go back to the local federations and do the same. The local delegates would go back to their factories. The decisions and negotiations would move up and down and a general national plan taking all local, regional and naitonal considerations into account would be decided on and then it would have to be carried out by each factory.

This is output, what about what consumers want.

Well on all those local, regional and national committees there would be consumer representatives who would have a parallel structure, so output would be negotiated with consumption wants every step of the way.

Then this would be the general economic plan of the whole economy that would be carried out.

The land, capital and the means of production would be direclty under the public's control, under their **direct** control in an egalitarian society.

That is what all the structures I explained allow workers to do: run the society directly in a participatory democracy.

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Good grief. I'll just take your "word" for it, then, eh? Who's the haughty "elite" now?

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The quote you referred to was something that I quoted within the post. In my post that you are responsive to I said that:

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Now these various councils would also act as consumer cooperatives and send delegates to the local, regional and national economic councils on which all industries were already represented. These structures would democratically plan the whole economy. This was the influence behind Parecon develloped by Albert and Hahnel. Now this was never set up fully, since the counter-revolution in Spain succeeded.

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So basically take what I said about the way all the factories were run. I was explicit about how workers did that. Then take how the cities and regions were run and make parallel links between the two. So a local federation of communities has a council or committee made up of delegates that represent those communities. Let us call them the local community delegates. A local federation of factories has has a council or committee made up of delegates that represent those factories. In a given locality, the local community delegates meet with the local factory delegates and they negotiate as consumeres and producers respectively. The come to a consensus. This is done on the regional levels and the national levels. Each higher level takes the concerns of a lower level into account. So when the national ecnomic council or committee comes up with a plan for the whole nation, there will be modalities and differences in each region and locality that was decided upon by those given regional and local economic councils.

This is how the workers and citizens would run the economy, this was the goal of what the CNT called libertarian communism.

On another note, being tired when typing and not wanting to go into a very elaborate explanation does not make one elitist it only makes one tired. Running out of steam and elitism are two different things.

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Where's the part about governing? It seems to be ... missing. There seems to be more discussion about preventing the creation of institutions that serve working people, by constantly moving people around, for example, than serious discussion of creating new institutions to replace the old, repressive institutions that need improving. This is what Lenin meant, I think, when he wrote that working people need practice with the existing state (in order to govern society themselves).

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????

Are you kidding me????

N.Beltov, you know all that stuff I wrote about communitie councils being federated, well that is what they are doing governing, they are governing themselves.

Let me give you an analogy in order to simplify how the self-governing process worked. Canada has 22 million of the voting age. Let us break them up into groups of 50 neighbours who meet once a month and vote on issues regarding their neighbourhood and decide on issues regarding the neighboorhod. That means there would be 440 thousand such direct assemblies of neighbours accross Canada.

Each of these first level assemblies would send a delegate to second level assembly made of 50 such delegates. That means that this second level assembly would represent 50 first level assemblies, in other words they would represent 2,250 people. These 50 delegates would decide on the matters affecting these 2,250 people. There would be 8,800 such second level assemblies accross Canada.

Each second level assembly would elect a delegate to sit on a third level assembly made up of 50 third level delegates representing 50 second level assemblies or 125,000 people. These 50 third level delegates would decide on the matters affecting these 125,000 people. There would be 176 such second level assemblies accross Canada.

Each third level assembly would elect delegate to a fourth level assembly made up of 176 fourth level delegates that would decide on all national matters since they represent 176 third level assemblies or 22 million people.

The 176 delegates of the fourth or national assembly all report back to their respective third level assembly that elected them.

The 50 delegates of each third level assembly, all report back to their respective second level assembly that elected them.

The 50 delegates of each second level assembly all report back to their respective first level or neighbourhood assembly made up of 50 neighbours that elected them.

Each delegate is elected for a given time and is recallable.

This analogy is based on Stephen Shalom's ParPolity and is a simplified version of the federalist system the anarchists had began to set up in Spain.

So this is how people governed themselves in a direct democracy with participatory democratic structures to coordinate things at the regional and national levels.

This is different from a representative system. But I throw the ball back to you, what kind of workers government did Lenin propose so the workers can get experience. Again, this is Leninist lip service to socialism. The anarchists did help build the world's largest experiment and self-management and participatory democracy.

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... except by making reference to a workers' militia and another interminable contribution about structure. How will a workers' militia deal with aerial bombardment from planes made in advanced and highly organized factories, or blasts from tanks engineered with the latest techniques and heavily armored against the best shot in the best militia? Without a modern state the revolution would just be a sitting duck to a strong military power that had no qualms about "federations", "confederations", or anything else that stood in their way

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That means that they did not want to rule in the name of anyone.

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... or seeing how many times the words "federation", "communities" and "committee" can be placed side by side or stacked one on top of each other.

And then there is this:

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Sure you can call them a political organization as well, or a revolutionary organization or a a social movement or anything you like. I was merely putting things into a historical perspective.

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Tom, this is going nowhere and I'm getting rather weary of trying to make sense of statements like:

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That means that they did not want to rule in the name of anyone.
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It is simple the Communist Party ruled over the Proleteriat, in the Name of the Proleteriat. The Proleteriat in Leninism did not have a voice. It did not meet in the shop floor to decide the day to day activities, it did not run the economy directly. Contrary to the Communist Party, the CNT as an organization did not seek for its officials to become rulers over the Proleteriat in the name of the Proleteriat. They wanted the Proleteriat to rule directly without a central vanguard Party that would decide what is best, without managers.

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... or seeing how many times the words "federation", "communities" and "committee" can be placed side by side or stacked one on top of each other.

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But do you understand how these structures worked? I was explaining how the workers ran everything themselves. Bringing the means of productions under the control of the workers is a great ideal but how do you do it, for a factory, for an industry, for a region for a country. Well, Lenin did it by centralizing all powers in the hands of the state apparatus, namely in the hands of bureacrats and managers who ruled over the workers and who were controlled by the dictatorship of the Communist Party that was under the dictatorship of Lenin. Where is the will of the workers in all of this? The anarcho-syndicalists created direct democracy on the shop floor but they also created a system of delegations sent to local, regional and national levels where representatives would coordinate the economic affairs at the local, regional and national levels. These were the decision-making bodies. These delegates were all controlled from below and were recallable. Power was in the hands of the workers. This is what socialism is about, power being in the hands of the workers. Whereas in Leninism, despots rule in the name of the workers. This is what the initial quote above referred to.

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And then there is this:

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Sure you can call them a political organization as well, or a revolutionary organization or a a social movement or anything you like. I was merely putting things into a historical perspective.
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Well why don't you use the whole parapgraph where I clearly explain that the term "political organization" was used for a group such as a Party that wanted to take office and rule via the state machinery. The CNT did not want that nor did it practice it. It wanted the workers, whether or not they were members of a party or a union or any type of other organization to rule directly. 1 worker one vote. YOu can do this in one factory but in order to do it over a whole region you need to have some sort of delegate system, some sort of representative system. The delegates that I talk about throughout are not running on a slate, they are merely representing the desires of the group they represent. Very different from a representative democracy. In other words if N.Beltov is elected by a group of workers in factory A that is in city B, N.Beltov sits on a local body that represents let us say the 20 factories in this city B. The way N.Beltov votes is decided by the workers in factory A because he has to go back to them and report to them and get their accord. This goes all the way through to the national level. They used this system to create real workers control of the economy. The anarchists also used this system to create real citizen control of the whole country.

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You say "to-mah-to" and I say "to-may-to".

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I don't agree. I don't care what you call the fruit. Tell me how it works and then we can judge which system gave authentic power to the workers: Leninism or Anarcho-Syndicalism. Then we can learn a little more about the Marx-Bakunin debate and use it for develloping our undestanding of how a post-capitalist society can be structured.

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Let's call the whole thing off.

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I don't see the reason for that. If something is not clear, I invite you to ask me questions and I will do my best to clarify what I mean.

I think our debate is around one fundamental issue.

I was trying to prove that workers and communties can govern themselves in direct democracy. I also demonstrated that by using recallable delegates (or representatives, these are synonymous) they can coordinate their collectve will over cities, regions and even nations. Communities can do the same. The anarchists showed us how this could be done with much being left to improve on. The anarchists did it without parliaments and parties but by direct rule of an egalitarian and free people.

What the anarchists called the state was the central authority, the parliament, the bureacracy, the military. They replaced all these by profoundly democratic structures that were directly controlled by the people with the structures I explained in detail.

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Stalin supplied modest amounts of military equipment and advisers while western democracies made it illegal to travel to Spain to fight fascism.

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Unfortunately, Stalin basically supplied the Communist segment of the revolution, led by Lister, while insuring that the socialist and anarchist elements got next to nothing.

Consequently, the revolution degenerated into a military action to create a Soviet satellite.