Kautsky on revolution

Kautsky is best known negatively, the great betrayer, the renegade - people only read of him rather than read him.

Frankly, I rate Kautsky as a writer - and that rating is that he is worth reading, even where you disagree with him. He's not like David Icke who you can not bother with because the refutation isn't productive, refuting Kautsky bears fruit. I was scrolling through his book The Social Revolution and on the day After the Social Revolution.

It is an intriguing glimpse of Marxistant social democracy - and something the present day left so lost in the wilderness would do well to catch. here's his prescription for a victorious proletariat:

In the first place it is self-evident that it would recover what the bourgeoisie has lost. It would sweep all remnants of feudalism away and realize that democratic programme for which the bourgeoisie once stood. As the lowest of all classes it is also the most democratic of all classes. It would extend universal suffrage to every individual and establish complete freedom of press and assemblage. It would make the State completely independent of the church and abolish all rights of inheritance. It would establish complete autonomy in all individual communities and abolish militarism. This last could be brought about in two ways; through the introduction of universal armament and the dissolution of the army. Universal armament is a political measure and dissolution of the army a financial one. The former can under certain conditions cost as much as a standing army. But it is essential to the security of democracy, in order to take away from the government its most powerful means of opposing the people. Dissolution again aims mainly at a diminution of the military budget.
[...]
Undoubtedly the victorious proletariat would also make fundamental reforms in taxation. It would endeavor to abolish all the taxes that today rest upon the laboring population – first of all the indirect ones that increase the cost of living, and would draw the sums necessary to the covering of governmental expenses from the great properties by means of a progressive income tax supplemented by a property tax. I shall return to this point later. This must suffice for the present suggestion.

A particularly important field for us is that of education. Popular schools have always occupied the attention of proletarian parties and they even played a great role in the old communistic sects of the Middle Ages. It must always be one of the aims of the thinking proletariat to deprive the possessing classes of the monopoly of culture.
[...]
There is one problem above all others with which the proletarian regime must primarily occupy itself. It will in all cases be compelled to solve the question of the relief of the unemployed. Enforced idleness is the greatest curse of the laborer. For him it signifies misery, humiliation, crime.

I'll leave the question of taxation to another post, since it is encompassed in my point of significant disagreement.

What is interesting is although he consciously commits to radical bourgeois measures, he tags on the significant radical measures of anti-militarism (a biggy in Germany) and also a clear class conscious necessity of dealing with unemployment, in effect (and this is made clear later in the passage) destroying the labour market, by removing the compulsion of poverty.

If the laborer can once be secure of existence even when he is not working, nothing would be easier than for him to overthrow capital. He no longer needs capitalists, while the latter cannot continue his business without him. Once things have gone thus far the employer would be beaten in every conflict with his employees and be quickly compelled to give in to them. The capitalists could then perhaps continue to be the directors of the factories, but they would cease to be their masters and exploiters. Once the capitalists recognized, however, that they had the right to bear only the risk and burdens of capitalist business, these men would be the very first ones to renounce the further extension of capitalist production and to demand that their undertakings be purchased because they could no longer carry them on with any advantage.

This would enable many differing forms of joint ownership by the workers - nationalisation, municipalisation and co-operativism.

The point being, contrary to the Labour movement, he didn't see state power and nationalisation as the means to socialism, but rather a clear class analysis led him to see resolving and abolishing the wages system as the means of dissolving the market system.

More another day.

A dark mind

I have an evil, corrosive mind. A friend of mine gave me a book she cherished from childhood - a German kids book by Michael Ende (author Neverending story) called Momo.

Now, this book is excellently written, and wonderful and imaginative. I centres on a sinister group of Time bankers stealing everyone's time and making their lives miserable - the perfect anti-capitalist story, you'd think.

I enjoyed it; but my problem came afterwards. See, the happy ending basically centred on the genocide of the grey men - wiped out to the last one, sent screaming in terror to try and avoid their fate. This was more than a little disturbing. See, the novel is a classic paranoid fantasy - a mysterious group who move among us unseen, who manipulate us, who weave elaborate conspiracies around us (they attack the central character, Momo, through her friends, "turning" them against her). The sly Others are watching us, and they are stealing something precious from us, our jouissance, our time.

Mercifully, the Grey Men are bowler hat wearing cigar smoking bankers, without anything remotely to suggest Jewishness or to connect to the very similar anti-semitic theories (the connexion is in the structure of the paranoid fantasy which is affixed to the Jews in some instances). The exterminationist response is, also, similar - the grey men are rootless and have no real substance, and so may be freely destroyed to save us all.

This is the anti-capitalism of fools - or the anti-capitalism of children - the belief that rather than transforming the world, if it was just freed from the presence of the despoilers, all will be well. Similarly, George Monbiot falls into this trap in his current call for class war a tirade against the rich as polluters.

The point is, that the world as is, freed from the current rich, from the present Grey Men will be alright is flawed. Revolution is more complex that a childish wish for the bad things to just go away, for the hated enemy to stop robbing you, it's about self transformation, and changing the way you are to stop being in the position of victim.

We will have no need for a terror, to exterminate our enemies, that is what is so liberating about socialism. And I'm glad that reading against the grain opened that up for me.

A very Bourgeois revolution

The notoriously litigious Barclay Clones have given us a textbook in bourgeois revolution - they have used their financial might to bring democracy to the Island of Sark through the courts - and now democracy has arrived, and voted against what they wanted (their own privately owned Bond villain base, it seems) they have decided to punish the puny mortals for their temerity to use their democracy, by disinvesting in the tiny island and causes relative mass unemployment. Their spokedroid has said: "The island cannot at the same time treat the Barclay family in the way that it has and expect them to continue investing large sums of money into its economy." Hulk Smash. Mongrol Smush. Big Jobs!

Once again, they prove that democracy is impossible in a society of unequal wealth - the microcosm of Sark has given the totalitarian pair their opportunity to prove that. It also shows the value of Harry's place style democratisation.

And what of the publicity shy scheming meglomaniacs themselves? Well, through their purely viscious actions they have exposed themselves to more headlines and public oprobrium than most folk could manage in a life time - I hope their lawyers hands drop off writing out all the vexatious writs that will now follow to keep the filth wallowing pigs able to live in their castles in the air.

The path of democracy

In Bolivia democracy isn't going down a smooth path, regional cessesionists are trying to thwart the will of the overall majority - will the US back any breakaways there? After all, Russia has made the precedents...

Anyway, Zimbabwe's democracy seems to be just about holding up. To their immense credit, the MDC never turned to guerilla warfare, and put the safety of its supporters high up its agenda - high enough to back away from the violence of the state. Today's power sharing deal could see Tsvangirai just turn shit pol with his feet under the table, or it could see Zimbabwe finally emerge as a stable democracy.

To be clear, in both cases, it is democracy and not street violence that must prevail - as the MDC has shown, plugging away can and does work. The conquest of democracy is an essential tool in the worker's hands for self defence and revolution. These events knock the sterility of the neo-con/cruise missile left's perspectives into a cocked hat. This is the way democracy spreads. This will do more good than the Iraq war or the Afghan campaign.

Now, we have to wait and see what will happen to Chavez in Venezuela, he needs to go for the good of democracy...

Stand ye close and resolute

So, back to politics.

The BBC has had a couple of really good in depth reports recently, explaining just why it is Mugabe in Zimbabwe commands such support from his contemporary African leaders - and tellingly where the problem lies.

The correspondent this morning said Mugabe had been likely to give in on the election issue, but that his cotery, forged in the military struggle for power, were unwilling to let their positions go without a fight - they need him to protect themselves.

Significantly, and I suspect hopefully, the MDC have not turned to armed struggle themselves, as indeed they would be "justified" in doing now they have been beaten into submission - but that way would only replicate the tragedy of ZANU-PF.

Some might argue that the Zimbabwe situations shows the folly of electoral tactics like ours, the MDC have literally been beaten into submission. But, let's not forget, they have the majority in Parliament to protect, they have damaged Mugabe's legitimacy, and there are signs that Zuma in South Africa, closely allied with the trade unions there, may be more hostile to Mugabe.

Let's remember that Zimbabwe is an economic dessert, the Unions there are powerless, but the struggle for democracy continues.

An injury to one is an injury to all.

Update: via Harry Barnes comes this worthwhile effort from the TUC: