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@transangel
twitter leftists literally make me want to kill myself
jokes are reactionary and being horny is revisionist
lmfao. yeah posing sexually w a coupy of Lenin’s Collected Works isn’t degrading our ideology at all. saying it “gets you off” isn’t turning it into a joke at all! fuck postmodernists and fuck weird ass creeps like this.
marxism is a joke to the petty bourgeoisie who like red flags
How The People Rule
Often when one looks at old socialist states of the past there are conjured images of one party rule, no dissent whatsoever, one man managed enterprises with undemocratic decision-making from the bottom to the top.
Besides the fact that China and the Soviet Union are much more complex than just a bunch of people living miserable lives, there were very obvious problems from the start that are well known and can not be ignored today. The question comes up again and again: is communism “authoritarian”? What does it look like to have a system where the working class “rules”?
Haggerty’s Wheel: Is Socialism “Workers Self-Management”?
Haggerty’s Wheel was the Wobblies’ draft constitution for a future socialism in North America. It’s fun to look at, but it’s hard to anticipate, especially today, this living form being implemented from such a primitive conception and whim.
When we talk about what a revolutionary society would look like, we acknowledge how politics (the science of power, of the struggle over society’s direction) is representational, not direct. The control of the workplace and the control of society’s overall direction are not, part of the same process, and the instruments for one don’t simply aggregate up into simply forming a whole. It’s not just Syndicalists who advocate a direct-democracy form, PARECON and Richard Wolff (a “Marxist”) advocate cooperative forms as a way to “replace” capitalism.
The part about representational forms that people don’t like is the danger of “substitution” - of the supposed representation acting in a way that is above the workers. There is no way to alleviate anxieties around this, because “substitution” has no formal, gimmicky solution to rid of it. But the fact is that power can never be simply exercised “directly,” this is an illusion. A much more sophisticated solution (two line struggle, a movement for greater consciousness through salvos of cultural revolution) can be vaguely described, but this is for later.
But for those who worry much about substitutionism and see direct democracy as the only path, think of how a non-capitalist economy in the USA would work (on decisions relative to investment, on which research to pursue, on how much to spend on the military defense of this new society, of whether to raise wages in the plants or spend more on creating a smaller eco-footprint).
Do we imagine that we can make these choices on a plant by plant basis? Or that a coherent economic plan can develop (and be insightful-ly evaluated) by every worker? By every plant? Is there a plebiscite on every decision every day, to decide every detail?
Let’s say Morgantown, West Virginia or Franklin, Pennsylvania needs some sort of new levee system to prevent flooding and ice jams, how will workers directly decide the engineering, the cost, the deployment, the eco-impact, the impact on the revolution of surrounding areas? Which workers? Through what process? How long is the timeframe?
Should just workers locally decide? What about the surrounding farmers? Or are just workers involved in the building? Or should workers across the continent have a say (directly, dare I ask) on how this all will work there?
One can take any number of even more complex economic decisions, related to larger level strategic planning, and you will see they can’t be evaluated and decided by people directly. Or (if one can still think they can) pick a complex decision, say, should we go to Mars, should we dredge the Allegheny River to have Viking Cruiselines go down it, should we build a high speed train from Austin, Texas to Miami, Florida, or should we double wages for everyone and cut the work day in half, and tell me how that will all be done directly.
Actually Non-Existing Anarchism
Spain often comes up as the most powerful example of Anarchist social experiments with a participatory economy. Ironically, it gives us a great glimpse into the failure of applying “workers self-management” as a universal principle.
The Anarchists in Spain, through the CNT-FAI, saw by the inexpediency of time and how the Falangists were using it more efficiently to their advantage, that it was becoming necessary to enter the Republican state to receive arms from them by having a regional Catalonian Generalariat and also by controlling the region through federations up to their own Central Anti-Fascist Militia Committee. Diego Abad de Santillán, the anarchist Economic Minister of Catalonia, admitted that this hierarchal order’s functions “included the establishment of revolutionary order in the rear, the creation of militia units for the front, the organization of the economy, and legislative and judicial action.”
As what is popularly known about the Spanish revolution, “one thing dominated the libertarian revolution: the practice of self-management - the workers’ administration of their factories and industries.” But as quickly as this practice started problems started arising. While a version of Haggerty’s Wheel was attempted to be implemented - “works councils, elected by an assembly decision of the workers and representing all sectors of the enterprise, are to administer the collectivized factory [and] assume the functions and responsibilities of the former board of directors” - a Generalitat reprresentative was to be chosen from each plant, in agreement with the workers, to be part of a general industrial council, which would then be part of a federation.
One of the first decisions decided by this body was to attempt to regulate and define the limits of direct democracy by deciding that 50% of collectivized firms profit would go to an industrial and commercial credit fund to finance all Catalan industry, 20% to reserve and depreciation funds, 15% for the given collective firm’s social needs, and the remaining 15% to be decided by the workers discretion directly. This, of course, was decided necessarily by representation and, as reported, “this measure was sponsored by the CNT and signed by its representative in the government, Juan P. Fabregas, the councilor of the economy.” Then we see, there wasn’t necessarily genuine workers control as much as there was an attempt at some form of state socialism, since, under the law, only a minority of the surplus value produced by workers were under direct discretionary control of the workers.
But in spite of attempts by Anarchist leadership to steer some degree of discipline and frugality in managing the economy, there was large internal opposition to them. Collective firms had to pay these percentages in profits, so to eliminate this, many worker self managed enterprises simply eliminated their profits. Through worker’s control they kept raising wages until the profits disappeared. Thus the Decree amounted to nothing other than a sad attempt to create a non-capitalist economy. The consequence of this was “an increase in wages by a third in late 1936 over July, but the effect was ruined by inflation, due to a fall in production, shortage of credit, as well as an increase in influx of refugees.”
What industrial syndicalism - “direct workers democracy” - came to mean in practice was not a transcending of capitalism at all. The workers became, albeit through an assembly form, the new co-owners of their former employers property. This created a malaise and depression among Anarchists there, who started to articulate their concerns.
Quite simply many of the collectivized plants had greater economies of scale and thus performed better than many other enterprises. The workers there, as so, were relatively privileged. Jose Peirats, depicted below, aptly described the essential worry, as these collectives of workers began acting as capital: “Fortified in their respective collectives, the industries would merely have replaced the old watertight compartments of capitalism and would inevitably lapse into bureaucracy, the first step in a new society of unequals.The collectives would end up waging the same commercial war against each other with the same combination of zeal and mediocrity that characterized the old bourgeois businesses. And so they attempted to expand the notion of collectivism to include, in a structural and permanent way, all industries in one harmonious and disinterested body.”
Likewise, Joan Ferrer, secretary of the CNT commercial employees union, confirmed this as well: “It came as a psychological shock to some workers to find themselves freed from capitalist tutelage. Exchanging one individualism for another, they frequently believed that, now that the owners were gone, they were the new owners.” And while many tried to struggle against it, their voices were not loud enough. The woodworkers union, made up of semi-proletarians who migrated to the cities recently, criticized that its small, insolvent workshops were left to struggle as best they could, while the collective profitable enterprises were able to do as they please. They put forward a resolution saying that the Revolution had led to “nothing other than the creation of two classes; the new rich and the eternal poor. We refuse the idea that there should be rich and poor collectives. This is the problem of collectivization [thus far].” CNT militia leader Ricardo Sanz, as this process of degeneration continued, said “things are not going as well as they did in the early days…the workers no longer think of working long hours to help the front. They only think of working as little as possible and getting the highest possible wages.” While this piece could be about how the Anarchist leadership missed opportunity after opportunity to increase enthusiasm and nourish the revolution, instead allowing the spontaneity of the market to permit the most privileged workers to improve their own lot in life, the point of this is to emphasize the fact that capitalism is not abolished by workers self management.
The fact of the matter was that, with no planned economy put in place, with no restriction of the law of value through internal accounting and balanced development of all enterprises and sectors, “direct democracy” and “workers self management” essentially amounted to leaving capitalism in place. A worker run collective essentially was a capitalist firm, with the workers being the stockholders instead of its original owners. And the Spanish experience showed that far from showing an alternative to capitalism, “workers control” was merely a corollary of capitalism that doomed the Revolution.
The Error of Seeing Theory as Having Primacy In Planning
With Spain being used as the alternative to “state” socialism, it is often criticism of this past socialism and its adherents that we are left with.
But while theories of “participatory” planning are nice, what about the harsh realities of revolutionary societies described above, where infrastructure is devastated, external and internal forces are working to undermine the revolutionaries, and where, even among the ranks of a revolutionary people, there is not always an agreement about the way forward? “The workers” are not some undifferentiated mass with a single will, nor are all of them necessarily committed revolutionaries.
“The Workers Know Best”
In flowing from the assumption of “direct democratic” economics (which, as seen in Spain, amounted more to privileged workers having a dictatorship over all other working class and rural people) those who support workers self management insist that in justifying that power must be direct, the locus of decision making should be on the plant level because the workers there know best.
To which we should answer that of course, they aren’t fucking stupid, but that there’s a difference between “input” and “initiative” and actual decision making. Production never happens in one locus so it can’t ever be mediated directly by those at the plant level. If you only want to decide minor workplace issues, like what temperature should the break room be, how polite the managers have to be, and what decisions should worker committees be allowed to make over discretionary spending, then those matters can be decided by vote. But the moment a decision effects the whole direction of society, then the argument that the locus of direct rule should be at the plant level essentially becomes an argument for capitalism.
What’s more is what happens when decisions need to be made about the allocation of resources, safety, and structural innovations? Some decisions which may mean the end of the plant through the replacement of robotics and labor saving technologies, or that would require workers to relocate somewhere else to man a much needed factory - what happens when the workers at the plant level disagree vehemently with them? Are those sort of decisions - should they be made by the “direct” vote of workers there, or by revolutionary mixed committees after hearing and input from the workers?
Localism and Regionalism
What about decisions made locally? Some anarchists weirdly echo conservatives in assuming that direct and local rule is better (as in more radical, more liberating). To me such ideas can only be believed by someone who hasn’t lived in the South. North America is a huge place and there will need to be many decisions made locally, but also many for the whole socialist society, and there are historical and political reasons why decentralizaiton of power and economics can not be permitted.
Some Very Limited and Incomplete Thoughts
What we need is tested, representative leadership with real living accountability-public reporting, forms of mass debate (i.e. input), but specific loci of decision-making where a combination of specialists, leaders and the masses themselves make decisions in committee. And then there needs to be a macro political process for approving the OVERALL line and direction of society (and the specific overall leadership and party composition).The “form” does not guarantee anything (even that of having managers over enterprises, or special three-in-one committees of managers, workers, and specialists), but that in the contested territory of socialist society where capitalism is fighting to make its comeback, the dogmatic festishization of direct-democratic forms negates the formal necessity of having a framework for line struggle over defining if we are heading down the capitalist road or the socialist one at a plant level and up higher than that. Workers control is a crucial instrument of making revolution and breaking the hold of old bourgeois forces and habits in production. It was and is an important and innovative ram. So there should be a simultaneous codifying of both real mass input (and accountability in leadership) along with a decision making structure of “three in one committees” (with specialists, trained communist leaders, and representatives from the grassroots). Wavelive motions of mass democratic fury will help secure new revolutionary normalcies, but predeciding and overdetermining the necessity of a certain form is an ossified and corrupt method. It is devoid of history, and it will not lead to the emancipation of our class.
“Femme Fatale” by Susan Kane
[From The Femme Mystique, ed. Lesléa Newman]
by Ryan McGinley for New York Times Magazine
daisies (1966)
Flute boy: “DON’T FUCK WITH ME, I HAVE THE POWER OF GOD AND ANIME ON MY SIDE.”
Bystander: “Wait, you-”
FB: “aAAAAHH”
“THE SOFTNESS OF THE MOONLIGHT, THE STRENGTH OF THE SUN” at the first national march on washington for lesbian and gay rights, photographed by larry butler, october 1979
kittypets and broke bitches STAY AWAY
kittypets and broke bitches STAY AWAY
Renée Jeanne Falconetti (Maria Falconetti) in La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc
a lesbian in lesbos, greece photographed by jan phillips, published in i know you know: lesbian views and news vol. 2 no. 1, december 1985
dr. dee mosbacher and dr. nanette gartrell on vacation in colorado, photographed by JEB (joan e. biren) 1984. published on the cover of lesbian connection vol. 2 no. 2, september 1988
