Libertarian Socialism. Bollocks or What?

[mk12]

I wasn't aware that tbaldwin had read Otto Ruhle, Anton Pannekoek and Herman Gorter...

 

[tbaldwin]

I wasn't aware that tbaldwin had read Otto Ruhle, Anton Pannekoek and Herman Gorter...

A lot of lefties think that reading a lot makes you more intelligent than other people.It leads them down the path of LIBERAL SUPREMACY. Watch them Matt they really are the CLASS ENEMY.

 

[Blagsta]

A lot of lefties think that reading a lot makes you more intelligent than other people.It leads them down the path of LIBERAL SUPREMACY. Watch them Matt they really are the CLASS ENEMY.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I wasn't aware that tbaldwin had read Otto Ruhle, Anton Pannekoek and Herman Gorter...

I don't believe balders "does" reading.

He thinks it's the sign of someone untrustworthy.

Edited to add: Fuck me, I was right, an' all!

 

[likesfish]

greenman sounds allright to me where do I sign up

 

[tbaldwin]

This is one conception, (specific to its' historical period, before anyone suggests I am adhering to it as a programme!) from the Zabalaza site detailing the ideas of Abad De Santillan-
Two months before the Saragossa congress Diego Abad de Santillan had published a book, El Organismo Economico de la Revolucion (The Economic Organization of the Revolution). This outline of an economic structure drew a somewhat different inspiration from the Saragossa program.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Santillan was not a rigid and sterile disciple of the great anarchists of the nineteenth century. He regretted that anarchist literature of the previous twenty-five or thirty years should have paid so little attention to the concrete problems of a new economy, and that it had not opened up original perspectives on the future. On the other hand, anarchism had produced a superabundance of works, in every language, going over and over an entirely abstract conception of liberty. Santillan compared this indigestible body of work with the reports presented to the national and international congresses of the First International, and the latter seemed to him the more brilliant for the comparison. He thought they had shown a very much better understanding of economic problems than had appeared in subsequent periods.

Santillan was not backward, but a true man of his times. He was aware that "the tremendous development of modern industry has created a whole series of new problems, which it was impossible to foresee at an earlier time." There is no question of going back to the Roman chariot or to primitive forms of artisan production. Economic insularity, a parochial way of thinking, the patria chica (little fatherland) dear to the hearts of rural Spaniards nostalgic for a golden age, the small-scale and medieval "free commune" of Kropotkin - all these must be relegated to a museum of antiquities. They are the vestiges of out-of-date communalist conceptions. No "free communes" can exist from the economic point of view: "Our ideal is the commune which is associated, federated, integrated into the total economy of the country, and of other countries in a state of revolution." To replace the single owner by a hydra-headed owner is not collectivism, is not self-management. The land, the factories, the mines, the means of transport are the product of the work of all and must be at the service of all. Nowadays the economy is neither local, nor even national, but world-wide. The characteristic feature of modern life is the cohesion of all the productive and distributive forces. "A socialized economy, directed and planned, is an imperative necessity and corresponds to the trend of development of the modern economic world."

Santillan foresaw the function of coordinating and planning as being carried out by a federal economic council, which would not be a political authority, but simply an organ of coordination, an economic and administrative regulator. Its directives would come from below, from the factory councils federated into trade union councils for different branches of industry, and into local economic councils. The federal council is thus at the receiving end of two chains of authority, one based on locality and the other on occupation. The organizations at the base provide it with statistics so that it will be aware of the real economic situation at any given moment. In this way it can spot major deficiencies, and determine the sectors in which new industries or crops are most urgently required. "The policemen will no longer be necessary when the supreme authority lies in figures and statistics." In such a system state coercion has no utility, is sterile, even impossible. The federal council sees to the propagation of new norms, the growth of interdependence between the regions and the formation of national solidarity. It stimulates research into new methods of work, new manufacturing processes, new agricultural techniques. It distributes labor from one region to another, from one branch of the economy to another.

There is no doubt that Santillan learned a great deal from the Russian Revolution. On the one hand, it taught him to beware of the danger of a resurgence of the state and bureaucratic apparatus; but, on the other, it taught him that a victorious revolution can not avoid passing through intermediate economic forms, [32] in which there survives for a time what Marx and Lenin call "bourgeois law." For instance, there could be no question of abolishing the banking and monetary system at one fell swoop. These institutions must be transformed and used as a temporary means of exchange to keep social life moving and prepare the way to new economic forms.

Santillan was to play an important part in the Spanish Revolution: he became, in turn, a member of the central committee of the anti-fascist militia (end of July 1936), a member of the Catalonian Economic Council (August 11), and Economics Minister of the Catalonian government (mid-December).

Excellent stuff greenman, Im sure more and more people will see the libertarian socialist light with people like you acting as a shining beacon of intellectual light.

 

[articul8]

well cmon baldwin - with your "intellectual" weight, please offer a critique...

 

[tbaldwin]

well cmon baldwin - with your "intellectual" weight, please offer a critique...

I'm like a feather duster.
Wot happened in Spain in the end by the way?

 

[TAE]

For libertarian socialists the defintion of socialism is [...] the extension of democracy to the economic sphere.

Nicely put.

 

[8ball]

Big shout out to all the remaining anarchists on U75!!

 

[In Bloom]

A lot of lefties think that reading a lot makes you more intelligent than other people.It leads them down the path of LIBERAL SUPREMACY. Watch them Matt they really are the CLASS ENEMY.

Balders, you big Maoist, you!

 

[tbaldwin]

Balders, you big Maoist, you!

I do have a high regard for the chinese. The foods good, they kill buddhists and students and mow down cyclists,so it's not all bad.

 

[In Bloom]

And with that, any last lingering doubts I had that you are a troll evaporate like the morning dew

 

[bluestreak]

i'm glad you posted that. i was thinking this was some kind of p+p injoke that those of us who haven't been arsed over the last couple of years might not have got and i didn't want to look stupid by throwing an eppy.

 

[In Bloom]

i'm glad you posted that. i was thinking this was some kind of p+p injoke that those of us who haven't been arsed over the last couple of years might not have got and i didn't want to look stupid by throwing an eppy.

It's just tbaldwin on another metatroll, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[tbaldwin]

And with that, any last lingering doubts I had that you are a troll evaporate like the morning dew

Dont really know what a troll is? But a lot of people on u75 cant really be serious can they? All those sad tossers going on about tory bliar etc got to be on some kind of a wind up,i'd say.

 

[trashycakes]

It's kind of contradictory I agree.

I once got a book about Anarchism but I kept falling asleep before I could finish a chapter. I think as a political movement it's best for films, music and to first get teenagers interested in politics.

As a practical programme for a nation.. I have trouble taking it seriously.

it's not a progam for a nation. nations don't exist under anarchism.

 

[ViolentPanda]

A lot of people on here...

Who'd they be then? Do they actually exist or are they another baldwinesque fantasy?

 

[Patty]

Looks like i've joined this thread a bit too late as it's already decended into personal slanging.

 

[nino_savatte]

Looks like i've joined this thread a bit too late as it's already decended into personal slanging.

It's like this with every baldwin thread and it has nothing to do with the posters either. Baldwin likes to be ever so controversial and his threads are simply an attempt - on his part - to make himself feel better.

In other words, it's a troll.

 

[mk12]

"libertarian socialism" is a good label to describe yourself as if you want to dissassociate yourselves from the "authoritarian socialists" like Stalinists, Maoists and (some would argue) Trotskyists.

 

[tbaldwin]

"libertarian socialism" is a good label to describe yourself as if you want to dissassociate yourselves from the "authoritarian socialists" like Stalinists, Maoists and (some would argue) Trotskyists.

But it seems a contradiction and just an easy label for people who want a socialism without any losers..........

It appeals to spineless people who want the best of both worlds but are in the end happy to accept a world of no change.

 

[mk12]

but socialism is libertarian, isn't it? Direct democracy, decisions from below, the lack of unaccountable leaders, the absense of bureaucratic centralised control etc etc. This is all very "libertarian" as opposed to other forms of socialism which have been practiced in many places.

 

[In Bloom]

but socialism is libertarian, isn't it? Direct democracy, decisions from below, the lack of unaccountable leaders, the absense of bureaucratic centralised control etc etc. This is all very "libertarian" as opposed to other forms of socialism which have been practiced in many places.

Quite.

You can only argue that socialism/communism are inherently authoritarian if you buy into the argument that the violence of the oppressor and the violence of the oppressed in resistance to oppression are morally equivalent. In which case, one has to wonder why you'd consider yourself a socialist at all, what with lacking a class analysis and all.

 

[mk12]

"if you buy into the argument that the violence of the oppressor and the violence of the oppressed in resistance to oppression are morally equivalent"

Yeah, i think that's what Engels was saying in "on authority", when he criticised those who kept banging on about "authoritarianism". He was saying how a revolution (where one part of the population imposes its will on another) is extremely "authoritarian".

The thing is, any "authority" must be checked and kept under the control of the population.

 

[ViolentPanda]

"libertarian socialism" is a good label to describe yourself as if you want to dissassociate yourselves from the "authoritarian socialists" like Stalinists, Maoists and (some would argue) Trotskyists.

Balders likes to call himself an "authoritarian socialist", but says he doesn't believe in "top-down socialism".

 

[mk12]

he does seem to have his own definitions for things. he's even copyrighted "liberal supremacist" if i remember correctly.

 

[nino_savatte]

Balders likes to call himself an "authoritarian socialist", but says he doesn't believe in "top-down socialism".

Quoi?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Quoi?

IMHO it's the case that balders likes the idea of "top-down" rule, but wants people to love him too.
So he's invented his own definition of "authoritarian socialism" where he gets to tell people what's good for them, but won't take responsibility for it, hence the "I'm against top-down rule" line.
Basically he's trying to rewrite the dictionary definitions of both words to mean something they don't.

 

[ViolentPanda]

he does seem to have his own definitions for things. he's even copyrighted "liberal supremacist" if i remember correctly.

Not "liberal supremacist", "LIBERAL SUPREMACIST" (c).