The autonomists did not grasp that the oppressors took advantage of the limitations of a rebellion that took militant action, but lacked organization, leadership, and ideological coherence. Moreover, they celebrate these features as a sign of the uprising’s novelty (“a festival without programs, nor objectives”). The assemblies emerged when the collapse of government institutions turned neoliberal propaganda against politicians and the “government” into a radicalized mobilization against the entire regime. The assemblies focused popular participation in the key moments of the uprising, but they declined when the ruling class regained the reigns of power. Many autonomists refuse to see this, forgetting that the oppressed cannot liberate themselves if they do not develop their own political project. They do not consider this to be an obstacle because they think that the social movements will construct a new society from the spontaneous act of rebellion.
(...) The autonomists refuse to grasp the fact that the representatives of the ruling classes co-opt many popular movements. They do not recognize the importance of the challenges that confront the Ecuadorian indigenous movement, the landless of Brazil, or the cocaleros of Bolivia in the face of betrayals, neoliberal policies, and right-wing repression from the governments that emerged from their struggles. They promote an idyllic image of the social movements, acting as if these groups advance from strength to strength.
(...) The autonomists trust in the sufficiency of the social struggle and dismiss the necessity of a socialist political project of the oppressed. They think that the accumulated experience in popular action leads to the spontaneous development of anti-capitalist sentiments within the population. But if it were so simple, the MST of Brazil would not be forced to fight the disillusionment created by Lula and the piqueteros would not be fragmented in the face of Kirchner’s machinery of cooptation. Nor would the Zapatistas feel compelled to participate in the crisis unleashed by the attempt to drive López Obrador out of office.
(...) Actions of this type would permit the development of an emancipatory political practice in the face of the alienation of capitalism. Holloway11 correctly emphasizes that the fetishism created by this system not only conceals exploitation, but it also unleashes liberating responses from the oppressed. But he reduces these acts of resistance to spontaneous anti-commercial acts (“the child that forgets to pay”) or to basic expressions of rebellion (“the worker who resists”). He disregards the fact that these acts alone can only lead to experiments with fleeting forms of liberation. In order to do away with capitalist domination, the exploited need to go further than Holloway’s “constant anti-fetishization” to embrace a socialist political program and action.
(...) These characterizations adequately take account of the brutal changes that have been created by the opening of local markets to imports, the corporatization of agriculture, the shuttering of numerous industries, and the recession in the world market. But from the recognition of these transformations it does not follow that there has been a radical change in the protagonists of social struggle. The autonomists do not see that the map of resistance in Latin America is very diverse and differentiated. The weight of rural sectors in the Andean region coexists with the preeminence of urban workers in the Southern Cone and the notable presence of public employees in all countries. The most significant feature of this process is the mixture of traditions between social subjects who share methods of struggle. To emphasize the role of the excluded at the expense of formal workers is to downplay this multiplicity and convergence.
(...) The autonomists magnify the role of the excluded at the expense of traditional workers, because they place more weight on the relations of domination than on the forms of exploitation. They have lost sight of the neurological center of capitalist reproduction located in the extraction of surplus value. For this reason, they tend to take up certain notions of post-industrialism and interpret the retreat of the traditional workers’ movement as a symptom of the structural decline of work. They forget that, whatever the dislocations or changes in the labor process there have been, capitalism would cease to exist without workers’ labor. Understood this way, the arguments of the autonomists lose all meaning.
(...) The operation of the contemporary economy and the complexity of the political choices that confront society today demand that we delegate authority and use legislative tools. The different forms of direct democracy proposed by autonomists could only contribute in a complementary way to the organization of society in the process of constructing a socialist society.
(...) Other critics of the radical Left question the Leninist conception of constructing firm political organizations dedicated to promoting socialist consciousness. They think that this strategy disdains the self-emancipatory capacity of workers and leads to Stalinist totalitarianism. This appraisal distorts Lenin’s advocacy of building of stable organizations in order to transform the social struggle into conscious workers’ political action. The Bolshevik leader also emphasized the role of organization in confronting powerful enemies. In the conditions of clandestine struggle against Tsarism he argued for rigorous organization, but he never claimed this was a universal model of revolutionary action. He always encouraged the adaptation of forms of organization to changing political realities (for example, emphasizing professionalism in some periods and flexibility in others). To present Lenin as a precursor to Stalinist massacres is a liberal caricature. To interpret any political discipline as inexorably leading to terror would mean that we would have to object to all forms of collective structure, including those adopted by social movements that the autonomists support!
(...) “Changing the world without taking power” is the strategic project of many autonomists. But how can one avoid the state? How can the target of every popular demand be ignored? The state can be combated or reformed, but it cannot be ignored. All demands made by social movements are directed towards the state. The Zapatistas demand pro-indigenous legislation from the Mexican congress, the piqueteros demand unemployment benefits from the Argentine Ministry of Labor, and the MST raises the demand of expropriation of land and the legalization of landless peasants’ encampments to the Brazilian parliament. In “developed” countries, “illegal” immigrants demand citizenship rights (France) and public housing residents ask for social legislation. The last of these are particularly “statist” demands.
(...) Holloway counsels against any form of power because he concludes that any exercise of power will reproduce oppression. But he doesn’t take into account the fact that refusing to take over the state leads to the preservation of the status quo and the consolidation of the impoverishment of the dispossessed. If we want to change the world, it is not enough to reject the state. We have to look for strategies to extinguish it progressively until the end of a process of socialist transition. This transformation would necessarily begin with the establishment of a new state administered by the popular majority. The proposal to change the world without taking power disqualifies one road without suggesting another. Thus, it leaves us with a bitter sensation of impotence. It demands insubordination and rebelliousness, but it never suggests how to triumph in the difficult battle against oppression.
Showing posts with label anarchism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anarchism. Show all posts
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Among them was Gavriii ll'ich Miasnikov, a metalworker from the Urals and a Bolshevik since 1906. One of the most vocal of the early oppositionists, he is also one of the most obscure. Yet during the early 1920s he blazed into prominence as a critic of Lenin's policies, posing questions of the utmost importance: Who is to decide what is in the interests of the workers? What methods are permissible in resolving disputes among revolutionaries? At what point does honest criticism of party officials become "deviation" or insubordination? Miasnikov, seeing his deepest revolutionary aspirations thwarted, evolved an elaborate and penetrating critique of the dictatorship in the making, pointing to dangers whose full consequences were not yet apparent.
(...) He was deeply troubled by the oligarchical tendencies within the party, the drift towards authoritarianism and elite rule, a process greatly accelerated by the Civil War. He was dismayed by the growing concentration of power in the hands of the Central Committee, the divorce of the leadership from the rank and file, and the suppression of local initiative and debate. Equally disturbing, though he did not yet raise his voice in public protest, was the introduction of labor discipline in the factories, along with the elevation of technical specialists to positions of authority and the replacement of workers' control by one-man management and bureaucratic administration.
(...) In May 1921, moreover, he exploded a bombshell in the form of a memorandum to the,Central Committee, calling for sweeping reform. A crushing indictment of the Communist leaders, their theories and methods, the memorandum demanded the abolition of the death penalty, the liquidation of bureaucratic forms of organization, and the transfer of industrial administration to producers' Soviets-, it counterpoised revolutionary principle to the expedients promoted by the Central Committee.
(...) Freedom of the press, Lenin sought to convince Miasnikov, would, under existing circumstances, strengthen the forces of counter-revolution. Lenin rejected "freedom" in the abstract. Freedom for whom? he demanded. Under what conditions? For which class? "We do not believe in 'absolutes.' We laugh at 'pure democracy."' Freedom of the press, Lenin maintained, would mean "freedom of political organization for the bourgeoisie and its most loyal servants, the Mensheviks and SRs." The capitalists are still strong, he argued, stronger than the Communists. They mean to crush us. To give them freedom of the press would facilitate this task. But we will not do it. We have no intention of committing suicide. (32) Freedom of the press, according to Lenin, was a "nonparty, antiproletarian slogan."
(...) "The trouble is that, while you raise your hand against the capitalist, you deal a blow to the worker. You know very well that for such words as I am now uttering hundreds, perhaps thousands, of workers are languishing in prison. That I myself remain at liberty is only because I am a veteran Communist, have suffered for my beliefs, and am known among the mass of workers. Were it not for this, were I just an ordinary mechanic from the same factory, where would I be now? In a Cheka prison or, more likely, made to 'escape,' just as I made Mikhail Romanov 'escape.' Once more I say: You raise your hand against the bourgeoisie, but it is I who am spitting blood, and it is we, the workers, whose jaws are being cracked." (34)
(...) On February 15, 1922, the Orgburo commission, having completed its investigation, recommended his expulsion from the party. This recommendation was referred to the Politburo, which, on February 20, declared Miasnikov expelled for "repeated violations of party discipline," and especially for attempting to organize a faction within the party, contrary to the resolution on party unity passed by the Tenth Congress. The Politburo, however, added the proviso that, should Miasnikov reform his ways, he might apply for readmission after a year.(42) For the first time, then, the penalty prescribed by the Tenth Congress for factionalism had been imposed. This was the first instance, moreover, except for that of S. A. Lozovsky in 1918, who was reinstated the next year, where Lenin actually expelled a well-known Bolshevik of long standing.(43)
(...) In such circumstances, Lenin felt, to criticize the Central Committee, to call for democratic procedure, was to play into the hands of the counterrevolutionaries. Furthermore, if Miasnikov's demands were granted, if freedom of the press and free elections to the soviets were permitted, the party would be swept from power and a reaction inevitably follow, of which the Bolsheviks, Miasnikov included, would be the first victims.
(...) Miasnikov found no defenders at the [11th Party Congress]. But one delegate, V. V. Kosior, argued that Lenin had taken the wrong approach to the question of dissent. If someone, said Kcisior, had the courage to point out deficiencies in party work, he was marked down as an oppositionist, relieved of authority, placed under surveillance, and-a reference to Miasnikov-even expelled from the party. The party, Kosior, warned, was alienating itself from the workers. (51)
(...) For Miasnikov the NEP had come as a shock. He viewed it as a continuation of the retreat from socialism begun during the Civil War. Its roots could be traced to the Ninth Party Congress, which had endorsed one-man management and the employment of technical specialists. By this action, as Miasnikov saw it, Lenin had deprived the workers of their most fundamental revolutionary conquest, the chief lever with which to advance their cause. "The organization of industry since the Ninth Congress of the Russian Communist Party," declared the manifesto, had been carried forward in a "purely bureaucratic way" and "without the direct participation of the working class." (59) The manifesto demanded that the administration of industry be turned over to the workers themselves, beginning with the workers in each factory. It denounced the bureaucrats and apporatchiki for whom such words as "solidarity" and "brotherhood" were empty shibboleths and who were concerned only with increasing their privileges and power. It attacked them at every turn-their insolence and hypocrisy, their contempt for ordinary workers, their pious mouthing of socialist phrases, belied by their bourgeois ambitions and way of life.
(...) What then was to be done? For Miasnikov the degeneration of the revolution could be halted only by the restoration of proletarian democracy. He remained unshakable in his belief in the initiative and capacity of the workers, the class from which he himself had sprung. The defects of the regime could no longer be corrected by the Bolshevik leadership. Remedies, rather, must come from the working-class rank and file, both party and nonparty. Without worker participation in every area, he insisted, the attainment of socialism would be impossible. Lenin, by contrast, lacking Miasnikov's faith in mass initiative, clung to administrative solutions, rejecting any proposal that would have allowed a democratic breeze to blow through the party apparatus. This he considered more dangerous than bureaucratism itself. He relied, to the very end, on bureaucrats to reform the bureaucracy, setting one section of the apparatus against another.
(...) In Lenin's absence, the task of anathematizing the Workers' Group fell to Trotsky, Radek, and Zinoviev. Trotsky, denouncing Miasnikov's manifesto, recalled "the old theory of the now forgotten Machajski" that "under socialism the state will be the apparatus for the exploitation for the working class." Radek poured contempt on Miasnikov's "high-flown formula" of freedom of the press. Zinoviev declared that "every criticism of the party line, even a so-called left criticism, is now objectively a Menshevik criticism." Miasnikov, he added, maintains that "the worker is against us and we are against him." Such a notion is "rubbish ." "I was personally bothered by him for almost a year. Vladimir ll'ich occupied himself with Miasnikov, wrote to him, reasoned with him." A special commission, of which Bukharin was a member, sought to bring him around. To no avail. Miasnikov "has betrayed our party." Whatever its mistakes, insisted Zinoviev, the party had driven the old ruling elite from its entrenched power. The "hegemony of the proletariat has survived under the most difficult circumstances, and will continue to survive, I hope, to the end (applause)." (74)
(...) [once in Germany] Miasnikov was able to publish, in booklet form, the manifesto of the Workers' Group,(77) prefaced by an appeal, drafted by his associates in Moscow, "to Communist comrades of all lands." The appeal, in brief compass, recapitulated the main points of the manifesto. Quoting Marx's inaugural address to the First International ("the liberation of the workers must be the task of the, workers themselves") and the second stanza of the "Internationale," it concluded with a set of slogans proclaiming the aims of the Workers' Group: "The strength of the working class lies in its solidarity. Long live freedom of speech and press for the proletarians! Long live Soviet Power! Long live Proletarian Democracy! Long live Communism!"(78)
(...) He was deeply troubled by the oligarchical tendencies within the party, the drift towards authoritarianism and elite rule, a process greatly accelerated by the Civil War. He was dismayed by the growing concentration of power in the hands of the Central Committee, the divorce of the leadership from the rank and file, and the suppression of local initiative and debate. Equally disturbing, though he did not yet raise his voice in public protest, was the introduction of labor discipline in the factories, along with the elevation of technical specialists to positions of authority and the replacement of workers' control by one-man management and bureaucratic administration.
(...) In May 1921, moreover, he exploded a bombshell in the form of a memorandum to the,Central Committee, calling for sweeping reform. A crushing indictment of the Communist leaders, their theories and methods, the memorandum demanded the abolition of the death penalty, the liquidation of bureaucratic forms of organization, and the transfer of industrial administration to producers' Soviets-, it counterpoised revolutionary principle to the expedients promoted by the Central Committee.
(...) Freedom of the press, Lenin sought to convince Miasnikov, would, under existing circumstances, strengthen the forces of counter-revolution. Lenin rejected "freedom" in the abstract. Freedom for whom? he demanded. Under what conditions? For which class? "We do not believe in 'absolutes.' We laugh at 'pure democracy."' Freedom of the press, Lenin maintained, would mean "freedom of political organization for the bourgeoisie and its most loyal servants, the Mensheviks and SRs." The capitalists are still strong, he argued, stronger than the Communists. They mean to crush us. To give them freedom of the press would facilitate this task. But we will not do it. We have no intention of committing suicide. (32) Freedom of the press, according to Lenin, was a "nonparty, antiproletarian slogan."
(...) "The trouble is that, while you raise your hand against the capitalist, you deal a blow to the worker. You know very well that for such words as I am now uttering hundreds, perhaps thousands, of workers are languishing in prison. That I myself remain at liberty is only because I am a veteran Communist, have suffered for my beliefs, and am known among the mass of workers. Were it not for this, were I just an ordinary mechanic from the same factory, where would I be now? In a Cheka prison or, more likely, made to 'escape,' just as I made Mikhail Romanov 'escape.' Once more I say: You raise your hand against the bourgeoisie, but it is I who am spitting blood, and it is we, the workers, whose jaws are being cracked." (34)
(...) On February 15, 1922, the Orgburo commission, having completed its investigation, recommended his expulsion from the party. This recommendation was referred to the Politburo, which, on February 20, declared Miasnikov expelled for "repeated violations of party discipline," and especially for attempting to organize a faction within the party, contrary to the resolution on party unity passed by the Tenth Congress. The Politburo, however, added the proviso that, should Miasnikov reform his ways, he might apply for readmission after a year.(42) For the first time, then, the penalty prescribed by the Tenth Congress for factionalism had been imposed. This was the first instance, moreover, except for that of S. A. Lozovsky in 1918, who was reinstated the next year, where Lenin actually expelled a well-known Bolshevik of long standing.(43)
(...) In such circumstances, Lenin felt, to criticize the Central Committee, to call for democratic procedure, was to play into the hands of the counterrevolutionaries. Furthermore, if Miasnikov's demands were granted, if freedom of the press and free elections to the soviets were permitted, the party would be swept from power and a reaction inevitably follow, of which the Bolsheviks, Miasnikov included, would be the first victims.
(...) Miasnikov found no defenders at the [11th Party Congress]. But one delegate, V. V. Kosior, argued that Lenin had taken the wrong approach to the question of dissent. If someone, said Kcisior, had the courage to point out deficiencies in party work, he was marked down as an oppositionist, relieved of authority, placed under surveillance, and-a reference to Miasnikov-even expelled from the party. The party, Kosior, warned, was alienating itself from the workers. (51)
(...) For Miasnikov the NEP had come as a shock. He viewed it as a continuation of the retreat from socialism begun during the Civil War. Its roots could be traced to the Ninth Party Congress, which had endorsed one-man management and the employment of technical specialists. By this action, as Miasnikov saw it, Lenin had deprived the workers of their most fundamental revolutionary conquest, the chief lever with which to advance their cause. "The organization of industry since the Ninth Congress of the Russian Communist Party," declared the manifesto, had been carried forward in a "purely bureaucratic way" and "without the direct participation of the working class." (59) The manifesto demanded that the administration of industry be turned over to the workers themselves, beginning with the workers in each factory. It denounced the bureaucrats and apporatchiki for whom such words as "solidarity" and "brotherhood" were empty shibboleths and who were concerned only with increasing their privileges and power. It attacked them at every turn-their insolence and hypocrisy, their contempt for ordinary workers, their pious mouthing of socialist phrases, belied by their bourgeois ambitions and way of life.
(...) What then was to be done? For Miasnikov the degeneration of the revolution could be halted only by the restoration of proletarian democracy. He remained unshakable in his belief in the initiative and capacity of the workers, the class from which he himself had sprung. The defects of the regime could no longer be corrected by the Bolshevik leadership. Remedies, rather, must come from the working-class rank and file, both party and nonparty. Without worker participation in every area, he insisted, the attainment of socialism would be impossible. Lenin, by contrast, lacking Miasnikov's faith in mass initiative, clung to administrative solutions, rejecting any proposal that would have allowed a democratic breeze to blow through the party apparatus. This he considered more dangerous than bureaucratism itself. He relied, to the very end, on bureaucrats to reform the bureaucracy, setting one section of the apparatus against another.
(...) In Lenin's absence, the task of anathematizing the Workers' Group fell to Trotsky, Radek, and Zinoviev. Trotsky, denouncing Miasnikov's manifesto, recalled "the old theory of the now forgotten Machajski" that "under socialism the state will be the apparatus for the exploitation for the working class." Radek poured contempt on Miasnikov's "high-flown formula" of freedom of the press. Zinoviev declared that "every criticism of the party line, even a so-called left criticism, is now objectively a Menshevik criticism." Miasnikov, he added, maintains that "the worker is against us and we are against him." Such a notion is "rubbish ." "I was personally bothered by him for almost a year. Vladimir ll'ich occupied himself with Miasnikov, wrote to him, reasoned with him." A special commission, of which Bukharin was a member, sought to bring him around. To no avail. Miasnikov "has betrayed our party." Whatever its mistakes, insisted Zinoviev, the party had driven the old ruling elite from its entrenched power. The "hegemony of the proletariat has survived under the most difficult circumstances, and will continue to survive, I hope, to the end (applause)." (74)
(...) [once in Germany] Miasnikov was able to publish, in booklet form, the manifesto of the Workers' Group,(77) prefaced by an appeal, drafted by his associates in Moscow, "to Communist comrades of all lands." The appeal, in brief compass, recapitulated the main points of the manifesto. Quoting Marx's inaugural address to the First International ("the liberation of the workers must be the task of the, workers themselves") and the second stanza of the "Internationale," it concluded with a set of slogans proclaiming the aims of the Workers' Group: "The strength of the working class lies in its solidarity. Long live freedom of speech and press for the proletarians! Long live Soviet Power! Long live Proletarian Democracy! Long live Communism!"(78)
collected figures/snippets, to help trace the origins of the Fall
- According to the declassified Soviet archives, during 1937 and 1938, the NKVD detained 1,548,367 victims, of whom 681,692 were shot - an average of 1,000 executions a day. Historian Michael Ellman claims the best estimate of deaths brought about by Soviet Repression during these two years is the range 950,000 to 1.2 million, which includes deaths in detention and those who died shortly after being released from the Gulag as a result of their treatment in it. He also states that this is the estimate which should be used by historians and teachers of Russian history.
- The governing body of the CPSU was the Party Congress which initially met annually but whose meetings became less frequent, particularly under Stalin. Party Congresses would elect a Central Committee which, in turn, would elect a Politburo. Under Stalin the most powerful position in the party became the General Secretary who was elected by the Politburo. In 1952 the title of General Secretary became First Secretary and the Politburo became the Presidium before reverting to their former names under Leonid Brezhnev in 1966.
-"Soviet rule in Russia could not have been maintained for three years -- not even three weeks -- without the iron dictatorship of the Communist Party. Any class conscious worker must understand that the dictatorship of the working class can by achieved only by the dictatorship of its vanguard, i.e., by the Communist Party . . . All questions . . ., on which the fate of the proletarian revolution depends absolutely, are decided . . . in the framework of the party organisations." Zinoviev in Kommunistische Rundschau (1920)
-"They [the workers' opposition] have come out with dangerous slogans. They have made a fetish of democratic principles. They have placed the workers' right to elect representatives above the party. As if the Party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy! . . The Party is obliged to maintain its dictatorship . . . regardless of temporary vacillations even in the working class . . . The dictatorship does not base itself at every moment on the formal principle of a workers' democracy." Trotsky, 10th Party Congress, 1921.
-"Obedience, and unquestioning obedience at that, during work to the one-man decisions of Soviet directors, of the dictators elected or appointed by Soviet institutions, vested with dictatorial powers." Lenin, Six Theses on the Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, April/May 1918
- According to the declassified Soviet archives, during 1937 and 1938, the NKVD detained 1,548,367 victims, of whom 681,692 were shot - an average of 1,000 executions a day. Historian Michael Ellman claims the best estimate of deaths brought about by Soviet Repression during these two years is the range 950,000 to 1.2 million, which includes deaths in detention and those who died shortly after being released from the Gulag as a result of their treatment in it. He also states that this is the estimate which should be used by historians and teachers of Russian history.
- The governing body of the CPSU was the Party Congress which initially met annually but whose meetings became less frequent, particularly under Stalin. Party Congresses would elect a Central Committee which, in turn, would elect a Politburo. Under Stalin the most powerful position in the party became the General Secretary who was elected by the Politburo. In 1952 the title of General Secretary became First Secretary and the Politburo became the Presidium before reverting to their former names under Leonid Brezhnev in 1966.
-"Soviet rule in Russia could not have been maintained for three years -- not even three weeks -- without the iron dictatorship of the Communist Party. Any class conscious worker must understand that the dictatorship of the working class can by achieved only by the dictatorship of its vanguard, i.e., by the Communist Party . . . All questions . . ., on which the fate of the proletarian revolution depends absolutely, are decided . . . in the framework of the party organisations." Zinoviev in Kommunistische Rundschau (1920)
-"They [the workers' opposition] have come out with dangerous slogans. They have made a fetish of democratic principles. They have placed the workers' right to elect representatives above the party. As if the Party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy! . . The Party is obliged to maintain its dictatorship . . . regardless of temporary vacillations even in the working class . . . The dictatorship does not base itself at every moment on the formal principle of a workers' democracy." Trotsky, 10th Party Congress, 1921.
-"Obedience, and unquestioning obedience at that, during work to the one-man decisions of Soviet directors, of the dictators elected or appointed by Soviet institutions, vested with dictatorial powers." Lenin, Six Theses on the Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, April/May 1918
Sunday, March 29, 2009
lecture 8, "dynamite club: the anarchists"
john merriman
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life and death of one man, emile henry (guillotined in 1894, when he was 21)
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anarchists, unlike socialists, did not want to seize control of the state, but wanted to "destroy" it. they saw political life as irredeemably bourgeois and corrupt.
first anarchist, prof is saying, was prodhoun (from east of france, active in 1850s and 1860s). he wrote a pamphlet titled "property is theft" (he meant, prof argues, that "unearned" property is theft)--"to be governed is to be...checked, valued, estimated, commanded...that is government, that is justice, that is its morality"
followed by two russian anarchists, peter kropotkin and mikael bakunin. both were nobles(!). the former was once toasted by the king of england--he was among those that came up with the term, "propaganda of the deed", which was premised on the idea that the masses were like a tinder-box, and all that was needed was a spark.
depending on how one counts, anarchists assasinated about 6 or 7 heads of state.
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begin with a bomb in the cafe terminus. february 12, 1894, a pale, thin man named emile henry hid a bomb in his clothes, and headed for the elegant boulevards near the paris opera. he wanted to kill as many peopole as possible. he stopped before the opera itself, where there was a fancy ball going on, but he didn't think he could get past the guards. he was a flanuer, an intellectual who had been a bit of a dandy--but if he was, he was an impoverished flanuer, who hated and killed.
at 8pm he reached the cafe terminus--as it was filling up he ordered two beers and a cigar (paying for them, in an un-anarchist gesture). an hour later, he lit the fuse with his cigar, and he threw the bomb into the packed cafe (paris had become a staging ground for the belle epoque, prof is saying--the "cathedrals of modernity").
rebuilding of paris by hausman had chased thousands of workers to north-eastern paris, don't forget, to make way for these boulevards packed with dept stores. indeed, paris seemed no longer the capital of revolution--"boulevards lined up like soldiers"--but the capital of Capital, in a sense. a centralized state, with strong police and army presence. (on may day 1891, troops fired on protestors.)
it was in this context, in the 1890s, that the anarchists began to organize. above all in mont matre, and in industrial regions and worker suburbs.
this was a time of scandal--the memory of the paris commune loomed large for the anarchists. they "hated" paris, and admired bakunin and the others. the modern state had erected itself on the corpses of the communards.
a wave of anarchist bombings swept the capital from 1892-1894--assasination noted by the king of italy as a "professional risk".
prof is arguing that many of the anarchists, however, were people of peace--for propotkin and proudhoun the goal was to create communities, to survive away from the state.
at the same time, propotkin had accepted the phrase "propaganda by the deed" (and maybe even coined it). the belief that a single act of violence would be the spark. he did later have his doubts, but he refused to condemn those driven by despair (he had celebrated the permanent revolution of the word and pen)
dynamite was invented by alfred nobel in 1868--it seemed, in some sense, to level the playing field. a german anarchist had written that it was "within the power of dynamite to destroy capitalism", just as it was "within the power of gunpowder to destroy feudalism."
rabba scholl(sp.?) took this to heart--born into poverty, shamed in school as someone wearing beggar's clothes. he took to crime and anarchism. he was arrested, escaped the police wagon, and made it to paris. after the police firings and arrests in 1891--rabba scholl's two "deeds" followed these incidents, when he bombed the homes of two magistrates. he was subdued later by 10 policemen, and was guillotined the next year.
he so terrified contemporaries, that his name became a verb. after his death the anarchists of paris debated the wisdom of his attacks. some sympathizers thought of him as a martyr, a violent jesus christ (both were 33 when they were executed).
in his eulogy of scholl, an art critic warned that the murder of scholl was going to act as a trigger. someone else penned, "what do the victims matter if the gesture is beautiful"(!).
people of means were afraid to go to fancy restraunts, to rent to magistrates, etc. (a climate of fear). hundreds of scrawled threats arrived to property owners, people of means, etc. (signed by the avengers of rabba scholl, etc.--"finally the day when social justice will arrive"). "the dynamite polka."
on the 9th of december 1893, an unemployed worker who couldn't feed his family tossed a small bomb full of thumbtacks into the chamber of deputies--his goal was not to kill, but to call attention to the plight of the poor. he was guillotined almost immediately, after a brief trial. "long live anarchy," he shouted.
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emile henry's father had been a communard--he fled, under the sentence of death, to spain, where he worked in the mines (turning from republican socialism, to anarchism--in spain anarchists were terribly influential). he had two brothers--following his father's death in 1882 from mercury poisoning, his mother and the kids returned to paris. his mother had a bit of family land, and started up an inn (in the countryside, basically). he is very smart, becomes a scholarship student. the last report on his scholarship reads "he will become a student at one of the best schools in paris" (but he failed the oral exam, alas--though he could have taken it again).
he precipitously returned to paris. he lost his footing, a friend said, and became attracted to spiritism, trying to contact the dead soul of his father. worked here and there while living on the margins of urban life. his brother became an anarchist, and was a prominent orator in smoky cafes (he went to jail in 1894, for things that he had written). emile, now 20 years of age, was called "microbe." he was devoted to his mother, and would walk/take the train to go visit her. gave about a third of his monthly earnings to his mother.
began meeting with some anarchist groups, read some propotkin and other counterparts. his two targets were "private property" and "authority", two cancers he believed had to be destroyed. though he remained detached from the intellectual anarchist scene, he did fancy himself an intellectual. he was different from the man that through the tack bomb (malatoun(sp.?)), in that emile only loved the "idea"--didn't love the people, but the "deed", according to prof. (this was a common thread amongst elite anarchists, whose hate for bourgeois society could translate into a hate for the "people").
emile was a loner--he never spoke in public, allegedly. arrested with his brother after his brother was mistaken for having dynamite in his coat-pocket (it was actually a pen case). emile lost his job after his arrest/release--he bounced between bad jobs (once working as an apprentice to a watch-maker...). in 1892, he briefly served as a manager for an anarchist literary newspaper. but all this while he was preparing his bombs.
police informers, remember, were everwhere! (g.k. chesterton's book). he was overheard saying something about nitro-glycerin. a police spy reported that the old ways of the anarchists no longer seemed in play--the ones that you had to worry about were not the speech-makers, but the ones lurking in the shadows with evil "deeds" in mind.
they reflected, of course, a debate within anarchism--between the associanists and the believers in individual autonomy of the dynamiters.
---------
this lecture's title, "dynamite club", reflects the police's misinterpretation that all these bombings were co-ordinated.
---------
on the 11th of november, 1892, an employer of a mining company found a suspicious looking package outside the company door. they carried it downstairs quite stupidly, and policemen came along and decided that they had to take it to the police station (it was a bomb that would explode after chemical reaction). when they put it down on a table in the police station it exploded! the bomb was wrapped in a newspaper that related the arrest of emile henry!
emile fled to london--a friend of oscar wilde's remembered meeting him there. he was proud. he had exterminated 6 enemies. the policemen, however, didn't think of him as a serious suspect--a policemen didn't believe that his routine of the day was possible (i.e., that he had an alibi...)
anyway, emile is in london, now. what converts him to anarchism, of course, is the appaling gap between the poor and the rich in paris. never had people lived it up in such egregious ways, as in the "belle epoque." everywhere he lived had been on the edge of paris--and from where he lived, he could see the monuments/buildings he hated in paris (notre dame, for example).
he once wrote that "love" could lead you to "hate"--he loved humanity in the abstract, and hated society in very concrete ways.
---------
the explosive device that emile henry threw into the terminus injured 20 people and killed one. henry had been seen, and so he wouldn't be caught, he said, "where's the scoundrel that did this?" but then he ran, and then was finally caught--he fired with his pistol, hitting a policeman's wallet(!).
he's put in a prison--the prison guards were trying to get information out of him, even as he's trying to convert the guards to anarchism. his friends actually broke into the prison and stole dynamite, putting paris on high alert.
at his trial he says you have "shot us in spain, hung us in germany... but what you can never do is extinguish anarchy, because its roots are too deep."
he was executed on the 21st of may, 1894. (the last public execution, actually, was 1936 (people bought tickets to sit on neighboring roofs!)--the last execution in france was in 1972, with the guillotine, of course).
these guillotine scenes were important to anarchists, as well, as scenes of martyrdom, of course.
---------
was this a form of indirect suicide? (some have argued this, presumably?)
he had fallen in love with a woman, the wife of a fellow anarchist. he proclaimed his love, but was blown off. she, after his execution, gives interviews to journalists--"oh, he loved me so much..."
no, not indirect suicide.
--------
how did this represent the origins of modern terror, prof is asking? what was new about it? a couple of things.
(1) most of the anarchists in western europe had been ordinary workers, but emile henry was an intellectual--instead of targeting a head of state, he threw a bomb at the petty-bourgeois that sustain capitalism. that's really new about it, prof is saying.
(2) in modern terrorism you have an alliance between intellectuals/students and the down-and-out, which is reflected in emile henry's life.
(3) you have revolutionary immorality--martyrdom.
(4) they all set out to attack the state/capitalism, imperialism/state--an institution that stands for a whole system/ideology.
(5) again, seen as leveling the playing field--you proved you were strong, even when, in reality, you were weak.
(6) not a centrally organized, massive conspiracy--yet individuals and small groups were critical.
(7) when you think of the word "terrorism" -- this was originally applied to describe the violence of the state. it is often forgotten, professor is saying, that the vast majority of victims of terror are victims of state terror. and the anarchists, in this sense, had obvious grievances. you cannot understand it without this. anarchists killed perhaps up to 60 people in this era; the state, of course, many more (260:1, in someone's estimates).
terrorism has thus become part of the political process, in a sense. mutual need, in a sense--dissidence stoked and encouraged the overzealous response of the State (when States take tactics that swell hatred for them).
john merriman
--------
life and death of one man, emile henry (guillotined in 1894, when he was 21)
--------
anarchists, unlike socialists, did not want to seize control of the state, but wanted to "destroy" it. they saw political life as irredeemably bourgeois and corrupt.
first anarchist, prof is saying, was prodhoun (from east of france, active in 1850s and 1860s). he wrote a pamphlet titled "property is theft" (he meant, prof argues, that "unearned" property is theft)--"to be governed is to be...checked, valued, estimated, commanded...that is government, that is justice, that is its morality"
followed by two russian anarchists, peter kropotkin and mikael bakunin. both were nobles(!). the former was once toasted by the king of england--he was among those that came up with the term, "propaganda of the deed", which was premised on the idea that the masses were like a tinder-box, and all that was needed was a spark.
depending on how one counts, anarchists assasinated about 6 or 7 heads of state.
---------
begin with a bomb in the cafe terminus. february 12, 1894, a pale, thin man named emile henry hid a bomb in his clothes, and headed for the elegant boulevards near the paris opera. he wanted to kill as many peopole as possible. he stopped before the opera itself, where there was a fancy ball going on, but he didn't think he could get past the guards. he was a flanuer, an intellectual who had been a bit of a dandy--but if he was, he was an impoverished flanuer, who hated and killed.
at 8pm he reached the cafe terminus--as it was filling up he ordered two beers and a cigar (paying for them, in an un-anarchist gesture). an hour later, he lit the fuse with his cigar, and he threw the bomb into the packed cafe (paris had become a staging ground for the belle epoque, prof is saying--the "cathedrals of modernity").
rebuilding of paris by hausman had chased thousands of workers to north-eastern paris, don't forget, to make way for these boulevards packed with dept stores. indeed, paris seemed no longer the capital of revolution--"boulevards lined up like soldiers"--but the capital of Capital, in a sense. a centralized state, with strong police and army presence. (on may day 1891, troops fired on protestors.)
it was in this context, in the 1890s, that the anarchists began to organize. above all in mont matre, and in industrial regions and worker suburbs.
this was a time of scandal--the memory of the paris commune loomed large for the anarchists. they "hated" paris, and admired bakunin and the others. the modern state had erected itself on the corpses of the communards.
a wave of anarchist bombings swept the capital from 1892-1894--assasination noted by the king of italy as a "professional risk".
prof is arguing that many of the anarchists, however, were people of peace--for propotkin and proudhoun the goal was to create communities, to survive away from the state.
at the same time, propotkin had accepted the phrase "propaganda by the deed" (and maybe even coined it). the belief that a single act of violence would be the spark. he did later have his doubts, but he refused to condemn those driven by despair (he had celebrated the permanent revolution of the word and pen)
dynamite was invented by alfred nobel in 1868--it seemed, in some sense, to level the playing field. a german anarchist had written that it was "within the power of dynamite to destroy capitalism", just as it was "within the power of gunpowder to destroy feudalism."
rabba scholl(sp.?) took this to heart--born into poverty, shamed in school as someone wearing beggar's clothes. he took to crime and anarchism. he was arrested, escaped the police wagon, and made it to paris. after the police firings and arrests in 1891--rabba scholl's two "deeds" followed these incidents, when he bombed the homes of two magistrates. he was subdued later by 10 policemen, and was guillotined the next year.
he so terrified contemporaries, that his name became a verb. after his death the anarchists of paris debated the wisdom of his attacks. some sympathizers thought of him as a martyr, a violent jesus christ (both were 33 when they were executed).
in his eulogy of scholl, an art critic warned that the murder of scholl was going to act as a trigger. someone else penned, "what do the victims matter if the gesture is beautiful"(!).
people of means were afraid to go to fancy restraunts, to rent to magistrates, etc. (a climate of fear). hundreds of scrawled threats arrived to property owners, people of means, etc. (signed by the avengers of rabba scholl, etc.--"finally the day when social justice will arrive"). "the dynamite polka."
on the 9th of december 1893, an unemployed worker who couldn't feed his family tossed a small bomb full of thumbtacks into the chamber of deputies--his goal was not to kill, but to call attention to the plight of the poor. he was guillotined almost immediately, after a brief trial. "long live anarchy," he shouted.
--------
emile henry's father had been a communard--he fled, under the sentence of death, to spain, where he worked in the mines (turning from republican socialism, to anarchism--in spain anarchists were terribly influential). he had two brothers--following his father's death in 1882 from mercury poisoning, his mother and the kids returned to paris. his mother had a bit of family land, and started up an inn (in the countryside, basically). he is very smart, becomes a scholarship student. the last report on his scholarship reads "he will become a student at one of the best schools in paris" (but he failed the oral exam, alas--though he could have taken it again).
he precipitously returned to paris. he lost his footing, a friend said, and became attracted to spiritism, trying to contact the dead soul of his father. worked here and there while living on the margins of urban life. his brother became an anarchist, and was a prominent orator in smoky cafes (he went to jail in 1894, for things that he had written). emile, now 20 years of age, was called "microbe." he was devoted to his mother, and would walk/take the train to go visit her. gave about a third of his monthly earnings to his mother.
began meeting with some anarchist groups, read some propotkin and other counterparts. his two targets were "private property" and "authority", two cancers he believed had to be destroyed. though he remained detached from the intellectual anarchist scene, he did fancy himself an intellectual. he was different from the man that through the tack bomb (malatoun(sp.?)), in that emile only loved the "idea"--didn't love the people, but the "deed", according to prof. (this was a common thread amongst elite anarchists, whose hate for bourgeois society could translate into a hate for the "people").
emile was a loner--he never spoke in public, allegedly. arrested with his brother after his brother was mistaken for having dynamite in his coat-pocket (it was actually a pen case). emile lost his job after his arrest/release--he bounced between bad jobs (once working as an apprentice to a watch-maker...). in 1892, he briefly served as a manager for an anarchist literary newspaper. but all this while he was preparing his bombs.
police informers, remember, were everwhere! (g.k. chesterton's book). he was overheard saying something about nitro-glycerin. a police spy reported that the old ways of the anarchists no longer seemed in play--the ones that you had to worry about were not the speech-makers, but the ones lurking in the shadows with evil "deeds" in mind.
they reflected, of course, a debate within anarchism--between the associanists and the believers in individual autonomy of the dynamiters.
---------
this lecture's title, "dynamite club", reflects the police's misinterpretation that all these bombings were co-ordinated.
---------
on the 11th of november, 1892, an employer of a mining company found a suspicious looking package outside the company door. they carried it downstairs quite stupidly, and policemen came along and decided that they had to take it to the police station (it was a bomb that would explode after chemical reaction). when they put it down on a table in the police station it exploded! the bomb was wrapped in a newspaper that related the arrest of emile henry!
emile fled to london--a friend of oscar wilde's remembered meeting him there. he was proud. he had exterminated 6 enemies. the policemen, however, didn't think of him as a serious suspect--a policemen didn't believe that his routine of the day was possible (i.e., that he had an alibi...)
anyway, emile is in london, now. what converts him to anarchism, of course, is the appaling gap between the poor and the rich in paris. never had people lived it up in such egregious ways, as in the "belle epoque." everywhere he lived had been on the edge of paris--and from where he lived, he could see the monuments/buildings he hated in paris (notre dame, for example).
he once wrote that "love" could lead you to "hate"--he loved humanity in the abstract, and hated society in very concrete ways.
---------
the explosive device that emile henry threw into the terminus injured 20 people and killed one. henry had been seen, and so he wouldn't be caught, he said, "where's the scoundrel that did this?" but then he ran, and then was finally caught--he fired with his pistol, hitting a policeman's wallet(!).
he's put in a prison--the prison guards were trying to get information out of him, even as he's trying to convert the guards to anarchism. his friends actually broke into the prison and stole dynamite, putting paris on high alert.
at his trial he says you have "shot us in spain, hung us in germany... but what you can never do is extinguish anarchy, because its roots are too deep."
he was executed on the 21st of may, 1894. (the last public execution, actually, was 1936 (people bought tickets to sit on neighboring roofs!)--the last execution in france was in 1972, with the guillotine, of course).
these guillotine scenes were important to anarchists, as well, as scenes of martyrdom, of course.
---------
was this a form of indirect suicide? (some have argued this, presumably?)
he had fallen in love with a woman, the wife of a fellow anarchist. he proclaimed his love, but was blown off. she, after his execution, gives interviews to journalists--"oh, he loved me so much..."
no, not indirect suicide.
--------
how did this represent the origins of modern terror, prof is asking? what was new about it? a couple of things.
(1) most of the anarchists in western europe had been ordinary workers, but emile henry was an intellectual--instead of targeting a head of state, he threw a bomb at the petty-bourgeois that sustain capitalism. that's really new about it, prof is saying.
(2) in modern terrorism you have an alliance between intellectuals/students and the down-and-out, which is reflected in emile henry's life.
(3) you have revolutionary immorality--martyrdom.
(4) they all set out to attack the state/capitalism, imperialism/state--an institution that stands for a whole system/ideology.
(5) again, seen as leveling the playing field--you proved you were strong, even when, in reality, you were weak.
(6) not a centrally organized, massive conspiracy--yet individuals and small groups were critical.
(7) when you think of the word "terrorism" -- this was originally applied to describe the violence of the state. it is often forgotten, professor is saying, that the vast majority of victims of terror are victims of state terror. and the anarchists, in this sense, had obvious grievances. you cannot understand it without this. anarchists killed perhaps up to 60 people in this era; the state, of course, many more (260:1, in someone's estimates).
terrorism has thus become part of the political process, in a sense. mutual need, in a sense--dissidence stoked and encouraged the overzealous response of the State (when States take tactics that swell hatred for them).
lecture 7, "mass politics and the political challenge from the left"
john merriman
-----------
in 1864, the first international was founded -- dissolved in 1876 amidst great tension, and also in the shadow of the repression of commune (and working class politics in Europe and US)
in 1877, adoplh theirs, who crushed the commune, said "no one talks about socialism any longer, we are rid of it."
in late 1880s and above all 1890s, socialist parties become part of the political scene in western Europe, legally. above all in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain--this is part of the emergence of mass politics (creation of political associations, proliferation of daily newspapers, etc.).
Socialists proclaimed themselves internationalists--and so, one of the central questions in 1914 is whether they'll fight comrades in other countries.
---------
Socialists in France and other countries are divided into revolutionary socialists and reform socialists.
The former, inspired by Marx, of course--on principle, they didn't believe in elections, nor in reforms (the notion was that you were propping up the system; though this puts them in a bind, as you can't have a mass following without participating in this public way). Moreover, conditions for workers are getting absolutely better (prof says this is in contrast to Marxist theory!).
There was obviously also a history of revolutions that informed this political posture--people who were anticipating revolution couldn't be dismissed as unrealistic. Marxism introduced to France by Marx's son-in-law, Paul Lafargue and Jules Guesde.
The latter was a Parisian, born in 1845, son of a schoolmaster--gave up his own intellectual pursuits for lack of money, and became a journalist. Read Victor Hugo, became interested in plight of the poor; became a Republican, sentenced to prison but fled to Italy, where he read Marx. He wanted to capture the trade-union movement, strikes legalized in 1864 and unions in 1881 (called the "Red Pope" by his enemies). Alleged authoritarian personality, looked starved, "always ill and pale."
He helps found the first mass political party in modern France, which becomes known as The French Worker's Party. Which begins in 1881, though with some hesitation, to run candidates in elections--the goals, though, are revolutionary, so elections are obviously not the goal (Workers, prof is arguing, wanted "reform"; 8-hr day, decent wages, etc., etc.). The party does well in regions, but not generally, even within the socialists, precisely because of their intransigence. (Do well in the North, around large textile industries, do well in the center-South, and some places in the South). So Guesde, in this sense, is always on the outside of the movement looking in.
Prof noting that they're constantly on the move--giving hundreds of speeches a year, which is where the railroads come in (it's in the 1880s and 1890s that these lectures-cum-debates become possible; this was the germ of mass politics, of course). A similar thing had happened, on a smaller scale, in the lead-up to the commune.
Guesde's political rival, in the early 1880s, was Paul Brousse, initally an anarchist--who probably coined the term "propaganda of the deed." Left the anarchists and became a reform socialist. He objected to Guesde's authoritarianism, and argued that practical activity should be rooted in the reality of local circumstances (cannot simply be imported from elsewhere).
This debate informs tensions that go right through WWI, despite the union of reform and revolutionary currents in 1905 (under leadership of Jean Jaures)--the Guesdeists advocate a hierarchical organization, where leaders make decisions and pass them down, whereas the reform socialists want a much less authoritarian set-up. This tension bursts forward in 1920, and the Guesdeists end up being the Communists (when, then, in 1922/1923, Moscow orders intellectuals expelled from the party, woillah!).
Going back: Brousse's argument was that the revolutionary strategy got workers nothing--reform socialism saw itself as the "politics of the possible", and they damned their rivals as the "impossibilists." Broussists argued that local conditions were of paramount importance. They argued that the State was so powerful/ruthless (wine-workers/wine-owners strike repressed brutally in 1905), Broussists wanted to concentrate on winning local power rather than agitating for a far-off revolution.
The Broussists tried to win municipal power (even though the power of these municipal councils was seriously constrained), and do things for their working-class constituency. And they do come to power, in many working-class towns. (Late 1890s/ early 1900s they ally with the anti-clerical, social moderate Radical party in some places).
This, actually, leaves the revolutionary socialists behind, as workers prefer to vote for parties giving concrete reforms (and this is why the Guesdists find themselves eventually compelled to run candidates). Municipal socialism, then, is one of the things that emerges from this conjuncture.
1898/1899, the first socialist paper makes it to a cabinet meeting (the Guesdists go wild, of course, because you have a socialist sitting at the same table as a butcher from the commune--and they say, "there you go!").
Nevertheless, in 1905, the parties unify, though they don't fully paper over these differences.
-----
Brousse, as person: son of relative privilege (middle-class), knew Guesde. (Jean Allemane--who says that the reform socialists are all led by non-workers, the middle-class, their bourgeois!--creates another party, in which workers will be both leaders and followers) Brousse accepts class struggle, but makes this case for reform, again.
If you look at the Communist Party of the 1920s, the leader of the party are miners (the leaders have been expelled, cf. the same tensions identified by Allemane).
-------
Syndicalists (or anarcho-syndicalists), rather like Jean Allemane, argue that we don't want bourgeois leaders--and even more than this, we don't believe in politics. To get from here to the promise land, we need not pass through political engagement (you will end up propping up the bourgeois republic). They see the shop floor, the mines, etc., as the means and end of revolution--the radical syndicalists are very involved in the 1895-1907 strike wave. From the shop-floor you build the bricks that are going to overthrow the state by seizing authority at the local level.
One of the institutions they see as fundamental are the "Labor Exchanges"--places workers from out of town could go to see whether there were jobs, to get some money, where dancers were held for workers, etc. They become part of the syndicalist vision, insofar as they're local institutions that organize worker life in a given location.
They are the idea of a man named Ferdinand Pelloutier was himself bourgeois. Born in 1968, died in 1901. Son of a monarchist family, educated in a church school (kicked out for writing an anti-clerical novel). Failed his Baccaulaureate. But he had already contracted, at this stage, that working-class disease, TB. He was a journalist, but he had to drop out after 18 months, for medical purposes. The disease changed him--when he wrote about the dying capitalist society, he was writing about himself, as well. He believed that only workers could rehabilitate the world, transforming it into a free association of producers. (He still believed in class struggle, which distinguished him from the anarchists, who, prof says, believed more in general "poor" vs. state apparatus).
Georges Sorel, of course, also contributes to this tradition--his contribution was to come up with the notion of the "general strike". He thought of it as a myth, but of a positive sort--a myth that could motivate working-class militancy. People would shut capitalist down by saying that we're not going to work anymore.
When these strikes move from factory to factory, there was this hope that, who knows, maybe this is the general strike. Of course, it doesn't quite work, and the heroic age of syndicalism ends in 1907.
-------
Unification of the Socialist Party in 1905: how, why?
It becomes a major force in French politics, after unification, thanks to the work of Jean Jaures (in Germany, SDP is the largest party in the Reichstag by 1914--but it doesn't make any difference, as the country is an autocracy run by the extraordinarily stupid Kaiser Wilhem II). France, however, was a parliamentary regime, and Jaures became the unifying force behind French Socialist Party. (When in 1981, Mitterand was elected President, he pays homage to Jaures). So this is his importance--he gives the party this impetus and wide popularity, that would propel it beyond his death.
He was bourgeois by birth--ends up, having failed at business, with a smallish farm of 15 acres in the south of France. He was born in 1859, north-west of Toulouse. He got his education because of a wealthy uncle (won all the first prizes in school--like Robespierre, in a way, though he was a very different person than Robespierre). He did very well; became a teacher, lecturer, and eventually a professor of philosophy in the University of Toulouse. ("Looked like a bourgeois on holiday!). He was a tremendous orator, had the capacity of uniting people of diverse politics (the momentum to find conciliation). And that's what he did in 1905, says prof.
He became a political dynamo of the Left because of his ability to integrate the bigger project--the happiness of humanity--into his politics.
john merriman
-----------
in 1864, the first international was founded -- dissolved in 1876 amidst great tension, and also in the shadow of the repression of commune (and working class politics in Europe and US)
in 1877, adoplh theirs, who crushed the commune, said "no one talks about socialism any longer, we are rid of it."
in late 1880s and above all 1890s, socialist parties become part of the political scene in western Europe, legally. above all in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain--this is part of the emergence of mass politics (creation of political associations, proliferation of daily newspapers, etc.).
Socialists proclaimed themselves internationalists--and so, one of the central questions in 1914 is whether they'll fight comrades in other countries.
---------
Socialists in France and other countries are divided into revolutionary socialists and reform socialists.
The former, inspired by Marx, of course--on principle, they didn't believe in elections, nor in reforms (the notion was that you were propping up the system; though this puts them in a bind, as you can't have a mass following without participating in this public way). Moreover, conditions for workers are getting absolutely better (prof says this is in contrast to Marxist theory!).
There was obviously also a history of revolutions that informed this political posture--people who were anticipating revolution couldn't be dismissed as unrealistic. Marxism introduced to France by Marx's son-in-law, Paul Lafargue and Jules Guesde.
The latter was a Parisian, born in 1845, son of a schoolmaster--gave up his own intellectual pursuits for lack of money, and became a journalist. Read Victor Hugo, became interested in plight of the poor; became a Republican, sentenced to prison but fled to Italy, where he read Marx. He wanted to capture the trade-union movement, strikes legalized in 1864 and unions in 1881 (called the "Red Pope" by his enemies). Alleged authoritarian personality, looked starved, "always ill and pale."
He helps found the first mass political party in modern France, which becomes known as The French Worker's Party. Which begins in 1881, though with some hesitation, to run candidates in elections--the goals, though, are revolutionary, so elections are obviously not the goal (Workers, prof is arguing, wanted "reform"; 8-hr day, decent wages, etc., etc.). The party does well in regions, but not generally, even within the socialists, precisely because of their intransigence. (Do well in the North, around large textile industries, do well in the center-South, and some places in the South). So Guesde, in this sense, is always on the outside of the movement looking in.
Prof noting that they're constantly on the move--giving hundreds of speeches a year, which is where the railroads come in (it's in the 1880s and 1890s that these lectures-cum-debates become possible; this was the germ of mass politics, of course). A similar thing had happened, on a smaller scale, in the lead-up to the commune.
Guesde's political rival, in the early 1880s, was Paul Brousse, initally an anarchist--who probably coined the term "propaganda of the deed." Left the anarchists and became a reform socialist. He objected to Guesde's authoritarianism, and argued that practical activity should be rooted in the reality of local circumstances (cannot simply be imported from elsewhere).
This debate informs tensions that go right through WWI, despite the union of reform and revolutionary currents in 1905 (under leadership of Jean Jaures)--the Guesdeists advocate a hierarchical organization, where leaders make decisions and pass them down, whereas the reform socialists want a much less authoritarian set-up. This tension bursts forward in 1920, and the Guesdeists end up being the Communists (when, then, in 1922/1923, Moscow orders intellectuals expelled from the party, woillah!).
Going back: Brousse's argument was that the revolutionary strategy got workers nothing--reform socialism saw itself as the "politics of the possible", and they damned their rivals as the "impossibilists." Broussists argued that local conditions were of paramount importance. They argued that the State was so powerful/ruthless (wine-workers/wine-owners strike repressed brutally in 1905), Broussists wanted to concentrate on winning local power rather than agitating for a far-off revolution.
The Broussists tried to win municipal power (even though the power of these municipal councils was seriously constrained), and do things for their working-class constituency. And they do come to power, in many working-class towns. (Late 1890s/ early 1900s they ally with the anti-clerical, social moderate Radical party in some places).
This, actually, leaves the revolutionary socialists behind, as workers prefer to vote for parties giving concrete reforms (and this is why the Guesdists find themselves eventually compelled to run candidates). Municipal socialism, then, is one of the things that emerges from this conjuncture.
1898/1899, the first socialist paper makes it to a cabinet meeting (the Guesdists go wild, of course, because you have a socialist sitting at the same table as a butcher from the commune--and they say, "there you go!").
Nevertheless, in 1905, the parties unify, though they don't fully paper over these differences.
-----
Brousse, as person: son of relative privilege (middle-class), knew Guesde. (Jean Allemane--who says that the reform socialists are all led by non-workers, the middle-class, their bourgeois!--creates another party, in which workers will be both leaders and followers) Brousse accepts class struggle, but makes this case for reform, again.
If you look at the Communist Party of the 1920s, the leader of the party are miners (the leaders have been expelled, cf. the same tensions identified by Allemane).
-------
Syndicalists (or anarcho-syndicalists), rather like Jean Allemane, argue that we don't want bourgeois leaders--and even more than this, we don't believe in politics. To get from here to the promise land, we need not pass through political engagement (you will end up propping up the bourgeois republic). They see the shop floor, the mines, etc., as the means and end of revolution--the radical syndicalists are very involved in the 1895-1907 strike wave. From the shop-floor you build the bricks that are going to overthrow the state by seizing authority at the local level.
One of the institutions they see as fundamental are the "Labor Exchanges"--places workers from out of town could go to see whether there were jobs, to get some money, where dancers were held for workers, etc. They become part of the syndicalist vision, insofar as they're local institutions that organize worker life in a given location.
They are the idea of a man named Ferdinand Pelloutier was himself bourgeois. Born in 1968, died in 1901. Son of a monarchist family, educated in a church school (kicked out for writing an anti-clerical novel). Failed his Baccaulaureate. But he had already contracted, at this stage, that working-class disease, TB. He was a journalist, but he had to drop out after 18 months, for medical purposes. The disease changed him--when he wrote about the dying capitalist society, he was writing about himself, as well. He believed that only workers could rehabilitate the world, transforming it into a free association of producers. (He still believed in class struggle, which distinguished him from the anarchists, who, prof says, believed more in general "poor" vs. state apparatus).
Georges Sorel, of course, also contributes to this tradition--his contribution was to come up with the notion of the "general strike". He thought of it as a myth, but of a positive sort--a myth that could motivate working-class militancy. People would shut capitalist down by saying that we're not going to work anymore.
When these strikes move from factory to factory, there was this hope that, who knows, maybe this is the general strike. Of course, it doesn't quite work, and the heroic age of syndicalism ends in 1907.
-------
Unification of the Socialist Party in 1905: how, why?
It becomes a major force in French politics, after unification, thanks to the work of Jean Jaures (in Germany, SDP is the largest party in the Reichstag by 1914--but it doesn't make any difference, as the country is an autocracy run by the extraordinarily stupid Kaiser Wilhem II). France, however, was a parliamentary regime, and Jaures became the unifying force behind French Socialist Party. (When in 1981, Mitterand was elected President, he pays homage to Jaures). So this is his importance--he gives the party this impetus and wide popularity, that would propel it beyond his death.
He was bourgeois by birth--ends up, having failed at business, with a smallish farm of 15 acres in the south of France. He was born in 1859, north-west of Toulouse. He got his education because of a wealthy uncle (won all the first prizes in school--like Robespierre, in a way, though he was a very different person than Robespierre). He did very well; became a teacher, lecturer, and eventually a professor of philosophy in the University of Toulouse. ("Looked like a bourgeois on holiday!). He was a tremendous orator, had the capacity of uniting people of diverse politics (the momentum to find conciliation). And that's what he did in 1905, says prof.
He became a political dynamo of the Left because of his ability to integrate the bigger project--the happiness of humanity--into his politics.
Monday, March 23, 2009
lecture 2, "the paris commune and its legacy"
john merriman
----
hung over Europe for 20, 30 years following it -- "in my view," the massacre that followed the commune anticipated the 20th century, where you became guilty for simply who you were (you were guilty if you were left in paris)
it was the largest massacre until the armenian genocide (in europe, only?)
----
what was it?
has to be placed in two contexts
(1) in the context of the regime of napoleon the third -- which lasted from 1852-1870 (when he was rounded up by the Prussians). in the late 1860s, there was a revival of republican, socialist, and anarchist organizations -- in 1868, the emperor legalizes public meetings, and you had these in cafes and large warehouses. people were agitating for democratization, etc. -- so, a wave of political mobilzation.
in 1870s, there was a wave of strikes, which had previously been illegal--unions would in fact be illegal until 1881.
(2) the franco-prussian war, napoleon the third gets suckered into a war without any allies at all, against otto von bismarck (the prussian chancellor). it involves the candidacy of a royal family member for the candidacy of france, which would have left the empire surrounded by the prussians. napoleon protests vigorously, and his ambassador abuses bismarck's envoy(!). bismarck reveals to the european world that napoleon had earlier tried to make a deal, intolerable to the british.
so, in sum, they go to war, in the summer of 1870 against prussia, expecting to win. he was, though, "blown out"
----
on september 4th, 1870, a crowd storms down town hall, and want to prolong resistance against the prussian army, which is routing the french. napoleon the third is very sick anyway, soon to die, he is captured in the battle of sedan and sent packing to britain.
there are those who want to keep fighting--one of the demands of prussia (german empire will be proclaimed in late january, in versailles) is that there be a huge indemnity that the french will have to pay. and that alsace and loren, the eastern, german-speaking provinces, would be annexed by germany (and these were two of the most prosperous, industrialized provinces of france)
so, in sum, people in paris find themselves surrounded. there is a wall around the city, keeping out the german troops. elsewhere, resistance is sparse--in metz, in october, a general capitulates to bismarck.
----
to be sure, there were lots of crowds in paris who were shouting for war, which was surprising, in a sense. but the siege goes on, and on.
paris changes appearences--military dress, uniforms become increasingly visible.
there is the problem of food, how to feed all these people. you have enough for only a month, or so (you are fine in terms of drink, b/c of wine cellars). they use balloons! a symbol of liberty, but presumably this is not exactly sufficient. (there were 65 baloon flights, carrying about 20,000 pounds. pigeons are used to fly messages out, germans bring in falcons to munch the pigeons!)
there were some massacres, in the north-east, but nothing like paris would see in 1914, or 1939-1940.
the national guard from the outskirts took refuge, so a bit like a medieval siege.
you have 2,000,000 people, in total (a smattering of foreigners). the population begins to eat animals--dogs, rats and cats. canine butchers replace horse butchers, animals in the zoo were eaten, etc.
bismark had projected that the siege would end, eventually -- but paris creates a committee of sobriety, and encourages people to eat healthy!? these are the fancy folk.
----
it ceased being funny, of course. hunger sets in, even if it was nothing like the siege of leningrad, where 1,000,000 died -- but there were people dying, etc. and venereal disease was rampant, as was drukenness, mental illnessess.
attempts to break out do not work. (there is a contest to see "how we get out"? two suggestions: (1) prostitutes are a resource for paris, they should be used to seduce and poision prussian soldiers. (2) take the orchestras of paris and teach them to play german music--one day they would march out and play this music, with a huge trojan horse behind it!)
----
as things are going downhill, people start to say we must fight, but we need to unite to imagine a new world. in january 1871, a red sign is put up (red was illegal between 1849 and 1851, because it was believed to excite people!), saying "make way for the commune."
----
france capitulates at the end of january 1871 -- the prussian cavalry trot down the champs d'elysses symbolically clean up the stones, etc., and france is all set to lose the war. france has a provisional government, much of the provinces return a monarchist assembly. the landlords come back to paris, and tell the people to pay back money with interest (pay back the indemnity).
and so people are incredibly angry.
theirs, expecting paris to rise, possbily, sends troops to mon matre(sp.?), because the national guard of paris has still got its guns. these troops go to disarm the national guard, but the guard is alerted--they take two commanders from the troops, and they shoot them.
thiers is now ready to "get these bastards."
and now, paris is surrounded again, but by troops of the provisional government.
---
and so the commune begins (march 18, 1871). it will last until the 2nd of may, 1871. (lenin calls this the "festival of the oppressed")
so, for the first time, ordinary parisians find themselves masters of their own lives (the population of the city is swollen with political refugees). as in the french revolution, and 1848, clubs of women begin to form, demanding their rights.
all sorts of impressive social legislation is passed. (secular education system, nurseries for women workers, uniform contracts for female unions, ban night-baking).
this also explains, in part, the viciousness of the massacre of ordinary working women. they were seen as "uppity." many of the important communards are women.
you have the jacobins (republican socialists from the revolutionary tradition), you have the anarchists, you have moderat republicans (who simply desire more liberty vis-a-vis the centralized state), you have moderate socialists.
there are debates, meetings, arguments, etc., as the guns draw nearer.
there were communes in other cities, as well, with a variety of demands. paris keeps waiting for these armies of citizens to come and rescue it.
----
within paris, you have poorer people invading the fancy areas, for the first time as independent citizens.
an artist calls for the tearing down of the statue of napoleon, as a symbol of centralized oppression.
for once they had won.
they had to defend paris, of course. cannons, they have. they build these huge barricades, a tradition that stretched back to the 16th century (of course, you can build barricades across smaller streets, but not really across big boulevards--and that was part of the rebuilding of paris in the 1850s and 1860s).
----
who were the communards?
when revolutions are victorious, of course, everyone says "i was there!"
here, you have a body count, of more than 15,000 people. they were the ordinary parisians who couldn't get out, basically -- they were the poor socialists, anarchists, republicans, etc. their defence of paris reflects tensions between urban and conservative, rural france--the army that they were fighting was largely recruited from rural areas.
and so the commune is basically proletarian--people from the working quarters. artisans, craftsmen, domestic servants, etc. and they were trying to imagine a world in which they could rule.
prof argues it reflects the artisinal base of the french economy at that time.
the myth of the commune--for the conservatives, this was the "fury of hell", those who rose up to slay their social betters. for the republicans, this was a defense of the republic against the monarchy, restored (which is partly true, of course).
for marx, lenin--this was armageddon for the ruling class. though not marx's industrial working-class, of course, but a very different kind of working-class (semi-proletarianized, prof is arguing). this of course informs the "breaking of the chains" argument; testing the "dictatorship of the proletariat"
----
the most important result, however, in prof's opinion, was the massacre itself.
the troops came in through the western gate--they use the boulevards that had been built by napoleon the third as a way of getting to the working-class areas (those areas that had always risen up). hausmann, of course, was the man who had plowed through working-class neighborhoods, that had once lain where those boulevards now are. he did it to bring more light, to bring more air, to free the flow for capital, and because you can't build barricades across the boulevards.
so the troops come pouring in, across boulevards that had been built in the 1850s and 1860s. and the damage was staggering.
and then the women were put on trial--there was a rumor that women had been burning down fancy houses. and so this rumor was part of the fear of "uppity women." and they squished them like grapes.
they shot them all.
in the end, there was a paris in which everybody had been guilty.
chimney sweepers were executed because they had charcoal on their cheeks; they would rip of your shirts, to see if you had any bruises from recoiling rifles; it wasn't a "neutral" massacre, they went to the radical areas, and that's where they went in and massacred the populations.
"why don't you get over this?" this was the ultimate lesson of the commune, which would hang over europe. it was a sign that the state was strong, and can be vicious. don't let anyone tell you that the victims of terrorism are equal, in number, to the victims of state terrorism. but this was the real lesson--the state was growing in power with napoleon, unification. the state could strike back with unparalleled savagery. and that's what happened at the commune.
minimum 15,000 died, probably closer to 25,000. (when they did the census in 1872, in paris, there were 10,000 less shoemakers than there had been before--an extraordinarily radical trade, don't forget). flames engulfed the bodies, they were gone, lost to history.
amnesty for the communards would come in 1879. but the massacre hung like a shadow over french and european politics, for years and years.
john merriman
----
hung over Europe for 20, 30 years following it -- "in my view," the massacre that followed the commune anticipated the 20th century, where you became guilty for simply who you were (you were guilty if you were left in paris)
it was the largest massacre until the armenian genocide (in europe, only?)
----
what was it?
has to be placed in two contexts
(1) in the context of the regime of napoleon the third -- which lasted from 1852-1870 (when he was rounded up by the Prussians). in the late 1860s, there was a revival of republican, socialist, and anarchist organizations -- in 1868, the emperor legalizes public meetings, and you had these in cafes and large warehouses. people were agitating for democratization, etc. -- so, a wave of political mobilzation.
in 1870s, there was a wave of strikes, which had previously been illegal--unions would in fact be illegal until 1881.
(2) the franco-prussian war, napoleon the third gets suckered into a war without any allies at all, against otto von bismarck (the prussian chancellor). it involves the candidacy of a royal family member for the candidacy of france, which would have left the empire surrounded by the prussians. napoleon protests vigorously, and his ambassador abuses bismarck's envoy(!). bismarck reveals to the european world that napoleon had earlier tried to make a deal, intolerable to the british.
so, in sum, they go to war, in the summer of 1870 against prussia, expecting to win. he was, though, "blown out"
----
on september 4th, 1870, a crowd storms down town hall, and want to prolong resistance against the prussian army, which is routing the french. napoleon the third is very sick anyway, soon to die, he is captured in the battle of sedan and sent packing to britain.
there are those who want to keep fighting--one of the demands of prussia (german empire will be proclaimed in late january, in versailles) is that there be a huge indemnity that the french will have to pay. and that alsace and loren, the eastern, german-speaking provinces, would be annexed by germany (and these were two of the most prosperous, industrialized provinces of france)
so, in sum, people in paris find themselves surrounded. there is a wall around the city, keeping out the german troops. elsewhere, resistance is sparse--in metz, in october, a general capitulates to bismarck.
----
to be sure, there were lots of crowds in paris who were shouting for war, which was surprising, in a sense. but the siege goes on, and on.
paris changes appearences--military dress, uniforms become increasingly visible.
there is the problem of food, how to feed all these people. you have enough for only a month, or so (you are fine in terms of drink, b/c of wine cellars). they use balloons! a symbol of liberty, but presumably this is not exactly sufficient. (there were 65 baloon flights, carrying about 20,000 pounds. pigeons are used to fly messages out, germans bring in falcons to munch the pigeons!)
there were some massacres, in the north-east, but nothing like paris would see in 1914, or 1939-1940.
the national guard from the outskirts took refuge, so a bit like a medieval siege.
you have 2,000,000 people, in total (a smattering of foreigners). the population begins to eat animals--dogs, rats and cats. canine butchers replace horse butchers, animals in the zoo were eaten, etc.
bismark had projected that the siege would end, eventually -- but paris creates a committee of sobriety, and encourages people to eat healthy!? these are the fancy folk.
----
it ceased being funny, of course. hunger sets in, even if it was nothing like the siege of leningrad, where 1,000,000 died -- but there were people dying, etc. and venereal disease was rampant, as was drukenness, mental illnessess.
attempts to break out do not work. (there is a contest to see "how we get out"? two suggestions: (1) prostitutes are a resource for paris, they should be used to seduce and poision prussian soldiers. (2) take the orchestras of paris and teach them to play german music--one day they would march out and play this music, with a huge trojan horse behind it!)
----
as things are going downhill, people start to say we must fight, but we need to unite to imagine a new world. in january 1871, a red sign is put up (red was illegal between 1849 and 1851, because it was believed to excite people!), saying "make way for the commune."
----
france capitulates at the end of january 1871 -- the prussian cavalry trot down the champs d'elysses symbolically clean up the stones, etc., and france is all set to lose the war. france has a provisional government, much of the provinces return a monarchist assembly. the landlords come back to paris, and tell the people to pay back money with interest (pay back the indemnity).
and so people are incredibly angry.
theirs, expecting paris to rise, possbily, sends troops to mon matre(sp.?), because the national guard of paris has still got its guns. these troops go to disarm the national guard, but the guard is alerted--they take two commanders from the troops, and they shoot them.
thiers is now ready to "get these bastards."
and now, paris is surrounded again, but by troops of the provisional government.
---
and so the commune begins (march 18, 1871). it will last until the 2nd of may, 1871. (lenin calls this the "festival of the oppressed")
so, for the first time, ordinary parisians find themselves masters of their own lives (the population of the city is swollen with political refugees). as in the french revolution, and 1848, clubs of women begin to form, demanding their rights.
all sorts of impressive social legislation is passed. (secular education system, nurseries for women workers, uniform contracts for female unions, ban night-baking).
this also explains, in part, the viciousness of the massacre of ordinary working women. they were seen as "uppity." many of the important communards are women.
you have the jacobins (republican socialists from the revolutionary tradition), you have the anarchists, you have moderat republicans (who simply desire more liberty vis-a-vis the centralized state), you have moderate socialists.
there are debates, meetings, arguments, etc., as the guns draw nearer.
there were communes in other cities, as well, with a variety of demands. paris keeps waiting for these armies of citizens to come and rescue it.
----
within paris, you have poorer people invading the fancy areas, for the first time as independent citizens.
an artist calls for the tearing down of the statue of napoleon, as a symbol of centralized oppression.
for once they had won.
they had to defend paris, of course. cannons, they have. they build these huge barricades, a tradition that stretched back to the 16th century (of course, you can build barricades across smaller streets, but not really across big boulevards--and that was part of the rebuilding of paris in the 1850s and 1860s).
----
who were the communards?
when revolutions are victorious, of course, everyone says "i was there!"
here, you have a body count, of more than 15,000 people. they were the ordinary parisians who couldn't get out, basically -- they were the poor socialists, anarchists, republicans, etc. their defence of paris reflects tensions between urban and conservative, rural france--the army that they were fighting was largely recruited from rural areas.
and so the commune is basically proletarian--people from the working quarters. artisans, craftsmen, domestic servants, etc. and they were trying to imagine a world in which they could rule.
prof argues it reflects the artisinal base of the french economy at that time.
the myth of the commune--for the conservatives, this was the "fury of hell", those who rose up to slay their social betters. for the republicans, this was a defense of the republic against the monarchy, restored (which is partly true, of course).
for marx, lenin--this was armageddon for the ruling class. though not marx's industrial working-class, of course, but a very different kind of working-class (semi-proletarianized, prof is arguing). this of course informs the "breaking of the chains" argument; testing the "dictatorship of the proletariat"
----
the most important result, however, in prof's opinion, was the massacre itself.
the troops came in through the western gate--they use the boulevards that had been built by napoleon the third as a way of getting to the working-class areas (those areas that had always risen up). hausmann, of course, was the man who had plowed through working-class neighborhoods, that had once lain where those boulevards now are. he did it to bring more light, to bring more air, to free the flow for capital, and because you can't build barricades across the boulevards.
so the troops come pouring in, across boulevards that had been built in the 1850s and 1860s. and the damage was staggering.
and then the women were put on trial--there was a rumor that women had been burning down fancy houses. and so this rumor was part of the fear of "uppity women." and they squished them like grapes.
they shot them all.
in the end, there was a paris in which everybody had been guilty.
chimney sweepers were executed because they had charcoal on their cheeks; they would rip of your shirts, to see if you had any bruises from recoiling rifles; it wasn't a "neutral" massacre, they went to the radical areas, and that's where they went in and massacred the populations.
"why don't you get over this?" this was the ultimate lesson of the commune, which would hang over europe. it was a sign that the state was strong, and can be vicious. don't let anyone tell you that the victims of terrorism are equal, in number, to the victims of state terrorism. but this was the real lesson--the state was growing in power with napoleon, unification. the state could strike back with unparalleled savagery. and that's what happened at the commune.
minimum 15,000 died, probably closer to 25,000. (when they did the census in 1872, in paris, there were 10,000 less shoemakers than there had been before--an extraordinarily radical trade, don't forget). flames engulfed the bodies, they were gone, lost to history.
amnesty for the communards would come in 1879. but the massacre hung like a shadow over french and european politics, for years and years.
Friday, July 6, 2007
parecon and anarchism:
Participatory economics, or parecon for short, is a classless economic system that serves as an alternative to capitalism, market socialism, and centrally planned economies. Parecon is based upon equity, solidarity, diversity, and participatory self-management, as well as takes into account kinship/gender, community/race, and polity in addition to economic considerations. Under parecon, workers and consumers councils are responsible for self-managed decision making; workers have balanced job complexes; effort and sacrifice are rewarded, not hours worked or how much capital was invested; and planning is participatory.
Participatory economics, or parecon for short, is a classless economic system that serves as an alternative to capitalism, market socialism, and centrally planned economies. Parecon is based upon equity, solidarity, diversity, and participatory self-management, as well as takes into account kinship/gender, community/race, and polity in addition to economic considerations. Under parecon, workers and consumers councils are responsible for self-managed decision making; workers have balanced job complexes; effort and sacrifice are rewarded, not hours worked or how much capital was invested; and planning is participatory.
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