Now that the University of Alaska and UNAC (its faculty union) are headed to arbitration, we'll share this passage from the excellent article "Legal Limits on Labor Militancy: U. S. Labor Law and the Right to Strike since the New Deal" by Holly J. McCammon.

"The purpose of arbitration is to prevent a breakdown in communication between labor and capital and to preserve the continuity of production. But it is through the disruption of production that labor exerts its power in the workplace. The arbitrator's actions, therefore, work in the interests of capital and to the detriment of the structural capacity of labor to achieve its collective goals. In that the law fortifies and legitimates the arbitration framework, it often works to the detriment of organized labor."

We recommend the whole article. It supports the communist left's point that unions have been integrated into capital.

The problem isn't bad leadership (though it's often bad). It's that the unions can only fight in a very narrow legal framework. They are no longer fighting bodies of the class.

Anyway, here's the article on #SciHub:

https://sci-hub.st/https://doi.org/10.2307/800649

#CommunistLeft #LeftCommunism #union #unions #labor #marxism #anarchism

Tonight's most interesting political news (it's news to me anyhow) is that there is yet another group calling itself the International Communist Party. This is a recent split, just a few months old. Here is their text on the U.S. election:

https://intcp.org/en/texts/11881/the-2024-us-presidential-election-only-capitalism-wins/

#CommunistLeft #LeftCommunism #leftcom #marxism #communism #socialism

"When contracts have to be renewed, the union feels itself the weaker party. It has to accept the bad terms the capitalists offer; no skill in bargaining avails. But now the trouble with the rank and file members begins. The men want to fight; they will not submit before they have fought; and they have not much to lose by fighting. The leaders, however, have much to lose -- the financial power of the union, perhaps its existence. They try to avoid the fight, which they consider hopeless. They have to convince the men that it is better to come to terms. So, in the final analysis, they must act as spokesmen of the employers to force the capitalists' terms upon the workers. It is even worse when the workers insist on fighting in opposition to the decision of the unions. Then the union's power must be used as a weapon to subdue the workers."

- Anton Pannekoek, Trade Unionism.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1936/union.htm

#unions #union #socialism #communism #marxism #CommunistLeft #LeftCommunism

Bordiga, quoted in Jacques Camatte's "Bordiga and the passion for communism:"

"Marxism is precisely, in essence, a foreseeing of the future. Utopianism in the strict sense is not a foreseeing of the future, but rather a proposal to mold the future."

#Communism #Socialism #Marxism #CommunistLeft #LeftCommunism

@argumento For a long but interesting account similar to yours, i point all readers to Paul Mattick's "Karl Kautsky: From Marx to Hitler."

https://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1939/kautsky.htm

#CommunistLeft #LeftCommunism #Marxism #Socialism

Comrades have issued "An Internationalist Statement on Capitalism and War"

"""
4. We reject both nationalism and democracy, which are the principal ideological tools by which the capitalist class creates the illusion that its interests and those of the working class within its borders are the same, and by which it mobilizes for war and justifies the militarization of society.

5. There are no separate solutions for the many existential threats to humankind. A peaceful capitalism, a green capitalism, a socially just capitalism are all just pipe dreams to hide the growing horror that is real. War, ethnic cleansing, genocide, ecocide, climate disasters, pandemics, poverty, insecurity, forced migration, homelessness, stress and mental breakdown will continue to worsen, together with the crisis of capitalism which causes them all. Therefore there is but one solution to all of them: closing the capitalist chapter of human history.
"""

#socialism #communism #CommunistLeft #LeftCommunism #AntiWar

https://aaap.be/Pages/Internationalist-Declaration-2024.html

"In a time of verbal inflation, 'fascism' is just a buzz word used by leftists to demonstrate their radicalism. But its use indicates both a confusion and a theoretical concession to the State and to Capital. The essence of antifascism consists of struggling against fascism while supporting democracy; in other words, of struggling not for the destruction of capitalism, but to force capitalism to renounce its totalitarian form."

-- Gilles Dauvé, "Fascism and Anti-Fascism." 1979.

https://redtexts.org/html/dauve_1979_fascism_antifascism.html

#fascism #AntiFascism #CommunistLeft #LeftCommunism

"""
It is precisely because any change in the living conditions of the exploited class is impossible through the ballot box that the bourgeoisie is so keen to convince us otherwise by hammering home the message: 'yes, another policy is possible... provided you vote well'.

...

The bourgeoisie knows full well that it has nothing to fear from workers' consciousness when they are passive spectators at electoral jousts featuring real political professionals who have nothing to do with the interests of the working class. Nor does it have anything to fear from their action when they are divided into so many atomised citizens in the polling booths. On the other hand, it knows that it has everything to fear from their collective strength and united action, expressed through discussion and the organisation of the struggle in the workplace, in general assemblies and in the streets. It is only in this way, and not by passively consuming electoral speeches and marking your ballot paper, isolated in the polling booths, that the life of the working class can be truly expressed.
"""

#marxism #socialism #communism #elections #democracy #CommunistLeft #LeftCommunism

ICC - "You can't change society with a ballot paper."

https://en.internationalism.org/content/17525/you-cant-change-society-ballot-paper

"""
What's missing is the class perspective: instead of sides being taken with a proletariat that has been oppressed and massacred for well over seventy years throughout the Middle East ... sides are being taken with a "people" (an exquisitely inter-classist concept) out of a sense of guilt. What's missing, in other words, is a clear-cut affirmation, combative and up for the struggle, that "the proletariat has no country, no nation": anyone trying to shut the proletariat within these cages, identifying it with "the people" -- intentionally or otherwise, it matters not -- is simply playing the counter-revolutionary card.
"""

- International Communist Party (Programma Comunista)

https://www.internationalcommunistparty.org/index.php/en/english/3616-the-pro-palestinian-protests-in-the-universities

#marxism #socialism #communism #gaza #AntiWar #CommunistLeft #LeftCommunism

Here are interesting passages from the 1970s text "Class and State in the Proletarian Dictatorship" by R.C.

"""
With the aid of universal suffrage, the bourgeoisie spread the ideological fiction of the egalitarian principle of the participation of all classes ("the people") in the development of the state. Thus it managed to hide the true nature of the state in the eyes of the exploited classes while at the same time crushing the first autonomous movements of the working class. In contrast, the proletariat will proudly proclaim the class purpose of the state. This state will not be a parliamentary arena which will allow the political activity of every party to take place in 'complete freedom.' It will not sanction a compromise between them. It will be the expression of a relation of force and will openly proclaim itself to be so. No class other than the proletariat will be allowed to carry arms; no council of strata not living by their own work will be tolerated. ... The lawful edicts of the semi-state will place all exploiting strata outside the law and they will be considered hostages of war.
"""

Also:

"""
The Commune-state is not communism, but the dictatorship of a class that is not yet working under conditions of freedom, nor in conditions of its own choosing. The dictatorship relies on the arming of the proletariat, and not on any institution produced by democratic consultation among the whole of the population. The proletarian revolution has substituted a system of soviets for a decrepit parliamentarism; the proletarians have expelled at bayonet point the learned assemblies constituted through democratic means. Bourgeois legality has been pulverised under the weight of the proletariat.
"""

#marxism #socialism #communism #CommunistLeft #LeftCommunism

"If the students really want to resist the war, they have to drop their nationalist flags and slogans, their support for one warring side against another, leave their campuses and spread the knowledge that capitalism is waging a war against humanity, and that the working class all over the world will be its victim, unless it wakes up and refuses to tolerate this madness."

- Internationalist Perspective, "The Student Protests: A Mixed Signal"

https://internationalistperspective.org/the-student-protests-a-mixed-signal/

#marxism #gaza #israel #socialism #communism #CommunistLeft #LeftCommunism

"""
Contrary to all the lies of the left-wing parties of capital, wars are always confrontations between competing nations, between rival bourgeoisies. Always! Wars are never fought for the benefit of the exploited! On the contrary, they are the first victims.

Workers everywhere must refuse to take sides with one bourgeois camp against another. Workers' solidarity is not with Palestine or Israel, Ukraine or Russia, or any other nation! Their solidarity is reserved for their class brothers living in Israel and Palestine, in Ukraine and Russia, for the exploited of the whole world! History has shown that the only real response to the wars unleashed by capitalism is international proletarian revolution. In 1918, thanks to a huge revolutionary upsurge throughout Europe, which had begun in Russia a year earlier, the bourgeoisie was forced to stop one of the greatest butcheries in history.
"""

- International Communist Current, "Choosing one side against another always means choosing imperialist war! "

https://en.internationalism.org/content/17521/choosing-one-side-against-another-always-means-choosing-imperialist-war

#marxism #socialism #gaza #palestine #CommunistLeft #LeftCommunism #communism

Just found out via the Internationalist Perspective site that Loren Goldner died last week.

In commemoration, and also because of the recent lionizing of the 1960s student protest movements, I want to point out his article "Didn't See the Same Movie: Review of Max Elbaum, Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao, and Che."

It is a devastating assault on so-called "radical" student groups of the 1960s. Except for those small and scattered groups that rediscovered the heritage of the historic communist left, these groups overwhelmingly supported whatever monstrous state capitalist, interclassist regime and ideology was flavor of the month. Fuck them all.

Goldner concludes his short article by saying -- then as now -- "the only thing that is 'progressive' in today’s world is working-class revolution."

https://redtexts.org/html/goldner_2003_same_movie.html

#marxism #communism #socialism #CommunistLeft #LeftCommunism

If you think state repression of anti-war protestors has been brutal (and it has), just wait until you see what they do when we begin to confront capitalism.

There is no form of capitalist state that is kinder to our interests, no form of capitalist state worth defending.

It is just as the communist left has said: "Fascism is the unscrupulous and extra-legal armed wing of democracy, and democracy is the 'velvet glove' of fascism."

https://www.international-communist-party.org/CommLeft/CL25_26.htm#Antifascism

#marxism #AntiFascism #CommunistLeft #LeftCommunism #Communism #AntiWar #Gaza

Leo Muellner, 'The Kronstadt rebellion' (1995)

More on the rebellion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion

#OTD #OTD1921, the revolutionaries/rebels passed the Petropavlovsk resolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion#Petropavlovsk_resolution

#art #anarchism #socialism #The Left #CommunistLeft #left #communism #bolshevism #antibolshevism #Russian #revolution #soviet #kronstadt #workers #WorkersCouncils #proletarian #peasants #councils #painting

"The quintessence of all antifascism is the wish to oppose fascism by defending democracy. With secret voting, equal suffrage and the existence of competing parties, democracy has proven in general to be the most apt form of government in commodity society. Bourgeois democratic ideology is founded on the principal belief that political freedom and equality are realised by suffrage. But this assumption can only hold true in economic conditions that are fundamentally equal for everyone, which can never be the case in a class society organised on the principles of capitalism. So even under normal conditions, bourgeois democracy reveals itself to be merely the appearance of freedom, and so the worst sort of bondage. And ultimately when crisis hits, the noble values and standards of democracy soon dissipate into smoke and mirrors, as authoritarian solutions and resentments gain traction, and previously permitted 'democratic rights' are sacrificed for the sake of the capitalist imperative of exploitation, a process which can now be seen all over the world. To hope to defend 'democracy' in the abstract in such a situation means to accept the myth of the state as a class neutral authority, to promote it, and ultimately to submit to it. It would mean allowing ourselves to be robbed of every possibility of self-activity, and deliver ourselves to authoritarian forces of all stripes on a platter."

- Gruppe Internationalistischer KommunistInnen, "Not Just Against the AfD!"

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-02-18/not-just-against-the-afd

#CommunistLeft #Leftcommunism #Marxism #Communism

(Anti-electoral poster of the KAPD, I guess. Early 1920s?)

You should not vote.

Parliamentarism is the democratic backdrop for the domination of capital.

Parliamentarism and its republic protect the capitalist sharks and murder the working class.

Parliamentarism breeds political lawyers and whealer-deelers.

Parliamentarism brings into being the omnipotence of bossdom over the proletariat and leads always to truce with the bourgeoisie.

Parliamentarism numbs the workers in leader-belief and creates passivity.

Parliamentarism is a means of power of capital.

The weapons of the working class are: direct action! Mass struggle!

All power to the Soviets!

Down with the parliament!

Election boycott!

Kommunistische Arbeiter-Partei
Allgemeine Arbeiter-Union

(Translation errors mine.)

#CommunistLeft #LeftCommunism #elections #vote #marxism #socialism #communism

(8 / x) Statement of Internationalist Perspective: "Capitalism's Death World."

"Let us be clear: there is no such thing as national liberation in our epoch. Humankind is facing Capital as a totality, a global machine, of which nations can only be a part. At most, 'national liberation' can achieve the right for a local bourgeoisie to choose out of which larger powers it wants to be a vassal. But always, with no exception, national liberation means that the exploited must support exploiters of their national origin against the foreign enemy. There is no liberation for the working class through national liberation movements. Quite the contrary: these movements are major obstacles to a movement that could lead to real liberation. A movement that fights for the real interests of the proletarians living in Israel/Palestine and overcomes the divisions imposed on them to attack the real source of their misery: capitalism and its states, which have nothing to offer them but exploitation, pauperization, and war."

https://internationalistperspective.org/capitalisms-death-world/

#CommunistLeft #LeftCommunism #socialism #communism #marxism #Gaza #Israel

The Internationalist Communist Tendency has posted a translation of the 1915 "Theses on Imperialism" authored by Karl Radek and fellow Polish comrades.

It shows that a genuinely marxist position on national liberation (and every other question) has nothing to do with abstract principles, and is instead about developing the revolutionary strength of the working class.

This is relevant today as the left drives the working class into this or that imperialist camp (Russian, Ukrainian, Palestinian, Israeli, etc), all in the name of the "right of national self-determination" or of weakening this or that state even at the cost of crushing the proletariat's class consciousness.

"Today, in light of the experience of the world war, the adoption of the slogan of independence as a means of struggling against national oppression would be not only a damaging utopia, but the denial of the simplest foundations of socialism. This slogan would mean striving to create a new imperialist power, a power that would itself strive to subjugate and oppress foreign nations. The only result of such a programme would be the weakening of class consciousness, the exacerbation of national contradictions, the division of the forces of the proletariat, and the amplification of new dangers of war."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-10-29/radek-s-theses-on-imperialism-1915

#LeftCommunism #CommunistLeft #marxism

I am tired of seeing "socialists" argue about whether Hamas is truly anti-imperialist. Like, who gives a fuck?

How is anti-imperialism -- supporting little capitalist factions against big ones -- a revolutionary position? How does it further the independence and strength of the working class? (Hint: it doesn't.)

Yes, in the 19th century, the workers' movement _did_ take sides in wars between states. But this was never a "question of abstract justice and human sentiments," to use Marx's sneering phrase. Taking sides in capitalist wars hastened the development of capitalism and, with it, the strength of the working class. For example, in the Second Italian War of Independence, the workers' movement sided with Austria even though that would harm the cause of Italian "national liberation." There was no criterion other than hastening capitalism's development (by weakening Russia).

This position made sense as long as the working class was too weak to challenge capitalism.

Considerations like this became pointless in the 20th century. The First World War -- and the revolutions that ended it -- showed that capitalism had outlived its usefulness. Its gravedigger had arrived on the stage of history. No longer should the working class sacrifice its autonomy in fights between factions of the capitalist class. As the Communist International said at its Second Congress: "National defense and democracy -- here are the solemn formulas of the capitulation of the proletariat to the will of the bourgeoisie!"

#marxism #socialism #communism #CommunistLeft #LeftCommunism