Date: Wed, 2 Oct 96 10:42:54 GMT
Subject: Re: the state redux & socialism



Justin writes:
> 
> I give up. The IS crowd has worn me out. They've fallen back on the last
> refuge of the Marxist fundamentalist: the "utopianism" argument, that is,
> we neednot move beyond Marx's The Civil War in France and Lenin's State
> and Revolution because The Working Class Has Spoken. Ignoring the vast
> variety of working class attempts at self-organization worldwide, this
> argument picks out, quite selectively, two brief canonical experiments in
> other circumastnces long ago: the Paris Commune of 1871 and the St.
> Petersburg Sovirt of 1905 (with some pretense that for some time in 1917
> the latter model had any bearing on events), and treats these as the only
> acceptable basis for thinking about a future society. 
> 

Jorn's excellent post refers to a whole revolutionary tradition, not
only 1871,1905 and 1917 :

Jorn writes:
> Of course this was most developed in the soviets of Sct. Petersburg in 1905
> and in most of the big cities of Russia in 1917, but the experience is much
> more general than that - in a more or less developed form. So far apart in
> time and space as Torino 1920, Germany at the same time, Chile in 1973,
> Iran in 1979 and Poland in 1980-81 have workers organized a form which were
> characterized by the same basic features.

And these other examples of workers council adapted to the conditions they
found themselves in : Chile in 1973 had representatives of the unemployed /
semi employed poor, Italy in 1920 addressed the problem of unionised / 
non unionised workers, Solidarnosc had as well as workers councils, student
councils, and even democratically self organised Solidarnosc queuing
committees !

These experiments in "actually existing workers states" can teach us a lot - 
but only if we recognise their significance.

Adam.



Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK


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