Yes, I know from a rhetorical perspective they’re a bunch of jerks who do nothing but complain, but is there an actual takedown of their ideological notions? Because just saying they suck without further explanation makes it hard to dismiss them when they pop up. I don’t agree with them, I just want to know why I shouldn’t. Something about statues and logic and being chained in a courtyard with wind and all that. I’m not sure where to put this, sorry.
Just popping in to say that this thread has been great to read, and I learned a lot. Thank you all! :meow-bounce:
They don’t believe transitional development of socialism is a thing (at least the Dutch ones don’t), which kinda begs alot of questions about their fundamental premises concerning practical change, but alot of the critiques are still useful, mostly their critiques on collaboration with liberals and social democrats, but to be fair Kaleckian critiques of class collaboration blows every left-com take on the subject out of the water
My opinion on left communism can be summed up as “Extraordinary theory requires extraordinary practical results”
I don’t know if you’ve read the text, because the people Lenin criticizes are not what we commonly refer to as leftcoms nowadays (though that term is already shitty and nebulous and doesn’t describe anything). Bordiga for example gets a brief mention and gets criticized for his anti-parliamentarism, but that’s about it.
I don’t know what you commonly refer to as leftcoms nowadays. If I had to guess, I’d say probably Trotskyites and some Maoist groups. Anyway, Lenin is pretty clear who he was talking about. The comrades in the PSMLS discussion do try and apply the concept to the present day.
I’d say probably Trotskyites and some Maoist groups
Far from it, leftcoms generally despise those guys as much as Stalinists lmfao, though they might be more sympathetic to Trotsky’s criticisms of the Soviet Union. Originally leftcoms referred to a bunch of Marxists who were skeptical of Leninism (but not in a Kautsky succdem way), people like Pannekoek or Pankhurst, who were contemporaries of Lenin and mentioned in the book, but that trend more or less completely died out. Nowadays, post-WW2, most people that would be classified as “left-communists” generally follow or were greatly inspired by the Italian left-communists like Bordiga or Damen, or people who fall closer to traditional council communism like Paul Mattick. Leftcom ideas also had a bit of a resurgence after '68 in France, the Situationists would fall under this umbrella for example. Leftcom is just a shit term really, because we’ve got Bordigists who are “more Leninist than Lenin” grouped together with anti-Leninist councilcoms and straight-up anarcho-primitivists like Camatte, all under the same umbrella lmao. Bordigists seem to be most numerous, though, and most if not all of the points in the book don’t apply to them since they agree with Lenin on pretty much everything.
Their critiques ignore that modes of production don’t change overnight. There are interregnums, moments of struggle and conflict, and periods where both systems overlap as one makes way for the other.
Look at the death of feudalism. There wasn’t one moment where the merchant class rose up and said ‘aight, you landowners don’t run things anymore. We’re capitalists now’. Rather, there was a transition where political power was steadily clawed from the king/lords, and the feudal mode gave way to the capitalist mode.
Even now, in many capitalist countries, they’re technically monarchies. But those are vestigial at best. No one would say England isn’t capitalist, despite the remnants of Queen Lizzy and her lands.
As someone who would generally identify with the majority of leftcom positions, this is the correct answer. Leftcom theoretical positions on most issues are, in my personal opinion, the objectively/empirically correct ones. But they’re often highly inflexible purists who refuse to take into account changing historical and contemporary conditions on the ground, and in turn denounce positions or campaigns that don’t perfectly conform to the theory. This in turn leads to the stereotype of leftcoms being armchair leftists who don’t do anything.
It also leads to really silly infighting, like how Gramscians and Bordigists mutually hated and still hate each other even though both have valuable theoretical contributions that aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
Don’t people who follow the Italian leftcoms generally criticize Gramsci’s thought for basically toeing the line between materialism and just straight up idealism? I don’t think Bordiga and Gramsci are compatible at all really
Not to mention Bordigists generally hate Gramsci’s guts because they view him as a Moscow puppet put in place through factional maneuvering so that the Italian Communist Party would be sympathetic to the USSR
Yes. And yes Gramsci’s later thought heavily incorporates Italian idealism, but that was precisely what made it stand out from the competing Marxist dogmas that had become entrenched in the early 20th centuries. It doesn’t mean his contributions aren’t worth considering.
But Bordiga’s philosophy was similarly flawed, at least in the way he attempted to put it into practice. His vision for the PCI was hyper-sectarian and rendered it completely isolated from the actual labor movement.
More so than that. Lots of old nobility just turned their power into money and became new nobility under capitlaism
Could someone briefly define left-communism for me? Sorry, I didn’t do the reading.
This helps, thank you. Based on this, and what else I’ve read, I’m feeling like it could be summed up as “All theory, no praxis,” ideological purity to the point where none of the successes of any past Marxist/communist projects have lived up to their standards.
Please correct me if that doesn’t sound right.
