Τετάρτη 15 Φεβρουαρίου 2023

About "democracy of the grassroots"..

The central representative institution of a democracy (bourgeois or socialist type) must be:
1) the dominant institution in terms of decisions concerning the whole of society, and 2) directly elected, in order to speak of democracy, but also of real socialism if we speak for socialism.
Anarchists deny central sovereign institutions (not just the state, which they also deny as we know).
I find their position the most compellingly and exciting opposed to mine, but that is not relevant to this discussion.
How do the dogmatic sectarian Marxist-communists (which are the majority among Marxists) understand the position of this central sovereign representative institution?
First of all, they devalue it as another result of the base which is the mode of production, etc.
Then, when the issue is raised directly, in relation to the form of central authority, they define it in a context where it means a false integration in practice into the "democracy of the grassroots", i.e. the workers' and people's councils, which are also the only those who elect and are elected directly. 
Beyond that, i.e. beyond the supposed "people's sea" of councils, there is the "Party of the working class" and the general assembly of councils (soviets), which as political bodies are NOT directly elected, but by the representatives who elected within the party by its members as far as the party is concerned, and by the representatives elected by the already elected councils.
This has been in practice and nothing other in the communist programs and realisations of all past and present communist movements, and their praxis does NOT show anything other than what I have described to you.
This is an openly declared authoritarian semi-democracy, which is NEVER going to lead to real socialism/communism, where there will be no class exploitation and also (probably) no state (although there will be politics which is another thing, not identical to the state, oh Marxist know-it-alls).
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When the only form of direct democratic representation is the "councils" and "assemblies" of the workers and the people, the only direct way left to governed a (socialist) society as a whole, as a total administrative form, so through a central institution, it is the one and only one Party.
At least the anarchists, as more honest in their utopia, are determined to fight every central administrative institution, while the sectarian Marxists insist on putting forward only the One party as a central strategic institution.
And how will the leadership of this essentially ruling party be elected? Perhaps from the entire working population of the socialist society?
I have not heard such a thing said by them. 
So, they stick to the old and tried Soviet model with perhaps an expansion of the role of workers' people's councils.
However, even the left-wing critics of the Soviet council institutional plan, the ultra-left, in a way "anarcho-communist" Marxists, e.g. Gorter, Guy Debord, removing the role of a party, what do they counter-propose as a positive replacement of the central elected institutions of bourgeois democracy?
Nothing. 
Like anarchists, they believe that this socialist society they envision will be self-governing "through the magic" of "self-direction self-management" and will not need a central democratic and elected institution.
Really, comrades, do you consider that you have an alternative institutional-political solution to bourgeois democracy, in the matter of the central institutional authority that will decide on critical issues expressing the whole of a working socialist classless society?
If we do not build a democratic alternative to capitalism and the bourgeois state, we will simply miss every train of history from now and beyond.
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The Iranian/Kurdish revolutionary left is closer to democracy than all the Iranian bourgeois forces, but it is also possessed by Bonapartist authoritarian ideas, due to its archaic Marxism.
The way out can be found by themselves, the Iranian and Kurdish people.
But how?
Are these things easy?
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Η ιρανική και η κουρδική επαναστατική αριστερά είναι πιο κοντά στην δημοκρατία από ό,τι είναι όλες οι ιρανικές αστικές δυνάμεις, όμως διακατέχεται επίσης από βοναπαρτιστικές αυταρχικές ιδέες, λόγω τού αρχαϊκού μαρξισμού της.
Την διέξοδο μπορούν να την βρουν μόνοι τους, ο ιρανικός και ο κουρδικός λαός.
Αλλά πώς;
Γίνονται έτσι εύκολα αυτά τα πράγματα;
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I just read an almost sarcastic ideological distraction by an Iranian communist about the future form of the state in Iran.
The dilemma as "stated" in reality is not generally a priori democracy versus theocracy and monarchy, but our dear dogmatist would like to state it this way, so that he can make his easy reductionism and in the end propose his own class-based supposed solution, the working-class regime, which will overcome this dilemma.
A completely wrong antidialectical methodology which is, however, an expected result of the sectarian despair of the left after the fall of Stalinism.
However, with such a mind, stuck in ancient Marxism, you can fight neither against the theocrats nor against the monarchists.
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The fact that according to the opinion most of our fellow non-Western people, we, as citizens of a pro-Western or Western state, "don't have the possible right" to defend ourselves but also possibly this state against a non-Western invader, if this state it is therefore fundamentally liberal and democratic, because -according to these friends- we are possessed by the original sin of Western colonialism, this fact, therefore, alienates us from you, my friends.
You can listen to your flattering Western comrades, but I live among the crowd of everyday people of my people and I know this:
In GREECE:
Ukraine is mainly supported by center-right democrats, center-left and some anarchists, while neutral pseudo-pacifists or open supporters of reactionary Russia are almost all the fascist Nazi far-right, the most reactionary part of the orthodox Christian church, and most radicals leftist and Marxist-Leninist "communists" .
There is something rotten in the Kingdom of the anti-colonial left.
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The demand of part of the West Left, in this case the German left, for the war to end while the Russian imperialist occupation of parts of Ukraine continues proves once again the extent of the mental ideological distortion in the minds of these people.
The crucial question for me in the end is:
Were things ever different within the left, in the West or also more broadly?
Or there is a deep contamination from a kind of theology and metaphysics present as ideology?
Let me be allowed this medical term for the analysis of political and social phenomena.
I speak roughly and spontaneously.
I am beginning to believe that the problem with this hidden religion and metaphysics is deeper than we thought.
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Ιωάννης Τζανάκος

 
 
 
 

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