Why are some communists considered to be to the 'left' of others?

mciver, out of curiosity, do you still consider yourself a communist (or anarchist?) after your experience with the ICC?

Socialism seeks to place the workers in control of the means of production and combined political system while abolishing class society in so creating abundance and shortening the work day with the application of technology and labor power.

This didn't happen in Russia or China because class society wasn't abolished. A class of managers [communist party] was put above the working class and simply took the place of the super capitalist class.

Any "socialist" who doesn't seek to immediately place workers in control of the combined means of production and political system is right wing and authoritarian. Illegitimate concentrated power/hierarchy is the problem. Hierarchy is a manifestation of right wing thought.

Vlad 336

Thanks for your curiosity. I don't consider myself anything like that. Aspiring to be a witness is hard enough. Voline and Döblin were more like this than Victor Serge. Shakespeare, Goya, Mozart, Bulgakov and Dada remain amazing sources of delight, reflection and inspiration. They were witnesses too. But this is a very incomplete and arbitrary personal list. The ICC was a nihilist detour, but then history is full of such traps.

'Individual, Class and Nation in Spain 1936-39 [a study on Lorca]' and 'Rackets' (at <http://www.left-dis.nl/>) may satisfy your curiosity more than the above.

You have an impressive personal reading and listening-to list here. A detail: don't you think that 'libertarian communist' is a contradiction? Are there 'totalitarian' communists? Or 'married bachelors'?

A Jehovah's witness perhaps? Sorry but the text you refer to about 'rackets' ends clearly on a religious note:

"So writes Stephen Koch in Stalin, Willi Münzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals, London 1995, p. 145. Still, I prefer other gods to Koch’s Nemesis. The Hebrew god, if I’m correct – and when he’s in a playful mood – protects all the persecuted, whether they be evil or unfair, and even against just and good men, if they be persecutors. Inspired by this god, the memory of Karl Radek deserves to be protected when he was being persecuted, and that happened in 1911-13."

Also, the notion of 'rackets' is just as silly as the one of 'parasites'.

On the Lenin's Embalmer's thread Noa Rodman wrote:

On this thread Noa Rodman wrote:

Having not read the text upon which Noa bases his one line dismissal on the 'Embalmers' thread (it's here if anyone wants to cross reference: http://www.scribd.com/doc/11992588/Mathematics-and-the-Divine) I'm unable to refute what he says, but I very much doubt that the whole book can be written off like that (or even any part of it, perhaps).

At least with the second quotation we can compare it with the specific extract it's intended to criticise:

Now, reading that extract, I certainly don't get the impression that the use of religious metaphor is tantamount to pushing religion, unless one has a clumsily over-literal interpretation of people's use of language ("Look! He mentioned god! He must be religious!). My understanding of that passage is that human beings can choose to act in a vengeful, persecutory way (the attribute of the figure of Nemesis - and we don't have to believe in Nemesis for that metaphor to stand), or can choose to 'protect the persecuted'. I don't see why this should have to be spelt out, but there you go...

Another dismissive one-liner. Care to elaborate?

Noa

No, other types of witnesses. You seem to be acquainted only with 'Jehovah's Witnesses'. You ignore real and well-known 'witnesses', like those on my post to Vlad 336. And there are thousands of others unknown and unpublished. The truths they dig out and expose in literary or other artistic forms are worth countless left communist journals and blogs. I recommend these types, and that you read less of The Watchtower.

Hypothetically, if a god were to exist who protected today's weak and vulnerable, regardless of their past crimes and evil doings, wouldn't that be a good entity? Would you be against this god? Naturally the god allusions are allegorical, as I don't think gods exist, and definitely not playful and amiable ones. So take it like that -- wouldn't it have been fantastic if some such Hebrew god freed Radek and all the zeks from the isolators? But where to place these millions, in a world riddled with wars and terror? In Master and Margarita Bulgakov creates sinister entities with extraordinary, god-like powers, who interact with alienated human beings. The work was written during the Great Purges, and the horror seeps through this surreal nightmare of a novel. Nevertheless, even in the deepest horror, Bulgakov allows for rare moments of love. These are not 'religious' notes or cravings -- they reveal a deep species need.

I agree that 'parasitism' is a sham ICC notion. This notion assumes that political ideas have intellectual copyright, just like brands, and that infringers or 'parasites' steal them (with bulletins and typewriters). In reality most 'parasites' had different ideas and practices, yet these were seldom addressed by rackets, mostly drowned in insults and amalgams. Although you reject the notion, how would you define a group that made this malignant notion a cornerstone of its existence?

You can dismiss the notion of the racket, band, cult or gang at your peril. Especially if you are in one. Some doctrine of a free-floating, perennial and unsullied 'left-communist milieu' becomes essential, something never contemplated before. In one main case, the objective isolation from society became virtuous, the basis for even more rabid apocalyptic ideas, like epidemics of 'parasites' and 'clans'. This took a rare creativity, it must be admitted, it energised the flows as it sealed off the throes. In the other (minor) case, the battle of boredom won.

Okay, I searched 'political organizing parasitism' in googlebooks and came across it in 'Faith in action: religion, race, and democratic organizing in America' by Richard L. Wood. 'Parasitism' strikes me as a term any old sociology professor would use; just like 'racket' (used by Weber, Simmel, Adorno,..as the text you referred to shows). I say leave it up to political sociologists to define what they mean by parasitism and rackets. There is nothing in these terms that contributes knowledge to us.

As Wellclose Sq. shows, you seem determined to dismiss too easily. Whatever you "say", Noa, you're looking in the wrong place; these terms have been used in specific ways as definitions of group behaviours and that is what mciver comments on - The ICC concept and use of parasitism and, I assume, something akin to Camatte's concept of political rackets; http://libcom.org/library/on-organisation-jacques-camatte. It is not the terms in isolation - but the concepts they are used to name and behaviour they describe here - that must be understood and evaluated before any dismissal.

Gravedigger writes:
“If you are a vanguard party it means you have leaders who set the party line, define the rules or constitution, determine party activity, expel those who dissent, interpret procedures to suit their own agenda, instigate witch hunts, verbally abuse those members who oppose their version of events and are addicted control freaks.
The aim of a vanguard party, by definition, is to treat the workers has grist for the mincer. For the working class are incapable of thinking for themselves and need directions from the vanguard on the nearest cul de sac. Self-emancipation according to the self-appointed vanguard, can only be brought about by 'professional revolutionaries' whose superior knowledge ensures the day to day tactics are correct and strictly followed in a dogmatic fashion. For what is the point of leaders if they have no followers?”

I like Gravedigger’s definition of what a vanguard party is because we could use it to investigate all political organisations, meaning, of course, those we are in, or those we are on the periphery of, and also the informal networks we ascribe to. Thus we could look at anarchist organisations and see if they exhibited any vanguard party tendencies. I think that Gravedigger has highlighted a problem that faces every single organisation that is represented here on Libcom (this is very apparent on the ‘Why is Anarchism marginalised’ forum). Perhaps, though, this problem is not one for all those organisations; maybe they refuse to consider it at all; it is perhaps only going to be a problem for those proletarians of the future who may suffer the consequences of their optimistic faith and dogma.

I particularly like Gravedigger’s ironic assertion, criticising the values of vanguard parties, that, “the working class are incapable of thinking for themselves”. We should, as Gravedigger suggests here, be looking constantly for where politicos such as ourselves offer blueprints; or where we exclude doubt and uncertainty in order to put across a forthright point; where we talk (as Raoul Vaneigem has done, sadly, and still does, in my opinion) with corpses in our mouths. When we put ideology before our own self-awareness and honesty then we merely let ideology, like poison, pour from our mouths.

But I worry, for Gravedigger says more than the above line, he says: “For the working class are incapable of thinking for themselves and need directions from the vanguard on the nearest cul de sac”. Oh dear, I think that behind his apparent wish that everyone would think for themselves, lies his own blueprint, his own set of directions, presumably avoiding the cul de sac. I fear that he only disagrees with one organisation’s ideas because he has his own plans for what the proletarians need to learn before they can make a change… Gravedigger goes on to say elsewhere: “We the working class are quite capable of thinking for ourselves in order to gain a revolutionary and political consciousness.” These intimations reveal, I think, Gravedigger’s allegiance to the idea of building a movement and raising consciousness (there is nothing unusual about this; almost everyone on Libcom accepts this ideological strategy). In other places Gravedigger also uses the word ‘democracy’ or ‘democratic’ to describe how revolutionary workers might organise themselves.

As has been repeated recently elsewhere: Everytime an anarchist says, "I believe in democracy," a little fairy somewhere falls down dead.
http://likelostchildren.blogspot.com/2010/01/autonomous-committee-3-monsieur-dupont.html

From Nihilist Communism, 2003:

We would emphasise that we do not see the working class takeover of the factories as a revolution as such but simply as the downfall of capital. We see the revolution (and communist consciousness) arising after the period of crisis when a new material base of reality is coming into existence. We see revolution as being in two stages (as, we believe, did Marx). It is in the second stage, the becoming human stage, in which the vast mass of human beings participate. This participation will be through consciously-developed organisations in response to critical conditions. The occupations of the factories are only a means and not an end; therefore we are not ultra-councilist (as some who would marginalise us would have it). We do not propose worker’s councils at all – we do not presume to call for any specific political institution, we leave that to the participants at the time. We say only that, for the capitalist process to be suspended, the ownership of production must directly pass to the workers, without any mediation by political institutions or bodies.

Incidentally, by ‘factory workers’ we mean those employed under factory conditions and this includes distribution staff, etc. We mean those workers who have the power to stop the economy (this excludes shop workers, teachers, politicised groups, the unemployed, ethnicities, and other marginal categories). [These people, for us, must be excluded from this part of the process because if they are included directly, at the time of initial upheaval, what we will have is a recreation of the democracy that has just been destroyed, as all interested parties fight to have their political say. If this is allowed to happen then political interests will recuperate capitalism before anyone knows what is happening. Before people can envision a new society, the reality of their surroundings must change, the economic system must have been destroyed – this is why it is those who have their hands on the levers of production who are so important, it is only they who can stop the economy and thereby change the material base.]

But, to go back to the idea of raising consciousness, whether it be from the heart of political parties or from those who claim true working class credentials…:

As it was said elsewhere, and as it has been said for too long now, by everyone who hates people and misunderstands how things work… ‘education is fundamental’.

Lenin’s corpse is here. Leaderless Leninism is here. Throughout Libcom (see, for example, the “Why is Anarchism marginalised?” forum.) This is not a shocking discovery, it is expected. Libcom could begin to provide useful analysis if the rigorous examination of accepted ideas and behaviours was undertaken here.

One difficult anarchist ideal which has stayed with me is that people should think for themselves. In order to encourage such a situation we should perhaps be less forthright and more doubtful. And we should be asking questions, not providing blueprints for how to think about things.

Again, from 2003:

So, what do pro-revolutionaries do in the present if they are useless at expressing solidarity and organising the proletariat? We think the first impulse should always be to do nothing, to watch the turning of the world and keep our powder dry. For those who wish to be activists we recommend that they take jobs under industrial conditions, not to lead the struggle (because the struggle will find them out soon enough), but to participate as ordinary workers in the only possible means of properly engaging capital, and see how things really stand. (For most present day revolutionaries it is inconceivable that the most important place in the world could be a factory in a provincial town, but it is from out of these factories that the world is built).

We also advocate a negative role, that of opposing false revolutionaries (those who would seek leadership and those who mystify the struggle by adding secondary political issues to it; such as nationalism, anti-imperialism, or limited support for nationalism, etc).

We would advocate the maintenance and production of pro-revolutionary consciousness, not ‘Go to the People’ as this can only fail (The People will never read revolutionary literature), but it is important to preserve and renew ideas for ourselves now and for that moment when they will have significance for a wider audience.

It is a fundamental mistake that we have all made, this imagining that we could personally make a difference beyond the level of personal existence – this is the ultimate self-delusion. We would advise everyone to be ready for a long wait, to have no great expectations, to be ready for failure, and to keep going for decades.

Ok, so you're an observer. But what does that mean politically? Volin was an anarchist, Doblin a leftist humanist, Victor Serge a Trot, Shakespeare a Catholic, and so on. They observed very different things and had different views on what society should be like. I'm not sure if you can build a theory of "observism" from these examples, influential as they may be. What I wanted to know is whether you are still a communist or anarchist after your experience with the ICC.
Your article on Lorca is interesting, yet problematic, and thank you for sharing it; in it you seem to defend the "initial spark" of emancipation, and deplore the fact that the individual has been betrayed by ideologies that were meant to liberate her. In other words you seem to be defending the notion of social revolution, if not the historical result. On the other hand you also claim that the Spanish anarchists supported the government from the very beginning and were never committed to their ideals. This to me seems like a contradiction. "The anarchists" were not all Ascaso and whoever else compromised with the Generalitat. Anarchists were also the workers who rose up in 1937, peasants, women, and social outcasts like Lorca himself. Furthermore, since you strongly disagree with how the ICC theory of parasitism seems to seek a monopoly on ideas, it is strange to see you imply that since some anarchists were swept up in the state's repression machine, this means anarchism itself "sold out."
I think your article is well written but it doesn't really answer the question of what politics you subscribe to, if any. Individual emancipation will not fall from the sky, and will not be brought about through mere enlightened criticism and "observation."

It is perhaps redundant, but not a contradiction. Why do you think it's a contradiction? Do you believe that communism necessarily implies dictatorship and totalitarian rule?

Ah,

Scanning the racket's article referenced by McIver, I'm not sure if it's religious or not but it does have the smell of the broad anti-organizational position; Mix later Freddy Perlman, Cammette, and Sam Mose and you've got yourself a position that's leaning heavily in the direction of "all organizations are rackets!"

I'm not an ICCer and have never had much contact with the ICC. Obviously, they've made mistakes in the past.

However, I am in favor of the most advanced "elements" in a revolutionary struggle organizing themselves as effectively as possible. Centralizing communication and acting decisively clearly seems like it will be necessary. Being aware of the particular conditions of whatever upsurge one is a part of will also be necessary. Organize well and flexibly. Discussion the crucial issues of the day publicly.

I mean, we self-conscious communists probably won't create the spark that sets off the world wide fire and we won't be necessary once this spark has burned fully. Our only relevance will be in terms of our part in the coming "transition period", a time which clearly will involve a complex churning of troubled waters [insert 18th Brumaire quote here]

In another thread on another topic, the infamous fort da la game said my arguments "smelled too much of eggs and omelets" (paraphrasing). I suppose it comes down to a tale of two smells; whether the messiness and mistakes implied by organizing doom one failure or whether one really has any choice in the matter (since "non-organization" is simply poor organization or the informal dictatorship of those in the right place on in their social graph).

I don't believe that organizations are inherently rackets. But also, I don't think there's any credible anti-organizational revolutionary position since revolution will rather clearly be an organized activity - not a clean, clearly or fully organized activity of course but also not a pure product of animal spirits or something.

Oh I know racketization and parasitism are terms that name certain concepts and describe certain phenomena, they just don't explain anything, that's all.

If you know that, why reply above by referring to a different usage by sociology professors etc, rather than the way the concepts are used on this thread?

This doesn't show much engagement with the specific usage of the definitions on this thread. (A student of single-celled organisms might also use the term 'parasite'. So what?) Hence my original comment. Nor is it just the definitions/concepts under discussion here, but the use to which they are put; such as maintaining group ideological conformity.

My claim is that both terms (parasitism and racketization) do not explain anything. If you claim the contrary, state if and how they (or the specific concepts these terms denote) accurately explain whatever it is you think that they explain. I bet that you agree with me on this, but of course that is just a hunch.

No one has denied that's your claim - are you just going to keep repeating that no matter what else is said?

You bet wrong. I believe concepts such as 'parasitism' and 'swamp' are aspects of the sickness (to borrow their metaphor theme) that has 'infested' the ICC body politik like an auto-immune disease for decades, and that political rackets do exist in the sense already described. So, depending on how and where it's applied, there can be some truth to the concept. But that is beside the point. Again, you miss the point - mciver has described the use of 'parasitism' as a definition/concept;

So he agrees that it doesn't explain what it claims to - but in fact functions to repress other truths about political groups; yet you just keep saying 'the term doesn't explain anything' - thereby missing the point. So how about you answer the previously asked questions with something more than a dismissive one-liner?

.

I don't know what 'defining' a group which holds to the idea of 'parasitism' means, so I can't answer that question.

'Racket' and 'parasite' can be dismissed as silly because both 'explain' their object psychologically; in one case as power hungry oppressors, the other case, as vain individualists or what have you. The point that I'm supposedly missing, namely that these terms are used in an insulting manner, can not be fought by taking a lesson in mutual respect from the Hebrew god, but only by showing that both terms do not explain anything and hence should be dropped.

You know what defining something means; you know what a group is; you know what holding an idea means; you claim to know what the term parasitism means - so what's the problem?

But to describe the concept of 'parasite' discussed here as "vain individualists or what have you" shows you aren't grasping what is being talked about and instead merely apply a ready-made dismissal, regardless of how irrelevant it is. But, of course, to attempt to apply any 'psychological explanation' whatsoever to such behaviour couldn't explain anything, could it? Or perhaps it could, and that's why you don't like the possibility of 'psychological explanations'.

Criticism of the repressive practices of political groups will only be seen as "insulting" (or be simplistically reduced to that) by those who uncritically defend such groups and their practice.

Unless one dismisses the psychological life of humans completely (or sees communist politics as uniquely outside it) - to acknowledge that there is a psychological element to the relations of political groups is not to reduce all explanation to psychology, but to recognise its function; especially where quasi-religious devotion to an ideological belief system and its claimed historical ancestry are given such great importance.

As you're a fan of hunches, here's mine; your knee-jerk dismissal is based on the fact that -
a) your marxist authority figures don't provide any quotes/party lines on the subject, so you feel rather disarmed and therefore obliged to dismiss.
b) to acknowledge the psychological dimension would be to acknowledge to yourself the servile nature of this ideological relationship - so, again, dismissal is safer.

I think this selection of extracts from Jacques Camatte's Against Domestication (http://www.marxists.org/archive/camatte/agdom.htm) may go some way to explain the dynamics of 'repressive consciousness' in parties and groups (rackets, if you will) which generate concepts such as 'parasitism'.

I'd suggest that the concept of 'parasitism' is itself a product of such a repressive consciousness, defining the organisation in relation to those it identifies as enemies, fulfilling a disciplinary role for those still inside the organisation, inhibiting 'the free development of human potentialities'.

Interesting extract from Camatte which shows that he knows nothing about Marxism:

Isn't Camatte a primitivist now? I think that says everything about his understanding of Marx.

Vlad336, answer to post 70 of 25 April 2010

Everybody is a witness – an 'observist' – as you could say. Even the sightless humanity of Saramago's Blindness keenly observe everything around, to survive in a dying world. You too observe here, not always with accuracy as your above one liner against Camatte shows.

Obviously political agendas and categorisations mean a lot to you, as ways to define individuals. I don't think that's important, or at least I don't care to define myself with those labels. Why does it matter? I'm not out to build any political theory. A 'theory of rackets' has been developed effectively already, mostly by Camatte, Collu and Perlman. Others more capable than me will undoubtedly add something new. And others have and will attempt to demolish the content, to render it falsifiable. That's positive, although I haven't yet seen a productive and honest refutation of the concept 'rackets'.

It's doubtful that an ICC apparatchik is a 'communist' in his/her own terms. That includes those who were there 30 years ago or more. They defended and still do a centralised and hierarchical model of 'militancy'. Historically, this type of apparat always fulfilled domination needs, not any effort of emancipation. The devotion to this regressive model of racket power is found not only in the surviving sects of 'the communist left', but in all Leninist groups (Trotskyists, Maoists, etc). They attract pale replicants of the fodder churned out by Zinoviev and Pianitsky in Comintern days. But nothing like 1917-23 will ever happen again, so their activity is redundant. No matter, critical observation continues without them.

Regarding 'anarchism', what's the current relevance of the thought of individuals from Bakunin and Kropotkin to Derrick Pike and others? This is too vast a subject and anyway there are already countless contributions on anarchism here.

Re anarchism in Spain 1936-39, I don't think that the intention of the article on Lorca was to delve on the author's beliefs. What would be the point of that? The subject matter was the issue of Lorca and a mass movement.

You say:

I agree that a separation must be made between the Anarchist leaders who joined the Generalitat, and I include among these leaders the warlord Durruti who supported the Republican war effort, and the anarchist workers and peasants, including the majority of individuals involved actively or passively in the civil war, who were not members of any anarchist group. That is done in the article. Incidentally, there is no evidence that Lorca was an anarchist, so to label all opponents of Franco as 'anarchists' is wrong. Michael Seidman's studies in his Republic of Egos is a salutary reminder that state apparatuses and rackets of all sorts confronted great problems in integrating individuals and masses to an inter-imperialist conflict. If to you 'anarchism' still came out of the Spanish War with flying colours, then perhaps your attachment to the label is delusional and uncritical. So observe with more attention. Incidentally, there is no hard evidence that Shakespeare was a Catholic.

I also agree that individual emancipation won't fall from the sky, and I didn't claim that 'mere enlightened criticism and observation' will bring it about. But these resources shouldn't be disparaged, they are essential in our epoch of blindness. They can be exercised by individuals. What to 'do' apart from being honest witnesses, well, only billions can answer that effectively. Unless you think that 'What is to be Done' remains a good recipe book, or any of the anarchist variants -- the organisers organising themselves, taking us back to the racket.

'Libertarian' in 'communist' is redundant, as the concept 'communist' presupposes freedom and liberty for the social individual. The contradiction appears in the logical, though unnamed antinomy, 'totalitarian communist' -- then contrasted to the 'libertarian' good guys. Naturally, no 'totalitarian communist' will admit he's one, though he will be 'frank' in reminding us that collateral damage is implicit in revolutions, and that omelettes require broken eggs. He usually doesn't include himself or his racket, in these regrettable cosmic or culinary losses. Sometimes making omelettes can be described as 'mistakes' or 'errors', like in Kronstadt '21 -- that gives away a totalitarian, more than shifty eyes.

I don't want to deflect from the excellent points pursued by W/S, RM and Mc but someone shook my cage.

Everything is always already organised. There is no such thing as somebody or something that is not organised. There is no such thing as anti-organisationalism except as it appears negatively within the discourses of 'big O' organisations. There is only such a thing as being anti-Organisations (i.e. not believing the claims of this organisation). Being against X group cannot be translated into being in favour of 'no organisations' either positively or negatively as that would involve a blatant contradiction given that everything in existence is organised. Sceptics do not have to make the same arguments as believers.

The point is always whether this organisation adds anything different or even tangible and I would suggest that most organisations whose members contribute here do not add anything except the quality of their being organised (which I think is a marginal concern that I would re-characterise as a state of being surplus organised).

As you know, for an organisation to assess its own contribution, or to function as a VSM, it requires a governor/corrective structure based on something like the Law of Requisite Variety. I do not see much evidence of this capacity for self-evaluation/self-correction. The argument for big O organisations must always be set in terms of the quality of what they produce and the quantity of new people they are drawing in... if these outputs remain at a marginal level then the I would suggest that the inhibitive effect the structure is having on their membership's activity probably outweighs the benefits of sticking with an a-historical formality.

If we move from omelets to puddings, then we all know where the proof is... A specific membership organisation requires that it must justify its existence as such and such an organisation by proving it has and will make a positive difference. Contrariwise, the burden of proof for not being a member of X group does not lie with the billions of people who are thus defined, they remain to be convinced and the organisations must prove their indispensibility to them, otherwise the billions will go on not being members (this does not mean they are not both latently and manifestly organised but in terms invisible to politicos).

Animal spirits, that's a good one!

A refutation is not meant to be productive. I don't see what you mean by 'honest refutation', unless you want to cast doubt on my motives which I think you are smart enough to know is not an argument.

Noa

Is Google Books your primary source for political research and knowledge? So anything that pops up as political 'parasitism' is the last word on the subject? You say that 'parasitism' strikes you as a term any old sociology professor would use. 'Strikes' you? So you don't know? It also seems that you have a somewhat bigoted disregard for what you call 'old sociology professors'. You include Weber, Simmel and Adorno among these. Your assertion that these intellectuals ('bourgeois' indeed, as we live in the bourgeois epoch) have nothing to contribute to our knowledge is preposterous. Indeed, abandon all hope ye who debate with you if your rigid stance and 'hunches' don't shift somewhat.

Is Richard L. Wood a parasitologist or a member of the ICC? I ask this because you seem to mention him as an authority on parasitism, but then you dismiss him instantly because he's a prof. You don't even quote from his work, have you read it? Looking at the two-part contents, there's no mention of 'parasitism', so it doesn't seem to be a main concern of this ho-hum tome. So I don't know why you cite this work, as the use of 'parasitism' in it (if any) bears no resemblance to the way the ICC uses the term.

Now,

What is so difficult about that question? Have you read the ICC's Theses on Parasitism? If you have, what do you think of these theses, apart from calling the term 'silly'? And what do you think of a group that has staunchly defended this 'silly term' for 12 years? Just made a silly mistake? You claim that 'parasitism' doesn't explain 'its object' because it 'explains' it 'psychologically'. So what is this 'object'? You evade this, and you appear to be indifferent to the intimidation and repression inherent in that type of amalgam. By 'object' read target, because the ICC Theses targeted individuals and rival minority groups, so the Theses were always Theses Against Parasites. What did you feel about the ex-members who were expelled and accused of being informers, freemasons, adventurers and worthless enemies of the proletariat and its favoured organ (not just 'vain individuals' as your hunch tells you)? But to you, there's nothing to it, 'parasites' didn't exist, it's just a 'silly term'. And, following this logic, 'rackets' don't exist either. So in reality nothing has happened, there are no parasites and no rackets, a neat solution.

Now, the term 'parasite' has become counter-productive for the ICC, a matter of diminishing returns. It will probably be dropped. But a 'racket' can't be dropped, because it is a tragic reality and not just a 'term'.

You misunderstand the naming of a kind Hebrew god in the Appendix of 'Rackets'. There's no lesson or advocacy for 'mutual respect' (another of your hunches). 'Mutual respect' in an extermination camp? This god is counterposed to the Hellenic revenge-goddess Nemesis, favourably cited by historian Stephen Koch in his description of Karl Radek's hideous murder in the gulag. If you had paid attention to the Appendix you would have realised that the early Radek wasn't a 'parasite' as slandered by the ICC. The resort to the forgiving Hebrew god seems like a retort to the allegorical 'just desserts' from scribes of 'liberal civilization', represented by Koch.

Finally,

But Camatte's writings provide ample evidence that he knows his Marx, and here he's mostly criticising Marxism, the integratory doctrine rooted in strands of Marx's ideas. That was the practice of the 2nd and 3rd Internationals. But maybe that's your Marxism, with a capital M? The context of Camatte's affirmation makes more sense with the rest of the extracts from Camatte's Against Domestication on the post by Wellclose Square. One can agree or disagree with Camatte's ideas, but they have a coherence and logic open to honest criticism. That is, in contrast to hunchy, ultra-compressed one-liners that can't deal with ideas. Criticism must engage with the subject matter, confront it in all its complexity, dissect the main categories and expose the incoherence and weaknesses of the opposing view. How can one-liners do this? I'm not suggesting you are dishonest. But rash opinionated hunches and dismissals don't contribute to a debate or a clarification of ideas.

Merely for the sake of sharing information, you should try it some time. I didn't say Richard L. Wood has the same meaning for parasitism as the ICC. I remarked that 'any old' (meaning, the average) political sociologist could use a notion of 'parasitism' to analyze political organizations, and I cited one example, namely of Wood, which I easily found using googlebooks. I said Wood uses the term without thereby contributing knowledge. That's different from dismissing any potential results from his work for the mere fact that he's a prof.

That's right the terms don't 'explain' their object, they 'create' their object in a psychological way ('parasitic mindset' and 'repressive consciousness'). Hence they do not explain anything and should be dropped. They should be dropped on that account, not for causing harm or for preventing harm. In that sense I'm indifferent to the purpose for which the terms are used.

So is Koch saying that Radek deserved his death or that Radek's death calls for revenge against Stalinism?

If only Camatte was criticizing that, instead he's criticizing the repressive consciousness, in the process of doing so showing no knowledge of Marxism.

Noa

I feel others like Red Marut and Wellclose Square have replied excellently, or at least in part, to most of your cryptic posts, including your recent one above. I will relate below only to the 'parasite' Radek, because in his life he expressed, to me, a dreadful fall in human values and hopes. However, for the ICC to have singled him out, as Bakunin, as a 'parasite' was grotesque and slanderous. Such calumnies didn't confront or deal with the enormity of what was happening in those years. Even now it's not fully assimilated. Relevant passages:

Yes, it seems that Koch is saying that Radek deserved to be kicked to death by 'the revolution's wretches', the bezprizornii. After all, these millions of orphans were created during the period that opened in 1914-17, so Radek partakes of the crimes that orphaned these working class and peasant children. This is a crime shared by most Bolsheviks after 1917. But Radek too became a wretched victim, as Stalinism wreaked paranoid revenge on its own apparatchiks and civil society. Did he 'deserve' such a retribution? No, I don't think anybody does. Also, I don't think that Koch meant that Radek's death calls for revenge against Stalinism. That would suggest that Koch identified with Radek, the zeks and the bezprizornii, and that's not true.

Still, a good question. Many Cold War apologists like Koch implicitly, or openly, supported Stalinism against Nazism in WW2, but turned against 'communism' after 1945. In 1939, Koch wouldn't have wanted Nemesis to make a premature move against the 'Father of the Soviet People'. This would have disturbed the great anti-fascist alliance brewing for 1941-45. The extermination of millions in the purges, including of Radek, was therefore well-deserved, opportune and ingenious at that time, as Koch and Vishinsky would have put it. Koch has a soft spot for the fierce and 'ingenious' Nemesis, a favourite and useful divinity of Western ideologists through the ages. The Cheka graduated from her school quite early on, attracting not only rootless and dysfunctional bezprizornii but educated and polished veterans of Polish and Russian internationalism.

The Mexica invented a similar god to Nemesis, Huitzilopochtli, who imbibed human blood 24/7. This thirsty and avid creature wasn't as sexy as Nemesis, in fact not at all if we compare their statues and images. Huitzi wasn't a god of revenge and envy, but no doubt he was used by Moctezuma and his necrophiliac priests like that, to instill terror on the subjects of the Aztec empire. Cortéz's conquistadores added their own Catholic trinity to the pantheon. Yet it seems that Nemesis, Huitzi and the law of value are the real holy trinity of human history.

In one of her writings against WW1, Luxemburg mourns the brutal and wanton spilling of human blood, and bizarrely mentions containers to save and place the precious liquid. That reaction wouldn't go down well with Nemesis (or Huitzi, who would have cursed for missing the Somme). It would have caused sarcastic mirth in Lenin. The point here, perhaps, is that as long as we don't transcend mass revenge and retribution urges, at one point or another there will be a longing for a benign divinity, call it a Hebrew god or whatever, who puts an end to these cycles of inhumanity. We also secretly know that it can only be us.

On the terms 'parasitism' and 'repressive consciousness' (in relation to 'rackets') Noa states

Right...

The last bit of your statement (in bold) is really an invitation to you to elaborate on why you think that is the case, or is the 'indifference' you've constantly asserted a central plank of your 'Marxism', to adjust a phrase from theoretical physics, a 'plank constant'?

Because in the extract Camatte equates Marxism with a concrete formula of the future. He does not say that's a gross misinterpretion of Marx, he makes the equation himself (thereby showing that he has the same Stalinist level of understanding of Marx as the opponents he is supposedly attacking according to mcgiver). He says this originated with Marxism, that is, from the start.

Yet another one-line dismissal from NRod thats asserts much without clarifying anything;

You speak as if there is an objective authority/fact you possess that proves your point - then please describe what makes your statement correct. Regardless of how much you dispute his interpretation of it, it is absurd to say Camatte "knows nothing about Marxism" (as shown by mciver). Unlike NRod, Camatte expressed his thoughts on Marxism at considerably greater length than one-liners of little substance or explanation. He at least gave a viewpoint rather than just an unsubstantiated judgement.

Despite claiming to be the definer and guardian of what Marxism really is, there's nothing in your contributions here showing any useful influence or application of Marxism's methods and insights as a means of analysis. You have expressed nothing but a defensive devotion and loyalty to a narrowly defined 'Marxism'.

This is wrong - according to NRod, to describe a phenomena - or some aspects - as part of its analysis becomes to "'create' the... object" and is apparently non-explanatory, so wrong; so how does one analyse and express a critique without defining one's object of critique so we know what's being discussed? One can criticise the accuracy of the description, but not the necessary describing.

NRod's comment is anyway self-contradictory - by his own logic, he above just created - by his own (inaccurate) description of his 'object of critique' - an invalid 'non-explanation of his object'. Or is it that any reference to psychological realities is offensive/threatening and so must be dismissed? As he sees description of psychological realities as 'creating' something seemingly out of thin air, perhaps a crude 2nd International-type materialism is at work here - if it can't be seen, touched, weighed, valued, measured it is dismissed as mere invention.

No, he says Marxism, not Marx - which can mean what developed after Marx;

Perhaps even this is seen as a blaspemy on the One True Church. Though it's no great ignorance to interpret Marx as having a deterministic, prescriptive element to him - that wouldn't show the total ignorance you claim. But for one who authoritively claims, as you repeatedly do, that others 'know nothing' about Marx - you show a strange reluctance to show what you think you know about Marx by backing up your easy dismissals and judgements with any substantial argument at all.

Do I really need to point out it would make more sense to say that believing him to be wrong about something doesn't discredit everything he ever said about Marx at any time? You might just as well say that because Marx, even in 1871 (and later), remained in one sense a parliamentarian;

- that this therefore 'says everything about Marx's understanding of capitalism'. And, by the same logic, does then the later development of Leninism as the dominant form of Marxism negate all of Marx?

And Camatte broke with Marxism before, iirc, the term primitivism was coined or its tendency formed - and, afaik, has never been involved with them. Neither do I think Camatte took the same theoretical or historical journey to arrive at whatever he may share with primmos. So I doubt he would call himself a primitivist or should be called so, even if his works are popular with some of them. But I wouldn't use that error to claim it 'says everything about your understanding of Camatte'. Such attitudes appear to seek to only discredit with dismissive labels so as to avoid dealing with the content of what offends.

I think that both of them are name calling. I believe that the ICC's thesis on parasitism offer nothing more than a theoretical accuse to call people names. It was written in the aftermath of a particular nasty split, and reflected that. To me the worst time to write a criticism of another group is just after you have split with them. Tempers are running high, and emotion can drive things as much as reasoned thinking. It would be far better if people decided to wait a while to allow themselves to cool down a little before writing these sort of things. Maybe waiting for six months before commenting on a split would be a good policy to adopt at the moment. I am not saying that there will never be times when it is necessary to explain a split immediatly, but they are not at the moment. I am sure that the massed ranks of the proletariat can wait a few months before they learnt why one small group of people has been left by an even smaller one.

Personally if I were to feel a need to insult somebody I would call them a 'cunt'. I feel it has about the same political insight as calling somebody a 'parasite', but at least has the advantage of being far more honest.

The same applies to 'rackets' though. Let's not pretend that this is some point full of political insight. It is the abuse that Camette threw at the ICP when he fell out with Bordiga, nothing more, nothing less.

Devrim