by Wayne Mon Nov 07, 2011 12:55

I am pretty much in agreement with this statementby the MAS comrades. It is not enoiugh to change the state as a structure but also to change how people relate to each other. And this will change in the course of popular struggle. It is through revolutionary struggle that people change themselves and make themselves capable of self-management. The main form of "pre-figurement" is the democratic popular organizations of struggle.

However, I am unclear about the line: "To organize a revolutionary society, we must have popular institutions that replace the necessary functions which the state and capital distorted and monopolized." I am all for community organizing and popular institutions. But we cannot expect to have alternatives to steel production ready to be put into place right after the revolution. We will have to take over the existing steel factories and reorganize them under workers anc community control.

But I agree with the basic idea of the statement, that a revolution is necessary and that counterinstitutions can be effective only in the context of a revolution.

by Scott Nappalos - Miami Autonomy & Solidarity Sun Nov 06, 2011 22:13 s.nappalos at gmail dot com

Kuhn brings up good points, and I'm not sure Wayne thinks this, but I'd oppose a purely structural account of the state. MAS' points of unity for example lays out a conception that tries to paint a coherent picture that goes beyond mere structure or mere relations.

http://miamiautonomyandsolidarity.wordpress.com/2009/05...orld/

"Abolition of the State
The state is an institution of minority class rule held through a monopoly of violence and centralized decision-making, which is reproduced as a social relationship throughout society. The modern state as we know it co-developed with capitalism in Western Europe and has spread to nearly everywhere across the globe, and in almost all instances sided with economic power against the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population. Today, the position of the state, both in terms of power and its participation in the market, creates divisions amongst the ruling class in competing for control. The ruling class and the state are therefore not identical.

The level of centralization both of power and wealth in the hands of the state makes any hope of change through working within the state only an illusion. History has been clear in showing that the state transforms rebels into masters or destroys those who try to defend the oppressed classes. Revolutionary change won’t come by changing who’s in power, only the eradication of hierarchy will achieve this.

We seek a social revolution that will overthrow the state and capitalism. Yet a society-wide transformation can’t happen overnight, since we have seen that the state is inside us too. Without an internal transformation, we will continue to reproduce the dominating and exploitative relations of the state and capital daily. It is only through the process of collective struggle that we can both draw out the potential for change and see the kernel of its realization.

To organize a revolutionary society, we must have popular institutions that replace the necessary functions which the state and capital distorted and monopolized. After defending ourselves in revolution and achieving greater stability, the re-organization of society for human needs rather than the profit-driven production of capitalism will increasingly become our task."

by Wayne Sat Aug 06, 2011 05:07

Gabriel Kuhn has written a response to my essay “Lndauer’s Fallacy,” at the PM Press website http://www.pmpress.org/content/article.php/201108042155...11248

Kuhn is the editor and translator of the recent book by and about Gustav Landauer’s political writings. So he, unlike me, is an expert on Landauer. He writes, “While some of Wayne's criticism touches on problematic aspects in Landauer's thought …Wayne jumps to a few conclusions that distort Landauer's beliefs and principles.” He gives me some leeway, noting that one version of the well-known Landauer quotation I cited was, unknown to me, inaccurate. “This [distortion], however, is only partly Wayne's fault…. The following remarks must therefore not necessarily be read as a criticism of Wayne….” He then gives a correct version of the quotation (not mentioning that I also quoted this version).

My little essay on Landauer’s “famous quotation” was not meant as an overview of Landauer’s politics nor of his life as a whole. It did refer to positive aspects of his thought and actions, and to other people’s positive assessments of him, but did not go into detail about these. Instead it focused on a single quotation which is frequently used by anarchists with a particular strategy. But first, to respond to Gabriel’s comments:

1) I did not cover many things about Landauer. This led to my essay giving a misleading impression of Landauer’s thought as simply “nonrevolutionary.” I should have made clear that he thought of himself as a revolutionary and wrote about “revolution.” However, his concept of “revolution” was rather mystical and (in my opinion, not Kuhn’s) unclear, as can be seen by the paragraph which Kuhn quotes.

2) Gabriel asks where I got the impression that Landauer counterposed the state as an institution (“a thing”) versus a “relationship.” Why, from the very quotation which I quoted and which Gabriel re-quotes. That is what it says.

3) Grabriel is unsure where I got the view of Landauer as having negative opinions about workers (although he himself notes “a certain cultural elitism” of Landauer’s). But I gave a set of unpleasant quotations and cited the sources.

4) Landauer is quoted as writing,” The entire system would vanish without a trace if the people began to constitute themselves as a people apart from the state." Surely this supports my interpretation of Landauer’s politics? The people withdraw themselves from the state, reorganize themselves into a community of communities, with only a minimal (at most) direct confrontation with the state, and the state will “vanish without a trace.” I reject this perspective.

As Gabriel states, this is a matter of “strategy.” I agree completely with Landauer’s vision of a socialist-anarchist society. But strategy is important. However, a revolutionary class-struggle perspective certainly includes building community organizations, clubs, study groups, theaters, childcare collectives, and cultural centers. This is part of a mass struggle strategy.

What my little essay did was to interpret Landauer’s “famous statement” as seemed appropriate to me. I connected this (nonrevolutionary) meaning with statements by Landauer about his strategy of building alternate institutions (collective villages). I noted the consistency of this with his negative statements about the working class, as they appeared in his book, For Socialism. And (the real object of my essay!), I connected this line of thought to present-day anarchists who advocate an alternate-institution strategy and oppose working toward a popular, working class, revolution. Which is why they like Landauer’s quotation. That is, I am not so much interested in Landauer as in those anarchists of today who interpret him in an antirevolutionary fashion.

by Wayne Sat Jul 30, 2011 04:42

To Duane this is a "great quote from Landauer." To me this quote is greatly muddled. Landauer seems to be denouncing revolutionary anarchists as elitists, as "tyrants," without stating why he thinks so.

But his real views come through when he denies that "anarchy is an affair of all of humanity" and then declares that "anarchy will never be a matter of the masses." Put this together with the vicious insults directed at the working class which I quote in my essay. The antidemocratic elitism of the nonrevolutionary wing of anarchism come through, unfortunately.

by Duane Fri Jul 29, 2011 16:31

I found this great quote from Landauer:

"However, this is year another crucial fallacy [on the part of the so-called revolutionary anarchists]: that one can -- or must -- bring anarchism to the world; that anarchy is an affair of all of humanity; that there will indeed be a day of judgment followed by a millennial era. Those who want 'to bring freedom to the world' -- which will always be THEIR idea of freedom -- are tyrants, not anarchists. Anarchy will never be a matter of the masses .... Anarchy is not a matter of the future; it is a matter of the present. ... The old opposition between destruction and construction begins to lose its meaning: what is at stake are new forms that have never been."

by Wayne, citing others Fri Jul 29, 2011 12:21

I reeived two comments on the essay, which I am repeating here (without names).

(1) I never read that quote as Landauer meaning that the state is *only* a relationship-- I always read it as an additional way of understanding institutions and hierarchies-- and I read it as an idea that is crucial and necessary one for people to visit if we ever want to live in better ways, sans the state. But that's just my reading-- perhaps I didn't read it in enough context.

(2) I had never thought of it as anti-revolutionary, but rather a critique of propaganda of the deed, Galleanisti, etc. But I can see how some people might use it to argue a conservative bent. I did not mean to put it forward in that light.

My response is this: Many people do read the quotation as nothing more than an assertion that anarchist-communism requires a different way of human beings working and living together, a different way of people relating to other people and to nature--not just a more efficient way of producing goods through centralized machinery, social and technological.

This would be a valid, even important, thought, and no doubt Landauer meant this ALSO. But he used this true, humanistic, concept to justify a nonrevolutionary orientation. He is explicit abut this, even within the quotation, and even more in other statements (such as I quote).

And nonrevolutionary anarchists use this quotation to justify their belief in a gradual, peaceful, step-by-sstep, alternate institutional, program--such as Uri Gorden, whose views I explore elsewhere (cited in the essay).

by Wayne Fri Jul 29, 2011 05:25

Manuel Baptista is correct in writing that today, "we can be inspired by Landauer, Marx, Proudhon, Kropotkin, etc.," while being aware of their strengths and weaknesses. He is also correct in noting that popular organizations, such as unions and community groups, should be as democratic and libertarian as possible, prefiguring a new society.

However, there is a difference between being a revolutionary who fights for reforms and being a reformist who think that gradual changes can peacefully lead into anarchism. This is a fundamental matter of strategy, how we think the struggle will lead to a new society. I completely disagree with Landauer's statement that “The state is not something which can be destroyed by a revolution." Yes it can and it must.

by Manuel Baptista Thu Jul 28, 2011 22:40

It is a good thing to imagine a society being run without what we all know as a «State». Be it whatever it is, be it institutions, with solid buildings (like tribunals, prisons, barracks, governement buildings, etc) or be it relationships.

It is very important for the class struggle, for the workers class, to run their own institutions in a democratic, non-hierarchical way, when they can perform this inner revolution. Then, the real social revolution is near, is arriving.

This hapens nowadays as many of our youth live in a «here and now classless, anarchistic dream»...
It is good and bad at the same time.
Everything has good and bad sides: Proudhon's gradualism is often a necessary attitude, even when our core theory remains attached to revolutionary anarchism.
The syndicalist praxis is «gradualist» class stuggle in «normal times». The «revolutionary» aspect of it can only be brought when people are being educated inside unions and other collectives not to rely anymore on the State (like a super-Mother or Father), but to their own strenght and to collective solidarity.

Still, we can be inspired by Landauer, Marx, Proudhon, Kropotkin, etc... No need to endorse their weaknesses!

We should take from these outstanding thinkers what is still worth today, and leave their practical and theoretical weaknesses to their time context ...