leadershipanddemocracy

for the last few weeks I've been talking about basically philosophical topics I'm now going to switch back to talking about politics specifically about politics from economics and the two videos I'm preparing now will be based on a talk I gave in Stockholm about eight years ago but updated slightly and I'm talking about ideas of leadership and democracy in the history of the socialist and communist movement and ideas of the transition to socialism and or what you would now call a political revolution as they've developed and how where we go from where we are now to the future we have to take into account that the marxist movement has been spectacularly unsuccessful in bringing about what it originally hoped which was the transition to socialism in developed capitalist countries it was very successful in doing that in less developed countries but has failed in the areas were expected to do best and this fundamentally requires us to think through why that is and what kind of strategy could be applied to deal with that situation so I'm gonna start off by looking at the ideas that were initially put forward in the Communist Manifesto about democracy in the manifesto if we said that the Communists don't form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties that they have no interest separate from and apart from those of the working class as a whole and don't setup any sectarian principles of their own by which to shape the proletarian movement now that obviously ceases to be the case in the twentieth century when they very definitely did set up separate parties opposed to other working-class parties and they had principles of their own with which they did attempt to shape the whole working class movement so that these general aims came to modify it as time went on people sometimes think that the concept of a vanguard or avant-garde party originated with the russian social democrats and lenin in the early years of the 20th century but you can see the vet the same idea is clearly being put forward right back at the very start where it says a calmness therefore on one hand practically the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country and that section which pushes forward all the others on the other hand theoretically they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march the conditions and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement now that summarises the idea of a vanguard and also summarizes quite well the position that communist parties did take up in countries like Britain Germany and Sweden in the period after the Second World War they attempted to base themselves on that position that they didn't set themselves up as a sectarian party against the exhibit the big social democrat parties but attempted to push them forward what then did the calmness set as their immediate aim back in the 1840s well their immediate aim was democracy it says the immediate aim in the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties the formation of the proletariat into a class the overthrow of bourgeois supremacy and the conquests of political power by the proletariat we've seen above that the first step in the revolution of the working class is to raise the protei to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy now this terms here raising the proletariat to the position of ruling class which prefigure terms which were later pop Erised by the Blancas of a workers dictatorship the idea that the working class will become the ruling class in society it's understood that at that point the parole Tara's not a class he had to be formed as a distinct class in society by the process of political struggle so that it is politics and political struggle that makes a mass of individuals act in a collective way for their common interest and therefore the formation of classes is not seen as an economic process it's primarily a political process which bases itself on economic preconditions the protet existed but was not formed into a class and it was the job of politics to form it into the class it must conquer political part must become the ruling class and this process of raising the weighing class to the position of ruling class is identified with the winning of democracy it's not seen as something opposed to democracy it's not a question of dictatorship as opposed to democracy the wain class becoming the ruling class was democracy what then did the authors of the Communist Manifesto mean by democracy well the language it uses is a language based on ancient political philosophy the word proletariat for example comes from ancient Rome the word democracy comes from ancient Greece today we see democracy as being very different from proletarian rule but a hundred years 160 years ago words had a different meaning to the upper classes of the day democracy and mob rule were the same thing what educated people thought about democracy was heavily influenced by their reading of the ancient Greek authors Aristotle had emphasized that democracy didn't mean majority rule instead it meant by the rule of the poor ruled by the artisans and those of mechanical occupations as he as it's but he even gives examples saying suppose there was a society with two rich people for every poor person and there the rich people ruled no one his right mind would call that a democracy because democracy means ruled by the poor not ruled by the rich and it's only circumstances by which the poor are everywhere many and the rich a few that causes people to confuse the two in fact it's arguable and latera I can't read ancient Greek but people can tell me that the word demos and the Latin word proles has very similar common connotations in those days so democracy and proletarian rule actually amount to Latin and Greek equivalents of one another okay let's move on from the early 19th century to the late 19th century and the communist party in Germany had been suppressed in the 1850s and when a socialist movement rose up to replace the earlier communist movement it was social democracy and this then became the orthodoxy of the the the left movement in in Europe now let's look at its founding program the air foot program see what that said about democracy I'm giving fights from the air foot program it calls for direct legislation through the people by means of the rights of proposal and rejection self-determination and self-government to the people in realm state province and parish election of magistrates by the people with responsibility to the people annual voting of taxes education of all to pay our arms militia in the places standing army decision by popular representatives and questions of war on place settlement of all international disputes by arbitration note this is extremely radical and it involves direct participate democracy something that later social democracy forgot it does call for the election of magistrates it doesn't call for election of officers and why do I mention that because in ancient democracies decisions were taken by a direct popular vote and elections were restricted to the election of military commanders now if we look at the measures that they're demanding they're very few of those have actually been won in general existing Republic's don't have direct legislation by the people in so far as they have election of magistrates by the people you have some of that in countries like the United States but not all officials are elected the people don't get to annually vote on taxes there is some provision to have decisions of by popular representatives on questions of one piece in theory that is the case in the United States and practice it isn't the United States has in principle the idea of a popular militia but it's not a popular militia in the place of the standing army it's a long side the standing army and it is not effective and under democratic popular control nowadays people tend to think of Lenin and the russian social democrats as being to the left of the german social democrats but if you actually look at their program before the first world war it's arguably less radical and somewhat to the right the 1903 RS DLP program is obviously stylistically modeled on the air foot program but it doesn't have the radical commitment to direct legislation by the people in direct voting of taxes their objectives were limited to what they called a democratic republic with a a legislative assembly consisting of representatives of the people in a single chamber a unicameral legislature with elected by universal equal and direct suffrage of all citizens men and women over the age of twenty secret ballot the right of every voter to be elected buying your parliaments salaries to be paid by paid to the people's representatives now is very questionable whether a constitution of the sort that the russian social democrats were agitating for really was democratic in the sense used by aristotle and Marx it is describing the kind of structure that all the European states adopted after the Second World War or in the case of places like Greece and and Spain not until the 1970s but it is a state in which you have a legislature that is elected and this is seen as being the representatives of the people that is not the same thing as the people themselves voting on things and we know that in practice these legislators are always dominated by the moneyed interest in principle they claim to be representing the people in general but in practice they represent overwhelmingly the wealthy we now go on to the war in the Russian Revolution and at this point the russian social democrats radicalize their position they now give more emphasis to the police in the standing army being abolished officials are not only going to be elected but also subject to recall their only they'll be paid but only paid an average wage and parliamentary institutions are gradually going to be replaced by soviets which act as both legislative and executive bodies so saying that you would not have a separate executive three key points are that parliamentary representation will be replaced by soviet representation representatives subject to recall workers paid more than no more than the average wage and if you ask any or 90 percent of marxist nowadays what the Marxist principles of democracy are they would summarize it than this they would summarize it in these demands the recall principle was derived from the commune and was incorporated in the constitution of the USSR and for that matter it was also incorporated into the constitution of several of the states in the USA like arizona and it in recent years it has gained some purchase at least verbally from existing political parties for instance in the 200 and 2010 election in the UK all the main parties said they're in favor of introducing the right of recall to the UK Constitution they didn't actually do it but they said they are in favor of it and I don't think if they had done it it would have made any difference it's mainly abuse in dealing with manifest corruption and perhaps for dealing with manifestly broken election prayer premises promises but it it's an institution with a lot of inertia it requires a lot of constituents to sign a demand for recall and then requires a ballot and in constitutions where it exists whether it's a Soviet Union or for that matter in China were which where they have the right to it or in American States it's almost never used there's no evidence that this is a particularly effective mechanism the next innovation of the 1917 RS DLP program was the proposal that parliamentary government be replaced by Soviet government now Soviets or councils our bodies that are spontaneously thrown up in revolutions against autocracies we've seen them come about in Paris in 1871 in Petrograd in 1917 or 1905 as well for that matter Vera's in Munich in in 1919 there were bare roads in Lisbon in 1975 under certain circumstances the formation of these councils can lead to a revolutionary situation but they can only do that if the army and navy mutiny and come under the command of these new councils that didn't happen in Paris at night in 1871 Otto only happened locally within Paris himself didn't happen in Munich in 1919 it didn't happen when similar councils were formed in the north of Italy in 1919 1920 so you not only need councils but you need a mutiny of the Armed Forces such that the members of the Armed Forces join the councils and it becomes possible for these councils to give orders to military units and they're only effective at all if determined insurrectionists lead them the relative success for a few months in Paris in 1871 was due to the fact that the Blanc East played a leading moral net the success of the Russian Revolution in 1970 is because the lenders played a leading role in it in general these councils don't necessarily act decisively in practice these councils are only able to be successful to the extent that they lead not to mass democracy but to the formation of a revolutionary aristocracy now you can try the following experiment if you take a polystyrene foam polystyrene cup fill it with form with cold water and place it in microwave in a microwave turn the oven on for maybe about 60 seconds and then dip in a teaspoon of instant coffee what will happen is that suddenly the cup will boil over as the instant coffee hits it the microwave super heats the water to just above a hundred degrees the entry of the coffee granules into the water nucleates the formation of bubbles of steam and the whole mass bubbles over in a phase change revolutions involve a similar phase changed external events for example in 1917 the privation of war raised the emotional energy of the population to superheat it then some minor event causes a sudden and terminer out pressed all the stored emotional inanimate Chi is then put work breaking down the old bones of B Avia they taking down the old behavior patterns so the processes at once deterministic and chaotic you have a deterministic phase in that pressure has to build up there has to be stress built up whether it's by war privation what-have-you that slowly builds up but the point at which it bursts over is unpredictable and chaotic and its outcome is undeterminable now a social group any large group of people can only act coherently in a chaotic situation if it has some coordinating mechanism there's an old saying from the first vodka that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy that was evident in the first world war each of the belligerent powers had plans for invading one another and within days those powers those plans have broken down and similarly no political party that follows a single fixed program can succeed in chaos you have a program of what you're going to do and in a chaotic situation it just doesn't fit the bones being succeeded because they were quickly able to come up with concrete economic problems to the concrete economic measures for the problems that people faced these are summarized in in Lenin's pamphlet the impending catastrophe and how to combat it the Bolshevik leadership understood something what took the Imperial general staffs for years to learn that if you had to succeed in a turbulent situation you need initiative and flexibility you cannot do this by sticking to a fixed plan in Russia in 1917 you had a perfect conjunction of circumstances you had what amounted to a workers general staff who had the skill and initiative to plot a course of action and you also had the formation of a structure which allowed this small General Staff to command large armies or large forces of people and this was due to the hierarchical character of the Soviet system of delegates now on one hand Soviet or Bolshevik leadership was essential for the Soviets to take power and on the other hand the Soviet constitutional structure was uniquely suited to leadership by a revolutionary aristocracy like the Bolshevik Party now suppose consider this diagram here each circle represents a thousand people several thousand people here elect people to local Soviets the local Soviets then elect delegates to the all-russian Congress of Soviets at the bottom you've got millions of people the all-russian Congress has actually thousands of members but a Council of thousands of members can't actually be what the Bolsheviks claimed a combined legislative and executive committee it has to then appoint a smaller body a Central Executive Committee 200 people on that but even that is too large it can't practically take decisions so that then appoints delegates to the council for the of People's Commissar only 17 people so you have here an inverted command structure at least it's supposed to be an inverted command structure a structure that's supposed to feed information upwards but in practice what it does it selects people upwards but provides an excellent mechanism by which decisions taken at the top level can be multiplied down through the hierarchy and produce large effects suppose a member of the Russian social democratic Labor Party was 50 times more likely to be nominated and four times more likely to be elected if nominated than the random non party citizen because random people who are not in any party are less likely to put themselves forward for election and since they're not standing on a platform of a known party are less likely to be elected that will give a two hundred fold over representation of the party in the local Soviets if the RS DLP made up 1,000 of the Russian population perhaps plausible they would already get 20% of the local soffits and each level up the election process your chances of nomination your chances of election are boosted by being a member of and representative of a political party the indirect election system amplifies any inequalities of votes at a lower level and you end up or you ended up with total domination of the Council of commissar Berea the rsd LP this sort of total domination was bound to occur you were bound to get total domination by one party or another it might have been the socialist revolutionaries instead of the Bolsheviks more toff might have become the person everyone knew about run Lenin but the structure of the system was such that one party was going to dominate so you start off with a system of Soviet democracy you then quickly form a Bolshevik aristocracy due to the concentrating effects of the Soviet indirect system of election from then they later period of the 19 late 1920s maybe through - they build a Christian few can say you have a revolutionary monarchy revolutionary tyranny this then degenerate into a bureaucratic oligarchy from the 1960s to the 1990s and then into a plutocratic oligarchy which now rules in Russia so why - so many revolutionary Republic's become monarchies we've said why did the Soviet system lead to revolution aristocracy that was a net method of election but why do you end up with a strongman why do you have Cromwell Napoleon Stalin Mao Kim il-sung Castro for that matter from the per beam standpoint only a strong man with dictatorial power can hope to advance their interests against a powerfully entrenched upper class so that's one of the reasons for the appeal of a Caesar for example if there are external enemies mobilization for defense favors the development of a supreme national commander and again you see that with Napoleon Castro or Kim il-sung and finally states with cabinet's of Ministers or commissar require someone who's a prime minister of first secretary to pay rate Dec locks when powerful ministers aren't you so any system based on a cabinet or Council of people's commissars ends up with one of them being dominant you know all these factors played their role as the USR went into the Stalin monarchy by a monarchy I'm not meaning hereditary monarchy I'm just meaning monarchy in the sense of rule or decision taking by one person or one person having a preeminent role in decision taking the given that you have a revolutionary Ariston aristocracy after 1918 you have a cabinet government populated by able determined and intelligent people the disputes and alliances arose which needed the stabilization which could only come about by the rise of a single leader then there was an external threat the country was under constant threat of invasion and the need to mobilize the economy for defense again favors a single leader you see that this still in Korea for example the that and the need to broaden physical support for the Communist Party in an agricultural country led to the policy of extraordinary rapid industrialization and we see now in Russia the widespread for being nostalgia for Stalin we see a nostalgia for a strong leader who can take on the oligarchs so in my next talk I'll be looking at given that background where do we go from there

Channel: Paul Cockshott

Views: 2,849

Rating: 4.8536587 out of 5

Keywords: Democracy, Communism, Bolshevism

Id: 98lvNhNfse4

Length: 34min 11sec (2051 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 28 2018