<nettime> The demands of the Paris proletariat are utopian nonsense, to which an end must be put.

[Dmytri Kleiner via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

~~@ "The bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe can be followed only by a bourgeois republic; that is to say, whereas a limited section of the bourgeoisie ruled in the name of the king, the whole of the bourgeoisie will now rule in the name of the people." @~~

Some may recal this passage, it's one of my favourites from Marx, it's a very concise definition of the Bourgeois Republic, the rule is by the Bourgeoisie in the name of people, not on behalf of the people. It is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

In order to evaluate forms of action, we need to undestand our affordances. The democratic provisions of bourgeois democracy does grant some affordances that we can employ to improve people's lives. This is a core idea of a "minimal program" -- the rejection of which by certain French Marxist caused Marx to famously declare "if that is Marxism, I'm not a Marxist."

I've tied this elsewhere to Lenin's idea of the "Light and Air of the proletariate," not all efforts to work for change within the current order are "legal Marxism" or "opportunitism" or "utopian."

However, affordances errors can be fatal.

~~@ "The demands of the Paris proletariat are utopian nonsense, to which an end must be put. To this declaration of the Constituent National Assembly the Paris proletariat replied with the June insurrection, the most colossal event in the history of European civil wars. The bourgeois republic triumphed. On its side stood the aristocracy of finance, the industrial bourgeoisie, the middle class, the petty bourgeois, the army, the lumpen proletariat organized as the Mobile Guard, the intellectual lights, the clergy, and the rural population. On the side of the Paris proletariat stood none but itself. More than three thousand insurgents were butchered after the victory, and fifteen thousand were deported without trial." @~~

The workers believed the republic was their own, they made up the forces that braught it about, they where entitled to their demands! However, reality is that the bourgeois republic served bourgeois consensus.

This has not changed. Bourgeois "democracy" is a mechanism to maintain bourgeois power, not to provide power to the people. "Parties" are PR firms with a political character. They do not represent the people, they sell consent to the bourgeois, elected officials do not drive policy, they sell it. Policy is determined by elite bourgeois consensus. By the billionaires, if you will.

Some elected officials are somewhat involved in policy making, if they have a background in powerful institutions, some are purely Beeblebroxian, there "not to wield power but to draw attention away from it" (Engels, Anti-Beeblebrox)

~~@ "With this defeat the proletariat passes into the background on the revolutionary stage. It attempts to press forward again on every occasion, as soon as the movement appears to make a fresh start, but with ever decreased expenditure of strength and always slighter results. As soon as one of the social strata above it gets into revolutionary ferment, the proletariat enters into an alliance with it and so shares all the defeats that the different parties suffer, one after another." @~~

Effective action requires that we not only understand the afforances present, but also have a realistic view of where our alliances are. The representives of various bourgeois strata may time and again find common cause with us, and even more often, seek to recruit us to their cause. There will always be characters about demanding "action." Demanding that take up these "opportunities" and dismissing radical concerns with barbs about "purity" or drivel like "perfect is the enemy of good," pitching some lesser-evilism or another.

And as this "action" inevetibly fails, the situation becomes worse, cycle after cycle, and rather than learn from these failures, cry loader, shriller, that we must take up the offer of the bourgeois strata pandering to their interest, urgently! "Now is not the time!" is the insignia on their banner flown in the face of radical voices.

--@ "The more important leaders of the proletariat in the Assembly and in the press successively fall victim to the courts, and ever more equivocal figures come to head it. In part it throws itself into doctrinaire experiments, exchange banks and workers’ associations, hence into a movement in which it renounces the revolutionizing of the old world by means of the latter’s own great, combined resources, and seeks, rather, to achieve its salvation behind society’s back, in private fashion, within its limited conditions of existence, and hence necessarily suffers shipwreck" @~~

Others, seek to escape poltiics completely, "prefiguring" utopia behind the back of society, while workers own organizations and institutions are necessary, these also have limited affordances.

What elections and worker's associations offer are forms of struggle over the terms of which the product of labour is handed over to the bourgeoisie. These are tools to be used, but as Lorde cautioned, they will not dismantle the master's house.

So, as Lenin asked ages ago, Where To Begin? What Is To Be Done?

Now, like then, it starts with buildng the capacity for mass action.

~~@ "It seems to be unable either to rediscover revolutionary greatness in itself or to win new energy from the connections newly entered into, until all classes with which it contended in June themselves lie prostrate beside it. But at least it succumbs with the honors of the great, world-historic struggle; not only France, but all Europe trembles at the June earthquake, while the ensuing defeats of the upper classes are so cheaply bought that they require barefaced exaggeration by the victorious party to be able to pass for events at all, and become the more ignominious the further the defeated party is removed from the proletarian party." @~~

How to we build the capacity for mass action?

Are we able to have this discussion?

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