Reply to Gerry

Gerry has made some very interesting and challenging comments to An Australian Revolution. Because there are so many questions, I decided to create a post with the questions followed by my answers.

What exactly do you mean by revolution? Violent or non-violent stuggle? Democratic? What.

A revolution is simply a turning about. Instead of orientating our lives towards Capitalism with its emphasis on wealth accumulation, we orientate ourselves in a different direction with a different set of values.

A revolution does not have to involve physical violence, but, unfortunately, most do. We have to find creative ways of getting the ruling class to relinquish power peacefully.

From your other questions, I would understand that you mean a democratic revolution to be wining a parliamentary election. I mean democratic as in the great majority of people acting in unison to change society.

One of the great blinders to understanding what is going on, is the belief that the government controls the Australian economy. Every day, we are being told the opposite to this official myth. It is the Reserve Bank who sets interest rates. It is the head offices of companies that decide what investment to make and who to hire and fire. It is the bureaucracy who administers the laws and decides how the law is applied. It is the police who decides who gets arrested and whose crimes are overlooked. It is the courts who decides how the law is to interpreted. It is the banks who decide who gets a loan and who does not.

With the various Free Trade Agreements in place, foreign companies can set aside Australian law if they can prove that it discriminates against them by being harsher here than elsewhere.

And of course, the government must not upset the market.

If it's going to be democratic, how will the party get the numbers to get into power (wouldn't that require the mother of all grass-roots education campaigns?)

As usual, you are right on the mark. This will involve the most intensive and wide-reaching grass-roots education campaigns ever seen in Australia. We are going to have to convince 20 million Australians to convert Australia into a Communist country. (And this is going to be done by a political ideology that got 0.12% of the vote at the last federal election. So the odds are about 1000 to 1.)

This will have to done with a budget that is less than what Kerry Packer spends on lunch. And against a mass media that can employ the best minds in academia and in public life to counter whatever we can come up with.

At least, we have got it easier than the Worker's Communist Party of Iraq: they have to deal with the various terrorist organisations (Al-Qaeda, Baathists, US Army, etc.) and with a population worried about staying alive for at least another day. Yet, the WCPI are trying to do the same sort of education campaign in Iraq. They have strongly condemned the Iraqi insurgency for its violence and this has cost them political support among the Iraqis.

"there must a political party that has nearly all of the advanced conscious workers acting together" Who decides who is 'advanced'? Wouldn't this be a form of elitism?

'Advanced' is a relative term. It means that one's political knowledge and understanding is ahead of the general population.

The party members decide who is advanced or not. For one to join a Communist party, the branch membership has to be convinced of the applicant's knowledge and understanding is sufficiently advanced.

In some parties, there is a probationary period during which the probationary is sent to education classes and tested in various actions. Only by testing the applicant's knowledge and understanding, and seeing how the applicant behaves in certain situations can the branch members be certain that their vote on the application for membership is the correct one.

You have also highlighted a very great and real danger with the Leninist party model: that of elitism or vanguardism. This is when the party convinces itself that it knows best. It leads and the people must follow. The people usually respond by suggesting various orifices into which the collected works of Marx and Engels can be stowed.

Because of this danger, some Communist parties reject the Leninist model altogether saying that this collapse into elitism cannot be overcome at all.

To overcome this elitism, parties must stay connected with and be in the midst of the working class. This means educating, debating, and recruiting people. The party must be outward focused not a mob of self-obsessed yobbos.

"That is, the central leadership is elected by and responsible to the whole membership" But why would the great unwashed membership vote for 'advanced conscious workers'? Why wouldn't they vote for those who told them them most what they wanted to hear? (And being 'unadvanced', what they would want to hear would make the 'advanced' recoil in horror, no?)

The leadership of a party is not necessarily more advanced than the membership. The leadership should be the people best able to implement the policies and strategies decided on by the party membership. This is why, at party meetings, the policies and strategies for the party are voted on first, then the election for the leadership is held. Until one knows where one is going, one cannot choose the best guide to lead one there.

Also implict in your question is how does one deal with the party going in one direction when one believes the party should be going in another? Lenin showed the way by loyally implementing the party programme while arguing against it. (This was when he was a "minority of one" in the Communist Party). If a direction is wrong, it should be obvious when the expected results are not achieved. Then the party needs to learn the exact reasons for failure and use that knowledge and understanding to go into another direction.

How would dissent be dealt with?

In a democracy, one has the right to attempt to convince other people to change their minds. But also in a democracy, the majority rules. That is, once a decision is voted on, that decision should be loyally implemented to the best of one's ability even though one may disagree with it. But one can still campaign to get that decision changed in a new vote. No decision is irrevocable.

How would religions be dealt with?

Religious belief and practice are of personal concern only. The State has no right to decide what is or is not a religion. Organisations that claim to be religious should be treated no differently to those that have secular objectives.

In a democracy, people have the right to freely associate. If they want to join together to form a church, a mosque, a synagogue, or a temple, that is their business as long as they do not break the law.

The trouble with capitalism and communism is that they are mutually exclusive. IOW, you have to destroy one to create the other. So the country can't really yo-yo between the two till it makes up its mind. It's this or that. "Karate do" or "karate don't". No middle ground. So once they vote for communism and it's implemented, a lot of pain would ensue over a long time and if they ever wanted to go back to capitalism, a lot more pain would ensue over a long time. Who would take that risk and opt for so much pain?

Before 2000, I would have said that you were absolutely correct. However, the experience of the Argentinian and Venzuelan revolutions suggests that there can be long periods of dual power: a Communist state and a Capitalist state existing together within the same country. This is something we do not fully understand as yet.

The Argentinian experience suggests that the Capitalist State is slowly but surely regaining control. Whereas the Venezuelan experience suggests that the revolution is deepening through the education of the masses while the Capitalist class remains on the sidelines.

This is why the education process has to be thorough and wide-ranging. People have to be clear about what they are getting into.

As in Venezuela, the revolutionary process could be a drawn-out affair with small changes being made and people evaulating that change before deciding on the next change.

How will enough people in middle and upper management and the professions abandon their craving for wealth and glitzy pretentious lifestyles in order to make the communist dream work? Because without the talent at these levels the crap sets in as it did in China, USSR, etc, etc.

This is where the Russian Revolution went wrong. These people became the ruling caste within a socialist country. They were extremely jealous of their privileges.

The solution would be, IMHO, to convince enough of these people that they belong in the working class along with the labourers, drivers, machinists, etc. To replace those who do not join the working class, technical education will have to provided to train workers to take their places. This means the economy will suffer until they are replaced.