In light of the country's political stalemate, a Belgian senator has proposed that women withhold sex until a government is formed. After almost eight months of frutiless negotiations and deadlock since elections took place, "the call is let's go for a sex strike until we have a government," said socialist senator Marleen Temmerman.

"It's not meant to be serious... It's a good joke," Temmerman said.

Temmerman took her inspiration from action in Kenya two years ago, where thousands of women vowed abstinence to protest against their country's bickering leadership failing to get a government off the ground.

A government was eventually formed but even Temmerman acknowledged that the impact of the strike was never scientifically proven.

For weeks now, Belgians have increasingly been searching for ways to goad the representatives of the six million Dutch-speaking Flemings and the 4.5 million Francophones into finally forming an administration.

Earlier this year tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Brussels in support of national unity and to demand that the rival political groupings finally agree on a government.

Public unease had been simmering for weeks, catching the imagination of Francophone actor Benoit Poelvoorde, who called on all Belgian men not to shave until the country created a new administration.

Belgium draws closer to the world record of 289 days without a government, set by Iraq in 2009. The low country currently stands at 242 days

Comrades

The conclusion is clear.

We must engage in as much sex as possible in order to prevent governments been formed.

Sex against capitalism.

The very style of dialectical theory is a scandal and abomination to the prevailing standards of language and to the sensibilities molded by those standards, because while it makes concrete use of existing concepts it simultaneously recognises their fluidity and their inevitable destruction

Everything depends on working people breaking from the Labour Party and trade unions and building new democratic organisations of working class struggle

Quote from the Socialist Equality Party UK.

As far as I can see (and I asked over and over), the SEP has now moved much closer to us on this vital issue.

If anything(as far as I can see) they have a more negative view of the unions than us.

Despite their Trotskyist heritage, I wonder if this organisation could be suitable for study, contact etc as I think their trajectory is positive .

However, in the past I have contacted them via e mail without response.

The CWO says it will work with other genuinely working class organisations.

But what are the differences we can accept?

Very possibly the SEP could share

only two forms of organisation - Party and councils

socialism or barbarism, no third way

No war but class war (this I am unsure about, seems a weakness of Trotskyist outfits, support the lesser evil etc-maybe it would make a good starting point to any contact).

Soviet power not party dictatorship.

Vague at the moment., but something I hope to develop.

Of the 7 points mentioned by Cleishbotham, I would say that there is room for debate on the point

Acceptance of the October Revolution as proletarian.

There is a valid point that the Bolsheviks violated soviet principles with the establishment of sovnarkom.

Hence for those who would absolutely insist that "proletarian" could only mean soviet power, there is a valid foundation for criticising the 1917 experience.

Below is a piece from Mattick who I consider goes well beyond a measured critique of 1917, but may interest someone.

I am not absolutely sure about

• "An orientation towards the organisation of revolutionaries recognising Marxist doctrine and methodology as proletarian science."

Is there such a thing as proletarian science?

Paul Mattick 1938

Was the Bolshevik Revolution a Failure?

A Symposium

Source: The Modern Quarterly, Fall 1938, pp. 16-20.

Transcribed: by Thomas Schmidt

Proofed: by Jonas Holmgren

The Questions

• Did the Bolshevik Revolution achieve its proletarian objectives?
• Is the dictatorship of the proletariat consonant with Party Dictatorship?
• Can a proletarian State arise on the basis of the wage system, managed by a Party-State? What constitutes the abolition of capitalism?
• Does Lenin’s thesis that in the imperialist epoch the proletariat alone can lead a revolution to complete the “Bourgeois task” claim validity in view of the course pursued by Cardenas in Mexico, Kemal Pacha in Turkey, etc.?
• Viewed in retrospect, did the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks retard the World Proletarian Revolution?

I.

I deny the assumption of the first question that the Bolshevik Revolution had proletarian aims. The proletarian character of the Russian Revolution is only apparent. It is true that the revolutionary workers were striving for a vaguely conceived sort of socialism, but in every bourgeois revolution in which workers participated, proletarian objectives were evident.

The ideas and slogans connected with proletarian objectives, and even actual struggles and forms of organization peculiar to the independent proletarian class movement, are not enough to give the Russian Revolution a proletarian character. Certainly many workers believed that the Bolshevik Revolution would end in socialism, however, the illusions of the workers cannot replace the necessary action to attain proletarian objectives. Socialism as a slogan, as an ideal, still fits perfectly in an otherwise bourgeois revolution and society. Proletarian objectives, first of all, must incorporate the abolition of the proletarian class through the abolition of all class relations.

The Bolshevik Revolution, however, aspired to the development of modern industry and of a modern proletariat, a fact which comes clearly to light in the bolshevistic concept of “socialism,” which still contains wage labor and capital production, and secures those relations through the division of society into rulers and ruled. That the Russian Revolution first of all was a peasant revolution cannot be denied; that these peasants, striving for land and property, had no proletarian objectives is obvious. In so far as the Bolshevik Revolution found support by the peasants and in turn supported them, no proletarian objectives were involved. For this reason the Bolsheviks regarded their early peasant policy as an unavoidable concession to the backwardness of Russian conditions. The later collectivization drive in agriculture illustrates how earnestly the Bolsheviks agreed with Western Socialism that the distribution of land to the peasants is no socialistic goal. However, the collectivization of agriculture, and the transformation of independent peasants into wage workers, is still no proletarian objective, but a bourgeois desire of long standing and has little chance of being realized without radical and risky changes in the socio-economic set up.

So far the making of wage workers was always considered the task of capitalism; by making this task their own, the Bolsheviks fulfilled capitalistic objectives. It is true that within the whole revolutionary situation in Russia there were also forces which fought for outspoken proletarian objectives. They were achieved, here and there, through the expropriation of factories and other forms of property by the Soviets. They were lost again as soon as the Bolshevik State arose which supplanted the power of the Soviets with that of the Bolshevik Party.

It is often asked how it is possible that power won by the workers by way of revolution may be lost again without a counter-revolution. The latter here is conceived as a return of the old authorities, but counter-revolutionary actions are not confined to old authorities; new officials can engage in them just as well, or even better. The counter-revolution against the state-capitalistic intent of the Russian Revolution was defeated by the Russian masses following the directives of the Bolsheviks. The counter-revolution against the proletarian objectives expressed within this revolution was triumphant with the success of Bolshevism, which transformed private property into state property, and continued the exploitation of the workers on state-capitalistic terms.

Not without opposition and struggle were the Soviets reduced to a mere instrument of the Bolsheviks’ rule over the whole of society. Groups of workers in Western Europe as well as in Russia recognized quite early the real character of the Bolshevik Revolution. Others, arising in opposition to the Stalin machines believe even today that the latter is a perversion of Bolshevism, and that the original Leninism intended something else than what exists in Russia. This, however, is not true. The Russia of today represents the essential aspirations of the early Bolsheviks before and after the October Revolution. That the Bolsheviks carried through a bourgeois revolution of which the bourgeoisie was no longer capable, was stated many times by Lenin himself. The fact that this revolution, essentially bourgeois in its tasks, made use of a Marxian terminology, gave rise to the illusion that its socialistic trends were strong enough to alter fundamentally its original character. However, all that happened was that the Bolsheviks were not only forced or willing to fulfill the functions of the bourgeoisie, but by this process they became the new ruling and exploiting class.

II.

The dictatorship of the party cannot be consonant with the dictatorship of the proletariat. Either the proletariat rules or is ruled. The party is only a small group in society; it is not the entire proletariat; it rules as a minority and is an expression of the conditions of exploitation. By the very conditions that make it necessary, it is impelled to rule in its own interests—that is, reproduce continually the conditions of the dictatorship over the proletariat—until the proletariat finally ends the rule of all minorities by destroying the bases of exploitation, which are wage labor and the state.

III.

The state always and invariably represents domination over the proletariat. It is the unmistakable badge of the exploiting society. A “socialism” that is realized by the state always includes the continuation of class relations, inequalities of income, money and market laws, and other forms of modern exploitation. Like any other contradiction in terms, a “proletarian state” is quite inconceivable. It is possible to conceive, however, the temporary and direct execution of state functions by the armed proletariat—the actual revolution to the end of securing the development of socialism, or the association of free and equal producers and consumers.

IV.

The Bolshevik Revolution was not led by the proletariat but by the middle class. The bourgeoisie of that country was extremely weak, and the intelligentsia and all the “progressive” forces struggling against reaction could obtain support neither from them nor from the already reactionary bourgeoisie of western Europe. Only in the workers’ movement could it find a usable revolutionary ideology, and only with the workers’ help, together with the agricultural revolutionary necessities, could the intelligentsia hope to change Russia into a modern state.

In Turkey and Mexico, as well, it is not the proletariat who leads, but the middle-class, who make use of the proletariat for their own ends. Important layers of the middle class, no longer able to secure or elevate their economic positions within the old-style capitalism, try to secure their further existence as non-workers by political means, by elevating themselves into ruling positions, to continue to participate in the exploitation of labor—naturally in the “interest of labor.”

The state has always played an important part in the development of capitalism. Its role increased in importance with the relative stagnation in capital expansion. A whole revolution was necessary for Russia to secure by political means what it could reach no longer by economic warfare: the complete centralization of all possible power in the hands of the dictatorial state, as the necessary prerequisite for a swift development of modern industry in Russia, to save the country from becoming a colony of one or more of the imperialistic nations, and to end the misery resulting from the backwardness of the country. The Bolshevist policy, aspiring to a state capitalist system, was best suited to save Russia from semi-colonial conditions, and to elevate it as a power among the other world powers. Imperialism as a hindrance to the development of the backward countries brought forth the modern nationalistic movements to end imperialistic oppression.

To build today successfully a modern state capable of maintaining its independence, the slow process in which private property expands is useless; instead, the highest concentration of all capital resources is needed which necessitates a radical onslaught on those interests defending the backward state of affairs. In order to bring results, the struggle for national liberation had to take on revolutionary forms. This necessity determines the developmental trends in other countries like Turkey and Mexico, also in countries trying a come-back as an imperialistic force, like Germany.

Other countries did not go as far as Russia in this concentration process with political means, for reasons of different internal and external conditions. It was, for instance, relatively easier for Russia, to challenge the imperialistic nations than it is for Turkey or Mexico. However, state capitalism expresses an economic weakness within the countries employing it, as well as an existing weakness of world capitalism, which loses control over the backward countries, as this control can no longer be secured economically. Economic warfare no longer suffices; political warfare, the open brutal slaughter, becomes the only possibility for coping with the economic stagnation which strangles the capitalistic world. Under such conditions the power of the state increases continuously. The real rulers of society are no longer recognizable by their private money bags, but by their position within the state apparatus.

Russian state capitalism has become the example for other nations as indicated in the rise of fascism and the growth of governmental control in all countries. However, this trend is no sign of “progress,” as many people believe. It does not correspond to a “higher stage” of capitalism, but indicates the decline of world capitalism. The trend toward bolshevization and fascization is only the political expression of the stagnation and decline of the capitalist system; it is barbarism.

V.

The world-revolutionary propaganda of the Bolsheviks in the first year of the revolution is often taken as an assurance of the proletarian character of Bolshevism. However, this “internationalism” at no time aspired to more than to secure the Bolshevik Revolution, to help the Bolshevik Party to remain in power.

As soon as the Bolsheviks recognized that the proletariat was too weak to establish state capitalistic systems favorable to Russia in other countries, and also that the bourgeoisie was no longer willing to risk anything in a struggle against state capitalist Russia, that is, about 1920, the Bolsheviks ceased to support revolutionary movements in other countries and instead prepared for a peaceful side by side existence with the other capitalistic systems. No more than Stalin today, were Lenin and Trotsky interested in helping the world revolution to reach proletarian objectives. The decline of the revolutionary movement in the world, and the consolidation of the power of capital now also served the needs of Bolshevik Russia.

Still, it cannot be said that the Bolshevik Revolution retarded the world revolution. If attempts toward the latter failed, this failure was quite independent of the Bolshevik policies, or the policies of any other minority group for that matter, and was due only to the still enormous power and vitality of world capitalism. The Bolsheviks can be blamed only, if at all, for hindering the proletariat from drawing the necessary lessons on its first great defeat after the last war, and for destroying the first attempts to create a real revolutionary labor movement in conformity with the necessities of today.

How does the United Front from below differ from the TROTSKY version?

Again Iam looking for possible insurmountable differences.

... according to the classical theory of the united front, the purpose of the front must not be propaganda, electoral campaigning or even peaceful demonstrations.  Rather, the united front must be organised in order to deliver the united actionof the workers.  Actionmeans strikes and physical, potentially violent, perhaps armed, mobilisations.  Actiondoes not mean conferences, and implies no organisational form except those necessary to directly organise physical class struggle action at a grassroots level.[19] Since this will be a surprise to most SWP members let us prove that these were the conditions under which Trotsky advocated the united front.In 1922, Trotsky saw the point of the united front as “the struggle of the proletariat for its daily bread”, and emphasises the importance of winning economic demands through union action.[20] A decade later, with the threat of fascism rising in Germany, the proposals he makes are no less immediate, no less physical:“it is precisely in the sphere of propaganda that a bloc is out of the question. . . . no common publications, banners, placards! March separately, but strike together!Agree only how to strike, whom to strike, and when to strike!  . . . The program of action must be strictly practical, strictly objective, to the point . . .

As set out above, it sounds acceptable, even if subsequent practice of the united front has gone beyond this framework.

AFAIK the ICT does not rule out the united front.

I was looking for a clarification of "the united front from below'' and how it differed from the Trotsky version sketched above.

As for pointless violence, the fascist threat is very real, and no doubt we would be amongst their targets. The united front is a way for workers to defend themselves.

The second link did not work, it took me to links about nuclear powerr....

Given that here in the UK we have a little fascist/antifascist activity, I'll translate the first link , maybe into English and Spanish just be sure to increase my parrty pension...

• Thanks Mic for posting those two links, unfortunately since I can't read Italian I'm going to use Google Translate to try and read them. I am glad Steve has raised this question; it is an interesting and important discussion to have. It is something I have investigated over the recent past as well; as Cleishbotham knows from discussions we have had previously. In order to try and go some way to answering Steve question 'how does the united front from below differ from the Trotsky version?’. It is necessary to look at the context in which it originated. It was a strategy/tactic (depending on who you talk to) borne out of desperation of Russia's isolation after the failure of world revolution in Western Europe. It was devised by the Comintern to try to break this isolation by creating mass parties in Western Europe via opportunism - i.e. absorption of layers from social democracy who weren’t won to the communist programme. It is also worth remembering that it was part of a series of opportunist inventions such as the ‘Entryist’ strategy-tactic and the ‘Workers Government’ formulation, which amounts to the installation of a bourgeois government. Which in subsequent theorisation are almost invariably glossed over and divorced from the historical experience of their application. Which is why contemporary advocates of it reference Trotsky’s writings on the rise of fascism in Germany, which is meant to be a powerful example of where it could have been applied. But this in my view anyway, just demonstrates their idealism that fascism could have been stopped if socialist and communist workers had united. Leaving aside the bloodshed that occurred only a decade previously, unity with the organisation of social democracy necessarily means limiting us to a struggle within the confines of capitalism. So all the talk of freedom to criticise and agitate is meaningless. What would the common goal to unite around be? There isn’t one, if you think that there can’t be a separation between our immediate struggles and the struggle for communism. To echo what others were saying, the necessary separation between communists and bourgeois left/left-wing of capital emerges. The left takes its starting point as the ‘raising of consciousness’ with its package of tricks devised for this purpose. Whereas we start from the real movement of the working class against the conditions of our exploitation, requiring us to organise independently of the bourgeoisie in order to assert our needs against those of capital. Therefore the ‘consciousness tricks’ that the left specialises in have the effect of sacrificing working class independence, whereby a necessary result is that they reinforce the rule of capital. As far as the ‘united front from below’ formulation goes – in substance I agree with it but I have been confronted before with people equating it to Stalin’s Third Period ‘red united front from below’. The important point for us is to move beyond mere propaganda groups and establish and deepen working class political organisation(s) that are a real factor in working class life. Obviously there is a pressing need for working class unity and solidarity in the face of all the attacks - the bosses’ austerity programmes and the attacks on marginalised sectors of the working class by the capitalist state mostly and to a more limited extent by reactionaries. But this must be done on a class basis and with the clear perspective that it is the system itself that is the root cause. Not saying any of the contributions have suggested anything otherwise.

J wrote

I do not think the proletarian nature of the October Revolution is up for question.

I am willing to accept both a considerable part of the Russian working class and the Bolsheviks had the intention to carry out a proletarian revolution by the establishment of a revolutionary proletarian dictatorship.

However the fact remains, and it seems to be a major one, that he direction pursued was flawed.

I think this goes beyond word play to the heart of the issue of proletarian self liberation.

If Irecall correctly, the cwo at the internatinal conferences of left communist groups clearly told the ICC that the task of the revolutionary party was to weild state power, however please correct me if I am wrong, nor am I saying this is a current position, I am simply pointing out the longevity of the concept of a special ruling body as opposed to the council authority. A concept which I consider carries a lot of weight to this day.

This is why I consider it valid to question the proletarian nature of 1917,

As Marx said

Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.

Having said all that, I do not think there is a better explanation than the one set out in the ICT pamphlet "Class consciousness and Revolutionary Organisation".

what I could possibly comment on is the fact (and I am recalling from memory of reading Lenin some years ago) that even before 1917 Lenin and the Bolsheviks were thinking in terms of the Bolsheviks assuming State power. I do not think that this occured after 1917 as in the quote

When Lenin first defended the

idea of the “dictatorship of the party" in

1919 he also said that the party’s ideas

can only be carried out in reality by the

new body, the soviets but by December

1920 (the very month in which the

civil war against the Whites and Allied

imperialism was won) he was stating,

...the dictatorship of the proletariat

cannot be exercised through an

organisation embracing the whole of that

class, because in all capitalist countries

(and not only over here, in one of the

most backward) the proletariat is still so

divided, so degraded and so corrupted

… that an organisation taking in the

whole of the proletariat cannot directly

exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can

be exercised only by a vanguard that

has absorbed the revolutionary energy

of the class.15

This is mysticism not materialism. It

has more in common with the fascist

myth that the Fuehrer/Duce is the real

expression of the will of the nation than

with the Marxist materialist Lenin of

l9l7 18.

Eg Can the Bolsheviks retain State Power?

"On what are all trends agreed, from Rech to Novaya Zhizn inclusively, from the Kornilovite Cadets to the semi-Bolsheviks, all, except the Bolsheviks?

They all agree that the Bolsheviks will either never dare take over full state power alone, or, if they do dare, and do take power, they will not be able to retain it even for the shortest while.

If anybody asserts that the question of the Bolsheviks alone taking over full state power is a totally unfeasible political question, that only a swelled-headed "fanatic" of the worst kind can regard it as feasible, we refute this assertion by quoting the exact statements of the most responsible and most influential political parties and trends of various "hues".

But let me begin with a word or two about the first of the questions mentioned—will the Bolsheviks dare take over full state power alone? I have already had occasion, at the All-Russia Congress of Soviets, to answer this question in the affirmative in no uncertain manner by a remark that I shouted from my seat during one of Tsereteli's [2] ministerial speeches. And I have not met in the press, or heard, any statements by Bolsheviks to the effect that we ought not to take power alone. I still maintain that a political party—and the party of the advanced class in particular—would have no right to exist, would be unworthy of the name of party, would be a nonentity in any sense, if it refused to take power when opportunity offers."

Perhaps it is the wording, a fusion of the concepts of Party and class somewhat akin to bordigas formulation that there is no class without the party, but I do not see a clear indication that the concept of party dictatorship occured after 1917/18.