bureaucratic bourgeoisie


Why Does Terrorism Occur and What Is the Proletarian Response?

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Jan Makandal

November 14, 2015

All terrorist acts, whether from the left or right, are in the final analysis a reactionary political practice. Terrorist acts are blind populist isolated acts in which an enemy is not well defined, and all are being terrorized.

 

Genuine anti-imperialist progressives need to denounce them, since these acts usually benefit the dominant classes, who recuperate them to serve their interests and justify narrow nationalism (another version of right populism). Proletarian revolutionaries also need to denounce them since they are not in the interest of the proletariat, and ultimately benefit the capitalist class and imperialism by giving them ammunition to intensify their internal acts of aggression.

 

The most recent acts by ISIS should be exposed and denounced along with all such isolated reactionary acts like the planting of bombs by the freedom fighters and the CIA in the port of Nicaragua, the planting of bombs in Israel, and the occupation of Vietnam by a minority force.

 

The isolated acts by ISIS in the imperialist social formation of France should not be considered progressive simply because they happened in the belly of an imperialist beast. The popular masses in imperialist France are being terrorized sporadically by these acts while being simultaneously dominated and exploited daily by their dominant classes. Those who commit these isolated acts do not seem to make a fundamental distinction between the masses and the dominant classes. This is why they are populist. All classes are dealt with as a potential enemy. Any unity with the popular masses of France becomes impossible since they too are targeted as a potential enemy.

 

To think that the struggle against terrorism should be directed against Islam is very limited, and is only looking at a tree but not the forest. Islam, like many other religions, is a sub-ideological component produced by a mode of production, mainly feudalism. As a sub-ideological component of religion, Islam, unlike Catholicism, is one of the few tendencies very difficult to adapt to capitalism.

 

Because of imperialism and capitalism, the feudalist mode of production (which is totally antagonistic to the capitalist mode of production) is in a process of decomposition. In many social formations this is a deformed process of decomposition, in which we will find the co-existence of two antagonistic modes of production. This inherently creates a constant contradiction: reproduction alongside and inside the dynamic of that decomposition. One of the effects of that complex problematic is constant political instability. One must appropriate that complexity in order to offer a solution that will not become feudalism or capitalism.

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The Bureaucratic Bourgeoisie: An Overview

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By Proletarian Alternative

(July 15, 2014)

Schematically, we can say the bureaucratic bourgeoisie (BB) are bourgeois like any other member of the bourgeoisie. They are also part of the larger power bloc, an alliance of all the classes and fractions of classes that hold political power, which ensures their capacity to dominate other classes politically on a daily basis. The power bloc uses its apparatuses (social structures and mechanisms) to dominate other classes. It is itself politically organized, while it works assiduously to disorganize the masses in all the classes it dominates.

One of the apparatuses the power bloc uses is the state apparatus—comprised of the police, military and other armed forces, plus the government (all branches) at all levels (federal, state, local) and the judicial system—to organize repression, to impose bourgeois democratism. In addition, the power bloc uses other apparatuses such as political parties, collaborationist unions, churches, schools, nonprofits, and all forms of media to keep the masses disorganized and under their domination. (more…)


Notes on the Bureaucratic Bourgeoisie

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by Jan Makandal

Mao mentioned the concept of bureaucracy in capitalism in many instances, but he never really gave it a definition; making Mao’s observation correct but still limited to an empirical level. He did his part, with all his limitations (including opportunism and populism). It should be a task of all revolutionary militants to deepen Mao’s contributions, while at the same time continue in the struggle against populism and opportunism. (more…)