Jasper Bernes, author of 'The Future of Revolution', dives into revolutionary history and theory, linking the Paris Commune to the George Floyd protests. He explores how workers' councils could shape future movements and the complexities of achieving true revolution. Bernes discusses revolutionary strategies, critiquing contemporary reformist approaches and emphasizing community engagement in areas like healthcare. He also highlights the dangers of misusing constituent power in revolutionary movements, pushing for a deeper understanding of systemic challenges.
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Workers' Councils as Flexible Revolutionary Org
Workers' councils evolve from coordinating strikes to managing production during revolutions.\n- They represent a flexible, fractal structure capable of socializing wealth and expropriating production.
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Council Self-Reflexivity Ensures Consent
Self-reflexivity in councils means delegates carry explicit, revocable instructions.\n- This creates a feedback loop ensuring decisions align with workers' consent and prevent elite bureaucratic separation.
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The Armed Proletariat and State Power
Arming the proletariat is essential, but direct military confrontations risk failure.\n- State armed power must dissolve partially through mutiny and disperse among councils to prevent state reconstitution.
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Communist Prospects from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising
Jasper Burns
Buy the Book: https://www.versobooks.com/products/977-the-future-of-revolution?srsltid=AfmBOopbQABhI9H6efsVC8cJLfIxh2LNXMqxpppbp8xUVVnxNMtAyEPc
How might a twenty-first-century revolution against class society succeed?
Communism comes from the future, but its hopes haunt our past. Reading revolutionary history from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising by the light of communist theory, from Marx to C. L. R. James, The Future of Revolution illuminates the possibilities for overcoming class society in the twenty-first century.
When Marx wrote that the Paris Commune of 1871 showed that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes,” he identified a principle that will remain true as long as capitalism and its class antagonism persist. Historical revolutions reveal essential features of our communist horizon, which would-be revolutionaries, then as now, must negotiate one way or another. In chapters that move from a critical history of the workers’ council to a reading of Marx’s theory of value as an inverted description of communism, Jasper Bernes synthesizes from a history of failure the key criteria for success. He defines for our present moment the urgent mission of the world proletariat.
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