A Series of Tubes

Nathan Coombs over at the guardian has an interesting read about the new communist movement and how the Santa Cruz Occupation fits into that (see the link here).  I apologize to my Anarchist readers, but the article’s author, like me, identifies the Occupation of the graduate student commons as a communist revival more than an Anarchist action.

I find this fascinating since I am currently reading books on Mao and Che and I quite recently read the motorcycle diaries.  The new communists correctly identify a major problem with previous revolutions: massive human rights violations perpetrated by a totalitarian state.  The idea is to maintain a large distance from the state, this would then prevent a link between communism and totalitarian systems of government.  Instead of installing a new government, the communists would instead install a system of worker owned coops (in order to obtain the means of production of say a factory, the communists would occupy the building).  The problem with the model is that large corporations can charge slave wages and undercut the coop prices.  In order for this new communist plan to work, it needs some sort of government subsidy or massive government intervention to compete.  This is where the theory and the practice butt heads since in practice, a strong and supportive state is needed, but the theory wants to keep the State far away in order to avoid past errors (aka.  deaths).

What you end up with at the end of it is a confused Occupation movement that wants a communist coop model, but has no practical political theory to acheive this end.  I guess the question is whether or not the new communists will figure this out or if instead we will have ineffective occupation son campus with vauge goals and demands.