Building a Revolutionary Party in 2009

[alhop10]

"For the socialist, the economic struggle serves as a basis for the organization of the workers into a revolutionary party, for the strengthening and development of their class struggle against the whole capitalist system. If the economic struggle is taken as something complete in itself there will be nothing solialist in it"
V.I.L

What are you views on the immediate priorities of revolutionaries right now? What about strategies for building a party and the opportunities that increased class struggle provide for us? Obviously this is fairly irrelevant to those of you who do not believe in the concept of a party but i'd be interested to hear from those of you who do.

[Q]

I think the first order of business is that we should attract the principal activists in our ranks. This can be either done by independant work or work in larger reformist parties, depending on the national conditions. Our immediate goal is try and build a vanguard party (and not a mass party (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?do=discuss&group=&discussionid=1356)), for example by calling for a "syndical party" (a party of trade union activists). Within this party then, the marxists could take part and convince the majority of their program.

[jake williams]

It's precisely this sort of question we have to be discussing quite broadly right now (although Q is right that the exact tactics depend on the local situation). There are important things going on right now all at once, and we really have to figure out exactly what we're doing.

[ComradeLands]

As there is a severe crisis of leadership of the working class, the revolutionaries are few and far between and we are on the verge of a very serious recession, we are desperately in need of a new international party.

A few years ago, the social forums would have been a good spring board to have launched such a party, however due to much opposition to the whole concept of a party within it and the undemocratic nature of the whole movement, the social forums have declined as they moved to the right.

However, the need for an international party is essential and patient suggestions such as just building the vanguard is all good and well, however there also needs to be an outward focus otherwise the recession will pass and no siginificant party would have been able to weather the capitalist storm.

[Pogue]

"For the socialist, the economic struggle serves as a basis for the organization of the workers into a revolutionary party, for the strengthening and development of their class struggle against the whole capitalist system. If the economic struggle is taken as something complete in itself there will be nothing solialist in it"
V.I.L

What are you views on the immediate priorities of revolutionaries right now? What about strategies for building a party and the opportunities that increased class struggle provide for us? Obviously this is fairly irrelevant to those of you who do not believe in the concept of a party but i'd be interested to hear from those of you who do.

You can start by stop fucking quoting Lenin as if he is god. For christs sake he was one man, you don't have to parrot everything he says.

[ComradeLands]

The quote still remains a great piece of advice.

[Decolonize The Left]

Why, exactly, do you want to create a revolutionary party?

The working class will enact the revolution.
The working class will be the revolution.
Not the party.

The working class is incapable of enacting a revolution without a high level of class consciousness, and this is created through discussion and debate - not party politics.

- August

[scarletghoul]

Looking at history, it is clear that a political party increases the chances of revolution.

Anyway its much easier for a group to take power (party-led revolution) than to make the majority of people concious and mobilise them.

[Decolonize The Left]

Looking at history, it is clear that a political party increases the chances of revolution.

I am not concerned with the "chances," nor should you be. I am concerned with the conditions which give rise to a revolution, and most importantly, this revolution being successful.


Anyway its much easier for a group to take power (party-led revolution) than to make the majority of people concious and mobilise them.

Why do the majority of the people need to be "made" to do anything? Is this not contrary to the entire idea of communism?

- August

[ComradeLands]

Exaclty right the working class will be the revolution, however without any attempt to build a party of the working class, then all that will be fought for is basic trade union economist demands.

This isn't about party politics, its about providing a truly revolutionary leadership of the working class that won't be swayed into reformism.

Even if soviets are created and the working class has its own independent organs of struggle, without a party that fights for those to take power away from the capitalist state, then revolution is not possible.

[Pogue]

I just don't think a party is the home for the working class, especially not dogmatic ones with their heads up Lenin/Trotsky/Mao/Stalin/etc's arses. For example I don't see why many workers would join the SWP en masse. Some might, but not many.

[ComradeLands]

People only join the SWP because they pester them long enough until they join and lie about their politics to get a name on paper.

They're losing members fast at the moment anyway.

As for needing a party, it first of all has to be far more organised and democratic than the SWP, but provide a leadership of the working class through proving itself through struggle and staying consistant to revolutionary politics.

As for dogma, the marxist method is to treat any work as a guide to action and not a schema, hence one of the reasons why the fourth international failed because it refused to admit that Trotsky had made a false prediction about the Soviet Union in the second world war.

[KC]

Right now revolutionaries should be entering into the struggles where they are happening, enter into existing workers organizations and agitate and educate. No party is needed right now, as the need for a party grows as the movement grows into fruition and demands it. Currently the best type of organizational structure is that of a loose body (a network of sorts) created solely for the purposes of coordinating and directing and for informing others of what is going on in a given area.

Any "traditional" party is going to fail, as they have for the past decades, as they have not grown out of struggle.

[Bilan]

Why, exactly, do you want to create a revolutionary party?

The working class will enact the revolution.
The working class will be the revolution.
Not the party.

The working class is incapable of enacting a revolution without a high level of class consciousness, and this is created through discussion and debate - not party politics.

- August

The party represents the class in an organised form. The proletarian party can only be formed during a period of struggle, not arbitrarily like most so-called "vanguard" parties.


There is also a different category of objection to the communist concept of the party’s role. These objections are linked to another form of critical and tactical reaction to the reformist degeneracy: they belong to the syndicalist school, which sees the class in the economic trade unions and pretends that these are the organs capable of leading the class in revolution. Following the classical period of the French, Italian and American syndicalism, these apparently left-wing objections found new formulations in tendencies which are on the margins of the Third International. These too can be easily reduced to semi-bourgeois ideologies by a critique of their principles as well as by acknowledging the historical results they led to.

These tendencies would like to recognise the class within an organisation of its own – certainly a characteristic and a most important one – that is, the craft or trade unions which arise before the political party, gather much larger masses and therefore better correspond to the whole of the working class. From an abstract point of view, however, the choice of such a criterion reveals an unconscious respect for that selfsame democratic lie which the bourgeoisie relies on to secure its power by the means of inviting the majority of the people to choose their government. In other theoretical viewpoints, such a method meets with bourgeois conceptions when it entrusts the trade unions with the organisation of the new society and demands the autonomy and decentralisation of the productive functions, just as reactionary economists do. But our present purpose is not to draw out a complete critical analysis of the syndicalist doctrines. It is sufficient to remark, considering the result of historical experience, that the extreme right wing members of the proletarian movement have always advocated the same point of view, that is, the representation of the working class by trade unions; indeed they know that by doing so, they soften and diminish the movement’s character, for the simple reasons that we have already mentioned. Today the bourgeoisie itself shows a sympathy and an inclination, which are by no means illogical, towards the unionisation of the working class.

Indeed, the more intelligent sections of the bourgeoisie would readily accept a reform of the state and representative apparatus in order to give a larger place to the “apolitical” unions and even to their claims to exercise control over the system of production. The bourgeoisie feels that, as long as the proletariat’s action can be limited to the immediate economic demands that are raised trade by trade, it helps to safeguard the status-quo and to avoid the formation of the perilous “political” consciousness – that is, the only consciousness which is revolutionary for it aims at the enemy’s vulnerable point, the possession of power.

Past and present syndicalists, however, have always been conscious of the fact that most trade unions are controlled by right wing elements and that the dictatorship of the petty bourgeois leaders over the masses is based on the union bureaucracy even more than on the electoral mechanism of the social-democratic pseudo-parties. Therefore the syndicalists, along with very numerous elements who were merely acting in reaction to the reformist practice, devoted themselves to the study of new forms of union organisation and created new unions independent from the traditional ones. Such an expedient was theoretically wrong for it did not go beyond the fundamental criterion of the economic organisation: that is, the automatic admission of all those who are placed in given conditions by the part they play in production, without demanding special political convictions or special pledges of actions which may require even the sacrifice of their lives. Moreover, in looking for the “producer” it could not go beyond the limits of the “trade”, whereas the class party, by considering the “proletarian” in the vast range of his conditions and activities, is alone able to awaken the revolutionary spirit of the class. Therefore, that remedy which was wrong theoretically also proved inefficient in actuality. In spite of everything, such recipes are constantly being sought for even today.

A totally wrong interpretation of Marxist determinism and a limited conception of the part played by facts of consciousness and will in the formation, under the original influence of economic factors, of the revolutionary forces, lead a great number of people to look for a “mechanical” system of organisation that would almost automatically organise the masses according to each individual’s part in production. According to these illusions, such a device by itself would be enough to make the mass ready to move towards revolution with the maximum revolutionary efficiency. Thus the illusory solution reappears, which consists of thinking that the everyday satisfaction of economic needs can be reconciled with the final result of the overthrow of the social system by relying on an organisational form to solve the old antithesis between limited and gradual conquests and the maximum revolutionary program. But – as was rightly said in one of the resolutions of the majority of the German Communist Party at a time when these questions (which later provoked the secession of the KAPD) were particularly acute in Germany – revolution is not a question of the form of organisation. Revolution requires an organisation of active and positive forces united by a doctrine and a final aim. Important strata and innumerable individuals will remain outside this organisation even though they materially belong to the class in whose interest the revolution will triumph. But the class lives, struggles, progresses and wins thanks to the action of the forces it has engendered from its womb in the pains of history. The class originates from an immediate homogeneity of economic conditions which appear to us as the primary motive force of the tendency to destroy and go beyond the present mode of production. But in order to assume this great task, the class must have its own thought, its own critical method, its own will bent on the precise ends defined by research and criticism, and its own organisation of struggle channelling and utilising with the utmost efficiency its collective efforts and sacrifices. All this constitutes the Party.

Bang. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1921/party-class.htm)

I don't necessarily agree with this, nor necessarily disagree, but this is at least a good explanation.

[Bilan]

Looking at history, it is clear that a political party increases the chances of revolution.

Anyway its much easier for a group to take power (party-led revolution) than to make the majority of people concious and mobilise them.

I'm not sure you really get the role of the party. Which is funny coming from me. :lol:

[Le People]

A friend and I were discussing the possilbilty of a leftist revolution in America. We came to the conclusion that the number road block to any meaningful revolutionary activitiy is the monoply the ruling class has on the mass media. After all, there is either the conservative asshole media (FOX, CNN) or the liberal media (MSNBC) both of which would attack revolutionary communism and condemn it if it ever broke out of a few internet forums and some college dorms. I have no clue as to how to bring down the media, but establishing a more thriving alternative media, though not explicitly communist, will be a step in the right direction.

[Q]

Why, exactly, do you want to create a revolutionary party?

The working class will enact the revolution.
The working class will be the revolution.
Not the party.

The working class is incapable of enacting a revolution without a high level of class consciousness, and this is created through discussion and debate - not party politics.

- August


Only on the basis of a study of political processes in the masses themselves, can we understand the rôle of parties and leaders, whom we least of all are inclined to ignore. They constitute not an independent, but nevertheless a very important, element in the process. Without a guiding organisation, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston-box. But nevertheless what moves things is not the piston or the box, but the steam.

Source (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch00.htm).

I think that hits the nail on the head.

[Bilan]

Posts on the relevance of the party in itself split into Is the Party still a viable method of political organisation? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/party-still-viable-t102885/index.html?t=102885)
Please stay on topic.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Why, exactly, do you want to create a revolutionary party?

The working class will enact the revolution.
The working class will be the revolution.
Not the party.

The working class is incapable of enacting a revolution without a high level of class consciousness, and this is created through discussion and debate - not party politics.

- August

As per my work, the "class" and the "class party" are not mutually exclusive, though. The latter - and not the bastardized "vanguards" of Comintern-ism (including Trotskyism) - is merely a class movement that is centralized, disciplined, and capable of posing the question of political power collectively. Part of "party politics" is indeed the discussion and debate that you've mentioned. The "socialist party," therefore, is the fulfillment of "the merger of [some form of revolutionary] 'socialism' and the worker-class movement."


The proletarian party can only be formed during a period of struggle, not arbitrarily like most so-called "vanguard" parties.

So what do you make of the Social-Democratic Workers' Party of Germany and its Eisenach program, as well as of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany and its Gotha program?

"The SPD was a vanguard party." (Lars Lih)

[Bilan]

The same SPD which crushed the workers revolution in Germany, and joined forces with the Freikorps?
Yeah, no. Not a vanguard. I hardly see "Social Democratic" parties as "vanguards". That's pretty ridiculous. Unless by "vanguards" you mean the leadership for the proletariat either looking for defeat and or destruction, or that which desires to be lulled back to sleep through bourgeois eleections.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The same SPD which crushed the workers revolution in Germany, and joined forces with the Freikorps?
Yeah, no. Not a vanguard. I hardly see "Social Democratic" parties as "vanguards". That's pretty ridiculous. Unless by "vanguards" you mean the leadership for the proletariat either looking for defeat and or destruction, or that which desires to be lulled back to sleep through bourgeois eleections.

I was referring to my old thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/sozialdemokratische-partei-deutschlands-t79754/index.html) (giving the full context of Lih's quote) and to this recent letter:

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/757/letters.html

SPD model

David Taylor is, I’m afraid, part of the soup of Stalinist thinking from which communism needs to escape (Letters, January 29).

Lenin’s model for communist organisation was not the infallible dictatorship of an elite, imposing “full agreement on definite aims”, but the German SPD - a mass, working class, democratic party, in which various Marxist tendencies argued out policy in front of the working class and put their views to the vote. That gave the majority the right to specify action and the minority the duty to support that action, but also the right of criticism.

Moreover, the SPD organised sporting, cultural and social events within the class. It strove to serve and represent a working class that was conscious of its own interests and capable of expressing its own views. The aim was to enable the working class to act as a ruling class.

The idea was that if workers are told the truth they will both understand it and act upon it. So the party criticised sundry viewpoints, both from within the working class and from outside it, from a rational and scientific viewpoint rather than sweep ideas under the carpet.

So, yes, a communist party does differ radically from a bourgeois party. History demonstrates that this kind of model is not infallible, but it is the only approach that puts the working class in control.

Arthur Lawrence
email

[Niccolò Rossi]

The same SPD which crushed the workers revolution in Germany, and joined forces with the Freikorps?
Yeah, no. Not a vanguard. I hardly see "Social Democratic" parties as "vanguards". That's pretty ridiculous. Unless by "vanguards" you mean the leadership for the proletariat either looking for defeat and or destruction, or that which desires to be lulled back to sleep through bourgeois eleections.

Despite your post being directed at Jacob, I would like to make a few remarks.

I don't think the SPD which called for the 'defence of the fatherland' during the First World War and was instrumental in crushing the workers revolution in Germany was in anyway a 'vanguard' or any form of party of the working class for that matter. However, it is important not to through the baby out with the bathwater.

The SPD was through its early history in the late 19th Century a proletarian party - one not free of illusions and alien class influences - but a proletarian party none the less. However, when faced with the opening of capitalisms era of decadence the SPD degenerated irreversibly and crossed over into the camp of the bourgeoisie.

You might find this interesting in this from the ICC's Communism: Not a Nice Idea but a Material Necessity - 1895-1905: The Revolutionary Perspective Obscured by Parliamentary Illusions (http://en.internationalism.org/ir/088_commy15.html)

[Bilan]

Despite your post being directed at Jacob, I would like to make a few remarks.

I don't think the SPD which called for the 'defence of the fatherland' during the First World War and was instrumental in crushing the workers revolution in Germany was in anyway a 'vanguard' or any form of party of the working class for that matter. However, it is important not to through the baby out with the bathwater.

The SPD was through its early history in the late 19th Century a proletarian party - one not free of illusions and alien class influences - but a proletarian party none the less. However, when faced with the opening of capitalisms era of decadence the SPD degenerated irreversibly and crossed over into the camp of the bourgeoisie.

Indeed, but I'm not contesting whether or not it was at some point a proletarian party, but whether or not it was a Vanguard party, and I was arguing against it on the basis that A/ it was a social democratic party and b/ as, you said, it was instrumental in crushing workers revolution.




You might find this interesting in this from the ICC's Communism: Not a Nice Idea but a Material Necessity - 1895-1905: The Revolutionary Perspective Obscured by Parliamentary Illusions (http://en.internationalism.org/ir/088_commy15.html)

I shall have a gander. But for now, gnocci! :lol:

[Die Neue Zeit]

It was indeed a vanguard party in the proper Marxist sense of the term (not Comintern caricatures) up until the late 1900s.

[AvanteRedGarde]

Everyone says we need a vanguard party. Meanwhile there's like 10-15 "vanguard" parties just in the U.S. Obviously something else is missing.

[Tower of Bebel]

Obviously something else is missing.Probably a solid relationship with working class struggles.

[disobey]

The party can surely never lead or coerce in the literal sense; it can only be effective if it nudges the working class in the right direction and serves as a central pool for debate, idea sharing and so on.. the class need to pull the party, not the other way around. If the byproduct of this is a line of failed attempts at revolution, then so be it.

I have enough confidence in the workers' ability to organise that this time around perhaps, with a depression looming, things might change for the better.

[JimmyJazz]

"For the socialist, the economic struggle serves as a basis for the organization of the workers into a revolutionary party, for the strengthening and development of their class struggle against the whole capitalist system. If the economic struggle is taken as something complete in itself there will be nothing socialist in it"
V.I.L

What are you views on the immediate priorities of revolutionaries right now? What about strategies for building a party and the opportunities that increased class struggle provide for us? Obviously this is fairly irrelevant to those of you who do not believe in the concept of a party but i'd be interested to hear from those of you who do.

I agree fully with the Lenin quote (although I'm not a "Leninist"), and my main political activity right now is with unions: the IWW (as a member) and a much bigger Change To Win union (as a volunteer).

Like a few others in my IWW local who are Marxist socialists, I joined because I had become disenchanted with all the socialist groups whose meetings I'd attended, like the PSL and ISO. Like them, I think that the main focus right now, in the U.S. at least, has to be to build class struggle. You can't have socialist consciousness without it, and right now, we are basically without it.

At the same time, my participation in the IWW and my reading of IWW history have just reaffirmed my Marxist/party-building socialist views, in other words my view of the absolute necessity of political action. I retain an open mind toward anarcho-syndicalism (which is not the IWW's founding philosophy btw, but became their philsophy at their fourth convention in 1908). But despite keeping an open mind, I pretty consistently reject it. The idea that the working class can go up against both the capitalist class and the state, and win, is naive craziness. In fact, even the idea that the working class could go up against the capitalist class by itself is dubious, since the capitalists can usually wait for the workers to go bankrupt and starve them out, if not necessarily in every strike, then definitely as a class*. But as we all know, even this doesn't happen, because the state always intervenes on the side of the capitalists; which is why capturing state power is, to my mind, at least as much a defensive move as an offensive one.

So that's my answer: socialists right now should focus on buildling class struggle. Join radical unions, volunteer for radical unions, start radical unions; or infiltrate conservative ones and undermine their leadership. Or organize direct actions outside of the permanent unions.

Then, if we can successfully give a large portion of the U.S. working class a taste of real class struggle, to steer this movement in a political direction, because if it's purely economic struggle then it will fizzle out. In my view, that was the historic problem with the U.S. labor movement: despite being exceptionally militant, it always had an anti-political bent (more so than the working class of other countries).

Start building a party right now? You can try, but I'm not going to bother. It's going to be a good long while before there are anything like the necessary conditions of mass working class support for such a party in America. Hopefully we all know ourselves well enough to know that we couldn't possibly maintain a group for that long without splitting into factions over stupid issues. So why bother trying, and just embarrassing ourselves in front of the working class with our sectarianism? We'll build the party later, when there is at least the first inkling of potential mass support for it. And mass support for socialist ideas comes, as Marx predicted and history has confirmed, from economic battles between workers and their bosses. From participation in actual class struggle.

*"Trautman, the secretary-treasurer of the IWW, blamed these 'constant irritative strikes' for the failure of two-thirds of the IWW membership to pay their dues. Because these disputes involved about half the union's members in one year, they could not afford to pay union dues while they were on strike, or jobless and blacklisted if the strike failed. Trautman was already showing signs of disenchantment with the antipolitical, industrial action of the IWW...[so he joined another radical, industrial union] which advocated industrial action combined with political affiliation to the Socialist Labor Party and penetration of the AFL."--from The Wobblies by Patrick Renshaw, p. 83

[JimmyJazz]

You can start by stop fucking quoting Lenin as if he is god. For christs sake he was one man, you don't have to parrot everything he says.

In other words, you've got nothing to refute the point.

Lenin 1, you 0.

[JimmyJazz]

The working class will enact the revolution.
The working class will be the revolution.
Not the party.

So is it that your analysis doesn't allow for different levels of consciousness among workers (spanning all the way from racist/pseudo-fascist/reactionary to revolutionary communist), or is it that you don't see the purpose of creating an organization in which the most advanced workers associate themselves to engage in debate, discussion, and strategy?


Looking at history, it is clear that a political party increases the chances of revolution.

Yep.


I am not concerned with the "chances,"...I am concerned with...this revolution being successful.

...what?



Obviously something else is missing.

Probably a solid relationship with working class struggles.

Or working class struggles, period. There has been a tremendous decline.

"During the 1970s, about 289 major work stoppages occurred annually in the United States, but during the 1990s that number plummeted to about 35 per year, falling to just 14 in 2003, despite the fact that the private nonfarm workforce had grown from about 64 million in the 1970s to nearly 108 million in 2003. Other BLS strike statistics demonstrate that whereas 4 percent of the private nonfarm workforce participated in major work stoppages in 1970, fewer than .5 percent did in 1997. Depending on the statistical measure...the overall strike rate in the United States has dropped by 60 percent to 90 percent in the past thirty years."--If The Workers Took A Notion by Josiah Lambert, p. 4

[Die Neue Zeit]

Like a few others in my IWW local who are Marxist socialists, I joined because I had become disenchanted with all the socialist groups whose meetings I'd attended, like the PSL and ISO. Like them, I think that the main focus right now, in the U.S. at least, has to be to build class struggle. You can't have socialist consciousness without it, and right now, we are basically without it.

At the same time, my participation in the IWW and my reading of IWW history have just reaffirmed my Marxist/party-building socialist views, in other words my view of the absolute necessity of political action. I retain an open mind toward anarcho-syndicalism (which is not the IWW's founding philosophy btw, but became their philsophy at their fourth convention in 1908). But despite keeping an open mind, I pretty consistently reject it. The idea that the working class can go up against both the capitalist class and the state, and win, is naive craziness. In fact, even the idea that the working class could go up against the capitalist class by itself is dubious, since the capitalists can usually wait for the workers to go bankrupt and starve them out, if not necessarily in every strike, then definitely as a class*. But as we all know, even this doesn't happen, because the state always intervenes on the side of the capitalists; which is why capturing state power is, to my mind, at least as much a defensive move as an offensive one.

So that's my answer: socialists right now should focus on buildling class struggle. Join radical unions, volunteer for radical unions, start radical unions; or infiltrate conservative ones and undermine their leadership. Or organize direct actions outside of the permanent unions.

Then, if we can successfully give a large portion of the U.S. working class a taste of real class struggle, to steer this movement in a political direction, because if it's purely economic struggle then it will fizzle out. In my view, that was the historic problem with the U.S. labor movement: despite being exceptionally militant, it always had an anti-political bent (more so than the working class of other countries).

Start building a party right now? You can try, but I'm not going to bother. It's going to be a good long while before there are anything like the necessary conditions of mass working class support for such a party in America. Hopefully we all know ourselves well enough to know that we couldn't possibly maintain a group for that long without splitting into factions over stupid issues. So why bother trying, and just embarrassing ourselves in front of the working class with our sectarianism? We'll build the party later, when there is at least the first inkling of potential mass support for it. And mass support for socialist ideas comes, as Marx predicted and history has confirmed, from economic battles between workers and their bosses. From participation in actual class struggle.

Jimmy, there's too much lost history over the appropriate party model, between so-called "vanguard" parties and so-called "mass" (read: reformist) parties. I've suggested this model as the best one, without bending the stick against the "vanguardists" in favour of the SPD per se:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/uspd-vs-kpd-t103415/index.html

[robbo203]

As there is a severe crisis of leadership of the working class, the revolutionaries are few and far between and we are on the verge of a very serious recession, we are desperately in need of a new international party.

A few years ago, the social forums would have been a good spring board to have launched such a party, however due to much opposition to the whole concept of a party within it and the undemocratic nature of the whole movement, the social forums have declined as they moved to the right.

However, the need for an international party is essential and patient suggestions such as just building the vanguard is all good and well, however there also needs to be an outward focus otherwise the recession will pass and no siginificant party would have been able to weather the capitalist storm.

Dont you think you have stumbled on a bit of contradiction here? How the hell can you have a democratic movement when you advocate a leadership-based vanguardist organisation? Democracy and leadership are incompatible. QED

[Decolonize The Left]

So is it that your analysis doesn't allow for different levels of consciousness among workers (spanning all the way from racist/pseudo-fascist/reactionary to revolutionary communist), or is it that you don't see the purpose of creating an organization in which the most advanced workers associate themselves to engage in debate, discussion, and strategy?

Of course I allow for different levels of class consciousness. What I'm skeptical of is who's defining "advanced workers," and how are they identifying themselves? Why are they separate from the other workers?

I guess I just don't trust a bunch of self-inflated egos organizing a 'party for the people' and then supposedly running this party with the people's interests in mind. Sounds a lot like representative democracy to me... and we know how that's failed.

If the party comes about organically from the working class then so-be-it, let it come, but don't force it.


...what?

Someone said that having a party increased the 'chances' of a successful revolution. I said that I wasn't concerned with 'chances.'

I'm concerned solely with elevating the class consciousness of the working class.

- August

[smoy]

the revolutionary party is already created; the libertarian party. If more ppl like ron paul are elected we can change this nation. it is easier to damage from the inside

[Q]

the revolutionary party is already created; the libertarian party. If more ppl like ron paul are elected we can change this nation. it is easier to damage from the inside

Could you elaborate on this? You're vague at the very least.

[JimmyJazz]

how are they identifying themselves?

By joining a revolutionary party.


Why are they separate from the other workers?

They want a revolution.


I guess I just don't trust a bunch of self-inflated egos organizing a 'party for the people' and then supposedly running this party with the people's interests in mind. Sounds a lot like representative democracy to me... and we know how that's failed.

If the party comes about organically from the working class then so-be-it, let it come, but don't force it.

That sounds good, but what exactly is the difference between an "organic" revolutionary party and one that is "forced"? If you just mean that you would only support a party that has mass working class support, I would agree, although I think the point is rather trivial. In fact, even mass support for the party is not enough imo, because without organs for workers' control (either soviets or radical, industrial unions) a "party" can't do anything to transform society along socialist lines. It will inevitably become either the command economy of a ruling clique or reformist.

But to actually seize power I am certain you need to have a party (see here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=260)). You don't have to call it a party, but a party by any other name...

[Bilan]

the revolutionary party is already created; the libertarian party. If more ppl like ron paul are elected we can change this nation. it is easier to damage from the inside

No, in no way is that true. Ron Paul is a libertarian capitalist, he is not a socialist.

[Decolonize The Left]

That sounds good, but what exactly is the difference between an "organic" revolutionary party and one that is "forced"? If you just mean that you would only support a party that has mass working class support, I would agree, although I think the point is rather trivial. In fact, even mass support for the party is not enough imo, because without organs for workers' control (either soviets or radical, industrial unions) a "party" can't do anything to transform society along socialist lines. It will inevitably become either the command economy of a ruling clique or reformist.

But to actually seize power I am certain you need to have a party (see here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=260)). You don't have to call it a party, but a party by any other name...

I'm simply highly skeptical of anyone touting the "party of the people." My reasons are historical. My skepticism is valid and healthy.

If there comes a time when a party is necessary, then such a time will demonstrate the solidarity and class consciousness of the working class.

- August

[Q]

I think we should always remember that a revolutionary party or any other form of activist organisation, is a means towards an end, not an end in itself. This point is sometimes forgotten by people on the left.

For example: In the broad leftist party I'm a member of, the Dutch SP, people (and most of them are part of the rightwing bureaucratic clique) attack us (CWI members) for being a "party in a party". They say we're not "loyal" to the SP. But this logic is obviously absurd. The SP is only a means to organise the working class in the class struggle, not a goal in itself. It is indeed true though that we, Marxists, differ from the right-reformist partyleadership on topics of tactic and strategy and this is also the reason we organise as, if you will, a "party in a party".

I guess I'm just ranting now. My point is made though: a party is a tool. Opposing a tool doesn't make sense. That only makes sense when the tool becomes a goal. That is my critique to both anarchists opposing a revolutionary party by definition and reformists and centrists using the party to further their own career.

[JimmyJazz]

If there comes a time when a party is necessary, then such a time will demonstrate the solidarity and class consciousness of the working class.

I don't understand this sentence exactly, but I agree with what seems to be the sentiment, of looking to the future more than the past and putting an emphasis on changing conditions. I think the future will prove the inability of anything but a highly centralized party to overthrow the now highly centralized capitalist state, but...we'll see. :)