Was Marx wrong about Blanquist "conspiratorialism"?

[Die Neue Zeit]

I just chatted with a comrade about how the Blanquist movement that spearheaded the Paris Commune "organized funerals for the poor who couldn't afford them." It seems to me that these "conspiracists" and "elitists" understood all too well the extent to which the class needed to be organized (like the pre-war SPD and inter-war USPD), unlike today's pseudo-Blanquist wannabes (lots of "vanguardists").

Did Marx overstate Blanquist "conspiratorialism"?

[chegitz guevara]

No, like Durriti, reality overtook ideology.

[bricolage]

I just chatted with a comrade about how the Blanquist movement that spearheaded the Paris Commune

Did they? Blanqui was in jail and while most historians estimate eight to eleven members of the Communal Assembly as Blanquists they were, however, not a separate bloc and on the crucial split in the Assembly of central authority versus local autonomy always sided with republicans against the Proudhonists/federalists. Blanquist influence was more evident in the police agencies but still not dominant. I don't think you can say the Blanquists spearheaded the Commune more than you can say any group spearheaded it, it was a vast mix of varying groups and many not actually belonging to any, you have to remember a lot of the terms we use to describe them, like neo-Jacobin, would have meant nothing at the time and have been imposed by historians. The actual amount of Blanquists in France is also often overstated based upon the Inspector Lagrange inflated figure of 3000 which was just produced to justify crackdowns.

[ComradeOm]

It seems to me that these "conspiracists" and "elitists" understood all too well the extent to which the class needed to be organizedExcept that the entire theoretical base of the Blanquists, and the vast majority of its practice, reveals that they did not in fact understand organising along class lines. How does "organising funerals for the poor" compensate for decades of futile shadowy conspiracies?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Except that the entire theoretical base of the Blanquists, and the vast majority of its practice, reveals that they did not in fact understand organising along class lines. How does "organising funerals for the poor" compensate for decades of futile shadowy conspiracies?

Because they finally understood, to paraphrase the most important Marxist book ever written in the Second International era, "the road to power" for the working class. Perhaps the Blanquists of the Paris Commune were, as Lenin described theoretically wrong Marxists who opposed WWI on militant lines (http://www.marxist.com/extract-lenins-notes-publicist.htm), "eagles."

That road to power is not just "taking power" - a phrase that can also mean coalitionist cop-outs and not just minoritarian putsches - or "change the world without taking power," but rather "change the world before, during, and after the seizure of power": real class movement building and real party-building, which in the revolutionary-centrist view are identical (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=205).

[ComradeOm]

And even if we assume that this was the case, how does it excuse the previous decades of pointless cloak and dagger politics? The Blanquist reputation for “conspiratorialism” was well earned


That road to power is not just "taking power" - a phrase that can also mean coalitionist cop-outs and not just minoritarian putsches - or "change the world without taking power," but rather "change the world before, during, and after the seizure of power": real class movement building and real party-building, which in the revolutionary-centrist view are identical (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=205).So now the Blanquists were involved "real class movement building" because they "organized funerals for the poor"?

[Die Neue Zeit]

And even if we assume that this was the case, how does it excuse the previous decades of pointless cloak and dagger politics?

My answer to that would be something similar to an e-mail I received over this past weekend on the Paris Commune: "the working classes" were not yet fully differentiated between proletariat, small-business petit-bourgeoisie, the class of primarily mid-level managers ("coordinators" in parecon-speak), and unproductive work (self-employed, cops, lawyers, etc.).

Cloak and dagger politics was the natural result of the proletariat still being in a demographic minority relative to the rest of "the working classes."


So now the Blanquists were involved "real class movement building" because they "organized funerals for the poor"?

I suppose you don't have much of an appreciation for the "alternative culture" model (Vernon Lidtke) of class building, because it necessarily entails bureaucracy.

[ComradeOm]

My answer to that would be something similar to an e-mail I received over this past weekend on the Paris Commune: "the working classes" were not yet fully differentiated between proletariat, small-business petit-bourgeoisie, the class of primarily midl-level managers ("coordinators" in parecon-speak), and unproductive work (self-employed, cops, lawyers, etc.).

Cloak and dagger politics was the natural result of the proletariat still being in a demographic minority relative to the rest of "the working classes."Well I was going to say that I don't particularly care about the class background of the various conspiratorial groups (be they Blanquist, Mazzinian, or others in the Jacobin tradition) but that's not true. I've been doing plenty of reading recently on such movements (particularly in Italy) and their petite-bourgeois backgrounds*. What I don't give a damn about is the notion that this somehow excuses them from following and advocating a deeply flawed model of organisation. This is particularly true when there were other socialists (most notably Marx of course) who were arguing for a mass class-based front

*And whoever says that the petite-bourgeoisie was not distinguished from the proletariat in 19th C Europe is simply lying/wrong. It was exactly the professional and "coordinator" classes that formed the backbone of Jacobinism following the mass dismissals of former Napoleonic bureaucrats/administrators in post-Vienna Europe. These groups, and by extension the later Blanquists, were not working class organisations

If the proletariat in the early 19th C was indistinguishable from any class it was the peasantry... whom the conspirators also had virtually no contact with


I suppose you don't have much of an appreciation for the "alternative culture" model (Vernon Lidtke) of class building, because it necessarily entails bureaucracy.I don't have much appreciation for the idea that we should fundamentally re-evaluate the role and structure of Blanquist cells simply because they paid for funerals in 1871. That is my basic problem here - you have presented no case as to why the Blanquists could be considered to be pursuing a "real class movement" (as stated, funerals does not satisfy) when all the evidence from the overwhelming majority of their existence suggests otherwise