De Leonism and Syndicalism

[Zanthorus]

Thread idea sparked by ZeroNowhere's last post in the "debunking current views on communism thread", but I thought I'd start a new thread instead of derailing that one (which is already slightly off topic but... whatever).

I've never been exactly clear on this. What exact positions would make someone a De Leonist? Especially in opposition to say, anarcho-syndicalism, which as far as I can gather is incredibly similar.

[thomasludd]

didn't de leon have a concept of a party? i think that would be one difference.

[graymouser]

De Leonism has two central positions:

1. Workers need to organize themselves in Socialist Industrial Unions. These are syndicalist style unions but unlike the IWW or similar anarcho-syndicalist federations, they are tied directly to a political party. These unions are formed under capitalism, but they will be the basis of the new society.

2. The party should come to power in parliamentary elections. The members of the party thus elected will dissolve parliament / congress in favor of the Socialist Industrial Unions as the new government.

In the period before this occurs, the De Leonists are opposed to fighting for intermediate reforms or organizing within trade unions - basically everything Lenin had raged against in "Left Wing Communism," they embodied. However, unlike the Council Communists, the De Leonists tended to keep to passive propagandism, believing that they need to simply convince all the workers of the SIU program and then they will go through the steps and the revolution will come.

De Leon had some worthwhile things to say, and if you read his speeches he was a pretty entertaining orator. The Socialist Labor Party was only the second nationwide Marxist party in history (the first being what is now the SPD in Germany). But the abstentionism practiced by the SLP removed it as a factor in the class struggle, and history has left it behind.

[mikelepore]

The main difference between DeLeonism and anarcho-syndicalism is that De Leonism says the means of production have to politically transferred to control by the workers' organization.

There's no consensus on the form of it, whether it would require a law passed by the national legislature, a constitutional amendment, or simply a decree by a socialist elected to the office of the country's chief executive, and which form it would require probably depends on the country in which it happens, but collective ownership of the means of production will require a political mandate in some form.

The workers can't organize merely industrially and then take control of means of production. If the workers were to do that, then the law, the courts and the police, would still go on operating according to the premise that the capitalists are the rightful owners of the property, and that the workers would be acting like pirates. There would automatically be a war between the government and the workers, and I don't mean that figuratively as in the sense of class war, I mean war literally, as in machine guns and bazookas and rocket launchers aimed at the workers as they walk out of the industries to go home. There has to be some kind of official notification handed down to law enforcement: there's a new decree by the goverment that makes the workers' organzation the rightful owners of the industries, therefore don't interfere with their new management.

De Leonists deny the anarchist belief that the political ballot is inherently so pro-capitalist that the workers cannot capture it and treat it as the people's poll for declaring a fundamentally new kind of society. Instead, the ballot is viewed as a genuine historical achievement of humanity. Recall that the Communist Manifesto explains that capitalism, for all its horrors, did at least one good thing: it developed mechanized production. Similarly, De Leon said that capitalism, for all its horrors, did two good things: it developed mechanized production, and also, in most places it replaced the practice of setting social disagreements by military strength with the practice of settling social disagreements by counting votes. The political system is now corrupted, but this is only something that, he said, has "latent good" while it is "encrusted with slime." He said the present corruptions of the political ballot are like "thorns on the rose." The ballot is corrupted mainly because most workers are indoctinated to believe in capitalism and habitually vote to continue their own enslavement, but no revolution will be possible until the workers reverse their views on that anyway, and, in the case of that ideological reversal by the workers, the socialist use of the ballot will also become available.

De Leon also believed in "dismantling" the state and leaving only an economic administration in its place, and to that extent he was in agreement with the anarcho-syndicalists. However, he said a literal war with the state is out of the question; the workers would be massacred. The only way to "dismantle" the state is first to elect socialists to the political offices, the only positions that have the ability to take the state apart piece by piece.

This additional viewpoint is further than I'm willing to go myself, but, in one speech to an audience, De Leon expressed the opinion that a U.S. Congress filled with socialists would have one and only one task to perform, and that would be to take a vote to abolish itself, that is, to pass a motion that the congress is ended with the added stipulation that it will never again reconvene in the future, he said, "to adjourn themselves _sine die_." Personally, I don't think that would work; I believe that a constitutional amendment would be necessary. Again, all De Leonists agree that there has to be some kind of political act or announcement for a socialist economy to be implemented, and the state disintegrated, but the form of the necessary political act remains ambiguous.

De Leonism is also defined by some additional characteristics, but I have negelcted them to focus on the main one mentioned above.

(I'm the founder of the web site deleonism.org, a repository of literature that is not formally affiliated with an organization.)

[ZeroNowhere]

But the abstentionism practiced by the SLP removed it as a factor in the class struggle, and history has left it behind.
Technically, De Leon's SLP was not particularly abstentionist at all, although the later SLP did become quite abstentionist.

I don't have the time to answer this question presently, so I'll probably get back to it. I will mention that probably the most relevant text is 'As To Politics', which is available free from the SLP website (technically, it was a dialogue in 'The People', formed of letters and responses, rather than an article as such), and 'The Socialist Reconstruction of Society' goes over the main ideas that went into De Leonism, and is probably the best for grasping the main ideas, although they were elaborated upon elsewhere.

[mikelepore]

to organize themselves in Socialist Industrial Unions

Good, I forgot about that. Interesting thing about the historical background - Trautmann, the person who first drafted the department structure of the IWW, was also with the Socialist Labor Party. Through this influence, the IWW and SLP assumed identical departments for the industrial union, the only difference being that the IWW named the departments with numbers and the SLP named them with letters of the alphabet. In both cases they said "we are forming the new society within the shell of the old." [IWW Constitution, Preamble, 1905]

[Martin Blank]

The workers can't organize merely industrially and then take control of means of production. If the workers were to do that, then the law, the courts and the police, would still go on operating according to the premise that the capitalists are the rightful owners of the property, and that the workers would be acting like pirates. There would automatically be a war between the government and the workers, and I don't mean that figuratively as in the sense of class war, I mean war literally, as in machine guns and bazookas and rocket launchers aimed at the workers as they walk out of the industries to go home. There has to be some kind of official notification handed down to law enforcement: there's a new decree by the goverment that makes the workers' organzation the rightful owners of the industries, therefore don't interfere with their new management.

...

De Leon also believed in "dismantling" the state and leaving only an economic administration in its place, and to that extent he was in agreement with the anarcho-syndicalists. However, he said a literal war with the state is out of the question; the workers would be massacred. The only way to "dismantle" the state is first to elect socialists to the political offices, the only positions that have the ability to take the state apart piece by piece.

Actually, DeLeon was not as clear-cut on this point as you present him. In As to Politics, which ZeroNowhere mentioned, DeLeon wrote:


The SLP ballot demands the unconditional surrender of the Capitalist Class. The SLP, accordingly preaches the Revolution, teaches the Revolution, and thereby enables the recruiting and organizing of the physical force element requisite to enforce the Revolution. The SLP does all this, including the latter, because it strikes the posture of holding the Ruling Class to the civilized method of a peaceful trial of strength.

Maybe the SLP will triumph at the hustings, that is, win out and be rightly counted. In this case the SLP would forthwith dissolve; the political State would be ipso facto abolished; the industrially and integrally organized proletariat will without hindrance assume the administration of the productive powers of the land. Is this impossible? We admit it is highly improbable.

More likely is the event of SLP triumph at the polls, but defeat by the election inspectors, or resistance, as the Southern slaveholders did at the election of Lincoln. In that case also the SLP would forthwith dissolve into its economic organization. That body, having had the opportunity to recruit and organize its forces, and the civilized method of peaceful trial of strength having been abandoned, the Might of the proletariat will then be there, free to resort to the last resort, and physically mop the earth with the barbarian Capitalist Class. ("Letter by H.B. Hoffman and Answer Thereto", As to Politics -- boldface mine)

Perhaps DeLeon was trying to appeal to an element that would have been inclined to maintain the unity of the IWW if they knew the SLP was more than a vote-mongering party. But I doubt that. I tend to think that DeLeon was being sincere here in his view on the use of physical force and the role of the ballot as a tactic, not a principle. I do think DeLeon understood that simply abandoning the use of the ballot would essentially hand a propaganda victory to the ruling classes and allow them to present the revolutionary workers' movement as a collection of social brigands disinterested in using the "civilized" avenues available to it. On the other hand, DeLeon, having lived in a time not too far removed from the Civil War, and having interacted with those comrades who, as the Workingmen's Party of the U.S., participated in the Great Upheaval of 1877, knew all too well from the beginning what the exploiting and oppressing classes were willing to resort to in order to maintain their control of the political system.


This additional viewpoint is further than I'm willing to go myself, but, in one speech to an audience, De Leon expressed the opinion that a U.S. Congress filled with socialists would have one and only one task to perform, and that would be to take a vote to abolish itself, that is, to pass a motion that the congress is ended with the added stipulation that it will never again reconvene in the future, he said, "to adjourn themselves sine die." Personally, I don't think that would work; I believe that a constitutional amendment would be necessary. Again, all De Leonists agree that there has to be some kind of political act or announcement for a socialist economy to be implemented, and the state disintegrated, but the form of the necessary political act remains ambiguous.

It is unfortunate that DeLeon did not live to see the Russian Revolution himself. While there is little value in the speculation itself, I suspect that DeLeon would have seen the workers' council (soviet, Räte) as the means of resolving this issue, since the Congress could, upon the sine die adjournment, pass political control (and caretaking of the old Constitution, etc.) to the workers' councils in Congress assembled. This is why we included such councils in the structure when we formulated our own strategy of revolutionary industrial unionism. In my view, it cuts the Gordian Knot that post-DeLeon SIU politics have experienced.

[DaringMehring]

De Leon is a hero of American socialism. His essay Lo, the Poor Inventor! still stands as a definitive Marxist response to the capitalist propaganda about socialism robbing inventors.

[mikelepore]

I tend to think that DeLeon was being sincere here in his view on the use of physical force and the role of the ballot as a tactic, not a principle.

My impression was that he contradicted himself because when he said "more likely...." I think he meant to say "It's possible that...."

[Martin Blank]

My impression was that he contradicted himself because when he said "more likely...." I think he meant to say "It's possible that...."

It doesn't seem that way. The paragraph immediate above that, dealing with the SLP winning an electoral victory -- the "victory at the hustings" (using the British terminology, for those who don't know) -- ends with the rhetorical exchange: "Is this impossible? We admit it is highly improbable." The next paragraph then begins, "More likely is ...".

This seems to make it clear that DeLeon did not expect the SLP to achieve state power through the ballot, but saw the ballot as a tactic to build the revolutionary forces capable of seizing power through armed revolution when the ruling classes resorted to what amounts to a coup d'état (or, directly drawing from his analogy, an initiation of civil war).

I can understand why DeLeon, in the pages of the SLP's public press, emphasized the role of the electoral tactic, since it offered the party a large and consistent platform through which it could educate and agitate for Socialist Industrial Unionism and the Socialist Industrial (i.e., Workers') Republic. But it's clear that Daniel's daddy didn't raise no fool, so to speak, and DeLeon knew what Debs meant when the latter said, "in the gleam of every bayonet and the flash of every rifle the class struggle was revealed."

[thomasludd]

Miles: what's your difference from the SLP, as being a supporter of WPA? They're both De Leonists, right?

[mikelepore]

Miles: One indicator I can see that the SLP has often viewed the ballot as "a tactic and not a principle" is how the interpetation has changed according to the legal pressure of the time. During 1950s McCarthyism, when Communist Party members were being imprisoned, the SLP could take refuge in saying: we want socialism just as soon as the Article V, the amendment clause of the Constitution, has been implemented to mandate it. However, in the late 1960s, when there were no legal repercussions for calling for illegal insurrection, and the Black Panthers and Yippies even got away with publicly calling for assassinations without being prosecuted for saying it, then the SLP changed its message. Now most SLP articles and speeches were saying that the campaign is just a rostrum from which to speak, and the ballot is just a thermometer of the political climate. According to the newer message, the moment that a socialist presidential candidate gets the majority vote, that would be the signal to the industrial union that the time is now to "take, hold and operate." I was an SLP member in the 1970s and at the time I disputed that kind of claim; I argued that a constitutional amendment would be necessary, which I still believe.

[Jazzhands]

Well it's basically Marxism-Syndicalism. As far as I know, Deleonists are basically people who would be anarcho-syndicalists but they have been Marxists for a long time and they aren't sure if a society like Anarchist Catalonia is sustainable for a long term.

DeLeonists are apparently notoriously dogmatic, but this comes from Wikipedia so who knows?

[mikelepore]

"Dogmatic" just means that someone else is following a principle that the speaker of the sentence disagrees with. When it's "us", we always say we are "adhering to important principles", but when it's "them" we always say "they are so dogmatic."

[Martin Blank]

Miles: what's your difference from the SLP, as being a supporter of WPA? They're both De Leonists, right?

The Workers Party is not formally DeLeonist. We are a multi-tendency communist organization and don't adhere to a single doctrine or "ism" other than communism. For us, revolutionary industrial unionism, which includes the role of workers' councils as the political basis for the workers' republic, is a strategy, not a principle. Our members recognize that DeLeon made a fundamental contribution to communist theory with Socialist Industrial Unionism, and a majority see it as the basis for what has become our general strategy. But since we are multi-tendency, there are comrades with disagreements and reservations. Such is life, I figure.

There are other differences with the SLP, too, such as on the class question and in areas of conjunctural analysis. But those are for another thread, I would think. This one is about DeLeonism.

[Martin Blank]

Miles: One indicator I can see that the SLP has often viewed the ballot as "a tactic and not a principle" is how the interpetation has changed according to the legal pressure of the time. During 1950s McCarthyism, when Communist Party members were being imprisoned, the SLP could take refuge in saying: we want socialism just as soon as the Article V, the amendment clause of the Constitution, has been implemented to mandate it. However, in the late 1960s, when there were no legal repercussions for calling for illegal insurrection, and the Black Panthers and Yippies even got away with publicly calling for assassinations without being prosecuted for saying it, then the SLP changed its message. Now most SLP articles and speeches were saying that the campaign is just a rostrum from which to speak, and the ballot is just a thermometer of the political climate. According to the newer message, the moment that a socialist presidential candidate gets the majority vote, that would be the signal to the industrial union that the time is now to "take, hold and operate." I was an SLP member in the 1970s and at the time I disputed that kind of claim; I argued that a constitutional amendment would be necessary, which I still believe.

Those kinds of strategic and tactical differences should nourish and enrich party discussion, even when they become sharp. I imagine, however, that little was discussed of the implications of each turn in presenting the role of the ballot. You can, of course, correct me if I'm wrong here.

[mikelepore]

I imagine, however, that little was discussed of the implications of each turn in presenting the role of the ballot

There was almost no discussion in the SLP of how literal we were being in saying "implement the amendment clause of the constitution." Members just assumed without checking with each other that everyone else had the same interpretation as themselves.

The main discussion of the role of the ballot that I recall was the part about the political field of organization being "purely destructive." Everyone in the party accepted very literally the idea of an instantanous abolition of the political form of government. Members talked about this constantly.

Besides that, I thought I could identify about six or seven separate reasons being given for the political organization, but no one besides me seemed interested in my theory that all those reasons were logically separate and needed to be justified separately.

[mikelepore]

In the period before this occurs, the De Leonists are opposed to fighting for intermediate reforms or organizing within trade unions

On the trade unions part, there's an acceptance in the SLP of joining the present pro-capitalist unions for their conventional benefits, that is, struggling over job conditions. But the belief tends to be that the unions can't someday be converted into the necessary socialist union, and that it will eventually be necessary to abandon the old unions to create a new one.

The older literature, say, in the 1950s, was most critical of the pro-capitalist unions, saying that they are "not better than nothing" but "worse than nothing." The 1977 SLP national convention declared a reversal of many of those older attitudes. The 1977 change initiated "intervention in social issues."

[Martin Blank]

There was almost no discussion in the SLP of how literal we were being in saying "implement the amendment clause of the constitution." Members just assumed without checking with each other that everyone else had the same interpretation as themselves.

The main discussion of the role of the ballot that I recall was the part about the political field of organization being "purely destructive." Everyone in the party accepted very literally the idea of an instantanous abolition of the political form of government. Members talked about this constantly.

Besides that, I thought I could identify about six or seven separate reasons being given for the political organization, but no one besides me seemed interested in my theory that all those reasons were logically separate and needed to be justified separately.

I hate to subsume my entire response to this in one sentence, since the questions stemming from your comments strike me as fascinating, but this just sounds like a complete breakdown and failure of inner-party democracy and education to me.

[mikelepore]

a complete breakdown and failure of inner-party democracy and education

Marxism in general, since its beginnings, has tended to attracted people who take comfort in acting as though organizational positions are reasoned out even when they are just memorized from a book. It's the same attitude as a student who gets shown Schrodinger's wave equation and accepts it because "someone smarter than me figured this out before I came along."

We see it on this forum, whenever someone is asked for a specific reason why they assert something and their only reply is "this is known dialectically" or "to say otherwise would be reactionary." That person is repeating an article of faith, but feels the sensation of understanding a proof. The reason that SLP members gets charged with doing this more than other groups is because the SLP positions are so unconventional that other socialists don't recognize them and consider them absurd.

For example, there's a belief in the SLP that government according to geographical lines is part of class rule only. Suppose an SLP member woke up after a long absense like Rip Van Winkle, and was informed that socialism was now in operation. But there's a sign that says "Welcome to California." The person would say, "That settles it -- this can't be socialism. Geographical constituency is still in use." That's an article of faith. There's a paragraph in Lewis Henry Morgan that supposedly explains that a society organized according to geographical lines is based on the rule of private property and slavery. If it says so in a scientific book then it must be true. Individuals even have the feeling that they "understand why."

Coming out of the SLP myself, I tend to laugh about it, like an ex-Catholic who now makes fun of the sprinkling of Holy Water. But I also see such articles of faith everywhere on the left. Because of what is familiar and unfamiliar, other people on the left notice the SLP's idiosyncracies when they don't notice their own.

[ContrarianLemming]

De Leonism has two central positions:

1. Workers need to organize themselves in Socialist Industrial Unions. These are syndicalist style unions but unlike the IWW or similar anarcho-syndicalist federations, they are tied directly to a political party. These unions are formed under capitalism, but they will be the basis of the new society.

2. The party should come to power in parliamentary elections. The members of the party thus elected will dissolve parliament / congress in favor of the Socialist Industrial Unions as the new government.

In the period before this occurs, the De Leonists are opposed to fighting for intermediate reforms or organizing within trade unions - basically everything Lenin had raged against in "Left Wing Communism," they embodied. However, unlike the Council Communists, the De Leonists tended to keep to passive propagandism, believing that they need to simply convince all the workers of the SIU program and then they will go through the steps and the revolution will come.

De Leon had some worthwhile things to say, and if you read his speeches he was a pretty entertaining orator. The Socialist Labor Party was only the second nationwide Marxist party in history (the first being what is now the SPD in Germany). But the abstentionism practiced by the SLP removed it as a factor in the class struggle, and history has left it behind.

Simply put then, it's Marxist Syndicalism

[Martin Blank]

Marxism in general, since its beginnings, has tended to attracted people who take comfort in acting as though organizational positions are reasoned out even when they are just memorized from a book. It's the same attitude as a student who gets shown Schrodinger's wave equation and accepts it because "someone smarter than me figured this out before I came along."

We see it on this forum, whenever someone is asked for a specific reason why they assert something and their only reply is "this is known dialectically" or "to say otherwise would be reactionary." That person is repeating an article of faith, but feels the sensation of understanding a proof. The reason that SLP members gets charged with doing this more than other groups is because the SLP positions are so unconventional that other socialists don't recognize them and consider them absurd.

For example, there's a belief in the SLP that government according to geographical lines is part of class rule only. Suppose an SLP member woke up after a long absense like Rip Van Winkle, and was informed that socialism was now in operation. But there's a sign that says "Welcome to California." The person would say, "That settles it -- this can't be socialism. Geographical constituency is still in use." That's an article of faith. There's a paragraph in Lewis Henry Morgan that supposedly explains that a society organized according to geographical lines is based on the rule of private property and slavery. If it says so in a scientific book then it must be true. Individuals even have the feeling that they "understand why."

Coming out of the SLP myself, I tend to laugh about it, like an ex-Catholic who now makes fun of the sprinkling of Holy Water. But I also see such articles of faith everywhere on the left. Because of what is familiar and unfamiliar, other people on the left notice the SLP's idiosyncracies when they don't notice their own.

Agreed. Very much agreed. There is a tendency among self-described socialists and communists to take the attitude summed up in the common religious bumper sticker: "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it". If you substitute "Marx" (or "Lenin", or "Trotsky", or "Mao", or "Hoxha", etc.) in place of "God", you more or less have the method of today's holy confessional left. Years ago, a couple of us came up with the term "Life of Brian Bolshevism" (based on the scene in Monty Python's "Life of Brian", where all the followers are outside his window, chanting in unison; when Brian tells them they have to think for themselves, they are reply: "Yes, we have to think for ourselves" -- that movie was a great parable about the left, then and now), and I still think the term is appropriate. Few seem willing these days to think critically, especially about the most basic principles, even if they are well over a century old.

[ContrarianLemming]

People never use anarchists as examples of this, and I hate to toot my own horn here but I have never witnessed this in "libertarian" socialism, which I can only take as being the different personalities that are attrcted to it. I don't mean to be sectarian, but almost all of those leftist who take stuff as "marx said it, so its true" are leninists. I have literally spoken to leninists who have said those words, funnilly enough, the gy I'm thinking of used to be an anarchist.

[eyedrop]

People never use anarchists as examples of this, and I hate to toot my own horn here but I have never witnessed this in "libertarian" socialism, which I can only take as being the different personalities that are attrcted to it. I don't mean to be sectarian, but almost all of those leftist who take stuff as "marx said it, so its true" are leninists. I have literally spoken to leninists who have said those words, funnilly enough, the gy I'm thinking of used to be an anarchist.
To take a cheap-shot; an ideology named after a guy should attract more people non-questioningly thinking that guy was right about anything.


Marxism, and all its derivatives, always has the guy its named after as an anchor the ideology is bound to. When there is disagreement the group which has a larger agreement with the "founder" has a larger "right" to the persons legacy.

It has some positive aspects that keeps marxism more nit together than anarchism, in that they can always compare back to an common anchestor of an ideology, while anarchism can be all over the place with no one having much more of a right to the label. Not that marxist don't disagree fundamentally about what the basic ideology is.

[Zanthorus]

Marxism, and all its derivatives, always has the guy its named after as an anchor the ideology is bound to.

...except for Left-Communism.

[ContrarianLemming]

...except for Left-Communism.

funny how the more libertarian versions of marxism isn't named after some great figure, while the statist verions are, like anarchism

[mikelepore]

A social idea named after a person introduces the danger that followers may say "if it says so in the book then it must be true." But it also has an advantage, which is to indicate which meaning you have in mind by referencing the person. This is even done in physical science. Chemists refer to the Bronsted-Lowry definition of acids and bases and the Lewis definition of acids and bases. In thermodynamics we have the Clausius definition of entropy and the Maxwell definition of entropy. So if someone says socialism according to the De Leon definition, that's a pointer to a specific outline of ideas.

For those here who haven't seen the SLP's blueprint, which they always insist is just a general approach and "not a blueprint", note the use of diagrams like this which have been used since the SLP artist Walter Steinhilber began introducing them in the first half of the 20th century:

http://deleonism.org/images/90092209.jpg