Should revolutionaries collaborate with reformists?

[Broletariat]

Or more specifically, the idea that revolutionaries and reformists should work together. That reformists would keep the revolutionaries from becoming left-authoritarians and that the revolutionaries would keep the reformists from becoming too in love with their system.

A friend of mine was proposing this sort of thing to me before but it just seems a bit too collaborationy to get anything accomplished.

[ZeroNowhere]

That's not De Leonism. It has nothing to do with De Leonism. I have no idea why anybody would associate it with De Leonism. It probably has more in common with the SPA, which was a split from the SLP formed after an attempted coup of the party failed.

[Broletariat]

That's not De Leonism. It has nothing to do with De Leonism. I have no idea why anybody would associate it with De Leonism. It probably has more in common with the SPA, which was a split from the SLP formed after an attempted coup of the party failed.
Yea that's sort of why I made this thread too, I was searching around some De Leonism stuff and didn't see anything like that at all, was hoping you guys could point me to it.

So where's he pulling this idea from then?

[ZeroNowhere]

The basic idea of reformists and revolutionaries working together was present in the 'multi-tendency' SPA (Socialist Party of America), with its modern incarnation, to some extent, being the SPUSA. However, I've never really heard the above justification (involving left-authoritarians and such) being given, so I'm not sure where that would have come from.

[ContrarianLemming]

I think it's Leninism with smiley faces and good PR

[Broletariat]

The basic idea of reformists and revolutionaries working together was present in the 'multi-tendency' SPA (Socialist Party of America), with its modern incarnation, to some extent, being the SPUSA. However, I've never really heard the above justification (involving left-authoritarians and such) being given, so I'm not sure where that would have come from.
He pointed me in this direction when he mentioned the whole left-authoritarian thing. I haven't gotten a chance to fully read it though.

http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf

[graymouser]

I think it's Leninism with smiley faces and good PR
De Leonism is not really close to Leninism at all. It has some things in common with left communism (red unions) but is explicitly centered on the party and non-insurrectionary. It avoids participation in reformist struggles in favor of education and building socialist industrial unions, but instead of an insurrection it pictures the revolution as taking place through elections (the party will get elected and then dissolve government in favor of SIUs). So it's pretty unique as such ideas go.

[Broletariat]

De Leonism is not really close to Leninism at all. It has some things in common with left communism (red unions) but is explicitly centered on the party and non-insurrectionary. It avoids participation in reformist struggles in favor of education and building socialist industrial unions, but instead of an insurrection it pictures the revolution as taking place through elections (the party will get elected and then dissolve government in favor of SIUs). So it's pretty unique as such ideas go.
I think he may have been referring to the idea which I mistakenly placed under the umbrella of De Leonism.

Would a mod please change the title of this thread to reflect the actual contents to avoid further confusion? Maybe something like, Collaboration with Reformists?

Done - Bob The Builder

[ZeroNowhere]

De Leonism is not really close to Leninism at all. It has some things in common with left communism (red unions) but is explicitly centered on the party and non-insurrectionary. It avoids participation in reformist struggles in favor of education and building socialist industrial unions, but instead of an insurrection it pictures the revolution as taking place through elections (the party will get elected and then dissolve government in favor of SIUs). So it's pretty unique as such ideas go.Not necessarily:

"Most likely, however, the political expression of the IWW will not be afforded the time for triumph at the polls. Most likely the necessities of capitalism will, before then, drive it to some lawless act that will call forth resistance. A strike will break out; capitalist brutality will cause the strike to spread; physical, besides moral support, will pour in from other and not immediately concerned branches of the Working Class. A condition of things—economic, political, social-atmospheric—will set in, akin to the condition of things in 1902, at the time of the great coal miners’ strike, or in 1894, at the time of the Pullman-ARU strike. What then? The issue will then depend wholly upon the degree, in point of quality and in point of quantity, that the organization of the IWW will have reached. If it has reached the requisite minimum, then, that class-instinct of the proletariat that Marx teaches the Socialist to rely upon, and the chord of which the Capitalist Class instinctively seeks, through its labor fakirs, to keep the Socialist from touching, will readily crystallize around that requisite IWW minimum of organization. The Working Class would then be organically consolidated. Further efforts for a peaceful measuring of strength would then have been rendered superfluous by Capitalist barbarism. Capitalism would be swept aside forthwith." (AtP)

"First. In a country where compulsory military service has not only made the people skillful in the handling of a gun, but has familiarized them with military tactics, an insurrectionary call to arms cannot be imagined to gather 50,000 men without the vast majority of them are readily organizable. From the militarily schooled mass the requisite military chief and lieutenants will spontaneously spring up, and be spontaneously acknowledged. The organized insurrectionary force would be on foot." ('Syndicalism')

I also don't think that De Leonism, inasmuch as it describes the current of thought based on De Leon's views from 1904 onwards, is particularly Party-centric either; rather, he viewed both political and economic organization as equally important in the US (his strategy was more or less tailored for the US, as he notes in the above cited article 'Syndicalism'). He compared them with two wings, so that without one the other would be unable to precipitate flight.


I think it's Leninism with smiley faces and good PRIf you're talking about De Leonism, rather than what was described in the OP (which I wouldn't say is particularly 'Leninist'), then I'd say we actually had more in common with Alexandra Kollontai's views put forth in 'The Workers' Opposition (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1921/workers-opposition/ch02.htm)', and condemned by Lenin as 'syndicalism', if anything. This isn't too surprising, as from what I recall Kollontai had been influenced by De Leon, and, apparently, "In 1916 she was in New York, and at Lenin’s request was collecting information about the American Socialist Party and the Socialist Labour Party, in the course of which she introduced Lenin to the writings of the socialist-syndicalist Daniel de Leon, who believed in industrial unionism – the working class organised into one big union to take over and run production."

[Zanthorus]

It has some things in common with left communism (red unions).

The idea of entryism into the trade unions was supported by Bordiga and emphasised by him as one of the reasons why the Italian abstentionists had little in common with the left-wing of the KPD which became the KAPD:


...the division between ourselves and those maximalists who voted in favour of Serrati's motion at Bologna is not analogous to the division between the supporters of abstentionism and the supporters of electoral participation within the German Communist Party, but corresponds rather to the division between Communists and independents.

In programmatic terms our point of view has nothing In common with anarchism and syndicalism... We are not In favour of boycotting economic trade unions but of communists taking them over, and our position corresponds to that expressed by comrade Zinoviev in his report to the Congress of the Russian Communist Party, published by Avanti! on 1 January.http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1920/letters.htm

[Barry Lyndon]

I think a lot of WWP's politics are shit, but this is a pretty good summation as to why I reject DeLeonism and related ideologies(like Left-Communism):

Combat Impossibilism, Defend Marxism-Leninism (http://calebmaupin.blogspot.com/2010/01/combat-impossibilism-defend-marxism.html)


By Caleb T. Maupin


Among the most crude distortions of the teachings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin is the ideology of “impossiblism.” Most of the practitioners of this vulgar revisionism do not know what they are practicing, or even that it has a name. However, impossiblist thought is prevalent among modern day leftists, including those who proclaim themselves to be Marxist-Leninists, in addition to Anarchists, Syndicalists, and other trends of modern anti-capitalist radicalism.

The word “impossiblism” was coined by Daniel DeLeon, the socialist academic who founded the Socialist Labor Party of America (http://www.slp.org/), the first “Marxist” organization in the United States. “Impossiblism” is the belief that all reforms to capitalism, and all victories for the working class short of the seizing of the means of production, are counter-productive. The impossibilist believes that voting, forming unions, passing progressive legislation, defending victims of state repression, and all other activities that put the class struggle in motion, and lay bare the contractions of capitalism are merely frivolous and worthless reformism.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_tqISUN7OIsY/S11UXiXOPbI/AAAAAAAABCY/LpyeFFL4uLg/s200/220px-Daniel-DeLeon-1902.jpg (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_tqISUN7OIsY/S11UXiXOPbI/AAAAAAAABCY/LpyeFFL4uLg/s1600-h/220px-Daniel-DeLeon-1902.jpg)

The impossibilist believes that such things “reinforce” in workers the mind the morality, or ability to "become human" of the capitalism. The impossibilist counter-poses class struggle with agitation. In affect, the impossibilist transforms the role of a Marxist-Leninist from that of a “tribune of the people” and champion of the oppressed, to that of a religious fanatic or a street corner preacher.

The impossibilist trades in the organization of unions, the formation of militant working class organizations, and the combating of the ruling classes, for simply standing on the side-lines proclaiming the benefits and necessity of socialism.


Utopian Preaching, Not Scientific Class Struggle

By doing so, they not only reject activism, but they reject the key point of Marx and Lenin’s teachings that being the existence and necessity of class struggle. The impossibilist forgets that society is divided into classes that are constantly in political war for control of wealth. The impossibilist sees Socialism as a utopian ideal to be reached upon the fulfillment of a great amount of agitation, a great amount of religious like conversions, in essence the “saving of souls” from all strata society by the evangelism of a church of revolution.

The impossibilist loses credibility to workers, who see them as mentally ill, phrase-mongering, and out of touch with the conditions of reality. Amid the horrors of economic crisis, the worker is in a constant struggle against unemployment, eviction, foreclosure, criminal prosecution, and all the horrors of the present day. A worker who is approached by an impossibilist, sees in them no program to combat these woes or overcome their day to day hardships.

Rather, the impossiblist presents them only with a utopian vision of an imaginary society nowhere to be seen. The impossibilist offers as much consolation and hope to an oppressed worker as a science fiction or fantasy novel, available for purchase at any drug store, book dealer, or library.

When a worker tells an impossiblist of the horrors of their daily life, the impossibilist can only tell them the necessity of a revolution and a new society to follow as a solution Knowing full well that no such revolution is on the near horizon, the worker does not see the impossiblist as of any assistance to them.


Material Basis of Impossiblism

Among the working class and the movement of its emancipation, there are very few impossibilists. Impossibilism is an ideology at home only among intellectuals, artists, and other strata of society with the comfort and free time, as well as the intellectual training to see the necessity of socialism and debate the merits of it.

The impossiblist is often not only out connection with the working class, but sometimes even loathing of it. When the workers reject the teachings of the impossibilist, the impossibilist views this as an inherent fault of the workers and is further reinforced in his/her hatred of the workers and lack of faith in them as an agent of social change.
Lenin’s work "What Is To Be Done? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/) specifically lays out the role of Marxist-Leninists in society. Marxist-Leninists seek to do two things:

1. Organize among the working class, while conducting agitation about the necessity of revolutionary change.

2. Break the working class from the leadership of one wing or other of the capitalist class, and allow it organize in its own, independent interests, strengthening itself to eventually seize control of all of society and destroy class differences.

The impossibilist will falsely accuse genuine Marxist-Leninists of being “economists” and “revisionists.” They will make these accusations on the basis that genuine Marxist-Leninists organize for demands other than Proletarian Revolution. It is then falsely inferred that the goal of Socialist Revolution has been dropped or dis-valued.


Lenin’s Definition of Economism

Such is a distortion of Marxism-Leninism’s concept of “Economism.” Economism is when the abolition of capitalism is rejected, and agitation and theory become absent from the practice of revolutionaries. Economism is often coupled with class collaboration. An economist often finds his/her movement subordinating itself to one wing of the bourgeoisie or other, thinking that it can offer a “better deal” to the working class.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_tqISUN7OIsY/S11VpWw-vcI/AAAAAAAABCg/oGT008YXG2M/s200/whattobedone.jpg (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_tqISUN7OIsY/S11VpWw-vcI/AAAAAAAABCg/oGT008YXG2M/s1600-h/whattobedone.jpg)

Economism and Impossiblism are but two sides of the same false, revisionist coin. The economist believes that the working class can find liberation only through appeasing liberal capitalists. The Impossiblists believes the working class can find liberation only through be “witnessed” to by themselves, and upon being so enlightened, smashing capitalism under the direction of the wise men who “showed them the way” from their misery. The economist believes that the bourgeoisie must be collaborated with, and morally convinced to accept socialism, as the working class is not strong enough to enact it independently.

Both Economism and Impossiblism reject the idea that the working class are agents of social change and revolution. Economists and Impossiblists both think like the bourgeoisie, because they believe in the theory of “great men” as the makers of history.

The Working Class as the Makers of History

Just as history according to the bourgeoisie tells of slavery being ended by the wisdom of Lincoln, or of segregation ending because of the “I Have A Dream” speech of Martin Luther King, and fails to mention the role of the millions who took up these visions, fighting, bleeding and dying for them, the impossiblists sees the class struggle as similar. They see themselves as the Lincolns or Kings who can strike down material conditions with their words and thoughts, no proletarian action or involvement needed, other than merely standing before their podiums in applause, or marching unthinkingly behind their banners, convinced of their greatness and following their orders.

The economist sees the bourgeoisie as being necessary allies to the working class in its struggle for liberation, underestimating not only the material interest of capitalists in the present order, but the ability of the workers to define their own future and program as was done in 1871, 1917, 1959, 1949, and currently in Latin America when revolutionary struggles gave the Proletariat Political Independence.

Marxist-Leninists, unlike the revisionist twins of Economism and Impossibilsm, realize that the masses are the makers of history. As such Marxist-Leninists seek to direct the masses into confrontation with the bourgeoisie, inspire them to take their independent political line, and build them up as a force to seize the means of production and overturn the brutal economic status quo amidst its self-destruction.


Impossiblism is a false, distortion of Marxism-Leninism. Impossiblism offers no road to Socialism, Communism, or Progress Toward the Empancipation of Humanity.

Long Live The Class Struggle! Long Live Working Class As the Makers of History! Down With Impossibilist Revisionism!

[Zanthorus]

Economism is when the abolition of capitalism is rejected, and agitation and theory become absent from the practice of revolutionaries.

No, economism in a narrow sense is the belief in growing political struggles out of economic struggles, and more broadly means lagging behind the 'spontaneous' working-class movement. Plenty of groups who nominally support the abolition of capitalism have economist politics, including the majority of Trotskyist groups.

Here is Jack Conrad on the subject:


As an aside, it is worthwhile here, once again, dealing with that term ‘economism’. Naturally economists, including those mentioned above, define economism in a particularly jejune fashion. That way, in their own minds at least, they have to be found completely innocent of the ugly charge. Hence the plaintive cry. ‘I can’t understand why you in the CPGB call us economists’. If I have heard it once, I have heard it a thousand times.

Below are four specially selected, but representative, examples of economism self-defined; it is a self-replicating Hydra.

1) Let us begin with Tony Cliff’s decoy of a definition: “Socialists should limit their agitation to purely economic issues, first to the industrial plant, then to inter-plant demands, and so on. Secondly, from the narrow economic agitation the workers would learn, through experience of the struggle itself, the need for politics, without the need for socialists to carry out agitation on the general political and social issues facing the Russian people as a whole.”

2) Next an ‘official communist’ dictionary definition: “Its proponents wanted to limit the tasks of the working class movement to economic struggle (improving labour conditions, higher wages, etc). They held that political struggle should be waged by the liberal bourgeoisie alone.”

3) The International Socialist Group’s Bob Jenkins can speak as the head of orthodox Trotskyism: economism is “orientating to daily trade union struggles” and this “leads them to underestimate the important new political issues and movements unless they are to be found in the unions”.

4) Finally we turn to the AWL’s Pete Radcliff for a definition from unorthodox Trotskyism: “Economism was the term Lenin used to describe the politics and approach of revolutionaries who exclude themselves from the political struggle ... and merely concentrated on trade union agitation.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Even against the “old economism” of 1894-1902, Lenin fielded the term in the “broad sense”. The principal feature of economism is lagging behind the spontaneous movement and a general tendency to downplay the centrality of extreme democracy. That is why in 1916 Lenin attacked those Bolsheviks who, citing war-torn capitalism’s supposed inability to grant meaningful reforms, dismissed the demand for national self-determination. He branded this trend “imperialist economism”.

Countless other manifestations of economism could be cited - eg, atheist economism, which, relying on technological and scientific progress, dismisses the need to combat religious superstition, or Trotskyite economism, which equates the former USSR with some kind of a workers’ state due to nationalised property forms.http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=432

[Paulappaul]

Combat Impossibilism, Defend Marxism-Leninism (http://www.anonym.to/?http://calebmaupin.blogspot.com/2010/01/combat-impossibilism-defend-marxism.html)


By Caleb T. Maupin


That's perhaps the worst piece of shit critique I have ever read. It doesn't site any reference from the Texts of Deleon to defend it's postion nor bare any reality to Impossiblism, which it believes to be just in the SLP, when in fact Impossiblism carried a big movement in Britain.

Furthermore, Left Communism is completely different from Impossibilism. The closet Left Communist to the Impossiblist ideology was Sylvia Pankhurst and that's because she came from the heart of the Left Socialists in Britain.

[ZeroNowhere]

The word “impossiblism” was coined by Daniel DeLeonNot true (http://slp.org/pdf/de_leon/eds1905/nov15_1905.pdf). Indeed, the word 'possibilist' certainly predated him by quite a while:
The original conjunction of Guesde (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/g/u.htm#jules-guesde) and Lafargue (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/l/a.htm#paul-lafargue) with Malon and Brousse was no doubt unavoidable when the party was founded, but Marx and I never had any illusions that it could last. The issue is purely one of principle: is the struggle to be conducted as a class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, or is it to be permitted that in good opportunist (or as it is called in the Socialist translation: possibilist) style the class character of the movement, together with the programme, are everywhere to be dropped where there is a chance of winning more votes, more adherents, by this means. Malon and Brousse, by declaring themselves in favour of the latter alternative, have sacrificed the proletarian class character of the movement and made separation inevitable. All the better. The development of the proletariat proceeds everywhere amidst internal struggles and France, which is now forming a workers' party for the first time, is no exception. We in Germany have got beyond the first phase of the internal struggle, other phases still lie before us. Unity is quite a good thing so long as it is possible, but there are things which stand higher than unity. And when, like Marx and myself, one has fought harder all one's life long against the alleged Socialists than against anyone else (for we only regarded the bourgeoisie as a class and hardly ever involved ourselves in conflicts with individual bourgeois), one cannot greatly grieve that the inevitable struggle has broken out.-Engels, 1882.


the socialist academic who founded the Socialist Labor Party of America (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.slp.org/)That's not true, either. De Leon joined the SLP when it was 13-14 years old. He had also been ejected from professorship some time before that, so it's not entirely clear that he was an 'academic' at the time, either.


The impossibilist trades in the organization of unions, the formation of militant working class organizations, and the combating of the ruling classes, for simply standing on the side-lines proclaiming the benefits and necessity of socialism.As we know, De Leon was highly opposed to the very idea of the IWW, being a merger of other trade unions into yet another trade union, and he also opposed strikes, rather than, say, going to them and expressing his support.


When the workers reject the teachings of the impossibilist, the impossibilist views this as an inherent fault of the workers and is further reinforced in his/her hatred of the workers and lack of faith in them as an agent of social change.Of course, De Leon hated the working class and had no faith in them as an agent of social change, contrary to the sentiments expressed in most of his work; we can read his mind, you see.

Anyhow, I think that further discussion of De Leonism may be off-topic, so I'll spare the rest of this ill-conceived article.


That is why in 1916 Lenin attacked those Bolsheviks who, citing war-torn capitalism’s supposed inability to grant meaningful reforms, dismissed the demand for national self-determination. He branded this trend “imperialist economism”.

Countless other manifestations of economism could be cited - eg, atheist economism, which, relying on technological and scientific progress, dismisses the need to combat religious superstition, or Trotskyite economism, which equates the former USSR with some kind of a workers’ state due to nationalised property forms. Wow, look at that word go.

[Broletariat]

Perhaps it would be best if a mod split the De Leon posts and remade my topic or something, because De Leonism is not what I had the intention of discussing apparently, though it has been quite informative we have drifted away from my original question.

[RED DAVE]

Basically, the SLP and the DeLeonists have abstained from serious struggle for about 100 years.

RED DAVE

[Queercommie Girl]

I favour the transitional strategies of Trotskyism and fighting within the current capitalist system on many fronts, and reject De Lelonism and impossibilism as strategically bankrupt and extremely dogmatic.

To be frank, being influenced by Kautskyite centralism I'd rather err on the side of economism than impossibilism. Most people care more about the food on their table than abstract ideologies. Without basic food and clothing, ideology is nothing. Objectively sustained reformism gives more power to the working class than ultra-dogmatic and escapist impossibilism. I'm by no means an ideological purist, I'm a pragmatist who is willing to bend some rules for strategic gains.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ "De Leonism" isn't really the same as what De Leon wrote and spoke.


Steps in the right direction, so-called ‘immediate demands,’ are among the most precarious. They are precarious because they are subject and prone to the lure of the ‘sop’ or the ‘palliative’ that the foes of labor’s redemption are ever ready to dangle before the eyes of the working class, and at which, aided by the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class, the unwary are apt to snap and be hooked. But there is a test by which the bait can be distinguished from the sound step, by which the trap can be detected and avoided, and yet the right step forward taken. That test is this: Does the contemplated step square with the ultimate aim? If it does, then the step is sound and safe; if it does not, then the step is a trap and disastrous.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/deleon/works/1904/040421.htm

Who can disagree with that assessment of how to pick reform struggles?

Organizing a Socialist Industrial Union was quite consistent with the revolutionary strategy of the Marxist center (i.e., Kautsky, Bebel, Guesde, etc.).

[ZeroNowhere]

Basically, the SLP and the DeLeonists have abstained from serious struggle for about 100 years.The De Leon-era SLP didn't do so, however, and as such this is clearly a case of De Leonists not being dogmatic enough.


^^^ "De Leonism" isn't really the same as what De Leon wrote and spoke.
Only the economic organization may and must reach out after crumbs -- "improved conditions" -- on its way to emancipation. The very nature of the organization preserves it from the danger of "resting satisfied." of accepting "improvement" for "goal." The economic organization is forced by economic laws to realize it can preserve no "improvement" unless it marches onward to emancipation.

Otherwise with the political organization. It must be "whole hog or none." The very nature of its existence -- itself only a path clearer for the economic organization, and only a temporary means -- renders the political organization prone to "rest satisfied" with incidentals and "improvements."

There is no danger of the true political party of socialism, that is, the party that flows from classconscious unions, dragging behind it the navel-string of "immediate demands" -- as well imagine an Declaration of Independence with "immediate demands."- Demands - 'Immediate' and 'Constant'.

That article's pretty well known amongst De Leonists, and 'The Burning Question...' even more so, so I'm not entirely sure what you're on about.

Anyhow, I'm thinking that we should end the discussion on De Leonism on the request of the original poster. Perhaps it should be split.

[Thirsty Crow]

Or more specifically, the idea that revolutionaries and reformists should work together. That reformists would keep the revolutionaries from becoming left-authoritarians and that the revolutionaries would keep the reformists from becoming too in love with their system.

A friend of mine was proposing this sort of thing to me before but it just seems a bit too collaborationy to get anything accomplished.

This is an odd notion. It seems to me that either you expressed yourself badly or the idea itself is severely flawed, with respect to its basis.
And its basis is the presupposition that reformists are in fact (absolutely) democratic in their politics. However, this is certainly not the case, since (left) reformism as a political phenomenon is strictly connected to the hierarchical character of the wider social relations (in which politics materially participates) within the capitalist mode of production.
Reformists are authoritarians.

[Amphictyonis]

NO!

[Die Neue Zeit]

- Demands - 'Immediate' and 'Constant'.

That article's pretty well known amongst De Leonists, and 'The Burning Question...' even more so, so I'm not entirely sure what you're on about.

What's the source for the stuff you quoted?

Anyway, I do think he was wrong on the party front. "Educate, Educate, Educate!" is as poor an answer as "Agitate, Agitate, Agitate!" He never wrote anything about parties themselves establishing an alternative culture.