Die Neue Zeit
12th December 2010, 05:41
Transnational Organization, Modern Partiinost, and Programmatic Centrality
“Looking back a few years later, the Bolshevik M. Liadov defined the heart of Bolshevism in 1904 as the defense of partiinost, a word that in this era can be defined as 'acting as befits a modern political party'. A historian of French socialism calls Jules Guesde's Marxist party 'the first modern political party' in France because it had the following characteristics: 'a large national base, an annual national congress, an executive committee, a programme, and an insistence of discipline'. This also defines what the Bolsheviks meant by partiinost.” (Lars Lih)
Contrary to the later similarity of partiinost (“partyism” or “partyness”) in the mid-to-late Soviet era with liberal-bourgeois political correctness in Western countries, the partiinost of three Internationals in the early 20th century best exemplified politico-ideological independence for the working class. For example, within the original Socialist International or Second International, one of the national parties officially dubbed itself a mere section: the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO), or the French Section of the Workers International. It was most likely the French example that inspired the likes of Italian Marxist Amadeo Bordiga during his time in the Communist International or Comintern:
From the out-break of World War I in 1914 to 1926 the Italian Left gave its contribution to the reconstruction of the world party, and it waged a struggle, increasingly defensive, to make this party into a truly effective organ which could realise the aims it had given itself. After 1926 our current was struck by the blows of the counter-revolution in full force, manifested both in the Stalinist persecution as well as in bourgeois repression, whether fascist in Italy or democratic in France. At the same time it found itself increasingly isolated from the currents which on the international level took a position more or less opposed to Stalinism and its liquidation of the revolutionary party.
In my earlier work, I pointed to the Comintern as that world party, under which Bordiga led a “Communist Party of Italy, Section of the Communist International,” but the word “reconstruction” is in fact a reference to centralist interpretations of the Second International itself, and even in the very early 1920s the Comintern itself became more and more an infantile, nutter-ish yet federated fan club for the Soviet government and corresponding Communist Party, losing its connections with the working class under pretenses of “Bolshevization.”
Indeed, strictly speaking of politico-ideological independence for the working class, the closest to a durable third worker-class International and the most relevant International was the short-lived International Working Union of Socialist Parties (IWUSP) formed in 1921, derisively called the “Two and a Half International” by an increasingly out-of-touch Comintern. This “centrist” International acknowledged realistically that any revolutionary period which had arisen in Europe just before the war and which lasted a few years into the Russian Revolution had receded; mass hostilities towards bourgeois regimes, majority political support (not just electoral support) for such hostilities towards parties even more hostile towards those regimes, and instability within the organs of those regimes were absent. Among the mass parties of this International were: the SFIO itself, the main Social-Democratic parties in Austria and Switzerland, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, and what some in today’s Die Linke (The Left party in Germany) called “an outstanding role model for left politics today” which “paid attention to the daily demands and needs of workers without yielding its claim to revolutionary, anti-capitalist politics” – the Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, or USPD). Unlike the Comintern and its sectarian spin-offs, the short-lived IWUSP retained the most realistic yet most important lesson from the Second International on real parties being real movements and vice versa, as discussed earlier.
Contemporarily speaking, the basic principle of transnational emancipation would be ineffective without the corresponding party organization, even at the point of civil disobedience. Indeed, a third worker-class International, or Internationale Klassenkämpferische Sozial Arbeit (International Class-Strugglist Social Labour), should not be sought because of the bankruptcy of internationalism or, more precisely, inter-nationalism. Inter-nationalism even in its worker-class form presupposes the indefinite existence of nation-states and the interaction between these nation-states, while nationalism itself has become bankrupt through Balkanization. Despite the positions of Marx and Engels on national self-determination and some post-bourgeois co-existence of nation-states, the world has become too small to assert like the Communist Manifesto does that “the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle,” that “the proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie […] must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation,” and that the proletariat “is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.” As Bordiga himself and his immediate comrades realized after the mislabelled “Second World War,” it is simply necessary to go beyond the very concept of nations, hence trans-nationalism and trans-national organization.
While the end form of transnational organization is unitary, some forms of federalism can keep this end form consciously in view as the desired one. One of the organizational levels immediately below the transnational organization could be one spanning an entire geological continent or a large portion of it, with lower levels unambiguously subordinated to this. For example, the Weekly Worker, a British Marxist newspaper, always raises the slogan “Towards a Communist Party of the European Union” on its masthead. Another organizational level immediately below the transnational organization could be one spanning an entire geological subcontinent, again with lower levels unambiguously subordinated to it. Such would be the case with Western Asia or the commonly called “Middle East,” as well as with Central America and the Caribbean put together. Yet another organizational level immediately below the transnational organization could be one within two or more geological continents, again with lower levels unambiguously subordinated to it. Such would be the case with Southeast Asia and the two geological continents of Oceania put together, as well as with area approximating the former Soviet Union but somewhat larger (most likely including all Uyghur and Altay territories, also likely including key inroads into Poland and other smaller areas of Eastern Europe, and less likely including the case of Finland like in the times before 1917).
Moreover, programmatic centrality, or the pairing together of “a programme and an insistence on discipline,” is more important at the transnational level than it ever was at mere national levels. Historically, the sixteenth of the twenty-one conditions of admission to the Comintern was aimed at correcting the practical non-enforceability of certain resolutions of the Second International. Two of the most notable resolutions were the “International Rules of Socialist Tactics” of 1904, which banned cross-class coalitionism (most notably coalitions with bourgeois parties at least at the national level) and the anti-war Basel Manifesto of 1912, which called for affiliates to “exert every effort in order to prevent the outbreak of war by the means they consider most effective, which naturally vary according to the sharpening of the class struggle and the sharpening of the general political situation,” and to “utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to arouse the people and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.”
Contemporarily speaking, programmatic centrality means that executive councils and bureaus at the transnational level should issue binding programmatic resolutions regarding the six or more types of demands (immediate, intermediate, threshold, transformative, directional, and maximalist) identified earlier in Chapter 1, and have the ability to enforce them upon all member organizations based somewhat on the old Lassallean rhetoric of “strict centralization” and “democratic centralization,” while practically speaking allow grandfather clauses on enforceability for newly admitted member organizations caught with their proverbial pants down in cross-class ruling coalitions – subject to the limitation of having a non-voting status on deciding these resolutions until they are clearly in opposition. Outside of the grandfather clauses, those sections of national party organizations and even whole national party organizations that are found to be in violation of the binding programmatic resolutions would be subject to substantive disciplinary action, up to and including expulsion. As noted in my earlier work, a more extreme application of programmatic centrality came in the form of Bordiga’s suggestion that the newly-formed Soviet Union be ruled directly by all member organizations of the Comintern, in direct contrast to the Comintern being a federated fan club for the Soviet government and corresponding Communist Party.
REFERENCES
History of the Marxist internationals (part 2, the Second International) by Louis Proyect http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/history-of-the-marxist-internationals-part-2-the-second-international/]
Fundamental Theses of the Party by Amadeo Bordiga [http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1951/fundamental-theses.htm]
Needed: Revived Second International (or Third Worker Class International) [http://www.revleft.com/vb/needed-revived-second-t128934/index.html]
History of the Marxist internationals (part 4, the Centrists) by Louis Proyect [http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/history-of-the-marxist-internationals-part-3-the-centrists/]
German Left Party honours the founding of the centrist Independent Social Democratic Party by Stefan Steinberg [http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/left-m10.shtml]
Why not an international socialist party? [http://www.revleft.com/vb/why-not-international-t59122/index.html]
Bankruptcy of internationalism? [http://www.revleft.com/vb/bankruptcy-internationalismi-t144285/index.html]
Really Existing Nationalisms: A Post-Communist View from Marx and Engels by Erica Benner [http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/politicalscience/9780198279594/toc.html]
The Revolutionary-Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Peasantry by Vladimir Lenin [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/apr/12b.htm]
Manifesto of the International Socialist Congress at Basel by the Extraordinary International Socialist Congress at Basel [http://www.workers.org/marcy/cd/sambol/bolwar/bolwar08.htm]
History of the Marxist internationals (conclusion, the call for a Fifth International) by Louis Proyect [http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/history-of-the-marxist-internationals-conclusion-the-call-for-a-fifth-international/]
If only the Lassalleans took over the First International [http://www.revleft.com/vb/if-only-lassalleans-t144446/index.html]
“Looking back a few years later, the Bolshevik M. Liadov defined the heart of Bolshevism in 1904 as the defense of partiinost, a word that in this era can be defined as 'acting as befits a modern political party'. A historian of French socialism calls Jules Guesde's Marxist party 'the first modern political party' in France because it had the following characteristics: 'a large national base, an annual national congress, an executive committee, a programme, and an insistence of discipline'. This also defines what the Bolsheviks meant by partiinost.” (Lars Lih)
Contrary to the later similarity of partiinost (“partyism” or “partyness”) in the mid-to-late Soviet era with liberal-bourgeois political correctness in Western countries, the partiinost of three Internationals in the early 20th century best exemplified politico-ideological independence for the working class. For example, within the original Socialist International or Second International, one of the national parties officially dubbed itself a mere section: the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO), or the French Section of the Workers International. It was most likely the French example that inspired the likes of Italian Marxist Amadeo Bordiga during his time in the Communist International or Comintern:
From the out-break of World War I in 1914 to 1926 the Italian Left gave its contribution to the reconstruction of the world party, and it waged a struggle, increasingly defensive, to make this party into a truly effective organ which could realise the aims it had given itself. After 1926 our current was struck by the blows of the counter-revolution in full force, manifested both in the Stalinist persecution as well as in bourgeois repression, whether fascist in Italy or democratic in France. At the same time it found itself increasingly isolated from the currents which on the international level took a position more or less opposed to Stalinism and its liquidation of the revolutionary party.
In my earlier work, I pointed to the Comintern as that world party, under which Bordiga led a “Communist Party of Italy, Section of the Communist International,” but the word “reconstruction” is in fact a reference to centralist interpretations of the Second International itself, and even in the very early 1920s the Comintern itself became more and more an infantile, nutter-ish yet federated fan club for the Soviet government and corresponding Communist Party, losing its connections with the working class under pretenses of “Bolshevization.”
Indeed, strictly speaking of politico-ideological independence for the working class, the closest to a durable third worker-class International and the most relevant International was the short-lived International Working Union of Socialist Parties (IWUSP) formed in 1921, derisively called the “Two and a Half International” by an increasingly out-of-touch Comintern. This “centrist” International acknowledged realistically that any revolutionary period which had arisen in Europe just before the war and which lasted a few years into the Russian Revolution had receded; mass hostilities towards bourgeois regimes, majority political support (not just electoral support) for such hostilities towards parties even more hostile towards those regimes, and instability within the organs of those regimes were absent. Among the mass parties of this International were: the SFIO itself, the main Social-Democratic parties in Austria and Switzerland, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, and what some in today’s Die Linke (The Left party in Germany) called “an outstanding role model for left politics today” which “paid attention to the daily demands and needs of workers without yielding its claim to revolutionary, anti-capitalist politics” – the Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, or USPD). Unlike the Comintern and its sectarian spin-offs, the short-lived IWUSP retained the most realistic yet most important lesson from the Second International on real parties being real movements and vice versa, as discussed earlier.
Contemporarily speaking, the basic principle of transnational emancipation would be ineffective without the corresponding party organization, even at the point of civil disobedience. Indeed, a third worker-class International, or Internationale Klassenkämpferische Sozial Arbeit (International Class-Strugglist Social Labour), should not be sought because of the bankruptcy of internationalism or, more precisely, inter-nationalism. Inter-nationalism even in its worker-class form presupposes the indefinite existence of nation-states and the interaction between these nation-states, while nationalism itself has become bankrupt through Balkanization. Despite the positions of Marx and Engels on national self-determination and some post-bourgeois co-existence of nation-states, the world has become too small to assert like the Communist Manifesto does that “the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle,” that “the proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie […] must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation,” and that the proletariat “is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.” As Bordiga himself and his immediate comrades realized after the mislabelled “Second World War,” it is simply necessary to go beyond the very concept of nations, hence trans-nationalism and trans-national organization.
While the end form of transnational organization is unitary, some forms of federalism can keep this end form consciously in view as the desired one. One of the organizational levels immediately below the transnational organization could be one spanning an entire geological continent or a large portion of it, with lower levels unambiguously subordinated to this. For example, the Weekly Worker, a British Marxist newspaper, always raises the slogan “Towards a Communist Party of the European Union” on its masthead. Another organizational level immediately below the transnational organization could be one spanning an entire geological subcontinent, again with lower levels unambiguously subordinated to it. Such would be the case with Western Asia or the commonly called “Middle East,” as well as with Central America and the Caribbean put together. Yet another organizational level immediately below the transnational organization could be one within two or more geological continents, again with lower levels unambiguously subordinated to it. Such would be the case with Southeast Asia and the two geological continents of Oceania put together, as well as with area approximating the former Soviet Union but somewhat larger (most likely including all Uyghur and Altay territories, also likely including key inroads into Poland and other smaller areas of Eastern Europe, and less likely including the case of Finland like in the times before 1917).
Moreover, programmatic centrality, or the pairing together of “a programme and an insistence on discipline,” is more important at the transnational level than it ever was at mere national levels. Historically, the sixteenth of the twenty-one conditions of admission to the Comintern was aimed at correcting the practical non-enforceability of certain resolutions of the Second International. Two of the most notable resolutions were the “International Rules of Socialist Tactics” of 1904, which banned cross-class coalitionism (most notably coalitions with bourgeois parties at least at the national level) and the anti-war Basel Manifesto of 1912, which called for affiliates to “exert every effort in order to prevent the outbreak of war by the means they consider most effective, which naturally vary according to the sharpening of the class struggle and the sharpening of the general political situation,” and to “utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to arouse the people and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.”
Contemporarily speaking, programmatic centrality means that executive councils and bureaus at the transnational level should issue binding programmatic resolutions regarding the six or more types of demands (immediate, intermediate, threshold, transformative, directional, and maximalist) identified earlier in Chapter 1, and have the ability to enforce them upon all member organizations based somewhat on the old Lassallean rhetoric of “strict centralization” and “democratic centralization,” while practically speaking allow grandfather clauses on enforceability for newly admitted member organizations caught with their proverbial pants down in cross-class ruling coalitions – subject to the limitation of having a non-voting status on deciding these resolutions until they are clearly in opposition. Outside of the grandfather clauses, those sections of national party organizations and even whole national party organizations that are found to be in violation of the binding programmatic resolutions would be subject to substantive disciplinary action, up to and including expulsion. As noted in my earlier work, a more extreme application of programmatic centrality came in the form of Bordiga’s suggestion that the newly-formed Soviet Union be ruled directly by all member organizations of the Comintern, in direct contrast to the Comintern being a federated fan club for the Soviet government and corresponding Communist Party.
REFERENCES
History of the Marxist internationals (part 2, the Second International) by Louis Proyect http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/history-of-the-marxist-internationals-part-2-the-second-international/]
Fundamental Theses of the Party by Amadeo Bordiga [http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1951/fundamental-theses.htm]
Needed: Revived Second International (or Third Worker Class International) [http://www.revleft.com/vb/needed-revived-second-t128934/index.html]
History of the Marxist internationals (part 4, the Centrists) by Louis Proyect [http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/history-of-the-marxist-internationals-part-3-the-centrists/]
German Left Party honours the founding of the centrist Independent Social Democratic Party by Stefan Steinberg [http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/left-m10.shtml]
Why not an international socialist party? [http://www.revleft.com/vb/why-not-international-t59122/index.html]
Bankruptcy of internationalism? [http://www.revleft.com/vb/bankruptcy-internationalismi-t144285/index.html]
Really Existing Nationalisms: A Post-Communist View from Marx and Engels by Erica Benner [http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/politicalscience/9780198279594/toc.html]
The Revolutionary-Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Peasantry by Vladimir Lenin [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/apr/12b.htm]
Manifesto of the International Socialist Congress at Basel by the Extraordinary International Socialist Congress at Basel [http://www.workers.org/marcy/cd/sambol/bolwar/bolwar08.htm]
History of the Marxist internationals (conclusion, the call for a Fifth International) by Louis Proyect [http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/history-of-the-marxist-internationals-conclusion-the-call-for-a-fifth-international/]
If only the Lassalleans took over the First International [http://www.revleft.com/vb/if-only-lassalleans-t144446/index.html]