The mass party

[Lyev]

I want to try to tidy up my ideas on the mass party; I have had some rather nebulous ideas swimming around in my head for a while now, and hopefully this thread will go some way to fleshing them out. With that in my mind, sorry in advance for probably quite a rambling post! I think this issue – and the myriad of positions that different parties have on it – is often of fundamental importance as it is mirrored in, and mirrors itself, other crucial viewpoints that a group takes.





One theory is that trying to build a mass party in the current epoch of capitalism is futile and largely impossible. Since the 70s, after the commercial crises of that period after the post-war boom, global capitalism has been in decline. And also, since the 70s, class struggle, generally, followed a pattern of decline as well. The collapse of the USSR and the eastern bloc has probably compounded this effect. I think some folks call the current period the ‘decadent’ phase, as opposed to capitalism’s healthier, more prosperous stage of the 19th and (most of the) of the 20th century. I remember maldoror made a thread a while back addressing the ‘politics of [ir]relevance’. I sympathise with this view, I think. I have also read an article that talked of ‘activist culture’, whereby those who purport to represent labour against capital, end up being integrated into capitalism (it was from an anarchist point of view). There is also this nihilist communism trend along similar lines that asks, ‘do nothing’. Anyway In that case, why are mass parties a thing of the past? – and if they are defunct, what is the task of revolutionaries and militants right now? I remember reading somewhere that a big problem with today's leftists is that they hope to use the same strategy of party-building, organisation, etc. as was used 100 years against the present-day ruling class which is 100 times stronger. So what needs to be scrapped from the communism of a century ago? - what still remains up-to-date?





This leads onto my next point, concerning the tradition of class struggle which I am part of, which still puts an emphasis on the mass party. This kind of model is about recruitment figures and building an organisation. This kind of tendency, it is often argued, was integrated into capital long ago; another question, then, what does it mean for a group or party to be ‘integrated into capital’? How can an at least nominally Marxist organisation be fighting capitalism on its own terrain, as such? Is it possible to engage in agitation amongst workers in the epoch of decadence without this effect? Sometimes the problem of this approach is that the working class is meant to sort of tail the vanguard, the small group of revolutionaries. The revolutionaries lead – or at least try to, sometimes completely in vain – the workers, not vice versa, with the rhythm of the organic ebb and flow of the struggle. Back to the other kind of tendency (the more leftwing one), whilst we can all agree that the leftist movement is divided and atomized – as a reflection of the status of the working class – once we reach a stage of intensity in struggle, like 1917-23, which I assume will just develop naturally, so to speak, what is the task of leftists then? – to build a mass party, or what?





So it seems there are 3 discernable trends: (1) the communists who believe we have an subjective problem in organisation, that all we need to do is carry on agitating and educating the way we always and soon enough we enter social revolution; (2) those who believe that the problem is objective and that, with the welcome bolstering of renewed class struggle, workers will rush into a mass party that will lead revolution; (3) Lastly, those who also believe that the problem is objective – that we are in an all-pervading decadent period of capitalism, hence the mass party project is dead, so we revolutionaries should just sit back and wait for the struggle to develop by itself. As regards the first kind of communist, maybe there is a misunderstanding in the role of militants. There is the opening line from The Transitional Programme: ‘The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.’ Throughout that text, Trotsky talks about a ‘pre-revolutionary period’, where basically with the mass parties in Germany and Italy, where millions of workers were familiar with the basic concepts of socialism, all he and ragtag band of followers needed to do was get their act together and build up the Fourth International at the head of the impending revolution.




However, the problem with applying that today is that we are no longer in a ‘pre-revolutionary’ period like Trotsky believed of the late 1930s. Sometimes that work of his is accused of having too much of an ‘apocalyptic’ tone, but it needs to contextualised within the rise of fascism, the economic global slump following the great depression, and the inevitability of World War II, only a year later. Some Trotskyists have the problem of using transitional demands as they would have been used in the 30s; in the period that Trotsky describes in the Programme. Perhaps this can account for the accusations of ‘economism’ because our project at the moment, at least within this particular frame of logic, should be to get on with building a mass party (I think this correlates most with the second mode of thinking I described). So, how do we define pre-revolutionary and revolutionary times? Obviously this will get different answers from different tendencies. However, some tendencies may believe that there is exclusively a problem with revolutionary leadership. In a revolutionary period then, how do communists organise amongst the working class; and if class struggle and consciousness will develop naturally, as such, then what exactly is the point of revolutionaries in such an epoch as this? Thanks a lot. (By the way, this quite a broad topic and many of questions are indirect so I don't expect there to be a clear-cut answer to any of this.)

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

You raise some good questions which I think certainly need to be addressed. I don't claim to have all the answers by any means, but...


I think some folks call the current period the ‘decadent’ phase, as opposed to capitalism’s healthier, more prosperous stage of the 19th and (most of the) of the 20th century.The only groups and individuals (ICC, left communists, etc.) I know who believe capitalism is in its decadent phase believe it began no later than 1914, when World War I broke out.

I'll come back to address the rest. I think it's a positive sign that you and a lot of others are raising questions like these today.

[Victus Mortuum]

Can I say that I fundamentally disagree with your premise? I think the problem is both much simpler and yet much more delicate, than you have put forward.

The 70s was the end of the liberal and progressive age of western capitalism (at least in the U.S. and U.K.) and the 80s saw the massive introduction of neo-liberalism and monetarism (by age here I mean cycle of state economic policy that affects the entire economy). If you look at any number of statistics, you'll notice that the position of the working class went downhill from there: wages have been stagnating or falling since, jail rates have skyrocketed, union membership plummeted, higher average long-term unemployment, welfare and other social programs have been shrinking, etc. In the 70s you saw huge activism and movements spring up, and then they seemed to dramatically shrink if not disappear starting in the 80s. Also note that there was a brief spurt of re-activism in the late 90s/early 00s during the major anti-globalization protests. If you look at the numbers unemployment was low and the economy was in a boom - people had the time and didn't have the fear so they fought back.

This is what I propose the reason is. If unemployment is high (above 4% really) and there are other indicators that would make it dangerous or risky to organize, then people will not take the risk. On the other hand, if unemployment is low and there are indicators that make it significantly less risky to organize then people will take that minimal risk. Note that the federal reserve usually manipulates interests rates to try to maintain high unemployment to "prevent inflation" (prevent workers from organizing, which prevents them driving up wages, and therefore prevents employers driving up prices) - monetarism. Also note that "free trade" has kept unemployment high in "developed" countries as jobs are shipped elsewhere (such as mexico) and workers are "shipped" in (such as from mexico again being the easiest example in the U.S.). While temporarily destroying the labor movements, this "globalization" process has the long-term effect of equalizing the class interests of workers in all of the 'globalized' countries and eventually the long-term higher rates of unemployment will disappear in them as the business cycle comes out of its slump and broader wage and then (we would only hope) participatory workplace democracy (worker self-management, worker's council, whatever you wanna call it) battles will be fought and won and trans-national labor organizing will happen.

This isn't to say that people can't start organizing if things get bad - just that negative organization only happens if things get REALLY bad. People get a taste of their potential freedom and fight for it much more.

Anyway, that's what I was thinking as I read your post.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I've tried to write up some of my thoughts on these questions, which I have actually been going over for the last two years. I apologize in advance for whatever is lacking, but as I've said I haven't come to any full and final conclusions on everything either.

I also apologize for the length of what I'm about to post, but I think it's a serious issue that needs to be addressed in a serious way.


Anyway In that case, why are mass parties a thing of the past? – and if they are defunct, what is the task of revolutionaries and militants right now? I don't think mass parties are a thing of the past. They certainly exist. But they are not organizations of the working class, nor can they be. Sure, many were born out of the organic struggles of the working class, and militants even took the lead in constructing them. But they were never going to be tools through which revolution would be made, and at a certain point they ossified and became alien to the working class they grew out of.


“Full-time status for the union committeeman, which began as a means of freeing the union representative from the pressures of management, became a means of freeing the representative from the pressure of the workers. ...Workers’ self-activity does create organizations create unions and other institutions, which may become bureaucratized and turn against the worker. Unions are not a secret plot designed to fool the workers. Workers organize them and then they get out of control." - Martin Glaberman

When unions became permanent, legal organizations they needed professional bureaucrats to organize the day to day operations. This opened the door for administrators to step in and take control, and they in turn brought individual workers into the bureaucracy when necessary.

The same process occurred with the “workers parties.” Militants were either forced out or co-opted, to become useful in bringing workers back in the fold of “acceptable politics” if and when they got uppity.


"How long it will be until the Socialists realize the folly and inconsistency of preaching to the Workers that the emancipation of the Working Class must be the act of the workers themselves, and yet presenting to those workers the sight of every important position in the party occupied by men not of the Working Class." - James Connolly

Bureaucrats and wannabee bureaucrats found a welcome home.


“The general coordination of workers’ organizations to capitalism saw the adoption of the same specialization in union and party activities that challenged the hierarchy of industries. Managers, superintendent and foremen saw their counterparts in presidents, organizers and secretaries of labour organizations. Boards of directors, executive committees, etc. The mass of organized workers like the mass of wage slaves in industry left the work of direction and control to their betters.” - Paul Mattick

This is nothing new. It's been the case since the beginning.


“The labour party becomes the party of the 'people.' Its appeals are no longer addressed simply to the manual workers but to 'all producers,' to the 'entire working population,' these phrases being applied to all the classes and all the strata of society except the idlers who live upon the income from investments. Both the friends and the enemies of the socialist party have frequently pointed out that the petty bourgeois members tend more and more to predominate over the manual workers.” - Political parties: a sociological study of the oligarchical tendencies of modern democracy, Robert Michels, pp. 268, 1915 [Emphasis added.]

The modern political party is an invention of the bourgeoisie. It arose with their system. Early on attempts were made to use similar bodies for the furtherance of working class interests. But that has proven to be impossible. The working class can't liberate itself through participation in bourgeois parliaments. It can't take control of the bourgeois state and use it for its own ends. And it can't make use of an organizational form created by the bourgeoisie to liberate itself either.

Parties are now staffed with administrators, seeking their own perpetuation and empowerment. They pursue their own interests by wrangling around to maintain their positions in organizations that rest on elements of their own class, the working class or the bourgeoisie. But they have no interest in abolishing their own positions.


"Therefore, those who contemplate a 'revolutionary party' are learning only a part of the lessons of the past. Not unaware that the workers' parties -- the Socialist Party and Communist Party -- have become organs of domination serving to perpetuate exploitation, they merely conclude from this that it is only necessary to improve the situation. This is to ignore the fact that the failure of the different parties is traceable to a much more general cause -- namely, the basic contradiction between the emancipation of the class, as a body and by their own efforts, and the reduction of the activity of the masses to powerlessness by a new pro-workers' power. Faced with the passivity and indifference of the masses, they come to regard themselves as a revolutionary vanguard. But, if the masses remain inactive, it is because, while instinctively sensing both the colossal power of the enemy and the sheer magnitude of the task to be undertaken, they have not yet discerned the mode of combat, the way of class unity. However, when circumstances have pushed them into action, they must undertake this task by organizing themselves autonomously, by taking into their own hands the means of production, and by initiating the attack against the economic power of capital. And once again, every self-styled vanguard seeking to direct and to dominate the masses by means of a 'revolutionary party' will stand revealed as a reactionary factor by reason of this very conception." - Anton Pannekoek

The working class created its own organs in struggle, without the guidance of any “saviors” from other classes.

Thus, Marx wrote that the "true secret" of the Commune was that "It was essentially a working class government, the product of the struggle of the producing class against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labor.” [Emphasis added.]

Similarly, neither the Bolsheviks or any other permanent organization created the Soviets. It was the working class itself.


“The soviet system of the Russian Revolution of 1905 disappeared with the crushing of the revolution, only to return in greater force in the February Revolution of 1917. It was these soviets which inspired the formation similar spontaneous organizations in the German Revolution of 1918 and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the social upheavals in Italy, England, France and Hungary. With the soviet system arose a form of organization which could lead and coordinate the self-activities of the very broad masses for either limited ends or for revolutionary goals, and which could do so independently of, in opposition to, or in collaboration with existing labor organizations. Most importantly, the rise of the council system proved that spontaneous activities need not dissipate in formless mass-exertions but could issue into organizational structures of more than temporary nature.” - Paul Mattick

They were created out of necessity, in the midst of struggle.


“The soviets were the realisation of an objective need for an organisation which has authority without having tradition, and which can at once embrace hundreds of thousands of workers. An organisation, moreover, which can unify all the revolutionary tendencies within the proletariat, which possesses both initiative and self-control, and, which is the main thing, can be called into existence within 24 hours.” - Trotsky

Of course the political specialists and professional revolutionaries decry this all, because it leaves no special position for them. And they can point to examples of “spontaneous” uprisings falling apart. But that proves nothing other than that they were not ready.


“If the proletariat does not know how to create the necessary prerequisites for socialist organisation of labour, no-one can do this for it and no-one can compel it to do this. The stick, if raised against the workers, will find itself in the hands of a social force which is either under the influence of another social class or is in the hands of the soviet power; then the soviet power will be forced to seek support against the proletariat from another class... it will destroy itself as the dictatorship of the proletariat. Socialism and socialist organisation must be set up by the proletariat itself, or they will not be set up at all; something else will be set up...” - ‘On the Building of Socialism', Kommunist #2, April 1918

This is why Marx refused to become any sort of official leader of the nascent workers organizations coming into existence in his time.


"Citizen Marx has just been mentioned; he has perfectly understood the importance of this first congress, where there should be only working-class delegates; therefor he refused the delegateship he was offered in the General Council." - James Carter, Geneva Congress of the First International.

"...Victor Le Lubez ... asked if Karl Marx would suggest the name of someone to speak on behalf of the German Workers.' Marx himself was far too bourgeois to be eligible so he recommended the emigre tailor Johann Georg Eccarius..." - Karl Marx: A Life, Francis Wheen.

“Lawrence moved that Marx be President for the ensuing twelve months; Carter seconded that nomination. Marx proposed Odger: he, Marx, thought himself incapacitated because he was a head worker and not a hand worker.” - The General Council of the First International: Minutes, Institut marksizma-leninizma, pp. 36

And why Marx and Engels warned against what they already saw taking shape:


“...when such people from other classes join the proletarian movement, the first demand upon them must be that they do not bring with them any remnants of bourgeois, petty- bourgeois, etc., prejudices, but that they irreversibly assimilate the proletarian viewpoint. But those gentlemen, as has been shown, adhere overwhelmingly to petty-bourgeois conceptions. …in a labor party, they are a falsifying element. If there are grounds which necessitate tolerating them, it is a duty only to tolerate them, to allow them no influence in party leadership, and to keep in mind that a break with them is only a matter of time. ...In any case, the time seems to have come.” - Private Circulation Letter from Marx and Engels, (First drafted by Engels) to Germany's Social-Democratic leadership, 1879.

And why Engels suggested a party was no longer necessary:


"A whole generation lies between [1836, when the League of the Just, predecessor of the Communist League, was formed] and now. At that time Germany was a country of handicraft and of domestic industry based on hand labor; now it is a big industrial country still undergoing continual industrial transformation. At that time one had to seek out one by one the workers who had an understanding of their position as workers and of their historico-economic antagonism to capital, because this antagonism itself was only just beginning to develop. Today the entire German proletariat has to be placed under exceptional laws, merely in order to slow down a little the process of its development to full consciousness of its position as an oppressed class. At that time the few persons whose minds had penetrated to the realization of the historical role of the proletariat had to forgather in secret, to assemble clandestinely in small communities of 3 to 20 persons. Today the German proletariat no longer needs any official organization, either public or secret. The simple self-evident interconnection of like-minded class comrades suffices, without any rules, boards, resolutions or other tangible forms, to shake the whole German Empire to its foundations. Bismarck is the arbiter of Europe beyond the frontiers of Germany, but within them there grows daily more threatening the athletic figure of the German proletariat that Marx foresaw already in 1844, the giant for whom the cramped imperial edifice designed to fit the philistine is even now becoming inadequate and whose mighty stature and broad shoulder are growing until the moment comes when by merely rising from his seat he will shatter the whole structure of the imperial constitution into fragments. And still more. The international movement of the European and American proletariat has become so much strengthened that not merely its first narrow form — the secret League — but even its second, infinitely wider form — the open International Working Men’s Association — has become a fetter for it, and that the simple feeling of solidarity based on the understanding of the identity of class position suffices to create and to hold together one and the same great party of the proletariat among the workers of all countries and tongues. The doctrine which the League represented from 1847 to 1852, and which at that time could be treated by the wise philistines with a shrug of the shoulders as the hallucinations of utter madcaps, as the secret doctrine of a few scattered sectarians, has now innumerable adherents in all civilized countries of the world, among those condemned to the Siberian mines as much as among the gold diggers of California; and the founder of this doctrine, the most hated, most slandered man of his time, Karl Marx, was, when he died, the ever-sought-for and ever-willing counsellor of the proletariat of both the old and the new world."

And how can a “revolutionary party” be built in a non-revolutionary period anyway? If the majority of workers are not revolutionary, who would be the recruits that would join the “revolutionary organization,” giving it a mass basis? Is it any coincidence that the largest organizations are always the most openly reformist?

And even if an organization could be created, member by members, from scratch, why on earth would the bourgeois let that happen? Even small groups which challenge the current order without challenging the fundamental premise of capitalism are smashed out of existence whenever they grow up. Why wouldn't an “authentic workers party” be destroyed before it could be of any consequence? Why were so many well known (and many unknown) proponents of revolution assassinated, tortured and imprisoned?

Isn't it much more important then for understanding and method to exist among the revolutionary class? Individuals can be killed. Organizations can be destroyed. But the working class is a requirement of capitalism and ideas cannot be murdered.

So what do we do? Well it depends who “we” are.

Elements from other classes who are sympathetic to the cause of the proletariat should at best support it where possible and at most offer suggestions based on study and analysis. But they should do no more.

The working class is the revolutionary class because of its relation to the means of production. Working people are exploited and oppressed. And by pursuing their own interests, as a class, and eliminating the source of that exploitation and oppression they liberate all of humanity.

It's not moralistic qualms with the way things run that motivates the class to act, but the need to free itself from wage slavery.


“Marx had learned from Hegel one lesson which he never forgot: putting in front of society a ‘slogan’, a formula, a set of ‘sectarian principles’ with which to make the world correspond is not the point. The social formation Marx strove for all his life was a human society, which he fought to release. While he respected the work of Fourier and Owen, he saw it as foreshadowing the Communism that arose from the sufferings of the proletariat itself.” - Cyril Smith

If you are outside of the class but are outraged over poverty, starvation, the treatment of workers, sweatshops, sexism, homophobia, etc., but understand the root cause to be private property and capitalism, then do what you can to support the actual movement of the working class towards it own liberation. But don't try to lead or direct the working class. Don't think your single issue activism is the way forward and condemn “backwards workers.” Homophobia, anti-semitism and the like were rife among the workers that made the October Revolution. Reactionary ideas certainly weren't erased from the minds of the workers that made the Hungarian Revolution, the Paris Commune or the St. Louis Commune.


“Marx believed that the conditions of life and work of the proletariat would force the working class to behave in ways that would ultimately transform society. In other words, what Marx said was: We’re not talking about going door-to-door and making workers into ideal socialists. You’ve got to take workers as they are, with all their contradictions, with all their nonsense. But the fact that society forces them to struggle begins to transform the working class. If white workers realize they can’t organize steel unless they organize black workers, that doesn’t mean they’re not racist. It means that they have to deal with their own reality, and that transforms them. Who were the workers who made the Russian Revolution? Sexists, nationalists, half of them illiterate. Who were the workers in Polish Solidarity? Anti-Semitic, whatever. That kind of struggle begins to transform people.” - Martin Glaberman

Which is certainly true:


“Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration that can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; the revolution is necessary, therefore, not only the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.” - The German Ideology

If you absolutely need to “do something” or to make yourself feel better, volunteer at a food bank, donate money to a charity, speak out, etc. At least that may have some positive effect on the lives of some individuals. It won't change anything in the overall swing of things, but it's better, and probably more effective, than naming yourself a part of the revolutionary vanguard and railing against injustice through a bullhorn so you can sleep at night, since at best that will land you in irrelevance and at worst will land in a position opposed to the self-activity of the working class.

Or, if you're really serious, join the working class. And don't do it in the sort of “slumming for support” way that leftists did it in the 60's and 70's. Otherwise, you'll get the same response they did: “What the hell are you doing here?”

For people who already belong to the working class, the choice is clear: fight for your own liberation. Because the alternative is continued slavery. Workers have no way out other than the abolition of wage slavery. It's not a political position they can take up during their youths and then discard later on when they move on to other things and “learn to accept the ways of the world.”

This is what really matters. Communists don't have some perfect system invented in advance to sell to the masses.

Marx wrote that “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.”

In the words of The Communist Manifesto, communists:


“...point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. ...[and] always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole. … The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.”

What does this mean in practice? It means they point out the next step, always keeping the final goal in view. This could mean arguing for a strike when your coworkers start expressing anger over the way they are being treated. It could mean arguing on a picket line to elect delegates to go to other workplaces and call for them to join the strike. It could mean to call for mass assemblies in certain situation, even workers councils. It could mean arguing for defensive bodies, or any number of things. Workers who are aware of the situation in advance have the advantage of being able to analyze things and try to gain an understanding of what's going on. The better the understanding, the better able they are to help their class find its way.

And such workers are 1000 times better able to do this sort of thing that leftist groups that circle around workers actions when they spring up like vultures over a corpse. Coworkers engaged in the same struggles, with the same stakes, can be trusted much more than a handful of students waving around a red flag and hawking their socialist rag.

Of course such workers can't will revolution into being. They can only act on what exists.


“...the Communists know only too well ... that revolutions are not made deliberately and arbitrarily, but that everywhere and at all times they have been the necessary outcome of circumstances entirely independent of the will and the leadership of particular parties and entire classes.” - Engels

We can only act in the conditions we face, but yet, broadly speaking, it is our actions that create future conditions. There is a delicate balance there. And that can be the depressing part. That can lead to all sorts of things, from antipathy to adventurism to joining a “revolutionary organization” that promises to deliver. Take my word for it. And that can't really be blamed or totally prevented. But attempts can be made.

And I think a part of it is for proletarian militants to separate themselves from “communism” if they are going to take that sort of approach at all. Marx clearly set himself apart from the socialists of his day, so he would not be mistaken for them. After World War I, the Communists clearly separated from the Social-Democrats because of what they came to represent. Today, whether we like it or not, “communism” is associated in the minds of most with what existed at the worst of times in the USSR, China, etc., and what exists currently in North Korea.

And the terms socialism and communism are really meaningless anyway without reference to class. Difference classes have their own “socialisms.” That's why the Manifesto dedicated a whole section to addressing them, and why Engels later wrote:


"...'the appropriation of the means of production, their subjection to the associated working class and, therefore, the abolition of wage labour, of capital and of their mutual relations.' Thus, here, for the first time, the proposition is formulated by which modern workers’ socialism is sharply differentiated both from all the different shades of feudal, bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, etc., socialism and from the confused community of goods of utopian and of primitive communism."


I remember reading somewhere that a big problem with today's leftists is that they hope to use the same strategy of party-building, organisation, etc. as was used 100 years against the present-day ruling class which is 100 times stronger.
Right. After all, one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

So what needs to be scrapped from the communism of a century ago? - what still remains up-to-date?
The basic principles and line of march issued out of the class itself, and remain relevant and important. The distortions added by years of “official communism” and even many of its detractors needs to be pealed away, or avoided all together. What's important is for workers to find the path to their own liberation, on their own, as a class.

This leads onto my next point, concerning the tradition of class struggle which I am part of, which still puts an emphasis on the mass party. This kind of model is about recruitment figures and building an organisation. This kind of tendency, it is often argued, was integrated into capital long ago; another question, then, what does it mean for a group or party to be ‘integrated into capital’? How can an at least nominally Marxist organisation be fighting capitalism on its own terrain, as such? Is it possible to engage in agitation amongst workers in the epoch of decadence without this effect? Sometimes the problem of this approach is that the working class is meant to sort of tail the vanguard, the small group of revolutionaries. The revolutionaries lead – or at least try to, sometimes completely in vain – the workers, not vice versa, with the rhythm of the organic ebb and flow of the struggle. Back to the other kind of tendency (the more leftwing one), whilst we can all agree that the leftist movement is divided and atomized – as a reflection of the status of the working class – once we reach a stage of intensity in struggle, like 1917-23, which I assume will just develop naturally, so to speak, what is the task of leftists then? – to build a mass party, or what?I've already discussed the mass parties and non-revolutionary periods.

The working class has shown that it is capable of creating its own bodies and moving forward. For what use then is a party? Especially when the “revolutionary” parties have time and time again done nothing but damage to genuine class movements!

Militants in the working class can argue for the next step, even coordinating their work, without the need for formal or permanent “official” organization. And those with an understanding of the traditional role of “revolutionary parties” in such situations will need to remain aware and point such things out to the class as a whole.

And any models which resemble the methods of religious recruiters should clearly be avoided. Contrary to the belief of some, workers aren't just waiting around for some enlightened figure to come around and tell them that their situation is bad. Most don't want to be approached by someone pushing a newspaper with Lenin's face on it any more than they want to be approached by one with the face of Jesus.

Obviously this will get different answers from different tendencies. However, some tendencies may believe that there is exclusively a problem with revolutionary leadership. Which of course makes no sense, since those same groups are the ones that say they “have the correct and necessary leadership.” But if that's the case, why haven't the workers flocked to them, ever?


In a revolutionary period then, how do communists organise amongst the working class; and if class struggle and consciousness will develop naturally, as such, then what exactly is the point of revolutionaries in such an epoch as this? I think I touched on practical activity in different periods above, though the specifics depend on the situation, the forces involved, etc. And there needs to be more discussion around this too.

Of course a “non-revolutionary period” can change into its opposite very quickly.


“The working class is divided by race, by gender, by age, by skill, by ethnic group, etc., etc. All true. However, if some social scientist had examined the workers in the industrial suburbs of Budapest in September of 1956, or the industrial suburbs of Paris in April of 1968, the same would have been found. There would have been no evidence of the coming social upheaval. How could there be? The workers themselves did not know.” - Martin Glaberman


Thanks a lot. By the way, this quite a broad topic and many of questions are indirect so I don't expect there to be a clear-cut answer to any of this.Thanks for bringing it up. These questions have been emerging from more and more people recently, and I think that reflects the importance of both these questions and the period we're living in. I don't think there are “clear-cut answers” for all of this, but the fact that it's even being questioned is definitely positive.

[Lyev]

Can I say that I fundamentally disagree with your premise? I think the problem is both much simpler and yet much more delicate, than you have put forward.I want clarify that at the moment I do not have clearly thought out premise and am very hesitant to ascribe to my very nascent ideas any specific 'ism' or doctrine. I wanna discuss some apparent faults in the way today's movement organizes, but I have yet to formulate some kind of concrete alternative.

The only groups and individuals (ICC, left communists, etc.) I know who believe capitalism is in its decadent phase believe it began no later than 1914, when World War I broke out.Ah yes, I thought I might have got that wrong - but the idea is that since that time, trade-unions, the mass party (?), etc. have become near-pointless for militants to centre their organisation around. The point I was trying to get across regarding the change in global capitalism since the 70s is summed up by Victus below. Reagan and Thatcher were the particularly mean faces of this neoliberal shift, right? In short, the working class is universally weaker and more divided in the present than it was some 40-odd years ago. Marxists analysing the global economy since that time also see it as important because of the build-up of fictitious capital - that which does not have concrete value, that creates bubbles - since then.
The 70s was the end of the liberal and progressive age of western capitalism (at least in the U.S. and U.K.) and the 80s saw the massive introduction of neo-liberalism and monetarism (by age here I mean cycle of state economic policy that affects the entire economy). If you look at any number of statistics, you'll notice that the position of the working class went downhill from there: wages have been stagnating or falling since, jail rates have skyrocketed, union membership plummeted, higher average long-term unemployment, welfare and other social programs have been shrinking, etc. In the 70s you saw huge activism and movements spring up, and then they seemed to dramatically shrink if not disappear starting in the 80s. Also note that there was a brief spurt of re-activism in the late 90s/early 00s during the major anti-globalization protests. If you look at the numbers unemployment was low and the economy was in a boom - people had the time and didn't have the fear so they fought back.

I've tried to write up some of my thoughts on these questions, which I have actually been going over for the last two years. I apologize in advance for whatever is lacking, but as I've said I haven't come to any full and final conclusions on everything either.

I also apologize for the length of what I'm about to post, but I think it's a serious issue that needs to be addressed in a serious way.

I don't think mass parties are a thing of the past. They certainly exist. But they are not organizations of the working class, nor can they be. Sure, many were born out of the organic struggles of the working class, and militants even took the lead in constructing them. But they were never going to be tools through which revolution would be made, and at a certain point they ossified and became alien to the working class they grew out of.Sorry, I don't think I was clear here; what I meant was worker's mass parties as organs for representation of workers themselves. And I really meant to say, is their capacity to fully and independently represent workers a 'thing of the past'. There are mass parties still around (the Labour Party in the UK being a prominent example, whereas the US has never had one), but perhaps trying to build another mass worker's party from scratch is an impossible task within today's epoch of capitalism. Anyway, thanks for your long reply, I will come back to the rest tomorrow.

[Die Neue Zeit]

It's even more pointless to put your eggs into the fragile basket of spontane-ist "workers councils," forming in fashionable moments, proving incapable of providing an alternative to the state bureaucracy in all spheres of policy and administration, and fading away as quickly as they are formed (if not repressed).

Mere electoral machines as "organs for representation" are a thing of the past, but that "past" began only after WWII.

[Q]

I agree with a lot of what NHIA has said, the point is indeed that workers go and organise, emancipate and liberate themselves. No self-styled "correct" leadership can do that for the whole, because even if such a self-described "vanguard" consisted wholly of workers, the mere fact that they would seek leadership over the movement complies with bourgeois ideology and undermines the whole point of the liberation as a class.

Said differently: You can raise the wages, shorten the hours, build better homes, provide free education and much, much more. You only end up upgrading the lead cage of wage-slavery into a golden one. Breaking with the mentality of being the slave-class that is ruled over, and transforming it into a class of rulers (first and foremost of our own lives), can only be the act of the workers themselves.

That said, I disagree with his particular all out anti-organisation stance. Yes, it is correct that most of the left is more of a fetter to the movement than anything else, however this need not be. Surely the far left upholds some kind of communist awareness, even if it is distorted . At the very least we have in common that we need workers struggle to fight for our interests. For this reason I believe the far left is also part of the solution, despite it now being very much part of the problem.

What I agree with DNZ is that we need a political movement that tries to unite the whole class, based on the principles of independence from other classes and the state, radical democracy and internationalism. Such a movement would house alternative culture that emphasises on solidarity and collectivity as opposed to the bourgeois culture of individualism, consumerism and apathy. It would propagandise for workers control over society, rule of our class through radical democracy. In short, it would act as the supporting mechanism of our class, promoting self-organisation, self-emancipation and self-liberation, preparing it for its own revolution.

We're however many miles apart from such a movement today, but still, the existing left can act as the politically conscious "coaches" of the class: like sports coaches they can only prepare you, the sporter, for your task, it is upon you to actually do it.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Why does the working class need elements from others classes to "coach it"?

[Q]

Why does the working class need elements from others classes to "coach it"?
1. Other classes? Most of the far left, in my experience, is very much part of the working class or at least part of our class-in-preparation (working class students).
2. I remain a "vanguardist" in the sense that I recognise that there are inevitably different layers of awareness among our class, some reactionary, others progressive. It's the worker-leaders "on the ground", to which you refer to in your long-ass post, that really matter. What I'm saying is that it is a good idea to try and get these layers together in what would actually be a real vanguard organisation.
3. The "coach" thing is just an analogy, but one that works. A sports coach is most of the time a fellow sports(wo)man that has acquired a lot of experience and passes it on to fellow sports(wo)men so they perform better. Likewise the far left can play such a role among the rest of the working class.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

1. Other classes? Most of the far left, in my experience, is very much part of the working class or at least part of our class-in-preparation (working class students).You have a very different experience than most, or you have a very inclusive view of who exactly belongs to the working class.

Members of other classes in "workers organizations" is not something new. It was a point raised during the days of Marx and Engels, later during the life of James Connolly, during the time of the Third International and since. Don't you think that's a sign of something? Don't you think bureaucrats feel at home in permanent party structures and union positions?


The "coach" thing is just an analogy, but one that works. A sports coach is most of the time a fellow sports(wo)man that has acquired a lot of experience and passes it on to fellow sports(wo)men so they perform better. Likewise the far left can play such a role among the rest of the working class. A coach has immense authority over the players and doesn't play along side them. They are akin to military officers, who were often soldiers at one time too. But leaving that aside...


I remain a "vanguardist" in the sense that I recognise that there are inevitably different layers of awareness among our class, some reactionary, others progressive. It's the worker-leaders "on the ground", to which you refer to in your long-ass post, that really matter. What I'm saying is that it is a good idea to try and get these layers together in what would actually be a real vanguard organisation.Why do the most militant workers need to be pulled out of their position in the class into an organization that is set up outside of it? Why can't they just stay where they are, make contacts with others as need be, and act as an active part of their class instead of as the representative of a formal leadership body in waiting, set up in advance of the revolution?

Why do they need "official organization, either public or secret" when "the simple self-evident interconnection of like-minded class comrades suffices, without any rules, boards, resolutions or other tangible forms"? (Engels)

What is it exactly that the working class cannot do without an external force pushing it along? Seize the means of production? Form armed bodies? Create organizational forms to express their rule? They have done all of those and more!

That's why Marx wrote so long ago that the Paris Commune "was essentially a working class government, the product of the struggle of the producing class against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labor.”

And on the other questions I raised in my post:

How can there be a "mass revolutionary party" when the majority of workers are not revolutionary and don't become revolutionary through recruitment or leftist preaching?

Why would the ruling class let such a party arise even if it were possible to construct?

[Zanthorus]

Why do they need "official organization, either public or secret" when "the simple self-evident interconnection of like-minded class comrades suffices, without any rules, boards, resolutions or other tangible forms"? (Engels)

Engels was heavily involved in the politics of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany and the Second International until his death. I'm inclined to think that this would not be the case if this were anything other than a mere rhetorical flourish by Engels. This is really quite a lame attempt to prove that Engels subscribed to your Councillist dogma that all formal organisations are necessarily external to the working-class. On the contrary, Marx and Engels were generally keen to show that the necessary result of the conditions of life of the working-class was their formation into a political party and taking political action.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

He was involved with it but never said it was necessary or the only way. They were there because workers were there.

In fact, they were critical from its beginnings to their deaths.

"The masses must have time and opportunity to develop, and they can have the opportunity only when they have a movement of their own-—no matter in what form so long as it is their movement—in which they are driven further by their mistakes and learn to profit by them… What the Germans [communists in the U.S.] ought to do is to act up to their own theory—if they understand it, as we did in 1845 and 1848—to go in for any real general working class movement, accept its actual starting point as such, and work it gradually up to the theoretical level by pointing out how every mistake made, every reverse suffered, was a necessary consequence of mistaken theoretical views in the original programme." - Engels

Heard of the Critique of the Gotha Program?

Marx identified the Paris Commune as the political form through which the emancipation of labor could be worked out. He didn't mention anything about needing an organization of professionals created in advance to move forward. (Time and time again, he and Engels rejected the influence of members from other classes, trying to limit their activities to 'offering educational elements' at best). And indeed no such organizations were needed to create the Soviets in Russia or launch the Hungarian Revolution.

Not to mention that when Marx and Engels wrote of 'the party of the working class' they meant the general formation of the class itself, acting in its own interests.

And that I'm not a "councilist." And that I'm about as far from a dogmatist as you can be.

You won't find me trying to trace some "unbroken thread" back to the Great Saints of Communist. I've quoted general observations above (which range from Pannekoek to Trotsky) which I think help explain the development of organization in the class struggle and the need to apply the right method and understanding today.

The dogmatists are those who uphold idealized versions of political organization from their heroes of a century or more ago, frozen in time but applied to today's conditions. We've seen how well that works out.

And it's always those who go on about standing in the tradition of Marx and Engels, the "Marxists," who are the first to reject their words and method when it's convenient to their position.

But in this case, as in many others, what they actually said flies right in the face of that:

"At that time one had to seek out one by one the workers who had an understanding of their position as workers and of their historico-economic antagonism to capital, because this antagonism itself was only just beginning to develop. Today the entire German proletariat has to be placed under exceptional laws, merely in order to slow down a little the process of its development to full consciousness of its position as an oppressed class. At that time the few persons whose minds had penetrated to the realization of the historical role of the proletariat had to forgather in secret, to assemble clandestinely in small communities of 3 to 20 persons. Today the German proletariat no longer needs any official organization, either public or secret. The simple self-evident interconnection of like-minded class comrades suffices, without any rules, boards, resolutions or other tangible forms, to shake the whole German Empire to its foundations. Bismarck is the arbiter of Europe beyond the frontiers of Germany, but within them there grows daily more threatening the athletic figure of the German proletariat that Marx foresaw already in 1844, the giant for whom the cramped imperial edifice designed to fit the philistine is even now becoming inadequate and whose mighty stature and broad shoulder are growing until the moment comes when by merely rising from his seat he will shatter the whole structure of the imperial constitution into fragments. And still more. The international movement of the European and American proletariat has become so much strengthened that not merely its first narrow form — the secret League — but even its second, infinitely wider form — the open International Working Men’s Association — has become a fetter for it, and that the simple feeling of solidarity based on the understanding of the identity of class position suffices to create and to hold together one and the same great party of the proletariat among the workers of all countries and tongues."

But in the end, exactly what Engels wrote is not what matters. Instead of responding to the questions I posed, you chose to criticize a few words within them. How about getting to the matter at hand instead?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Engels was heavily involved in the politics of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany and the Second International until his death. I'm inclined to think that this would not be the case if this were anything other than a mere rhetorical flourish by Engels. This is really quite a lame attempt to prove that Engels subscribed to your Councillist dogma that all formal organisations are necessarily external to the working-class. On the contrary, Marx and Engels were generally keen to show that the necessary result of the conditions of life of the working-class was their formation into a political party and taking political action.

Indeed. I said this to NHIA before. If Engels were a councilist or whatever, he would have pressed for the SAPD to dissolve in 1891 and not adopt a new program.

"Councillist dogma that all formal organisations are necessarily external to the working-class": remind me to use this as a polemical stick against spontaneists next time.

[Jose Gracchus]

It's even more pointless to put your eggs into the fragile basket of spontane-ist "workers councils," forming in fashionable moments, proving incapable of providing an alternative to the state bureaucracy in all spheres of policy and administration, and fading away as quickly as they are formed (if not repressed).

Can you supply me with a systemic explanation or critique of soviets as means of administration and policy? Sources?


Mere electoral machines as "organs for representation" are a thing of the past, but that "past" began only after WWII.

Why are they a thing of the past? What do you mean by that? And why after WW2?

I think workers' councils/soviets/etc. and factory/etc. committees are inevitable in socialism (strikes aren't going away). I also think some representation by political parties and political organizations will also be always inevitably present. Both aspects and qualities in various aspects of workers' politics and organization must be considered. The soviets do have advantages. However frequently the soviets are built up and coordinated via the work of workers' parties. I think (I may be wrong) that the the Social Democrats - Menshevik, Bolshevik, etc. - and the Socialist Revolutionaries worked to coordinate the various post-Feb 1917 soviets into the All-Russian congress and subordinate congresses. I may be wrong. I do think parties present important problems for "participant control", which is essential to democratic practice and building the subjective human factors of socialism.

The Hungarian soviets and fabkomzy of 1956 did not require any parties for assistance because all parties had been annihilated by the "workers' party"-come-administrative-apparatus that served as the satrap of the USSR, so I do not think it is fair to pinpoint that as a data point.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Can you supply me with a systemic explanation or critique of soviets as means of administration and policy? Sources?

Other than the Russian example, which I already pointed out, there are others. The German soviets, in the midst of a fragile German economy, were quickly co-opted by the SPD until the parliamentary republic saw no more need for them. The Portuguese soviets proved the failure of the Mandelites there, as the workers turned to the Portuguese CP instead.


Why are they a thing of the past? What do you mean by that? And why after WW2?

Mere electoral machines are things of the past for workers because they need more (i.e., alternative culture). Re. the post-WWII period:

http://www.newunionism.net/library/organizing/Interview%20-%20Dan%20Gallin%20-%202009.htm


Far more pervasive and general were the consequences of the war. Today it is hard to imagine the extent to which the historical labour movement had been destroyed, first by the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s, then by the war itself, with the occupation of most of Europe by the Nazi armies and police. In most of Europe the structures of the labour movement were wiped out, parties and unions of course, but also the entire institutional network that rooted the movement in society: welfare institutions, credit unions, co-ops, cultural and leisure time activities – everything.

Most of the leadership of the movement, right down to local level, had to go into exile, or into concentration camps, or died in the war. Many of the best people were lost. One of the important parties of the Socialist International, the Jewish Labour Bund (11), was destroyed entirely, together with the population that supported it. No one had imagined anything like this could happen, and those who had hoped that the end of WWII would usher in another period of social revolution, a re-play of 1918, had lost touch with reality.

Superficially, the unions emerged in a strong position – after all we were on the side of the victors, whereas big business had collaborated with fascism throughout Europe and had much to be forgiven for. In fact, labour was far weaker than it appeared, and far more dependent on the State than before the war. That too did not seem to be a problem at first, since most post-war governments were pro-labour in one way or another, but it did eventually lead to the loss of the political and material independence of the movement and, yes, it did promote bureaucratization.

Whereas the pre-war movement conceived of itself as a counter-culture and an alternative society, at least in principle, the post-war movement made its peace with the "social market economy" and demanded no more than a better life within the system (full employment, welfare, social protection, good wages and working conditions).

In that situation, the leadership of the movement became increasingly unwilling to maintain a whole network of flanking institutions. If you don't want to change society then you don't need to build an alternative counter-culture or an alternative economy. Think of all the money you can save. So the unions concentrated on their presumed "core business" - collective bargaining with "social partners" - the parties concentrated on elections, and the movement lost its roots in society, lost many of its think tanks and educational institutions, and lost its periphery, a sphere of influence and protection.

And that is why I call for "The wholesale absorption of all private-sector collective bargaining representation into free and universal legal services by independent government agencies acting in good faith and subjecting their employees to full-time compensation being at or slightly lower than the median equivalent for professional and other skilled workers."


The Hungarian soviets and fabkomzy of 1956 did not require any parties for assistance because all parties had been annihilated by the "workers' party"-come-administrative-apparatus that served as the satrap of the USSR, so I do not think it is fair to pinpoint that as a data point.

That example and Kronstadt, comrade, are the only council-ist (i.e., also anti-party) examples on record.


I think workers' councils/soviets/etc. and factory/etc. committees are inevitable in socialism (strikes aren't going away).

Did you read my Appendix commentary on revisiting Syndicalism in the DOTP itself (http://www.revleft.com/vb/direction-syndicalism-and-t135993/index.html)?

[RED DAVE]

I think that a good point to focus on is the difference (if people believe there is one) between a mass party and a revolutionary party.

I believe that behind DNZ's notions is a love affair with the pre-WWI German Social Democracy, which I would call a mass party for purposes of this discussion. This party proved to be the cause of some of the worst disasters in working class history. It betrayed the workers in 1914, 1919 and in the struggle against fascism.

As to a vanguard party, it should be, among other things, the memory of the working class. It must maintain a knowledge of the history of working class revolution and be constantly trying, on its own if necessary, to bring this praxis into the working class.

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

"As we set about the task of rediscovering Lenin's actual outlook, the terms 'party of a new type' and 'vanguard party' are actually helpful – but only if they are applied to the SPD as well as the Bolsheviks. The SPD was a vanguard party, first because it defined its own mission as 'filling up' the proletariat with the awareness and skills needed to fulfill its own world-historical mission, and second because the SPD developed an innovative panoply of methods for spreading enlightenment and 'combination.'" (Lars Lih)

[RED DAVE]

"As we set about the task of rediscovering Lenin's actual outlook, the terms 'party of a new type' and 'vanguard party' are actually helpfulOkay.


but only if they are applied to the SPD as well as the Bolsheviks.I have been around the Left for a long time, and that's the first time I ever heard this one.


The SPD was a vanguard party, first because it defined its own mission as 'filling up' the proletariat with the awareness and skills needed to fulfill its own world-historical mission, and second because the SPD developed an innovative panoply of methods for spreading enlightenment and 'combination.'" (Lars Lih)If the SPD was a vanguard party, why didn't it act like one? Why is it that in every crisis of the German working class, 1914, 1919, 1932, etc., they sold out in the most craven way. The SPD is a model for a party that we don't want.

A vanguard party should be [ileading[/i] the working class to revolutionary victory. The SPD led the working class to defeat after defeat after defeat. (Maybe it was a vanguard party – for the petit-bourgeoisie.)

RED DAVE

[ar734]

Does anyone have any analysis (class, economic, political, religious, etc) on the Egyptian (current) revolution? Is it about peasants (French, Chinese rev), bourgeois (U.S. rev) workers (Russian), national liberation (Vietnam, Cuba, Algeria), religious (Iran), etc.?

[Jose Gracchus]

Other than the Russian example, which I already pointed out, there are others. The German soviets, in the midst of a fragile German economy, were quickly co-opted by the SPD until the parliamentary republic saw no more need for them. The Portuguese soviets proved the failure of the Mandelites there, as the workers turned to the Portuguese CP instead.

Could you explain more? I mean what does it mean in practice that "soviets cannot provide for public administration"? Why in principle can we not have a delegate model of urban-commune democracy?

I guess I find it too hard to imagine otherwise that we won't have something of the nature of working people in their places of work organizing committees and mass assemblies, and communities, and organically representing these constituencies in councils or congresses. Again, I don't think any party-movement or whatever you want to call it will be able to substitute for the all-inclusive nature of delegate democracy and council systems. I think working people think to have direct participation and institutions of their own organically to enforce accountability on socialist leadership. I think working people need to have control over social decision-making and policy at their places of work and places of living. I also think it is telling that mass Bolshevik support by working people was an endorsement of soviet power. Working people and revolutionary peasants consistently tried to make sure support for the Bolsheviks materialized in fact as a coalition of the revolutionary left based on soviets, via Vizkel and other petitions. However, that hardly makes the case we should abandon it in favor of a one-party state sitting atop a "socioeconomic syndicate" or whatever with demarchic communal councils. How else are working people to control their working-class organizations except from their places of work via representatives of their choice?


Mere electoral machines are things of the past for workers because they need more (i.e., alternative culture). Re. the post-WWII period:

http://www.newunionism.net/library/organizing/Interview%20-%20Dan%20Gallin%20-%202009.htm

You mean by "electoral machines" modern "parties"?


And that is why I call for "The wholesale absorption of all private-sector collective bargaining representation into free and universal legal services by independent government agencies acting in good faith and subjecting their employees to full-time compensation being at or slightly lower than the median equivalent for professional and other skilled workers."

I do not imagine this political demand will be met (especially when your "party-movement" cannot enter government except with 'majority worker support for the maximum program'). And I don't see why we would want to outsource workers' needs and reforms outside of the union movement to the bourgeois state civil service and managed by bourgeois party governments. Its just a demand plucked from thin-air. I don't think it means anything.

What about other workers' parties? Other groups of revolutionaries? Not everyone will agree with your program - even if they do, if there's something the Left adores before revolution, it is splitting - how will workers' democracy be realized in practice? You substitute all forms of grassroots democracy with bureaucratism. I realize we discussed this before, but I fail to see just because a revolutionary party sponsors a bunch of services, social groups, food banks, co-ops will solve the problem the Bolsheviks turned to Cheka to solve - of supplying full-time bureaucrats to the revolutionary government.


That example and Kronstadt, comrade, are the only council-ist (i.e., also anti-party) examples on record.

If you want to engage in this kind of argument, as RED DAVE put it succintly: I would not stand next to the record of the SPD.


Did you read my Appendix commentary on revisiting Syndicalism in the DOTP itself (http://www.revleft.com/vb/direction-syndicalism-and-t135993/index.html)?

This link doesn't work at all.

[RED DAVE]

I guess I find it too hard to imagine otherwise that we won't have something of the nature of working people in their places of work organizing committees and mass assemblies, and communities, and organically representing these constituencies in councils or congresses. Again, I don't think any party-movement or whatever you want to call it will be able to substitute for the all-inclusive nature of delegate democracy and council systems. I think working people think to have direct participation and institutions of their own organically to enforce accountability on socialist leadership. I think working people need to have control over social decision-making and policy at their places of work and places of living. I also think it is telling that mass Bolshevik support by working people was an endorsement of soviet power. Working people and revolutionary peasants consistently tried to make sure support for the Bolsheviks materialized in fact as a coalition of the revolutionary left based on soviets, via Vizkel and other petitions. However, that hardly makes the case we should abandon it in favor of a one-party state sitting atop a "socioeconomic syndicate" or whatever with demarchic communal councils. How else are working people to control their working-class organizations except from their places of work via represented of their choice?Exactly.

RED DAVE

[Jose Gracchus]

A vanguard party should be [ileading[/i] the working class to revolutionary victory. The SPD led the working class to defeat after defeat after defeat. (Maybe it was a vanguard party – for the petit-bourgeoisie.)

RED DAVE

Thanks for your agreement on the matter of grassroots democracy in your last post.

As an aside to the earlier discussion: I think the conception, particularly of Trotskyists, I think - of soviets + one true workers' vanguard party = socialism - is somewhat stilted and confused. I mean I think it intrinsically prohibits the concept of more than one workers' party, and down that slippery slope really does lie Stalinism. Competitive elections with the allowance of public (even if worker and other direct producers-only) political organizations will naturally (after the establishment and consolidation of workers' power) lead to pluralism. I think to think otherwise is just silly considering the fundamental nature of these electoral political institutions.

State and Revolution had many weaknesses as a constitutional concept, to say nothing of the 1918 Soviet Constitution, which was, in any case, not implemented anyway.

We should deal seriously with the limitations and weaknesses soviets have, and pay serious attention to the, at times, antagonistic relationship parties and soviets have had and perhaps intrinsically have. They do have limitations, historically and institutionally. I just don't think we should uncritically impose 1917 Russia as a model on everything on one hand, but nor should we ditch a pretty organic and intuitive organizational form to working class struggles because of a few really abstract arguments based on Aristotle's opinion of aristocracy v. democracy without a real realistic conception of the micro political science of how organizations, governments, etc. work in practice on the other in some bizarre fusion between SPD, demarchy, and bureaucratic workers' institutions because soviet revolutions have not succeeded yet. I'm not a councillist proper, certainly. I think both sides of this issue do not take the empirical reality of parties and councils each being inevitable qualities in any imaginable working class struggle for revolution.

Now the pros for soviets seem obvious. They are organic, grassroots, spontaneous forums of working class struggle, democratically responsible, and not filled with placemen but worker and worker militant delegates. They seem to naturally flow from mass strike actions, which seem likely to be a feature, in one way or another, of a workers' revolution. They are automatically and fundamentally representative of the working class at its point of combat against capital. As such they actually form an instant worker democratic forum for the revolutionary left. From anarchists to democratic socialists, if they are represented among the workers they will in soviets and workplace committees and their higher congresses. They are independent of both the bourgeois state and of any political party or organization in particular. They are also potential instruments of direct workers' control over production and management. They are potential instruments of self-management. They are fundamental instruments for participant control of their lives and society.

Cons are more particular. Often the elections were never regularized in any properly apportioned manner, in many cases elected in mass assemblies, which do have some problems. Their means of apportionment and constituency were never properly organized. For example, between strong party skeptics and non-partisan workers - there was a great desire to maintain what they called a "curial form" of organization. Here, all the way up to executive committees, the fundamental constituencies of the soviet were the various factories, workshops, neighborhoods, etc. which elected delegates. Other currents, either concerned in principle about proportional representation or cynically looking to use soviets as party platforms, thought committees should be filled according to party factions in the soviet. The soviets often got unwieldy in size and much work had to be decentralized toward various committees and plena, and accountability became increasingly diffuse. That was also a problem with the 'tiered' system of councils. In essence the congresses were very indirectly elected. There are also abstract problems with many tiers. Tiers tend to help magnify majorities upward. I think that it is probably inadvisable to have decision-making bodies composed purely of delegates if they are more than a tier or 2 removed from authentic grassroots base constituencies. A national body should be at the very least, half delegates of soviets and half seats distributed according to party-list proportional representation, in my opinion.

Similar pros and cons could be offered about parties, unions, and guerrilla armies, I'm sure. Lets discuss some of the issues and basic reasons for our lines, rather than just The Recitation of The Tendency.

[Paulappaul]

That example and Kronstadt, comrade, are the only council-ist (i.e., also anti-party) examples on record.

1968 – 1975ish where every workers’ struggle was co-opted by Parties and Unions under the policy “riding the tiger” of revolutionary sprit and ultimately crushing the movement. Every modern struggle has by no coincidence a tendency of Unions and Parties ultimately reducing a revolutionary movement to its sour demands. So no, I think there are more examples.


"As we set about the task of rediscovering Lenin's actual outlook, the terms 'party of a new type' and 'vanguard party' are actually helpful – but only if they are applied to the SPD as well as the Bolsheviks. The SPD was a vanguard party, first because it defined its own mission as 'filling up' the proletariat with the awareness and skills needed to fulfill its own world-historical mission, and second because the SPD developed an innovative panoply of methods for spreading enlightenment and 'combination.'" (Lars Lih)

The SPD had its time. The fact that the German Proletariat broke with it such much and pursued its own policy shows us that they have become their own Vanguard, and the traditional need for Vanguard party to educate and organize is no longer needed. This has been proven everywhere in the test of time, that in every revolutionary situation the workers have taken their own means and devised their own strategy and really thrown all of society into chaos.

[Paulappaul]

Double post

[Die Neue Zeit]

Could you explain more? I mean what does it mean in practice that "soviets cannot provide for public administration"? Why in principle can we not have a delegate model of urban-commune democracy?

There is a difference between soviets being set up by prior organizations that can do such things, or soviets borrowing talents from such prior organizations, and soviets set up ad hoc.


I guess I find it too hard to imagine otherwise that we won't have something of the nature of working people in their places of work organizing committees and mass assemblies, and communities, and organically representing these constituencies in councils or congresses. Again, I don't think any party-movement or whatever you want to call it will be able to substitute for the all-inclusive nature of delegate democracy and council systems.

How is the party-movement, despite its bureaucracy, not already "organic"? There's direct participation in the party institutions.


You mean by "electoral machines" modern "parties"?

Yep.


I do not imagine this political demand will be met (especially when your "party-movement" cannot enter government except with 'majority worker support for the maximum program'). And I don't see why we would want to outsource workers' needs and reforms outside of the union movement to the bourgeois state civil service and managed by bourgeois party governments. Its just a demand plucked from thin-air. I don't think it means anything.

First point: it's not a "transitional" demand, it is a reform demand calling for class struggle. Governments can be pressured into implementing stuff like this.

Second point: Did you read the Dan Gallin interview material? Collective bargaining in terms of union "representatives" isn't really conducive to class struggle. It's not a demand plucked from thin air, but derived from an earlier demand found in the Erfurt Program.


You substitute all forms of grassroots democracy with bureaucratism. I realize we discussed this before, but I fail to see just because a revolutionary party sponsors a bunch of services, social groups, food banks, co-ops will solve the problem the Bolsheviks turned to Cheka to solve - of supplying full-time bureaucrats to the revolutionary government.

Perhaps I should rephrase this in the negative: if there's no party-movement beforehand, workers will be caught with their collective pants down. "Stalinism" in terms of excessive bureaucracy will be inevitable. There are no short cuts.

"Grassroots democracy" is nothing without political commitment (such as paying dues). Also, within demarchy there can also be a debate between statistical representation and statistical delegation (here I side with the former, since the latter can go to far and lead to mob rule on things like cultural prejudices).

Anyway, you can have bureaucratic processes that are nevertheless accountable to the fullest extent.


If you want to engage in this kind of argument, as RED DAVE put it succinctly: I would not stand next to the record of the SPD.

Try the USPD, the "outstanding role model for left politics today."


This link doesn't work at all.

It works on my end. :confused:

If not, at least you have the PDF for reference. It's also in one of my RevLeft Blogs (go to my profile and see my blogs tab).

[Die Neue Zeit]

Thanks for your agreement on the matter of grassroots democracy in your last post.

As an aside to the earlier discussion: I think the conception, particularly of Trotskyists, I think - of soviets + one true workers' vanguard party = socialism - is somewhat stilted and confused. I mean I think it intrinsically prohibits the concept of more than one workers' party, and down that slippery slope really does lie Stalinism. Competitive elections with the allowance of public (even if worker and other direct producers-only) political organizations will naturally (after the establishment and consolidation of workers' power) lead to pluralism. I think to think otherwise is just silly considering the fundamental nature of these electoral political institutions.

Comrade, I know I am in the extreme minority on the left when I advocate a genuine one-party state (as opposed to what Moshe Lewin called a "no-party state" re. the Soviet bloc) along the lines of my CSR pamphlet's appendix:

One party vs. multiple parties vs. no parties (http://www.revleft.com/vb/one-party-vs-t144336/index.html)

P.S. - You already responded to my post there two posts below it. ;)


nor should we ditch a pretty organic and intuitive organizational form to working class struggles because of a few really abstract arguments based on Aristotle's opinion of aristocracy v. democracy without a real realistic conception of the micro political science of how organizations, governments, etc. work in practice on the other in some bizarre fusion between SPD, demarchy, and bureaucratic workers' institutions

Aristotle didn't comment on permanent workers organizations or bureaucratic processes. :confused:

There are three fusions, but one element above is redundant and another not mentioned: mass bureaucracies (party-movement), Paris Commune (recallability, average skilled workers' standard of living, etc.), and demarchy.


Lets discuss some of the issues and basic reasons for our lines, rather than just The Recitation of The Tendency.

Mine is paradoxically both very unorthodox and very orthodox. There's no Recitation of the Tendency on my part.

[RED DAVE]

Comrade, I know I am in the extreme minority on the left when I advocate a genuine one-party state along the lines of my CSR pamphlet's appendix:Actually, what you are is an eccentric stalinist.

By the way, what actual activities have you engaged in to try your bizarre theories out?

RED DAVE

[Paulappaul]

"Grassroots democracy" is nothing without political commitment (such as paying dues). That's a fallacy. There is more than Political Commitment, there is love and commitment to bettering ones community and to humanity at large - this is what makes it possible in the first place.


By the way, what actual activities have you engaged in to try your bizarre theories out?

Again I don't defend DNZ's notion of One-Party State - which isn't necessarly Stalinism (Bordigaist Left-Coms share the same idea) - however it's kinda hard to test that idea out however bizzare it may be.

[Die Neue Zeit]

1968 – 1975ish where every workers’ struggle was co-opted by Parties and Unions under the policy “riding the tiger” of revolutionary sprit and ultimately crushing the movement. Every modern struggle has by no coincidence a tendency of Unions and Parties ultimately reducing a revolutionary movement to its sour demands. So no, I think there are more examples.

Were the "Parties" involved real parties? I don't think so.


The SPD had its time. The fact that the German Proletariat broke with it such much and pursued its own policy shows us that they have become their own Vanguard, and the traditional need for Vanguard party to educate and organize is no longer needed. This has been proven everywhere in the test of time, that in every revolutionary situation the workers have taken their own means and devised their own strategy and really thrown all of society into chaos.

Without something like Die Linke, you'd have a bigger neo-Nazi National-Democratic Party. Without a more genuine party-movement beyond Die Linke, you'd have continued CDU-SPD shenanigans.


That's a fallacy. There is more than Political Commitment, there is love and commitment to bettering ones community and to humanity at large - this is what makes it possible in the first place.

That basic "love and commitment" is nothing without political consciousness and political action:

"The fundamental present problem is that after the failures of the strategies of the 20th century, in the absence of a Marxist strategic understanding, most socialists are socialists by ethical and emotional commitment only. This leads to the adoption of ‘get-rich-quick’ solutions..." (Mike Macnair)

"Get rich quick" also includes raw councilism, a short cut to building necessary party-movements.

[Paulappaul]

Without something like Die Linke, you'd have a bigger neo-Nazi National-Democratic Party.

No, I didn't rule out the prospects for a Socialist Organisation outside Electoral politics.


Were the "Parties" involved real parties? I don't think so.

Frankly I've never seen any organisation work as perfectly as it does on pen. Those Parties considered themselves to be the real vanguard of the working class.


That basic "love and commitment" is nothing without political consciousness and political action

Grassroots Democracy acknowledges a Political consciousness; it actively creates an alternative for the failures of Liberal Democracy.

[blake 3:17]

So it seems there are 3 discernable trends: (1) the communists who believe we have an subjective problem in organisation, that all we need to do is carry on agitating and educating the way we always and soon enough we enter social revolution; (2) those who believe that the problem is objective and that, with the welcome bolstering of renewed class struggle, workers will rush into a mass party that will lead revolution; (3) Lastly, those who also believe that the problem is objective – that we are in an all-pervading decadent period of capitalism, hence the mass party project is dead, so we revolutionaries should just sit back and wait for the struggle to develop by itself.

Great post!

2 would be the easy answer,and may happen. I tend to think organizations will be very horizontal. Most of the early CPs and Trotskyist groups actually were -- mailings and print jobs took a while to produce and distribute.

As for 1 -- I think we have a different understanding of organizational subjectivity. In the late USFI tradition I come out of, there was certainly no sense of just Pushing Forward. I think that may be more common in IS, some CP traditions, and many social democratic parties. Occasionally I've seen it on the ultra-left in variation -- just keep pushing pushing pushing. Doesn't really work, though lessons may be gained.

3) I have certain sympathy for this one, not because I believe in a "Final Collapse" or whatever, but at times the masses do take control. The current struggle in Egypt is the most obvious example. I'm not sure that a Socialist preacher would make that much difference. I've tried to get a read on the revolutionary left in Egypt and it seems spotty. I've met Egyptian comrades before, with good ideas and doing what they could, but under martial law it is very difficult.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Actually, what you are is an eccentric stalinist.

Since you're now resorting to slander and ad hominem attacks, I should say re. your Trotskyism-Stalinism bogeyman debate that the historical tendencies on both sides of the divide I'm closest to are the Mandelites and the Third Periodists, respectively. :cool:

[RED DAVE]

Since you're now resorting to slander and ad hominem attacks, I should say re. your Trotskyism-Stalinism bogeyman debate that the historical tendencies on both sides of the divide I'm closest to are the Mandelites and the Third Periodists, respectively. :cool:It's not a slander. Your concept of Caesarism is nothing more than a thinly-disguised form of stalinism. Who but some kind of a stalinist would have an affection for third-period stalinism, mandelism and kautskyism, all of which tendencies betrayed the working class.

RED DAVE

[Lyev]

As a general reply to some recurring themes brought out throughout the thread: A concrete example of this revolutionary vanguard party - its ossification, its bureaucrats, 'official' ideology etc. - how do we view an event such as Mai '68? There we had one of the largest wildcat strikes ever. An organic, as such, uprising of students and youth followed by workers. Did this near-revolution have a head? The betrayals of the Soviet-backed CP and the trade unions is an important issue here (both examples of where these official organisation of workers have capitulated in the face of capital and the bourgeois state).

A more current example is the struggle in Egypt; whilst it does not have a clear socialist impetus, there are mass protests against corruption, unemployment, high food prices. We seem to have the spontaneous growth of councils, self-armament to protect neighbourhoods. Do you think this correlates with the quote from The German Ideology ('Communism, for us, is not a state of affairs to be established...').

Anyway, sorry if this is rambling; on top of its lack of ideological leadership, indeed it seems the ideas about revolution and class struggle arose from the conditions at the time, not some sloganeering dogma, the second reason I picked 1968 was because of those very conditions from which it rose. It was an industrially developed country. Living standards were high. People had cars, TVs, etc. - people had quite comfortable lives, in general. This is similar to western countries like the UK and US. However, one big difference is the lack of industrially-based factories and whatnot in these countries, unlike France in the 60s, which was just prior to the massive de-industrialisation (outsourcing of labour, etc.) seen in 70s in the developed western world. This was why the situationists involved with Mai '68 put quite a big emphasis on self-estrangement under capitalism, because this is something universal to capitalism throughout its long history; unlike the horrendous conditions of workhouses and child-labour that Marx and Engels described in Victorian England. But these conditions now exist in the neocolonial world. I think Victus' answer was an interesting and relevant one (when unemployment is low, workers are too scared to take action), but what about Egypt and Tunisia? - unemployment there is horrendous.

Anyway, the point I am getting onto: For those social movements and upheavals that arise spontaneously - well, in fact, most seem to arise this way at first - in specifically industrially-developed countries, where economies are not primarily based in the factories but in offices etc. what is their main drive? Of course, Marx said due to the increasing centralisation of capital against the increasing immisersation of workers that such movements arise naturally and organically. This problem that I have tried to describe seems to be a bit of cliche (and I certainly don't want to go into any third-worldism, labour aristocracy nonsense) brought up more inexperienced communists like me. But is this tendency I describe (immiseration of workers) obviously active in modern welfare state economies? If it isn't - and I am not saying this - then you can see why some folks might draw conclusions about the necessity of a (rigidly official, leading-the-masses) kind of vanguard party. Then again, I don't think many folks do actually draw that conclusion.

I don't think the above is as coherent as what I have previously posted, and is quite confused. At any rate, I think the development of the welfare state, the nature of commerical crises, capitalism's change since WW2 and the 70s, are germane and important.

Edit: can we discuss, as an example, the kinds of organisations and councils etc. that sprung up during France in 1968?

[Zanthorus]

The obvious reply to the point about Mai 68 would be that if official organisations of the class will always betray the class in such a way then we're doomed. The 'labour bureaucracy' is a fairly entrenched feature of contemporary capitalism. If Mai 68 shows anything, it would be the futility of trying to get around the existing unions and workers' parties merely by the rejection of all kinds of formal organisation.

[Die Neue Zeit]

It's not a slander. Your concept of Caesarism is nothing more than a thinly-disguised form of stalinism. Who but some kind of a stalinist would have an affection for third-period stalinism, mandelism and kautskyism, all of which tendencies betrayed the working class.

RED DAVE

And here we see a descent into Cliffite isolationism. Re. the Third World: That's Caesarean Socialism, not mere Caesarism anymore.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

The obvious reply to the point about Mai 68 would be that if official organisations of the class will always betray the class in such a way then we're doomed.

Only if we believe "official organizations" are "of the class" to begin with, which they clearly are not (and has been proved time and time again when the class struggle heats up).

I can literally spend hours describing one event after another in which "official organizations" have derailed and destroyed genuinely revolutionary activity by the working class. How many examples can you dig up of bodies created organically by the class in the midst of active struggle betraying it?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Anyway, sorry if this is rambling; on top of its lack of ideological leadership, indeed it seems the ideas about revolution and class struggle arose from the conditions at the time, not some sloganeering dogma, the second reason I picked 1968 was because of those very conditions from which it rose. It was an industrially developed country. Living standards were high. People had cars, TVs, etc. - people had quite comfortable lives, in general. This is similar to western countries like the UK and US. However, one big difference is the lack of industrially-based factories and whatnot in these countries, unlike France in the 60s, which was just prior to the massive de-industrialisation (outsourcing of labour, etc.) seen in 70s in the developed western world. This was why the situationists involved with Mai '68 put quite a big emphasis on self-estrangement under capitalism, because this is something universal to capitalism throughout its long history; unlike the horrendous conditions of workhouses and child-labour that Marx and Engels described in Victorian England. But these conditions now exist in the neocolonial world. I think Victus' answer was an interesting and relevant one (when unemployment is low, workers are too scared to take action), but what about Egypt and Tunisia? - unemployment there is horrendous.

Anyway, the point I am getting onto: For those social movements and upheavals that arise spontaneously - well, in fact, most seem to arise this way at first - in specifically industrially-developed countries, where economies are not primarily based in the factories but in offices etc. what is their main drive? Of course, Marx said due to the increasing centralisation of capital against the increasing immisersation of workers that such movements arise naturally and organically. This problem that I have tried to describe seems to be a bit of cliche (and I certainly don't want to go into any third-worldism, labour aristocracy nonsense) brought up more inexperienced communists like me. But is this tendency I describe (immiseration of workers) obviously active in modern welfare state economies? If it isn't - and I am not saying this - then you can see why some folks might draw conclusions about the necessity of a (rigidly official, leading-the-masses) kind of vanguard party. Then again, I don't think many folks do actually draw that conclusion.

I don't think the above is as coherent as what I have previously posted, and is quite confused. At any rate, I think the development of the welfare state, the nature of commerical crises, capitalism's change since WW2 and the 70s, are germane and important.

Of course all such things are important. But there are a few "fast and hard" conclusions we can draw:

1. The working class is international in character. It only makes sense to look at the class within national borders if you understand that it is but a part of the global proletariat.

2. Work sucks, whether or not it takes place in a factory. Workers are exploited under capitalism, in all aspects of the economy.

3. Despite deindustrialization and automation, workers still need to produce. Every car, chair, pair of shoes, t-shirt, pencil, computer, etc., not to mention every service you use, needs to be created somewhere, by someone.

4. Reforms are a product of class struggle and a reformable capitalism. Not only do they not prevent class struggle (clearly strikes don't disappear in 'welfare states'), they cannot last forever. Crises lead to austerity; austerity leads to attacks on the working class. We're seeing that now.

5. Profit is derived from the exploitation of the working class. It is the bedrock of capitalism. It cannot be eliminated or superseded within the frame work of capitalism, no matter the technical advances or reforms in place.

[Paulappaul]

If Mai 68 shows anything, it would be the futility of trying to get around the existing unions and workers' parties merely by the rejection of all kinds of formal organisation. What's "Formal" and "Official" other than that which exists in the boundaries of Capitalism, on it's own terms and presents itself as the master of a class? Nobody rules out organization, but officiality and formality are out the window.

The workers didn't get around the Unions and the Parties in May 68, which is why one of the reasons the movement failed. It's a bitter exaggeration to simply say that the workers created their own autonomous means absent of Party or Union influence.

[Die Neue Zeit]

There is such a thing as tyranny of structurelessness, you know.

[Jose Gracchus]

The Left is a constant struggle between the "Iron Law of Oligarchy" on the side of bureaucratism, electoralism, formal organization, etc. and the "Tyranny of Structurelessness" on the side of informalism and shadow cliques etc.

[Die Neue Zeit]

That, comrade, I think sums up the organizational problems faced by any type of left organization.

However, the "Iron Law of Oligarchy" was coughed up by someone who eventually became a fascist. Off-tangent here, it relates directly to bourgeois republicanism vs. Caesarean Socialism as the antidote ("democracy" and "monarchy" squeezing "aristocracy" tighter and tighter out of existence).

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

The Left is a constant struggle between the "Iron Law of Oligarchy" on the side of bureaucratism, electoralism, formal organization, etc. and the "Tyranny of Structurelessness" on the side of informalism and shadow cliques etc.

I'm a lot less worried about "the left" than the working class.

[Jose Gracchus]

I'm a lot less worried about "the left" than the working class.

:rolleyes: Is it always necessary for everyone in this forum to descend into puerile showmanship like this?

I'm talking about all hitherto attempts to organizing, and even proposals to organizing, the working class (or other possibly revolutionary classes, strata, &c.,) have had the problem of having to fend off the Iron Law of Oligarchy on one end or the Tyranny of Structurelessness on the other.

If you have a factual dispute with that, you could, I dunno, state it and explain it. But no, we can speak of "the working class" abstractly.

[Die Neue Zeit]

He's referring to the class composition of much of the left, but he doesn't understand the merger of some form of revolutionary socialism and the worker-class movement.

[RED DAVE]

And here we see a descent into Cliffite isolationism. Re. the Third World: That's Caesarean Socialism, not mere Caesarism anymore.(1) I'm not a Cliffite: haven't been one for about 35 years or so.

(2) Your "Caesarean Socialism" is stalinism covered in jargon. Who else but a stalinist (or a maoist) would advocate a dictatorship over the proletariat?

RED DAVE

[Paulappaul]

There is such a thing as tyranny of structurelessness, you know.

I never came out against structure or with it against organization.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I know you're saying you're trying to build soviets before a revolutionary situation. I referenced the Greater Toronto Workers Assembly as an example.

[Paulappaul]

I know you're saying you're trying to build soviets before a revolutionary situation.

No I think Workers' Councils arise as a true product of a struggle. The testament of time solidified this truth. Creating Soviets now has the same failures as the Syndicalist General Strike. You can't just call out a revolution and expect it to happen.

There are certain preliminaries to such councils which we should work towards. This is where there is a definite need for organization, not to act upon the Proletariat as its Subject to command, but too give it the tools and understanding for its own liberation and to furthermore create the conditions of that liberation. As Bordiga says its in the Party of the Proletariat that the future organs of the Workers' Councils come out. I think there's some truth in that. The success of the Revolution and of the creation of the Socialist society at large will require the active duty of the organization. C.L.R. James brilliantly pointed out that in the turmoil the revolutions in Hungary, there was no clear Proletarian Paper defending and analyzing the marches and riots of the Proletariat. Viable Media alternatives to Capitalist media should bring us to the greater conclusion that there needs to be Proletarian Alternatives to everything. The great work of the Pre-War SPD in Germany, the AAUD-E and the Proletarian Party in America was that there were Workers' Clubs, Educational Societies, etc. Community work as the SOLFED does in Seattle or as the Black Panther Party did does alot to revive the name of Socialism in the minds of everyday people.

These are the sort of things I see as being truly useful and as being preliminaries to the foundation of Workers' Councils. I don't see this sort of activity as being any different then what Left-Coms, Autonomist Marxists, Council Communists, Anarchists or any sort tendency truly against Reformism and truly for Revolutionary Socialism.

[Jose Gracchus]

There is a difference between soviets being set up by prior organizations that can do such things, or soviets borrowing talents from such prior organizations, and soviets set up ad hoc.

What would be examples of each historically, if you were? When were soviets 'good'? And properly used available "party-movement resources"?


How is the party-movement, despite its bureaucracy, not already "organic"? There's direct participation in the party institutions.

There also is in some churches. I mean I just don't know how seriously I can respond. I think the idea that if workers' just set up some civil society institutions and off-the-job utilities and services, this will mean real consciousness will be achieved, soviets will be unnecessary except as creatures of the party, and somehow all this will provide manpower for new socialist state bureaucracies. I think the bureaucracy and "what has to keep working the morning after" problem is a serious one. I just do not see this as a real solution.

I think it is fantastic that you think elections at the place of work of direct delegates are equally 'organic' to party-member e-plebiscites with all the personal deliberative involvement of posting on this forum or checking Facebook. If you think that plus willingness to cough up dues from the plastic every month or year is what makes revolutionary consciousness. Again, there will be worker-amateurs.

Even taking your comment seriously involves endorsing your implicit notion that the party is the class expressed as a meaningful institution of struggle. Everything else is dead-end and by definition not authentic to the class. I know where that road leads.

I say this with reservation because at least you've crawled out of your sectarian hole unlike most, who post here purely to represent or recite the sect's holy function. And to spend time quibbling over which historical disagreements' positions translates into the Only True Way to compete over the limited supply of student activist raw material and the occasional communist worker. I think you bring up novel ways of examining politics, economics, and especially revolutionary left shibboleths like councils and problems of consciousness. Rather than just pissing in the wind and giving theoretical justifications. However, I cannot say that this alternative is any more a solution than the usual to the rightfully-pointed-out tendency toward, how did you put it? Consumer skepticism culture? No one wants to pay dues? I think a failure of people to want to commit and put some trust is partly healthy, partly destructive. I don't think you have a good way of realistically bridging this problem (or others which are substantial and often brushed over, like trying to build a party in an electoral climate like the U.S., and expecting encouragement to spoil or vote for 'the party' for abstract reasons - failing to respect the primacy of the Duverger's Law problems). I also don't think obsequiousness to paying dues to your ideal party qualifies as a major quality of class consciousness - you seem to make this identity.


First point: it's not a "transitional" demand, it is a reform demand calling for class struggle. Governments can be pressured into implementing stuff like this.

I guess I just find it hard to imagine any bourgeois party government passing this law and against the union bureaucracy. I mean it'd be a powerful battle within the labor movement just to poise this coherent demand. And who would pass it?


Second point: Did you read the Dan Gallin interview material? Collective bargaining in terms of union "representatives" isn't really conducive to class struggle. It's not a demand plucked from thin air, but derived from an earlier demand found in the Erfurt Program.

If you could provide it for me again, that would be nice. I cannot sort through everything you write, I am a busy person. Summaries and money-quotes would be appreciated.


Perhaps I should rephrase this in the negative: if there's no party-movement beforehand, workers will be caught with their collective pants down. "Stalinism" in terms of excessive bureaucracy will be inevitable. There are no short cuts.

So what? Again I'm asking point blank: what are you saying? Because we have people running our workers' cooperatives, food pantries, food banks, funeral services, etc. we will have enough ultra-loyal clerical workers to staff the new People's Commissariats?

I don't think this is a realistic claim. Also, I don't think this is really why the Russian Revolution degenerated. I just feel like revolution and class struggle is a lot messier and stochastic and dynamic process than you give credit for. No single organization with the right lines will ever lead straight-forward to revolution. A messy combination of competing labor currents, political organizations and their own factions, people in the street, people trying to build instruments of grassroots democracy like fabkomzy and soviets. Do I know the right answer? No. I will say that class struggle in the United States and throughout the world is insufficiently developed for anyone to be much more than agnostic while listing honestly pros, cons, and controversies between what are ultimately groups and among people with barely a foot in a real dynamic workers' struggle. I don't think we can take a look at a few case examples and weaknesses in Russia 1917-1930 and boil out the perfect party. To a substantial extent, judging from how socialism has sold in the developed world over the industrial and to the extent that it fed off agrarian resistance and dissatisfaction, and considering what has happened to even the most radical unions and parties etc. since the First and especially Second World War. I honestly think we're playing in a new playground. Modern information society follows on the consciousness-eradicating tendencies of the modern propaganda society inaugurated in the lead to the First World War, intensified in the 1920s to 40s, and perfected by the 1950s. Authentic political struggles and even substantial group struggles and community institutions, especially among white working people, are scarcely imaginable and rarely visible.


"Grassroots democracy" is nothing without political commitment (such as paying dues). Also, within demarchy there can also be a debate between statistical representation and statistical delegation (here I side with the former, since the latter can go to far and lead to mob rule on things like cultural prejudices).

I don't think any real-world proletariat will be able to be sufficiently educated/indoctrinated/trained to make demarchy a workable system. I think if it is impossible it is a feature of later communism. I also think one needs to work with what we have got in the really existing political millieu, really existing labor movement, really existing proletariat. I think elections are inevitable.


Anyway, you can have bureaucratic processes that are nevertheless accountable to the fullest extent.

Bureaucracy intrinsically tends to isolate accountability toward the rank-and-file. Activity is alienated and impossible to be systemically examined in a manner which realistically makes accountability possible.


Try the USPD, the "outstanding role model for left politics today."

Could you cite your quotes? This is not an argument, either.


Comrade, I know I am in the extreme minority on the left when I advocate a genuine one-party state (as opposed to what Moshe Lewin called a "no-party state" re. the Soviet bloc) along the lines of my CSR pamphlet's appendix:

One party vs. multiple parties vs. no parties (http://www.revleft.com/vb/one-party-vs-t144336/index.html)

P.S. - You already responded to my post there two posts below it. ;)

Single-party states (either properly motivational or really engaged in political life or not like your party, or a fake 'administrative party' - if such a meaningful distinction could exist in practice, and I'm not sure it does) cannot be sustained except by forcible repression of competitors.


Aristotle didn't comment on permanent workers organizations or bureaucratic processes. :confused:

A substantial amount of your and Paul Cockshott's justification for the idea rests on purely classicist arguments. There are serious political science critiques of the concept.


There are three fusions, but one element above is redundant and another not mentioned: mass bureaucracies (party-movement), Paris Commune (recallability, average skilled workers' standard of living, etc.), and demarchy.

In what sense is the party-movement have mass bureaucracies? Anyway, it is silly to call it 'recallability' when you really mean "spin the wheel again". The demarchic representative is not really responsible to a 'constituency'.


Mine is paradoxically both very unorthodox and very orthodox. There's no Recitation of the Tendency on my part.

No, and I didn't mean to imply so.

[Die Neue Zeit]

What would be examples of each historically, if you were? When were soviets 'good'? And properly used available "party-movement resources"?

"Soviets being set up by prior organizations that can do such things": Portuguese workers councils set up by the Proletarian Revolutionary Party, 1917 soviets set up by Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries

"Soviets borrowing talents from such prior organizations": German workers councils before the establishment of a "Council of People's Commissars" between the SPD and USPD, perhaps the workers councils during the Spanish Civil War

"Soviets set up ad hoc": 1905 soviets, what could have been in May 1968 had workers councils been formed then in the midst of spontaneism.


There also is in some churches. I mean I just don't know how seriously I can respond. I think the idea that if workers' just set up some civil society institutions and off-the-job utilities and services, this will mean real consciousness will be achieved, soviets will be unnecessary except as creatures of the party, and somehow all this will provide manpower for new socialist state bureaucracies. I think the bureaucracy and "what has to keep working the morning after" problem is a serious one. I just do not see this as a real solution.

Some have criticized the pre-war SPD party-movement model as a sort of secular political "church" model. Even Lars Lih hinted at the referenced criticisms when he wrote of "good news."


I think it is fantastic that you think elections at the place of work of direct delegates are equally 'organic' to party-member e-plebiscites with all the personal deliberative involvement of posting on this forum or checking Facebook. If you think that plus willingness to cough up dues from the plastic every month or year is what makes revolutionary consciousness. Again, there will be worker-amateurs.

Don't forget branch meetings. It's the horizontal inter-branch meetings that might facilitate Internet usage.

I know there will be worker-amateurs, but that's the point of candidate membership: to become well-informed about the party program and other things.


Even taking your comment seriously involves endorsing your implicit notion that the party is the class expressed as a meaningful institution of struggle. Everything else is dead-end and by definition not authentic to the class. I know where that road leads.

I was hoping you'd answer this hot-button question of mine in my other post on movement substitutionism. Again, it's not necessarily just one party-movement (consider once more the Sociopolitical Syndicate), but there's no division into competing and bickering party-movements.


I say this with reservation because at least you've crawled out of your sectarian hole unlike most

When I started posting on this board, I had no sectarian tendencies at all. I was for "broad unity" between Trots and tankies in the same organization, but at that time there was little substance to my argument. I wasn't aware of the Kautsky Revival (and just think once more of the "evangelical" overtone of this Lars Lih phrase :D) at the time, either. ;)

It's the difference between liberal ecumenicalism and class unity.


However, I cannot say that this alternative is any more a solution than the usual to the rightfully-pointed-out tendency toward, how did you put it? Consumer skepticism culture? No one wants to pay dues? I think a failure of people to want to commit and put some trust is partly healthy, partly destructive.

You did mention this recently. I am aware of that. You called the flip side of this buying into scams or something.


I don't think you have a good way of realistically bridging this problem (or others which are substantial and often brushed over, like trying to build a party in an electoral climate like the U.S., and expecting encouragement to spoil or vote for 'the party' for abstract reasons - failing to respect the primacy of the Duverger's Law problems). I also don't think obsequiousness to paying dues to your ideal party qualifies as a major quality of class consciousness - you seem to make this identity.

Maybe I'm wrong here, and maybe the WPA comrades can help me out here, but the US itself might need two stages. Comrade Cockshott said that what needs to go first is the "slave owners' constitution" which directly feeds into the "two"-"party" problem and the "states rights" shit. In other words, the US had a very, very retarded "bourgeois revolution" compared to something like the French revolution or the aftermath of the German revolution.


I guess I just find it hard to imagine any bourgeois party government passing this law and against the union bureaucracy. I mean it'd be a powerful battle within the labor movement just to poise this coherent demand. And who would pass it?

Of course the bourgeois governments won't pass it out of the goodness of their hearts. The class struggle puts pressure on them to do so. Also, why did you ask that last question, when it's clear that the entirety of Chapter 6 is meant to be passed by bourgeois governments under pressure.


If you could provide it for me again, that would be nice. I cannot sort through everything you write, I am a busy person. Summaries and money-quotes would be appreciated.

“Free administration of justice and free legal assistance. Administration of the law by judges elected by the people. Appeal in criminal cases. Compensation for individuals unjustly accused, imprisoned, or sentenced. Abolition of capital punishment.” (Eduard Bernstein)

[...]

All in all, what is to be learned from these trends is that the collective bargaining function itself, except perhaps where there are no union representatives, goes against politico-ideological independence for the working class. Amongst the various forms of dispute resolution in civil law – negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and litigation – tred-iunion careerists perform not just negotiation on the formal behalf of employees, but also (and in practice) mediation between employers and employees.

[...]

Looming over this lesson and the trends is the difficulty of mobilizing clerical workers (who are mistaken for the entire “service worker” population, which includes professional workers) – as well as the newest, cross-sectoral, cross-age (from youth to midlife and beyond), and growing part of the working class that is the precariat.

[...]

The immediate solution once more lies in the Erfurt Program, this time in its demand for free legal assistance. However, what should be pursued here is the wholesale absorption of all private-sector collective bargaining representation into free and universal legal services by independent government agencies acting in good faith (and subjecting their employees to full-time compensation being at or slightly lower than the median equivalent for professional and other skilled workers). Significant parts of the administrative apparatus required for the complete provision of labour dispute resolution by such agencies and their plethora of lawyers are already in place in the more developed countries, and happen to be called “labour courts” or “labour relations boards.” Public-sector collective bargaining is not addressed, given the sensitivity of public-sector workers towards their government employers.

It should be noted that the collective bargaining function as a whole is different from the strike function, the latter of which should naturally remain the function of whatever unions remain, including “red” unions and the sociopolitical syndicate.


So what? Again I'm asking point blank: what are you saying? Because we have people running our workers' cooperatives, food pantries, food banks, funeral services, etc. we will have enough ultra-loyal clerical workers to staff the new People's Commissariats?

The US federal bureaucracy employs anywhere between 2 and 3 million public-sector workers. The state bureaucracies employ their fair share.

Refer again to Kautsky on the four criteria for revolutionary periods for the proletariat. Implicitly the party-movement in the US would have to be in the tens of millions at least. [But again refer to the possibility of yet another bourgeois revolution in the US.]


I honestly think we're playing in a new playground. Modern information society follows on the consciousness-eradicating tendencies of the modern propaganda society inaugurated in the lead to the First World War, intensified in the 1920s to 40s, and perfected by the 1950s. Authentic political struggles and even substantial group struggles and community institutions, especially among white working people, are scarcely imaginable and rarely visible.

I'm aware of that, hence the possibility of a second bourgeois revolution, however bad that sounds.


I don't think any real-world proletariat will be able to be sufficiently educated/indoctrinated/trained to make demarchy a workable system. I think if it is impossible it is a feature of later communism. I also think one needs to work with what we have got in the really existing political millieu, really existing labor movement, really existing proletariat. I think elections are inevitable.

Well, at least you're in agreement with Macnair's counter-critique of Cockshott's critique of the former's Revolutionary Strategy:

Representation, not referendums (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker2/index.php?action=viewarticle&article_id=1004002)

Transition and abundance (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004071)


Bureaucracy intrinsically tends to isolate accountability toward the rank-and-file. Activity is alienated and impossible to be systemically examined in a manner which realistically makes accountability possible.

The only part I agree with there is the very real and general problem of alienated activity.


Could you cite your quotes? This is not an argument, either.

I really hope all these History thread links work:

Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (USPD) (http://www.revleft.com/vb/unabhaengige-sozialdemokratische-partei-t95038/index.html)

USPD vs. KPD: lessons for organizing today (http://www.revleft.com/vb/uspd-vs-kpd-t103415/index.html)

USPD: tendencies, the KPD question, and lessons for today (http://www.revleft.com/vb/uspd-tendencies-kpd-t118549/index.html)


Single-party states (either properly motivational or really engaged in political life or not like your party, or a fake 'administrative party' - if such a meaningful distinction could exist in practice, and I'm not sure it does) cannot be sustained except by forcible repression of competitors.

The guy who wrote the "Second Communist Manifesto" suggested a mechanism (probably not the only one) to keep the party a genuine one: crossing off party members in the state apparatus from the party's citizenship / voting membership list (though they can still pay dues to the party, attend meetings, etc.).


A substantial amount of your and Paul Cockshott's justification for the idea rests on purely classicist arguments. There are serious political science critiques of the concept.

And what about Karatani's argument in his Transcritique (available on Google Books)? His is a reading of Kant through Marx and vice versa:

There is one crucial thing we can learn from Athenian democracy in this respect. The ancient democracy was established by overthrowing tyranny and equipped itself with a meticulous device for preventing tyranny for reviving. The salient characteristic of Athenian democracy is not a direct participation of everyone in the assembly, as always claimed, but a systematic control of the administrative power. The crux was the system of lottery: to elect public servants by lottery and to surveil the deeds of public servants by means of a group of jurors who were also elected by lottery [...] Lottery functions to introduce contingency into the magnetic power center. The point is to shake up the positions where power tends to be concentrated; entrenchment of power in administrative positions can be avoided by a sudden attack of contingency. It is only the lottery that actualizes the separation of the three powers. If universal suffrage by secret ballot, namely, parliamentary democracy, is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the introduction of a lottery should be deemed the dictatorship of the proletariat.”


In what sense is the party-movement have mass bureaucracies? Anyway, it is silly to call it 'recallability' when you really mean "spin the wheel again". The demarchic representative is not really responsible to a 'constituency'.

"Spinning the wheel again" can occur outside of regular term limits. If sufficient numbers are pissed off can vote to recall some bastard before term's end, the "spinning the wheel again" leads to another representative who will have to stand for random selection during that term's end.

[RED DAVE]

The Left is a constant struggle between the "Iron Law of Oligarchy" on the side of bureaucratism, electoralism, formal organization, etc. and the "Tyranny of Structurelessness" on the side of informalism and shadow cliques etc.
That, comrade, I think sums up the organizational problems faced by any type of left organization.Are you sure of that? Which "left organization[s]" have you been in that would let you speak so authoritatively? Frankly, I think you are blowing hot air; I don't think you've spenT much, if any, committed time in a left organization.

If I'm wrong, please let us know which organizations you've been in, so we can assess the experiential data you're working with. I have been in left organizations on and off for a long time, and my experience is that the struggle between the "Iron Law of Oligarchy" and the "Tyranny of Structurelessness" is far from a summation of the problems such organizations face.

RED DAVE

[Jose Gracchus]

To be honest, RED DAVE, I have yet to see any evidence that sheer tenure in a left organization is at all a virtuous or insight-building matter. In my experience the sectarians participating in unions or student organizations etc. never ascend from their swamp, and many outsider workers and students, however sympathetic, keep their distance. The American left is a completely irrelevant enterprise 90% of the time. I suppose they help put out critiques and lend a hand toward defensive struggles. I just basically see no way out but starting from scratch.

What are your views then? Do you even know what I mean by 'Iron Law of Oligarchy' and 'Tyranny of Structurelessness'?

[RED DAVE]

To be honest, RED DAVE, I have yet to see any evidence that sheer tenure in a left organization is at all a virtuous or insight-building matter.But it helps. If a person has never been in such an organization, they would do well to exert a certain amount of caution before handing the word down from on high.


In my experience the sectarians participating in unions or student organizations etc. never ascend from their swamp, and many outsider workers and students, however sympathetic, keep their distance.Doubtless true. However, this is not the universal experience.


The American left is a completely irrelevant enterprise 90% of the time.This is true right now. But this has not always been the case.


I suppose they help put out critiques and lend a hand toward defensive struggles. I just basically see no way out but starting from scratch.Needless to say, I disagree. At the moment, I myself am engaged in a union organizing drive assisted by active members of several left organizations. But even if you start from scratch, you would do well to (a) assess the experiences of the past, (b) actually go out and do something, and (c) assess, constantly, your own experience. DNZ has done none of these.


What are your views then? Do you even know what I mean by 'Iron Law of Oligarchy' and 'Tyranny of Structurelessness'?I am quite familiar with these subjects. I have seen more oligarchical structures in and around the Left than I like to think of. And every time someone starts to talk about "leaderless groups" and "participatory democracy," I get a headache.

More on this later.

RED DAVE

[Kotze]

Given that there are many more working class people than socialists, I think it's more fruitful to search for reasons why not more people subscribe to socialism than to discern between different trends among socialists. What is a normal working-class person going to conclude when she sees people wearing symbols that remind her of a country that had a lower standard of living than the USA and that doesn't exist anymore? The impression doesn't get better if she tries against better judgement to talk with them about a possible different future, because they don't have any ideas about that — and they are proud about not having any, because "making predictions would be unscientific" or something.
Anyway, it is silly to call it 'recallability' when you really mean "spin the wheel again". The demarchic representative is not really responsible to a 'constituency'.Recall isn't a great idea to begin with. Consider this:

System 1: The mayor is elected every 6 years.
System 2: The mayor is elected every 6 years. Mid-term, there is the possibility of recall.
System 3: The mayor is elected every 3 years.

I prefer system 2 to system 1, but I wouldn't say that because system 2 is the only one with recall it must be the one that gives ordinary people the most control.

Another problem is that achieving the goals proportionality and secrecy of the vote and recall together looks impossible. Given that I don't believe that adding recall mechanisms increases control by ordinary people more than increasing the frequency of elections or using better voting methods or demarchic elements, I rather drop recall than the other goals.

[Victus Mortuum]

Recall isn't a great idea to begin with. Consider this:

System 1: The mayor is elected every 6 years.
System 2: The mayor is elected every 6 years. Mid-term, there is the possibility of recall.
System 3: The mayor is elected every 3 years.

I prefer system 2 to system 1, but I wouldn't say that because system 2 is the only one with recall it must be the one that gives ordinary people the most control.

Usually, the possibility of recall is proposed to be open at all times.


Another problem is that achieving the goals proportionality and secrecy of the vote and recall together looks impossible. Given that I don't believe that adding recall mechanisms increases control by ordinary people more than increasing the frequency of elections or using better voting methods or demarchic elements, I rather drop recall than the other goals.

Proportionality and statistical representation based on lottery is opposed to delegative recall and "district"-rep election.

This is because they reflect fundamentally different attitudes about a central organization. This is something that just clicked in my head that I think is important. I think it needs more working out, but I’m curious what you guys make of this.

Firstly, a basic understanding. Representatives are supposed to act on their personal beliefs and collectively they are to be a general picture of the entire area that the decision-making body presides over (hence why recall is unimportant - the representatives should include individuals who are from the minority of society). Hypothetically, representatives could be selected by (ideally) proportional vote or by lottery, as long as they fulfill their role of broadly representing society (though obviously lottery of representatives would be most preferable under this mindset).

Delegates are supposed to represent their constituency, regardless of their personal beliefs (hence why recall is important - if they start overriding the constituency with their personal beliefs). Hypothetically, a delegate could be selected by vote or by lottery, as long as they fulfill their role of representing the smaller, more local body (though obviously election of delegates would be most preferable under this mindset).

From these two basic concepts comes the broader systems of organizational and democratic structure that are an outgrowth of fundamentally different philosophical approaches to governance: majoritarianism and autonomy.

1. The former (proportional bodies, which find their full fruition in demarchy and direct democracy (with demarchy being the best way to approximate direct democracy (the fullest expression of majoritarianism) on a day-to-day decision-making basis)) is about having an authoritative body that makes a centralized majority decision that all member groups/individuals are expected to follow. The objective is to maximize the power of the majority and ensure issue-based majorityism. This flows strongly with the 'democratic centralism' concept of Lenin and the idea of everyone in such an organization working together if the majority says they should in the interest of large-scale unity of the organization.

2. The latter (“district”-rep bodies, which find their full fruition in delegation and voluntary deliberation (with delegates being the best way to approximate mass deliberation (which, without coercive central decisions, is the fullest expression of individual autonomy) for large-scale ideas)) is about having a non-coercive body that provides a place for dialogue and sets up working organizations/groups that member bodies can opt-in or –out of. The objective is to maximize local and ultimately individual autonomy and to limit the coercion of any group, majority or minority. This flows strongly with the ‘self-management’ concept of Anarchists and the idea that local autonomy and freedom are more important than coerced unity for the benefit of the large-scale organization.

These two institutional structures represent fundamentally distinct attitudes to organization that indeed represent a split within the far left, I believe (as well as a split between more common political philosophies – take the argument between a congressional district approach and a parliamentary proportional approach to bourgeois state politics).

Now the questions I have are: is there a resolution between these two approaches to organization? What is the role of an individual who disagrees with one of these models, but the model they oppose is that of the dominant socialist organization in their area? Should perhaps an organization take a double approach and have two separate bodies that resolutions must pass through (a sort of bicameral approach that would be akin to, but fundamentally different from, that of the U.S. legislative system)? Or is that just a stupid idea? What about a general type-2 organization that has within it sub-type-1 organizations for each faction that wants to join one or make one? What is the purpose of having a large-scale organization and which of these most effectively meets that purpose? What are the benefits and drawbacks to each of these separate approaches?

[Kotze]

These two institutional structures represent fundamentally distinct attitudes to organization that indeed represent a split within the far left, I believe (as well as a split between more common political philosophies – take the argument between a congressional district approach and a parliamentary proportional approach to bourgeois state politics).

Now the questions I have are: is there a resolution between these two approaches to organization?Well, we could go all meta and have two group (s)election processes provide a number of seats and let people at intervals vote on what percentage of seats comes from which process via the median or allow people individually to participate in only one of these processes.

But the thing is, similar to single-winner districts vs. proportional representation, with one of these I don't believe that it has the advantages claimed by its advocates.

Among the common claims for single-winner reps is that it respects the majority better, which is a bizarre claim: Given that the votes for the locally losing parties fall under the table and the extent of extra votes for locally winning parties is disregarded as well, with the result that national majorities can be in the minority in parliament.

You said that proportional representation maximizes the power of the majority, that doesn't follow either. Proportional representation is one thing. Whether that results in majorities having all the power or in minorities having disproportional power or groups having proportional power depends. Super-majority requirements for certain changes give a special privilege to minorities, those that enjoy the status quo (can't say I'm a big fan of that). For many decisions regarding budget allocation, one could use a method that does give minorities control over a part of the budget, instead of no control at all.

Another common claim is that with single-winner districts you have that special link to your local rep, so if I'm in a local minority I have a "special link" to somebody I have nothing to do with. There are proportional methods that will return some locally linked representatives for those regions that are politically very homogeneous. If people in a region are very divided politically, there simply is no fitting single representative (unless Dr. Jekyll runs). Proportional representation represents both minorities and majorities better.

There are some people here who claim that voting for delegates who vote for delegates who vote for delegates who then vote for delegates who vote for delegates who in turn vote for delegates gives normal people more power than random selection and that it is a great example of direct democracy. It doesn't and it isn't. To control closely what the delegates do requires a huge amount of work from the grassroots, and if you do that, how much work does having a delegate save in comparison with everyone voting directly? Now, you could do something else than everybody checking all the time what the delegate does by just having a representative sample doing the checking. Once one has that idea, one starts to see other uses for these samples.

[Victus Mortuum]

I think you missed the underlying point of my response, though. I think that the PURPOSE of type-1 organizations is FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT from the PURPOSE of type-2 organizations. Obviously, in the mindset you are considering (the central coercive decision-making body) the proportional (and preferably, the demarchic if direct isn't always possible) system is the most preferable and district voting doesn't make sense. In your mind, the organization functions fundamentally as a decision-making organization.

The alternative mindset is that of a deliberation organization. The objective here is to (ideally) leave all sovereign decision-making power in the smallest directly deliberative bodies (say a neighborhood or workplace council) and to have delegates who are aware of all the sentiments of their deliberative body approach a more central body for deliberation about a larger-scale issue and then return to their local body and explain the sentiments of other participating councils and to explain any created working groups that the local body has the option to join (this is preferred because the true ideal here (mass-scale personal deliberation) doesn't seem at all conceivable at this time (much like direct democracy in the other mindset)) and therefore a central coercive decision-making body doesn't make sense. In their mind, the organization functions fundamentally as a deliberative organization for the benefit of the local bodies working in voluntary concert.

I'm a bit more partial to the latter, personally. I don't see the former as a necessary component of a socialist society/government or a revolutionary worker's organization. But I'm not convinced of either philosophy yet. I need to see someone argue in support of the former and in opposition to the latter IN TERMS OF PURPOSE to get a balanced perspective.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'll start a separate Theory thread based on your exchange (Kotze & Victus). Something in my mind's brewing yet again re. proportionality, "districts," secrecy, recall, demarchy, etc.

[Lyev]

I think that a good point to focus on is the difference (if people believe there is one) between a mass party and a revolutionary party.This may have been covered earlier in the thread in bits and pieces, but can we just clarify: what is the difference? The most obvious example of a revolutionary mass party was the Bolsheviks in October. But I think the latter that Dave refers to here is some sort of centralised vanguard party, right? I suppose the example of the Bolsheviks cannot hold as much relevance for today's discussions because 1917 - a year before the First World War ended - was the dawn before, globally, capitalism fell into decay as a decadent system. I mean, the Bolsheviks were a small fringe party in times of state repression and when struggle was quiet, but in the fervour after February, their numbers swelled and they surely became the legitimate mass party of the Russian proletariat. This was not a party trying to 'shape or mould' the mass movement; the working class came to the party because it remained consistently anti-war, anti-Tsar, pro-worker, pro-soviet etc. The party was just a guide, right? - an expression of the class struggle itself, and a result of the political independence of workers. (Please say if I have anything wrong here.) So will this model work today? - we have so many different pro-revolutionary parties around, all claiming to be the only true representatives of workers. As struggles heighten and antagonisms intensify surely it will not just be the case that working people shop around, as such, in some kind of communist candy shop for the party or organisation to rush into that seems to support and represent them best? Rather, people are smart enough take their own initiatives and form workplace committees, democratic councils, soviets etc. by themselves. Indeed, for many, to try and organise around, with, or as a part of any 'official' pre-existing organisation would be a grave error because these parties have been absorbed into capital long ago. in all this, where does the role of the party come in? - where does the role of 'building socialist consciousness' - or something to that effect - come into the equation? Thanks

[Die Neue Zeit]

Are you a left-com now? :confused:

[Paulappaul]

So will this model work today? - we have so many different pro-revolutionary parties around, all claiming to be the only true representatives of workers. As struggles heighten and antagonisms intensify surely it will not just be the case that working people shop around, as such, in some kind of communist candy shop for the party or organisation to rush into that seems to support and represent them best? Rather, people are smart enough take their own initiatives and form workplace committees, democratic councils, soviets etc. by themselves. Indeed, for many, to try and organise around, with, or as a part of any 'official' pre-existing organisation would be a grave error because these parties have been absorbed into capital long ago. in all this, where does the role of the party come in? - where does the role of 'building socialist consciousness' - or something to that effect - come into the equation?

It's proper to look at 1917 in its historical conditions. The Proletariat was on the rise as a mass class and on the part of not a national bourgeois but an international bourgeois. The relatively small Bourgeois class in Russia lacked liberal imagination and political leadership. The Proletarit directly descendant from the institutions of feudal society lacked education and required a strict leadership. Under such conditions, it's no wonder that the socialist milieu from Western Europe had little effect on Russian conditions and as a result the Bolsheviks had to develop their own tactics. The same can be said vis versa - Bolshevik tactics would have and have had little success in the western world where conditions were the opposite of Russia. It's no bad joke of history that the Bolshevik tactics have been most successful in countries alike to the condition of Russia.

This was the chief thesis of the so called "Left Communists" whose warning I think have stood the test of time. With that said, the Vanguard Party was for its appropriate conditions as was the movement for Reforms, Utopianism, etc. The real use of the Vanguard Party to educate and organize the masses ran out for most countries with the prospect of true communism following World War 1, where Workers' Councils appeared by the Proletarians own doing in all parts of Europe. Where the revolution was actually accomplished by these means was the Hungarian Revolution against all odds.

As for the later nature of your question, here are my opinions on the prospect of a Party or organization for Socialists to work around:

I think there is already a general movement towards organizations which transcend the typical role of revolutionaries. Where Socialism exists as a nasty word, as a disenfranchised word, the work of an organization is to turn this around. Give a socialist paper to Conservative Proletariat and they'll burn it. Show a Conservative Proletariat by deeds in their community and in protecting labor and they'll embrace you. Words are empty, action is worth a thousand of them. The Black Panther Party did much to revitalize the word of Socialism by giving out free food, healthcare, rehabilitation and providing an alternative culture.

Transcending the labor line is important too. The coupling of youth councils, workers' clubs, unemployed councils and "party" branches (groups of like minded revolutionaries) into a General Union of the Working Class seems like a good idea.

If we consider the Party as a organization comprising the entire class upon a general program, this "General Union of the Working Class" if founded on the program of Communism without despotism, inequality and exploitation doesn't seem of any significant difference besides the choice of vernacular.

Thoughts comrade?

[Die Neue Zeit]

This SPD-ism / party-movementism sounds good to me. :)

However, you criticized the SPD model in previous posts. While it was, according to Lars Lih, an actual vanguard party, it also was a mass party and a real movement. My praise of the pre-war SPD and inter-war USPD lies precisely in all those alternative culture permanent organizations you mentioned.


this "General Union of the Working Class" if founded on the program of Communism without despotism, inequality and exploitation doesn't seem of any significant difference besides the choice of vernacular

Vernacular, hehe ;)

[Lyev]

Are you a left-com now? :confused:Me? No, I am just trying to remain open-minded. Although, it is not like I would just suddenly wake up one day and decide to change my views like a pair of clothes; I mean that I don't really like 'isms'.
It's proper to look at 1917 in its historical conditions. The Proletariat was on the rise as a mass class and on the part of not a national bourgeois but an international bourgeois. The relatively small Bourgeois class in Russia lacked liberal imagination and political leadership. The Proletarit directly descendant from the institutions of feudal society lacked education and required a strict leadership. Under such conditions, it's no wonder that the socialist milieu from Western Europe had little effect on Russian conditions and as a result the Bolsheviks had to develop their own tactics. The same can be said vis versa - Bolshevik tactics would have and have had little success in the western world where conditions were the opposite of Russia. It's no bad joke of history that the Bolshevik tactics have been most successful in countries alike to the condition of Russia.So do you think that - in 1917 Russia - the Bolsheviks were an natural expression of the class struggle, as such?
This was the chief thesis of the so called "Left Communists" whose warning I think have stood the test of time. With that said, the Vanguard Party was for its appropriate conditions as was the movement for Reforms, Utopianism, etc. The real use of the Vanguard Party to educate and organize the masses ran out for most countries with the prospect of true communism following World War 1, where Workers' Councils appeared by the Proletarians own doing in all parts of Europe. Where the revolution was actually accomplished by these means was the Hungarian Revolution against all odds.How does this point of view - that the 'vanguard party' is no longer of any worth - compare with the pro-party view of the Italian communist left (Bordiga, etc.)? And I think there is often this fallacy created by those who are pro-vanguard when they say, without any kind of organisation, revolutions and social movements gradually peter out or are quashed. However, as I understand, those who are against a vanguard party - I presume you are, Paul? - do not propose a complete lack of any kind of organisation whatever as the only means for making revolution. I would like to hear the opinions of some Maoists and Trotskyists etc. on the necessity of a vanguard.

[Lyev]

Also, blake 3:17, I am not sure I completely understand what you when you refer to 'Pushing Forward' - could you please briefly explain?

[Paulappaul]

How does this point of view - that the 'vanguard party' is no longer of any worth - compare with the pro-party view of the Italian communist left (Bordiga, etc.)?Mind you, I mentioned Left-Coms with regards to their theory between the distinction between Lenin's tactics and tactics of Europe and much of the Western World.

With regards to Bordiga and the Italian Communist Left who were infact quite pro-lenin, just remained absent from Unions and Representative Institutions. Their ideology reminds me of a early Comintern.


However, as I understand, those who are against a vanguard party - I presume you are, Paul? - do not propose a complete lack of any kind of organisation whatever as the only means for making revolution.Yes and I've given my thoughts in the above post with regards to a Organization of our time.


So do you think that - in 1917 Russia - the Bolsheviks were an natural expression of the class struggle, as such?That's a flimsy word Class Struggle. Advanced Capitalism has really made clear the distinction between Lower and Upper Class. In this case Class Struggle always means between these two classes. In early capitalism, where its Political control has yet to be solidified, this clear distinction is not present. So in Russia where there was little bourgeois, a small proletariat and a mass of peasants, where feudal relations prevailed in large part still, the Bolshevik Party included all the oppressed classes, worker, peasant, bourgeois. So yes the Bolshevik Party was an expression of Class Struggle - that is of all the oppressed classes.

DNZ:


However, you criticized the SPD model in previous posts. While it was, according to Lars Lih, an actual vanguard party, it also was a mass party and a real movement. My praise of the pre-war SPD and inter-war USPD lies precisely in all those alternative culture permanent organizations you mentioned.

Yeah I like alot of the Politics of the pre-war SPD, alot of Left-Coms were high ranking members, it was really after the WW1 and the German Revolution that Dutch/German Left Communism solidified into a real movement.

[blake 3:17]

Also, blake 3:17, I am not sure I completely understand what you when you refer to 'Pushing Forward' - could you please briefly explain?

By that I mean, that groups, parties, unions, etc think they can duplicate past successes and build on those successes in a very straight forward way and that a few positive developments will just snowball into some ultimate victory.

The examples I can speak to most accurately are ones in Canada. I think many of the patterns are very common at the national and local levels in the Global North. I could give some examples if you're curious. It's all in the details...