The source of funding for revolutionary organizations

[pranabjyoti]

The source of funding to run a revolutionary organization is rarely discussed. I think like me, many of us here are in completely dark regarding the source of funding that fed the Bolsheviks and the CPC before 1949. I am requesting other comrades, those who know, to show some light in this regard.
After all, a revolutionary party can not run solely by voluntary donation from poor people and workers as their capacity to donate is not much.

[Jose Gracchus]

The CPC after the extermination of the urban cadres was based primarily on rural peasant guerrilla war, and therefore opened up 'liberated zones' in the periphery where the CPC in essence had a state-within-a-state. Like guerrilla and rebels groups today which maintain a territorial base, it is as simple as tax.

The RSDLP had several funding sources. Before 1905 when it was banned and covert, they actually sought funding via bank robberies in some instances. Stalin, as a rank-and-file militant, actually participated in bank robberies to fund the party.

[graymouser]

I'm not going to go into details about modern-day organization but I want to note:

1. There are left-wing individuals among the well-off layers of society who will in fact donate money to an organization. This can be particularly true when a group recruits students; some of them are people with considerable wealth. But for instance the CPUSA used to collect donations from sympathizers in Hollywood. Older sympathizers who leave large sums of money in their wills are known as "angels."

2. While putting out a left-wing newspaper is usually a money losing proposition, the same is not true of a book publishing company. Also, parties that have printing equipment will frequently do work on the side for a profit. There are groups where the press is arguably more important than the organization or party.

3. Before the last few decades, it was radically cheaper to put somebody up in housing and keep them fed & clothed than it is today, and you could run a party on less money. It's drastically more expensive to have a full-timer now.

[Kléber]

RSDLP(B) did some bank robberies in its early days, but this method was abandoned and condemned by Lenin. It brings down repression and brings criminal elements into the party. The Bolsheviks had some laundering front operations but their relative importance is inflated by anti-communists. They also did rely on private benefactors but didn't twist their politics to court the rich and win donations. The funding available to party branches was still largely based on what they could scrape together the old fashioned way with dues, donations, literature sales etc.

During the Chinese Soviet and New Democracy period, the CPC taxed farmers in its base areas, it set up cottage industries anywhere that could be held in nighttime and daytime, it secretly grew opium to sell elsewhere (opium use was forbidden in base areas), and it constantly sought out channels of Soviet aid although these were sparse and unreliable, becoming larger with the move to Yan'an and then huge after the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. During the Second United Front, the GMD initially gave some monetary aid to the CPC but that agreement dried up within a few years.

[Die Neue Zeit]

After all, a revolutionary party can not run solely by voluntary donation from poor people and workers as their capacity to donate is not much.

The pre-war SPD managed to rake in lots of direct membership dues and indirect membership dues through unions, plus additional donations from the alternative culture they set up (cultural societies, recreational clubs, funeral homes, etc.), plus subscriptions from newspapers and magazines, plus sales from books, etc.


Before the last few decades, it was radically cheaper to put somebody up in housing and keep them fed & clothed than it is today, and you could run a party on less money. It's drastically more expensive to have a full-timer now.

Considering the historically limited Trotskyist scope of "party" activity (read: bad NPO "business" model), I'm not surprised at their difficulty in having more full-timers.

[RED DAVE]

Considering the historically limited Trotskyist scope of "party" activity (read: bad NPO "business" model), I'm not surprised at their difficulty in having more full-timers.Considering the fact that the pre-war SPD engaged in perhaps the biggest betrayal of the workers of all (before Stalin), I'm not surprised it had little trouble getting money.

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

Yes, because the SPD betrayed workers in the 1890s and early 1900s. :rolleyes:

[Hoplite]

The source of funding to run a revolutionary organization is rarely discussed. I think like me, many of us here are in completely dark regarding the source of funding that fed the Bolsheviks and the CPC before 1949. I am requesting other comrades, those who know, to show some light in this regard.
After all, a revolutionary party can not run solely by voluntary donation from poor people and workers as their capacity to donate is not much.

That depends entirely on the type and structure of the organization.

If you're talking about an overt and radical organization, it would probably have to subsist off what it could capture, salvage, or scrape together. Many revolutionary groups work this way and many of the weapons of the revolutionary are born out of necessity and scarcity. Once the organization got bigger or had some form of international recognition and legitimacy, you could try to seek funding from foreign sources but that is often dicey.

In my opinion, a revolutionary group should try to stay away from acquisition of wealth as much as possible, even if it is to further revolutionary goals. It's too tempting for some of the people in the group to find making money a more worthy goal than their original objective and thus descend into basic criminal behavior.

If the organization is more a force of social change and attempts to revolutionize society within the boundaries of reasonable acceptability, funding is much easier to find. Fund drives and appeals for donations are easier to do when your group is legitimate and there are ALWAYS people with money or resources that at least sympathize with your cause enough to give some of that to you. The key is to be legitimate though, the second you taint your reputation with something like tax fraud or buying weapons for a radical group, funding will be harder to find and your legitimate message will be lost.

You can also straddle the line; not engage in overt acts of violence and avoid running a public campaign as a group. This would be more culture jamming, distributing literature, small-scale sabotage/vandalism, public displays of your beliefs, etc etc. This would, by nature, have to be a relatively secretive group and as such you'd have to rely more on begging, borrowing, or stealing what you needed from the right places and making what you had go as far as possible.

[RED DAVE]

Yes, because the SPD betrayed workers in the 1890s and early 1900s. :rolleyes:This was the period during which the party was basically oriented towards the reformist view of socialism, which resulted in the debacle.

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

This was the period during which the party was basically oriented towards the reformist view of socialism, which resulted in the debacle.

RED DAVE

Cry me a river:

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