Is a communist "party" contradictory? [Archive]

Vladimir Innit Lenin

14th July 2012, 10:07

Just to feed your paranoia: Yes, we want a one-party state :)

To nuance: Since the party-movement in the sense Labor Days is talking about is really the working class constituted itself as a class-collective fighting for the communist project, it would really mean that the working class seizes power.

The party-movement here is not (necessarily) a single mass organisation. Much more likely would be a federation of organisations that all focus on their "field", be it unions, coops, educational collectives, social community centers, or something else. They'd all be united to the common project of revolutionary transformation of society and this is what the "political leadership" of the party itself would do: To politicize the whole movement and fight for the political program of working class power and globally overcoming the rule of capital.

This party-movement, when it comes to power, replaces the existing state with a semi-state that consists of institutions fits for majoritarian rule. It remains a "state" in the sense of enforcing the political hegemony of the working class, but is in reality an extreme democracy (demarchy) in every core capitalist country (where the working class is the majority of society). It ceases to function like a state when all other classes have collapsed into the working class and society becomes one of free producers.

I do understand what you're saying, and it's a very nice theory, but again, these aren't real, organic, grassroots movements if they in the end have to subjugate themselves to the one-party state.

Indeed (and i'm going to move this conversation on because there's no point going back and forth over the same point, it's boring and we're both stubborn enough that we're not going to budge!), the one-party state is a two-pronged attack on workers' democracy. The party subordinates workers' council and other independent organisations in practice, however nice the theory. The Russian Revolution is sort of 'patient zero' for this sort of case, and Rosa Luxemburg in The Russian Revolution expounds the case perfectly for there being a third way [sorry to have to use that phrase] between bourgeois democracy and one-party dictatorship:

"The tacit assumption underlying the Lenin-Trotsky theory of dictatorship is this: that the socialist transformation is something for which a ready-made formula lies completed in the pocket of the revolutionary party, which needs only to be carried out energetically in practice. This is, unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – not the case. Far from being a sum of ready-made prescriptions which have only to be applied, the practical realization of socialism as an economic, social and juridical system is something which lies completely hidden in the mists of the future. What we possess in our program is nothing but a few main signposts which indicate the general direction in which to look for the necessary measures, and the indications are mainly negative in character at that. Thus we know more or less what we must eliminate at the outset in order to free the road for a socialist economy. But when it comes to the nature of the thousand concrete, practical measures, large and small, necessary to introduce socialist principles into economy, law and all social relationships, there is no key in any socialist party program or textbook. That is not a shortcoming but rather the very thing that makes scientific socialism superior to the utopian varieties."

Indeed, if we are too rigid in demanding a one-party state, then we implement practical policy using only the theoretical considerations we made pre-revolution. Whilst economic planning is a hallmark of Scientific Socialism, social and political planning should not be. We criticise western Capitalist nations for their embrace of that faux-democratic of political systems: liberal democracy. However, we then make the mistake of viewing politics as a binary: if the capitalists have a liberal democracy where nothing is certain, we must have an authoritarian dictatorship where everything is planned. Again, Luxemburg in The Russian Revolution is spot on here:

"The basic error of the Lenin-Trotsky theory is that they too, just like Kautsky, oppose dictatorship to democracy. “Dictatorship or democracy” is the way the question is put by Bolsheviks and Kautsky alike. The latter naturally decides in favor of “democracy,” that is, of bourgeois democracy, precisely because he opposes it to the alternative of the socialist revolution. Lenin and Trotsky, on the other hand, decide in favor of dictatorship in contradistinction to democracy, and thereby, in favor of the dictatorship of a handful of persons, that is, in favor of dictatorship on the bourgeois model. They are two opposite poles, both alike being far removed from a genuine socialist policy. The proletariat, when it seizes power, can never follow the good advice of Kautsky, given on the pretext of the “unripeness of the country,” the advice being to renounce socialist revolution and devote itself to democracy. It cannot follow this advice without betraying thereby itself, the International, and the revolution. It should and must at once undertake socialist measures in the most energetic, unyielding and unhesitant fashion, in other words, exercise a dictatorship, but a dictatorship of the class, not of a party or of a clique – dictatorship of the class, that means in the broadest possible form on the basis of the most active, unlimited participation of the mass of the people, of unlimited democracy."

Moreover, her prescription:

"But socialist democracy is not something which begins only in the promised land after the foundations of socialist economy are created; it does not come as some sort of Christmas present for the worthy people who, in the interim, have loyally supported a handful of socialist dictators. Socialist democracy begins simultaneously with the beginnings of the destruction of class rule and of the construction of socialism. It begins at the very moment of the seizure of power by the socialist party. It is the same thing as the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Yes, dictatorship! But this dictatorship consists in the manner of applying democracy, not in its elimination, but in energetic, resolute attacks upon the well-entrenched rights and economic relationships of bourgeois society, without which a socialist transformation cannot be accomplished. But this dictatorship must be the work of the class and not of a little leading minority in the name of the class – that is, it must proceed step by step out of the active participation of the masses; it must be under their direct influence, subjected to the control of complete public activity; it must arise out of the growing political training of the mass of the people."

So there you have it. A one-party state not only stifles the practical workings of democracy by relying on our knowledge and experience pre-revolution (when the decist party claims a vanguard-style hegemony over the movement and moves its direction to the one it decides internally), which will inevitably fall short of the knowledge and experience of the working class during and post-revolution.

Inevitably, a healthy Socialist democracy - represented by either a multi-Socialist party system, or more radically, a no-party system whereby the political process is dominated by individuals from the class in the form of genuinely democratic workers' workplace councils, political councils and grassroots, organically evolving social institutions - will lead to a more fruitful Socialism, a more sustainable Socialism and one less tainted by the dictatorship and mass death that was induced by the Socialistic experiments of the 20th Century.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

14th July 2012, 10:07

That's a reply to Labor Days, too.^^^

Mr. Natural

14th July 2012, 16:24

Any growing anarchist/communist process must develop higher levels of organization, whether it is a "party" or some other coordinating structure, or such processes would degenerate into chaotic disconnection.

Brains develop to coordinate the activities of organisms as they and their relations become more complex, and any successful revolutionary process must develop such "brains" (parties) too.

Such parties would have to take care to avoid cooptation by the surrounding capitalist system, but they could most definitely oppose capitalism from within. Cancers oppose the organization of life from within, and living anarchist/communist processes can oppose the cancer of capitalism from within.

Life is community as is communism. Communism is natural and must adhere to the "rules of life" and natural organization, and natural organization develops "parties" as complexity increases.

My red-green, partying best.

Lucretia

14th July 2012, 17:33

"The tacit assumption underlying the Lenin-Trotsky theory of dictatorship is this: that the socialist transformation is something for which a ready-made formula lies completed in the pocket of the revolutionary party, which needs only to be carried out energetically in practice. This is, unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – not the case. Far from being a sum of ready-made prescriptions which have only to be applied, the practical realization of socialism as an economic, social and juridical system is something which lies completely hidden in the mists of the future. What we possess in our program is nothing but a few main signposts which indicate the general direction in which to look for the necessary measures, and the indications are mainly negative in character at that. Thus we know more or less what we must eliminate at the outset in order to free the road for a socialist economy. But when it comes to the nature of the thousand concrete, practical measures, large and small, necessary to introduce socialist principles into economy, law and all social relationships, there is no key in any socialist party program or textbook. That is not a shortcoming but rather the very thing that makes scientific socialism superior to the utopian varieties."

I know Luxemburg's writings on Lenin and Trotsky have become something of a rallying point for petite-bourgeois, anti-Leninist nonsense. So I feel the need to respond to this quote, which is an unfair characterization of Lenin and Trotsky by Rosa Luxemburg. On the one hand, she takes contextually contingent actions undertaken by the Bolsheviks at concrete historical stages, and attempts to draw sweeping principles about Bolshevik ideas of The Party (tm), as we see being done here with all the language about "ready-made formulae." Then on the other hand, she doesn't hold back from criticizing the Bolsheviks from -- and this is rich -- making virtues (drawing good rules of practice) out of necessary actions undertaken for specific reasons in historical flux of revolution. In other words, she imputes to them principles they don't have, then criticizes them for drawing principles they never drew.

Take for instance, this accusation of "completed ready-made formulae," which depicts the Bolshevik Party as consisting of a beneficent and omniscient force that need only swoop down on workers from above and bestow socialism upon them. What we know in reality is that the Bolshevik party had definite principles about what socialism would repesent (workers administering their own affairs, managing and administering the means of production, etc.), but were very, VERY flexible in charting the course for how to transition to such a society. In fact, the entirety of the Bolshevik experience following the October revolution is just one illustration after another of how the Bolsheviks' preferred "ready-made formulae" (NEVER "complete") were thwarted by objective conditions, leaving them to improvise new practices and to try out new ideas.

What Rosa is criticizing here, of course, in the context of the rest of the passage is the striking but in my mind indisputable idea that in struggling for proletarian democracy, you cannot simply fetishize democratic decision-making processes and blindly support what Lenin called "pure" democracy in situations where politics -- including decision-making of the kind any "democratic" process is attempting to carry out -- is blending with armed class struggle and active counter-revolution against the soviets and against workers' power. In this case Trotsky and Lenin are absolutely correct, and Rosa herself is the one making sweeping conclusions of principle about democracy while ignoring the contingent circumstances of historical flux. One wonders what Rosa would have had the Bolsheviks do differently: open the door to Menshevik and SR power, along with their catering to the bourgeoisie and attempts at immediately curtailing soviet power? Well, it would have been perfectly in keeping with the "democratic processes" of the Constituent Assembly.

Indeed, if we are too rigid in demanding a one-party state, then we implement practical policy using only the theoretical considerations we made pre-revolution. Whilst economic planning is a hallmark of Scientific Socialism, social and political planning should not be. We criticise western Capitalist nations for their embrace of that faux-democratic of political systems: liberal democracy. However, we then make the mistake of viewing politics as a binary: if the capitalists have a liberal democracy where nothing is certain, we must have an authoritarian dictatorship where everything is planned. Again, Luxemburg in The Russian Revolution is spot on here:

"The basic error of the Lenin-Trotsky theory is that they too, just like Kautsky, oppose dictatorship to democracy. “Dictatorship or democracy” is the way the question is put by Bolsheviks and Kautsky alike. The latter naturally decides in favor of “democracy,” that is, of bourgeois democracy, precisely because he opposes it to the alternative of the socialist revolution. Lenin and Trotsky, on the other hand, decide in favor of dictatorship in contradistinction to democracy, and thereby, in favor of the dictatorship of a handful of persons, that is, in favor of dictatorship on the bourgeois model. They are two opposite poles, both alike being far removed from a genuine socialist policy. The proletariat, when it seizes power, can never follow the good advice of Kautsky, given on the pretext of the “unripeness of the country,” the advice being to renounce socialist revolution and devote itself to democracy. It cannot follow this advice without betraying thereby itself, the International, and the revolution. It should and must at once undertake socialist measures in the most energetic, unyielding and unhesitant fashion, in other words, exercise a dictatorship, but a dictatorship of the class, not of a party or of a clique – dictatorship of the class, that means in the broadest possible form on the basis of the most active, unlimited participation of the mass of the people, of unlimited democracy."Once again, here, we see Rosa speaking of "democracy" in the abstract as a sweeping, ahistorical and universal principle, in contrast to Lenin and Trotsky, who correctly noted that before the transition to socialism and a classless society is complete, democracy always has a class content. It is therefore impossible to speak of "pure democracy" except as an illusion. Instead, you must speak of which class democratically exercises power through the state in order to wield power in a society riven by class antagonisms. It is not, therefore, true that Lenin or Trotsky counterposed dictatorship to democracy. They counterposed the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat to bourgeois democracy and imputed to it the attributes of proletarian democracy. Again, on this, see Lenin's "Proletarian Revolution" from the same year Luxemburg's unfairly critical pamphlet was published.

Yes, dictatorship! But this dictatorship consists in the manner of applying democracy, not in its elimination, but in energetic, resolute attacks upon the well-entrenched rights and economic relationships of bourgeois society, without which a socialist transformation cannot be accomplished. But this dictatorship must be the work of the class and not of a little leading minority in the name of the class – that is, it must proceed step by step out of the active participation of the masses; it must be under their direct influence, subjected to the control of complete public activity; it must arise out of the growing political training of the mass of the people."Of course Lenin and Trotsky would agree with this -- in the abstract. The problem comes when you are struggling to realize and implement the greatest degree of proletarian democracy in a proletariat that is variegated and has achieved vastly different degrees of class and revolutionary consciousness, in the context of a fierce national and international conspiracy to roll back the revolution. In such a situation, it is pure delusion to imagine that no substitution from the party on behalf of the more backward elements of the masses, including reactionary pockets of the working class, would be necessary to thwart the very strong possibility of workers "democratically" electing the capitalists back into power -- especially in a society as backward as Russia was at the time. Is such substitution anti-democratic? Well, I suppose we could just become anarchists and preach dissolving all organized violence and state power when the white army is five miles down the line. Substitutionism itself has to be viewed in context, for when it is undertaken as an expedient to remove an temporary barrier in the wider process of transitioning to socialism, it is excusable. When it is no longer a part of the revolutionary process, or in fact contributes to transforming the process into one of counter-revolution, then obviously it should be condemned. And this, by the way, is precisely what Lenin and Trotsky did as it became clear that the bureaucratic distortions that emerged in response to objective conditions had begun to morph into a powerful force that was working against the transition to socialism.

Does my (and Lenin's and Trotksy's) very guarded and limited defense of political substitution mean that we shrug and pretend that democracy doesn't matter? Of course not. It shows just the opposite -- that in the contradictory-filled process of transitioning to socialism, democratic processes which socialism aims to universalize are sometimes polluted by the lingering hegemony of bourgeois ideas; that sometimes democratic principles, applied universally in all situations as the sole barometer as to whether an action should be undertaken in the transition to socialism, can possibly undermine the economic basis of the proletarian democracy and therefore render those supposedly "democratic processes" completely undemocratic in substance. Again, the very concept of "dictatorship of the proletariat" -- the existence of state power -- presupposes a contradiction between what socialists are striving for (a stateless society) and what they must do in order to achieve it (use state power to eliminate the bourgeoisie). So it is the case with proletarian democracy. Sometimes measures which contradict pure democratic principles are necessary to defend the wider process of transitioning to a purely democratic society, to defend the proletarian nature of the state. This is the case not just when it comes to thwarting the "democratic rights" of the bourgeoisie, but also in resisting the residue of bourgeois ideological hegemony that might surface in working class, especially in moments of intense and polarizing armed class struggle of the kind that marked the Soviet Union following October.

So there you have it. A one-party state not only stifles the practical workings of democracy by relying on our knowledge and experience pre-revolution (when the decist party claims a vanguard-style hegemony over the movement and moves its direction to the one it decides internally), which will inevitably fall short of the knowledge and experience of the working class during and post-revolution.The most I would be willing to concede about Trotsky's discussion of the one-party state throughout the 1920s is that he is making a sociological/political judgment about how revolutions polarize politics and the struggle for power to the point where two parties -- one pro-revolutionary and the other counter-revolutionary -- will organically tend to coalesce. At not point in his discussions of a one-party state, including in Terrorism and Communism does he couple the one-party state with a monolithic, anti-democratic party.

It is very, very easy to issue sweet-sounding paeans to the beauty of democratic processes when you're not in the thick of a bloody revolutionary struggle for power, and the content of that democracy - how it is implemented - means the difference between life and death. In such a situation, democracy begins to take on rougher edges than what you might find on the Platonic form.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

14th July 2012, 19:07

Lucretia

14th July 2012, 19:40

I'm just going to pick out a couple of things you've said and address them because I don't think we will find much aside from sectarian bickering if we both address all of each others' points (as you prove yourself when you come to the conclusion that I rally around petty-bourgeois anti-Leninism, implying that only principles that follow Leninist lines can possibly be proletarian; i'm sure Marx and Engels, not to mention Lenin himself, would have something to say about that), and I just can't be bothered with that, it's boring and pointless.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear. So much you're missing in my post, which is a shame. Not least because you choose to fill in those empty spaces by inventing claims I never made or implied. I am straining to search for a place where you can interpret me as suggesting that "only Leninist lines can possibly be proletarian." What I was actually arguing is that on the specific points of dispute that Luxemburg was raising, Lenin had the correct approach. But, like Luxemburg, you're taking my statements about a specific, concrete passage of text, and trying to draw sweeping conclusions about principles from them (e.g., the principle that "I am a principled Leninist who thinks that only Lenin could adopt an authentically proletarian line"). I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise that you make this logical fallacy while failing to see it in Luxemburg's own writings. (Note that I am giving you the benefit of the doubt here, and am not suggesting your statement was an ad hominem attack to discredit my argument on the basis of my supposed "sectarianism." I will expect the same consideration.)

I do think we can have a fruitful exchange on a couple of areas, notably: 1. You say "Once again, here, we see Rosa speaking of "democracy" in the abstract as a sweeping, ahistorical and universal principle, in contrast to Lenin and Trotsky, who correctly noted that before the transition to socialism and a classless society is complete, democracy always has a class content. It is therefore impossible to speak of "pure democracy" except as an illusion. Instead, you must speak of which class democratically exercises power through the state in order to wield power in a society riven by class antagonisms."

Now, I don't think anybody here has in mind a sort of petty-bourgeois, liberal-style democracy where everyone gets to vote for their favourite politician every year, every economic organisation is a co-operative and we all shop at John Lewis for Christmas. What I personally interpret Luxemburg's writings on democracy here, are that at the very least the dictatorship of the proletariat should equal a pure-as-possible democracy within the working class.Of course. That is the point of principle, and Lenin and Trotsky would wholeheartedly agree with it. The problem comes when you take this abstract announcement of principle, and apply it to the real world -- a dirty little place where philosophers fear to tread because it is replete with all sorts of contradictions and imperfections.

In this imperfect world of ours, the question could arise: if you allow unconstrained and unchecked proletarian "democracy" (really: democratic procedures), and a proletariat exhausted and dispirited from the violence of class struggle gradually begins to choose to hand more and more power to the bourgeoisie, and re-establish bourgeois economic practices, what do you do? Well, if you take as your measure of "proletarian democracy" the fetishizing of democracy as an practice divorced from substance, a means divorced from an end, so long as it is just the proletarians voting, what you could end up with is just such a situation: with a demoralized or confused proletariat ceding power right back to the same system that has caused them to become demoralized in the first place!

Proletarian democracy is not just the practice of choosing. And it's not even just the practice of having only proletarians choose. It's the practice of proletarians managing and administering their own affairs, including production, on the basis of exercising authority over the ultimate source of political power in any society -- control over the means of production. Again, the means and ends of choice are irreducible to one another but dialectically interdependent. (Interestingly, this is also how Trotsky described means and ends in his discussion of proletarian morality.) You cannot abstract one from the other, and still have proletarian democracy -- a prefiguration of the "pure democracy" that Kautsky, and yes even Luxemburg in that passage, allude to (even if not explicitly in the latter case).

Now, whether Luxemburg herself would agree with my next point is open to debate, but for me, wielding state power as a class is irreconcilable with genuine intra-class democracy. When the bourgeoisie wields state power as a class, it does so in a wholly undemocratic, free-for-all manner in which the only rule is the hegemony of capital; bourgeois politics bends between social liberalism and conservatism, statism and the free-market and even fascism, in order to a) survive and b) maximise the rate of profit. It has no need to be constrained by genuine democracy. Socialism however, need not only be constrained by democracy, but indeed democracy really is the seed from which Socialism grows. As we petty-bourgeois anti-Leninist types often note, Social Democratic reforms such as nationalisations have nothing to do with Socialism. If Socialism is to survive as the socio-political system underpinning the world in the long-term, then we must take far more care with the means, than the ends by themselves.I am in agreement with you about the nature of socialism (and by implication, any process of transition to socialism) and its relationship to democratic practices/processes. Where I disagree is that I am "taking more care" with "the ends by themselves" than I am with "the means." What I am doing, in fact, is just the opposite: I am saying you have to view the means and ends as organically united, but dialectically so, such that they can often come into contradiction with one another. Thus in the case of dissolving the constituent assembly, or outlawing the Menshevik parties, you (and Luxemburg) might cry out "You're sacrificing the means to the end!" However, I think I've made it very clear, and I think anybody who has really studied Trotsky's and Lenin's understanding of the process of revolutionary transition to socialism would agree, that these are viewed as instances where -- to borrow a phrase from that great Leninist "petite bourgeois" socialist Tony Cliff used to love to say -- "tactics contradict principles." And sometimes you have to deviate from perfectly prefiguring the democratic processes of socialist democracy, because reality in all its messiness will produce situations where following such processes will move us all away from the desired end. In other words, I am arguing against abstracting the means from the ends, thereby placing the means above the ends even where they are in contradiction with one another.

But to stress once more, this does not mean that we give "the ends" greater weight than "the means." For to do so would be tantamount to saying that socialism can be imposed from above by an enlightened cadre with perfect designs on what the ends are. That is just a regurgitation of the utopian socialist model that divorces vision from practice and who is doing the practice. Socialism has to come from below, and this means that the workers themselves will establish socialism and determine exactly what it will be. However, the processes by which they will do this cannot be abstracted out from the class struggle, and treated as though the processes themselves -- divorced from how they relate to substance, "the ends" of the class struggle -- are sufficient to bring socialism about.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

14th July 2012, 21:48

It is very, very easy to issue sweet-sounding paeans to the beauty of democratic processes when you're not in the thick of a bloody revolutionary struggle for power, and the content of that democracy - how it is implemented - means the difference between life and death. In such a situation, democracy begins to take on rougher edges than what you might find on the Platonic form.

I must just take issue with this, too.

What you are essentially saying is that, if necessary, we should discard - or at least re-consider - democracy as a principle of our politics, when the time for revolution comes, if it means the difference between power and no power.

What i'm saying is, power for power's sake is no good, as the Socialistic experiments of the 20th century showed: you can't achieve Socialism if you jack in most of your principles. Blame it on the situation at the time all you want but, to be fair, this time round we have had 20+ years to prepare for a genuine revolutionary situation and possibly have more time to go. If we can't get this right then maybe we shouldn't be doing this at all.

Art Vandelay

14th July 2012, 22:39

History has shown us that it is eminently possible for the interests of those who wield state power to become divergent from the interests of the working class itself. This cannot be allowed to happen again.

This has been a good discussion all around, but I just wanted to jump in on this point here, seeing as how it seems almost verbatim to what I was probably saying on this forum about a month ago. While I think that you've raised many great points boss, this one here seems like little more than allocution for "power corrupts;" a view that I have grown to extremely dislike.

Lucretia

14th July 2012, 22:46

I must just take issue with this, too.

What you are essentially saying is that, if necessary, we should discard - or at least re-consider - democracy as a principle of our politics, when the time for revolution comes, if it means the difference between power and no power.

What i'm saying is, power for power's sake is no good, as the Socialistic experiments of the 20th century showed: you can't achieve Socialism if you jack in most of your principles. Blame it on the situation at the time all you want but, to be fair, this time round we have had 20+ years to prepare for a genuine revolutionary situation and possibly have more time to go. If we can't get this right then maybe we shouldn't be doing this at all.

Where in either of my posts on this thread am I "essentially saying that, if necessary, we should discard - or at least re-consider democracy as a principle of our politics, when the time for revolution comes"? Seriously, if this is what you've taken from the paragraphs I have written above, you need to take more care to comprehend what you read.

Because, in reality, I said just the opposite, that democracy is THE principle of socialism, but that democracy is not just an abstract process of vote-taking by the right people. It's a decision-making process that, for it to be genuine democracy of the kind for which socialists struggle, must take place within a definite socio-economic context.

I also said that at certain concrete junctures where the class struggle is particiuarly violent, or where the remnants of the bourgeoisie might attempt to buy off sections of the working class, the process of "voting" or "choosing" by proletarians can in fact, sometimes unintentionally and sometimes explicitly and unambiguously, create conditions that move society back to a system of bourgeois control and away from genuine socialist democracy. In other words, the theoretical error you and Luxemburg both make is to define democracy, even proletarian democracy, by voting (or by just having proletarians voting, regardless of the context that is informing and affecting their voting logic).

This does not mean, as Luxemburg and many other critics of Lenin seem to attribute to Lenin, that the RDotP is characterized by being a dictatorship in the sense of rejecting all democratic procedures. It means that voting (and respecting the outcome of the vote), while forming the basis of democracy and being a prerequisite for it, is not the entirety of democracy and is not sufficient to create it. It also requires an economic basis for proletarian hegemony which might not necessarily always correspond to how proletarians vote (see, for example, how proletarians vote under bourgeois democracy).

Tim Finnegan

14th July 2012, 23:14

Art Vandelay

15th July 2012, 00:45

I believe that, yes, a communist party is a contradiction in terms. We can fuss about the etymology of the word "party", or the precise meaning it had in 1848, or whatever other screen-filler you prefer, but at the end of the day "party" is understood by everyone outside of alienated little milieu, and by most within it, to denote a form of centralised political organisation formed in a non-revolutionary era, rather than the working class subject emerging in a revolutionary situation, which is what as communists we should actually be concerned with. Perhaps we can refer to the revolutionary class-subject as "the party", but I frankly don't see that as much more than an unhelpful terminological nostalgia.

For further reading, I recommend Otto Rühle's "The Revolution Is Not a Party Affair" (http://libcom.org/library/the-revolution-is-not-a-party-affair-otto-ruhle), a criticism of the uSPD and KPD written in the aftermath of the German Revolution.

I really don't mean to be antagonistic and as someone who is still fleshing out their views this comment stems from general curiosity; to me this seems to infer that communists might as well twiddle their thumbs during "non-revolutionary eras" seeing as how a mass proletarian movement cannot be formed in a pre-revolutionary era (sorry if I am putting words in your mouth, but that is the general criticism I have heard against the orthodox Marxist stance on party building).

Positivist

15th July 2012, 01:06

I believe that, yes, a communist party is a contradiction in terms. We can fuss about the etymology of the word "party", or the precise meaning it had in 1848, or whatever other screen-filler you prefer, but at the end of the day "party" is understood by everyone outside of alienated little milieu, and by most within it, to denote a form of centralised political organisation formed in a non-revolutionary era, rather than the working class subject emerging in a revolutionary situation, which is what as communists we should actually be concerned with. Perhaps we can refer to the revolutionary class-subject as "the party", but I frankly don't see that as much more than an unhelpful terminological nostalgia.

The problem I see with this line of reasoning is that there is a multiplicity of economic crises that affect different sections of the proletariat at different times.

For example a minor recession may harshen the conditions of some workers, but only very few. At this time, these workers may develop a revolutionary conscioussness that the rest of the proletariat does not yet have. Now these radicalized workers should, and likely will organize to promote their revolutionary agenda.

The fundamental precept of the scenario above is that their will be minor "revolutionary situations" prior to major ones, which will result in the awakening of class conscioussness in some workers but not others.

Also to isolate the current situation from a working movement is incorrect. There is a workers movement, and there is a revolutionary workers movement today. Parties must be form to organize the revolutionary workers of today, and to educate, and draw in the next revolutionary workers of tomorrow. Obviously, since capital erupts into crisis frequently, this cumulative growth will eventually increase dramatically, and under these circumstances the minor working party can be built into a mass workers party.

Martin Blank

15th July 2012, 01:14

Is it not interesting that when political questions, such as that of the communist party or the proletarian party, are raised among various self-described socialists and communists, the debate inevitably moves farther and farther away from the very real class struggle today, and closer to sterile debates over historical doctrine?

While it's certainly respectable for a comrade to know and understand the arguments made by past communist thinkers, such as Luxemburg, Rühle, Lenin, Trotsky, etc., it does not bring us any closer to the real question that begs to be asked and answered: Through what organized means does the proletariat raise itself, overthrow the ruling classes and conquer state power? When we think about this issue, this is the question that is first and foremost on the minds of both communists and class-conscious workers, not what Lenin or Luxemburg or even Marx wrote in their time.

Yes, we can quibble over definitions until we are all blue in the face. We can parse and re-parse old terms and formulations like a first-year language student. And we can have Talmudic arguments over the true meaning of the ancients. But none of this gets us any closer to what matters, which is the application of the lessons of the past to the current class struggle.

The communist movement is not a debating point. It is a living movement of living people in the living moment of history. And it is the fact that we are dealing with a living system that demands our greatest attention.

Is the bourgeois (and petty-bourgeois) conception of an institutional political party anathema to the communist movement? Yes, and that fact has never been in dispute.

Does this negate the necessity for a unified proletariat fighting on the basis of a common program? No. In fact, it only emphasizes its need.

Does it really matter, in the final analysis, if such a unified proletarian political movement based around a common program that seeks to fulfill the three central goals -- the "Three Pillars" -- of the revolutionary proletariat calls itself a "party"? No ... and yes. No, in the sense that terminological differences should never be raised to a level where they would interfere with proletarian unity or revolutionary proletarian political action. Yes, in the sense that, regardless of what one chooses to call it, it is, nevertheless, a proletarian party (or proletarian party-movement).

Must this be a specifically political formation? Again, no ... and yes. No, in the sense that the revolutionary proletarian movement must be all-encompassing, with economic (revolutionary industrial unionist), cultural and social organizations existing alongside the political movement. Yes, in the sense that, while the battles between capital and labor happen in every aspect and arena of society, it is on the political battlefield that the matter will be settled.

The class struggle is, at its core, a political struggle. All of the economic, cultural and social battles can end with decisive proletarian victories, but as long as the ruling classes are able to rely on their state as armed protection and the enforcers of their "law and order", there is no revolution. Lenin called the communist party a "combat organization" for a reason; its chief task is to effectively challenge and defeat the ruling classes and their state, thus overthrowing them and conquering state power.

The communist party, both as a part of the proletarian party and independently, is responsible for "probing the line" -- that is, looking for the weaknesses and gaps in the ruling classes' defenses, finding areas where breaches can be opened and/or widened, taking every opportunity to sow confusion in the ranks of the exploiting and oppressing classes, as well as destabilizing them in preparation for future battles. In this sense, the communist party is the tip and sharp edge of the sword -- to use the sword-and-shield analogy of the overall proletarian movement.

We are not the "vanguard"; the revolutionary proletarian movement (the masses of self-acting, class-conscious and critically-thinking workers), including its party-movement, is the vanguard. The proletarian communist party is the honed and tempered edge that the vanguard uses as its strongest weapon. We are an instrument in the hands of the proletariat, not the other way around.

It is time to set this discussion back on its feet and address the real questions at hand.

Brosa Luxemburg

15th July 2012, 01:59

Hey guys :cool:

A random thought just popped into my head and I wanted to get some input from you more senior leftists - is the concept of a communist party inherently contradictory? Doesn't establishing a "party" inherently make the group part of the system, and, by being part of the system, make it anti-communist?

Well no organization that works within the material conditions of capitalism can exist "outside the system" because the "system" encompasses everything. If the party advocates the abolition of private property, the abolition of the market, the abolition of the law of value, support for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and other assorted things then the party is a communist party.

I'm not sure. I'm thinking that the communist "party" makes it somewhat part of the established system .... but then again, the party doesn't have to take part in day-to-day politics and can just be a rallying org for anti-capitalists.

This all depends on how the party operates. If we are thinking of the communist party as the CPUSA then I would say that the communist party is actually a bourgeois party and any serious communist would be completely opposed to such a party. If the party is concerned with maintaining a Marxian theory of existing society, organizing the proletariat for eventual revolution, uniting with other vanguard elements in other countries, etc. then I, along with most communists, would view this as a genuine communist and proletariat party.

Just because there is a party doesn't mean it has to run candidates, participate in parliaments, etc.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

15th July 2012, 08:41

Miles raises a very interesting point in the beginning of his post - that we are a living people, fighting a living struggle in a living moment - and it's probably important that Lucretia and I remember this. As I suspected earlier on, fighting over the definitions meant by ideologues of old would only lead to sectarian bickering and heated debate that, whilst interesting, falls back into the theoretical philosophy that Lucretia himself/herself said so desperately we should avoid in 'this dirty world'.

However, to me Miles is still off the mark in his assessment that it's somehow possible to have a party that is both "the tempered edge that the vanguard uses as its strongest weapon" and also merely "an instrument in the hands of the proletariat, not the other way around."

Again, if we are to take Lucretia's understanding that this is "a dirty world", then how are we to really make it possible that our strongest weapon, which is our face in the media, in the formal political spheres and which is (presumably) responsible for agitation, propaganda and organisation, is somehow kept under our control? What I fail to see is anything but justification for this. I want to see a convincingly clear idea of how this situation of the controllable weapon of the party occurs.

To me, for all of Miles' eloquence and however considered his opinion is, what I still get is a certain lack of originality (I don't want to start using the word naive, as I don't believe from his posts that the user is naive) in that, even faced with masses of historical evidence that party-ism - especially the decist parties that come to power during and post revolution - evidently reverses the power relationship between the class and the party at the point when the party takes state power on behalf of the working class. Whilst it's obviously not an historical inevitability, it seems tragic that, as students of history, some on our side are willing to take the chance of making this mistake again.

Martin Blank

15th July 2012, 20:30

However, to me Miles is still off the mark in his assessment...

You raise some very good points here. Unfortunately, I won't be able to reply properly right now. Today is my wedding anniversary, and my wife and I are going out. So, I'll have to return to this tomorrow.

Brosa Luxemburg

15th July 2012, 20:37

You raise some very good points here. Unfortunately, I won't be able to reply properly right now. Today is my wedding anniversary, and my wife and I are going out. So, I'll have to return to this tomorrow.

bow chika wow wow ;)

Tim Finnegan

15th July 2012, 20:52

I really don't mean to be antagonistic and as someone who is still fleshing out their views this comment stems from general curiosity; to me this seems to infer that communists might as well twiddle their thumbs during "non-revolutionary eras" seeing as how a mass proletarian movement cannot be formed in a pre-revolutionary era (sorry if I am putting words in your mouth, but that is the general criticism I have heard against the orthodox Marxist stance on party building).
I don't think that it's proper to equate participation in class struggle and participation in a party. It's perfectly possible to be active without being a member of a party, and it's perfectly possible to be an active party militant while being irrelevant to the class struggle. Plenty of politically unaffiliated shop floor militants, plenty of über-Trot students who've only seen the working class from a distance.

The problem I see with this line of reasoning is that there is a multiplicity of economic crises that affect different sections of the proletariat at different times.

For example a minor recession may harshen the conditions of some workers, but only very few. At this time, these workers may develop a revolutionary conscioussness that the rest of the proletariat does not yet have. Now these radicalized workers should, and likely will organize to promote their revolutionary agenda.

The fundamental precept of the scenario above is that their will be minor "revolutionary situations" prior to major ones, which will result in the awakening of class conscioussness in some workers but not others.

Also to isolate the current situation from a working movement is incorrect. There is a workers movement, and there is a revolutionary workers movement today. Parties must be form to organize the revolutionary workers of today, and to educate, and draw in the next revolutionary workers of tomorrow. Obviously, since capital erupts into crisis frequently, this cumulative growth will eventually increase dramatically, and under these circumstances the minor working party can be built into a mass workers party.
And yet, after more than sixty years, nothing of the sort has happened to even the most successful of sectlets. Most are punier and less capable than ever, struggling to attain relevance even in a period of genuine popular dissent. So what gives?

Art Vandelay

15th July 2012, 21:35

I don't think that it's proper to equate participation in class struggle and participation in a party. It's perfectly possible to be active without being a member of a party, and it's perfectly possible to be an active party militant while being irrelevant to the class struggle. Plenty of politically unaffiliated shop floor militants, plenty of über-Trot students who've only seen the working class from a distance.

Indeed and I wouldn't disagree, however I feel like this didn't really address my question. Now I want to make very clear that I don't think that party work is the only avenue for revolutionaries (pro-revolutionaries if you prefer) or the working class to engage in the class struggle. On top of that I don't think that any existing party is the "vanguard," but that in the most likely of scenarios the vanguard will arise organically out of a multitude of parties, unions, etc.

Having stated all of that, I would still like to stress the need for political organization by socialists. We cannot simply organize along economic lines and simply focusing on union organizing has proven itself to be bankrupt, they had their heyday and now it has passed. We need not only social, economic, but also political organizing; which requires, given the titanic scale of the work ahead of us, an organized and centralized party.

And yet, after more than sixty years, nothing of the sort has happened to even the most successful of sectlets. Most are punier and less capable than ever, struggling to attain relevance even in a period of genuine popular dissent. So what gives?

That is because we have just begun to emerge from a period of reaction and are just beginning to see a renewed intensity of class antagonisms. I guess that since no one has overthrown capitalism yet, that means it was their methods of organizing holding them back and not material conditions.

Lev Bronsteinovich

16th July 2012, 00:36

Do we really still have to have this argument. Do you really think the masses can coalesce, make a revolution and hold on to power against the bourgeoisie without some kind of party leading them? For all of the concerns about a party usurping power from the proletariat, if the bourgeoisie are not overthrown and then suppressed, there is no worry about bureaucracy or usurpation. It's kind of funny that Rosa is so frequently quoted against Lenin. There were so many areas of agreement.

As an asideI have been to some pretty darn good parties thrown by communists.

Die Neue Zeit

16th July 2012, 05:36

I do understand what you're saying, and it's a very nice theory, but again, these aren't real, organic, grassroots movements if they in the end have to subjugate themselves to the one-party state.

The USPD was a real, organic, grassroots movement. It would have remained so had it taken power by itself and established a genuine one-party system consisting of itself ("All Power to Independent Social Democracy").

I really don't mean to be antagonistic and as someone who is still fleshing out their views this comment stems from general curiosity; to me this seems to infer that communists might as well twiddle their thumbs during "non-revolutionary eras" seeing as how a mass proletarian movement cannot be formed in a pre-revolutionary era (sorry if I am putting words in your mouth, but that is the general criticism I have heard against the orthodox Marxist stance on party building).

Despite assertions by Tim to the contrary, what you said is a defense of revolutionary strategy, comrade.

I believe that, yes, a communist party is a contradiction in terms. We can fuss about the etymology of the word "party", or the precise meaning it had in 1848, or whatever other screen-filler you prefer, but at the end of the day "party" is understood by everyone outside of alienated little milieu, and by most within it, to denote a form of centralised political organisation formed in a non-revolutionary era, rather than the working class subject emerging in a revolutionary situation, which is what as communists we should actually be concerned with. Perhaps we can refer to the revolutionary class-subject as "the party", but I frankly don't see that as much more than an unhelpful terminological nostalgia.

Comrade Miles demolished the "party in the broad sense" mantra of your last sentence, because it is not what he called the "party in the real sense."

Tim Finnegan

16th July 2012, 10:50

Indeed and I wouldn't disagree, however I feel like this didn't really address my question. Now I want to make very clear that I don't think that party work is the only avenue for revolutionaries (pro-revolutionaries if you prefer) or the working class to engage in the class struggle. On top of that I don't think that any existing party is the "vanguard," but that in the most likely of scenarios the vanguard will arise organically out of a multitude of parties, unions, etc.

Having stated all of that, I would still like to stress the need for political organization by socialists. We cannot simply organize along economic lines and simply focusing on union organizing has proven itself to be bankrupt, they had their heyday and now it has passed. We need not only social, economic, but also political organizing; which requires, given the titanic scale of the work ahead of us, an organized and centralized party.
Well, again, I don't think that political organisation demands a centralised party. That, to me, implies a politics that is orientated towards the state and towards state power, which I do not regard as a communistic orientation. Rather than being orientated towards the "titantic" struggle for state power, communism is an orientation towards daily life and the reproduction of capitalist society through daily activities, which requires a wholly different approach than that of the traditional revolutionary socialdemocratic party. I will be entirely honest, I don't have much of an idea what kind of political organisation that entails, but if we were to pretend that we had all the answers when the cycle of struggle is still so new we would either be liars or idiots.

That is because we have just begun to emerge from a period of reaction and are just beginning to see a renewed intensity of class antagonisms. I guess that since no one has overthrown capitalism yet, that means it was their methods of organizing holding them back and not material conditions.We saw a renewed intensity of class antagonisms in the '65-'75 period, and the sects were bloody useless then as well. What makes you think that this will be any different? Have their dogmas gotten just stale enough that the stink of unreconstructed Bolshevism has become a pungent bouquet of revolution?

Art Vandelay

16th July 2012, 18:13

Well, again, I don't think that political organisation demands a centralised party. That, to me, implies a politics that is orientated towards the state and towards state power, which I do not regard as a communistic orientation.

Indeed it is, the working class must successfully seize and hold state power through the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

I honestly hate to appeal to Marx, as on this site he is quoted way to often (often leading to quote wars which I despise and which also presupposes his infallibility), but undoubtedly what he had in mind (regarding the dotp) was a centralized and highly effective state.

Rather than being orientated towards the "titantic" struggle for state power, communism is an orientation towards daily life and the reproduction of capitalist society through daily activities, which requires a wholly different approach than that of the traditional revolutionary socialdemocratic party. I will be entirely honest, I don't have much of an idea what kind of political organisation that entails, but if we were to pretend that we had all the answers when the cycle of struggle is still so new we would either be liars or idiots.

Indeed, but we can still learn valuable organizing methods from the past. That doesn't mean that much of what will be successful will be learned through praxis.

We saw a renewed intensity of class antagonisms in the '65-'75 period, and the sects were bloody useless then as well. What makes you think that this will be any different? Have their dogmas gotten just stale enough that the stink of unreconstructed Bolshevism has become a pungent bouquet of revolution?

Truthfully I don't know enough about that time period to say whether or not it constituted a genuine revolutionary situation.

RRRevolution

16th July 2012, 18:27

Yes, I think it is contradictory. In relation to Marx's own ideas this is wrong as he saw the class accumulating the power as the point of revolutionary change and not a party claiming this power.Karl Marx never ruled out communist parties. He was not actually very specific at all about how revolution would specifically happen.

This is why there are so many self-titled communist parties, because they all claim to be a representative body of proletarian consciousness while this consciousness doesn't exist - the party will be a product of consciousness, not the other way round.When the Bolshevik party first began gaining ground it consisted of under 100 members.

Die Neue Zeit

16th July 2012, 21:53

We saw a renewed intensity of class antagonisms in the '65-'75 period, and the sects were bloody useless then as well. What makes you think that this will be any different? Have their dogmas gotten just stale enough that the stink of unreconstructed Bolshevism has become a pungent bouquet of revolution?

Truthfully I don't know enough about that time period to say whether or not it constituted a genuine revolutionary situation.

NRZ, to be blunt, it did not: http://www.revleft.com/vb/pcfs-role-may-t138705/index.html

Vladimir Innit Lenin

16th July 2012, 22:09

NRZ, to be blunt, it did not: http://www.revleft.com/vb/pcfs-role-may-t138705/index.html

May 1968 was a genuine revolutionary situation in France.

That there was nobody but the reformist PCF there to 'organise' the working class is really the failure and fault of your beloved party-movement, NOT the working class.

Art Vandelay

17th July 2012, 00:48

May 1968 was a genuine revolutionary situation in France.

I believe, and am not 100% since I have never read the road to power, that one of the criteria that DNZ uses for defining a revolutionary situation would be a party-movement with the ability to seize state power and therefor actually pose anything but a minor inconvenience to the bourgeoisie.

That there was nobody but the reformist PCF there to 'organise' the working class is really the failure and fault of your beloved party-movement, NOT the working class.

The only thing this shows, is that you have reaffirmed DNZ's point.

Die Neue Zeit

17th July 2012, 02:44

^^^ A party-movement with majority political support within the class for the revolutionary program, yes. May 1968 had no such institutional organ.

Comrade Jandar

17th July 2012, 06:32

are anarchists not councilists/federalists?

How would either of those preclude a revolutionary organization?

Art Vandelay

17th July 2012, 06:39

How would either of those preclude a revolutionary organization?

They wouldn't, however it would be incompatible with a party in the orthodox Marxist sense (a centralized political party of the proletariat), which is what you claimed your support of. Perhaps, without realizing it you are moving away from your anarchist convictions, or else you were unaware of what constituted a party in the "orthodox marxist" sense.

Comrade Jandar

17th July 2012, 06:46

They wouldn't, however it would be incompatible with a party in the orthodox Marxist sense (a centralized political party of the proletariat), which is what you claimed your support of. Perhaps, without realizing it you are moving away from your anarchist convictions, or else you were unaware of what constituted a party in the "orthodox marxist" sense.

Perhaps. Contrary to popular opinion, anarchism has a history of militants forming more or less centralized revolutionary organizations such Bakunin's Brotherhood and the FAI in Spain.

Art Vandelay

17th July 2012, 06:58

Perhaps. Contrary to popular opinion, anarchism has a history of militants forming more or less centralized revolutionary organizations such Bakunin's Brotherhood and the FAI in Spain.

Hmm, as a former anarchist, I am intrigued to hear this. Without attempting to derail this thread to much, how does this not fly in the face of anarchists contempt of hierarchy? It seems like a lack of consistency in thinking to me. But I would have to say, that to the best of my knowledge, a party in the orthodox Marxist sense would be incompatible with anarchism; which, in fact, helped prompt me to break with anarchism.

Comrade Jandar

17th July 2012, 07:07

Hmm, as a former anarchist, I am intrigued to hear this. Without attempting to derail this thread to much, how does this not fly in the face of anarchists contempt of hierarchy? It seems like a lack of consistency in thinking to me. But I would have to say, that to the best of my knowledge, a party in the orthodox Marxist sense would be incompatible with anarchism; which, in fact, helped prompt me to break with anarchism.

I would hope that there are other anarchists besides me who recognize that there are legitimate hierarchies.

Art Vandelay

17th July 2012, 07:19

I would hope that there are other anarchists besides me who recognize that there are legitimate hierarchies.

Then what is exactly your reason for self styling as an anarchist?

You support a centralized political party, legitimate hierarchical relationships (just for the record communists also oppose illegitimate forms of hierarchy), and the organizing methods proposed by orthodox Marxists. I would probably bet that if we really got down to it, your vision of what should take place in an immediate post revolutionary situation, would be constituted as a state by Marxist definitions; I have always found that much (not all) of the points of contention between anarchists and Marxists over the state, is a disagreement largely rooted in semantics.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

17th July 2012, 10:27

I believe, and am not 100% since I have never read the road to power, that one of the criteria that DNZ uses for defining a revolutionary situation would be a party-movement with the ability to seize state power and therefor actually pose anything but a minor inconvenience to the bourgeoisie.

The only thing this shows, is that you have reaffirmed DNZ's point.

Yes, i'm fully aware that is one of DNZs criteria, but that is DNZ. I personally think that if the workers rise up and the ruling class' authority has crumbled to the extent that the President has sought refuge in another country, that very clearly represents a revolutionary situation.

The only reason DNZ adds his extra party-movement + program criteria is because he is a Kautskyist hack whose main interest is in his theoretical party-movement, not the working class. His position on May 1968 shows that he'd rather a party-movement existed to lead a non-existent working class, than the working class came to revolution independent of the party-movement.

Truth be told, in real life DNZ wouldn't know a revolutionary situation if it came and whacked him one in the face, so I try not to judge revolutionary situations by his criteria! I advise you to do the same!

Die Neue Zeit

17th July 2012, 13:23

Perhaps. Contrary to popular opinion, anarchism has a history of militants forming more or less centralized revolutionary organizations such Bakunin's Brotherhood and the FAI in Spain.

The problem with the Brotherhood is that it wasn't a mass party-movement. Platformists should look into the pre-WWI SPD model.

Yes, i'm fully aware that is one of DNZs criteria, but that is DNZ. I personally think that if the workers rise up and the ruling class' authority has crumbled to the extent that the President has sought refuge in another country, that very clearly represents a revolutionary situation.

There's a difference between a revolutionary period and a mere regime change situation.

His position on May 1968 shows that he'd rather a party-movement existed to lead a non-existent working class, than the working class came to revolution independent of the party-movement.

Your strawman doesn't make sense. There can't be a mass party-movement of the class (which I really think is the class for itself) if the class doesn't exist sociologically in the first place!

Ocean Seal

17th July 2012, 13:40

A party is an organizational means, and yes we are part of the system. Denying it is delusional and immature.

Teacher

17th July 2012, 15:29

I would agree with the original poster

I have been to many May Day BBQs and communists definitely do not know how to party for the most part.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

17th July 2012, 15:48

There's a difference between a revolutionary period and a mere regime change situation.

Your strawman doesn't make sense. There can't be a mass party-movement of the class (which I really think is the class for itself) if the class doesn't exist sociologically in the first place!

1. How is the replacement of the ruling class with the working class - circumventing the party-movement - mere 'regime change'? It's called class war mate.

2. My strawman was set up to take the piss out of your naivety. It's called humour, you should try it.;)

Die Neue Zeit

18th July 2012, 03:11

I would agree with the original poster

I have been to many May Day BBQs and communists definitely do not know how to party for the most part.

Well, on that note I can definitely agree with the yay-sayers! :lol: :D

More seriously, though, Alternative Culture can organize decent "parties."

Martin Blank

18th July 2012, 09:18

However, to me Miles is still off the mark in his assessment that it's somehow possible to have a party that is both "the tempered edge that the vanguard uses as its strongest weapon" and also merely "an instrument in the hands of the proletariat, not the other way around."

Again, if we are to take Lucretia's understanding that this is "a dirty world", then how are we to really make it possible that our strongest weapon, which is our face in the media, in the formal political spheres and which is (presumably) responsible for agitation, propaganda and organization, is somehow kept under our control? What I fail to see is anything but justification for this. I want to see a convincingly clear idea of how this situation of the controllable weapon of the party occurs.

To me, for all of Miles' eloquence and however considered his opinion is, what I still get is a certain lack of originality (I don't want to start using the word naive, as I don't believe from his posts that the user is naive) in that, even faced with masses of historical evidence that party-ism - especially the decist parties that come to power during and post revolution - evidently reverses the power relationship between the class and the party at the point when the party takes state power on behalf of the working class. Whilst it's obviously not an historical inevitability, it seems tragic that, as students of history, some on our side are willing to take the chance of making this mistake again.

There is much here to think about, so I thank The Boss for bringing it up. This has actually been an issue that members of the Workers Party had discussed for some time, precisely because of the concerns that are being raised above.

The best place to start with this is to talk about the communist party versus the proletarian party. Quite obviously, we do not see them as the same thing. Our view of the party-movement is not exactly the same as others' views. We've defined the party-movement as the unification of the various factions and fractions of the working class around a single program based on the "Three Pillars" that Marx and Engels outlined in the Communist Manifesto: raising the proletariat to a class-for-itself; overthrow of the supremacy of the ruling classes; conquest of state power by the proletariat.

To give a concrete example of what this might look like, let me indulge in a "what-if" scenario. What if workers had joined the #Occupy movement in such numbers that they were able to drive out the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements from "leadership" and take control of the movement itself? Or, similarly, what if workers had formed their own version of the #Occupy movement, based in workplaces and neighborhoods? In our view, such a movement could easily become the proletarian party-movement. The main thing that would have to be done would be to hold a National General Assembly to adopt a program -- one that was, at the very least, based on a concretized "Three Pillars" platform. Things like unity in action would develop out of common experience in struggle.

Within such a party-movement as this, an organization like the Workers Party in America would be one of the "factions and fractions" -- a party-faction. This is what a communist party is in relation to the party-movement; it is a party-faction within the revolutionary workers' movement. Its main task in pre-revolutionary situations would be to educate, agitate and organize into the party-movement -- to provide political, as opposed to practical, leadership (which, in such periods, is little more than substitutionism and adventurism).

In a revolutionary situation, however, the role of the party-faction changes. At this stage, we act under the direction of the party-movement (the mass, organized movement of the armed working class). This is where "probing the line" comes in. As the party-movement grows in strength and numbers, and the balance of class forces and momentum shift in the direction of the proletariat, it will be party-factions that are called upon to find the weaknesses in the ruling classes' defenses (and, yes, I said "factions"; I'm not so arrogant to think there won't be other genuinely communist party-factions operating in a mass party-movement).

This is where the concept of the communist party-faction being the "tempered edge of the sword" and "instrument in the hands of the working class" come in. But before I am accused of engaging in some circular logic, we need to take a step back and look at the question of class.

I read Lucretia's "dirty world" argument, though I really didn't need to do so. It is an argument that nearly all non-proletarian socialists use to justify their abandonment of principle. "Well, yes, we believe in the principle of proletarian democracy," says such a socialist, "but don't hold us to it. We might need to toss it out of the window in order to hold on to power." Sadly, this is what comes to us from both sides of the argument; both Lucretia and The Boss agree with the "dirty world" theory. The problem with both comrades' arguments is that they start more or less from the same position: parties exist to manage the working class.

I understand all too well that revolutions and democracy are both very messy things. They are the worst actions and systems aside from all the others. For communists, being forced to act contrary to our principles due to material conditions is not something we should see as an automatic process. Rather, when such situations arise, the choice of which path to take must rest in the hands of the working class, not any particular party (be it a party-faction or party-movement).

These differences in approach are more than just matters of policy. They are reflections of the consciousness of different classes. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois are raised from birth to be the leaders, the managers, the owners, the bosses. They bring this class consciousness with them wherever they go. And as long as it is not directly challenged in a material sense, it will come to dominate. On the other hand, the proletariat is raised from birth to be the followers, the managed, the owned, the bossed. We, too, bring this consciousness with us wherever we go. And as long as we do not challenge it in a material sense, it will continue to dominate us ... and, in turn, we will continue to be dominated.

The concept of raising the proletariat to being a class-for-itself -- to being able to assume the responsibilities of being a ruling class -- does not mean we crudely ape the customs and mannerisms of our exploiters. It means we find new ways to act together for the betterment of humanity. It means cooperation, collective decision-making, respecting the rights and dignity of everyone, seeing us all as being in the same boat together, etc.

What does this mean in the context of this discussion? First and foremost, it means that a party of proletarians is fundamentally distinct and counterposed to parties of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, as well as counterposed to cross-class parties claiming to be proletarian. A proletarian political organization begins from the standpoint that we act in a manner that foreshadows the society we seek to build (I use the term "foreshadows" here because the fact that we do live under the rule of the exploiting and oppressing classes constrains our ability to fully emulate or reproduce the social relations we seek to establish). This sets a genuinely proletarian organization apart from those of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, and from those cross-class formations, in the sense that the exploitative and oppressive class consciousness of our enemies simply do not have a viable breathing space.

For the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, institutionalism and bureaucratism are considered a natural and organic state of affairs. Hierarchy and vertical organization are endemic to their concepts of order, administration and governance. Democracy is merely a form of this governance, applicable only under specific material conditions. Let those conditions change, and democracy becomes incompatible. This is as much true in societies led by the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie as it is in political organizations led by elements of these classes.

This is the class root of the "dirty world" theory -- a theory that acts as a justification for the abandonment of communist principle in advance of the material need to do so. It is the true foundation of the literature of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialism. All such statements of "principle" or "what we fight for" are subordinated to this theory, just as in the 1990s so many petty-bourgeois socialist groups subordinated their principles and programs to "bad periodism" -- the belief that we were in a "bad period" of history, and that we had to abandon our principles and "regroup or die".

The "dirty world" theory, just like the "bad periodism" of a generation before, reminds me of a letter Engels wrote to Joseph Weydemeyer in April 1853, talking about what a communist party might face.

I have a feeling that one fine day, thanks to the helplessness and spinelessness of all the others, our party will find itself forced into power, whereupon it will have to enact things that are not immediately in our own, but rather in the general, revolutionary and specifically petty-bourgeois interest; in which event, spurred on by the proletarian populus and bound by our own published statements and plans — more or less wrongly interpreted and more or less impulsively pushed through in the midst of party strife — we shall find ourselves compelled to make communist experiments and leaps which no-one knows better than ourselves to be untimely. One then proceeds to lose one’s head — only physique parlant I hope — , a reaction sets in and, until such time as the world is capable of passing historical judgment of this kind of thing, one will be regarded, not only as a brute beast, which wouldn’t matter a rap, but, also as bête, and that’s far worse. I don’t very well see how it could happen otherwise. In a backward country such as Germany which possesses an advanced party and which, together with an advanced country such as France, becomes involved in an advanced revolution, at the first serious conflict, and as soon as there is real danger, the turn of the advanced party will inevitably come, and this in any case will be before its normal time. However, none of this matters a rap; the main thing is that, should this happen, our party’s rehabilitation in history will already have been substantiated in advance in its literature.

Having established the difference between proletarian and bourgeois/petty-bourgeois organizations, we can now return to The Boss' first criticism: "Miles is still off the mark in his assessment that it's somehow possible to have a party that is both 'the tempered edge that the vanguard uses as its strongest weapon' and also merely 'an instrument in the hands of the proletariat, not the other way around'."

As I've explained above, the concept of a party is different for different classes -- as are other abstractions, like democracy or freedom. A communist party (party-faction) is an instrument of the working class. It emerges within our class; it does not come from the outside. As such, it has a dependent character within and among the proletariat itself. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the communist party rises and falls with the working class, and can only become a party with mass influence at a time when the proletariat's organized participation in the class struggle is high. Under conditions such as we face today, the party will inevitably be small, almost seeming to be indistinguishable from the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialist sects. However, the fact that a proletarian communist party places itself at the service of the working class gives it a fundamentally different character. It is not party first and class second, but the other way around.

The concrete meaning of this is seen in the answer to this comment by The Boss: "How are we to really make it possible that our strongest weapon, which is our face in the media, in the formal political spheres and which is (presumably) responsible for agitation, propaganda and organization, is somehow kept under our control?"

First of all, "our face in the media" is not our "strongest weapon". In fact, given the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois monopoly of the media, our "face" is actually one of our weakest weapons. No, the strongest weapon in the proletariat's arsenal is our ability to mount an organized challenge to the ruling classes' power. This is why a communist party is not an "activist party", but an organizing party. "Activists" want to get their faces in the media because they see themselves as politicians in waiting. More to the point, they see themselves as better managers of capitalism than the capitalists themselves. Communists are organizers, not activists. We work to organize our brothers and sisters, and to arm them with the tools necessary to liberate themselves. Ninety-nine percent of this work is un-glamorous and conducted away from the media. It's done in workplaces and neighborhoods; it's one-on-one or in small groups; it's casual conversations, informal meetings and semi-formal get-togethers. Most of all, it is winning the trust and confidence of our brother and sister workers -- of proving ourselves to them. You can't do this in front of a camera. At best, you can only make yourself not look like an ass.

Viewed from this perspective, the question of control over activity and organizing becomes clearer. The more successful the organizing, the more control rests in the hands of the working class itself, and the more that the work of local detachments of the party-faction is subordinated to that of the party-movement. Just as national class struggles are subordinated to the international class struggle, so the local work of a communist party-faction is increasingly subordinated to that of the proletarian party-movement.

This gets us to the rub, as stated by The Boss: "What I still get is a certain lack of originality,... in that, even faced with masses of historical evidence that party-ism -- especially the decist parties that come to power during and post revolution -- evidently reverses the power relationship between the class and the party at the point when the party takes state power on behalf of the working class."

(First things first. I am figuring that "decist" is a shorthand for "democratic centralist". If I am wrong, please correct me.)

I can certainly understand where The Boss is coming from. And if we are talking solely about the various and sundry bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialist parties that exist, I am with him 100 percent. I've seen their future and it doesn't work, to turn a phrase.

The liberation of the proletariat must be the work of the proletariat itself. It is not the work of a cross-class organization -- of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialists -- coming from outside of, and acting "on behalf of", the working class. The proletarian party-movement is, as I said above, "the mass, organized movement of the armed working class", a unification of the various factions and fractions of the working class in struggle, not an institution and not something designed to fit into the political system of the ruling classes.

Within that party-movement is the communist party-faction (or multiple communist party-factions), which not only fulfills its political tasks as outlined in the Communist Manifesto ("In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality; in the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole."), but also, in relation to the proletarian party-movement itself, is, "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."

That relationship between faction and movement, between party and class, as Marx and Engels describe it, is and can only be one of the former acting at the behest of the latter.

This is, of course, the converse of what we see from the "decist" (bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialist) parties, which are designed to be institutional entities and separated from the working class. Their role is to manage the working class and to use "organized distrust" (the very core of democratic centralism) to keep proletarians, both inside and outside of the institutional parties, disorganized and unable to liberate themselves. The issue is not so much that these parties will "reverse the power relationship between the class and the party at the point when the party takes state power on behalf of the working class", but that these parties will preserve the power relationship between exploiter and exploited at the point when the party takes state power.

The bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialists have usurped the forms by which the proletariat fights for power in order to cut our class off from its own liberation -- an act that, in its own way, confirms the validity of these forms of struggle. In the process, they have made it so that many worker-communists, who instinctively reject the institutional parties of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialists, also end up rejecting anything that resembles how these elements assumed power. But we must be able to discern between form and content, between the tactics used by the proletariat and those used by those who seek to manage the proletariat.

It is ultimately in the question of class that we find the answers and the lines of demarcation.

I'll leave it here for now, since I've already said enough for comrades to consider.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

18th July 2012, 09:40

Thank you Miles, that's a very thoughtful and incisive contribution. I'll take a little while to consider what you've said, it's certainly brought the idea of the party-movement/party-faction/fraction into a new light for me.

Incidentally, did any of the 'Communist' Parties of the 20th Century have workers' only memebership/voting/eligibility for positions of leadership?

18th July 2012, 10:04

A very well written post there comrade. Just one remark, as I've seen it come by a few times now:

We've defined the party-movement as the unification of the various factions and fractions of the working class around a single program based on the "Three Pillars" that Marx and Engels outlined in the Communist Manifesto: raising the proletariat to a class-for-itself; overthrow of the supremacy of the ruling classes; conquest of state power by the proletariat.

"The conquest of state power by the proletariat" is an ambiguously phrased aim. Communists do not seek to conquer the existing state. After all, the capitalist state is unfit for majoritarian rule. Much better would be to phrase it as "The establishment of working class political supremacy" ('supremacy' fits with the second aim, but I personally like 'hegemony' better), which means the same (if we mean the establishment of a new state, a Democratic Republic), yet is clearer I think in content.

Martin Blank

18th July 2012, 11:28

"The conquest of state power by the proletariat" is an ambiguously phrased aim. Communists do not seek to conquer the existing state. After all, the capitalist state is unfit for majoritarian rule. Much better would be to phrase it as "The establishment of working class political supremacy" ('supremacy' fits with the second aim, but I personally like 'hegemony' better), which means the same (if we mean the establishment of a new state, a Democratic Republic), yet is clearer I think in content.

There are certainly better formulations that can be used. I stuck with that one simply because I was playing off the "Three Pillars" in the Manifesto. I certainly don't think the proletariat can capture the existing state. The state and the entire political system of the exploiting and oppressing classes need to be destroyed.

Martin Blank

18th July 2012, 11:34

Incidentally, did any of the 'Communist' Parties of the 20th Century have workers' only memebership/voting/eligibility for positions of leadership?

No, but the First International, especially after the experience of the Paris Commune, began adopting such policies at the Hague Congress. Moreover, Marx and Engels both were highly critical of the fact that the German Social-Democrats had allowed people like Bernstein into the party, and threatened a public split with them if the issue was not resolved. Marx also opposed the very idea of the Second International, believing that the successor to the IWMA should be explicitly communist and modeled on the Communist League, but on a mass scale.

Die Neue Zeit

18th July 2012, 14:05

This sets a genuinely proletarian organization apart from those of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, and from those cross-class formations, in the sense that the exploitative and oppressive class consciousness of our enemies simply do not have a viable breathing space.

For the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, institutionalism and bureaucratism are considered a natural and organic state of affairs. Hierarchy and vertical organization are endemic to their concepts of order, administration and governance. Democracy is merely a form of this governance, applicable only under specific material conditions. Let those conditions change, and democracy becomes incompatible. This is as much true in societies led by the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie as it is in political organizations led by elements of these classes.

[...]

In the process, they have made it so that many worker-communists, who instinctively reject the institutional parties of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialists, also end up rejecting anything that resembles how these elements assumed power.

Comrade, don't you mean their institutionalism, working through their institutions, etc.? Like you said at the end, many workers who reject mainstream institutions are led mistakenly to reject the basics of institutions altogether (which I, of course, think is crucial to political class formation).

"The conquest of state power by the proletariat" is an ambiguously phrased aim. Communists do not seek to conquer the existing state. After all, the capitalist state is unfit for majoritarian rule. Much better would be to phrase it as "The establishment of working class political supremacy" ('supremacy' fits with the second aim, but I personally like 'hegemony' better), which means the same (if we mean the establishment of a new state, a Democratic Republic), yet is clearer I think in content.

There are certainly better formulations that can be used. I stuck with that one simply because I was playing off the "Three Pillars" in the Manifesto. I certainly don't think the proletariat can capture the existing state. The state and the entire political system of the exploiting and oppressing classes need to be destroyed.

I personally prefer expropriating ruling-class political power in policymaking, legislation, execution-administration, and other areas.

No, but the First International, especially after the experience of the Paris Commune, began adopting such policies at the Hague Congress. Moreover, Marx and Engels both were highly critical of the fact that the German Social-Democrats had allowed people like Bernstein into the party, and threatened a public split with them if the issue was not resolved. Marx also opposed the very idea of the Second International, believing that the successor to the IWMA should be explicitly communist and modeled on the Communist League, but on a mass scale.

Comrade, in hindsight Bernstein was actually the least of the problems facing the SPD. The SPD did maintain this policy in relation to, say, the German peasantry (i.e., Kautsky prevailed over von Vollmar and even Bebel). Bernstein's pacifist tendency was distinct from the tred-iunionisty who became pro-war.

But, since The Boss was referring to the official Communist parties from the Comintern onwards, that's a different topic.

Rafiq

18th July 2012, 17:32

are anarchists not councilists/federalists?

Syndicalists are, but platformists are different.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

Vladimir Innit Lenin

18th July 2012, 19:10

There is much here to think about, so I thank The Boss for bringing it up. This has actually been an issue that members of the Workers Party had discussed for some time, precisely because of the concerns that are being raised above.

This is mainly a response to Miles’ excellent and thoughtful post; given its length and the breadth of the material it dealt with, I thought it deserved an equally considered response, which is what I’m aiming for here.

The best place to start with this is to talk about the communist party versus the proletarian party. Quite obviously, we do not see them as the same thing. Our view of the party-movement is not exactly the same as others' views. We've defined the party-movement as the unification of the various factions and fractions of the working class around a single program based on the "Three Pillars" that Marx and Engels outlined in the Communist Manifesto: raising the proletariat to a class-for-itself; overthrow of the supremacy of the ruling classes; conquest of state power by the proletariat.

As I think Q stated earlier, ‘conquest of state power by the proletariat’ is indeed a somewhat unfortunate phrase. However, how you view this of course depends on your view of the nature of revolution, which itself is dependent on your view of the party. If you are generally anti-party (and pro-council), then you may view the literal conquest of the power of the bourgeois state by the proletariat directly as useful, in that its immediate task would be to destroy the state. What better way to do this than to democratically conquer the state? I imagine this is something that the SPGB would support. However, this leads to problems of its own, mainly electoralism or, as with the SPGB, confusion over their position re: parliament and how revolution is actually induced.

To give a concrete example of what this might look like, let me indulge in a "what-if" scenario. What if workers had joined the #Occupy movement in such numbers that they were able to drive out the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements from "leadership" and take control of the movement itself? Or, similarly, what if workers had formed their own version of the #Occupy movement, based in workplaces and neighborhoods? In our view, such a movement could easily become the proletarian party-movement. The main thing that would have to be done would be to hold a National General Assembly to adopt a program -- one that was, at the very least, based on a concretized "Three Pillars" platform. Things like unity in action would develop out of common experience in struggle.

I agree that, in principle, Occupy could have developed into a bona-fide revolutionary proletarian movement had it had greater numbers of workers in its ranks, and greater numbers overall. Personally, I would say that a workplace/neighbourhood-based Occupy would have had a greater chance of succeeding, for the simple logistical reason that, the short-term unemployed aside, most workers will spend most of their lives in their workplaces. One of the obvious reasons that Occupy was mainly not made up of conscious proletarians was precisely because of its basic form: it is impossible to bring together a group of proletarians with nothing in common but their exploitation, in a grand Occupying movement – there would be no economic/political incentive for workers to be drawn to such a movement. Class character needs both political and economic struggles to develop; a permanent sit-in organised outside the already existing organised working class (the trade unions) really has no chance of succeeding for this reason.

Within such a party-movement as this, an organization like the Workers Party in America would be one of the "factions and fractions" -- a party-faction. This is what a communist party is in relation to the party-movement; it is a party-faction within the revolutionary workers' movement. Its main task in pre-revolutionary situations would be to educate, agitate and organize into the party-movement -- to provide political, as opposed to practical, leadership (which, in such periods, is little more than substitutionism and adventurism).

I think this is a fair characterisation of a party-faction/party-fraction. The party can be posed not as the vanguard of the revolution, but as a part of the whole movement, not necessarily its lead but also not necessarily redundant. However, the key point is that the party must not subordinate the organically-developed leadership of the working class to its own leadership, as the decist parties always seem to predict/support.

In a revolutionary situation, however, the role of the party-faction changes. At this stage, we act under the direction of the party-movement (the mass, organized movement of the armed working class). This is where "probing the line" comes in. As the party-movement grows in strength and numbers, and the balance of class forces and momentum shift in the direction of the proletariat, it will be party-factions that are called upon to find the weaknesses in the ruling classes' defenses (and, yes, I said "factions"; I'm not so arrogant to think there won't be other genuinely communist party-factions operating in a mass party-movement).

I can’t remember where I read the other day, but it was said that the easiest way to capture state power is through a small professional party (a la Bolshevik Party), but that it presents the problem of what to do when power is captured; inevitably, politics is a game of power and those who capture power, once they have conquered the state, start to have interests which slowly (or quickly!) diverge from those of the wider working class.

This is where the concept of the communist party-faction being the "tempered edge of the sword" and "instrument in the hands of the working class" come in. But before I am accused of engaging in some circular logic, we need to take a step back and look at the question of class.

I read Lucretia's "dirty world" argument, though I really didn't need to do so. It is an argument that nearly all non-proletarian socialists use to justify their abandonment of principle. "Well, yes, we believe in the principle of proletarian democracy," says such a socialist, "but don't hold us to it. We might need to toss it out of the window in order to hold on to power." Sadly, this is what comes to us from both sides of the argument; both Lucretia and The Boss agree with the "dirty world" theory. The problem with both comrades' arguments is that they start more or less from the same position: parties exist to manage the working class.

I fully agree. I should clarify my position here: I don’t like to subscribe to this argument, and it’s probably a debating weakness of mine that I get dragged into arguing on Lucretia’s terms on this one. But I do agree, there is no place for substituting our basic principles in this way, whatever the political weather.

I understand all too well that revolutions and democracy are both very messy things. They are the worst actions and systems aside from all the others. For communists, being forced to act contrary to our principles due to material conditions is not something we should see as an automatic process. Rather, when such situations arise, the choice of which path to take must rest in the hands of the working class, not any particular party (be it a party-faction or party-movement).

I fully agree.

These differences in approach are more than just matters of policy. They are reflections of the consciousness of different classes. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois are raised from birth to be the leaders, the managers, the owners, the bosses. They bring this class consciousness with them wherever they go. And as long as it is not directly challenged in a material sense, it will come to dominate. On the other hand, the proletariat is raised from birth to be the followers, the managed, the owned, the bossed. We, too, bring this consciousness with us wherever we go. And as long as we do not challenge it in a material sense, it will continue to dominate us ... and, in turn, we will continue to be dominated.

The concept of raising the proletariat to being a class-for-itself -- to being able to assume the responsibilities of being a ruling class -- does not mean we crudely ape the customs and mannerisms of our exploiters. It means we find new ways to act together for the betterment of humanity. It means cooperation, collective decision-making, respecting the rights and dignity of everyone, seeing us all as being in the same boat together, etc.

I fully agree with all of this.

What does this mean in the context of this discussion? First and foremost, it means that a party of proletarians is fundamentally distinct and counterposed to parties of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, as well as counterposed to cross-class parties claiming to be proletarian. A proletarian political organization begins from the standpoint that we act in a manner that foreshadows the society we seek to build (I use the term "foreshadows" here because the fact that we do live under the rule of the exploiting and oppressing classes constrains our ability to fully emulate or reproduce the social relations we seek to establish). This sets a genuinely proletarian organization apart from those of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, and from those cross-class formations, in the sense that the exploitative and oppressive class consciousness of our enemies simply do not have a viable breathing space.

This is an important distinction, yet I suspect very difficult to enforce. The tragedy of ‘being human’ is that power tends to trump all, and I’m not sure how much faith I have in any group of people to forego their urge to take power (state power in this case) to ensure that theirs is a party-movement of genuinely proletarian character, with full workers’ democracy.

This is the class root of the "dirty world" theory -- a theory that acts as a justification for the abandonment of communist principle in advance of the material need to do so. It is the true foundation of the literature of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialism. All such statements of "principle" or "what we fight for" are subordinated to this theory, just as in the 1990s so many petty-bourgeois socialist groups subordinated their principles and programs to "bad periodism" -- the belief that we were in a "bad period" of history, and that we had to abandon our principles and "regroup or die".

The "dirty world" theory, just like the "bad periodism" of a generation before, reminds me of a letter Engels wrote to Joseph Weydemeyer in April 1853, talking about what a communist party might face.

I fully agree with all of the above.

Having established the difference between proletarian and bourgeois/petty-bourgeois organizations, we can now return to The Boss' first criticism: "Miles is still off the mark in his assessment that it's somehow possible to have a party that is both 'the tempered edge that the vanguard uses as its strongest weapon' and also merely 'an instrument in the hands of the proletariat, not the other way around'."

As I've explained above, the concept of a party is different for different classes -- as are other abstractions, like democracy or freedom. A communist party (party-faction) is an instrument of the working class. It emerges within our class; it does not come from the outside. As such, it has a dependent character within and among the proletariat itself. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the communist party rises and falls with the working class, and can only become a party with mass influence at a time when the proletariat's organized participation in the class struggle is high. Under conditions such as we face today, the party will inevitably be small, almost seeming to be indistinguishable from the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialist sects. However, the fact that a proletarian communist party places itself at the service of the working class gives it a fundamentally different character. It is not party first and class second, but the other way around.

Agree, tentatively. I’m not sure whether this can be translated into practice. If the object of the communist party is to educate and propagate amongst the class, then ergo the communist party members hold a greater degree of sophistication in their understanding of Socialist politics and all it engenders, than those in the wider class, whose politics comes from the tongue of the communist party (in terms of education, propaganda, agitation). The problem with the argument that the communist party is to subjugate itself to the class, is that the power relationships between the party and the class are not so: the party is that of the organised, the professional, the bureaucrat, the knowledgeable and the already committed Socialist. It holds all the aces. The only grounds for saying that “a proletarian communist party places itself at the service of the working class” is reliance upon a somewhat moralistic (though not totally redundant) belief in the altruism of the communist party in relation to the wider working class. Even accounting for a communist party which is workers only and has a workers’ only membership/voting/committee policy that is properly enforced, this can still be so. Think of it this way: even a genuinely proletarian communist party’s members’ interests could very easily divorce themselves from the political and economic interests of the wider working class, should that party have the ability to place itself as the vanguard of the working class, of the revolution, and seize state power.Your point is very solid in theory, and I am sympathetic to the eloquent way you’ve put it across, but given the 20th Century, I’m inclined to be a cynic. To me, a political party will, at the appropriate juncture, always manifest itself as a political party first and a class-interest group second.

The concrete meaning of this is seen in the answer to this comment by The Boss: "How are we to really make it possible that our strongest weapon, which is our face in the media, in the formal political spheres and which is (presumably) responsible for agitation, propaganda and organization, is somehow kept under our control?"

First of all, "our face in the media" is not our "strongest weapon". In fact, given the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois monopoly of the media, our "face" is actually one of our weakest weapons. No, the strongest weapon in the proletariat's arsenal is our ability to mount an organized challenge to the ruling classes' power. This is why a communist party is not an "activist party", but an organizing party. "Activists" want to get their faces in the media because they see themselves as politicians in waiting. More to the point, they see themselves as better managers of capitalism than the capitalists themselves. Communists are organizers, not activists. We work to organize our brothers and sisters, and to arm them with the tools necessary to liberate themselves. Ninety-nine percent of this work is un-glamorous and conducted away from the media. It's done in workplaces and neighborhoods; it's one-on-one or in small groups; it's casual conversations, informal meetings and semi-formal get-togethers. Most of all, it is winning the trust and confidence of our brother and sister workers -- of proving ourselves to them. You can't do this in front of a camera. At best, you can only make yourself not look like an ass.

Viewed from this perspective, the question of control over activity and organizing becomes clearer. The more successful the organizing, the more control rests in the hands of the working class itself, and the more that the work of local detachments of the party-faction is subordinated to that of the party-movement. Just as national class struggles are subordinated to the international class struggle, so the local work of a communist party-faction is increasingly subordinated to that of the proletarian party-movement.

This gets us to the rub, as stated by The Boss: "What I still get is a certain lack of originality,... in that, even faced with masses of historical evidence that party-ism -- especially the decist parties that come to power during and post revolution -- evidently reverses the power relationship between the class and the party at the point when the party takes state power on behalf of the working class."

(First things first. I am figuring that "decist" is a shorthand for "democratic centralist". If I am wrong, please correct me.)

I can certainly understand where The Boss is coming from. And if we are talking solely about the various and sundry bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialist parties that exist, I am with him 100 percent. I've seen their future and it doesn't work, to turn a phrase.

The liberation of the proletariat must be the work of the proletariat itself. It is not the work of a cross-class organization -- of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialists -- coming from outside of, and acting "on behalf of", the working class. The proletarian party-movement is, as I said above, "the mass, organized movement of the armed working class", a unification of the various factions and fractions of the working class in struggle, not an institution and not something designed to fit into the political system of the ruling classes.

I think we can, more or less, agree that, even with my criticisms above of even a genuinely proletarian communist party, a cross-class communist party present a vision of the future that is ultimately not in my – nor any workers’ – interests, not to put too fine a point on it.

Within that party-movement is the communist party-faction (or multiple communist party-factions), which not only fulfills its political tasks as outlined in the Communist Manifesto ("In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality; in the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole."), but also, in relation to the proletarian party-movement itself, is, "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."

That relationship between faction and movement, between party and class, as Marx and Engels describe it, is and can only be one of the former acting at the behest of the latter.

This is, of course, the converse of what we see from the "decist" (bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialist) parties, which are designed to be institutional entities and separated from the working class. Their role is to manage the working class and to use "organized distrust" (the very core of democratic centralism) to keep proletarians, both inside and outside of the institutional parties, disorganized and unable to liberate themselves. The issue is not so much that these parties will "reverse the power relationship between the class and the party at the point when the party takes state power on behalf of the working class", but that these parties will preserve the power relationship between exploiter and exploited at the point when the party takes state power.

The bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialists have usurped the forms by which the proletariat fights for power in order to cut our class off from its own liberation -- an act that, in its own way, confirms the validity of these forms of struggle. In the process, they have made it so that many worker-communists, who instinctively reject the institutional parties of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialists, also end up rejecting anything that resembles how these elements assumed power. But we must be able to discern between form and content, between the tactics used by the proletariat and those used by those who seek to manage the proletariat.

Fair.

It is ultimately in the question of class that we find the answers and the lines of demarcation.

I'll leave it here for now, since I've already said enough for comrades to consider.[/QUOTE]

I have a couple of questions of my own:

1) At the start of your post, you distinguish between a ‘communist party’ and a ‘proletarian party’, yet you seem to either use communist party interchangeably through the rest of your post, or use the phrase ‘proletarian communist party’, whose meaning is quite clear. For clarity’s sake, when you say ‘communist party’, and when you say ‘proletarian party’, what forms exactly are you referring to?

2) If the object of the communist party is to educate, agitate and organise within the party-movement, then why do we need the party? Surely, the ‘party’ form only arose when Capitalism began to industrialise and mature. It seems as though, throughout history, where the party is concerned ‘form’ and ‘content’ have never been separated. There has not been one political party that has not, at some point, turned into a top-down, aloof organisation whose content [aims] tend to move towards its form [political party], whereby its focus is on retaining power, because that is what parties do. Why do we need this form, if clearly we want its content to not be the gaining of power (because we want that to be the work of the working class, from whom leadership will rise organically, in what form we do not know, but we are agreed that it will not be the vanguard party form), but of propaganda and agitation, then why can we not have an alternative form? A ‘group-movement’? Workers’ councils?

Vladimir Innit Lenin

18th July 2012, 19:11

Sorry that post is so long. The formatting killed me :ohmy:

Martin Blank

18th July 2012, 21:16

Comrade, don't you mean their institutionalism, working through their institutions, etc.? Like you said at the end, many workers who reject mainstream institutions are led mistakenly to reject the basics of institutions altogether (which I, of course, think is crucial to political class formation).

It is one thing to have organizations and structure; only the most foolish of fools would suggest that workers have absolutely no organizations or structure. But institutions are a creature of the ruling classes. Institutions, from their physical facades to their raisons d'être, are meant to project power over the masses; they are meant to create and instill a sense of authority over the population, much as a powerful military or police force does. Most importantly, though, institutions are designed to be looked upon as eternal and omnipresent, as above society and not a part of it. We can see this in everything from the architecture of institutional buildings to the application of heraldry to its symbolism. Each outward component of an institution is meant to convey a millennial existence -- something that is bigger than you puny humans and your grievances.

Is there such a thing as proletarian institutionalism? Generally speaking, no. Let us not forget that the entire point of the proletarian revolution and the workers' republic is to abolish all classes, including that of the proletariat. The millennial character of institutionalism is anathema to a revolutionary proletariat, in or out of power.

The institutionalism of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie is replaced with something that, for lack of a better term, can be called constitutionalism. That is, with power and authority resting in the hands of the armed working class, the independent, eternal existence of institution is replaced with the dependent, evolutionary (and revolutionary) existence of society itself. Entities and organizations meant for the administration and development of communist society, even in the earliest phases of the transition between the capitalist and communist modes of production, gain their authority and power from their existence as outgrowths and appendages of the armed society. There is no need for a millennial edifice, either in the symbolic or literal sense. The constitution of the proletariat as the organized society, and the society as one emerging from the epilogue of history, is more than enough to convey the message.

To put in more direct and simpler terms, the proletarian organs of struggle and power -- the workplace committee, the workers' council, the revolutionary industrial union, the communist party-faction, the proletarian party-movement, etc. -- are not institutions because the extent of their existence is finite. These crude bodies, which are little more than communist society in fetal form, will themselves evolve into different forms and become imbued with different content, or wither and die due to their obsolescence, as we move closer to the advent of the opening stage of communism.

I personally prefer expropriating ruling-class political power in policymaking, legislation, execution-administration, and other areas.

The problem I have with this formulation is akin to that raised by Q over the "conquest" formulation. This phrasing makes it sound like the workers' republic could be established through parliamentarism -- through the capture of the existing political system and state.

Comrade, in hindsight Bernstein was actually the least of the problems facing the SPD. The SPD did maintain this policy in relation to, say, the German peasantry (i.e., Kautsky prevailed over von Vollmar and even Bebel). Bernstein's pacifist tendency was distinct from the tred-iunionisty who became pro-war.

But, since The Boss was referring to the official Communist parties from the Comintern onwards, that's a different topic.

Right. It was meant to be about the sections of the CI. Within that context, the only such body that I know of that did employ a precursor to proletarian separatism was the Workers' Group of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) -- the Myasnikov organization, later called the Communist Workers Party.

Martin Blank

18th July 2012, 22:12

I seem to think we're finding some solid agreement, so I think it's best to concentrate on the few areas where clarification is required.

As I think Q stated earlier, ‘conquest of state power by the proletariat’ is indeed a somewhat unfortunate phrase. However, how you view this of course depends on your view of the nature of revolution, which itself is dependent on your view of the party. If you are generally anti-party (and pro-council), then you may view the literal conquest of the power of the bourgeois state by the proletariat directly as useful, in that its immediate task would be to destroy the state. What better way to do this than to democratically conquer the state? I imagine this is something that the SPGB would support. However, this leads to problems of its own, mainly electoralism or, as with the SPGB, confusion over their position re: parliament and how revolution is actually induced.

Electoralism should never be a weapon in the arsenal of the working class. I am a firm believer in De Leon's warning in As to Politics:

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

What De Leon saw as a likelihood at the turn of the 20th century is the bare-naked reality today. Lending any credence to this system by placing confidence in electoralism is a tell-tale sign of an organization seeking to be better managers of capitalism.

I’m not sure whether this can be translated into practice. If the object of the communist party is to educate and propagate amongst the class, then ergo the communist party members hold a greater degree of sophistication in their understanding of Socialist politics and all it engenders, than those in the wider class, whose politics comes from the tongue of the communist party (in terms of education, propaganda, agitation). The problem with the argument that the communist party is to subjugate itself to the class, is that the power relationships between the party and the class are not so: the party is that of the organized, the professional, the bureaucrat, the knowledgeable and the already committed Socialist. It holds all the aces. The only grounds for saying that “a proletarian communist party places itself at the service of the working class” is reliance upon a somewhat moralistic (though not totally redundant) belief in the altruism of the communist party in relation to the wider working class. Even accounting for a communist party which is workers only and has a workers’ only membership/voting/committee policy that is properly enforced, this can still be so. Think of it this way: even a genuinely proletarian communist party’s members’ interests could very easily divorce themselves from the political and economic interests of the wider working class, should that party have the ability to place itself as the vanguard of the working class, of the revolution, and seize state power.Your point is very solid in theory, and I am sympathetic to the eloquent way you’ve put it across, but given the 20th Century, I’m inclined to be a cynic. To me, a political party will, at the appropriate juncture, always manifest itself as a political party first and a class-interest group second.

Given what I wrote, I can fully understand the criticism. There are some things that I take for granted when it comes to the relationship between party and class, and that is that there will be class-conscious and communist-conscious workers who will NOT belong to any party-faction. In my view, these comrades are essential and, in addition, will play a more important role in some areas than a communist party-faction would. I see such independent worker-communists involved in the proletarian party-movement as our "check and balance". They are the comrades who keep us honest, keep us from becoming separate from the class, keep us from losing sight of the reason we're fighting.

Moreover, these comrades hold an important political role. To use a bourgeois political term, they will be the "kingmakers" in a revolutionary proletarian movement, in the sense that they will be independent of the party-factions. They will be able to take a step back and make an independent assessment of the various proposals that the party-factions put forward, and convey their independent views to our fellow workers. These comrades will be the ones who will likely be the first to call "bullshit" in political arguments. They will also be able to call out the party-factions when they fuck up, act outside of the interests and demands of the class, etc.

We need such independent voices, now and in the future. Any self-described socialist or communist organization that says otherwise should be viewed with suspicion.

I have a couple of questions of my own:

1) At the start of your post, you distinguish between a ‘communist party’ and a ‘proletarian party’, yet you seem to either use communist party interchangeably through the rest of your post, or use the phrase ‘proletarian communist party’, whose meaning is quite clear. For clarity’s sake, when you say ‘communist party’, and when you say ‘proletarian party’, what forms exactly are you referring to?

"Communist party" and "proletarian communist party" are the party-faction; "proletarian party" is the party-movement. I guess it's my journalism training, which drilled into me that I should not use words repetitively unless it is for a literary effect, that caused the confusion. Sorry about that.

2) If the object of the communist party is to educate, agitate and organize within the party-movement, then why do we need the party? Surely, the ‘party’ form only arose when Capitalism began to industrialize and mature. It seems as though, throughout history, where the party is concerned ‘form’ and ‘content’ have never been separated. There has not been one political party that has not, at some point, turned into a top-down, aloof organization whose content [aims] tend to move towards its form [political party], whereby its focus is on retaining power, because that is what parties do. Why do we need this form, if clearly we want its content to not be the gaining of power (because we want that to be the work of the working class, from whom leadership will rise organically, in what form we do not know, but we are agreed that it will not be the vanguard party form), but of propaganda and agitation, then why can we not have an alternative form? A ‘group-movement’? Workers’ councils?

Admittedly, this has been something we've went 'round and 'round with at various times. Even when we formed the WPA at the end of 2008, there had been a debate about whether we call ourselves "Workers Party in America" or "Working People's Alliance". In fact, "Workers Party in America" won out by a very narrow plurality, with "Working People's Alliance" being a close second (and the choice made on much of the same basis you're arguing above). Personally, I gave up on terminology fetishism a long time ago, and I really don't care if we call ourselves an alliance or a party or a league or whatever (just as long as the initials remain the same :cool: ).

In the final analysis, the WPA is an experiment. There is so much about us that is different (proletarian separatism, the party-faction and party-movement, revolutionary industrial unionism, the organizing party, use of new media, etc.) that we can only see ourselves this way. And perhaps there is a touch of faith among us, insofar as we genuinely believe that we have moved the goalposts, so to speak, and are not like those who have come before us. I can accept that criticism, as well as the charge that I am far too optimistic than I should be. But I see us as ... well, different. And it will be the cruel hand of history that tells us whether we are different enough and different in the right way.

Sorry that post is so long. The formatting killed me :ohmy:

No need to apologize. It was a great contribution.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

18th July 2012, 22:44

I realised as I wrote my post that I wasn't really subscribing to such electoralism. You're right on that one. Can probably put that disagreement away in the closet of pedantry anyway, it means little in reality, a little dispute over the wording of the three pillars you quoted.

In terms of the relationship between intra-party workers and extra-party workers, I would repeat my criticism that you are relying too heavily on an idealistic, somewhat faith-based idea that, even with the carrot of power dangled in front of them, the party comrades will remain steadfastly committed to exactly the same aims as the rest of the working class, and their interests will not diverge from that of the wider working class. To your credit, you do provide some context to how you arrived at your idea, re: the formation of the WPA, so I can't really criticise you there, just wish you all the best!

We obviously have slightly different formulations regarding the party and the movement. I do wish you the best of luck with the WPA experiment, and commend your openness and transparency and intellectual honesty, but I would probably caution that, theoretically and as borne out in praxis many, many times, a political party is not to be trusted! :)

Die Neue Zeit

19th July 2012, 02:39

It is one thing to have organizations and structure; only the most foolish of fools would suggest that workers have absolutely no organizations or structure. But institutions are a creature of the ruling classes. Institutions, from their physical facades to their raisons d'être, are meant to project power over the masses; they are meant to create and instill a sense of authority over the population, much as a powerful military or police force does. Most importantly, though, institutions are designed to be looked upon as eternal and omnipresent, as above society and not a part of it. We can see this in everything from the architecture of institutional buildings to the application of heraldry to its symbolism. Each outward component of an institution is meant to convey a millennial existence -- something that is bigger than you puny humans and your grievances.

If that's the case, comrade, surely there's got to be a word that conveys what I mean by "institutions," going beyond the overly broad "organization," but addressing your concerns as well.

On the subject of "authority," I guess it depends on the "institution." I'm quite sure that a sense of authoritativeness exhibited by the class movement over the class as a whole isn't a bad thing. German workers felt pride in the SPD's "institutions," and regarded them as authoritative, but I'm sure the latter didn't have much, say, architecture.

Is there such a thing as proletarian institutionalism? Generally speaking, no. Let us not forget that the entire point of the proletarian revolution and the workers' republic is to abolish all classes, including that of the proletariat. The millennial character of institutionalism is anathema to a revolutionary proletariat, in or out of power.

If we stretch the word "institution" to mean something eternal, then absolutely there's no such thing.

The institutionalism of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie is replaced with something that, for lack of a better term, can be called constitutionalism. That is, with power and authority resting in the hands of the armed working class, the independent, eternal existence of institution is replaced with the dependent, evolutionary (and revolutionary) existence of society itself.

I'm caught by surprise here, to be honest. Comrade Macnair, with his legal knowledge, has railed quite a lot against constitutionalism ("rule of law constitutionalism").

Entities and organizations meant for the administration and development of communist society, even in the earliest phases of the transition between the capitalist and communist modes of production, gain their authority and power from their existence as outgrowths and appendages of the armed society. There is no need for a millennial edifice, either in the symbolic or literal sense. The constitution of the proletariat as the organized society, and the society as one emerging from the epilogue of history, is more than enough to convey the message.

Agreed.

To put in more direct and simpler terms, the proletarian organs of struggle and power -- the workplace committee, the workers' council, the revolutionary industrial union, the communist party-faction, the proletarian party-movement, etc. -- are not institutions because the extent of their existence is finite. These crude bodies, which are little more than communist society in fetal form, will themselves evolve into different forms and become imbued with different content, or wither and die due to their obsolescence, as we move closer to the advent of the opening stage of communism.

I'm sure you already know that the reason why I use(d) the word "institution" is to emphasize the necessity before actual revolutionary periods for the working class. I'm still skeptical of the word "organization."

The problem I have with this formulation is akin to that raised by Q over the "conquest" formulation. This phrasing makes it sound like the workers' republic could be established through parliamentarism -- through the capture of the existing political system and state.

I beg your pardon? :confused:

If it's my terminology you're referring to, "expropriating" is quite a militant term. It doesn't involve one side merely handing something over to the other. Moreover, I did say "ruling-class political power" over Marx's crude "political power" because it is more specific in terms of levels and pervasiveness.

Given what I wrote, I can fully understand the criticism. There are some things that I take for granted when it comes to the relationship between party and class, and that is that there will be class-conscious and communist-conscious workers who will NOT belong to any party-faction. In my view, these comrades are essential and, in addition, will play a more important role in some areas than a communist party-faction would. I see such independent worker-communists involved in the proletarian party-movement as our "check and balance". They are the comrades who keep us honest, keep us from becoming separate from the class, keep us from losing sight of the reason we're fighting.

I don't know about the potential for such freelancing. My own stance on party-movement vs. class is clear enough: the former already is the class for itself.

When I wrote my paper on redefining membership re. party-movement citizenship, there are definitely worker "brains" not delving deep into activism, but contribution to political development and regular economic support are still crucial. The honesty is best served by exercising voting power in party meetings.

[Note to Boss: I'm not being hypocritical about this at all. Party-movements cannot afford to have regular folks like me on the outside looking in.]

We need such independent voices, now and in the future. Any self-described socialist or communist organization that says otherwise should be viewed with suspicion.

Why? There's a difference between a "party line," on the one hand, and united programmatic defense and general party action on the other.

Martin Blank

19th July 2012, 02:42

I realized as I wrote my post that I wasn't really subscribing to such electoralism. You're right on that one. Can probably put that disagreement away in the closet of pedantry anyway, it means little in reality, a little dispute over the wording of the three pillars you quoted.

Fair enough.

In terms of the relationship between intra-party workers and extra-party workers, I would repeat my criticism that you are relying too heavily on an idealistic, somewhat faith-based idea that, even with the carrot of power dangled in front of them, the party comrades will remain steadfastly committed to exactly the same aims as the rest of the working class, and their interests will not diverge from that of the wider working class. To your credit, you do provide some context to how you arrived at your idea, re: the formation of the WPA, so I can't really criticize you there, just wish you all the best!

I think it's less "faith-based" and more knowing our members. We've actually talked about what we want to do after the revolution, and the consensus seems to be "retire". None of us want to be "in charge"; we just want to see it happen before we die. Admittedly, that can be more dangerous than having faith, since it obviously skews one's perception. All I can say is that we all endeavor to pass on our shared views and perspectives to all future members and supporters of the Party, including the view that it is not our job to be "in power".

Our "leadership principle" is simple: the role of Party leadership is to train its replacements, not hold on to positions until they can no longer do so. I suppose that also affects our views on "leadership", too.

We obviously have slightly different formulations regarding the party and the movement. I do wish you the best of luck with the WPA experiment, and commend your openness and transparency and intellectual honesty, but I would probably caution that, theoretically and as borne out in praxis many, many times, a political party is not to be trusted! :)

Well, as long as there are comrades out there like you, who will call us to account when we fuck up, I think we'll do OK. :thumbup:

Comrade Jandar

19th July 2012, 03:05

Since we're speaking of parties and revolutionary organizations I thought I would ask what everyone's opinion is on "professional revolutionaries."

Die Neue Zeit

19th July 2012, 03:08

Since we're speaking of parties and revolutionary organizations I thought I would ask what everyone's opinion is on "professional revolutionaries."

I don't like that term. However, full-timers, revolutionary careerists (conveying conviction, support, solidarity, and self-interest all in one), etc. are indispensable.

Martin Blank

19th July 2012, 03:12

If that's the case, comrade, surely there's got to be a word that conveys what I mean by "institutions," going beyond the overly broad "organization," but addressing your concerns as well.

Well, you're the king of neologisms on RevLeft. I leave it in your capable hands. :)

On the subject of "authority," I guess it depends on the "institution." I'm quite sure that a sense of authoritativeness exhibited by the class movement over the class as a whole isn't a bad. German workers felt pride in the SPD's "institutions," and regarded them as authoritative, but I'm sure the latter didn't have much, say, architecture.

In terms of the relations between party-movement and class, empowerment plays a key role. All the authoritativeness that a party-movement can muster cannot substitute for the empowerment of the proletariat to act in its own common interests. I have no reason to dispute how German workers saw the SPD's institutions (its labor unions, its institutes, newspapers, journals, politicians, etc.), but it seems to me that this was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, such authoritativeness can marshal the working class quickly for a battle against the ruling classes; on the other hand, that level of authority can drain the working class of its ability to act on its own behalf. Put another way, the institutions and authority of the SPD may have been able to mobilize millions of German workers, but they were mobilized as semi-conscious (or unconscious) followers, not as conscious, self-acting and critically-thinking leaders in their fight for self-liberation.

If we stretch the word "institution" to mean something eternal, then absolutely there's no such thing.

It's not so much that institutions in and of themselves are eternal, but that they project themselves before the masses as eternal, millennial entities.

I'm caught by surprise here, to be honest. Comrade Macnair, with his legal knowledge, has railed quite a lot against constitutionalism ("rule of law constitutionalism").

You misunderstand me. I'm not referring to rule-of-law constitutionalism by any stretch. In fact, what I meant was what you stated agreement with in your post:

Entities and organizations meant for the administration and development of communist society, even in the earliest phases of the transition between the capitalist and communist modes of production, gain their authority and power from their existence as outgrowths and appendages of the armed society. There is no need for a millennial edifice, either in the symbolic or literal sense. The constitution of the proletariat as the organized society, and the society as one emerging from the epilogue of history, is more than enough to convey the message.

I'm sure you already know that the reason why I use(d) the word "institution" is to emphasize the necessity before actual revolutionary periods for the working class. I'm still skeptical of the word "organization."

Yes, I know. And you're right to emphasize that these organs of struggle and rule will not simply appear fully formed like Minerva from the head of Jupiter. There will need to be preparatory work done. The real question, though, is how this is to be done.

I beg your pardon? :confused:

If it's my terminology you're referring to, "expropriating" is quite a militant term. It doesn't involve one side merely handing something over to the other. Moreover, I did say "ruling-class political power" over Marx's crude "political power" because it is more specific in terms of levels and pervasiveness.

I understand your argument, and I can accept for as far as it goes. What concerned me was what followed "ruling-class political power": "policymaking, legislation, execution-administration, and other areas". I suppose that the state is implied in here somewhere, but I am of the firm opinion that the communist principle of destroying the state must be up-front and clear at all times. Take it as you will.

Die Neue Zeit

19th July 2012, 03:30

Well, you're the king of neologisms on RevLeft. I leave it in your capable hands. :)

I'll see what I can muster! :D

In terms of the relations between party-movement and class, empowerment plays a key role. All the authoritativeness that a party-movement can muster cannot substitute for the empowerment of the proletariat to act in its own common interests. I have no reason to dispute how German workers saw the SPD's institutions (its labor unions, its institutes, newspapers, journals, politicians, etc.), but it seems to me that this was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, such authoritativeness can marshal the working class quickly for a battle against the ruling classes; on the other hand, that level of authority can drain the working class of its ability to act on its own behalf. Put another way, the institutions and authority of the SPD may have been able to mobilize millions of German workers, but they were mobilized as semi-conscious (or unconscious) followers, not as conscious, self-acting and critically-thinking leaders in their fight for self-liberation.

As more comradely leaning posters pointed out, the problem with SPD membership was relative passivity inside the party-movement. By that, I include programmatic development as well as the more typical activism. I'm not as concerned about the passivity outside, simply because the class for itself (the party-movement) is not the class in itself ("as a whole"). If the chips are down right, the authoritativeness should attract those on the outside to join. However, the authoritativeness should not be seen by voting members as some sort of free ride. Example: I wear this organizational badge with pride, but in order to get the right results and continue to feel proud I must chip in.

There might be a double-edged sword, but I think it's relative to the membership and not the class as a whole.

You misunderstand me. I'm not referring to rule-of-law constitutionalism by any stretch. In fact, what I meant was what you stated agreement with in your post

Of course, but just imagine you and Macnair butting heads.

You: Constitutionalism! No institutions!
Macnair: Institutions! No constitutionalism!

:D

I understand your argument, and I can accept for as far as it goes. What concerned me was what followed "ruling-class political power": "policymaking, legislation, execution-administration, and other areas". I suppose that the state is implied in here somewhere, but I am of the firm opinion that the communist principle of destroying the state must be up-front and clear at all times. Take it as you will.

Got it. Amongst the four, I actually emphasize policymaking, because typically that is done outside the confines of "state affairs." This is all the stuff about paradigm shifts, Overton windows (http://www.revleft.com/vb/political-science-overton-t169605/index.html), etc.

Martin Blank

19th July 2012, 03:34

Since we're speaking of parties and revolutionary organizations I thought I would ask what everyone's opinion is on "professional revolutionaries."

I think it's horribly misunderstood. Most self-described Leninists I know see the "professional revolutionary" as someone whose daily activity is conducting party work -- full-time organizers and party officers, journalists, etc. In fact, this is not what Lenin meant when he wrote What Is To Be Done?. Lenin saw the "professional revolutionary" as counterposed to the amateurism that was prevalent in the Russian Social-Democratic and broader workers' movements. In the context of turn-of-the-20th-century Russia, being a professional revolutionary meant first and foremost being able to conduct political activity without being caught by the police.

A professional revolutionary is someone professionally trained to conduct revolutionary education, agitation and organization. They would understand and be able to articulate communist principles and positions clearly, whether through conversation or through writing. They would know how to recruit and develop workers into being professionally-trained revolutionaries themselves. Most importantly, they would be able to assess the current material conditions and develop appropriate tactics for maximizing the use of these skills.

Die Neue Zeit

19th July 2012, 03:50

I think it's horribly misunderstood. Most self-described Leninists I know see the "professional revolutionary" as someone whose daily activity is conducting party work -- full-time organizers and party officers, journalists, etc. In fact, this is not what Lenin meant when he wrote What Is To Be Done?. Lenin saw the "professional revolutionary" as counterposed to the amateurism that was prevalent in the Russian Social-Democratic and broader workers' movements. In the context of turn-of-the-20th-century Russia, being a professional revolutionary meant first and foremost being able to conduct political activity without being caught by the police.

A professional revolutionary is someone professionally trained to conduct revolutionary education, agitation and organization. They would understand and be able to articulate communist principles and positions clearly, whether through conversation or through writing. They would know how to recruit and develop workers into being professionally-trained revolutionaries themselves. Most importantly, they would be able to assess the current material conditions and develop appropriate tactics for maximizing the use of these skills.

Does revolutionary professionalism sound better? ;)

Geiseric

19th July 2012, 05:17

The party question to me is simple enough, an independent party made up of revolutionary proletarians of all nationalities, and its delegates are instantly recallable. obviously full transparency, and democratic centralism in policy making. But as we saw with occupy, which was started, stolen from, and eventually ruined by petit bourgeois post modernists, we need a workers party, not an affinity group run by a clique of intellectuals.

Comrade Jandar

19th July 2012, 05:38

not an affinity group run by a clique of intellectuals.
Well any revolutionary leftist party, at least initially, will be made up by intellectuals. What do you think the leaders of the Bolsheviks were? I'm not saying that is necessarily a bad thing though.

Geiseric

19th July 2012, 06:00

Not necessarily. there is such a thing as "intellectual workers," you know :p . The bolsheviks were made up of em, like Kamanev, Sverdlov, Zinoviev. The "revolutionary worker," is what lenin means by professional revolutionary, not a petit bourgeois, condescending, sitting on a pedestal because he read a book by Engels and has an economics degree college college student who has free time. A pro revolutionary has NO social life nor any private property, his life purpose is the revolution. The bureaucracy that formed was disconnected from the original vanguard of revolutionary workers who were responsible for the revolution in Russia, so it's imperitive that the group in power IS the working class through it's delegates to the workers congress.

Die Neue Zeit

19th July 2012, 14:05

Not necessarily. there is such a thing as "intellectual workers," you know :p . The bolsheviks were made up of em, like Kamanev, Sverdlov, Zinoviev.

I don't think they had a working-class background. :confused:

I would count Yan Rudzutak, Sergei Kirov, Stanislav Kosior, etc. among the more intellectual Bolshevik workers.

Geiseric

19th July 2012, 15:58

Kamanev and Sverdlov definately had working class backgrounds. kamanev was a pharmacists assistant, and I vaguely remember Sverdlov working in a factory type situation. Zinoviev was born on a farm and didn't go to college I think. But that's not my point, the overwhelming majority of bolshevik leaders were working class and in the future it needs to stay that way. However what they did wrong was recruit only Russians, which bit them in the arse.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

19th July 2012, 16:47

What does it matter about the individuals? The party didn't have a workers' only policy.

Even the Labour and Conservative parties here in the UK have some people who originated from the working class. So what?

It's the class-form of the organisation that makes up its class-content, not whether a few leading members were workers or not.

Geiseric

19th July 2012, 17:16

Comrade Jandar

19th July 2012, 17:50

Doesn't Lenin say, or at least in reference to Kautsky, in What is to Be Done, that it is the bourgeois intelligentsia that brings socialism to the proletariat?

Vladimir Innit Lenin

19th July 2012, 19:28

Geiseric

19th July 2012, 19:46

oh my god, you're nit picking. the peasantry included were employed laborers to Kulaks, and the intelligencia weren't even petit bourgeois. They simply did work like writing articles and expounding revolutionary theory, but you won't ever find Lenin or Trotsky living very comfortably when they're doing work for say Iskra or Pravda. basically they have a college education, and know how to read, which was rare in russia, so they're technically the intelligencia of the party. However the militant rank and file is what makes the party what it is, and without the mass of workers the intelligencia is useless.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

19th July 2012, 19:53

I'm not nit picking.

What i'm saying is that a communist party must be a party of proletarian communists, not merely a party of communists. This means workers ONLY. That's not nit picking. If you read the discussion between me and Miles, you will see that the consequences are potentially many, if a communist party is not proletarian-only in character.

Tim Finnegan

19th July 2012, 20:04

[...]you won't ever find Lenin or Trotsky living very comfortably when they're doing work for say Iskra or Pravda.
What does that have to do with anything? http://forums.civfanatics.com/images/smilies/huh.gif

Geiseric

19th July 2012, 20:27

Tim Finnegan

19th July 2012, 20:33

(Took my time to get to this, sorry.)

Indeed it is, the working class must successfully seize and hold state power through the dictatorship of the proletariat.

I honestly hate to appeal to Marx, as on this site he is quoted way to often (often leading to quote wars which I despise and which also presupposes his infallibility), but undoubtedly what he had in mind (regarding the dotp) was a centralized and highly effective state.
You can appeal to the Marx of 1848 as much as you like, because I can simply respond by appealing to the Marx of 1871, who had through the experience of the Paris Commune begun to realise the limits of his essentially Jacobin view of revolution presented in the Manifesto.

[T]he working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.

The proletariat revolution represents the absolute and final demolition of all apparatus of bourgeois government. Whether we describe the political organisation that opposes and replaces it a "state" is a matter for another discussion, suffice to say that it is not simply the same old structures with a red flag.

Indeed, but we can still learn valuable organizing methods from the past. That doesn't mean that much of what will be successful will be learned through praxis.I agree that learning from the past is important, but that seems to be entirely what proponents of the vanguard party ignore: that their model has never proven itself to be an authentically revolutionary force. In Russia, the party turned into a bourgeois dictatorship within four years, in the colonial and post-colonial world they have habitually collaborated with bourgeois forces in the name of "anti-imperialism", and in the struggles of the '60s and '70s, the candidates to this role ranged from peripheral to workers' struggle to actively reactionary. The only defences offered are abstract theory conducted without reference to the concrete composition of capital and of the working class, and of the struggles that result from it.

He meant that they were petit bourgeois intelligencia, which meant that they were like most leaders of the SPD on a "higher level" than the workers who were in the party. I'm saying that a working class intelligencia, not a petit bourgeois intelligencia was at the nucleus of the bolshevik party.
In what sense does being a bit hard up make one working class? Lenin and Trotsky were classic petty bourgeois intellectuals; that their politics left them in less than cushy digs doesn't make them proletarians any more than it made Marx or Goldman or bloody Hitler a proletaran.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

19th July 2012, 20:36

He meant that they were petit bourgeois intelligencia, which meant that they were like most leaders of the SPD on a "higher level" than the workers who were in the party. I'm saying that a working class intelligencia, not a petit bourgeois intelligencia was at the nucleus of the bolshevik party.

I didn't mean that. And whether I did is irrelevant.

My point was about the form of the party, namely it must be exclusively proletarian by design, not by mistake.

Lucretia

19th July 2012, 20:49

Tim Finnegan

19th July 2012, 20:56

Eh, fuck 'im. It's great if he's on our side, but, at the end of the day, this is about the self-emancipation of the working class, not giving left-wing bourgeois something to do.

Brosa Luxemburg

19th July 2012, 20:58

The proletariat revolution represents the absolute and final demolition of all apparatus of bourgeois government. Whether we describe the political organisation that opposes and replaces it a "state" is a matter for another discussion, suffice to say that it is not simply the same old structures with a red flag.

Nobody disagrees with this. Not saying it was wrong to bring up, just saying there really is no points for discussion.

I agree that learning from the past is important, but that seems to be entirely what proponents of the vanguard party ignore: that their model has never proven itself to be an authentically revolutionary force.In Russia, the party turned into a bourgeois dictatorship within four years

Again, as another user brought up, this has much more to do with material conditions than anything. Of course, I would put the complete degeneration of the revolution at a little past 4 years (middle to late 1920's and possibly the very early 1930's). The degeneration of the revolution had much to do with the various material conditions Russia faced and, of course, the decisions various individuals made within those material conditions. Yes, Stalin (and Lenin to some minimal extent I would say, even being a Leninist I can see this) is to blame for the degeneration of the revolution, but only within the material conditions present at the time.

in the colonial and post-colonial world they have habitually collaborated with bourgeois forces in the name of "anti-imperialism"

Yes, the popular frontism of the Stalinists is very flawed, but this isn't a indictment of the conception of a vanguard party but an indictment of the non-revolutionary and class collaborationism of the Stalinists.

and in the struggles of the '60s and '70s, the candidates to this role ranged from peripheral to workers' struggle to actively reactionary. The only defences offered are abstract theory conducted without reference to the concrete composition of capital and of the working class, and of the struggles that result from it.

Again, this is more of an indictment of certain flawed policies than an attack on the vanguard party.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

19th July 2012, 21:03

I am sure Engels would be very upset to find out he is barred from your "workers only" party.

I'm sure he wouldn't. Didn't he and Marx refuse to take up elected positions in the IWMA, precisely because Marx didn't see them as workers?

But yeah, shit point. Next.

Tim Finnegan

19th July 2012, 22:11

Nobody disagrees with this. Not saying it was wrong to bring up, just saying there really is no points for discussion.
You would think, wouldn't you? And yet Lenin's first action upon overturning the bourgeois Provisional Government was to establish a bourgeois cabinet and declare a bourgeois republic- "people's commissars" and "Soviet" as they may have been formally styled. And even now, with a century of hindsight to know that this was a really stupid thing to do, we are still instructed by those who fancy themselves his inheritors that this was a correct course of action, and, indeed, that it is the course of action we should aspire to replicate. With such confusion widespread as it is, discussion seems to me entirely valid.

Again, as another user brought up, this has much more to do with material conditions than anything. Of course, I would put the complete degeneration of the revolution at a little past 4 years (middle to late 1920's and possibly the very early 1930's). The degeneration of the revolution had much to do with the various material conditions Russia faced and, of course, the decisions various individuals made within those material conditions. Yes, Stalin (and Lenin to some minimal extent I would say, even being a Leninist I can see this) is to blame for the degeneration of the revolution, but only within the material conditions present at the time.Political organisation is a material condition. The political composition of the working class is a material condition. And the decomposition of the working class under the assault of a "socialist" dictatorship is a material condition. "Material conditions" are not something separate from and wholly prior to human activity, some mystic fate handed down by a cruel and fickle deity, they are something that human beings actively produce. Even those which exist beyond us- geography, say- are given meaning solely through our activity, exist as we experience them only as a result of our engagement with them, and so are in a very real sense a product of our activity. History is constituted by concrete human activity; that is as close to a one-clause definition of Marxism as you're going to get, and it's as true here as any other time.

Yes, these were not the only material conditions at play. Political isolation, economic turmoil, White terrorism, Stalin sneaking around stealing lollipops from children, the whole roster of classic explanations have their place in understanding the collapse of the Russian Revolution. But the Russian working class were not simply passive subjects of external events, the hapless victims of a fate not of their own making, they had proven themselves quite capable of making history for themselves. That was, in fact, the whole point. It is necessary that we understand this, understand what they were doing- or not doing- during this process of collapse, what happened to the revolutionary proletariat of 1917 that it would collapse in such a fashion as to cede political power so entirely to a bourgeois republic. The answer is that it Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership took it apart from the inside, co-opting that which it could into their bourgeois regime and suppressing that which it could not, just as the SPD did in Germany. The political organisation of the Russian working class, namely, the structural dependence on parties and party-dominated soviets meant that the political subject remained composed only as long as the interests of the party and the class converged, and when they diverged, the Bolshevik Party was not a glue holding a fracturing class together but was a fault-line along which the class cracked. By 1920, the struggle in Russia was not simply to defend the revolution but to reconstruct the working class subject that had splintered under the assault of both White and Bolshevik power, and that was a struggle which despite some valiant efforts did not succeed.

Yes, the popular frontism of the Stalinists is very flawed, but this isn't a indictment of the conception of a vanguard party but an indictment of the non-revolutionary and class collaborationism of the Stalinists.Hardly. Lenin was more than happy to collaborate with bourgeois anti-communists like Kemal or Chiang even as they butchered the working class militants of their countries. He supported the attempts of Polish, Ukranian, Estonia, etc. bourgeois nationalists to establish their own republics, opposing them only when it became politically opportune to do so. He was supportive of the Irish national bourgeoisie even before he assumed state power, praising Connolly's readiness to cross the class line for the sake of national liberation, and cheerfully support De Valera and crew as they brought the guns of "liberation" to bear on striking workers and land-raiding peasants. Class-collaboration pour la nation is in Bolshevim from the start, and their descendent, come they in Stalinist, Trotskyist, Maoist or wacky neo-Kautskyite guises, have upheld this tradition vigorously. If Bordiga and the other ultra-left Leninists managed to avoid that disease, it was through a want of Leninism, not an abundance of it.

Again, this is more of an indictment of certain flawed policies than an attack on the vanguard party.I'll grant you that it is possible to present a model of the vanguard party that does not fall prey to these criticisms. However, what I'm criticising is the Leninist model of the vanguard, the body of "professional revolutionaries" that we are told will inject class conciousness into the masses. This has never actually happened, and in all the instances where it could have happened, in which there existed the sort of would-be vanguards that the contemporary Bolshevik aspires towards, they ranged from ineffective to simply making things worse.

If you had a recipe that always ended up tasting awful, and on the few occasions you managed to choke it down made you ill, I would call that a bad recipe. Perhaps there are other recipes that produce a similar but superior food, I don't know. But I'm damn sure that if you ask me round for a slice of vomit-pie, I'll find my afternoon booked solid.

Brosa Luxemburg

20th July 2012, 00:44

You would think, wouldn't you? And yet Lenin's first action upon overturning the bourgeois Provisional Government was to establish a bourgeois cabinet and declare a bourgeois republic- "people's commissars" and "Soviet" as they may have been formally styled. And even now, with a century of hindsight to know that this was a really stupid thing to do, we are still instructed by those who fancy themselves his inheritors that this was a correct course of action, and, indeed, that it is the course of action we should aspire to replicate. With such confusion widespread as it is, discussion seems to me entirely valid.

No, Lenin did not declare a bourgeois republic, he declared a dictatorship of the proletariat. Actually, as E.H. Carr shows, the Bolsheviks were for a while espousing a slogan of "learn from the capitalists" but there is good reason for this. It wasn't that Lenin wanted to allow the capitalists to regain state power, but to utilize the knowledge of the capitalists in the interests of the proletariat dictatorship. This is different from the class collaborationist policies of Maoists, etc. that view the bourgeoisie working together with the proletariat, but rather subordinating the knowledge and skills of the capitalists to that of the proletariat. If you look at the history of the Bolsheviks at this time, the destruction of the economy and the lack of individuals with the skills to do certain tasks left them with no other option. Of course, if this can be avoided (as it sure would if a revolution were to break out in a industrialized and developed country such as the United States, Great Britain, etc.) then it would be.

Political organisation is a material condition. The political composition of the working class is a material condition. And the decomposition of the working class under the assault of a "socialist" dictatorship is a material condition. "Material conditions" are not something separate from and wholly prior to human activity, some mystic fate handed down by a cruel and fickle deity, they are something that human beings actively produce. Even those which exist beyond us- geography, say- are given meaning solely through our activity, exist as we experience them only as a result of our engagement with them, and so are in a very real sense a product of our activity. History is constituted by concrete human activity; that is as close to a one-clause definition of Marxism as you're going to get, and it's as true here as any other time.

I am not so sure that political organization is a material condition. Yes, humans have a direct influence on material conditions (who ordered the armies to invade Russia after the Bolsheviks came to power? Material conditions? No, individuals) but political organization comes about after the assessment of other conditions for sure. The assessment of, as you have stated, political and economic isolation, terrorism, recession and depression, etc. all effect the make-up of the political organization. Yes, the political organization might effect them as well, but only in minimal ways.

Yes, these were not the only material conditions at play. Political isolation, economic turmoil, White terrorism, Stalin sneaking around stealing lollipops from children

:laugh: hahaha

the whole roster of classic explanations have their place in understanding the collapse of the Russian Revolution. But the Russian working class were not simply passive subjects of external events, the hapless victims of a fate not of their own making, they had proven themselves quite capable of making history for themselves. That was, in fact, the whole point. It is necessary that we understand this, understand what they were doing- or not doing- during this process of collapse, what happened to the revolutionary proletariat of 1917 that it would collapse in such a fashion as to cede political power so entirely to a bourgeois republic.

I do not disagree.

The answer is that it Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership took it apart from the inside, co-opting that which it could into their bourgeois regime and suppressing that which it could not, just as the SPD did in Germany.

Okay, well I am going to sift through the kind-of condescending rhetoric here (I know it was probably not intentional, so whatever) but I am guessing here you are against the statization of things like the trade unions, etc. and the suppression of Kronstadt. Well, I don't want a shitstorm about Kronstadt to appear but yeah, Kronstadt was fucked up and I agree with you. As for the statization, what other options, really, did the Bolsheviks have when 14 countries invaded them, sabotage and white terror were rampant, they were in a horrific civil war, the economy was on the brink of utter collapse, etc.

The political organisation of the Russian working class, namely, the structural dependence on parties and party-dominated soviets meant that the political subject remained composed only as long as the interests of the party and the class converged, and when they diverged, the Bolshevik Party was not a glue holding a fracturing class together but was a fault-line along which the class cracked. By 1920, the struggle in Russia was not simply to defend the revolution but to reconstruct the working class subject that had splintered under the assault of both White and Bolshevik power, and that was a struggle which despite some valiant efforts did not succeed.

And why was there so much dominance from the center? It is very obvious. The civil war, the invasion, the economic collapse, etc. did nothing but speed up the process of centralization and the dominance of the center. I have no problem with centralization but I do think that during the years of war communism it was overly centralized. Of course, there were factors, already mentioned, that caused such centralization to occur.

Hardly. Lenin was more than happy to collaborate with bourgeois anti-communists like Kemal or Chiang even as they butchered the working class militants of their countries. He supported the attempts of Polish, Ukranian, Estonia, etc. bourgeois nationalists to establish their own republics, opposing them only when it became politically opportune to do so. He was supportive of the Irish national bourgeoisie even before he assumed state power, praising Connolly's readiness to cross the class line for the sake of national liberation, and cheerfully support De Valera and crew as they brought the guns of "liberation" to bear on striking workers and land-raiding peasants. Class-collaboration pour la nation is in Bolshevim from the start, and their descendent, come they in Stalinist, Trotskyist, Maoist or wacky neo-Kautskyite guises, have upheld this tradition vigorously. If Bordiga and the other ultra-left Leninists managed to avoid that disease, it was through a want of Leninism, not an abundance of it.

As I am not to well informed of the foreign policy of the Bolsheviks, I won't comment on this (I am actually about to read about the foreign policy) but I from the knowledge I do have I know some things listed above are incorrect.

I'll grant you that it is possible to present a model of the vanguard party that does not fall prey to these criticisms. However, what I'm criticising is the Leninist model of the vanguard, the body of "professional revolutionaries" that we are told will inject class conciousness into the masses.

This criticism of Leninism annoys the crap out of me. The user ComradeOm countered this the best.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2441107&postcount=47

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2441518&postcount=57

The vanguard party is not about "injecting" class consciousness into the proletariat (although if this happens I am not opposed to it). The vanguard party is used to organize the most class conscious proletariat together to overcome many of the immediatist and workerist tendencies in syndicalism, factory councils, etc. There is nothing wrong with revolutionary syndicalism, factory councils, etc. as they can prove to be very useful in elevating class consciousness, creating a revolutionary situation, etc. but they can also become very reactionary because they can include non-revolutionary, reformist, and reactionary workers. A restrictive, vanguard party will not fall prey to this.

This has never actually happened, and in all the instances where it could have happened, in which there existed the sort of would-be vanguards that the contemporary Bolshevik aspires towards, they ranged from ineffective to simply making things worse.

And I can say the same thing about decentralized and autonomous organizations as well. That isn't a good argument. Yes, we should look at the results of history but both forms of organization do not hold up well to history. I think, of course, this is due to various material conditions present mostly. Of course, the ways of organizing play a direct role in success and not falling into reformism, workerism, immediatism, or allowing the degeneration of the revolution.

Martin Blank

20th July 2012, 01:12

I just want to jump in quickly on this one, since this is a common argument made against proletarian separatism.

I am sure Engels would be very upset to find out he is barred from your "workers only" party.

Actually, after what he and Marx learned in the course of the Paris Commune, and later applied in the IWMA, Engels never accepted membership in any party, including the SAPD/SPD, and never backed away from the view he and Marx took in their 1879 Circular Letter to the SAPD leadership (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1879/letters/79_09_15.htm).

If people of this kind [the "philanthropic bourgeois and petty bourgeois" -- Miles] from other classes join the proletarian movement, the first condition is that they should not bring any remnants of bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, etc., prejudices with them but should whole-heartedly adopt the proletarian point of view*. But these gentlemen, as has been proved, are stuffed and crammed with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas. In such a petty-bourgeois country as Germany these ideas certainly have their own justification. But only outside the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party. If these gentlemen form themselves into a Social-Democratic Petty-Bourgeois Party they have a perfect right to do so; one could then negotiate with them, form a bloc according to circumstances, etc. But in a workers’ party they are an adulterating element. If reasons exist for tolerating them there for the moment, it is also a duty only to tolerate them, to allow them no influence in the Party leadership** and to remain aware that a break with them is only a matter of time. The time, moreover, seems to have come. How the Party can tolerate the authors of this article in its midst any longer is to us incomprehensible. But if the leadership of the Party should fall more or less into the hands of such people then the Party will simply be castrated and proletarian energy will be at an end.

As for ourselves, in view of our whole past there is only one path open to us. For almost forty years we have stressed the class struggle as the immediate driving force of history, and in particular the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as the great lever of the modern social revolution; it is therefore impossible for us to co-operate with people who wish to expunge this class struggle from the movement. When the International was formed we expressly formulated the battle-cry: the emancipation of the working class must be achieved by the working class itself. We cannot therefore co-operate with people who say that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must first be freed from above by philanthropic bourgeois and petty bourgeois. If the new Party organ adopts a line corresponding to the views of these gentlemen, and is bourgeois and not proletarian, then nothing remains for us, much though we should regret it, but publicly to declare our opposition to it and to dissolve the solidarity with which we have hitherto represented the German Party abroad. But it is to be hoped that things will not come to that. (Boldface mine)
In a materialist sense, how does one "whole-heartedly adopt the proletarian point of view"? Well, Marx repeatedly pointed out that social being determines consciousness. Moreover, how does a party not allow certain elements "no influence in the party leadership"? Considering that all members in good standing have a decisive vote in party matters, including influencing the party leadership, where does that leave us?

Lucretia

20th July 2012, 01:38

I'm sure he wouldn't. Didn't he and Marx refuse to take up elected positions in the IWMA, precisely because Marx didn't see them as workers?

But yeah, shit point. Next.

The point is not a shit point. It's a perfectly legitimate point: and that point is you are reducing people's consciousness and politics to their class standing, then using that reduction to bar them from membership -- effective participation -- in a political group.

But I don't know if even that rises to the level of ridiculousness of the "we don't need a communist party" position. Its absurdity -- especially if one points to M&E's decisions about whether to lead or join particular parties at specific junctures in their careers, which was often the result of their constant fleeing from country to country -- is really not even worth responding to. RE: M&E, and their relationship with parties, see Nimtz's Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough, Gilbert's Marx's Politics, and for a very lovely analysis that interlocks their political activity with their ideas on the revolutionary party, chapter 3 of Soma Marik's Reinterrogating the Classical Marxist Discourses of Revolutionary Democracy. At no point did they waver from the need for a revolutionary party of international scope; at no point did they reduce political consciousness to class position in discussing how membership for that party was to be limited; and at no point did they abandon the idea that communists as the most far-sighted of activists should maintain forms of organization distinct from the class as a whole.

Read their stuff and then get back to me for a discussion. I have no time to offer personalized remedial instruction.

Geiseric

20th July 2012, 03:42

Vladimir Innit Lenin

20th July 2012, 09:23

The point is not a shit point. It's a perfectly legitimate point: and that point is you are reducing people's consciousness and politics to their class standing, then using that reduction to bar them from membership -- effective participation -- in a political group.

But I don't know if even that rises to the level of ridiculousness of the "we don't need a communist party" position. Its absurdity -- especially if one points to M&E's decisions about whether to lead or join particular parties at specific junctures in their careers, which was often the result of their constant fleeing from country to country -- is really not even worth responding to. RE: M&E, and their relationship with parties, see Nimtz's Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough, Gilbert's Marx's Politics, and for a very lovely analysis that interlocks their political activity with their ideas on the revolutionary party, chapter 3 of Soma Marik's Reinterrogating the Classical Marxist Discourses of Revolutionary Democracy. At no point did they waver from the need for a revolutionary party of international scope; at no point did they reduce political consciousness to class position in discussing how membership for that party was to be limited; and at no point did they abandon the idea that communists as the most far-sighted of activists should maintain forms of organization distinct from the class as a whole.

Read their stuff and then get back to me for a discussion. I have no time to offer personalized remedial instruction.

How arrogant do you want to be? Remedial instruction? :lol:

Marx and Engels are not biblical figures. If they say 'we need a revolutionary party', I don't fully agree or disagree. I'm open to the idea of a revolutionary party. But they never said we need a vanguard party, merely they said we need a dictatorship of the proletariat. And if they hypothetically did say we need a vanguard party, i'd disagree with them. Socialism only continues because people come up with new ideas for new times, rather than sticking dogmatically to Marxist orthodoxy. You may want to remember that.

Oh and in any case, Marx and Engels, even in saying there was a need for a revolutionary party, still did not take up leadership positions, least of all Engels, because he was a member of the bourgeoisie. So your point is still moot.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

20th July 2012, 09:28

So basically according to Tim, the bolshevik party established themselves as the new capitalists owning Russia? I guess the workers were cool with that. So according to you, the entire russian revolution was pointless and millions of workers died for the "bolshevik capitalist planned economy where nobody owns anything." I guess the dekulakisation was so Stalin's bureaucracy could steal the countryside from other capitalists and create collective farms? and i guess when private property was abolished, it was just a show? Just like my english teacher taught us when we were reading animal farm! You're ignoring that Lenin had nothing to do with Chaing nor Kemal, that was Zinoviev's bag when he was in charge of comintern. Also there was practically no significant workers party in Turkey, the CP had only a few hundred members when Zinoviev decided to help them. I'm not defending it, i'm just laying the story straight. The buisness with KMT happened entirely under the triumvrate though, in the mid-late 1920s.

I don't think anyone is saying the Russian Revolution was pointless.

What I think - and he can correct me if i'm wrong - Tim was highlighting was that the Russian Revolution failed to live up to its initial potential (for forging Socialism) largely because of the form of the Bolshevik Party itself. Such a large country, such an ethnically/religiously/culturally diverse country, was in no way a good place to have power centralised and led by a tiny, tight-knit group of 'professional' revolutionaries. Yes, having taken power a lot of their actions were necessary for self-preservation, but at that point their [the Bolsheviks'] goal of self-preservation [of their state power] was clearly divergent to the interests of the wider working class. And that is the key point that some of us have been trying to hammer home this thread, and why we come to the conclusion that a vanguard party seizing state power on behalf of the class is a problematic route.

20th July 2012, 10:56

The point is not a shit point. It's a perfectly legitimate point: and that point is you are reducing people's consciousness and politics to their class standing, then using that reduction to bar them from membership -- effective participation -- in a political group.

But I don't know if even that rises to the level of ridiculousness of the "we don't need a communist party" position. Its absurdity -- especially if one points to M&E's decisions about whether to lead or join particular parties at specific junctures in their careers, which was often the result of their constant fleeing from country to country -- is really not even worth responding to. RE: M&E, and their relationship with parties, see Nimtz's Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough, Gilbert's Marx's Politics, and for a very lovely analysis that interlocks their political activity with their ideas on the revolutionary party, chapter 3 of Soma Marik's Reinterrogating the Classical Marxist Discourses of Revolutionary Democracy. At no point did they waver from the need for a revolutionary party of international scope; at no point did they reduce political consciousness to class position in discussing how membership for that party was to be limited; and at no point did they abandon the idea that communists as the most far-sighted of activists should maintain forms of organization distinct from the class as a whole.

Read their stuff and then get back to me for a discussion. I have no time to offer personalized remedial instruction.

Making this post right after Miles soundly demolished the point makes me wonder whether you're actually reading the thread?

Tim Finnegan

20th July 2012, 11:37

Die Neue Zeit

20th July 2012, 14:25

So whats your point? the vast majority of the bolshevik party were working class, i'd say about 70% of it, whereas 25% or so were peasant and a very small minority of ex bourgeois intelligencia. i was saying that the image of a group tightly controlled by petit bourgeois intellectuals (like Bakunin's anarchists, SDS, or most social democrat parties) was incorrect if applied to the Bolsheviks and will be incorrect if applied to the future workers party.

Yet petty-bourgeois elements did exist in the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, which itself represented the leadership of the working class.

A communist party is naturally going to attract more workers than not. I'd say that a communist party with 70% worker membership is not something to shout about.

As Miles has very convincingly expounded in this thread, what we need to do is separate ourselves from the shoddy democratic/participatory intra-party record of previous communist parties, by ensuring that future parties that play a role in the workers' movement are proletarian communist parties, not merely parties that attract 'a majority of workers'.

As mentioned before, the pre-WWI SPD didn't make the mistake of admitting peasants and other non-workers. It too upheld a workers-only voting membership policy such that Kautsky had to sell my namesake to the party.

And that is the key point that some of us have been trying to hammer home this thread, and why we come to the conclusion that a vanguard party seizing state power on behalf of the class is a problematic route.

Would you have problems with a mass class movement / class-for-itself seizing power on behalf of the broader class as a whole / class-in-itself?

Define "vanguard."

"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 fulfil its own world-historical mission, and second because the SPD developed an innovative panoply of methods for spreading enlightenment and 'combination.' The term 'vanguard party' was not used during this period (I do not believe the term can be found in Lenin's writings), but 'vanguard' was, and this is what people meant by it. Any other definition is historically misleading and confusing." (Lars Lih)

Brosa Luxemburg

20th July 2012, 15:47

@Brosa: This is all getting a bit wall-of-text, and I don't really have the energy for yet another debate about extremely dead Russians, so I'll just skip to what I consider to be the point.

I agree, good call.

This isn't about centralisation. It's about class. The Leninist party constitutes itself fundamentally outside of the class struggle, a "concious" organisation of "revolutionaries" organised on "scientific" lines. It is not an organisation that embodies the working class constituted as a political subject, it is a political organisation that seeks to represent the working class in the sphere of politics. It may be the case that its political trajectory for a time coincides with that of the working class, as occurred in Russia in the first stages of revolution, but that can only last so long. Sooner or later, these "scientific" revolutionaries, outside of the class struggle and therefore incapable of producing communist social relations, find that the power they have seized is a specifically bourgeois power, a power premised on the existence of wage-labour. So what do they do then? They do what we all do: they fight for their class interests, against and despite the working class whom they never tire of reminding us that they represent.

I think this is is following a form of faulty logic (faulty cause and effect) that if the party takes state power then the party will most certainly become the new bourgeois power. Also, I do not see why you believe that the vanguard party would exist outside the class struggle, especially in a revolutionary and post-revolutionary society. As we know, class struggle encompasses everything and if the state has taken power and instituted a dictatorship of the proletariat (suppressing violent counter-revolutionaries, confiscating private property, etc.) it is clearly fighting the bourgeoisie. If the state did become "the new bourgeoisie" and instituted capitalist relations, it was because these countries were underdeveloped and had not passed through the capitalist mode of production to develop yet. This is why Lenin instituted the NEP and "state capitalism for the benefit of the people." I don't agree with the rhetoric, but I understand the sentiment. We can have a discussion about why Maoism and other forms of Stalinism are inherently bourgeois, but I do not think that the same can characterize Leninism and the vanguard party of Lenin (which existed in a specific time period). Obviously, this wouldn't be a problem in an industrialized and developed country like the United States.

Marx Communist

20th July 2012, 17:34

No.

Martin Blank

20th July 2012, 20:34

RE: M&E, and their relationship with parties, see Nimtz's Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough, Gilbert's Marx's Politics, and for a very lovely analysis that interlocks their political activity with their ideas on the revolutionary party, chapter 3 of Soma Marik's Reinterrogating the Classical Marxist Discourses of Revolutionary Democracy....

Read their stuff and then get back to me for a discussion....

So, your recommendation is that we read books by petty-bourgeois intellectuals about how petty-bourgeois intellectuals should be allowed membership in a proletarian organization?...

Makes sense to me! Derp! :drool:

Martin Blank

20th July 2012, 20:41

Making this post right after Miles soundly demolished the point makes me wonder whether you're actually reading the thread?

Her raison d'être is not to actually contribute constructively, which would require the aforementioned reading. At this point, she is only here to dismiss the idea that workers should organize themselves for their own liberation, and to promote the idea that they should instead rely on philanthropic bourgeois and petty bourgeois to be in charge. Obvious implications are obvious.

Martin Blank

20th July 2012, 21:06

Missed this one before....

Kamanev and Sverdlov definitely had working class backgrounds. Kamanev was a pharmacists assistant, and I vaguely remember Sverdlov working in a factory type situation. Zinoviev was born on a farm and didn't go to college I think. But that's not my point, the overwhelming majority of Bolshevik leaders were working class and in the future it needs to stay that way. However what they did wrong was recruit only Russians, which bit them in the arse.

Actually, we've had this discussion before (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2185012&postcount=29). Here is the list I posted at the time of the members of the Bolshevik Central Committee at the time of the October Revolution, along with their class backgrounds:

Jan Berzin - petty bourgeois (peasant)
Andrei Bubnov - bourgeois (merchant)
Nikolai Bukharin - petty bourgeois (professionals)
Felix Dzerzhinsky - nobility
Prokofy Dzhaparidze - petty bourgeois (professional)
Adolph Joffe - bourgeois (merchant)
Lev Kamenev - petty bourgeois (first generation)
Alexei Kiselyev - unknown
Alexandra Kollontai - bourgeois (military-officer corps)
Nikolai Krestinsky - bourgeois (merchant)
Vladimir Lenin - nobility
Georgi Lomov - nobility
Vladimir Milyutin - petty bourgeois (peasant)
Matvei Muranov - petty bourgeois (peasant/politician)
Viktor Nogin - petty bourgeois (shopkeeper/artisan)
Alexei Rykov - petty bourgeois (farmers)
Fyodor Sergeyev (Artem) - petty bourgeois (peasant)
Stepan Shahumyan - bourgeois (merchant)
Ivar Smilga - petty bourgeois (forester -- sheriff of a lord's land)
Grigori Sokolnikov - petty bourgeois (professional)
Josef Stalin - petty bourgeois (artisan)
Elena Stassova - petty bourgeois (court official)
Yakov Sverdlov - petty bourgeois (intelligentsia)
Leon Trotsky - petty bourgeois (farmers)
Moisei Uritsky - bourgeois (merchant)
Georgi Zinoviev - petty bourgeois (farmers)This list was compiled from official biographies authored in the USSR (published by Progress or International) or from endnotes in books published by various and sundry Trotskyist groups (Pathfinder, Mehring, New Park, etc.). Leo had challenged some of these, but his arguments were unconvincing, as they were based mainly on Wikipedia and the UK Spartacus website, and described only brief moments in their lives. Those who are interested can read through the first few pages of that thread to see the exchange, as well as find a collection of passages from Marx and Engels' writings, posted by me and Nothing Human Is Alien, on class and organization.

The point here is that while the Bolshevik Party may have had a majority of working-class members in 1917, its leadership was thoroughly non-proletarian. And history has shown that, in such organizations, a class-based division of labor develops, where the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements are elevated to become leaders, theoreticians, etc., while working-class members find themselves stuck with the grunt work: selling newspapers, distributing leaflets, carrying signs and banners, etc. This is due in large part to bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology, which sets out who are the leaders and who are the followers, which not only inundates the organization from the outside, but is also carried into the organization by these non-proletarian elements.

Rafiq

20th July 2012, 21:12

Martin Blank

20th July 2012, 21:44

The Leninist party constitutes itself fundamentally outside of the class struggle,...

I wanted to say something about this because this formulation has always bothered me, even though I've used it myself (including earlier in this thread, as I recall). The concept that anyone or anything can be "fundamentally outside the class struggle" is a real theoretical problem. This implies that the person or organization in question can remove his/her/itself from the material conditions set by the mode of production. This is physically and politically impossible.

The idea that one can separate from a system of social relations, outside of the context of a social revolution, is idealistic rubbish. It turns the very idea of class and social relations on their head. It is a vile concession to Weberian sociology, which is anti-Marxist to its core, first made by the German Social-Democrats and crudely repeated by most of the other parties of the Second International, including the Russians.

Much like the concept of "de-classed" elements (another gem of the post-Marx Social-Democracy), the concept of coming from "outside of the class struggle" is alien to Marxian communist theory. It is used as a means of obscuring the reality of what is being advocated: the elevation of non-proletarian elements into leading positions in the class struggle and the Social-Democratic Party. Looking at it from this perspective, we can actually see this mangling of the Marxian concept of classes and the class struggle as an attempt to square the circle.

By declaring bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements "de-classed", and by placing a party of such elements as coming from "outside of the class struggle", the Social-Democrats -- first the Germans, then everyone else, including the Russians -- sought to theoretically circumvent and bury the admonitions of Marx and Engels made in 1879 (and cited above) by creating a whole new set of social relations that exist outside of the capitalist mode of production without actually proclaiming it openly. The end result is that communism is separated from its class character. Utopianism of the worst kind returns, but on a "higher" level. Owenite utopianism finds new existence in Leninist petty-bourgeois socialism -- and the "slaves at my mercy" that Owen lamented became ... well, I'll let you all figure it out.

Die Neue Zeit

21st July 2012, 04:21

But this is all the necessary in that level of class consciousness proletarians achieve only extends as far as class consciousness. The sciences.. Which are necessary for any revolutionary movement, are in themselves divorced from the proletarian populations, and therefore, either Non worker intellectuals or Proletarian intellectuals, as Kautsky put it, are necessary to steer the proletarian movement in a direction which is more desirable in the interests of the proletarian class (which may or not be apparent to proletarians themselves).

^^^ Proletarian intellectuals as active members, but not non-worker intellectuals. The latter do not "introduce socialism into the class struggle... when conditions allow."

I wanted to say something about this because this formulation has always bothered me, even though I've used it myself (including earlier in this thread, as I recall). The concept that anyone or anything can be "fundamentally outside the class struggle" is a real theoretical problem. This implies that the person or organization in question can remove his/her/itself from the material conditions set by the mode of production. This is physically and politically impossible.

Tim might have had more of a point if he said "outside the class movement."

The idea that one can separate from a system of social relations, outside of the context of a social revolution, is idealistic rubbish. It turns the very idea of class and social relations on their head. It is a vile concession to Weberian sociology, which is anti-Marxist to its core, first made by the German Social-Democrats and crudely repeated by most of the other parties of the Second International, including the Russians.

Much like the concept of "de-classed" elements (another gem of the post-Marx Social-Democracy), the concept of coming from "outside of the class struggle" is alien to Marxian communist theory. It is used as a means of obscuring the reality of what is being advocated: the elevation of non-proletarian elements into leading positions in the class struggle and the Social-Democratic Party. Looking at it from this perspective, we can actually see this mangling of the Marxian concept of classes and the class struggle as an attempt to square the circle.

By declaring bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements "de-classed", and by placing a party of such elements as coming from "outside of the class struggle", the Social-Democrats -- first the Germans, then everyone else, including the Russians -- sought to theoretically circumvent and bury the admonitions of Marx and Engels made in 1879 (and cited above) by creating a whole new set of social relations that exist outside of the capitalist mode of production without actually proclaiming it openly.

Actually, "outside of the class struggle" comes right from Engels' Conditions of the Working Class in England. Without this, there's no merger formula (in that work positively and in the Manifesto negatively).

Keep in mind, though, that Tim's got a different, less political definition of "class struggle" than you do.

Also, re. the working-class political freelancers you mentioned before: are they not by definition "outside the class struggle" because of their relation to the party-movement?

In other words, there's room for comradely agreement and disagreement on the "outside the class struggle" phrase. It can definitely be abused to serve as a cover for non-worker elements, but it also addresses sympathetic and educated workers refusing to be politically active. More importantly, it addresses the merger formula.

Ostrinski

21st July 2012, 04:53

So what should non workers who sympathize with the worker's movement do, if anything

Die Neue Zeit

21st July 2012, 04:57

So what should non workers who sympathize with the worker's movement do, if anything

I'm sure they can lend a hand, discuss lots of stuff, and such. We just "discourage" them from being voting members or campaigning for such status.

Lucretia

21st July 2012, 05:59

How arrogant do you want to be? Remedial instruction? :lol:

Marx and Engels are not biblical figures. If they say 'we need a revolutionary party', I don't fully agree or disagree. I'm open to the idea of a revolutionary party. But they never said we need a vanguard party, merely they said we need a dictatorship of the proletariat. And if they hypothetically did say we need a vanguard party, i'd disagree with them. Socialism only continues because people come up with new ideas for new times, rather than sticking dogmatically to Marxist orthodoxy. You may want to remember that.

Oh and in any case, Marx and Engels, even in saying there was a need for a revolutionary party, still did not take up leadership positions, least of all Engels, because he was a member of the bourgeoisie. So your point is still moot.

Yes, remedial instruction. We don't need to guess why M&E turned down leadership positions with specific parties. Engels was explicit about why, and it had absolutely NOTHING to do with his or Marx's class location. It had to do with M&E's perceived status as symbols of the international movement, which would have made assuming leadership of, say, the SPD awkward. This symbol was not just the result of their theoretical contributions, but also of their rootlessness and consequent close ties to multiple parties.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

21st July 2012, 07:34

Yes, remedial instruction. We don't need to guess why M&E turned down leadership positions with specific parties. Engels was explicit about why, and it had absolutely NOTHING to do with his or Marx's class location. It had to do with M&E's perceived status as symbols of the international movement, which would have made assuming leadership of, say, the SPD awkward. This symbol was not just the result of their theoretical contributions, but also of their rootlessness and consequent close ties to multiple parties.

Yup, i'm sure the bloke who came up with 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' refusing voting positions along with this business-owning mate had nothing to do with class membership.

Anyway, as suggested above, for some remedial instruction you should read previous parts of the thread, in particular the discussion between Miles and I which will answer all your questions about the petty-bourgeoisie academics and their relationship to a communist party and the wider working class. :thumbup:

A Marxist Historian

21st July 2012, 08:18

Q: if we think of the communist party in the orthodox sense, as a part of the working class, then are we not to also assume that the communist party itself is not the vanguard of the revolution, but is subsumed by the increasing political consciousness of the class?

I say this because, even as a non-Leninist communist, I still don't oppose the existence of parties, as long as they don't co-opt the entire workers' movement, which is a danger when they exist at the head of the movement, as the vanguard.

If the party of the vanguard of the working class does in fact get subsumed by increasing poliical consciousness of the class as a whole, that would be awfully cool.

But it is inconceivable for that to happen in a capitalist society. As long as society is under the dominion of capital, the class will be divided, some will be more conscious, some will be more backward and more under the influence of capitalist ideology (racism, national chauvinism, narrow trade unionism etc. too damn much etc.) there will be material divisions in the class between the more aristocratic elements and those at the bottom and those trailing off into the lumpenproletariat, etc. etc.

If you want to wait for a revolution for the entire working class to attain clear communist consciousness, you will wait forever, there will never be a revolution, and the capitalists will drag the human race to inevitable destruction.

A party that is just "of the working class" would be a lowest common denominator party, an Archie Bunker racist, national chauvinist sexist etc. etc. party.

Like your average oldstyle Social Democratic or Labour Party, come to think of it.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

21st July 2012, 08:37

Missed this one before....

Actually, we've had this discussion before (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2185012&postcount=29). Here is the list I posted at the time of the members of the Bolshevik Central Committee at the time of the October Revolution, along with their class backgrounds:

This list was compiled from official biographies authored in the USSR (published by Progress or International) or from endnotes in books published by various and sundry Trotskyist groups (Pathfinder, Mehring, New Park, etc.). Leo had challenged some of these, but his arguments were unconvincing, as they were based mainly on Wikipedia and the UK Spartacus website, and described only brief moments in their lives. Those who are interested can read through the first few pages of that thread to see the exchange, as well as find a collection of passages from Marx and Engels' writings, posted by me and Nothing Human Is Alien, on class and organization.

The point here is that while the Bolshevik Party may have had a majority of working-class members in 1917, its leadership was thoroughly non-proletarian. And history has shown that, in such organizations, a class-based division of labor develops, where the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements are elevated to become leaders, theoreticians, etc., while working-class members find themselves stuck with the grunt work: selling newspapers, distributing leaflets, carrying signs and banners, etc. This is due in large part to bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology, which sets out who are the leaders and who are the followers, which not only inundates the organization from the outside, but is also carried into the organization by these non-proletarian elements.

I can fill in the blank on your list for you. Lomov was the son of a Tsarist noble, fairly prominent one at that. And a very interesting fellow by the way, but I've posted on that here before.

Yes, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party were none of them proletarian by birth. This has to do with the history of the Russian revolutionary movement, which began as a movement of the intelligentsia and only really rooted itself among the workers during the 1905 Revolution. So as late as 1917, there really weren't too many factory workers with the extensive political experience necessary to serve on the Central Committee, although by then local party committees were fairly proletarian. However, during the course of the 1917 Revolution, many factory workers did come to the fore, and by say 1921 you'd have a different picture if you did a collective bio of the Central Committee. Though still probably a majority of folk from a nonproletarian background.

This changed when Stalin took over. He "proletarianized" the Bolshevik Party, sort of. In the Great Terror of the 1930s, the revolutionary workers and intellectuals who led the Bolshevik Revolution were exterminated, replaced by rank and file workers who generally had not participated in the Revolution at all, likely many had opposed it, but rode the Soviet "working class affirmative action" programs of the late 1920s and early 1930s into the bureaucrcy.

The Brezhnev generation.

Under Brezhnev, unlike under Lenin, not just the Central Committee but the Politburo was almost exclusively of proletarian origins. Only one intellectual at the top, Mikhail Suslov. All the rest former workers like ex-steelworker Brezhnev himself.

So then, that's the actual historical example of your ideal of an all proletarian (or rather, ex-proletarian) party. The CPSU under Leonid Brezhnev.

-M.H.-

Die Neue Zeit

21st July 2012, 09:35

Martin Blank

21st July 2012, 16:28

So what should non workers who sympathize with the worker's movement do, if anything

One thing we've done is develop the WPA Supporters Organization, which is an auxiliary for comrades from all classes to work with us and promote our politics. Members of the Supporters Organization operate under our Constitution and Program, are invited to participate in the Party's public activity and our Convention (but with only a consultative vote). They organize their own Supporters Units that work closely with Party organizations.

The WPASO operates similarly to how a youth league would: they have a formal relationship to the Party, are organizationally independent but politically subordinate, and provide a training ground for potential members.

Martin Blank

21st July 2012, 16:43

So then, that's the actual historical example of your ideal of an all proletarian (or rather, ex-proletarian) party. The CPSU under Leonid Brezhnev.

Actually, no. But thanks for playing.

My "actual historical example" of my "ideal of an all proletarian ... party" would be the Workers' Group of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), later the Communist Workers Party of the USSR, which was composed entirely of workers and rank-and-file Red Army soldiers (including the majority of the garrison of Moscow), and armed with a communist program (the Manifesto of the Workers' Group).

Although I have been placing a lot of emphasis on the class composition of the party (party-movement or party-faction) in this thread, it should be noted that I am taking as a given that such a party would have a revolutionary program -- the proletarian party-movement armed with a program based on the Three Pillars; the communist party-faction armed with a proletarian communist program.

It is composition and program together that makes an organization communist, revolutionary proletarian, etc. With the Brezhnev CPSU, the composition was that of ex-proletarians-cum-petty-bourgeois-bureaucrats (or, to shorthand it, the petty bourgeoisie) and the program was that of petty-bourgeois socialism. And those two very political elements were reflected in how the organization was designed and functioned.

Anyway, thanks for the information on Lomov. If you find information on Kiselyev, let me know.

A Marxist Historian

21st July 2012, 20:29

^^^ Don't be so dismissive of the intellectual potential of those active and former workers promoted under Stalin. You don't give enough intellectual credit to the likes of Sergei Kirov, Nikolai Bulganin, Yekaterina Furtseva, Andrei Kirilenko, Alexei Kosygin, Pyotr Masherov, Kirill Mazurov, Nikolai Podgorny, and Dmitri Ustinov.

The technical education that "industrial" and "non-industrial" workers of the Brezhnev generation had to undergo was more developed than that which was had by the revolutionary underground.

I'd rather work with scores of "worker-Stalinists" (already probably leaning towards Third Periodism more than Popular Frontist BS) than with New Left or post-modernist intellectuals with no working-class credentials.

Yes, folk like Brezhnev, who'd been through engineering school, were much better engineers and factory managers than the rank and file workers elected to run factories during War Communism or the underground revolutionaries and Civil War heroes whose corpses the Brezhnev types walked over into management. (As for post-modernist intellectuals, they should be driven away from running factories with sticks, but that's besides the point.)

But me, I'll take the revolutionary Old Guard as the leaders of society over Brezhnev and his ex-proletarian bureacrats any day and twice on Mayday. The Kosygins and Podgornys may or may not have developed into sophisticated thinkers by the time they hit the top, but sophisticated bureaucratic crap is still crap.

BTW, you're wrong on Kirov, he was a radical journalist who got swept up into the Bolshevik Party during the Civil War after a career on a liberal bourgeois paper. Thoroughly petty bourgeois class background. Now, Khrushchev, he was a true rank and file coal miner, recruited into the top ranks by Lazar Kaganovich, who was possibly the first true dirt-poor proletarian by background in the top party leadership, for whatever that's worth.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

21st July 2012, 20:43

Actually, no. But thanks for playing.

My "actual historical example" of my "ideal of an all proletarian ... party" would be the Workers' Group of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), later the Communist Workers Party of the USSR, which was composed entirely of workers and rank-and-file Red Army soldiers (including the majority of the garrison of Moscow), and armed with a communist program (the Manifesto of the Workers' Group).

Although I have been placing a lot of emphasis on the class composition of the party (party-movement or party-faction) in this thread, it should be noted that I am taking as a given that such a party would have a revolutionary program -- the proletarian party-movement armed with a program based on the Three Pillars; the communist party-faction armed with a proletarian communist program.

It is composition and program together that makes an organization communist, revolutionary proletarian, etc. With the Brezhnev CPSU, the composition was that of ex-proletarians-cum-petty-bourgeois-bureaucrats (or, to shorthand it, the petty bourgeoisie) and the program was that of petty-bourgeois socialism. And those two very political elements were reflected in how the organization was designed and functioned.

Anyway, thanks for the information on Lomov. If you find information on Kiselyev, let me know.

A few more things about Lomov-Oppokov. He was a top economic administrator particularly noted for being the last advocate among the top administrators of the kind of "democracy from below" workers control ideas that the Workers Group advocated. E.H. Carr mentions this.

The youngest member of the Central Committee, and one of the most universally popular, seen by everybody as honest and honorable, though never a leader or an independent thinker. Stayed loyal to Stalin to the end, but never liked the kind of bureaucratic brutality Stalinist economic management became famous for.

Ran Donugol, the all-important coal trust, during the famous Shakhty Affair in 1928, the first and most popular of the Stalinist show trials of "wrckers," and the model for all the others. I've seen some of his letters during research of mine into it. He really believed the garbage from the GPU about a supposed wrecker conspiracy among his bourgeois coal engineers, and was puzzled and confused that he'd never noticed any sign of it while running his trust. And took all the propaganda nonsense about worker involvement in management of the economy during the Stalinist industrial revolution for good coin, and even tried to implement it at his trust till they kicked him upstairs.

And the son of a fairly prominent Tsarist noble. Such are the complexities of life.

-M.H.-

Die Neue Zeit

21st July 2012, 21:17

Yes, folk like Brezhnev, who'd been through engineering school, were much better engineers and factory managers than the rank and file workers elected to run factories during War Communism or the underground revolutionaries and Civil War heroes whose corpses the Brezhnev types walked over into management. (As for post-modernist intellectuals, they should be driven away from running factories with sticks, but that's besides the point.)

Did you not read Read's bio of Lenin? He was quite critical of "workers control," noting that the factory workers basically turned their factories into production units for their own immediate demand (not broader consumer demand).

If those bureaucrats rotated in and out of their political and "industrial" positions, they'd actually have more working-class credentials. But, like I said, Brezhnev and Tikhonov were dumb (perhaps even illiterate to some extent) exceptions to the rule.

BTW, you're wrong on Kirov, he was a radical journalist who got swept up into the Bolshevik Party during the Civil War after a career on a liberal bourgeois paper. Thoroughly petty bourgeois class background.

Kirov had a mechanical engineering background, though.

Now, Khrushchev, he was a true rank and file coal miner, recruited into the top ranks by Lazar Kaganovich, who was possibly the first true dirt-poor proletarian by background in the top party leadership, for whatever that's worth.

You forgot Yan Rudzutak and Mikhail Tomsky, though. :confused:

Martin Blank

22nd July 2012, 03:55

A few more things about Lomov-Oppokov. He was a top economic administrator particularly noted for being the last advocate among the top administrators of the kind of "democracy from below" workers control ideas that the Workers Group advocated. E.H. Carr mentions this.

Carr, like many other Sovietologists and Soviet historians, often confused the Workers' Group and the Workers' Opposition, thinking the latter beget the former. But while Myasnikov signed the appeal to the CI written by Kollontai and Shlyapnikov, that was the entire extent of his collaboration with them.

As for the question of workers' control, that is something that should be taken up in a separate thread. If you want to start one, be my guest.

Die Neue Zeit

22nd July 2012, 04:11

More on topic, some of the discussions in the newest Theory poll thread on one-party states are relevant to this one.

open debate within a mass party movement is a more healthy arrangement than a multi party system, where there is a greater potential for sectarianism and political tribalism.

If the working class can't even establish and maintain democracy for themselves within one party, then how do we expect a system of multiples of that same failure to be productive?

Of course. The proletariat is represented by, and can only begin to act as a class for itself through, its class party. A truly proletarian dictatorship, then, would be animated by exclusively this party.

^^^ That's true only if said organization is a real party, but that entails rejecting the Bordigist separation of real parties from real movements and vice versa.

The proletariat only becomes a class for itself and is represented by it's specific class party (I know another user made the same point, but it is an essential Bordigist point and I agree with it).

Begging the rather essential question: why? Why can a class only become a class with a party as catalyst and its representation?

I know Brosa here responded by quoting Bordiga, but I'll go straight to the source: Marx and the International Workingmen's Association.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/09/politics-resolution.htm
http://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1872/hague-conference/parties.htm

Against this collective power of the propertied classes the working class cannot act, as a class, except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to, all old parties formed by the propertied classes;

That this constitution of the working class into a political party is indispensable in order to ensure the triumph of the social revolution and its ultimate end — the abolition of classes

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm

That this collective appropriation can arise only from the revolutionary action of the productive class – or proletariat - organized in a distinct political party;

That a such an organization must be pursued by all the means the proletariat has at its disposal

The case for the model of the party-movement posed by the pre-WWI SPD and the inter-war USPD could not be greater!

Could you explain this a little more :confused: I don't think Bordigists advocate the separation of "real parties from real movements and vice versa" like you say, and I can provide quotes from Bordiga if you would like (yet, I would like to here what you have to say first).

It's all about building mass class-strugglist parties of the class before a revolutionary period. Bordigists aren't into this. As a result, their "party in the historical sense" is as divorced from social movements as Lenin's distorted merger formula in LWC of "merge, if you will, with the broad masses."

A Marxist Historian

22nd July 2012, 08:41

Did you not read Read's bio of Lenin? He was quite critical of "workers control," noting that the factory workers basically turned their factories into production units for their own immediate demand (not broader consumer demand).

I haven't, not familiar with it, though I've read quite a lot of other material on the subject. That sounds like overstatement, probably only true at more backward factories. Many factory workers very voluntarily participated in communist subbotniks and made all sorts of sacrifices for victory. If general working class attitudes had been as you describe, the Whites would have won.

But it is definitely true that initial ideas of "workers control" as the solution to everything did not work. The move to one man management, bringing back the bourgeois engineers, etc. was absolutely necessary. Running a factory requires technical training. Practical experience on the factory floor is very useful but not at all adequate in and of itself.

If those bureaucrats rotated in and out of their political and "industrial" positions, they'd actually have more working-class credentials. But, like I said, Brezhnev and Tikhonov were dumb (perhaps even illiterate to some extent) exceptions to the rule.

Kirov had a mechanical engineering background, though.

You forgot Yan Rudzutak and Mikhail Tomsky, though. :confused:

Not that familiar with Rudzutak's background, but Tomsky was something of a labor aristocrat I do believe. Kaganovich and his brothers (one of his brothers was a Trotskyist) were all from a dirt poor bottom of the barrel working class background, raised in true poverty.

As for Kirov studying engineering before the Revolution, bourgeois engineers were definitely not considered fellow proletarians by Russian workers, quite the contrary, they were seen as the enemy--too much so in fact.

But he was basically a radical journalist. Distant spiritual cousin of the late Alexander Cockburn perhaps--who was a bit soft on Stalinism, though worthy in many ways.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

22nd July 2012, 08:45

Carr, like many other Sovietologists and Soviet historians, often confused the Workers' Group and the Workers' Opposition, thinking the latter beget the former. But while Myasnikov signed the appeal to the CI written by Kollontai and Shlyapnikov, that was the entire extent of his collaboration with them.

As for the question of workers' control, that is something that should be taken up in a separate thread. If you want to start one, be my guest.

I'll leave that to others.

They were two separate groups all right, with differing political conceptions, especially with regard to their attitudes to the CPUSSR. But certainly there was a certain cousinship between the two groups at least with respect to concepts of workers control and workers management, wasn't there?

If in fact the Workers Group had economic ideas that were fundamentally different from those of the Workers Opposition, I am unfamiliar with that, and perhaps, as a partisan of the ideas of the Workers Group, you might want to explain that to Revleft.

-M.H.-

Clifford C Clavin

22nd July 2012, 12:52

Does anyone have a list of links or sources where Marx and Engels specifically talk about forms of organization? As far as I can tell, they didn't spend a lot of time on the issue.

Die Neue Zeit

22nd July 2012, 17:56

^^^ I just linked to Marx and Engels above (Post #126). They clearly referred to party-movements. A note of critical caution, though: their understanding of "party-movement" was more primordial and wasn't as concrete or "institutional" as the higher, more refined understanding of the original Socialist ("Second") International.

Clifford C Clavin

22nd July 2012, 18:24

What drugs are you on?

Lucretia

22nd July 2012, 19:56

What drugs are you on?

You'll have to forgive Die Neue Zeit. He is our resident Kautskyite, and as you can probably guess from the number of posts he has made, he has an abysmal signal-to-noise ratio. Ask him about the lumpenproletariat, and he'll provide you a chart with nine different kinds of present-day lumpen sub-classes. :blushing:

Martin Blank

22nd July 2012, 20:28

If in fact the Workers Group had economic ideas that were fundamentally different from those of the Workers Opposition, I am unfamiliar with that, and perhaps, as a partisan of the ideas of the Workers Group, you might want to explain that to Revleft.

I believe I've done this before, but I have no problem doing it again. I'll make this short, though, since it is sorta off-topic for this particular thread.

The crux of the economic program of the Workers Opposition was the replacement of one-person management with control by the existing trade unions. The WO argued that this would be the restoration of workers' control, since the unions were workers' organizations, devoid of bureaucratism and independent of the RCP(B). The reality, of course, was that this was far from the truth. Historically, the union federations in Russia had been extensions of the various parties. The All-Russian Federation of Trade Unions was an extension of the Bolshevik Party, with its leaders chosen by the Bolsheviks, and with a crushing bureaucracy. Essentially, the WO platform would switch out party-state officials for party-union officials (many of whom were WO supporters).

The Workers' Group, on the other hand, had adopted as the core of their economic program the restoration of the Factory-Shop Committees and Soviets to the position they held at the time of the October Revolution -- i.e., to the leading organs of the workers' republic. Direct workers' control, including over the selection of management, would take place through the FSC. These workplace committees would not only send deputies to the Soviets, but also to industrial conferences and congresses on provincial, regional, republic and all-Russian levels. These bodies, which would extend all the way to the top levels of the economy, would be responsible for developing coordinating plans for production and distribution, not state ministries. The unions themselves would be reorganized and re-purposed, taking over the functions of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection.

The Workers' Group was rather critical of the Workers Opposition, seeing its platform as being more of a power grab by its members than an attempt to restore workers' control and workers' power.

Martin Blank

22nd July 2012, 20:31

You'll have to forgive Die Neue Zeit. He is our resident Kautskyite, and as you can probably guess from the number of posts he has made, he has an abysmal signal-to-noise ratio. Ask him about the lumpenproletariat, and he'll provide you a chart with nine different kinds of present-day lumpen sub-classes. :blushing:

Say what you want about DNZ, at least he thinks -- unlike others on here who can only regurgitate selective quotes and rote commentary on command.

Lucretia

22nd July 2012, 20:44

Say what you want about DNZ, at least he thinks -- unlike others on here who can only regurgitate selective quotes and rote commentary on command.

There's a difference between thinking and intellectual masturbation. And if your vague references to regurgitation and rote commentary are meant to be an oblique criticism of me specifically, then this distinction might not occur to you.

Die Neue Zeit

22nd July 2012, 22:27

Say what you want about DNZ, at least he thinks -- unlike others on here who can only regurgitate selective quotes and rote commentary on command.

It was only a matter of time, comrade, before the ad hominems and other personal attacks would rear their ugly heads in this thread, especially against those amongst the ranks of "proletarians who stand out due to their intellectual development, and [...] bring [modern socialism] into the class struggle of the proletariat where conditions allow."

Martin Blank

23rd July 2012, 00:34

There's a difference between thinking and intellectual masturbation. And if your vague references to regurgitation and rote commentary are meant to be an oblique criticism of me specifically, then this distinction might not occur to you.

If I had meant you, I would have made it abundantly clear.

And as DNZ said, you're only engaging in an ad hominem attack here. You know better than that.

Clifford C Clavin

23rd July 2012, 02:28

Say what you want about DNZ, at least he thinks -- unlike others on here who can only regurgitate selective quotes and rote commentary on command.

But what does he think? I have no idea because his posts seem not to be in English.

bring [modern socialism] into the class struggle of the proletariat where conditions allow."

So you discuss your theories about Kautsky and Caesar with fellow workers on the shop floor do you?

Geiseric

23rd July 2012, 03:39

I'm against Trotsky's bureaucratic move to incorporate the unions into the soviet state, as he was later in his life, simply because Unions are some of the most direct democratic organizations around when they're formed, the danger lies with bureaucracy with them though as well, as we see with Gomper and the current AFL-CIO. The role of the party coincides with the goals of the working class to rid themselves of the buisness union leadership that's currently reigning in the U.S. However there needs to be a steady program adopted on a very wide scale in order for propagation and organization to be done to fulfill that task, which is why the members of those unions whose ideas go hand in hand with the rest of the revolutionary workers need a body to center the struggle around. The role of intellectuals is honestly insignificant compared the role of the militants who make up the party. However if Lenin never wrote State and Rev, or Marx never did Capital, I would have had to figure out those things on my own.

Ostrinski

23rd July 2012, 04:03

One thing we've done is develop the WPA Supporters Organization, which is an auxiliary for comrades from all classes to work with us and promote our politics. Members of the Supporters Organization operate under our Constitution and Program, are invited to participate in the Party's public activity and our Convention (but with only a consultative vote). They organize their own Supporters Units that work closely with Party organizations.

The WPASO operates similarly to how a youth league would: they have a formal relationship to the Party, are organizationally independent but politically subordinate, and provide a training ground for potential members.That sounds like a productive arrangement.

So this would be an organ of, say, students et al?

23rd July 2012, 04:24

So you discuss your theories about Kautsky and Caesar with fellow workers on the shop floor do you?

So, who's sock are you?

Die Neue Zeit

23rd July 2012, 06:54

Another comradely post from that thread:

What is your suggestion for times of low awareness in a non-revolutionary period?I would suggest that the party do a few things. I think that the party should continue to develop a Marxian understanding of existing society, putting emphasis on revolution and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat. It should develop propaganda and make the party visible to the proletariat as a viable alternative to existing society through various means. Here, I would think that the party could develop somewhat of an "alternative culture" to today's world (such as providing anything from free medical service, a "cop watch", etc.) If the party can be seen as a viable option that differs from existing society, more people will be interested in the party and it's ideas. The party, of course, in all situations, should maintain a revolutionary stance opposed to all forms of bourgeois society.

Martin Blank

23rd July 2012, 07:22

That sounds like a productive arrangement.

So this would be an organ of, say, students et al?

Yes. It would also be a place for workers who cannot commit to being a member for various reasons, for non-proletarians generally, etc.

Martin Blank

23rd July 2012, 07:24

So, who's sock are you?

Took the words right out of my mouth.

Clifford C Clavin

23rd July 2012, 11:47

I have been lurking here for a while. This guy posts a lot and his stuff is bat-shit insane. Hard to miss! It's one of the most obvious features of this forum. Hard to believe he is allowed free reign to post his garbagio all over the board.

Check my intro post fellas.

Clifford C Clavin

23rd July 2012, 12:59

I'll admit that the posts by Miles seem convincing and are of a higher grade than the usual posts here. But like all left communist stuff, it falls down in reality. After all, where are these "all-proletarian party-movements" in the real world? There hasn't been even one of significance anywhere, ever. Doesn't that tell you something?

Didn't Marx look at what really existed in the world and go from there? He didn't invent things and then try to apply that to the world. That would be idealism plain and simple.

So where outside of the realm of pure thought does this phenomenon, as good as it sounds, exist?

Martin Blank

24th July 2012, 02:40

I'll admit that the posts by Miles seem convincing and are of a higher grade than the usual posts here.

Thank you.

But like all left communist stuff, it falls down in reality.

If what I wrote was "left communist", then Marx was, too. If you go back through the entire thread, you'll see that the conception of the proletarian party I put forward was his ... as was the later insistence on class composition.

After all, where are these "all-proletarian party-movements" in the real world? There hasn't been even one of significance anywhere, ever. Doesn't that tell you something?

By this logic, we should junk all of communist theory, since there hasn't been one communist society "of significance anywhere, ever". And before you go there, every attempt at a proletarian dictatorship has collapsed after a relatively short time, too -- which arguably poses the issue of there not being a transition to communism "of significance anywhere, ever". And the more you whittle down on the question, the more it leads you back into the camp of the exploiting and oppressing classes. You rely too much on a pragmatic argument and philosophical viewpoint; the result is that this yellow brick roads ends with you once again bound hand and foot with the class enemy.

Didn't Marx look at what really existed in the world and go from there? He didn't invent things and then try to apply that to the world. That would be idealism plain and simple.

Yes, Marx did indeed observe the real world and "go from there". And so have we. Proletarian separatism is the product of over a century of lessons from the class struggle, just as Marx's elaboration of communism was itself a product of centuries of lessons from class society and the class struggle. The same can be said about "inventing things" and "trying to apply them" to the world. The communist party, proletarian party, proletarian dictatorship, workers' control, etc., were all "invented" by Marx as a result of his study of the class struggle and effort to learn from its lessons. And, yes, he sought to "try to apply them" to future battles. Was all this idealism "plain and simple"?

So where outside of the realm of pure thought does this phenomenon, as good as it sounds, exist?

In every struggle of the working class against capital -- in the lessons they offer and the battles to come. Don't think that's some mere cover for the lack of an answer, because it isn't. The more we observe the current class struggle, the more we see not only the material justification for an all-proletarian movement but also the embryo of that movement in gestation.

I think of Egypt, for example, where the workers who struck to bring down Mubarak and, more recently, SCAF worked with the student-based movements but did not join their organizations, choosing instead to remain both politically and organizationally independent, fighting for their own class demands -- both economic and political.

Historically speaking, this is the norm, not the exception. When the class struggle sharpens, workers instinctively (though not necessarily consciously) organize themselves where they are and initiate their own battles. It is only when placed under pressure from non-proletarian elements that we see workers subordinate themselves. From the Russian soviets of 1905 and 1917 to the Spanish communes to the Hungarian workers' councils to the Iranian shoras of 1979 to today, we've repeatedly seen workers organize themselves and fight for their own interests ... only to be betrayed by non-proletarian elements who called such existing all-proletarian movements "idealism pure and simple".

What we advocate is that workers consciously reject such subordination and maintain their class independence at all levels; that is the essence of proletarian separatism. We reject the idea of the cross-class "people's front", whether it is in the form of a coalition or a singular organization, and adhere to the basic principle that the liberation of the working class must be the work of workers themselves.

Clifford C Clavin

24th July 2012, 03:01

By this logic, we should junk all of communist theory, since there hasn't been one communist society "of significance anywhere, ever". And before you go there, every attempt at a proletarian dictatorship has collapsed after a relatively short time, too -- which arguably poses the issue of there not being a transition to communism "of significance anywhere, ever". And the more you whittle down on the question, the more it leads you back into the camp of the exploiting and oppressing classes. You rely too much on a pragmatic argument and philosophical viewpoint; the result is that this yellow brick roads ends with you once again bound hand and foot with the class enemy.

But hey, there were attempts. There was a real movement. There were millions and millions of people engaged for the fight for the Leninist model. Dozens of countries went in for that!

There are what, four or five people who agree with you on an internet forum.

That's my point.

You can see this model of Lenin on a mass scale rising up in different countries in different periods, even though I think it was a wrong turn. I don't see any "proletarian party-movements" anywhere outside of this website.

Yes, Marx did indeed observe the real world and "go from there". And so have we. Proletarian separatism is the product of over a century of lessons from the class struggle, just as Marx's elaboration of communism was itself a product of centuries of lessons from class society and the class struggle. The same can be said about "inventing things" and "trying to apply them" to the world. The communist party, proletarian party, proletarian dictatorship, workers' control, etc., were all "invented" by Marx as a result of his study of the class struggle and effort to learn from its lessons. And, yes, he sought to "try to apply them" to future battles. Was all this idealism "plain and simple"?

I don't think that's true. He analysed already existing struggles and conditions. He didn't conjure up a "workers party" and recruit people to it. He examined the workers movement that really existed, and figured out why and where it came from. He was invited into the Communist League, which already existed. Also, he didn't proclaim a 1st International. Workers built that! He just joined up.

What you seem to do is proclaim an idea, make a website, and expect people to come. That's idealism and adventurism IMHO.

(Sorry I am probably not capable of writing posts as well as you, certainly not as sophisticated. If mine are not up to the same level I apologize about that. All I can do is call it like I see it. I do thank you for continuing to engage in this thread. You have posted some thought provoking things.)

Martin Blank

24th July 2012, 07:58

But hey, there were attempts. There was a real movement. There were millions and millions of people engaged for the fight for the Leninist model. Dozens of countries went in for that!

I already answered this in my previous post. The Russian soviets, Spanish communes, Hungarian workers' councils, Iranian shoras, etc., were not "Leninist" (petty-bourgeois socialist) movements. They were all-proletarian movements. They existed, but were compromised, betrayed and destroyed by the "Leninists".

BTW, dozens of countries went in for Social-Democracy, too. In fact, they just did it (again!) in Greece. Does that mean we should go ahead and support them, too?

There are what, four or five people who agree with you on an internet forum.

That's my point.

LOL! That's your argument?! Aside from the fact that your assertion is completely false, it's really a ridiculous argument. This is not a popularity contest. If we were to just follow what's popular, the self-described revolutionary left would cease to exist.

I don't think that's true. He analyzed already existing struggles and conditions. He didn't conjure up a "workers party" and recruit people to it. He examined the workers movement that really existed, and figured out why and where it came from.

Partially true. He not only examined "why and where it came from", but also drew conclusions about it -- about where it was going and, more importantly, where it needed to go. The very idea of the proletarian revolution being a conscious act is based on the fact that Marx drew conclusions from his analysis. There is no inevitability of proletarian revolution; it has to be organized and built, and that requires learning lessons and applying them to future struggles (or, as you describe it, "proclaiming an idea" and "conjuring up" an organized means to do so).

He was invited into the Communist League, which already existed. Also, he didn't proclaim a 1st International. Workers built that! He just joined up.

Actually, the Communist League didn't exist. It was the League of the Just when Marx joined, and he and Engels fought like hell to transform it into the Communist League. Fortunately, he succeeded. Many of the founding members of the Workers Party fought like hell to transform several organizations (or, at least, sections of them) before stepping out and organizing our own.

What you seem to do is proclaim an idea, make a website, and expect people to come. That's idealism and adventurism IMHO.

Sigh! Like crabs in a barrel.

(Sorry I am probably not capable of writing posts as well as you, certainly not as sophisticated. If mine are not up to the same level I apologize about that. All I can do is call it like I see it. I do thank you for continuing to engage in this thread. You have posted some thought provoking things.)

Comrade, this is the part that angers the hell out of me. I don't know who has convinced you that you are "probably not capable of writing posts as well as you, certainly not as sophisticated", but whomever they are, they need to be dragged into the street and beaten to within an inch of their life. There is no reason why you, or any of our brother and sister workers, cannot do what I'm doing. I'm no one special, and neither claim nor have any special abilities. I am just a worker with communist consciousness. Period.

I will certainly continue to contribute to this discussion, representing not only my own views but also those of the Workers Party in America. And I hope you continue to engage in this thread.

A Marxist Historian

24th July 2012, 09:09

I believe I've done this before, but I have no problem doing it again. I'll make this short, though, since it is sorta off-topic for this particular thread.

The crux of the economic program of the Workers Opposition was the replacement of one-person management with control by the existing trade unions. The WO argued that this would be the restoration of workers' control, since the unions were workers' organizations, devoid of bureaucratism and independent of the RCP(B). The reality, of course, was that this was far from the truth. Historically, the union federations in Russia had been extensions of the various parties. The All-Russian Federation of Trade Unions was an extension of the Bolshevik Party, with its leaders chosen by the Bolsheviks, and with a crushing bureaucracy. Essentially, the WO platform would switch out party-state officials for party-union officials (many of whom were WO supporters).

The Workers' Group, on the other hand, had adopted as the core of their economic program the restoration of the Factory-Shop Committees and Soviets to the position they held at the time of the October Revolution -- i.e., to the leading organs of the workers' republic. Direct workers' control, including over the selection of management, would take place through the FSC. These workplace committees would not only send deputies to the Soviets, but also to industrial conferences and congresses on provincial, regional, republic and all-Russian levels. These bodies, which would extend all the way to the top levels of the economy, would be responsible for developing coordinating plans for production and distribution, not state ministries. The unions themselves would be reorganized and re-purposed, taking over the functions of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection.

The Workers' Group was rather critical of the Workers Opposition, seeing its platform as being more of a power grab by its members than an attempt to restore workers' control and workers' power.

Ah, thanks. Useful and clarifying. However, in the context of the current thread, the distinction between WO and WG is not very meaningful. They both wanted less control by the party of the economy and more "workers control" - or more precisely, workers management. They had different ideas of how to get that, but in the context of the current thread, that's of lesser significance.

Straying yet further off this thread, I'll point out that by 1921-22 the unions and the factory committees had merged, and this was a merger on pretty equal terms. You can read this as a takeover by the union officials of the factory committees if you like, but it is equally plausible to see it as a takeover of the unions by the factory committee officials.

I hope you and your trend are familiar with Chris Goodey's rather famous (at least among Russian labor historians) article in Critique #3, "Factory Committees and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat," in which he explains that the factory committee leaders, who indeed were those most interested in the project of direct worker administration of the factories, tended to be male, better paid metalworkers, a bit on the labor aristocrat side, and disciplinarians, who distrusted the spontaneous revolutionary fervor of newer and more poorly-paid and less skilled workers, especially women workers, for whom they often had disdain.

And that quite a number of the factory committee leaders ended up playing central role in economic management, saw War Communism as the realization of what they wanted, and often became loyal Stalinists, indeed were probably more likely to do so than others of the revolutionary generation of 1917, as Stalin's forced speed industrialization of the late '20s and early '30s also seemed to them like the realization of what they wanted.

The most famous among the Petrograd factory committee leaders were Stalinist Politburo members Chubar' and Skrypnik. Skrypnik famously died "in bad odor" as an alleged Ukrainian nationalist deviationist. Chubar, also Ukrainian, made it all the way to '37 and was purged then as so many others were. Shot in '38.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

24th July 2012, 09:18

Thank you.

If what I wrote was "left communist", then Marx was, too. If you go back through the entire thread, you'll see that the conception of the proletarian party I put forward was his ... as was the later insistence on class composition...

Er, not exactly. Neither of them were proletarians after all. Which was very far from an abstract matter, as many of his opponents within the movement, going all the way back to Weitling in the 1840s in the original Communist League, made much of the fact that he wasn't a proletarian.

His answer to that in private correspondence with Engels was that, due to the economic backwardness of much of continental Europe at the time, workers in the movement ("knoten" as he called them) often had more backward conceptions than did some middle class intellectuals such as ... himself of course. And Engels.

Nor did he always keep these thoughts to himself. There was one meeting, in the '50s I think it was, at which he was being heckled for not being a proletarian and asked how it was that he was supposed to be the leader of the proletariat.

He fairly famously answered "because I said so."

And he was right.

That he lived in extreme poverty did help a lot in deflecting these criticism.

-M.H.-

Clifford C Clavin

24th July 2012, 16:09

Actually, the Communist League didn't exist. It was the League of the Just when Marx joined, and he and Engels fought like hell to transform it into the Communist League. Fortunately, he succeeded. Many of the founding members of the Workers Party fought like hell to transform several organizations (or, at least, sections of them) before stepping out and organizing our own.

But were these real mass workers organizations like those that arose in Marx's day? I mean like the First International?

As far as I can tell, the only thing that exists anywhere in the world today are tiny petit-bourgeois sectarian cults and social democratic parties masquarading as communist outfits.

I think if Marx were born today, he wouldn't have done the same kind of work. The mass struggles of his days, the "combinations of workers," the parties, all have disappeared. This has been almost a half century of post modern nothingness. Feels bad.

Art Vandelay

24th July 2012, 16:29

But were these real mass workers organizations like those that arose in Marx's day? I mean like the First International?

As far as I can tell, the only thing that exists anywhere in the world today are tiny petit-bourgeois sectarian cults and social democratic parties masquarading as communist outfits.

I think if Marx were born today, he wouldn't have done the same kind of work. The mass struggles of his days, the "combinations of workers," the parties, all have disappeared. This has been almost a half century of post modern nothingness. Feels bad.

But why do you think this is? Have we simply had the wrong ideas about how to organize? Or the material conditions have been antithetical to proletarian revolution? Regardless of whether or not you realize it, we are just now exiting one of the darkest periods of reaction under capitalism.

Clifford C Clavin

24th July 2012, 16:43

Material conditions of course. Which is why I say this stuff is kind of idealism to me. It's like "we didn't do the right prayer chants" so heaven didn't come. No one noticed we're living in hell in the meantime.

The working class is more atomized, less socialized, less organized than it was even in Marx's dark days! What difference can a bunch of unemployed kids make in their parents basements? Who left has any real industrial power. Certainly less than any time since the industrial revolution. And with less social weight and power than ever. Easy to destroy, easy to replace. There's a reason there hasn't been a "Battle of Homestead" in a century.

Book O'Dead

24th July 2012, 16:45

Martin Blank

24th July 2012, 21:19

Ah, thanks. Useful and clarifying. However, in the context of the current thread, the distinction between WO and WG is not very meaningful. They both wanted less control by the party of the economy and more "workers control" - or more precisely, workers management. They had different ideas of how to get that, but in the context of the current thread, that's of lesser significance.

Well, who's revolution is it, anyway? You make it sound like the revolution is purely a party affair, and that the working class (hmm, what turn of phrase should I use here? Oh! I know!) is just a big bag of shit to be dragged behind it.

Straying yet further off this thread, I'll point out that by 1921-22 the unions and the factory committees had merged, and this was a merger on pretty equal terms. You can read this as a takeover by the union officials of the factory committees if you like, but it is equally plausible to see it as a takeover of the unions by the factory committee officials.

The merger was far from equal. From the end of November 1917, numerous Bolsheviks, both in the unions and in the government, had called for the factory committees to be subordinated to the unions, which culminated in decrees restricting the authority of the independent committees and then ordering their integration into the local trade union structure (whereupon they died a lingering death). By the beginning of 1919, the factory committees had been swallowed up by the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. Beginning in 1918, one-person management began to appear in the armaments industries. By 1920, it had been extended to all industries and trades, even though not only a significant section of the Russian working class objected but also a large proportion of the RCP(b).

I hope you and your trend are familiar with Chris Goodey's rather famous (at least among Russian labor historians) article in Critique #3, "Factory Committees and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat," in which he explains that the factory committee leaders, who indeed were those most interested in the project of direct worker administration of the factories, tended to be male, better paid metalworkers, a bit on the labor aristocrat side, and disciplinarians, who distrusted the spontaneous revolutionary fervor of newer and more poorly-paid and less skilled workers, especially women workers, for whom they often had disdain.

And that quite a number of the factory committee leaders ended up playing central role in economic management, saw War Communism as the realization of what they wanted, and often became loyal Stalinists, indeed were probably more likely to do so than others of the revolutionary generation of 1917, as Stalin's forced speed industrialization of the late '20s and early '30s also seemed to them like the realization of what they wanted.

The most famous among the Petrograd factory committee leaders were Stalinist Politburo members Chubar' and Skrypnik. Skrypnik famously died "in bad odor" as an alleged Ukrainian nationalist deviationist. Chubar, also Ukrainian, made it all the way to '37 and was purged then as so many others were. Shot in '38.

For the record, I've read the article. But, in all reality, is it neither here nor there.

For those of you playing at home, this is the set-up for what is called an angular argument. That is, a person uses a tangential point as an "angle of attack" against an opponent, as a means of attempting to undercut and discredit them. The Spartacists, of which AMH is a sympathizer (and former member), have developed this dishonest method of discourse to an art form. Sometimes, the angle has a kernel of fact at its core; sometimes, it doesn't. Either way, though, it doesn't matter. The strawman is in place and ready to scare the bejeezus out of those who, for some oddball reason, are afraid of how the Spartacists will use it.

What on earth does it matter who was in charge of the factory committees in Russia? It has no bearing on what a workplace committee movement would look or act like in the U.S. or any other country today. It certainly has no bearing in this discussion, since we are far removed from Russia in 1917. But I understand that this is your political "comfort zone", so I don't fault you for resorting to such cheap shots. I just think you're better than that.

Just glad I had my trusty Zippo handy for all those strawmen. (Given how the Spartacists will latch on to anything as an angular argument, I can even see them accusing me of burning a cross after putting the torch to AMH's strawmen.)

Martin Blank

24th July 2012, 21:44

Er, not exactly. Neither of them were proletarians after all. Which was very far from an abstract matter, as many of his opponents within the movement, going all the way back to Weitling in the 1840s in the original Communist League, made much of the fact that he wasn't a proletarian.

Again, we've had this argument before -- in fact, in the same thread where we discussed the class composition of the Bolshevik Central Committee. The one thing I did not answer in that thread, as a response to you, was about the biography of Engels I used as source material for dispelling your argument. It was on the MIA, yes, but it wasn't one of the definitions written by the archive's directors; the bio I drew from was the one Lenin wrote for the Encyclopedia.

What can and should be added here is that the Marx and Engels of the 1840s or 1850s were not the same as the Marx and Engels of the 1870s or 1880s. Prior to the experience of the Paris Commune, Marx and Engels both looked at the class struggle through the lens of the democratic revolution -- through the experiences of 1848-1851. After the Commune, however, both Marx and Engels underwent profound changes, and undertook broad examinations of their past political positions. These changes and examinations not only manifested themselves in their interventions in the First International (the decision at the Hague Congress regarding class composition of sections), but also in their view toward the growing Social-Democratic movement throughout Europe.

His answer to that in private correspondence with Engels was that, due to the economic backwardness of much of continental Europe at the time, workers in the movement ("knoten" as he called them) often had more backward conceptions than did some middle class intellectuals such as ... himself of course. And Engels.

Nor did he always keep these thoughts to himself. There was one meeting, in the '50s I think it was, at which he was being heckled for not being a proletarian and asked how it was that he was supposed to be the leader of the proletariat.

He fairly famously answered "because I said so."

And he was right.

LOL! Do you really think Marx meant that? "Because I said so"?! Wow.

That he lived in extreme poverty did help a lot in deflecting these criticism.

And why did Marx live in extreme poverty? It wasn't just for shits and giggles. As someone armed with a PhD, he could have easily found a job at any university he wished. But he chose to break from those class relations and carry out his existence as a wage laborer. His greatest sources of income, aside from Engels, came from translating and writing articles for American newspapers. He was paid by the column inch, not a salary or any other kind of steady paycheck. The modern term for such a person is a stringer.

28350

24th July 2012, 22:15

Whatever a Party can do isn't communism

Art Vandelay

24th July 2012, 22:26

Whatever a Party can do isn't communism

Your contributions to this thread just keep getting better and better.

Brosa Luxemburg

24th July 2012, 22:30

Whatever a Party can do isn't communism

Really? I think many communists would disagree, like Marx and Engels.

At least give arguments as to why you think this rather than just make a "one-liner"

28350

25th July 2012, 03:08

Really? I think many communists would disagree, like Marx and Engels.

At least give arguments as to why you think this rather than just make a "one-liner"

What can a party do? Seize political power. If this really is the "real movement," what does it do with this political power? Suppress capitalism first, then instate the mysterious content of communism? Capitalism, and moreover, alienation, can't be overcome with politics -- that which implies alienation. But then again, it wouldn't even come to that, because political power is never exercised to abolish or bury the law of value by "proletarian" parties, but is wielded to crystallize or preserve the law of value. Even all this is beside the point, as a "real movement" based on new social relations wouldn't need a bourgeois relic nursed by the petty bourgeois like the party-form for people to relate and act as people.

If you disagree with any of this, as you probably do, I ask you, what are your criteria for a successful party? A certain number of constituents? A certain class base? If the party is "successful," what does it do? Does it seize political power? What does it do with this political power? Where is there room for communism to enter the picture?

As for the one liners, I thought maybe the language of repressive consciousness would be best to make my point. When in Rome and all

Brosa Luxemburg

25th July 2012, 03:48

What can a party do?

Organize the most class conscious and revolutionary into one organization with the common goal of revolution, establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, and supporting the eventual abolition of the state, classes, and other remnants of bourgeois society.

Seize political power.

I would argue yes, but not everyone that supports the conception of the party agrees with this, so I can only speak for myself.

If this really is the "real movement," what does it do with this political power? Suppress capitalism first, then instate the mysterious content of communism? Capitalism, and moreover, alienation, can't be overcome with politics -- that which implies alienation.

Yes, the dictatorship of the proletariat is used to suppress capitalism and defend the revolution. Then, once this task is completed, the transition to a stateless and classless society would hopefully develop (communism) yet, of course, we do not know how this society would look because the material conditions for such a society do not exist yet (and, as I am sure you agree, the material proceeds the ideal). Even people who do not advocate a party agree with this (except for the anarchists). I never said Capitalism could be overcome with "just politics" which would imply parliamentary action inside the bourgeois state, but revolution can.

But then again, it wouldn't even come to that, because political power is never exercised to abolish or bury the law of value by "proletarian" parties, but is wielded to crystallize or preserve the law of value.

I assume you are talking about the Bolsheviks and Lenin here correct? Well, if this is the example you were thinking of, yes this did happen. And why? Well, Russia was a backwards country with no real development (although years previous to the October Revolution is was developing, but not nearly at a rate fast enough to make a real difference). There was massive famine, civil war, drought, invasion, etc. This all made the NEP (or "state capitalism") an unfortunate but necessary step to take. Now, if you are talking about the Stalinist states, then we are in much more agreement here.

Even all this is beside the point, as a "real movement" based on new social relations wouldn't need a bourgeois relic nursed by the petty bourgeois like the party-form for people to relate and act as people.

The party-from would, though, organize the most class conscious and revolutionary into one organization while excluding reactionary elements. When class consciousness is high then the party would be made up of the majority of the class. The party we envision is not the same structure as that of the bourgeoisie, but much different.

If you disagree with any of this, as you probably do, I ask you, what are your criteria for a successful party? A certain number of constituents?A certain class base?

At another time I would have said "no, it should not be class discriminatory" but after reading Miles's posts my views are changing and I am undecided on this.

If the party is "successful," what does it do?

It would do a few things that I have already mentioned in this thread I believed, but I will repeat myself.

I would suggest that the party do a few things. I think that the party should continue to develop a Marxian understanding of existing society, putting emphasis on revolution and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat. It should develop propaganda and make the party visible to the proletariat as a viable alternative to existing society through various means. Here, I would think that the party could develop somewhat of an "alternative culture" to today's world (such as providing anything from free medical service, a "cop watch", etc.) If the party can be seen as a viable option that differs from existing society, more people will be interested in the party and it's ideas. The party, of course, in all situations, should maintain a revolutionary stance opposed to all forms of bourgeois society.

In times of high class consciousness the party should then first of all link up with various vanguard elements internationally (this could happen in times of low consciousness as well, but it should certainly happen in times of high class consciousness). The party should organize the class and prepare it for revolution and prepare it for an alternative society by building some of these structures in this time period.

Of course, everything I said above could turn out to be radically different with various material conditions that manifest themselves. This should be frankly admitted. This is all speculation (not to deny that this isn't an important conversation, because it very much is so).

Does it seize political power?

I would argue yes.

What does it do with this political power?

I answered this earlier in my post.

Where is there room for communism to enter the picture?

I am not a fortune teller, but I would assume after the bourgeoisie and it's violent allies have been suppressed and the revolution has been successfully defended.

Clifford C Clavin

25th July 2012, 04:10

I am not a fortune teller, but I would assume after the bourgeoisie and it's violent allies have been suppressed and the revolution has been successfully defended.

Then the politburo will vote to abolish itself and the secret police with wither away into oblivion like pixie ferries do at the end of children's stories.

But wait...

http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/sites/country/img/5826_Mao%20Zedong.jpg

Comrade Jandar

25th July 2012, 06:06

Brosa Luxemburg

26th July 2012, 00:52

I don't understand how anyone truly believes that the next attempt at social revolution will resemble anything similar to what occurred in the 20th century. I believe, and some more forward thinking Marxists recognize, that we live in a fundamentally different type of capitalism and thus our struggles and strategies for revolution will be different.

I agree. I think that the party working within bourgeois parliaments, trade unions, etc. is a strategy that should not be followed by the party and were tactics only correct for Russia during the time period in those specific conditions (I agree with Gorter on this). Either way, I think the conception of the vanguard party is as essential now as it was back then.

What organizational form of the proletariat will be in the post-modern era I know not, but I highly doubt it will be that of the party, in either the bourgeois or marxian sense.

It's funny. It seems a lot of "anti-party" people say they won't support a party, but then talk about an "organization" that would have the exact same role as the party.

A Marxist Historian

26th July 2012, 03:38

Well, who's revolution is it, anyway? You make it sound like the revolution is purely a party affair, and that the working class (hmm, what turn of phrase should I use here? Oh! I know!) is just a big bag of shit to be dragged behind it.

The merger was far from equal. From the end of November 1917, numerous Bolsheviks, both in the unions and in the government, had called for the factory committees to be subordinated to the unions, which culminated in decrees restricting the authority of the independent committees and then ordering their integration into the local trade union structure (whereupon they died a lingering death). By the beginning of 1919, the factory committees had been swallowed up by the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. Beginning in 1918, one-person management began to appear in the armaments industries. By 1920, it had been extended to all industries and trades, even though not only a significant section of the Russian working class objected but also a large proportion of the RCP(b).

For the record, I've read the article. But, in all reality, is it neither here nor there.

For those of you playing at home, this is the set-up for what is called an angular argument. That is, a person uses a tangential point as an "angle of attack" against an opponent, as a means of attempting to undercut and discredit them. The Spartacists, of which AMH is a sympathizer (and former member), have developed this dishonest method of discourse to an art form. Sometimes, the angle has a kernel of fact at its core; sometimes, it doesn't. Either way, though, it doesn't matter. The strawman is in place and ready to scare the bejeezus out of those who, for some oddball reason, are afraid of how the Spartacists will use it.

What on earth does it matter who was in charge of the factory committees in Russia? It has no bearing on what a workplace committee movement would look or act like in the U.S. or any other country today. It certainly has no bearing in this discussion, since we are far removed from Russia in 1917. But I understand that this is your political "comfort zone", so I don't fault you for resorting to such cheap shots. I just think you're better than that.

Just glad I had my trusty Zippo handy for all those strawmen. (Given how the Spartacists will latch on to anything as an angular argument, I can even see them accusing me of burning a cross after putting the torch to AMH's strawmen.)

And you accuse me of cheap shots? I'm disappointed in this posting, you usually do much better.

Instead of answering my points, you engage in personalistic guilt by association, exactly the sort of thing you were condemning earlier in the thread.

I will neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of your attempt to "out" me, I will note only that it is the sort of thing supposed to be frowned on here at Revleft.

-M.H.-

Book O'Dead

26th July 2012, 04:00

And you accuse me of cheap shots? I'm disappointed in this posting, you usually do much better.

Instead of answering my points, you engage in personalistic guilt by association, exactly the sort of thing you were condemning earlier in the thread.

I will neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of your attempt to "out" me, I will note only that it is the sort of thing supposed to be frowned on here at Revleft.

-M.H.-

All Miles did was to point out the weakness of your argument and properly expose your method of advancing it.

The fact that you admit to your inability to "confirm nor deny the accuracy" of Mile's words is quite telling.

Martin Blank

26th July 2012, 10:45

And you accuse me of cheap shots? I'm disappointed in this posting, you usually do much better.

Instead of answering my points, you engage in personalistic guilt by association, exactly the sort of thing you were condemning earlier in the thread.

I can admit to not being 100 percent the other day. I had been more than 24 hours without the raft of medications I have to take daily -- my blood pressure was through the ceiling and giving me headaches, my angina was making my entire body hurt, the fluid build-up in my lungs was making it hard to breathe, and my blood-sugar was going up and down like an out-of-control rollercoaster.

So, yeah, I'll admit I took a couple cheap shots. I can accept that criticism. At the same time, though, you know as well as I do that there are certain elements of legacy you accept when you align yourself with a certain political tendency. I've interacted with the Spartacist League since the iSt days -- since the days of Nicabucks and the Red Avengers (the tail end, admittedly). So I'm pretty familiar with the SL's history -- the highlights and lowlights. Perhaps hanging one of the lowlights around your neck, as if you had something to do with it, was a little unfair and reflected some poor judgment. In that sense, I do apologize.

Now that this is dealt with, you can answer the question: Whose revolution is it, anyway?

I will neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of your attempt to "out" me, I will note only that it is the sort of thing supposed to be frowned on here at Revleft.

I am not "outing" you. You publicly state in your profile that you are a sympathizer of the SL. In a past posting, you said you were a former member. I am working on information you provided publicly on this forum. I would never consciously "out" someone, and I have actually been one of the strongest advocates on here to keep members' personal information off-forum. I have been "outed" before, and it cost me a decent job. I would not willingly do that to anyone. As it is, though, you provided every bit of information I cited in that comment. If you want to point a finger and accuse someone of "outing" you, find a mirror.

Now that this too has been clarified, you can explain what the point was of raising the issue of who were leaders in the Factory-Shop Committees in Soviet Russia, and what bearing (if any) it has on the question today.

Die Neue Zeit

26th July 2012, 14:34

I don't understand how anyone truly believes that the next attempt at social revolution will resemble anything similar to what occurred in the 20th century. I believe, and some more forward thinking Marxists recognize, that we live in a fundamentally different type of capitalism and thus our struggles and strategies for revolution will be different. What organizational form of the proletariat will be in the post-modern era I know not, but I highly doubt it will be that of the party, in either the bourgeois or marxian sense.

I agree on the first part, but naturally disagree strongly on the second. Most doubters prefer ad hoc councils, which have been tried and found wanting time and again.

You would think, wouldn't you? And yet Lenin's first action upon overturning the bourgeois Provisional Government was to establish a bourgeois cabinet and declare a bourgeois republic- "people's commissars" and "Soviet" as they may have been formally styled.

Please. No bourgeois republic was declared, and no bourgeois cabinet was formed, either. :glare:

Besides, the Congress passed only three decrees. Not even supplemental decrees pursuant to the fulfillment of those early decrees were passed by the CEC, let alone the Congress. The organs best positioned to implement immediate redress, especially within the Workers Decrees, were not the soviets or even their executive committees, but ministries and cabinets culminating in an RPG, as early as November 9, a mere two days!

Rational Radical

26th July 2012, 18:33

An organization of anarchists determined to abolish the state and establish democratic workers councils is not the same thing as a vanguard party putting it self as the head of the revolution that's determined to seize state party in order to 'liberate' the proletarian. Anarchists shouldnt be opposed to organizing but if we do organize it will be at grassroots level rather than in a centralized,top down,hierarchical structure.

A Marxist Historian

26th July 2012, 22:42

I can admit to not being 100 percent the other day. I had been more than 24 hours without the raft of medications I have to take daily -- my blood pressure was through the ceiling and giving me headaches, my angina was making my entire body hurt, the fluid build-up in my lungs was making it hard to breathe, and my blood-sugar was going up and down like an out-of-control rollercoaster.

I can sympathize on that basis. Especially since I haven't exactly been at my best lately healthwise either. Nothing like blood in the urine after two weeks of the flu (and overwork at my job) to get one worried...

So, yeah, I'll admit I took a couple cheap shots. I can accept that criticism. At the same time, though, you know as well as I do that there are certain elements of legacy you accept when you align yourself with a certain political tendency. I've interacted with the Spartacist League since the iSt days -- since the days of Nicabucks and the Red Avengers (the tail end, admittedly). So I'm pretty familiar with the SL's history -- the highlights and lowlights. Perhaps hanging one of the lowlights around your neck, as if you had something to do with it, was a little unfair and reflected some poor judgment. In that sense, I do apologize.

Apology accepted.

Now that this is dealt with, you can answer the question: Whose revolution is it, anyway?

That of the workers of course. I just don't happen to believe that what workers want is to run their own factories. Some do, mostly highly skilled workers, who are those most interested in "workers control" projects, and quite naturally might be attracted to projects under which they play a central role in economic management. Such as those of the WO, or WA ... or Stalin during the Five Year Plan.

What most of us want is a decent life in a decent society, and, frankly, having as little to do with the damn factory as possible. There are vastly more interesting things to do than run factories, to my tastes and that of most people.

The economy should be run by those who have the necessary knowledge and training, are good at it, and enjoy it. That ia perfectly in tune with the way the Bolsheviks did things, insofar as that was possible.

I am not "outing" you. You publicly state in your profile that you are a sympathizer of the SL. In a past posting, you said you were a former member. I am working on information you provided publicly on this forum. I would never consciously "out" someone, and I have actually been one of the strongest advocates on here to keep members' personal information off-forum. I have been "outed" before, and it cost me a decent job. I would not willingly do that to anyone. As it is, though, you provided every bit of information I cited in that comment. If you want to point a finger and accuse someone of "outing" you, find a mirror.

Did I say that? I can neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of such a statement by me. Perhaps I was drunk at the time, perhaps I wasn't, perhaps I had spent too much time posting to Revleft...

Now that this too has been clarified, you can explain what the point was of raising the issue of who were leaders in the Factory-Shop Committees in Soviet Russia, and what bearing (if any) it has on the question today.

Why certainly. Because, whereas if the WO had won out, trade union officials like Shliapnikov would have been running the economy, if your preferred group had won out, factory committee officials like Skrypnik and Chubar' would have been running the economy,

Now, you can protest that they weren't in the WG. But that merely reflects the fact that the WO really did have powerful roots in the Russian trade unions, but all the WA had was one medium prominent factory committee activist, Myasnikov.

By the way, does your group also support the WA's famous call for freedom of expression for everybody in Soviet Russia "from anarchists to monarchists"? I think that would have been rather dangerous in the NEP atmosphere. I figure this must have had something to do with inappropriate personal guilt feelings around his personal role in the killing of Grand Duke Michael.

-M.H.-

Martin Blank

27th July 2012, 01:40

That of the workers of course. I just don't happen to believe that what workers want is to run their own factories. Some do, mostly highly skilled workers, who are those most interested in "workers control" projects, and quite naturally might be attracted to projects under which they play a central role in economic management. Such as those of the WO, or WG ... or Stalin during the Five Year Plan.

So here's the question I have: How much of this desire to not "run their own factories" is a result of basic class characteristics, and how much of it is the effect of bourgeois (and petty-bourgeois) ideology?

What most of us want is a decent life in a decent society, and, frankly, having as little to do with the damn factory as possible. There are vastly more interesting things to do than run factories, to my tastes and that of most people.

My experiences have been different. The co-workers I've had did think that they should have, at the very least, some control over how the workplace was organized. They didn't trust the supervisors or managers to do it right, and whenever they weren't around, a different method of organization was used. When I was working the midnight shift at the railroad, we didn't have a manager present. During that shift, we implemented direct workers' control of production. We met at the beginning of the shift, went through what needed to be done at what time, decided democratically who would take care of what, and get it done. More often than not, this meant we were finished with our work faster and more efficiently than if we relied on what the managers left in their instructions. The only thing that would mess up our plans would be if a train was late or if Customs showed up early. Admittedly, there were only a handful of us working that shift, but the experience carried over into the other shifts when co-workers rotated on to daytime and afternoons.

Why did it work? Well, at first, it didn't, for the reasons you stated. Co-workers just wanted to follow the bosses' instructions and be done with it. They were busting their asses trying to get things done while other workers sat idle. That led to a lot of tensions and distrust. It was when this broke out into a screaming match that they were ready to consider alternatives. And it was less than a week after we started practicing workers' control on the job that the tensions were gone, trust had been re-established and all of us were actually happy to come to work. We may have still been alienated from the product of our labor, but we were no longer alienated from the production process itself. It was our shift, it was our workplace and it was our collective labor-power getting things done. We knew it and we saw it, every day.

And I think this is the difference we're having here. You are making your argument from the standpoint of the typical unconscious alienated worker, who wants nothing to do with the capitalist factory system. I don't blame you for that. If that had been the extent of my own experience, I might agree with you. But I've seen the effects that our little experiment had. We took what was effectively a company union and turned it into something the bosses feared. We organized the first rejection of a contract by the union ever. We organized a workers' aid program and Christmas toy drive when the bosses refused to issue the annual Christmas bonus because we voted down their offer. The two local stewards were completely isolated. The Business Agent was booed out of a local meeting. And the best part of all is that most of this was organized by co-workers whose only radical experience was working on that shift with me.

Workers' control empowered my co-workers beyond anything I could have conceived at the time. They felt like they could finally hold their heads up high when they walked into the yard -- like they were full human beings and not merely slaves (a comment more profound if you consider that 90 percent of the workforce was African American). Most importantly, they felt -- they still feel -- like this is their workplace, and that the supervisors and managers are only there for formality's sake.

The economy should be run by those who have the necessary knowledge and training, are good at it, and enjoy it. That is perfectly in tune with the way the Bolsheviks did things, insofar as that was possible.

Yes, it is in tune with how the "Bolsheviks" did things ... all the way up to 1991.

Did I say that? I can neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of such a statement by me. Perhaps I was drunk at the time, perhaps I wasn't, perhaps I had spent too much time posting to Revleft...

This place will do that to you. :cool:

Why certainly. Because, whereas if the WO had won out, trade union officials like Shliapnikov would have been running the economy, if your preferred group had won out, factory committee officials like Skrypnik and Chubar' would have been running the economy.

Maybe. Then again, maybe not. That would have depended on whether they continued in their positions or not. And given the material conditions that prevailed at the time when the Workers' Group was at its strongest, there is a real likelihood that neither of these two would have been involved, in spite of their allegiance to the defunct Workers Opposition. Moreover, these two would not have been the only ones making decisions (if they were making them at all), since it would have been a congress of factory committees that would have decided on the economic planning and organization of the economy. Really, raising Skrypnik and Chubar' in this discussion is nothing but a strawman argument.

Now, you can protest that they weren't in the WG. But that merely reflects the fact that the WO really did have powerful roots in the Russian trade unions, but all the WG had was one medium prominent factory committee activist, Myasnikov.

You should really read Paul Avrich's essay on Myasnikov and the Workers' Group (http://libcom.org/library/bolshevik-opposition-lenin-paul-avrich). He points out that the WG had strong roots in the working class of Petrograd and Moscow, as well as ongoing strong support in the Perm' region.

The "Provisional Organizational Bureau" of the WG was originally composed of Myasnikov, Moiseyev and Kuznetsov (a former WO member won over to the WG). Other prominent members of the clandestine WG were Makh (a Bolshevik since 1907 and former WO member), Tyunov, Demidov (another former WO), Berzina (one of the few Old Bolshevik women members), Kotov, Shokhanov and Medvedev (not the same one who was a leader in WO). By the spring of 1923, the WG had over 300 members in Moscow, about 200 each in Petrograd and Perm', and hundreds more scattered throughout the USSR. The WG had support in the Party, Komsomol and Red Army garrisons.

When the mass strikes in Moscow and Petrograd broke out in the fall of 1923, the WG was heavily involved in their organization and activity. Because of their support and presence in the working class and in these strikes, the GPU was ordered to crush them.

The most relevant point to make here would be that Myasnikov and the WG were the first Bolsheviks to be permanently expelled from the Party, imprisoned and exiled because of their criticism of the leadership. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Radek were the chief proponents of these actions -- of suppressing freedom of criticism, of disrupting and breaking up a political opposition, of using the police, its prisons and mental institutions to silence dissent. The suppression of Myasnikov and the Workers' Group was the archetype for what Trotsky and the Left Opposition faced years later. Indeed, Trotsky, as the main denouncer of Myasnikov after Lenin fell ill, made the very bed he was to inhabit at the hands of Stalin and Bukharin. In many respects, one can argue that Trotsky was felled by his own hand, and not that of Stalin, since it was he who pushed most strongly for the very precedent that led to his own expulsion and exile.

By the way, does your group also support the WG's famous call for freedom of expression for everybody in Soviet Russia "from anarchists to monarchists"? I think that would have been rather dangerous in the NEP atmosphere. I figure this must have had something to do with inappropriate personal guilt feelings around his personal role in the killing of Grand Duke Michael.

The Workers' Group never adopted that position. Myasnikov dropped that formulation about a year after first raising it, narrowing it to all those who were pro-soviet and not including those who took up arms in counterrevolution. It's nice to see that you're beginning to do your homework on the WG, though. I would suggest reading the sections of the Manifesto of the Workers' Group that are published on the ICC's website (http://en.internationalism.org/ir/142/workers-group-manifesto-1) to learn more.