How Should Socialists Organise?

[The Idler]

From Socialist Standard May 2013

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2013/no-1305-may-2013/how-should-socialists-organise

We were anti-Leninist from the start.
In recent months the idea or concept of 'Leninism' has been placed under the microscope with the revelations of the undemocratic activities of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party. In March the Socialist Standard republished its 1995 education document as The SWP: an undemocratic Leninist organisation which identifies the undemocratic nature of the 'Leninist' concept of 'democratic centralism' in the SWP. The origins of 'Leninism' lie at the beginning of the twentieth century when Lenin distorted the original message of Marx and Engels, but even in this period there were criticisms of 'Leninism' and 'Bolshevism' by such revolutionary thinkers as Rosa Luxemburg and Julius Martov.


Lenin's pamphlet What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of our Movement was published in 1902 when Lenin, Martov and Plekhanov with the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) were in political exile from Tsarist Russia. The pamphlet detailed the organisational structure Lenin believed necessary for a revolutionary political party in an autocratic state like that of Tsarist Russia. This organisational structure of a disciplined centralised party of committed activists is the seedbed for the later authoritarianism and dictatorship in the Bolshevik regime in Russia. Lenin argued that the working class would not achieve political class consciousness simply by fighting the 'economic' battles between capital and labour over wages and working hours, and that Marxists needed to form a political party, a 'vanguard' of dedicated revolutionaries to bring socialist consciousness to the working class.


Lenin wrote that:
'Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only from outside the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain this knowledge is the sphere of relationships (of all classes and strata) to the state and government, the sphere of the interrelations between all classes.'


Lenin had little if any belief in the working class as agents of change, believing 'that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness', and that socialist ideas came from 'the educated representatives of the propertied classes' or 'revolutionary socialist intellectuals.'


At the second congress of the exiled RSDLP on Charlotte Street in London in 1903, there was a split between Lenin on one side and Martov and Plekhanov on the other. The opposing factions became known as 'Bolshevik' and 'Menshevik' respectively. The split centred on definitions of party membership. The Martov 'Menshevik' faction favoured a loose (in comparison to Lenin's views) interpretation of party membership as 'one who accepts the Party's programme, supports the Party financially, and renders it regular personal assistance under the direction of one of its organisations.' In contrast Lenin and the 'Bolshevik' faction wanted a restricted membership of a fully committed cadre; 'one who accepts its programme and who supports the Party both financially and by personal participation in one of the Party's organisations.'


The ideas of Lenin in What Is To Be Done? are in contrast to what Marx and Engels wrote in the Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1848 where they described the proletarian movement as 'the self conscious, independent movement of the immense majority in the interest of the immense majority.’ Marx drafted the general rules of the International Working Men's Association in 1864 which began categorically with the line 'that the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.’ In 1879 Marx and Engels felt the need to distribute a circular where they stated: 'when the International was formed we expressly formulated the battle cry; the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, cooperate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois.'


In response to Lenin's What Is To Be Done? Rosa Luxemburg wrote Organisational Questions of Russian Social Democracy (1904) which later became known as Leninism or Marxism? where she criticised his concept of revolutionary organisation and identified Lenin as a 'Blanquist' socialist revolutionist.


Luxemburg wrote that:


'Blanquism did not count on the direct action of the working class. It, therefore, did not need to organise the people for the revolution. The people were expected to play their part only at the moment of revolution. Preparation for the revolution concerned only the little group of revolutionists armed for the coup.'


This is the Bolshevik strategy in its essence, both then and now.
Luxemburg identified 'the two principles on which Lenin’s centralism rests are precisely these: the blind subordination, in the smallest detail, of all party organs to the party centre which alone thinks, guides, and decides for all. The rigorous separation of the organised nucleus of revolutionaries from its social-revolutionary surroundings.' This is Blanquist organisation, although Lenin himself 'defined his 'revolutionary Social Democrat' as the ' Jacobin indissolubly connected with the organisation of the class-conscious proletariat.'


Lenin's former comrade-in-arms Julius Martov wrote a critique of 'Leninism' and 'Bolshevism' in his 1919 work The Ideology of ‘Sovietism’ identifying the 'Jacobin and Blanquist idea of a minority dictatorship.' Martov reiterated the point made by Engels 'that the epoch of revolutions effected by conscious minorities heading unknowing masses had closed for ever. From then on, he [Engels] said, revolution would be prepared by long years of political propaganda, organisation, education, and would be realised directly and consciously by the interested masses themselves.'


Martov also quoted the Swiss Social Democrat Charles Naine’s observation on 'Bolshevism' as 'the minority possessing the knowledge of the truth of scientific socialism has the right to impose it on the mass.' Later Martov looks at Blanqui as a major influence ('a dictatorial power whose mission it will be to direct the revolutionary movement').


Lenin's own words in a speech on Economic Construction in 1920 were also revealing when he said:


'the Soviet Socialist Democracy is in no way inconsistent with the rule and dictatorship of one person; that the will of a class is at times best realised by a dictator, who sometimes will accomplish more by himself and is frequently more needed. At any rate, the principal relation toward one person rule was not only explained a long time ago but was also decided by the Central Executive Committee.'


Marx in his 1845 Theses on Feuerbach had written that 'The materialist doctrine that men are the products of conditions and education, different men therefore the products of other conditions and changed education, forgets that circumstances may be altered by men and that the educator has himself to be educated. This doctrine leads inevitably to the ideas of a society composed of two distinct portions, one of which is elevated above society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.'


Martov correctly pointed out that if this thesis is applied
'. . . to the class struggle of the propertyless, this means the following. Impelled by the same ‘circumstances’ of capitalist society that determine their character as an enslaved class, the workers enter into a struggle against the society that enslaves them. The process of this struggle modifies the social ‘circumstances.’ It modifies the environment in which the working class moves. This way the working class modifies its own character. From a class reflecting passively the mental servitude to which they are subjected, the propertyless become a class which frees itself actively from all enslavement, including that of the mind.'


In conclusion Martov saw 'the proletarian class considered as a whole is the only possible builder of the new society.'


A year after the RSDLP congress in London at which the Bolshevik/Menshevik split took place 142 former members of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) met to found the Socialist Party of Great Britain on quite different organisational principles to those proposed by Lenin. The SDF was riddled with 'reformist' policies, undemocratic party organisation, authoritarianism and dictatorial methods used by its leadership. The rules of the newly established party gave the party membership complete control of the organisation, all meetings at branch, executive committee and conference were open to the public; there were no leaders, just an annually elected executive committee with power only to run week-to-week affairs and carry out membership decisions. The declaration of principles of the new party stated that 'the emancipation of the working class must be work of the working class itself.' We were therefore 'anti-Leninist' in principle and practice before 'Leninism' and the Bolshevik revolution that was its political outcome.

[Le Socialiste]

So, I wanted to respond with my own rejection of what the authors of this article outlined regarding Lenin and the revolutionary party, but my response ended being much longer than I anticipated. I'm gonna post it here anyway, but I understand if comrades respond with a "tl;dr" - I'd feel the same way if the post wasn't mine. ;)

Anyway, this is me being as formal and comradely as possible in response to the Socialist Standard's article "How Should Socialists Organize?" - a question I'm not sure even they fully addressed.
________________________________________


The Socialist Standard posits a familiar denunciation of the 'Leninist model' in “How Should Socialists Organize?” - firstly as an elitist formation that reduces the historical importance of the working-class, and secondly as a substitutionist entity built upon 'undemocratic activities'. I will begin with the first of this article's points, that Leninism's origins lie in the distortion of Marx and Engels' original message. I will seek later to highlight and disprove some of the assumptions inherent in the myth of Luxemburg's 'rejection' of Leninism as well. I was going to conclude on what the Leninist model means for revolutionaries organizing in the 21st century, but I’ve since run out of time to do so. Other comrade’s comments on the matter will have to suffice.

Lenin's understanding of the relationship between the class and party was anything but original. Far from distorting Marx, Lenin shared his belief that the 'necessary interconnection of socialist theory and practice with the working-class and labor' necessitated the subordination of theoretical and programmatic clarity to, in Marx's words, "every step of real movement." The question of organization, central to Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? occurs at a time when figures like Luxemburg and Kautsky, among others, were asking similar questions (1902-08). Thus one finds the notion of the revolutionary workers party as “the vanguard of the proletariat” to be not at all peculiar to Lenin; in fact it can be argued that he, among other major theorists of the period, drew inspiration from Marx and Engels themselves:

"The Communists...are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement."

Herein we find not Marxism with an attached hyphen, but the simple undistorted Marx many of us are familiar with. The idea pertaining to the role of communists within the broader working-class movement isn’t simply traceable to Lenin alone, but further back to Marx and Engels. Revolutionary socialists, it is understood, must be inseparable from and responsive to the real shifts, struggles and movements of the working-class.

This is something which the authors of the above article either fail or choose not to understand, the consequences of which are evident throughout the piece. This mistake leads them to, in their words, see the organizational structure as proposed by Lenin as the “seedbed for the later authoritarianism and dictatorship in the Bolshevik regime in Russia.” Here it seems worthwhile to delve a little into the subject of democratic centralism and what Lenin (who drew on and accepted the Menshevik definition of the term as early as 1905), understood it to mean.

According to their November 1905 resolution, the Mensheviks introduced the term to mean "decisions of the guiding collectives are binding on the members of those organizations of which the collective is the organ. Actions affecting the organization as a whole...must be decided upon by all members of the organization. Decisions of lower-level organizations must not be implemented if they contradict decisions of higher organizations."

The Bolsheviks accepted this, and sought in many instances to apply it - when applicable - to their situation. Lenin explained it further in 1906, commenting that "The principle of democratic centralism and autonomy for local Party organizations implies universal and full freedom to criticize so long as this does not disturb the unity of a definite action; it rules out all criticism which disrupts or makes difficult the unity of an action decided by the Party." We find very little in terms of what might contradict the original definition of the term in Lenin’s writings. Indeed, both the original 1905 resolution and Lenin’s understanding of it a year later stress two key points: 1) universal and full freedom of discussion for all members concerning decisions affecting the organization as a whole; 2) Decisions disrupting or otherwise contradicting the unity of a definite action as decided by the party are, on the whole, impermissible.

We may easily condense these two points into something most are familiar with: freedom of discussion, unity in action.

There would appear to be little disagreement on this matter of democratic centralism between the Mensheviks as they introduced it, and the Bolsheviks as they adopted it. Where Lenin does break with his Menshevik counterparts however, is on the question of “limits within which decisions of Party congresses may be criticized.” Lenin resists the idea as posited by the Mensheviks that such limitations are necessary, stressing the fundamental characteristics of the democratic centralist model:

“In a revolutionary epoch like the present, all theoretical errors and tactical deviations of the Party are most ruthlessly criticized by experience itself, which enlightens and educates the working class with unprecedented rapidity. At such a time, the duty of every Social Democrat is to strive to ensure that the ideological struggle within the Party on questions of theory and tactics is conducted as openly, widely and freely as possible, but that on no account does it disturb or hamper the unity of revolutionary action of the Social-Democratic proletariat. . .

We are profoundly convinced that the workers' Social-Democratic organizations must be united, but in these united organizations, there must be wide and free discussion of Party questions, free comradely criticism and assessment of events in Party life.”

In 1921 Lenin, among others, touched on the concept of democratic centralism further in an organizational resolution regarding the organization of communist parties. Rather than contradict his earlier writings on the subject, Lenin instead reaffirms the guiding principles of the democratic centralist model. The resolution in question actually warns the leaderships of communist parties not to ‘go too far in the direction of centralization’:

“Centralization in the Communist Party does not mean formal, mechanical centralization, but the centralization of Communist activity, i.e., the creation of a leadership that is strong and effective and at the same time flexible. . .Formal or mechanical centralization would mean the centralization of 'power' in the hands of the Party bureaucracy, allowing it to dominate the other members of the Party or the revolutionary proletarian masses outside the Party."

Lenin was far from an organizational fetishist; his conception of these models and methods were heavily dependent on the conditions of whatever period the party developed in. Thus clandestine methods of organization were given priority in times of severe repression and illegality, but by and large abandoned as inapplicable during revolutionary periods. Sometimes it became necessary to "open the gates" during periods of mass activity and revolutionary sentiment in order for newly radicalized workers to join. A party's membership, asserted Lenin, must be active participants both inside and outside its boundaries, rooting themselves in the Marxist tradition while simultaneously learning to link up and apply theory through practice.

The vanguard is not some monolithic, omniscient entity, subordinating its members (indeed, the working-class itself) to its “leadership.” The party plays the role of a guiding organization in relation to the self-emancipatory activity of the masses. As Trotsky noted: "Without a guiding organization, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston box. But nevertheless, what moves things is not the piston or the box, but the steam."

I feel that I have sufficiently explained Lenin’s understanding of democratic centralism here, including how it doesn’t quite begin to explain the degenerative, bureaucratic elements of the revolution, and would like to turn to other related matters - namely the supposition that Leninism perceives the working-class not as agents of change, but as passive vessels in need of revolutionary leadership (i.e. Blanquism). The authors of this article make this case, but demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of both Leninism and its connection to working-class movements in doing so. Continuing in the tradition built upon by Marx and Engels, Lenin demonstrates a serious commitment to the centrality of the revolutionary party in relation to what I highlighted earlier: the necessary interconnection of socialist theory and practice with the working-class and labor.

The working-class cannot adequately begin to struggle for its own actual interests and overcome adversity without embracing the eventual goal of socialism. Lenin's conception of the party took into account the unevenness of working-class consciousness, and was dialectical in its analysis of the party's relationship with the broader class. The vanguard in this instance refers only to the 'most advanced' sections of the class, concentrated politically and organizationally in a manner that best utilizes and advances their collective perspective. (Of course, Stalinism would later redefine this notion along substitutionist lines, rendering it a topdown, undemocratically centralized entity.)

Lenin referred to the role of the party as an entity seeking to raise the consciousness of the masses, so as to - as Chris Harman puts it in "Party and Class" - "enable them to act truly independently." The organization works to "be a party of the masses not only in name," to "get ever wider masses to share in all party affairs, steadily to elevate them from political indifference to protest and struggle..." (Lenin). Lenin argued that the point of the party wasn't to win power on behalf of the workers, but to provide political and organizational clarity, to make the case for revolutionary socialism via active engagement with working-class organizations and communities.

Lenin often referred to the self-emancipative activities of the working-class, stating that in such times the party is to provide a guiding leadership. This isn't an elitist, or substitutionist, notion, but an acknowledgement of the party's importance in relation to mass movements. The party doesn't come in and take over, it instead puts forward the theoretical and tactical basis upon which the movement can be built and strengthened.

Having written far too much about Lenin’s approach to the organizational question, I’m going to transition toward what others had to say about Leninism and the revolutionary party. I want to focus on the myth surrounding Luxemburg and her own critique of Lenin’s and the Bolshevik’s model, specifically her supposed rejection of their contribution(s) to the party question (which this article’s authors touch on). While the disagreements between Lenin and Luxemburg shouldn’t be understated (see, for example, the question of how socialists should relate to struggles for national liberation), opponents of Leninism tend to conflate Luxemburg’s criticism of the Leninist model with a total rejection of this perspective. This simply isn’t true. Helen Scott, in a talk about Lenin and Luxemburg (2008), partially refutes this idea:

“. . .they were the figureheads of social democracy’s international Left, sharing an enduring faith in working-class self-emancipation, a commitment to revolution, an understanding of socialists as the tribune of the oppressed, and were principled opponents to imperialism and war. They were frequently allied in the struggle against reformism; they collaborated in Finland after the defeat of the 1905 revolution; they co-authored the antiwar amendment at the Stuttgart congress of 1907; and they famously denounced the Second International’s betrayal in 1914, when the vast majority of parties abandoned international working-class solidarity to support the war efforts of their respective nations.”

Lenin and Luxemburg devoted much of their lives to building socialist organizations. This isn’t to say she had her disagreements with Lenin over the organization question; in fact, the article’s authors cite some of Luxemburg’s criticisms in her “Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy” (which was, it should be noted, changed to “Leninism or Marxism?” long after her death). Needless to say, Luxemburg misrepresents much of what Lenin himself wrote about and advocated. It also bears mentioning that many of the targets of Luxemburg’s criticism are not merely those in the Bolshevik party, but those unique to Germany, including evidences of bureaucratic centralism amongst trade unions and parliamentarians, and in the leadership(s) of the SPD itself. Curiously enough, Luxemburg identified similar needs confronting the party in regards to organization, stating that “the revolutionary party had to be the vanguard of the working class, that it had to be centralistically organized, and that the will of its majority could be carried out by means of strict discipline in its activities” (“Organizational Questions”).

I also find it pertinent, in light of the authors’ depiction of these two revolutionaries as stubborn opponents, to wrap up with a quote from Luxemburg made shortly before her death in one of her final works:

“Whatever a party could offer of courage, revolutionary far-sightedness and consistency in an historic hour, Lenin, Trotsky and the other comrades have given in good measure. All the revolutionary honour and capacity which Western Social Democracy lacked was represented by the Bolsheviks. Their October uprising was not only the actual salvation of the Russian Revolution; it was also the salvation of the honour of international socialism.”

There are many reasons to criticize some of what emerged from Lenin and other theorists of the period, but these criticisms shouldn't have to hide behind false representations of what these figures said and did. The authors of "How Should Socialists Organize?" fall into this trap more than once. If we're to generate a solid understanding of Leninism today, we must be willing to do so through critical engagement of both the material and the historical circumstances of its development. I do not think Leninism is a dead-end, nor do I think it has lost any of its relevancy for socialists in the 21st century. There's still a lot ahead of us, and Leninism has its role to play in all of it - despite comrades' assertions to the contrary.

[VinnieUK]

Indeed, both the original 1905 resolution and Lenin’s understanding of it a year later stress two key points: 1) universal and full freedom of discussion



but that was only because at that time the Bolsheviks were a minority within the party. When he got to power he was later (1921) in favour of suppressing "factions" within the Bolshevik party.

You also say that "Leninism" is still relevant in the 21st century, but if Lenin was just an orthodox Marxist , why would we need a separate doctrine called "Leninism"?

[SteveHegel1844]

Le Socialiste: "Lenin; in fact it can be argued that he, among other major theorists of the period, drew inspiration from Marx and Engels"-
SteveHegel1844: The ideas of Lenin in What Is To Be Done? are in contrast to what Marx and Engels wrote in the Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1848 where they described the proletarian movement as 'the self conscious, independent movement of the immense majority in the interest of the immense majority.’ Marx drafted the general rules of the International Working Men's Association in 1864 which began categorically with the line 'that the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.’ In 1879 Marx and Engels felt the need to distribute a circular where they stated: 'when the International was formed we expressly formulated the battle cry; the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, cooperate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois.'

Le Socialiste: "There are many reasons to criticize some of what emerged from Lenin and other theorists of the period, but these criticisms shouldn't have to hide behind false representations of what these figures said and did" -
SteveHegel1844:Dictatorship of the Bolshevik (Communist Party) over the Proletariat
Privilege of Party membership leading to elitism and Nomenklatura
War Communism prohibited strikes -the only weapon the proletariat have against bosses (Even bolshevik bosses)
New Economic Policy - market economy - state capitalism
Red Terror - repression, setting up of Cheka, NKVD, OGPU - implemented by Dzerzhinsky on September 5, 1918, described by the Red Army journal Krasnaya Gazeta: "Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds. Let them be thousands, let them drown themselves in their own blood"
Suppression of Kronstadt (the reddest of reds) rebellion - Emma Goldman: "The dictatorship under Stalin's rule has become monstrous, that does not, however, lessen the guilt of Leon Trotsky as one of the actors in the revolutionary drama of which Kronstadt was one of the bloodiest scenes"
Suppression of peasant anarchist army of Makhno in Ukraine
Persecution/prohibition/imprisonment/execution/exile of all non bolsheviks, left opposition, anarchists
"Lenin's own words in a speech on Economic Construction in 1920 were also revealing when he said: 'the Soviet Socialist Democracy is in no way inconsistent with the rule and dictatorship of one person; that the will of a class is at times best realised by a dictator, who sometimes will accomplish more by himself and is frequently more needed. At any rate, the principal relation toward one person rule was not only explained a long time ago but was also decided by the Central Executive Committee.'
Le Socialiste:"Revolutionary socialists, it is understood, must be inseparable from and responsive to the real shifts, struggles and movements of the working-class" and "The vanguard is not some monolithic, omniscient entity, subordinating its members (indeed, the working-class itself) to its “leadership.” The party plays the role of a guiding organization in relation to the self-emancipatory activity of the masses. As Trotsky noted: "Without a guiding organization, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston box. But nevertheless, what moves things is not the piston or the box, but the steam."
SteveHegel1844: Lenin wrote that: 'Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness', and that socialist ideas came from 'the educated representatives of the propertied classes' or 'revolutionary socialist intellectuals.', Luxemburg identified 'the two principles on which Lenin’s centralism rests are precisely these: the blind subordination, in the smallest detail, of all party organs to the party centre which alone thinks, guides, and decides for all. The rigorous separation of the organised nucleus of revolutionaries from its social-revolutionary surroundings.'
Again: the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves (Marx) - Martov:'the proletarian class considered as a whole is the only possible builder of the new society.'
Marx 'Theses on Feuerbach': The materialist doctrine that men are the products of conditions and education, different men therefore the products of other conditions and changed education, forgets that circumstances may be altered by men and that the educator has himself to be educated. This doctrine leads inevitably to the ideas of a society composed of two distinct portions, one of which is elevated above society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.'
Martov correctly pointed out that if this thesis is applied
'. . . to the class struggle of the propertyless, this means the following. Impelled by the same ‘circumstances’ of capitalist society that determine their character as an enslaved class, the workers enter into a struggle against the society that enslaves them. The process of this struggle modifies the social ‘circumstances.’ It modifies the environment in which the working class moves. This way the working class modifies its own character. From a class reflecting passively the mental servitude to which they are subjected, the propertyless become a class which frees itself actively from all enslavement, including that of the mind.'
Le Socialiste: "I do not think Leninism is a dead-end"
SteveHegel1844: if Lenin was just an orthodox Marxist as he claims, why would there need to be a separate doctrine called "Leninism"?
Leninism is a dead end, it leads into cul de sacs filled with numerous trotskyite splinters, Stalinists, Maoists, worshippers of Che, Castro, state capitalism, the wages system and commodity production, the proletariat still being robbed of their surplus value
The three things that ruined the working class in Europe and the World in the 20th century; Social Democracy ie Labour Party reformism in Britain and elsewhere, secondly, the First World War, and thirdly probably the most insidious - Leninism and the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917 - diverted the working class away from the socialist message of Marx and Engels into a stalinist cul de sac.

[Brutus]

Marx too advocated revolutionary terror against counter revolutionaries.

Just to clear up some misconceptions, the October revolution was an act of the soviets and the red guards; the Bolshevik party had a majority in the soviets, so they assumed leadership, as the workers wanted.

[Ismail]

"Lenin's own words in a speech on Economic Construction in 1920 were also revealing when he said: 'the Soviet Socialist Democracy is in no way inconsistent with the rule and dictatorship of one person; that the will of a class is at times best realised by a dictator, who sometimes will accomplish more by himself and is frequently more needed. At any rate, the principal relation toward one person rule was not only explained a long time ago but was also decided by the Central Executive Committee.'Misquoting Lenin is always exciting, isn't it?

Here's the whole work: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/mar/29.htm (see section 4 for relevant part)

Lenin was discussing management in Soviet industries, calling for the combination of democracy and discipline with regards to directives and decisions made. The "Soviet leader" referred to is the manager who is simultaneously responsible to the rank-and-file of the enterprise and the Soviet government.

It's no surprise that the quote you cited has been used by various anti-communists throughout the decades. The translation provided in the link makes clear what Lenin was referring to: "that Soviet socialist democracy and individual management and dictatorship are in no way contradictory, and that the will of a class may sometimes be carried out by a dictator, who sometimes does more alone and is frequently more necessary. At any rate, the attitude towards the principles of corporate management and individual management was not only explained long ago, but was even endorsed by the All-Russia Central Executive Committee."

This has nothing to do with the Party and its leadership. He was speaking of the necessity of discipline (never divorced from the objective needs and control of the working-class) to rehabilitate the economy.

[SteveHegel1844]

SteveHegel1844 wrote:


"Lenin's own words in a speech on Economic Construction in 1920 were also revealing when he said: 'the Soviet Socialist Democracy is in no way inconsistent with the rule and dictatorship of one person; that the will of a class is at times best realised by a dictator, who sometimes will accomplish more by himself and is frequently more needed. At any rate, the principal relation toward one person rule was not only explained a long time ago but was also decided by the Central Executive Committee.”


Lenin speech of 16 March 1920 to the 9th Congress of the Russian Communist Party:
Section 4 on Economic Development
“Soviet socialist democracy and individual management and dictatorship are in no way contradictory, and that the will of a class may sometimes be carried out by a dictator who sometimes does more alone and is frequently more necessary. At any rate, the attitude towards the principles of corporate management and individual management was not only explained long ago, but was even endorsed by the All-Russia Central Executive Committee”


The translation used by SteveHegel1844 is not exact replica of translation used in Marxists.org/archive but on a practical interpretative basis it is identical.


Lenin uses extracts from his article 'The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government' of April 1918 in his speech of 16 March 1920: “Large-scale machine industry—which is precisely the material source, the productive source, the foundation of socialism—calls for absolute and strict unity of will … unquestioning subordination to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of processes organised on the pattern of large-scale machine industry. “We must learn to combine the ‘public meeting’ democracy of the working people—turbulent, surging, overflowing its banks like a spring nood with iron discipline while at work, with unquestioning obedience to the will of a single person, the Soviet leader, while at work.”, the task of unquestioningly obeying the will of the Soviet leader, of the dictator, during the work. . . .”


Ismail wrote: “management in Soviet industries, calling for the combination of democracy and discipline with regards to directives and decisions made, This has nothing to do with the Party and its leadership. He was speaking of the necessity of discipline (never divorced from the objective needs and control of the working-class) to rehabilitate the economy”


SteveHegel1844: The foundation of socialism or in this instance of Bolshevik Russian 'State Capitalism' in the economy has everything to do with democracy, the Party, leadership.


Fundamentally, as socialists we believe in the democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, for if everyone owns, then everyone must have equal right to control the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.

[Fionnagáin]

Marx too advocated revolutionary terror against counter revolutionaries.

Just to clear up some misconceptions, the October revolution was an act of the soviets and the red guards; the Bolshevik party had a majority in the soviets, so they assumed leadership, as the workers wanted.
The Bolsheviks assumed a position of government, but that's not quite the same as saying they "assumed leadership". During this period, the actual relationship between government, party and soviet remained contested and unsettled, with a lot of workers, Bolshevik and non-Bolshevik, holding that the provisional government was nothing more than a committee of the soviets appointed to treat with the Axis powers in pursuit of an end to the war. Just because the bourgeois governments would look at the situation and conclude that the Bolshevik provisional government represented an unambiguous "leadership" doesn't mean that we should be so naïve.

[Ismail]

The Bolsheviks assumed a position of government, but that's not quite the same as saying they "assumed leadership". During this period, the actual relationship between government, party and soviet remained contested and unsettled, with a lot of workers, Bolshevik and non-Bolshevik, holding that the provisional government was nothing more than a committee of the soviets appointed to treat with the Axis powers in pursuit of an end to the war. Just because the bourgeois governments would look at the situation and conclude that the Bolshevik provisional government represented an unambiguous "leadership" doesn't mean that we should be so naïve.As the vanguard of the working-class they did, in fact, assume leadership. Obviously not all Bolsheviks understood this significance (hence why in the years to come there would be the "Workers' Opposition" and "Democratic Centralists"), but actions like the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, which allowed for Soviet democracy to triumph over bourgeois democracy, were done under Bolshevik leadership.

[Fionnagáin]

See, "Bolshevik leadership" doesn't really mean anything, is the problem. Bolshevism, at this point, was a pretty broad tendency within the Russian revolutionary movement, not a hive-mind acting with a single will. In many cases, rank-and-file party-members went beyond the CC. In some cases, workers acting outside of their status as party-members, and in alliance with other (Left-SR and anarchist) workers went beyond even the party rank-and-file. Identifying roles of "leadership", if its to be taken as a category of any real political substance, has to be derived from the concrete facts, who was doing what, not just noting that the party rules say the CC is in charge and writing your own history from there.

[uk_communist]

Socialists can usually organize by hosting book clubs, unions/groups, and speaking to people in general.
That's what I usually do; I speak to people about how they feel about the world at the moment, then I'll subtly slip in socialism to the conversation. It usually turns out well, too.

I need to start a socialist/communist group with a book club involved too. :grin:

[Hit The North]

Whatever the root of the crisis of the SWP is, and whatever culpability Leninism/democratic centralism played in that crisis, one thing is true: if it was left up to the Socialist Standard and the SPGB, and we were to adopt their model of organisation, there would be no serious socialist agitation among the working class at all.

Over 100 years old and nothing to show for it. This is why I have no time for their critique because, at the end of the day, they are themselves clueless about the way forward.

I mean, this article tells you everything you need to know about this party: apart from its abysmal misreading of the Bolshevik model, it poses the question of how socialists should organise themselves and then fails to provide even half an answer. It is not enough to quote the holy writ of working class self-emancipation, which is all the author of this article does, because this tells us nothing about how the socialist minority should organise themselves within the class and push the agenda for self-emancipation.

[RedMaterialist]

Socialists can usually organize by hosting book clubs, unions/groups, and speaking to people in general.
That's what I usually do; I speak to people about how they feel about the world at the moment, then I'll subtly slip in socialism to the conversation. It usually turns out well, too.

I need to start a socialist/communist group with a book club involved too. :grin:

Marx advised communists to run for political office. You may not win but in the debate you can bring to the public communist positions not filtered through the capitalist press. You could, for instance, debate a Conservative Party candidate. You may only get a few votes, but you could expose the hypocrisy and crimes of the Conservative Party.

[RedMaterialist]

Whatever the root of the crisis of the SWP is, and whatever culpability Leninism/democratic centralism played in that crisis, one thing is true: if it was left up to the Socialist Standard and the SPGB, and we were to adopt their model of organisation, there would be no serious socialist agitation among the working class at all.

Over 100 years old and nothing to show for it. This is why I have no time for their critique because, at the end of the day, they are themselves clueless about the way forward.



Well, what model would you suggest?

[Vanguard1917]

Marx advised communists to run for political office. You may not win but in the debate you can bring to the public communist positions not filtered through the capitalist press. You could, for instance, debate a Conservative Party candidate. You may only get a few votes, but you could expose the hypocrisy and crimes of the Conservative Party.

Most workers in past decades were aware of the reactionary nature of the Conservative Party. It was their illusions in leftwing bourgeois parties like Labour which held them back and sustained capitalist rule. Hence Lenin's emphasis on the need for communists to actively expose the reactionary nature of such parties. The alternative was to abstain and thereby let a reactionary leadership decide the scope of working-class politics.

[RedMaterialist]

Most workers in past decades were aware of the reactionary nature of the Conservative Party. It was their illusions in leftwing bourgeois parties like Labour which held them back and sustained capitalist rule. Hence Lenin's emphasis on the need for communists to actively expose the reactionary nature of such parties. The alternative was to abstain and thereby let a reactionary leadership decide the scope of working-class politics.

Well, the communists could also work politically against Labor. Where I live being a communist is still technically a crime. I wonder why in England and Europe communist parties have shrunk so much. surely it can't all be the fault of Stalin, or anti-communist propaganda.

Yikes!! I just did a wiki search on the communist party in britain. It has almost disappeared from sight. Good grief, even the socialists are disappearing from Great Britain.

[SteveHegel1844]

Hit The North[/U];2618380]Whatever the root of the crisis of the SWP is, and whatever culpability Leninism/democratic centralism played in that crisis, one thing is true: if it was left up to the Socialist Standard and the SPGB, and we were to adopt their model of organisation, there would be no serious socialist agitation among the working class at all.
Over 100 years old and nothing to show for it. This is why I have no time for their critique because, at the end of the day, they are themselves clueless about the way forward. I mean, this article tells you everything you need to know about this party: apart from its abysmal misreading of the Bolshevik model, it poses the question of how socialists should organise themselves and then fails to provide even half an answer. It is not enough to quote the holy writ of working class self-emancipation, which is all the author of this article does, because this tells us nothing about how the socialist minority should organise themselves within the class and push the agenda for self-emancipation.

Redshifted wrote : "Marx advised communists to run for political office. You may not win but in the debate you can bring to the public communist positions not filtered through the capitalist press. You could, for instance, debate a Conservative Party candidate. You may only get a few votes, but you could expose the hypocrisy and crimes of the Conservative Party"


SteveHegel1844: The Socialist Party of Great Britain believe that parliament can, and should, be used in the course of establishing such a socialist society. This position is based on our understanding that before socialism can be established there has to be a majority actively in favour of this, and that it is essential for this majority to win control over the machinery of government/ the state before trying to establish socialism. Since control of parliament is obtained via elections based on universal suffrage, a socialist majority can win control of the machinery of government through winning a parliamentary majority via the ballot box. Two ideas prominent to liberal democratic political ideology are that we live in a society which is both democratic and free. If this is not the case but if we live in a society where there is a semblance of democracy and freedom, what better way is there to challenge that ‘democracy and freedom’ than by using the accepted legitimate channels and thereby being able to call its bluff. Capitalism cannot be gradually reformed into socialism. There is no gradual parliamentary road to socialism through a series of piecemeal reform measures introduced by a reformist government. Anarchists are right to say this. We in the Socialist Party of Great Britain say it too. The socialist political party (of which the SPGB is just a potential embryo) will not be something separate from the socialist majority. It will be the socialist majority self-organised politically, an instrument they have formed to use to achieve a socialist society. There is nothing to prevent workers who want socialism selecting one of their number to stand as a candidate to go to parliament as a socialist delegate, pledged to take instructions from socialists voting for them organised in the socialist political party.
The dangers of a capitalist class coup ? On the eve of a socialist election victory most workers would already be convinced of the need for socialism and would have organised themselves in unions and other bodies ready to keep production and administration going after the election victory. Socialist ideas would also have penetrated into the armed forces. Should some of the pro-capitalists think of staging a coup: any wavering elements, especially in the armed forces, would tend to side with those who have the undisputed democratic legitimacy, i.e. in this instance those who want socialism. Even the anti-parliamentarian Anarchist Federation in 1996: “ The majority of military personnel are working class, and however indoctrinated they are, we doubt that they will be prepared on the whole to shoot down their friends, neighbours and relatives. Examples from the Russian Revolution of 1917 to the Romania of 1990 show that the army will switch sides when it becomes clear that the people will no longer tolerate their government and are prepared to take to the streets to prove it” (Beyond Resistance, p. 19).


The Socialist Party of Great Britain believe that Socialism will entail the immediate abolition of the State. Marx wrote of "storming heaven" which is the break up of the bourgeois political state, in this instance he was talking of the 1871 Paris Commune. The State in the example of the Paris Commune of 1871 offers many examples of the working class taking over and what is effectively the abolition of the bourgeois state;
Engels: “Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” - run by the workers in the interests of the workers, Commune no longer a state, absence of a standing army, self-policing of the quartiers.
Bakunin on the Commune: “a bold, clearly formulated negation of the state”

Kropotkin: “by proclaiming the free commune, the people of Paris proclaimed an essential anarchist principle, which was the breakdown of the state”. The working class conquest of political power will entail what Marx wrote to Dr Kugelman it will “smash the bureaucratic military state machine”


I will quote Lenin now... Lenin in Lessons of the Commune: “the Proletariat, which had seized power, carried out the democratisation of the social system, abolished the bureaucracy, and made all official posts elective”and “Commune replaced the smashed state machine with a fuller democracy, transformed from bourgeois into proletarian democracy”.


Parliament can, and should, be used in the course of establishing such a socialist society, the majority of the working class will win control over the machinery of government/ the state before trying to establish socialism and proletarian socialist democracy.


Marx wrote in 1872: “All socialists understand this by Anarchy: once the aim of the proletarian movement, the abolition of classes has been attained, the state power which serves to keep the great productive majority under the yoke of an exploiting minority small in numbers, disappears, and the governmental functions are transformed into simple administrative functions”. In 1847 'The Poverty of Philosophy', Marx writes:“there will be no more political power properly so-called, since political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism in civil society”.



Edouard Vaillant, Communard:

“If socialism wasn't born of the Commune, it is from the Commune that dates that portion of international revolution that no longer wants to give battle in a city in order to be surrounded and crushed, but which instead wants, at the head of the proletarians of each and every country, to attack national and international reaction and put an end to the capitalist regime”

[VinnieUK]

if it was left up to the Socialist Standard and the SPGB, and we were to adopt their model of organisation, there would be no serious socialist agitation among the working class at all.

Over 100 years old and nothing to show for it. This is why I have no time for their critique because, at the end of the day, they are themselves clueless about the way forward.



The SPGB's message is the only message that is not clueless! They say "stop wasting time squabbling and fighting over the crumbs that fall from the capitalist table and organize NOW for revolution". Is that message not clear and decisive?

Can you suggest anything better to say to our fellow workers?

[bricolage]

The SPGB's message is the only message that is not clueless! They say "stop wasting time squabbling and fighting over the crumbs that fall from the capitalist table and organize NOW for revolution". Is that message not clear and decisive?

Can you suggest anything better to say to our fellow workers?
the spgb are the oldest organisation in the country and have far outlived most other groups. during that time their relevance to the working class has remained remarkably the same.

if their clear and decisive message was not successful in the last century, through the revolutionary upsurge at the end of the first world war and through the mass workers struggles of the 1970s, if it was not successful throughout all that time do you not think that there might be some problem with it? if an organisational and strategical outlook has floundered for over a century what will change to make it relevant in the future?

[Hit The North]

The SPGB's message is the only message that is not clueless! They say "stop wasting time squabbling and fighting over the crumbs that fall from the capitalist table and organize NOW for revolution". Is that message not clear and decisive?



No, it's abstract. How does the SPGB propose that workers organize themselves NOW for revolution? I've looked through their declaration of principles and apart from revolutionary-sounding slogans about self-emancipation (but ruling out violence) and the call for immediate revolution, ironic given that it was written in 1904, there really is no clue.

[Professional Revolution]

Revolutionary Marxists need to organize into legitimate and effective organizations. Everyone in the party needs to be willing to fight to the end for communism, otherwise the revolution will simply be driven into failure. The Bolshevik Party was a prime example.

[VinnieUK]

if their clear and decisive message was not successful in the last century, through the revolutionary upsurge at the end of the first world war and through the mass workers struggles of the 1970s, if it was not successful throughout all that time do you not think that there might be some problem with it? if an organisational and strategical outlook has floundered for over a century what will change to make it relevant in the future?

So which struggles abolished capitalism? The world is still owned by a tiny minority. More people in poverty and more people starving. Unions have all but vanished. So much for 'agitation'

People believed for centuries that the world was flat and the belief that it was not remained irrelevant during that time.

Can you not see the problem with such a criticism?

Religion was relevant for centuries. Did that make atheism irrelevant? Atheists fought for centuries against religious dogma. Reformism is a falsley held belief and offers false hope to workers

People need to THINK like revolutionaries not use revolutionary terms and then advocate a bunch of reforms.

[Mytan Fadeseasy]

The message from the SPGB is clear, the removal of capitalism and the establishment of real socialism. This should be the aim of all socialist factions. If it is not, then the faction is not socialist. The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class themselves, not a vanguard. Therefore, the working class need to know what socialism is, and want it. If the working class do not know what socialism is, they will just accept reforms, and not realise that they are still being exploited under capitalism.

In my view, the floundering of socialism has been caused by the reformist policies of many of the socialist factions, and the damage done to public perception of socialism by dictatorships and state capitalists that call themselves socialist.

Reformism does nothing but stabilise the capitalist system, preventing the runaway self-destructive tendency of the neoliberal free market, whilst placating the working class, and thus preventing any further moves toward socialism. Marx recognised that the capitalist class could see the benefit of legislating against limitless working hours in Chapter 10 of Capital Volume 1, The Working Day. Only this week, Lord Sainsbury has published a book which advocates ‘progressive capitalism’ where the government upholds public interest i.e. protects the public against the free market. Capitalists know that the interests of the working class need to be considered in order to increase capital, and they rely on the working class ignorance of socialism and the workings of capital to keep the working class in their place. Interestingly, in a radio interview this week, Lord Sainsbury, a former Labour Party donor, suggested that Labour’s form of neoliberalism had gone too far.

Any vanguard action is likely to fail without a socialised working class, and a socialised working class would negate the need for a vanguard. Consider the events in Paris in May 1968. The student protest managed to obtain massive support from workers, resulting in a general strike. De Gaulle flees the country fearing a socialist revolution. The workers are offered reforms. The protesters stand down. An election is held, and De Gaulle wins with a massive majority. The working class were happy to continue with De Gaulle because of the reforms, and the capitalists won. Things could have been very different if the working class were knowledgeable socialists.

The workers aren’t going to organise themselves now for revolution, unless they know that they want revolution, and workers will not know that they want revolution, unless they know what socialism is, and want it.

With regard to violence, the SPGB aims to achieve socialism by wresting control of the state through the democratic process, and then dissolving the state once all threat of counter revolution has subsided. This would hopefully achieve a non-violent revolution. Should a minority use force to try to oppose the majority who want a socialist state, then the majority will need to use force to prevent them.

The goal of all socialists should be to educate the working class as to what real socialism is, and to try to undo the damage done to the public perception of socialism.

[Hit The North]

So which struggles abolished capitalism? The world is still owned by a tiny minority. More people in poverty and more people starving. Unions have all but vanished. So much for 'agitation'

People believed for centuries that the world was flat and the belief that it was not remained irrelevant during that time.

Can you not see the problem with such a criticism?

Religion was relevant for centuries. Did that make atheism irrelevant? Atheists fought for centuries against religious dogma. Reformism is a falsley held belief and offers false hope to workers



You seem to be reducing revolutionary struggle to the realm of ideas. But how do these ideas change? What is the relationship between ideas, material relations and social action?

What are the social roots of reformism, how are these ideas organised in social practices and how can these be challenged?

What is the relationship between class struggle and revolutionary socialist ideas?


People need to THINK like revolutionaries not use revolutionary terms and then advocate a bunch of reforms.


But what does it mean to "think" like a revolutionary and how does this thinking inform practice? These are the key questions.

As comrade bricolage points out, even during those periods of high class struggle and radicalisation of layers of the working class, the SPGB has not capitalised by expanding its membership; has been unable to appeal to those workers who's ideas are moving leftward. The reason for this, I'd argue, is that the SPGB explicitly rejects the idea of the socialist party fighting for leadership in the class struggle or providing material assistance in workers struggles. In short, it has no praxis. So the question is what use is the SPGB?

[bricolage]

People need to THINK like revolutionaries not use revolutionary terms and then advocate a bunch of reforms.
people need to base their praxis upon the actually existing struggles of the working class, need I say;

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

the winter of discontent, for example, came far closer to challenging the fundamentals of capitalism than revolutionary language ever did. the spgb may have well thought out language, ideas or programmes but there is no concept of how this may move from mere language to action and in over a century of political activity there has been no indication that there ever has been.

[bricolage]

You seem to be reducing revolutionary struggle to the realm of ideas. But how do these ideas change? What is the relationship between ideas, material relations and social action?
exactly.

[Ismail]

With regard to violence, the SPGB aims to achieve socialism by wresting control of the state through the democratic process, and then dissolving the state once all threat of counter revolution has subsided. This would hopefully achieve a non-violent revolution. Should a minority use force to try to oppose the majority who want a socialist state, then the majority will need to use force to prevent them.Sounds like Khrushchev and the rest of the Soviet revisionists: make bourgeois laws and whatnot "genuinely democratic" through supposed working-class control.

Marxists smash the bourgeois state, as the Bolsheviks did; they don't "wrest control" over it. Such a position makes all this "look how revolutionary we are!" rhetoric a sham.

[Mytan Fadeseasy]

Sounds like Khrushchev and the rest of the Soviet revisionists: make bourgeois laws and whatnot "genuinely democratic" through supposed working-class control.

Marxists smash the bourgeois state, as the Bolsheviks did; they don't "wrest control" over it. Such a position makes all this "look how revolutionary we are!" rhetoric a sham.

The Bolsheviks didn't smash the bourgeois state, they just replaced it with their own, which continued to oppress the working class. Like I said, the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class themselves.

[VinnieUK]

the winter of discontent, for example, came far closer to challenging the fundamentals of capitalism than revolutionary language ever did


Which fundamentals were they?

[VinnieUK]

So the question is what use is the SPGB?

It is the only party that advocates socialism NOW. It is the only party that does not patronise workers by telling them that their struggles to reform and 'repair' capitalism will solve their problems: Only socialism will do that.

It is not the SPGB's fault that workers have not become socialists. Workers are rightly confused by the activities of those who say they are socialists but don't advocate socialism.

As Mytan Fadeseasy wrote:

“the floundering of socialism has been caused by the reformist policies of many of the socialist factions, and the damage done to public perception of socialism by dictatorships and state capitalists that call themselves socialist.”


Socialists should say what they mean – Fellow workers, this is socialism, let’s organise for it, now.

[Ismail]

It is the only party that advocates socialism NOW. It is the only party that does not patronise workers by telling them that their struggles to reform and 'repair' capitalism will solve their problems: Only socialism will do that.And yet apparently "the SPGB aims to achieve socialism by wresting control of the state through the democratic process."

So basically the SPGB is going to manage the bourgeois state in a "socialist" manner and isn't merely going to engage in reforms. How will it achieve this through the "democratic process," unless somehow workers are going to wake up one day and go to the next election casting all their votes for the SPGB?

[Mytan Fadeseasy]

And yet apparently "the SPGB aims to achieve socialism by wresting control of the state through the democratic process."

So basically the SPGB is going to manage the bourgeois state in a "socialist" manner and isn't merely going to engage in reforms. How will it achieve this through the "democratic process," unless somehow workers are going to wake up one day and go to the next election casting all their votes for the SPGB?

The SPGB don't propose to manage a bourgeois state. There will be no state. The state will be cease to exist once the majority who want socialism vote for socialism. To get to this stage the working class need to understand and want socialism, and so our role now should be to spread socialism. This will not happen overnight. What method would you use to bring about a socialist society? I know, perhaps a vanguard of elite socialists could be used to overthrow the democratically elected capitalist state and force socialism on the population? That would go down well with a population that does not know what socialism is. Hang on, hasn't this happened somewhere before?

Socialism cannot be forced upon society, societyneeds to understand and want socialism.

[Hit The North]

It is the only party that advocates socialism NOW.


Yes, but given that the SPGB is not in a position to deliver socialism NOW, or to map out the road from here to there, what usefulness is there in your advocacy?


It is the only party that does not patronise workers by telling them that their struggles to reform and 'repair' capitalism will solve their problems: Only socialism will do that.It is not the only party to take this position. In fact, in the UK, only Labour lefts argue such a thing. The only way you can make this accusation stick is if you wilfully misinterpret all attempts to build resistance to the rule of capital as guided by reformism.


It is not the SPGB's fault that workers have not become socialists. Workers are rightly confused by the activities of those who say they are socialists but don't advocate socialism.Except by refusing to organise in the here and now against reformism, the SPGB is partially culpable, surely? By pursuing a century-long strategy of avoiding leadership, the SPGB has conceded leadership to the reformists.


Socialists should say what they mean – Fellow workers, this is socialism, let’s organise for it, now.
And what is your reply when your fellow workers turn to you and ask, "How?"


To get to this stage the working class need to understand and want socialism, and so our role now should be to spread socialism.

How do you "spread socialism"? You can spread socialist ideas, but even that would not be enough unless it was followed with practice. Revolution, after all, is a practical act, not an act of contemplation.


I know, perhaps a vanguard of elite socialists could be used to overthrow the democratically elected capitalist state and force socialism on the population? That would go down well with a population that does not know what socialism is. Hang on, hasn't this happened somewhere before?

Socialism cannot be forced upon society, society needs to understand and want socialism.
This is a childish portrayal of the strategy of your political opponents. Leninists and Trotskyists do not argue for this kind of Blanquism. The theory of the vanguard addresses the question, one you wish to avoid, which is how does the socialist minority organise itself within the working class so that it can best push the movement for socialism forward.

[evermilion]

If it is not, then the faction is not socialist. The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class themselves, not a vanguard.

Why is it always presupposed that a vanguard is distinct from the proletariat? Sure, political communism demands a mass movement among the non-propertied classes, that the party be one with the proletariat, but I ask why a vanguard is something separate from our class? A vanguard is what agitates the non-propertied classes to move against the bourgeoisie and its state. It is an organ of the revolutionary party, itself an expression of the proletariat and the means of liberation for what other underclasses remain, like peasantry, in certain parts of the world.

[Mytan Fadeseasy]

Why is it always presupposed that a vanguard is distinct from the proletariat? Sure, political communism demands a mass movement among the non-propertied classes, that the party be one with the proletariat, but I ask why a vanguard is something separate from our class? A vanguard is what agitates the non-propertied classes to move against the bourgeoisie and its state. It is an organ of the revolutionary party, itself an expression of the proletariat and the means of liberation for what other underclasses remain, like peasantry, in certain parts of the world.

My understanding is that the vanguard is separate from the proletariat, as the vanguard 'understands' what socialism is, and the proletariat are just expected to follow them. If the vanguard was part of the proletariat, and socialism was understood and wanted by all, then there would be no need for a vanguard. The socialist proletariat, as a majority, could take control of the state apparatus, including the armed forces and the police, democratically. The state could then be dissolved. I cannot see how a move by the non-propertied classes against the bourgeoisie and a well armed state could successfully achieve a socialist society.

[Mytan Fadeseasy]

How do you "spread socialism"? You can spread socialist ideas, but even that would not be enough unless it was followed with practice. Revolution, after all, is a practical act, not an act of contemplation.

Yes, OK, spread socialist ideas. Once a majority hold those socialist ideas, then they can move to practical action. A socialist minority cannot move against a majority that does not understand, or want socialism.


This is a childish portrayal of the strategy of your political opponents. Leninists and Trotskyists do not argue for this kind of Blanquism. The theory of the vanguard addresses the question, one you wish to avoid, which is how does the socialist minority organise itself within the working class so that it can best push the movement for socialism forward.

OK, I admit, it was childish ;)1; however, a socialist minority would need to spread socialist ideas within the working class before it could move forward in a practical way.

[WelcomeToTheParty]

And yet apparently "the SPGB aims to achieve socialism by wresting control of the state through the democratic process."

How can socialism be forced onto a country where the majority of workers don't want it? If the will of the working class is being suppressed by bourgeois democracy surely the best way to show it is directly. It's a win win, either it works and socialists take control or it doesn't and the necessity for a new system is demonstrated (assuming the country has reached a point where the majority of workers support socialism).

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

How can socialism be forced onto a country where the majority of workers don't want it? .
Tell me, has any other social system come about from majority rule?

[bricolage]

Yes, OK, spread socialist ideas. Once a majority hold those socialist ideas, then they can move to practical action.
what practical action? what do the majority do once they have been convinced of socialist ideas and how do you get to this position without practical action in the first place?

[evermilion]

My understanding is that the vanguard is separate from the proletariat, as the vanguard 'understands' what socialism is, and the proletariat are just expected to follow them. If the vanguard was part of the proletariat, and socialism was understood and wanted by all, then there would be no need for a vanguard.

Okay, none of that is true, first off. The vanguard acts as a focus for proletariat revolution against a highly centralized global system. Socialism can be understood and wanted by all, but how do we expect every last proletarian individual to concoct a cohesive, harmonious plan for revolution and to carry it out in tandem with the other workers? Some individuals who have the knowledge and the means to do so will take care of that aspect of the endeavor.


The socialist proletariat, as a majority, could take control of the state apparatus, including the armed forces and the police, democratically. The state could then be dissolved. I cannot see how a move by the non-propertied classes against the bourgeoisie and a well armed state could successfully achieve a socialist society.

The state serves the owning class. That is the bourgeoisie. Every Marxist accepts this. And if you don't understand how "undemocratic" revolutionary activity can achieve a socialist society, then you're not familiar with the historical precedent of social revolution.

[Mytan Fadeseasy]

what practical action? what do the majority do once they have been convinced of socialist ideas and how do you get to this position without practical action in the first place?

The practical action needs to be to educate the proletariat in order to achieve a socialist majority. Once the majority support and want socialism they will vote for socialism democratically.

[Mytan Fadeseasy]

Okay, none of that is true, first off. The vanguard acts as a focus for proletariat revolution against a highly centralized global system. Socialism can be understood and wanted by all, but how do we expect every last proletarian individual to concoct a cohesive, harmonious plan for revolution and to carry it out in tandem with the other workers? Some individuals who have the knowledge and the means to do so will take care of that aspect of the endeavor.

The state serves the owning class. That is the bourgeoisie. Every Marxist accepts this. And if you don't understand how "undemocratic" revolutionary activity can achieve a socialist society, then you're not familiar with the historical precedent of social revolution.

If we look at the historical precedent of social revolution we see a raft of failed uprisings, suppressed by the state, dictatorships and state capitalism.

The vanguard approach has led to the subjugation of the proletariat, and countless murders, as populations have had socialism forced on them against their will. The vanguard approach assumes that the working class are not capable of becoming conscious socialists. It is inherently un-socialist as it would result in a state where a minority group (the vanguard) become the bureaucracy presiding over the majority. If you are familiar with the history, the vanguard Bolsheviks oppressed and exploited the proletariat in Russia.

[WelcomeToTheParty]

Tell me, has any other social system come about from majority rule?

No socialist revolution will succeed without it. You can't force socialism on the working class. You can help them get there, but they have to do it.

[VinnieUK]

Tell me, has any other social system come about from majority rule?

No. All social systems are and have been class systems: systems ruled by a minority. As Marx wrote -

"The history(written) of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."

That's what makes socialism different, it will be brought into existence by the working class, the vast majority. The proletarian revolution abolishes class rule and involves the emancipation of all humankind.

That is why Communism cannot be brought into existence by a minority.

[evermilion]

If we look at the historical precedent of social revolution we see a raft of failed uprisings, suppressed by the state, dictatorships and state capitalism.

Which makes it so weird, then, that social revolution absolutely has to have happened, huh?


The vanguard approach has led to the subjugation of the proletariat, and countless murders, as populations have had socialism forced on them against their will. The vanguard approach assumes that the working class are not capable of becoming conscious socialists. It is inherently un-socialist as it would result in a state where a minority group (the vanguard) become the bureaucracy presiding over the majority. If you are familiar with the history, the vanguard Bolsheviks oppressed and exploited the proletariat in Russia.

I reject your premise. The Soviet Union before its degeneration at the hands of revisionist beginning with Khrushchev was a solid workers' state. Even under Khrushchev, they were hardly oppressed and exploited.

[Mytan Fadeseasy]

Which makes it so weird, then, that social revolution absolutely has to have happened, huh?

I can't make any sense from this statement, please can you explain further.


I reject your premise. The Soviet Union before its degeneration at the hands of revisionist beginning with Khrushchev was a solid workers' state. Even under Khrushchev, they were hardly oppressed and exploited.

A workers state where wage slavery existed, and thus the proletariat was exploited. And are you seriously suggesting that there was no oppression in Russia?

[VinnieUK]

To claim that The Soviet Union was a workers state is not correct. To say so distorts the socialist message beyond recognition. As I have said previously- it is such distortions preventing the working class from hearing the genuine socialist case.

State ownership has nothing to do with socialism - it is state capitalism

[bricolage]

The practical action needs to be to educate the proletariat in order to achieve a socialist majority. Once the majority support and want socialism they will vote for socialism democratically.
spgb have been following this evangelist model for over a century and have failed to get anywhere close to the mythological passage of socialism as a piece of legislation.

every other strategy has equally failed but at least there are material reasons that can be given regarding the state of class struggle itself. if you dismiss all those struggles as reformism (despite the fact that reformism refers to policies and programmes taken on by organisations and not ways in which self-organised workers assert their own demands and of course that "Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers.") then what are you left with.

I ask again if the answer is just one-by-one education and recruitment what will change to make this work in the future, given that the success is solely dependent on the efforts of activists... and you can't get more effort from activists unless you get more of them and you can't get more of them because they can't educate enough and they can't educate enough because there aren't enough of them and so forth and so forth....

[bricolage]

To claim that The Soviet Union was a workers state is not correct. To say so distorts the socialist message beyond recognition. As I have said previously- it is such distortions preventing the working class from hearing the genuine socialist case.

State ownership has nothing to do with socialism - it is state capitalism
the fact that the soviet union was state capitalist has very little impact on how workers today will structure their political opinions. it seems this enduring myth of the left that it's still unbelievably important to have an in-depth perspective on this historical matter because it's something that will come up in day to day conversations. i'm not saying we shouldn't have perspectives but most people don't really give a shit one way or the other.

[VinnieUK]

but most people don't really give a shit one way or the other.

I agree! Which is why we still have capitalism! :(

[evermilion]

A workers state where wage slavery existed, and thus the proletariat was exploited. And are you seriously suggesting that there was no oppression in Russia?

Oppression of whom? Kulaks? The displaced bourgeoisie? And how exactly did wage slavery exist in the pre-Khrushchev, post-N.E.P. U.S.S.R.?

[Mytan Fadeseasy]

Oppression of whom? Kulaks? The displaced bourgeoisie? And how exactly did wage slavery exist in the pre-Khrushchev, post-N.E.P. U.S.S.R.?

Er, people worked for wages and produced surplus value for the state.

[Ismail]

State ownership has nothing to do with socialism - it is state capitalismState ownership by itself has nothing to do with socialism. After all China has plenty of state enterprises, and private property, in legal terms, was quite minor in the USSR under Soviet revisionism until the last years.

But no one is arguing that state ownership equals socialism. It is social ownership that is essential to socialism, and you do not get this either through syndicalism or through other quasi-market measures.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

I posted something related to this topic in another thread and I'd love to back up my comrade Ismail so I'll repost it here. Since it is a decently through reply to electoral politics I think it is worth it.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Mytan Fadeseasy
If a democratically elected socialist party can gain the necessary amount of control of the state that it would require to implement a minimum programme, then why not go straight to socialism?
A democratically elected socialist party will never happen.

"But YABM, surely a party that has a Marxist ideology could theoretically win a majority in Parliament".

Correct. This is theoretically true. But ideology counts for very little. A Revolutionary party is not one that adheres to a Marxist line, but one that applies it to it's praxis. So in this sense, a revolutionary party is one that takes a leading role in class struggle and is able to prepare for the seizure of power.

However, when a Marxist party engages the working class through the ballot box as the primary method of engagement, the party takes on a different character.

First of all, the most obvious problem with this engagement is that the act of voting is inherently de-classed. It is not an action which pitches the working class against the ruling class. It is a legal act where the working class plays the game of the bourgeois by the rules of the bourgeois.Not only that, but the very engagement has little to do with class politics. Class politics is the sort of politics that can only function on the level of class, when boss kidnapping happens, we see the working class pitched against his boss, there is no rational way the boss could somehow kidnap himself for the benefit of the working class! However any class can vote for any party, A bourgeois can vote for a "socialist party", and a worker can vote for a "capitalist party". This happens all the time, only the wealthiest section of the labor aristocracy forms the bulk of Labour Party buercracy and many of their politicians are former businessmen, while on the otherhand the Tories can appeal to a white lower middle class base on the level of consumer identity and nativism. So the very act of putting a party on the ballot is an act of surrendering class Independence, as this act has nothing to do with class.

Likewise, no matter what ideology a party takes, it will have to engage politics on it's own level. Now I'd like you to turn on the TV, what are your politicians debating? Nothing really, there isn't much of a discussion about ideas . Instead politics is based on scandals, political spin, and the use of these events to create "popularity" for a politician to make a majority come the day of election. So if you want to engage the working class on the level of electoral politics, then you will need to engage them on this level.

Now I know what you are going to say before you say it. "But a socialist party will be about ideas! It will be about people, people will trust us because we aren't corrupt like bourgeois politcans"! Really? Do you think bourgeois politicians are dumb? If honesty and new ideas were really the way to win elections, then we'd see alot more of it. The reason why politics is the way it is, is because the bourgeois have money and they invest that in marketing teams to find the best ways to manipulate human psychology in order to get votes. Lying and appealing to emotions is simply a better way to win elections.

Let me demonstrate this with a real life example so you understand what I'm saying in concrete terms. J.C Penny decided one day that instead of raising prices and announcing "sales" that were actually more expensive, they'd stop manipulating their consumers and be honest with their pricing and marketing. Do you know what happened? They lost millions of dollars. Here's a link so you know what I mean, It's not that long, only a few minutes of your time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmCn-csZStA

Likewise, there is no other possible way to win an election. Either a socialist party becomes better at double talk, lies, deciete, and popularity contests, or it loses. It will never, ever, ever win an election otherwise.

And if a socialist party does all that, if it surrender's it's class politics to the ballot, if it engages in mainstream politics like it must to win elections. Then even if it wins a majority of parliament, it will cease to be a socialist party and nothing will come out of it.

So no, a socialist party can never win democratically win the state. Because to do so would be to surrender it's socialist nature.

[The Idler]

Universal suffrage and the struggle for the ballot is inherently a class issue. The 19th Century Chartists struggle was for


A vote for every man over the age of 21;
A secret ballot;
No property qualification for members of Parliament;
Payment for MPs (so poor men could serve);
Constituencies of equal size;
Annual elections for Parliament.

As Duncan Hallas commented (http://www.marxists.org/archive/hallas/works/1983/06/vote.htm)


In 1852 Marx wrote, concerning the Chartists
But universal suffrage is the equivalent of political power for the working class of England, where the proletariat forms the large majority of the population, where, in a long though underground civil war, it has gained a clear consciousness of its position as a class and where even the rural districts know no longer any peasants, but only landlords, industrial capitalists (farmers) and hired labourers. The carrying of universal suffrage in England would, therefore be a far more socialistic measure than anything which has been honoured with that name on the continent. Its inevitable result, here is the political supremacy of the working class. (emphasis in original)
The plain meaning of Marx’s words is that, in a ‘constitutional’ state – what is now erroneously called a democracy, a working class majority in the legislature, backed by a majority of the population, can bring about a real transfer of power, without the destruction of the existing state machine.
That view is compatible with the statement of the Communist Manifesto, written four and a half years earlier,
that the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.

As for socialists winning elections, this has simply been disproven.

[WelcomeToTheParty]

A democratically elected socialist party will never happen.

...


So no, a socialist party can never win democratically win the state. Because to do so would be to surrender it's socialist nature.

Perhaps that's true, but surely electoral politics offers at least a platform and a loudspeaker to spread socialist ideas if not also a radicalizing force when the working class sees its will unreflected in the outcome. Does the "fact" that socialism will not be won in an election mean that socialists shouldn't stand?

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Perhaps that's true, but surely electoral politics offers at least a platform and a loudspeaker to spread socialist ideas if not also a radicalizing force when the working class sees its will unreflected in the outcome. Does the "fact" that socialism will not be won in an election mean that socialists shouldn't stand?

Well I disagree, but I do acknowledge that there are Communists who regard participating in elections as a mere means to engage the working class and acknowledge that they will never conquer state power on this basis and I do respect that view, I was simply airing my disagreements with the idea that it, along with propaganda and raising "socialist consciousness" should be the primary engagement with the working class while rejecting actually existing class struggle as "reformism". Not that I don't have my critiques of actually existing class struggle, nor do I believe that it is always productive to engage every struggle since each of them arise in different contexts with different layers of the class. But I don't reject participating in these struggles as "reformism", nor do I reject direct action as "substitutionism". Instead I embrace direct action.

So while I don't agree with you, this little critic wasn't aimed at your school of thought.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Pardon me for condensing your post a bit, I always feel rude doing that and I do admit that I should try to engage impossiblism on a better basis than I have previously. Even though I know you disagree with my last post I hope it is at least an improvement. Now to the meat of the issue


Universal suffrage and the struggle for the ballot is inherently a class issue

It was, back before we had universal suffrage. But of course we live in the 21st century, a completely different social context. Personally I think that such a demand is reformist at that time, considering that the political energy of the proletariat would be better aimed at the bourgeois when their oppression is more apparent.

And if I may quote the dear and beloved Bordiga:

[QUOTE]The division of society into classes distinguished by economic privilege clearly removes all value from majority decision-making. Our critique refutes the deceitful theory that the democratic and parliamentary state machine which arose from modern liberal constitutions is an organization of all citizens in the interests of all citizens. From the moment that opposing interests and class conflicts exist, there can be no unity of organization, and in spite of the outward appearance of popular sovereignty, the state remains the organ of the economically dominant class and the instrument of defence of its interests. In spite of the application of the democratic system to political representation, bourgeois society appears as a complex network of unitary bodies. Many of these, which spring from the privileged layers and tend to preserve the present social apparatus, gather around the powerful centralized organism of the political state. Others may be neutral or may have a changing attitude towards the state. Finally, others arise within the economically oppressed and exploited layers and are directed against the class state. Communism demonstrates that the formal juridical and political application of the democratic and majority principle to all citizens while society is divided into opposed classes in relation to the economy, is incapable of making the state an organizational unit of the whole society or the whole nation. Officially that is what political democracy claims to be, whereas in reality it is the form suited to the power of the capitalist class, to the dictatorship of this particular class, for the purpose of preserving its privileges.......

It is clear that the principle of democracy has no intrinsic virtue. It is not a "principle", but rather a simple mechanism of organization, responding to the simple and crude arithmetical presumption that the majority is right and the minority is wrong.


What Bordiga is saying here is that the politics of the state does not play a central role in capitalism, it is simply an organizational method for the sake of class rule. If the proletariat were to win the Parliament, the bourgeois would still have the media, the police (In my country, I do not know about yours, our policemen make special efforts to consult local businessmen to inform their law enforcement decisions), the military industrial complex and with it, the full might of the military, and the superstructure of society along with ownership of the means of production. So perhaps in capturing parliament the working class would win a battle, but in doing so it would expose it's flank to counter attack.


As for socialists winning elections, this has simply been disproven.


Now I know Impossiblists have never won a "democratic revolution" before. So obviously there is no way that I can say that you are absolutely disproven. But we saw what happened to Allende and in Spain. Other than that, I've never seen a socialist winning an election really change anything fundamental in the political discourse. Unless you count institutionalized Communist oppositions such as the KKE, but they've been around for so long that I don't know if they are really "changing anything" by sitting in Parliament. (Not that this is a jab at my Greek comrades). So what exactly has been proven, or in your words, "dis proven". Since your impossiblists oppose all other parties, then tell me where a party according to your line has managed to become a significant part of the political discourse for a sustained period of time?

[Hit The North]

Universal suffrage and the struggle for the ballot is inherently a class issue. The 19th Century Chartists struggle was for


A vote for every man over the age of 21;
A secret ballot;
No property qualification for members of Parliament;
Payment for MPs (so poor men could serve);
Constituencies of equal size;
Annual elections for Parliament.



All but one of these have been achieved long ago. Surely you're not suggesting that these are demands that socialists should continue to organise around? Also, ironically, if the impossibilists had been around in 1850 they would have derided the Chartists for their reformism and denounce them for falling short of calling for socialism NOW. Doubly ironic, the bourgeois-representative-democratic institutions which have reached their highest expression through the reformist demand for universal adult suffrage is now the centre-piece of the SPGB strategy!


As Duncan Hallas commented (http://www.marxists.org/archive/hallas/works/1983/06/vote.htm)
Weird that you would quote from an article by a venerated old Trot like Duncan. Doubly weird when you consider that he concludes the article by quoting approvingly from the First Congress of the Communist International:


Democracy assumed different forms and was applied in different degrees in the ancient republics of Greece, the medieval cities and the advanced capitalist countries. It would be sheer nonsense to think that the most profound revolution in history, the first case in the history of the world of power being transferred from the exploiting minority to the exploited majority, could take place within the time-worn framework of the old, bourgeois parliamentary democracy, without drastic changes, without the creation of new forms of democracy, new institutions that embody the new conditions for applying democracy.

[The Idler]

Demands for democratic rights seem to have been pretty popular to organise around in Spain (indignados) and the Arab Spring in the last couple of years. Certainly more popular than Trot front campaigns. What impossibilists have written about these movements, puts paid to the suggestion they would be denounced for not calling for socialism at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution let alone transposing impossibilism through history to over 150 years ago.
Quoting from an article by Duncan Hallas you might find weird I suppose, but I actually read material from other tendencies even if their conclusions are wrong. It helps when making accurate criticism. Perhaps you should give it a try.

[Mytan Fadeseasy]

I posted something related to this topic in another thread and I'd love to back up my comrade Ismail so I'll repost it here. Since it is a decently through reply to electoral politics I think it is worth it.


A democratically elected socialist party will never happen.

"But YABM, surely a party that has a Marxist ideology could theoretically win a majority in Parliament".

Correct. This is theoretically true. But ideology counts for very little. A Revolutionary party is not one that adheres to a Marxist line, but one that applies it to it's praxis. So in this sense, a revolutionary party is one that takes a leading role in class struggle and is able to prepare for the seizure of power.

It should be the proletariat that seize power, not a leading party.


However, when a Marxist party engages the working class through the ballot box as the primary method of engagement, the party takes on a different character.

If the party's aim is to establish socialism by helping to generate a socialist majority in the population, then how can it's character change? The party has one role, to aid the overthrow of the capitalist state by the proletariat. The party does not have any other motives, unlike other so called socialist parties that aim to establish themselves as a vanguard, which will then take control of the state 'on behalf of' the proletariat.


First of all, the most obvious problem with this engagement is that the act of voting is inherently de-classed. It is not an action which pitches the working class against the ruling class. It is a legal act where the working class plays the game of the bourgeois by the rules of the bourgeois.Not only that, but the very engagement has little to do with class politics. However any class can vote for any party, A bourgeois can vote for a "socialist party", and a worker can vote for a "capitalist party". This happens all the time, only the wealthiest section of the labor aristocracy forms the bulk of Labour Party buercracy and many of their politicians are former businessmen, while on the otherhand the Tories can appeal to a white lower middle class base on the level of consumer identity and nativism. So the very act of putting a party on the ballot is an act of surrendering class Independence, as this act has nothing to do with class.

At the time of revolution, with a class conscious proletariat, most will understand that there are ultimately just two classes, the working class, and the capitalist class. The choice will be between socialism and capitalism. Do you want to continue being a wage slave, raising wage slaves, spending your whole life as part of the mechanism of the capitalist process, or do you want to be free? As the proletariat understands and wants socialism, many capitalists may also come to understand and want socialism. We are, after all, all capitalists at the moment. Our pensions, houses, savings etc. are all making money from money. A true socialist party on the ballot is not trying to appeal to classes, but to socialists, who may come from many walks of life.


Likewise, no matter what ideology a party takes, it will have to engage politics on it's own level. Now I'd like you to turn on the TV, what are your politicians debating? Nothing really, there isn't much of a discussion about ideas . Instead politics is based on scandals, political spin, and the use of these events to create "popularity" for a politician to make a majority come the day of election. So if you want to engage the working class on the level of electoral politics, then you will need to engage them on this level.

A political party standing for socialism does not engage in populism to gain votes. It stands for socialism. If the public do not want socialism, they will not vote for it. The public needs to understand and want socialism, and not be coerced into something that calls itself socialism, but which follows a reformist agenda.


Now I know what you are going to say before you say it. "But a socialist party will be about ideas! It will be about people, people will trust us because we aren't corrupt like bourgeois politcans"! Really? Do you think bourgeois politicians are dumb? If honesty and new ideas were really the way to win elections, then we'd see alot more of it. The reason why politics is the way it is, is because the bourgeois have money and they invest that in marketing teams to find the best ways to manipulate human psychology in order to get votes. Lying and appealing to emotions is simply a better way to win elections.

A socialist revolution will come from the people, with representatives of the people standing for parliament in order to win control of state mechanisms, prior to disbanding the state. A class conscious public will know what socialism is, and want it. If their representative did not stand for socialism, they would be replaced. The main political parties in the UK stand for capitalism, a system that owes its survival to lying to the public. Therefore, it's no surprise that capitalist politicians lie. Why would a socialist politician need to lie if the public understood and wanted socialism?


Let me demonstrate this with a real life example so you understand what I'm saying in concrete terms. J.C Penny decided one day that instead of raising prices and announcing "sales" that were actually more expensive, they'd stop manipulating their consumers and be honest with their pricing and marketing. Do you know what happened? They lost millions of dollars. Here's a link so you know what I mean, It's not that long, only a few minutes of your time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmCn-csZStA

That's capitalism for you.


Likewise, there is no other possible way to win an election. Either a socialist party becomes better at double talk, lies, deciete, and popularity contests, or it loses. It will never, ever, ever win an election otherwise.

Again, a socialist party does not need to lie.


And if a socialist party does all that, if it surrender's it's class politics to the ballot, if it engages in mainstream politics like it must to win elections. Then even if it wins a majority of parliament, it will cease to be a socialist party and nothing will come out of it.

I agree. The party would not be a socialist party.


So no, a socialist party can never win democratically win the state. Because to do so would be to surrender it's socialist nature.

No socialist party would surrender its socialist nature. That would mean it was not a socialist party. However, if the majority of the public understood and wanted socialism, then a democratically elected socialist party would take control of the state, enabling the dismantling of the state, and the establishment of a socialist society.

[bricolage]

Demands for democratic rights seem to have been pretty popular to organise around in Spain (indignados) and the Arab Spring in the last couple of years.
if you think you can separate the economic factors of these movements from the 'demands for democratic rights' then you are insane. or was the egyptian uprising just as 2011 chartist movement that had no connection to rising food prices, increased slum populations, several years of militant strike movements and so forth?

[Hit The North]

if you think you can separate the economic factors of these movements from the 'demands for democratic rights' then you are insane. or was the egyptian uprising just as 2011 chartist movement that had no connection to rising food prices, increased slum populations, several years of militant strike movements and so forth?

Except this separation of the political and economic struggle seems pretty much embedded in the strategy of the SPGB. So you don't need to be insane, you just need to be in agreement with the SPGB.

[Hit The North]

Demands for democratic rights seem to have been pretty popular to organise around in Spain (indignados) and the Arab Spring in the last couple of years.

The democratic demands of the indignados movement are not identical with the democratic demands of the Arab Spring, though, are they? And neither have much to do with the Chartists. Of course, Marxists are the most resolute proponents of the most extreme democracy which is, of course, embodied by the socialist revolution. Our message isn't that we can use bourgeois democracy to win this extension in freedom, but that we must break through its limitations. At the core of our politics is the belief that political democracy without economic democracy is a sham democracy and, further, that economic democracy cannot be achieved without the abolition of the capitalist mode of production.

Arguably, the limitation of the idignados movement is that it has not been able to translate its street power into political power; and the weakness of the Egyptian movement is not connecting decisively with the economic struggles that preceded it. The job of socialists, as I see it, is so be in there arguing for the need to link these different sides of the struggle and I wonder if the SPGB were in either of these two countries would they be engaging their resources in a campaign within these movements to build a revolutionary party that straddles the full power of the working class or would it be standing to one side sloganeering about the dangers of vanguardism?


Certainly more popular than Trot front campaigns.

I wouldn't trade on the virtues of popularity if I were you :rolleyes:.

[Hit The North]

It should be the proletariat that seize power, not a leading party.


But according to you lot, the revolution will be carried out by a political party that has won the electoral support of the majority of society on the basis of its program to abolish capitalism and provide the basis for socialism, so what kind of party do you envision this to be if not a "leading party"?


A political party standing for socialism does not engage in populism to gain votes. It stands for socialism. If the public do not want socialism, they will not vote for it. The public needs to understand and want socialism, and not be coerced into something that calls itself socialism, but which follows a reformist agenda.


So how's that paying off for you so far, after over one hundred years? What do you think it will take to get "the public" to want socialism - a mass subscription to the Socialist Standard?

[Mytan Fadeseasy]

But according to you lot, the revolution will be carried out by a political party that has won the electoral support of the majority of society on the basis of its program to abolish capitalism and provide the basis for socialism, so what kind of party do you envision this to be if not a "leading party"?

The revolution will not be carried out by the political party, it will be carried out by the majority that have voted for socialism. The democratic process will be used by the majority that want socialism to take control of the state apparatus.


So how's that paying off for you so far, after over one hundred years? What do you think it will take to get "the public" to want socialism - a mass subscription to the Socialist Standard?

People need to understand what socialism is before they can want it. Most people living within the current capitalist society don't even realise that there is an alternative.

Socialism is invisible to the proletariat for a variety of reasons, such as the coercion of the capitalist state to keep workers ignorant and working, and the mind numbing power of capitalism over the proletariat, who need to spend all their time worrying about how to get by from one day to the next, with barely any time for their own thoughts.

At the moment, many people are casting about looking for an alternative to capitalism. Perhaps the time is right for the proletariat to become politically aware. However, most people relate socialism to the state capitalist and dictatorial regimes that have marred the name of socialism. They are not going to stand behind a socialist group proclaiming that it will lead them to victory over capitalism. They need education as to what socialism actually is. The proletariat can then decide for themselves whether that is what they want, and when they understand socialism, I am sure that it will be what they want.

[Hit The North]

The revolution will not be carried out by the political party, it will be carried out by the majority that have voted for socialism.


Well in an earlier post you wrote differently:


A socialist revolution will come from the people, with representatives of the people standing for parliament in order to win control of state mechanisms, prior to disbanding the state.
And from the same post:


However, if the majority of the public understood and wanted socialism, then a democratically elected socialist party would take control of the state, enabling the dismantling of the state, and the establishment of a socialist society. So it is clear that, for you, the active instrument of the revolution is the party and not the people who are merely represented in the acts of the party. If this isn't a "leading party" then what is it?


The democratic process will be used by the majority that want socialism to take control of the state apparatus.
Do you mean the current bourgeois democratic process? I think you do because you are viewing the revolution entirely from the point of view of representative politics: 'the workers vote for people to represent them in parliament'.

Btw, I have no problem with the idea that once the proletariat has achieved power that it may elect a central administration to manage the further development of socialism; but the SPGB turn this elected body from a mere adminstrative formality of a workers democracy to the main agent of workers democracy. It is from the election of this party, by a proletariat magically transformed from dull slaves to the rhythm of their own exploitation to enlightened professors of socialism, that the revolution begins.

It is an abstract propagandist vision of revolution: where the aim is to reach a critical mass where you have "educated" workers to believe in your cause and then vote accordingly. It is the revolution of reason and contemplation, over tea and crumpets, the very English revolution of the Socialist Party of Good Boys.

It is not the messy revolutions of collapsing economies and states in crisis, of polarised societies and waves of reaction which we find in actual history.


People need to understand what socialism is before they can want it. Most people living within the current capitalist society don't even realise that there is an alternative.

Socialism is invisible to the proletariat for a variety of reasons, such as the coercion of the capitalist state to keep workers ignorant and working, and the mind numbing power of capitalism over the proletariat, who need to spend all their time worrying about how to get by from one day to the next, with barely any time for their own thoughts.Yes, well as you said elsewhere, the job of the socialists party is to help raise consciousness in the class and the question of this thread is how we organise to do that. On my side of the argument it is through the active intervention in the day to day struggles of the class - but intervening as an organised force. On the SPGB side of the argument, it seems to be more about one-on-one propaganda and summer schools.

[The Idler]

What the Chartists, the indignados and the Arab spring have in common was they made democratic demands a central part of their campaign. Those that want to separate the economic factors from the political struggle are those that still believe workers are only capable of achieving a trade union level of consciousness.

Unfortunately this counts for most self-proclaimed 'Marxists' (at least in the UK). You only have to look at the set-up of supposedly 'Marxist' parties who subscribe to this notion, to see how 'extreme democracy' is not proposed. Hence why the claim of 'extreme democracy' in socialist organisation is delayed and essentialised to be 'embodied in the socialist revolution', rather than the here and now.

Workers in these recent movements showed themselves quite capable of linking economic factors with political struggle. The claimed 'Marxists' applied for this 'job' and were rebuffed and reminded by the democratic majority of the class just how unpopular and unwelcome these self-appointed linkers are. In fact their practice is very much a separation of and preference for street power and political power.

To reiterate, 'Marxists' claiming the mantle of the party to exclusively carry out revolution are wrong. The revolution will not be carried out by the political party, it will be carried out by the majority. The working-class is the vast majority of society. Workers do all of the work in society who are perfectly capable of class consciousness, socialist understanding and acting politically. Workers have had enough of parties 'intervening in day-to-day struggles' and 'linking up the economic with the political'. They're fed up to the back teeth with this.

SPGB have always said a majority is necessary first, their opponents have rejected this and argued for 'intervention in day-to-day struggles' yet time and again this strategy seems incapable of achieving support for anything other than the day-to-day struggles being 'intervened' in.

I'm not expecting a sudden mass subscription to the Socialist Standard anymore than Socialist Review, but the least you could do would be to read what you're trying to attack.

[Mytan Fadeseasy]

Well in an earlier post you wrote differently

Nothing contradictory here old bean. The majority want revolution, and achieve this by voting for delegates to take control of the state apparatus to help ensure a smooth transition from capitalism to socialism.


So it is clear that, for you, the active instrument of the revolution is the party and not the people who are merely represented in the acts of the party. If this isn't a "leading party" then what is it?

No leading party here, the majority are the revolutionaries.


Do you mean the current bourgeois democratic process? I think you do because you are viewing the revolution entirely from the point of view of representative politics: 'the workers vote for people to represent them in parliament'.

OK, didn't mean represent them in parliament. Parliament will no longer exist once the proletariat have taken control. There will be no state.


Btw, I have no problem with the idea that once the proletariat has achieved power that it may elect a central administration to manage the further development of socialism

I do have a problem with this. Why on earth would any socialist revolution want to then re-instate a centralist administration to lord it over them when they have just won their freedom?


It is an abstract propagandist vision of revolution: where the aim is to reach a critical mass where you have "educated" workers to believe in your cause and then vote accordingly. It is the revolution of reason and contemplation, over tea and crumpets, the very English revolution of the Socialist Party of Good Boys.

If socialism is imposed on a majority who do not want it, by a small group of 'revolutionaries' it is not socialism, it is a dictatorship.


It is not the messy revolutions of collapsing economies and states in crisis, of polarised societies and waves of reaction which we find in actual history.

There may well be some resistance by a minority, even after the socialists have seized control of the state apparatus, so you can still bash some capitalists if that's your bag.


On my side of the argument it is through the active intervention in the day to day struggles of the class - but intervening as an organised force.

History has shown time and time again that this intervention provides a temporary reprieve from some of the results of capitalism. Reforms won are just undone by the next administration. The cause of the problems is capitalism, thus it is capitalism that needs to be removed.

“away with the conservative motto, a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage and inscribe on your banner the revolutionary watchword ABOLITION OF THE WAGES SYSTEM”

[bricolage]

Those that want to separate the economic factors from the political struggle are those that still believe workers are only capable of achieving a trade union level of consciousness.
I don't really know what you are talking about, the only ones here who have been separating the economic factors from the political struggle are those that adhere to the spgb line.

the irony of this of course being that by far and way the most democratic organs that have ever emerged have been those that have come from militant workers actions and that the strike committees, popular assemblies, workers councils that have come from 'reformist' and 'mere economic' struggles have far more to offer the working class and the movements towards socialism than any kind of imaginary 21st century chartism. (and of yeah check out what happened in egypt and tell me the democratic bodies had nothing to do with strike movements...)

you are right that most self-proclaimed marxists in the uk are full of shit, the problem is that seems to include your lot as well.

[bricolage]

SPGB have always said a majority is necessary first, their opponents have rejected this and argued for 'intervention in day-to-day struggles' yet time and again this strategy seems incapable of achieving support for anything other than the day-to-day struggles being 'intervened' in.
far more workers have become socialists through 'day to day struggles' than from the evangelical communism you propose. this is simply a fact.

[Mytan Fadeseasy]

far more workers have become socialists through 'day to day struggles' than from the evangelical communism you propose. this is simply a fact.

Have workers become socialists through day to day struggles? Historically, once reforms have achieved a certain level that the worker is happy with, the drive for socialism seems to desert the worker. This would suggest that the worker did not want socialism after all.

Marx suggests in Capital that it is very difficult for workers to have the time to develop class consciousness, due to the very fact that workers spend all of their time focused on getting by, day by day. This may appear to contradict the idea that all workers can achieve a class consciousness, and thus enable the revolution to occur from the bottom up.

Lenin's idea of the proletariat being unable to develop more than a trade union consciousness, and thus needing a vanguard party, may seem to be supported by this idea. However, it is not that the proletariat do not have the ability to develop class consciousness, it is that they do not have the time to do so. When times are good, neither do the workers have the inclination.

Perhaps the time afforded by high unemployment, with workers looking for answers as to how unemployment can be so high, is enabling the indignados to develop class consciousness?

[bricolage]

Have workers become socialists through day to day struggles?
yes. speak to people. look at relationships between periods of high class struggle and popularity of socialist ideas/organisations.


Historically, once reforms have achieved a certain level that the worker is happy with, the drive for socialism seems to desert the worker. This would suggest that the worker did not want socialism after all.
historically they have emerged into full scale insurrections and led to the formation of workers councils and other forms of 'extreme democracy'.

but this is the problem, you see each struggle as an isolated thing that happens once and then diminishes just as quickly, when the reality is that it creates far longer term cultures of resistance and formal/informal organisations and so forth. these then both impact upon and are impacted upon by the wider balance of class forces.


Perhaps the time afforded by high unemployment, with workers looking for answers as to how unemployment can be so high, is enabling the indignados to develop class consciousness?
so we should fetishise periods of high unemployment as the only gateway to socialism? putting aside the preference for a period of great suffering this is a very deterministic attitude for a group so indebted to idealism.

[Mytan Fadeseasy]

yes. speak to people. look at relationships between periods of high class struggle and popularity of socialist ideas/organisations.
What popularity of socialist ideas/organisations?

historically they have emerged into full scale insurrections and led to the formation of workers councils and other forms of 'extreme democracy'.
But have any of these insurrections lead to the establishment of socialism? In countries where revolution has not happened we have a load of reformist parties continuing the endless class struggle within a capitalist state. Where revolutions have happened, and states have defined themselves as socialist, a vanguard party has imposed its own form of state control on the proletariat. The workers councils have ended up subservient to a dictatorial state, and wage slavery continues. Historically socialism has yet to happen.

but this is the problem, you see each struggle as an isolated thing that happens once and then diminishes just as quickly, when the reality is that it creates far longer term cultures of resistance and formal/informal organisations and so forth. these then both impact upon and are impacted upon by the wider balance of class forces.
This is the ongoing class struggle within capitalism. Worker wants reforms, capitalist resists reforms, worker action affects profit, capitalist reforms to improve profit, worker happy until capitalist discards reforms, and so on, and so on. To end this cycle the workers need to know how capitalism works, what socialism is, and to want socialism. Only then will workers be able to see a way out of this merry-go-round.

so we should fetishise periods of high unemployment as the only gateway to socialism? putting aside the preference for a period of great suffering this is a very deterministic attitude for a group so indebted to idealism.
There is no idealism here. The transfer of ideas to empower the workers is action. Action happens whenever workers discuss ideas in the pub, workplace, on the web. How else can ideas be shared, but by action? This is action that will raise the class consciousness of the worker. This is action that will lead the proletariat to question the capitalist state, and lead to democratic action to overthrow the capitalist state. Where is the idealism?

[bricolage]

But have any of these insurrections lead to the establishment of socialism?
no. but has the spreading of ideas led to the establishment of socialism? no.
so where are we then.

that previous insurrectionary moments have been subsumed to reaction does not mean, as you say, we dismiss the whole thing but instead look at how the moments can be strengthened and adapted.


Action happens whenever workers discuss ideas in the pub, workplace, on the web. How else can ideas be shared, but by action?
ideas are formed through struggle, ideas reflect material relationships.
workers discuss ideas on picket lines far more meaningfully than internet forums but of course you have no interest in that.

the idealism is that you admit your only form of action is... ideas.

[Mytan Fadeseasy]

that previous insurrectionary moments have been subsumed to reaction does not mean, as you say, we dismiss the whole thing but instead look at how the moments can be strengthened and adapted.

Yes, and the moments can be strengthened by ensuring the workers understand how capitalism works, and know what socialism is, thus moving beyond protest and reform and into revolution.



ideas are formed through struggle, ideas reflect material relationships.
workers discuss ideas on picket lines far more meaningfully than internet forums but of course you have no interest in that.

the idealism is that you admit your only form of action is... ideas.

Yes, ideas can be spread anywhere. Once a majority know what socialism is and want it, they can take action by seizing control of the state apparatus through democracy. The action is revolution.

[The Idler]

Once again, we see the attempt to separate the economic factors from political struggle by the economistic perspective of reducing Arab Spring and indignados to economic factors and the Chartists to purely political. Its like creationists trying to separate fossils of man from fossils of apes only with more examples they have to keep shifting which is which because 'workers are only capable of trade union consciousness'.

Hence why these folks mobilise workers around slogans like 'smash the ...', 'kick ... out' or 'unite the resistance' or 'stop the war'. Contrary to your claim, this doesn't make more 'socialists'.

The problem with self-proclaimed 'Marxists' is preaching democracy (the more 'extreme' it is claimed, the less it seems to be questioned) on the one hand, and organising into undemocratic less-than-completely egalitarian 'socialist' parties. Come on, you had one job!

Determinism is another form of idealism, I'm not interested in playing the falling living standards or day to day struggles game as I don't think it makes 'socialists' any more than rising living standards. You've still got to become conscious politically either way. Claiming workers discuss on picket lines (and I suppose 'marxists' discuss on revleft) is idealist, through and through.

Re-enacting failed insurrections, with promises to win this time, only demoralises the class further. When pressed, you sort of reluctantly concede their futility but cling to them, is this not idealism? Some of the most interesting new movements of the last decade or so over anti-globalisation influenced occupy movement with ideas over anti-hierarchichal organising that unfortunately for aspiring Lenins, won't fade away or be crushed.

[bricolage]

ok lets be straight here, you clearly haven't read anything ive written so I don't see why I should argue with you but fine.

I never said there were no political factors involved in the arab spring (a collection of disparate struggles that have been grouped under this very problematic homogenous title and in most cases have fallen prey to reformism and civil war but hey dont let that get in the way of your gcse analysis) but that it was ridiculous for you to complete divorce it from economic conditions. once again I repeat that the only ones who has ever separated the political from the economic is you with your assumption that it was just about democratic demands and had nothing to do with (AMONGST OTHER THINGS) food prices and pre-existing labour struggles, and that the democratic demands had nothing to do with using them to improve economic conditions. hint: the two are very very related.

and lets get the other point here I am neither a leninist nor am I a member of any organisation that campaigns around any of the nebulous slogans you mention (btw Im firmly of the opinion that workers are capable of forming their own organisations and will sweep into the dustbin of history the parasitic groups of the left), you are just incapable of thinking anyone can disagree with you unless they are part some sort of caricatured enemy that you create for the purpose of your arguments.


I'm not interested in playing the falling living standards or day to day struggles game as I don't think it makes 'socialists' any more than rising living standards.
except that it was your mate in this thread that played that game so you ought to get your own ship in order.


Claiming workers discuss on picket lines (and I suppose 'marxists' discuss on revleft) is idealist, through and through.
workers discuss lots of things on picket lines. I know cos Ive stood on plenty of them both in solidarity and on strike myself. i'm sorry it's not as glamorous as running for by-elections in clapham.


Some of the most interesting new movements of the last decade or so over anti-globalisation influenced occupy movement with ideas over anti-hierarchichal organising that unfortunately for aspiring Lenins, won't fade away or be crushed.
lol, the alter-globalisation movement was mostly made up of groups fighting under 'reformist' demands, or did the zapatistas not care about NAFTA? were the summit protests not about IMF structural adjustment policies and resource grabbing? so they organised in anti-hierarchical structures to fight for these goals and did not solely confine their struggle to them? well hey thats what I've been arguing in this entire thread.

[The Idler]

Stating that demands for democratic rights seem to have been pretty popular to organise around in Spain (indignados) and the Arab Spring in the last couple of years is not separating economic factors from political struggle. It especially shouldn't be a problematic statement for those standing for 'extreme democracy'.

To quote directly from what you've written (and I've read)
'if an organisational and strategical outlook has floundered for over a century what will change to make it relevant in the future?'
Given your selective economism, why not economic conditions and 'day to day struggles' changing? You even say 'there are material reasons that can be given regarding the state of class struggle itself', so why not the SPGB?
Instead, caricatures are presented such as 'the mythological passage of socialism as a piece of legislation'.

If I'm disagreeing with who you call 'my mate', then caricaturising anyone I disagree with as an 'enemy', then which is it?

If you're interested in organising in anti-hierarchical structures but not confining your struggle to discussing lots of ideas on picket lines, but in by-elections and more too, then I look forward to your application form to join the SPGB.

[bricolage]

Stating that demands for democratic rights seem to have been pretty popular to organise around in Spain (indignados) and the Arab Spring in the last couple of years is not separating economic factors from political struggle.
it is, because for you those democratic demands have nothing to do with achieving anything apart from democratic rights. in reality the democratic rights go alongside 'reformist' and 'economistic' demands but that would be problematic for you to admit because it would make those movements both reformist and economistic and hence you would have to drop your support for them. it's also problematic because what I have been constantly mentioning is that these struggles stem in some degree from pre-existing day to day struggles, ie. the relationship between pre-arab spring strikes in egypt and the composition of those that formed the real strength of the movement in tahrir square and elsewhere.. once again this is problematic for you to admit because it conflates things you agree with and things you don't and for you there appears to be no grey area.


You even say 'there are material reasons that can be given regarding the state of class struggle itself', so why not the SPGB?
because your views on how socialists (and hence socialism) will come about solely come from the spread of ideas which you separate from material reasons. so it doesn't matter if workers are forming ad hoc councils and occupying entire cities, this has no relationship to what you identify as the real drive towards socialism and what's more important is how many of them agree with the political line put forward by the spgb.


Instead, caricatures are presented such as 'the mythological passage of socialism as a piece of legislation'.
ok maybe I was a bit hyperbolic there, but considering the spgb praxis is based around using an elected government (elected through bourgeois institutions) to establish socialism, I don't think this is too far off.


If I'm disagreeing with who you call 'my mate', then caricaturising anyone I disagree with as an 'enemy', then which is it?
he/she is in the same political organisation as you, granted you might not actually be friends but i'd imagine that for a group that has such strict membership requirements you'd have some kind of political similarity.

and I was saying you caricature all those that disagree with you as leninists and swp members or whatnot, ignoring the fact that there are plenty of others (anarchist, left-communist, insurrectionists and so forth) that also disagree strongly with the spgb line.


If you're interested in organising in anti-hierarchical structures but not confining your struggle to discussing lots of ideas on picket lines, but in by-elections and more too, then I look forward to your application form to join the SPGB.
thanks but no thanks.
I don't like clapham anyway.

[Djoko]

I think that most of socialist parties in the world today are part of a "system" and therefore part of a problem, not solution.

[Mytan Fadeseasy]

ok maybe I was a bit hyperbolic there, but considering the spgb praxis is based around using an elected government (elected through bourgeois institutions) to establish socialism, I don't think this is too far off.

The SPGB do not propose to use parliament to establish socialism. That would not be socialism. As I understand it, the SPGB will use the parliamentary process to gain control of the state machinery. The majority who understand and want socialism will establish socialism.



he/she is in the same political organisation as you, granted you might not actually be friends but i'd imagine that for a group that has such strict membership requirements you'd have some kind of political similarity.

I have never said that I'm a member of the SPGB; however, my political views are similar, and as far as I am aware, nothing I have said contradicts the SPGB's views.



I don't like clapham anyway.

That's alright. There are branches all over the UK :lol:

[Hit The North]

As I understand it, the SPGB will use the parliamentary process to gain control of the state machinery.


The SPGB will do nothing of the kind because its refusal to engage in the movement that gets us to the revolution will mean that the working class will still not know who they are.

The SPGB can't recruit in times of struggle. They can't recruit in time of no struggle. They can't recruit. This is all they've proved to the proletariat over the course of nearly one hundred and ten years.


That's alright. There are branches all over the UK :lol:

Twigs, maybe :rolleyes:

[Mytan Fadeseasy]

The SPGB will do nothing of the kind because its refusal to engage in the movement that gets us to the revolution will mean that the working class will still not know who they are.

The proletariat need to understand and want socialism before the revolution can happen. Leading the proletariat up a blind alley by letting them believe that a reformist agenda will save them from a capitalist system that they do not even know is oppressing them is misleading. Education is the key, by whatever means possible. And honesty.


Twigs, maybe :rolleyes:

Sticks and stones......................:tt2:

[Hit The North]

The proletariat need to understand and want socialism before the revolution can happen. Leading the proletariat up a blind alley by letting them believe that a reformist agenda will save them from a capitalist system that they do not even know is oppressing them is misleading. Education is the key, by whatever means possible. And honesty.


This predictable auto-response does nothing to address the criticism that the problem with the SPGB, and partly a cause of their minuscule-ness, is that they refuse to go to the proletariat and expect the workers to come to them.

They have no praxis; no answer to the question of this thread: How should socialists organise?

Education and honesty are all very well but if the pupil won't go to the teacher, nothing much will be taught or learned.

[The Idler]

I think you're shifting tack from 'economic factors' in the movements to movements making specific 'economic demands'.
You're also shifting tack from the movements making 'demands for democratic rights' to the movements using 'democratic rights going alongside reformist demands'.
Not necessarily the same point as one implies acknowledgement of how struggle happens and the other implies supporting specific demands like fairer taxes etc.

Of course various ideas between groups can overlap but the workers who are members of the SPGB formulate policy, and commit to it, in order to capture political power. No need to travel anywhere to the proletariat since our policy is determined by workers who are members. I acknowledge there are also anarchists, leftcoms etc who disagree with the SPGB, which is partly why SPGB members formulate the SPGB's own policy. Unlike other 'Marxists' the SPGB are not substituting the party (policy) for the class. If you don't agree, then don't join. As for recruitment, the SPGB has the highest rate of member retention of any group and certainly isn't miniscule when it comes to 'marxist' parties, its probably the fourth largest in Britain. Most 'Marxist' groups disillusion and burnout more people than they recruit. These are part of the problem, not the solution.

The SPGB do not propose using an elected government to establish socialism. This is a ridiculous distortion of the case.

Leftcoms may need reminding what Marx said, that 'every class struggle is a political struggle'. Is this separating economic factors from democratic demands since this is Marx's case and the SPGB's? The SPGB have a pretty exceptionally positive record on attitude towards strikes and industrial action (much better than leftcoms in fact). To the insurrectionists and anarchists, remember there are no shortcuts, as Engels put it 'in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long, persistent work is required' although we wouldn't go as far as Lenin's claim 'If Socialism can only be realised when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not get Socialism for about 500 years'.

Personally I'm not a fan of the teacher-pupil analogy as I think this is perpetuated in 'socialist' parties where the executive committee 'do the thinking' in private meetings and the rest 'do the action'. The SPGB answer to how socialists should organise is transparently with all meetings being open to the public as the best education for the class self-organising for themselves. What Delta did in a party known for high recruitment is like this relationship but worse, since it would have led to his dismissal as a teacher. Lesson over or as leftcoms might say 'class dismissed'.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Wack Materialism:
"It's cool bro, we'll have individual dictatorship over industry as a necessary compliment to proletarian democracy." - Lil' Vlad

[The Vox Populi]

Like the anarchists :cool: ,for a bunch of militant, and leftist radicals who hate all forms of the state they sure are organized.:grin: