Question to Trots about substitutionism

[Skyhilist]

Alright, so it's my understanding that Trotskyists are strongly anti-substitutionist, no?

So my questions are as follows (and these are specifically directed towards Trots):

1. How do you envision it being ensured that the vanguard party is acting strictly in the interests of the working class (i.e. isn't being subsitutionist)?

2. Is this something that Trots tend to agree on, or no? If not, what are some of the other Trotskyist viewpoints on how to ensure that substitutionism isn't present within the vanguard party?

3. How would these measures be put into practice if the vanguard party was substitutionist to begin with, what would you suggest in order to counter this, and how could your suggestions plausibly be implemented if such were the case?

4. What role specifically would the working class itself play in determining the actions of the vanguard party? When I say specific I don't mean "the party would act on behalf of the working class" or that kind of thing, I mean specific rights in determining things that would be guaranteed to the working class (if any).

Thanks.

[Fred]

Alright, so it's my understanding that Trotskyists are strongly anti-substitutionist, no?

So my questions are as follows (and these are specifically directed towards Trots):

1. How do you envision it being ensured that the vanguard party is acting strictly in the interests of the working class (i.e. isn't being subsitutionist)?

2. Is this something that Trots tend to agree on, or no? If not, what are some of the other Trotskyist viewpoints on how to ensure that substitutionism isn't present within the vanguard party?

3. How would these measures be put into practice if the vanguard party was substitutionist to begin with, what would you suggest in order to counter this, and how could your suggestions plausibly be implemented if such were the case?

4. What role specifically would the working class itself play in determining the actions of the vanguard party? When I say specific I don't mean "the party would act on behalf of the working class" or that kind of thing, I mean specific rights in determining things that would be guaranteed to the working class (if any).

Thanks.

There are no guarantees
The best defense is hewing carefully to a Leninist program. I think that Trotskyists generally would agree that since the revolution has to be made by a very large section of the working class, substitutionism simply won't work. Kind of like political assassinations. If capitalism could be overthrown by either, than it could be considered. But since it can't be. . . .

2. I don't know if all Trotskyist tendencies agree -- I mean we don't agree that the other tendencies besides our own are Trotskyist.

3. That's pretty abstract, comrade. How does any party right itself when it errs? Hopefully by dissent within the party that acts as a corrective. I can think of parties that have gone awry but managed to avert disaster. But also revolutionary parties that have succumbed to reformism and worse.

4. Again if the Party is to lead a revolution in an industrialized country, it will only do so with a very large piece of the proletariat behind it. Why would the newly empowered proletariat, now politically aware and feeling its own power, allow such a thing?

[Geiseric]

Black bloc is IMO a much better example of substitutionism than anything i've seen trotskyist parties do. Of course trying to impress your program on the working class is substitutionist. But if you've read the transitional program, you'd know that trotskyists basically struggle for whatever the rest of the working class is struggling for at a given moment. It all has to do with tactics, wheras ultra lefts would attempt to veer the struggle in a different, "more radical" direction.

[Hit The North]

But if you've read the transitional program, you'd know that trotskyists basically struggle for whatever the rest of the working class is struggling for at a given moment. It all has to do with tactics, wheras ultra lefts would attempt to veer the struggle in a different, "more radical" direction.

This makes it sound like the Trotskyists tail-end the class struggle and allow the "less radical" elements to determine the direction.

[Brotto Rühle]

This makes it sound like the Trotskyists tail-end the class struggle and allow the "less radical" elements to determine the direction.

Trotskyism is tail-endism.

[Fourth Internationalist]

This makes it sound like the Trotskyists tail-end the class struggle and allow the "less radical" elements to determine the direction.

How does it make it sound like that?

[Art Vandelay]

How does it make it sound like that?

Because that is litteraly what Geiseric describes here, which is unsurprising given that his politics seem to have been spoon fed to him by whatever group it is, that he's a member of. The idea that Trotsky advocated tailing the consciousness of the masses, as opposed to standing ultimately in contradiction with the prevailing level of class consciousness, is false and can only stem from a gross misreading of the transitional program. The transitional program is no more about tailing prevailing class consciousness anymore then the manifesto for the communist party was.

Edit: re: op, I actually consider this a really interesting question and will back later when I'm off work and can properly post.

[Geiseric]

Because that is litteraly what Geiseric describes here, which is unsurprising given that his politics seem to have been spoon fed to him by whatever group it is, that he's a member of. The idea that Trotsky advocated tailing the consciousness of the masses, as opposed to standing ultimately in contradiction with the prevailing level of class consciousness, is false and can only stem from a gross misreading of the transitional program. The transitional program is no more about tailing prevailing class consciousness anymore then the manifesto for the communist party was.

Edit: re: op, I actually consider this a really interesting question and will back later when I'm off work and can properly post.

In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.

They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.

They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.

[Geiseric]

This makes it sound like the Trotskyists tail-end the class struggle and allow the "less radical" elements to determine the direction.

What? Trotskyists find out where the ENTIRE WORKING CLASS IS WILLING TO STRUGGLE. Once that happens, the role of communists is to expand that struggle to its success, and then expand that consciousness into other areas which ARE NOT arbitrarily decided by the communists. Food, Land, Peace, was the slogan of the bolsheviks because they knew that Food, Land, and Peace were what the Russian proletariat and poor peasantry were concerned with. Not an arbitrary condemnation of any struggle that falls short of the slogans of "overthrow the government." They did say "all power to the soviets," though, which meant in itself the end of capitalism, because the soviets formed without the bolsheviks. Once the soviets did form, the bolsheviks defended them to their last breath and were chosen by the working class to be their leaders.

Because the slogan of Food, Land, and peace were incompatable with capitalism, that was the entire point. The working class knew the bolsheviks were one and the same with them once the bolsheviks formed the most excited, dedicated sections of the struggle for food, land, and peace during the october revolution, and then the most dedicated sections to defend what was won.

According to you, the slogan above was "tail ending," the "less radical," proletarians, which is an incorrect position.

[Skyhilist]

Edit: re: op, I actually consider this a really interesting question and will back later when I'm off work and can properly post.

Thank you very much, I appreciate it.

[Skyhilist]

There are no guarantees
The best defense is hewing carefully to a Leninist program. I think that Trotskyists generally would agree that since the revolution has to be made by a very large section of the working class, substitutionism simply won't work. Kind of like political assassinations. If capitalism could be overthrown by either, than it could be considered. But since it can't be. . . .

Yes, I agree substitutionism wont work. It'll perpetuate capitalism. But when it's said that "the revolution has to be made by a very large section of the working class" what exactly is meant? I mean it seems kind of vague. Are there any actual decisions that the working class a whole can be guaranteed to be able to make? And if so, how is such a guarantee enforced? Finally, what about the things that aren't guaranteed to the working class in the decision making process? How can we be assured that the positions of power held by members of the vanguard party wont lead them astray? I mean on what basis should we believe that they know what's best for the working class more than the working class does itself (which if this wasn't true, why not just have the working class direct all of the party's goals and ideas whenever possible through direct democracy)?


2. I don't know if all Trotskyist tendencies agree -- I mean we don't agree that the other tendencies besides our own are Trotskyist.

What I mean is: surely you, being a reasonable individual see Trotskyism as something that is flexible to at least some extent and not an absolute dogma. So given that, are there any prominent viewpoints within Trotskyism on how we could ensure that a vanguard party wouldn't become substitutionist once having control of the state?


3. That's pretty abstract, comrade. How does any party right itself when it errs?

That's the problem at hand -- most don't, at least not adequately.


Hopefully by dissent within the party that acts as a corrective. I can think of parties that have gone awry but managed to avert disaster. But also revolutionary parties that have succumbed to reformism and worse.

When you say "hopefully", is there any actual plan laid out to ensure that we don't just have to "hope" that there will be some type of accountability within the vanguard party and can actually be guaranteed it? You know something that would definitely prevent any party from going astray for to long? It seems like a really huge gamble to me, because what if it doesn't pay off and things go similar to the way they did after Lenin's death (and I'm not saying I'm a huge fan of Lenin to begin with)?


4. Again if the Party is to lead a revolution in an industrialized country, it will only do so with a very large piece of the proletariat behind it.

Could you maybe point to some empirical evidence for this please? Forgive me for my skepticism, but it seems that the bourgeois have no problem controlling the industrialized world now despite making up a very small percentage of the population.

[Fred]

Unfortunately, the way it works in practice is that a lot of ostensibly Trotskyist groups, including the one the Geiseric adheres to, do tail the rest of the left and whatever working class consciousness is at a given moment. That is not Trotskyism.

In a revolutionary situation, as in Russia in 1917, Trotsky explained over and over in his wonderful History of the Russian Revolution, the masses will often advance further than the revolutionary vanguard. So it was that by July, even though the time was not quite right for it, big sections of the proletariat were agitating for the seizure of power. That is what precipitated the July Days. So the slogan of Food, Land and Peace were excellent transitional demands, because they led directly to the overthrow of the government. It is well known that sections of the Bolshevik leadership were not ready for the Revolution (e.g., Zinoviev and Kamenev) -- the masses, in this case were to the left of these leaders.

It is folly to apply that kind of thinking in periods of capitalist stability and/or reaction. The reformist wing of ostensible Trotskyism uses the Transitional Program as a road to bury the revolutionary program of Trotskyism under their liberal political appetites. In the current period meeting the masses where their political consciousness lies is pointless. It misses the relative size of Trotskyist parties and the entire left (minute). Should comrades in trade unions fight for transitional demands? Sure. But they should also fight for a socialist program, against the Democrats, and left-talking union bureaucrats.

This is the kind of shit that leads to fawning over the Occupy movement, rather than flat out saying that this was a class amorphous thing that would go nowhere as long as the dichotomy in society was viewed as between the 99 and 1 percent. I have seen much bigger, more radical movements flatline in my lifetime -- at this point recruiting a few subjectively revolutionary young workers or students would be what you might do. The tendency to look for shortcuts is understandable, but they don't work at all.

To the OP -- in the end, the idea of substitutionism is antithetical to Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism. It can't work in an advanced industrialized nation. The relationship of the Vanguard Party to the masses of the proletariat is dialectical and will change over time -- it is not static. In times of revolutionary upsurge, sometimes the Party will lead the masses and sometimes the masses will lead the party.

[Skyhilist]

To the OP -- in the end, the idea of substitutionism is antithetical to Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism. It can't work in an advanced industrialized nation.

Yes, I definitely understand this position. It can't work to advance socialism, it'll only perpetuate capitalism. That's why I'd be so concerned with any revolution turning subsitutionist and what would be done to stop such a thing from happening.


In times of revolutionary upsurge, sometimes the Party will lead the masses and sometimes the masses will lead the party.

How can you determine who will lead who in times where both want to lead?

[Geiseric]

"Unfortunately, the way it works in practice is that a lot of ostensibly Trotskyist groups, including the one the Geiseric adheres to, do tail the rest of the left and whatever working class consciousness is at a given moment. That is not Trotskyism."

The spartacist league literally tails us and follows us wherever we go to sell their shitty newspaper, and to try to recruit our members. I know you have a favorable opinion of them, so your theory in regard to this is bunk.

[Fred]

Yes, I agree substitutionism wont work. It'll perpetuate capitalism. But when it's said that "the revolution has to be made by a very large section of the working class" what exactly is meant? I mean it seems kind of vague. Are there any actual decisions that the working class a whole can be guaranteed to be able to make? And if so, how is such a guarantee enforced? Finally, what about the things that aren't guaranteed to the working class in the decision making process? How can we be assured that the positions of power held by members of the vanguard party wont lead them astray? I mean on what basis should we believe that they know what's best for the working class more than the working class does itself (which if this wasn't true, why not just have the working class direct all of the party's goals and ideas whenever possible through direct democracy)?



What I mean is: surely you, being a reasonable individual see Trotskyism as something that is flexible to at least some extent and not an absolute dogma. So given that, are there any prominent viewpoints within Trotskyism on how we could ensure that a vanguard party wouldn't become substitutionist once having control of the state?



That's the problem at hand -- most don't, at least not adequately.



When you say "hopefully", is there any actual plan laid out to ensure that we don't just have to "hope" that there will be some type of accountability within the vanguard party and can actually be guaranteed it? You know something that would definitely prevent any party from going astray for to long? It seems like a really huge gamble to me, because what if it doesn't pay off and things go similar to the way they did after Lenin's death (and I'm not saying I'm a huge fan of Lenin to begin with)?



Could you maybe point to some empirical evidence for this please? Forgive me for my skepticism, but it seems that the bourgeois have no problem controlling the industrialized world now despite making up a very small percentage of the population.
These are good questions and I don't think they can be definitively answered. I think the reason things went wrong in Russia had a great deal to do with the relatively small size of the proletariat and its near dissolution during the first several years of the Soviet Union (due to civil war and attacks by imperialist countries).

I think that you underestimate the revolutionary masses. If a proletarian revolution happened in the US, or France, I don't imagine the workers would blindly accept the dicta of the leading party. It is very linear thinking that the proletariat would not be radically transformed by a successful revolutionary struggle. They certainly didn't in the USSR, although the Bolsheviks did clamp down tightly on the Mensheviks and SRs, who were agitating for counterrevolution. The biggest problem the Bolsheviks had was being a proletarian party in an overwhelmingly peasant country. This is not a contradiction that would be faced by a victorious proletariat in the US, Europe (at least most of Europe), or Japan.

The best guarantee against a party degenerating is good internal democracy. The rights of oppositional tendencies should be clearly guaranteed -- including rights to publish bulletins and vie for leadership of the group. Some groups on the left have time-delimited "discussion periods" every once in a while. This is can be used very undemocratically to stifle discussion. Before it degenerated into a weird castroist cult, the SWPUS had that rule and it was used to shut-up the left-wing of the party, or any opposition that emerged, in order to keep them from vying for leadership.

[Art Vandelay]

Thank you very much, I appreciate it.

No worries, this is actually something that I did alot of thinking about, while reading Deutscher's 3 vol. bio of Trotsky, specifically around the ending of vol.2. Before I even get to the heart of the matter though, I just wanted to say that I think its great you're clearly independently exploring varying lines of thought, we need more of that.

I think its important to preface my comments, with the statement, that no one is really in favor of substitutionism. As seen during the Russian Revolution, it was a shitty necessity due to the prevailing material conditions (more on this later). Ultimately if substitutionism ever proved necessary in any future revolutionary situation, it would ultimately be a sign of the fact that the revolution was in danger and if implemented as anything but a temporary measure, would result yet again in Bonapartism. If I had to guess, I'd say you probably wouldn't agree that the substitutionism of the Bolshevik party was justified. So I'm going to frame my line of thinking in that context and if you do agree that the Bolsheviks substitutionism was justified, then hopefully I still say something worthwhile, regardless.

Personally speaking, I am in favor of a one party state. When establishing the one party state, the Bolsheviks were attempting to establish political monopoly, exercised by the proletariat through its class party, as well as a worker's democracy. This is an important distinction, because it plays into our understanding of substitutionism. A one party state is no way inherently leads to substitutionism, then Leninism inherently leads to Stalinism.


The logic of the single-party system might not have asserted itself as strongly as it did, it might never have become as ruthless as it was and its implication might never have become explicit, or the system might even have been udone by the growth of a worker's democracy, if the whole history of the Soviet Union, encircled and isolated in its age-old poverty and backwardness, had not been an almost uninterrupted sequence of calamities, emergencies, and crises threatening the nation's very existence. Almost every emergency and crisis posed all major issues of national policy on the knife's edge.

The issue is not itself the single party system. It is a lack of worker's democracy which leads to the phenomenon of substitutionism. While Stalin viewed the accession of his faction as the solidification of the political monopoly of the Bolsheviks, Trotsky understood the reality that, the solidification of the Stalin's rule, ultimately antagonistically carried with it the affirmation, as well as the negation, of the Bolshevik political monopoly. This may seem slightly off topic, but I think its important, in the sense of helping to clarify what exactly substitutionism is. So how exactly did substitutionism within the Bolshevik party? Well it arose to many of the prevailing material conditions that Deutscher points out above. It arose due to the necessity of the civil war, for example, could you potentially pose to me, any sort of sane alternative to what the Bolsheviks did in the Russian Civil War? Its naive to think that a worker's democracy can thrive under the conditions of a civil war; resources need to be organized and distributed in an efficient manner and at times, there just is no time for discussions or votes among the broader populace. It is times like these when substitutionism can prove to be, however unfortunately, necessary. In fact I'd most likely accuse those who fetishize worker's control to the point where they can't see the logic in the previous statement, of liberalism of the worst sorts. The Bolsheviks could do nothing else but to enforce the measures necessary to ensure the continued survival of the proletarian class nature of the revolution and to wait for the German Revolution. As I stated earlier, when this phenomenon even arises, its a sign of the revolutions weakness and if anything other then a temporary measure, inherently leads to bonapartism (in the Marxist sense of course, I'm not alluding to the French Revolution here). The reason why a one party state, does not entail subsitutionism, is because political monopoly is no way at odds with the social superstructure of the dotp. The justified substitutionism of the Bolsehviks, as we know, did not turn out to be temporary, ultimately due to the failure of the world revolution. It lead to the Bonapartism of Stalin, as all Bolshevik internal democracy and indeed even the class nature of the party, was destroyed.


Trotsky, and following him one Bolshevik leader after another, protested that when they had, under Lenin, established the Bolsehvik political monopoly they had sought to combine it with a worker's democracy; and that, far from imposing any monolithic discipline on the party itself, they had taken the party's inner freedom for granted and had indeed guaranteed it. Only the blind and the deaf could be unaware of the contrast between Stalinism and Leninism. The contrast showed itself in the field of ideas and in the moral and intellectual climate of Bolshevism even more strongly than in matter of organization and discipline.

[Five Year Plan]

Unless a person thinks that every worker will be in support of a socialist revolution, or at the very least not act to thwart it, you're going to have to envision a situation in which the more far-sighted sections of the working class will substitute itself or act on behalf of the less advanced sections.

As appealing as the no-substitution position might seem, there is a huge logical problem in thinking that every worker will be on board with overturning capitalism, rendering substitution unnecessary. The problem is, why would a ruling capitalist class peacefully allow anti-capitalist ideas to win over the entirety the working class? Wouldn't it seek to violently suppress these ideas and the people who adhere to them when they represented a plurality of working class, a majority maybe? And wouldn't workers similarly try to overthrow capitalism at the time when they have majority support? The only way to try to sidestep this logical problem is to think that all workers will suddenly become socialists, all at once. But history has shown time and again that this is not how political consciousness develops among any class or segment of the population.

[Fred]

Unless a person thinks that every worker will be in support of a socialist revolution, or at the very least not act to thwart it, you're going to have to envision a situation in which the more far-sighted sections of the working class will substitute itself or act on behalf of the less advanced sections.

As appealing as the no-substitution position might seem, there is a huge logical problem in thinking that every worker will be on board with overturning capitalism, rendering substitution unnecessary. The problem is, why would a ruling capitalist class peacefully allow anti-capitalist ideas to win over the entirety the working class? Wouldn't it seek to violently suppress these ideas and the people who adhere to them when they represented a plurality of working class, a majority maybe? And wouldn't workers similarly try to overthrow capitalism at the time when they have majority support? The only way to try to sidestep this logical problem is to think that all workers will suddenly become socialists, all at once. But history has shown time and again that this is not how political consciousness develops among any class or segment of the population.

By "substitutionism" I always took to mean some kind of conspiratorial, putschist kind of approach. Obviously, "vanguard" means most forward component and as such won't encompass more than a piece of the working class. And I agree that whether or not you have a majority among workers is neither here nor there (although I think the general progression and logic of a revolutionary upsurge would pull the vast majority of the working class along with it). Some random thoughts before my morning coffee:).

[Thirsty Crow]

As appealing as the no-substitution position might seem, there is a huge logical problem in thinking that every worker will be on board with overturning capitalism, rendering substitution unnecessary. The problem is, why would a ruling capitalist class peacefully allow anti-capitalist ideas to win over the entirety the working class?This is not at all the problem with and the significance of the notion of substitutionism, and it is definitely not a synonym of Balnquism:


By "substitutionism" I always took to mean some kind of conspiratorial, putschist kind of approach.

The point is not to have every worker on board as you say, but in the relationship between the political organization of the class and the class itself, which has historically tended to manifest itself in the form of the finished Stalinist state.

The position advocated by the SPGB might be closer to what you say here, with their insistence on referendum voting and strict democratic procedures (head counting essentially). But this is a false problem.

Of course that entire sections of the class will constitute the vanguard (if one conceives a political organization as the vanguard, the signs of substitutionist malaise are already there) in the sense that they will act decisively and chronologically first. But the dynamics of this social transformation depend on something different - class autonomy, which can only be practiced by the continued broadening of participation in the process itself on behalf of those who are its carriers. What is being substituted by Stalinists and many Trotskyists is the rule of the class - imagining that a party which only nominally pays lip service to communism, and is detached and antagonistically opposed to the working class, might serve as a transitory form when fused with the state apparatus that is basically the same as that of capitalist states.


But when it's said that "the revolution has to be made by a very large section of the working class" what exactly is meant?
I think such expressions acknowledge that the first act in the process - dismantling the repressive apparatus of the bourgeois state - is to be undertaken, of course due to sheer necessity, by the broad layers of the class. But what next? The question of substitutionism is most important not in this initial phase, but in that "what next".

[Five Year Plan]

This is not at all the problem with and the significance of the notion of substitutionism, and it is definitely not a synonym of Balnquism:



The point is not to have every worker on board as you say, but in the relationship between the political organization of the class and the class itself, which has historically tended to manifest itself in the form of the finished Stalinist state.

The position advocated by the SPGB might be closer to what you say here, with their insistence on referendum voting and strict democratic procedures (head counting essentially). But this is a false problem.

Of course that entire sections of the class will constitute the vanguard (if one conceives a political organization as the vanguard, the signs of substitutionist malaise are already there) in the sense that they will act decisively and chronologically first. But the dynamics of this social transformation depend on something different - class autonomy, which can only be practiced by the continued broadening of participation in the process itself on behalf of those who are its carriers. What is being substituted by Stalinists and many Trotskyists is the rule of the class - imagining that a party which only nominally pays lip service to communism, and is detached and antagonistically opposed to the working class, might serve as a transitory form when fused with the state apparatus that is basically the same as that of capitalist states.


I think such expressions acknowledge that the first act in the process - dismantling the repressive apparatus of the bourgeois state - is to be undertaken, of course due to sheer necessity, by the broad layers of the class. But what next? The question of substitutionism is most important not in this initial phase, but in that "what next".

Substitutionism is such an ambiguous term that I tend to avoid it altogether in favor of more precise formulations. You are right that Blanquism is different than substitutionism, which is why I was a little puzzled at Fred's response to me. In my mind it is synonymous with bureaucratism, and as such, very little of a useful nature can be said about it as an abstraction from concrete circumstances of the class struggle at any particular juncture. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky all consistently conceptualized the proletarian party (also referred to in various places as the revolutionary party, the independent party of the working class, and so on) as the political expression of workers' generalizing at a theoretical and programmatic level their struggle against capital, independent of the influences of bourgeois ideology, in a manner that permitted them to advance the long-run interests of the working class as a whole in contrast to other classes in society (thus INDEPENDENT party of the working class). Sometimes the process of that party relating to those outside of it, when the party is in power, involves bureaucratism in regards to how advanced workers treat less advanced workers. That was my point.

You are correct about how the broadening of the revolution to encompass greater and greater sections of the working class, and the globe, is essential to the process of consolidating a proletarian revolution. Both represent a struggle against capitalism. The first a struggle against the foothold that bourgeois ideology has in the backward segments of the working class, the latter a more literal struggle against capitalists around the globe.

What I think you are discussing, though, is something more specific than just "substitutionism" or "substitutism" (as Deutscher called it). What you're discussing centers on the issue of party and state organizational structures and practices suitable for carrying out the process of the broadening of the revolution alluded to in the previous paragraph. Or as I call it, a proletarian form of state carried over from a proletarian form of democracy (democratic centralism) practiced within the party.

On this there is a lot to be said about the staggering betrayals of people claiming to be Trotskyist while categorizing some of the most brutal regimes in history, in no way established by the workers, as revolutionary dictatorships of the proletariat.

[Thirsty Crow]

What I think you are discussing, though, is something more specific than just "substitutionism" or "substitutism" (as Deutscher called it). What you're discussing centers on the issue of party and state organizational structures and practices suitable for carrying out the process of the broadening of the revolution alluded to in the previous paragraph.This is one of the two sides of the term. It is not something more specific, but a complex of problems directly denoted by the term. Another side concerns the relationship between the party and the class prior to the smashing of the bourgeois state.

And the crucial question centers on the issue of party rule as opposed to class rule (with a different conception of the role of the party and its position in social transformation). My contention is that substitutionism can arise historically from the concrete conditions facing a revolutionary working class, but that party rule cannot be a solution. It is only a symptom.



Or as I call it, a proletarian form of state carried over from a proletarian form of democracy (democratic centralism) practiced within the party.This is a curious formulation. So, in your view, the internal organization of the party prefigures that of a society undergoing radical transformation?

Of course, the issue is what is meant by democratic centralism in particular, and how does the central body function: as a locus of power, the high point in the order transmission belt, or as a coordinating instance.

[Five Year Plan]

And the crucial question centers on the issue of party rule as opposed to class rule (with a different conception of the role of the party and its position in social transformation). My contention is that substitutionism can arise historically from the concrete conditions facing a revolutionary working class, but that party rule cannot be a solution. It is only a symptom.

Before I delve further into this discussion, it will be helpful to clarify our terms here. And I'd like to start with party rule, which is often wielded as a signifier of politically oppressive monolithism and totaliarianism. This is because certain assumptions, drawn from the historical examples of burgeoning Stalinism, are smuggled into the concept. When we speak of party rule, this does not necessarily preclude the possibility of a single party enjoying widespread support of a large majority of the working class. Neither does it preclude the possibility that this single party might incorporate strong internal democracy with multiple tendencies freely debating issues within the confines of a revolutionary line. Understood this way, "party rule" means disagreement contained within certain political boundaries. Whether these boundaries are defined as a single party or a group of parties is irrelevant to determining whether there is democracy. It also means the idea of opposing "party rule" to democracy out of logical deduction is completely baseless.

Yet you want to frame the issue of being of "party rule" as opposed to working class rule. It's an odd opposition. Each member of the working class can vote all it wants to, enjoy political liberties all it wants to, but if it is using those liberties under the influence of bourgeois ideology rather than as an independent class, you're not going to have class rule. You're going to end up with the same old bourgeois dictatorship. To put it a little differently, working class self-emancipation isn't just a matter of democratic procedure. It's also a matter of arriving at substantive position regarding the nature of capitalism and the necessity of overthrowing it. It's about the substance of political line and political program.

To put this in more concrete terms, what happens if you're in a situation where a majority of, but not all, workers are on board with overturning capitalism at the time a socialist revolution occurs, a time when bourgeois property and political office has been confiscated by an organization supported by the majority of workers in elected councils? Do we call this rule of the "party" (or "parties"), and counterpose it to rule of the class?

In one sense, yes, it is not rule of the entire class. There is still a state, and not all workers are staffing it. Therefore, they aren't "ruling." But thankfully, we are Marxists, and don't reduce rule or state power to empirical descriptions about who is in office and who isn't. We seek to explain how certain people rule, and why they rule, by seeking the basis of their rule in class relationships and forms of holding and exploiting property. A bourgeois state isn't staffed by all the capitalists, but that doesn't prevent it from representing the rule of their entire class. It is in this deeper sense that I would argue that it is possible to have rule of the entire working class, even with some segments of the working class dispossessed of direct control over the state. Trotsky used this distinction to delineate between a political and a social revolution. I think it's a useful one.

To take us back to our example of revolution, do we say that the ruling entity, supported by the majority of workers against a disfranchised minority, is ruling in opposition rule of the entire class? Well if the supremacy of the entire working class, which effectively means socialism and the eliminate of class processes across all of society, depends upon overthrowing capitalist property relations; and if we remember that it means installing in the place of those property relations a process of planning that, while perhaps bureaucratized in some ways, is incompatible with class rule; how can one say that the party or group of parties used by, and supported by, the majority of workers to overthrowing capitalist property relations is "party rule opposed to the rule of the entire class"? The only way to do is to collapse the political level into the social level, to ignore the necessary material/social basis of proletarian political emancipation, and to allow democratic procedures to swallow up democratic substance altogether.

My point, to clarify, is that rule of the party CAN be opposed to rule of the class, in certain situations, but does necessarily have to be opposed out of some kind of logical deduction as if you could read the opposition off from the fact that we use different words to refer to them. Unlike an alienated system of class rule, which in no way depends upon the active role of capitalists in formulating political policy, the decisive factor for whether a workers' "party-state" is opposing, or whether it is supporting, the rule of the entire class is the extent to which that party-state continues to function as revolutionary workers' mechanism for broadening the revolutionary process not just by waging international class war by defending themselves against imperialist threats abroad, but also by strengthening workers' solidarity and serving as a concentrated reflection of workers' revolutionary class consciousness and agency, democratically expressed of course. These are the things I mentioned in the previous post.

The role of isolated acts of bureaucratism, or "substitution," have to be analyzed and interpreted in view of the delicate balance between the political and social levels I mentioned earlier. On the one hand maintaining a revolutionary line that objectively upholds the material interests of the proletariat against capitalist production relations and their reinstatement is essential, but on the other it is equally essential to ensure the maintenance of democratic links with wide sections of the working class. It is these links, after all, that put the workers' state in power, and made it a workers' state in the first place. Balancing these competing demands is the overriding task of revolutionary strategy following the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. Because they are competing demands, and trade-offs will have to be made between the two levels.

When a revolution begins to degenerate and slide back to capitalism is when bureaucratization on one level, either the political or the social, begins to outpace the actual gains in the other. This is where workers' agency, and democratic procedure, begins to slip away from emancipatory anti-capitalist substance. Too much slipping and you have a counter-revolutionary break, followed by the re-establishment of a capitalist state, either bourgeois or state capitalist. And of course, if the revolution was a product of adventurist fantasies, the chasm between the two will be too great to bridge from the start, as most workers will not be on board with the emancipatory anti-capitalist substance. To ignore the balancing act altogether, and pretend there might not be bureaucratic tension between the two, is to treat the socialist revolution as a unanimous and peaceful affair, a fait accompli implanted in the minds of all workers on the day of revolution, and with no opposition the day after to try to change their minds.


This is a curious formulation. So, in your view, the internal organization of the party prefigures that of a society undergoing radical transformation?

Of course, the issue is what is meant by democratic centralism in particular, and how does the central body function: as a locus of power, the high point in the order transmission belt, or as a coordinating instance.I wouldn't want to take credit for it. Lenin discusses the link between democratic centralism and the functioning of the workers' state in his State and Revolution.