Die Neue Zeit
13th October 2014, 20:05
http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1026/referenda-and-direct-democracy/
CPGB comrade Ben Lewis is working on an English translation of Kautsky's 1893 classic Parliamentarism, Direct Legislation by the People and Social Democracy.
One good reason for engaging with this book is its centrality to many of the strategic conceptions of Bolshevism. As with many of Kautsky’s other works, it was quickly translated into Russian and extensively discussed amongst the social democrats there.
At its best, it powerfully evokes what Lenin meant when describing how well Kautsky wrote “when he was a Marxist”. However, as I will argue, the text is far from being beyond criticism and in several respects is limited by an erroneous reading of both the essence and function of the various wings of the capitalist state apparatus that have repeatedly blighted leftwing thought.
Some useful insights:
The parliamentary fraction had a very strong presence, but, according to Kautsky, this area of work had not been sufficiently thought through: practice was running ahead of theory
Why, oh why, does this bear striking resemblance to the agitation-focused hyper-"activism" culture on the left? :glare:
As for the parliamentary work itself, by "not sufficiently thought through" I can think only of this clear-headed framework: http://www.revleft.com/vb/greece-lessons-optimal-t188741/index.html
Given that much of what is written about Kautsky to this day unfortunately tends to heavily rely on recycled phrases and received opinions largely drawn from cold war historiography, it is important to emphasise what Kautsky is not doing in this text. He is not defending parliament and parliamentary democracy against soviet democracy and organisation along the lines of Russia 1905/1917 or Germany 1918-19. What he actually seeks to do is to defend the need for representative democracy in society and the workers’ movement against attempts to prioritise, or even to exclusively focus on, direct democracy. As he puts it, “if the idiosyncrasies of the opponents of parliamentarism merely extend to the name then it is easy to help them. The representative system will always re-emerge, however often they may destroy it” (p85). The issue of ‘soviets versus parliament’ was not on the agenda in 1893 and is not taken up in the 1911 edition either. Of course, the obvious shortcoming of attempts to frame the issue along the lines of ‘soviets vs parliament’ today is that soviet democracy is itself a form of representative democracy.
One notable comradely disagreement I must express with Kautsky the orthodox Marxist is his entertainment of this demographic possibility:
It can even come to pass that social democracy wins the majority of people, even in countries where the waged workers do not form the majority. But today this is still far away. And, however near we may get towards it, the proletariat will always form the backbone of the party
But at least here it is merely a possibility, not an imperative that others stressed despite the urban and rural demographic majority of the petit-bourgeoisie.
Now:
In terms of Britain, for example, this would involve the election of judges, the abolition of the House of Lords, short parliamentary terms and the abolition of extortionate electoral deposits, which effectively debarred working class representatives (the experience of Chartism is in the forefront of his mind, although he does not draw on all of that movement’s demands).
Only by forming parties can the individual classes assert themselves. In elections masses of people are drawn into the party struggles - not as individuals, but as parties, do the candidates appear before them.
Of course, elections are by no means the only form of public policymaking struggle / political struggle, but that which applies to this specific point applies to the broader, general point outside electoral games.
And, of course, the ‘soviets vs parliament’ paradigm dominant today flows from this [left] understanding. To crudely summarise this attitude: you are a reformist if you favour parliament, a revolutionary if you want soviets, and a centrist if you demand a mixture of both. Yet from today’s perspective this is also unhelpful, because it elevates form over content: ie, the radical constitutional alternative to the capitalist state around which the workers’ movement should organise in the here and now in order to dissolve the main pillars of bourgeois rule and usher in the dictatorship of the proletariat. A revolutionary crisis can take many forms and it would be stupid to rule out any particular scenario a priori: after all, the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Russian Revolution of 1917 both embodied a similar content of radical proletarian rule, but the form they assumed was quite different.
In this sense, I think Kautsky is right to assert that a real parliamentary regime could be the basis of either the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or that of the proletariat. A genuinely democratic parliament à la Paris 1871 - based on regular elections, recallable representatives on a [skilled] workers’ wage - which is an executive and legislative body at the same time, can only be achieved by the proletariat armed with the kind of “merger formula” vision with which I introduced this discussion. Accordingly, when it comes to Marxist political strategy, it is not so much a question of Parliaments, the Streets or Both as it is of the working class movement asserting its positive hegemony and revolutionary outlook in all areas of social and political life.
CPGB comrade Ben Lewis is working on an English translation of Kautsky's 1893 classic Parliamentarism, Direct Legislation by the People and Social Democracy.
One good reason for engaging with this book is its centrality to many of the strategic conceptions of Bolshevism. As with many of Kautsky’s other works, it was quickly translated into Russian and extensively discussed amongst the social democrats there.
At its best, it powerfully evokes what Lenin meant when describing how well Kautsky wrote “when he was a Marxist”. However, as I will argue, the text is far from being beyond criticism and in several respects is limited by an erroneous reading of both the essence and function of the various wings of the capitalist state apparatus that have repeatedly blighted leftwing thought.
Some useful insights:
The parliamentary fraction had a very strong presence, but, according to Kautsky, this area of work had not been sufficiently thought through: practice was running ahead of theory
Why, oh why, does this bear striking resemblance to the agitation-focused hyper-"activism" culture on the left? :glare:
As for the parliamentary work itself, by "not sufficiently thought through" I can think only of this clear-headed framework: http://www.revleft.com/vb/greece-lessons-optimal-t188741/index.html
Given that much of what is written about Kautsky to this day unfortunately tends to heavily rely on recycled phrases and received opinions largely drawn from cold war historiography, it is important to emphasise what Kautsky is not doing in this text. He is not defending parliament and parliamentary democracy against soviet democracy and organisation along the lines of Russia 1905/1917 or Germany 1918-19. What he actually seeks to do is to defend the need for representative democracy in society and the workers’ movement against attempts to prioritise, or even to exclusively focus on, direct democracy. As he puts it, “if the idiosyncrasies of the opponents of parliamentarism merely extend to the name then it is easy to help them. The representative system will always re-emerge, however often they may destroy it” (p85). The issue of ‘soviets versus parliament’ was not on the agenda in 1893 and is not taken up in the 1911 edition either. Of course, the obvious shortcoming of attempts to frame the issue along the lines of ‘soviets vs parliament’ today is that soviet democracy is itself a form of representative democracy.
One notable comradely disagreement I must express with Kautsky the orthodox Marxist is his entertainment of this demographic possibility:
It can even come to pass that social democracy wins the majority of people, even in countries where the waged workers do not form the majority. But today this is still far away. And, however near we may get towards it, the proletariat will always form the backbone of the party
But at least here it is merely a possibility, not an imperative that others stressed despite the urban and rural demographic majority of the petit-bourgeoisie.
Now:
In terms of Britain, for example, this would involve the election of judges, the abolition of the House of Lords, short parliamentary terms and the abolition of extortionate electoral deposits, which effectively debarred working class representatives (the experience of Chartism is in the forefront of his mind, although he does not draw on all of that movement’s demands).
Only by forming parties can the individual classes assert themselves. In elections masses of people are drawn into the party struggles - not as individuals, but as parties, do the candidates appear before them.
Of course, elections are by no means the only form of public policymaking struggle / political struggle, but that which applies to this specific point applies to the broader, general point outside electoral games.
And, of course, the ‘soviets vs parliament’ paradigm dominant today flows from this [left] understanding. To crudely summarise this attitude: you are a reformist if you favour parliament, a revolutionary if you want soviets, and a centrist if you demand a mixture of both. Yet from today’s perspective this is also unhelpful, because it elevates form over content: ie, the radical constitutional alternative to the capitalist state around which the workers’ movement should organise in the here and now in order to dissolve the main pillars of bourgeois rule and usher in the dictatorship of the proletariat. A revolutionary crisis can take many forms and it would be stupid to rule out any particular scenario a priori: after all, the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Russian Revolution of 1917 both embodied a similar content of radical proletarian rule, but the form they assumed was quite different.
In this sense, I think Kautsky is right to assert that a real parliamentary regime could be the basis of either the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or that of the proletariat. A genuinely democratic parliament à la Paris 1871 - based on regular elections, recallable representatives on a [skilled] workers’ wage - which is an executive and legislative body at the same time, can only be achieved by the proletariat armed with the kind of “merger formula” vision with which I introduced this discussion. Accordingly, when it comes to Marxist political strategy, it is not so much a question of Parliaments, the Streets or Both as it is of the working class movement asserting its positive hegemony and revolutionary outlook in all areas of social and political life.