Why Bordigism?

[Jacob Cliff]

Wouldnt the dictatorship of a single party be opposite of socialism? Would this breed bureaucracy and a new coordinating class? What measures would stop a bureaucratic and totalitarian country from rising?

[Comrade #138672]

It seems like you are just asking questions for the sake of asking questions. Search the forum for threads on Bordigism and Bordiga. There are also some Bordigist groups.

[Црвена]

All Marxists (apart from council communists, but I don't think they're much of a political force within the contemporary Marxist movement) support a dictatorship of a single party before socialism is reached. This party is the "political organisation of the proletariat." But I think Bordigists would go a step further and say that the party isn't OF the proletariat, it IS the proletariat, and that there is total unity of the proletariat and the party. I'm definitely no expert though. As for the bureaucracy problem, I think they would say that only certain material conditions would cause bureaucracy, such as socialism not spreading globally. Also, I've seen Bordigists call themselves "totalitarian" as a way to say that they don't support democracy, so they probably wouldn't have a problem with a totalitarian dictatorship of the proletariat.

[#FF0000]

All Marxists (apart from council communists, but I don't think they're much of a political force within the contemporary Marxist movement) support a dictatorship of a single party before socialism is reached

[citation needed]

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

[citation needed]

Same here. I'm a Marxist and am strongly in favor of multi-party proletarian democracy. Hell, the friggin' Bolsheviks wanted a multi-party democracy before the civil war.

[Rafiq]

[citation needed]

The notion of political pluralism outside the organs of the proletarian dictatorship is completely alien to Marxism and arose particularly during the capitulation of the Second International to the bourgeois state during the displacement of the political struggle wrought out by the first world war. The toleration of separate political parties is irrevocably the toleration of the expression of interests by class enemies. How could a proletarian dictatorship exist, or in other words - how could power be wielded by a real existing class if the only medium through which the interests of that class can be expressed is through politics, is reduced to a mere faction or pretender to power? This would in effect pre-suppose the existence of a state not under control by the proletarian class. Otherwise, what purpose exactly would other parties serve? People point towards the October revolution as an example, so let's use it: Throughout the course of the revolution, all revolutionary factions of opposing parties joined the Bolsheviks. Struggle was conducted solely, and clearly on class lines - remaining parties in opposition, who would be banned by the Bolsheviks, remained in opposition insofar as they actively opposed the proletarian dictatorship and took a definite side in the class struggle with the exploiting, and petite-bourgeois agrarian classes.

Parties do not form merely out of disagreement. I guarantee that if a revolution were to happen tomorrow which culminated into a proletarian dictatorship, there would be no level of consistency as far as which factions of the sectarian Left would be absorbed into it, or join in - Anarchists, Stalinists, all of them in different varying degrees. In that real political parties do not form because of mere disagreements, but disagreements in approximation to a real plane of power relations. There were a plethora of disagreements within the Bolshevik party, but this couldn't trigger the formation of a new party as they were all bound by their loyalty to the revolution, and to their identification with proletarian class.

That isn't to say that factionalism, mediums through which collective disagreements can be expressed shouldn't exist - they should, and they did even during the worst epochs of political repression. Disagreements over how a proletarian dictatorship should go about its rule is worth being encouraged, but it cannot exist outside the organs of the party. Even if it is made an immediate goal to abolish the state, this alone would make a multi-party system an impossibility.

[Црвена]

Oh, when I said "dictatorship of a single party," I was referring to a state with one ruling party rather than one party in existence. Sorry for the confusion. But I see where the Bordigists are coming from here, actually (and I'm an anarcho-syndicalist, so I disagree with them on nearly everything). If the vanguard party is the political organisation of the proletariat and all other parties are reactionary, then we can't have these parties involved in a proletarian state apparatus, so why must they even exist?

[Tim Cornelis]

I think we all know what you meant, but it's nonsense. It's meaningless to speak of one-party rule when you have a situation where deputies are elected, mandated, and recallable by the lowest organs. How do you guarantee that every deputy that is elected 1) belongs to the one permitted party 2) that the mandate is identical to the party's program 3) reconcile that the deputy is accountable to the party first and foremost and the lower organs at the same time. And if there's one-party rule then why not dispense with electing deputies all together, and if you dispense with elections altogether, then in what sense is it a dictatorship of the proletariat if the proletariat is excluded from power (with the exception of a small number)?

[Rafiq]

I think we all know what you meant, but it's nonsense. It's meaningless to speak of one-party rule when you have a situation where deputies are elected, mandated, and recallable by the lowest organs. How do you guarantee that every deputy that is elected 1) belongs to the one permitted party 2) that the mandate is identical to the party's program 3) reconcile that the deputy is accountable to the party first and foremost and the lower organs at the same time.

Because the political connotations of class allegiance by that time would make it clear that allegiance to a political party no longer has anything to with trivial preferences but where you stand in a revolutionary situation. Hence, the wide array of people from a wide array of different parties joining the Bolsheviks when push came to shove. As it is said - why wouldn't there be a single party in a revolutionary situation? Those minor disagreements people will have don't qualify for a partisan split. In a proletarian dictatorship, the party and the organs of state dictatorship become synonymous, it would be similar to asking why deputies of another party can't be elected to hold posts of an opposing party. The point is that "another party" would irrevocably translate into being outside state rule, as it would signify being outside another party.

The point is that the party is one with the mass movement whereby the organs of democratic action are already enshrined from the onset of the political struggle for the state itself. It must be understood that the connotations of political pluralism in a revolutionary situation aren't merely 'different viewpoints' or 'disagreements' over things, but class allegiance. During the French revolution, various factions existed in coincidence with the existence of various social antagonisms enshrined into the democratic order (i.e. Invested in the French revolutionaries were all of the social antagonisms of capitalism, not just the interests of the bourgeoisie).

[#FF0000]

The notion of political pluralism outside the organs of the proletarian dictatorship is completely alien to Marxism and arose particularly during the capitulation of the Second International to the bourgeois state during the displacement of the political struggle wrought out by the first world war.

That's nonsense though because the question was still up in the air with a lot of the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution (not Lenin obvs but yeah)

[Tim Cornelis]

Because the political connotations of class allegiance by that time would make it clear that allegiance to a political party no longer has anything to with trivial preferences but where you stand in a revolutionary situation. Hence, the wide array of people from a wide array of different parties joining the Bolsheviks when push came to shove. As it is said - why wouldn't there be a single party in a revolutionary situation? Those minor disagreements people will have don't qualify for a partisan split. In a proletarian dictatorship, the party and the organs of state dictatorship become synonymous, it would be similar to asking why deputies of another party can't be elected to hold posts of an opposing party. The point is that "another party" would irrevocably translate into being outside state rule, as it would signify being outside another party.

The point is that the party is one with the mass movement whereby the organs of democratic action are already enshrined from the onset of the political struggle for the state itself. It must be understood that the connotations of political pluralism in a revolutionary situation aren't merely 'different viewpoints' or 'disagreements' over things, but class allegiance. During the French revolution, various factions existed in coincidence with the existence of various social antagonisms enshrined into the democratic order (i.e. Invested in the French revolutionaries were all of the social antagonisms of capitalism, not just the interests of the bourgeoisie).

This seems somewhat semantical at first. There wouldn't be a single party because the revolution inherits the political formations from the pre-revolutionary situation. But there's quite a difference between integration of factions and parties into a party-movement in a revolutionary crisis and the banning of rival factions and parties in a revolutionary crisis. It's a difference between one-party rule and one-party dominant rule.

[Rafiq]

There wouldn't be a single party because the revolution inherits the political formations from the pre-revolutionary situation. But there's quite a difference between integration of factions and parties into a party-movement in a revolutionary crisis and the banning of rival factions and parties in a revolutionary crisis. It's a difference between one-party rule and one-party dominant rule.

A revolution isn't some kind of passive, secondary process that happens over night under everyone's noses. It completely displaces, changes and transforms all "pre revolutionary" political formations, because all formations become absorbed under the dichotomy of allegiance or opposition to the revolution. By the time the Bolsheviks banned rival parties, they were only opposing factions insofar as they possessed a different social character in approximation to the revolution. All the rival political parties which had proclaimed allegiance to the proletarian dictatorship, the Left SR's, along with vast swaths of workers from other parties joined the Bolsheviks - and to a minor extent constituted different factions within the party. So indeed, banning rival factions is quite synonymous with integrating factions, because it implies a line drawn between which factions are integrated and which one's aren't. The parties that were disbanded were, in effect, disbanded because they posed a threat to the worker's dictatorship.


That's nonsense though because the question was still up in the air with a lot of the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution (not Lenin obvs but yeah)


Regarding the then present, specific situation (i.e. whether to disband multi-party rule all together), not the long term character of the proletarian dictatorship.

[Црвена]

I think we all know what you meant, but it's nonsense. It's meaningless to speak of one-party rule when you have a situation where deputies are elected, mandated, and recallable by the lowest organs. How do you guarantee that every deputy that is elected 1) belongs to the one permitted party 2) that the mandate is identical to the party's program 3) reconcile that the deputy is accountable to the party first and foremost and the lower organs at the same time. And if there's one-party rule then why not dispense with electing deputies all together, and if you dispense with elections altogether, then in what sense is it a dictatorship of the proletariat if the proletariat is excluded from power (with the exception of a small number)?

Well I'm not sure how that would work, and I don't particularly care because I don't think vanguardism is ever going to be democratic. But in any case, a dictatorship of the proletariat would not be a state where multiple parties, all of them deemed to be counterrevolutionary apart from the vanguard party, are allowed positions of power, even if they were allowed to exist as opposition parties were in the early USSR and may be in a future dotp. That was all I meant.