"Bordigist"/Organic Centralist Parties?

[The Intransigent Faction]

Hi there,

I've been reading up on Bordiga, and the more I understand, the more I find my own perspective similar.
I can't say I really understand yet, though, because I'm still wondering: What is to be done?

The working class obviously has a ways to go before any talk of mass revolutionary consciousness. Our parliamentary politics is still coloured by antiquated rituals of constitutional monarchy and hardly inspires enthusiasm as an arena for a somehow consciousness-building struggle via a minimum programme. Our unions are weakened and dispersed. There are two (three?) parties calling themselves Communist.

From an "organic centralist" perspective, what exactly should I, as a pretty much petty-bourgeois individual living in Canada, be doing?

[GiantMonkeyMan]

So I'll preface this with the fact that I'm not a Bordigist. Honestly, I agree with quite a bit of what he wrote for sure but I just think that dismissing democracy, as he is sometimes known for, just won't 'work' with the contemporary workers movement.

All that aside, I think the most important thing revolutionary socialists need to be doing is networking, forming groups with a predominantly working class character and discussing the ideas of socialism and post-capitalism - this is literally the only way to develop people's conciousness after all. It sounds a bit lame to bring up the Bolsheviks but the party during the period of 1912-17, as in the party that successfully led a proletarian revolution, was not at all the sort of top-down sect that some portray it as and I feel that many contemporary organisations jhave learned all the wrong lessons. The very nature of the Bolshevik party as an illegal organisation whose leading members were forced into exile meant that the various local groups were highly autonomous and linked more closely with the workers movement in their area than with the central committee in Zurich.

Piatnitsky writes: "The initiative of the local party organisations, of the cells, was encouraged. Were the Bolsheviks of Odessa, or Moscow, or Baku, or Tiflis, always to have waited for directives from the the Central Committee, the provincial committees, etc., which during the years of reaction and of the war did not exist at all owing to arrests, what would have been the result? The Bolsheviks would not have captured the working masses and exercised any influence over them."

And Shliapnikov: "The place of the petty-bourgeois intellectuals and student youth was taken up by the intellectual proletarian with calloused hands and highly developed heads who had not lost contact with the masses."

And Zinoviev: "The whole of our party was fragmented into groups, sub-groups, and factions. In those hard days our central task consisted in assembling the party piece by piece, preparing its rebirth, and, above all, defending the principles of Marxism against all possible distortions."

The Bolshevik party of the revolution, and not the Bolshevik party that had struggled to survive in the midst of Civil War and famine, was a highly organic and autonomous party with an internally vibrant life, highly interconnected with the workers movement and unified in purpose. So in this contemporary period where the parties of socialism are either small sects of intellectuals or entirely intertwined with capital, I feel it's important to almost begin anew the education of the working class. We need to be bringing our ideas to workers, making these ideas relevant to their lives and not just snapshots of a history long gone (which is ironic considering I brought up the Bolsheviks), and supporting and integrating ourselves in the workers movement. When the RSDLP had its 'first' congress, meeting in 1898, there were a total of nine people who attended. But the ideas of socialism spread like a spider's web throughout Russia.

So what is to be done? To steal a phrase, we need to 'educate, agitate, organise'.

[The Intransigent Faction]

Yes, I differ with Bordiga's views on democracy. I cringe at any use of the term "bourgeois democracy." From what I understand, though, his view is based on a proceduralist understanding of democracy that mistakes limited adoption of its methods (i.e. parliamentary elections of so-called representatives) for its substance (people's self-government). If anything, I see more democratic substance in consultation with a mass party base.

Those are some good points, though. Thanks.

Where it gets tricky is in considering that not only do we need to 'educate, agitate, organize," but we need to do so more effectively than entrenched institutions with hegemonic authority. We need to offer alternative education, agitation and organization. It will need to overpower the influence of the current system or worse yet, the upsurge of a so-called "alt right" (which is in fact more amenable than the radical left to the "intuitive" logic of the current system with all of its latent prejudices).

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Yes, I differ with Bordiga's views on democracy. I cringe at any use of the term "bourgeois democracy." From what I understand, though, his view is based on a proceduralist understanding of democracy that mistakes limited adoption of its methods (i.e. parliamentary elections of so-called representatives) for its substance (people's self-government). If anything, I see more democratic substance in consultation with a mass party base.

Those are some good points, though. Thanks.

Where it gets tricky is in considering that not only do we need to 'educate, agitate, organize," but we need to do so more effectively than entrenched institutions with hegemonic authority. We need to offer alternative education, agitation and organization. It will need to overpower the influence of the current system or worse yet, the upsurge of a so-called "alt right" (which is in fact more amenable than the radical left to the "intuitive" logic of the current system with all of its latent prejudices).
I don't think you should underestimate the 'traditions of all dead generations' that the socialist movements of the past had to overcome to spread the ideas of socialism to the working class. Literally, Marx and Engels and the first international were a tiny group of people living in exile, poverty and faced with all the powers of the world trying to suppress them but still they managed to convey their ideas to workers the world over and Marxism is acknowledged even by the bourgeoisie as one of the most powerful ideologies of history (even if they would prefer it known as a destructive and failed ideology). This is definitely the challenge revolutionaries face - conveying these ideas to working people in ways that just 'click'. Workers the world over are faced with the every day problems that only socialism can answer - shit wages, shit bills and rent, shit politicians, shit bosses. The 'alt-right' can literally be picked apart with ease comparatively, their ideology is built on sand whilst ours is grounded in the everyday problems that people face.