Die Neue Zeit
19th September 2017, 05:39
https://platypus1917.org/2017/08/29/1917-2017/
[...]
LP: Freedom of association gave scope to these new parties, although that freedom was not simply provided, and was not strictly required. People tend to forget that the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), which was treated, including by Lenin, as the model party, remarkably managed to build itself through the 1880s in spite of legal proscription. Some 1,300 newspapers and magazines were shut down in those years, while 1,500 activists were jailed and over 300 trade unions associated with the Social Democrats were dissolved by the state. So, even though the repeal of anti-socialist laws in 1890 was a boon, the emergence of these organizations was not entirely dependent upon the freedom of assembly.
As I mentioned, the Russian revolutionaries modeled the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party on the German SPD. Lenin’s discussion in 1895 of party program is explicitly related to the Germans’ Erfurt Program of 1891. What Lenin articulated is that the task of the party is class consciousness, which means pushing beyond trade-union consciousness, and I think this is how most social democrats understood their work at this time. Lenin clarified that class consciousness is not just something you add on to trade-union consciousness; it requires the active intervention by socialists in order to drive a politics of class formation.
[...]
As we see socialist parties evolve through the course of the 21st century, a few things need to be observed. The first is that capitalism is not doomed to collapse. Two, socialism is a marathon, not a sprint. We are not going to get there through insurrection in a country like this, given how the military is controlled and organized. Three, because of the time we need to develop socialist parties and build our capacities, liberal democracy is crucial. Without freedom of association, we will not have the political space to do this. Four, capitalist contradictions today, including the tendency toward crisis, but not only that, are likely to be closing the space for liberal democracy, which poses a difficult dilemma. Do we combine in alliances and popular fronts with anybody to the left of the authoritarians in order to preserve liberal democracy? If we do that, however, we limit our ability to articulate socialist politics independently. That is a major dilemma at the current conjuncture. I do not think we should in any way be dissuaded from trying to build socialist parties anew, but it will be a major problem if the authoritarian tendencies of capitalism come to the fore in the coming years.
[...]
CC: But the October Revolution was not a socialist revolution, because the February Revolution had not been a democratic revolution. The old Tsarist state remained in place, with only a regime change, the removal of the Tsar and his ministers and their replacement with liberals and moderate “socialists,” namely the Right Socialist Revolutionaries, of whom Kerensky, who rose to the head of the Provisional Government, was a member. To put it in Lenin’s terms, the February Revolution was only a regime change—the Provisional Government was merely a “government” in the narrow sense of the word—and had not smashed the state: the “special bodies of armed men” remained in place. The October Revolution was the beginning of the process of smashing the state—replacing the previously established (Tsarist, capitalist) “special bodies of armed men” with the organized workers, soldiers, and peasants through the “soviet” councils as executive bodies of the revolution, to constitute a new revolutionary, radical-democratic state, the dictatorship of the proletariat. From Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ perspective, the October Revolution was merely the beginning of the democratic revolution.
[...]
As Leo Panitch remarked at a public forum panel discussion that Platypus held in Halifax on “What is Political Party for the Left?” in January 2015, the period from the 1870s to the 1920s saw the first as well as the as-yet only time in history in which the subaltern class organized itself into a political force. This was the period of the growth of the mass socialist parties, around the world, of the Second International. The highest and perhaps the only result of this self-organization of the international working class as a political force was the October Revolution in Russia of 1917.
[...]
The October 1917 Revolution has not been repeated, but the February 1917 Revolution and the July Days of 1917 have been repeated, several times, in the century since then.
[...]
CC: I like to think of the arc of the 1960s and 1970s as a kind of “Neo-Narodnism.” The “back to the people” proletarian turn of the 1970s on the Left had a kind of a “pre-Marxist” or even non-Marxist flavor to it. The question of party building is vexed by this history.
Earlier, I cited Leo’s comment about the period of the 1870s to the 1920s being the first and only time in history that the subalterns had organized themselves as a political force—never before and never since.
[...]
In light of this history, it is important for us to reconsider what party building meant before World War I. It had a different character than what came later, in the 1970s, which was a weak echo of the 1930s and had more in common with liberalism. In other words, the “vanguard party” idea got completely distorted. The earlier idea was that the party was not simply identical with the self-organization of the working class. Rather, the party served a crucial role in facilitating the self-organization of the working class, while also serving a function beyond the membership of the party and even beyond the working class as such. For the party also took up the lead in various democratic struggles in civil society, and thereby led the petite bourgeoisie. It also strove to provide all sorts of social services to people. The party did not just aim at state power, but was the school of revolution—meaning that it was teaching people how they, themselves, could exercise state power after the revolution.
[...]
Nonetheless I think that the model of the SPD, which Lenin and the Bolsheviks followed, was a model of building up the working class so that, as Lenin put it, “Any cook could govern.”
[...]
LP: Freedom of association gave scope to these new parties, although that freedom was not simply provided, and was not strictly required. People tend to forget that the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), which was treated, including by Lenin, as the model party, remarkably managed to build itself through the 1880s in spite of legal proscription. Some 1,300 newspapers and magazines were shut down in those years, while 1,500 activists were jailed and over 300 trade unions associated with the Social Democrats were dissolved by the state. So, even though the repeal of anti-socialist laws in 1890 was a boon, the emergence of these organizations was not entirely dependent upon the freedom of assembly.
As I mentioned, the Russian revolutionaries modeled the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party on the German SPD. Lenin’s discussion in 1895 of party program is explicitly related to the Germans’ Erfurt Program of 1891. What Lenin articulated is that the task of the party is class consciousness, which means pushing beyond trade-union consciousness, and I think this is how most social democrats understood their work at this time. Lenin clarified that class consciousness is not just something you add on to trade-union consciousness; it requires the active intervention by socialists in order to drive a politics of class formation.
[...]
As we see socialist parties evolve through the course of the 21st century, a few things need to be observed. The first is that capitalism is not doomed to collapse. Two, socialism is a marathon, not a sprint. We are not going to get there through insurrection in a country like this, given how the military is controlled and organized. Three, because of the time we need to develop socialist parties and build our capacities, liberal democracy is crucial. Without freedom of association, we will not have the political space to do this. Four, capitalist contradictions today, including the tendency toward crisis, but not only that, are likely to be closing the space for liberal democracy, which poses a difficult dilemma. Do we combine in alliances and popular fronts with anybody to the left of the authoritarians in order to preserve liberal democracy? If we do that, however, we limit our ability to articulate socialist politics independently. That is a major dilemma at the current conjuncture. I do not think we should in any way be dissuaded from trying to build socialist parties anew, but it will be a major problem if the authoritarian tendencies of capitalism come to the fore in the coming years.
[...]
CC: But the October Revolution was not a socialist revolution, because the February Revolution had not been a democratic revolution. The old Tsarist state remained in place, with only a regime change, the removal of the Tsar and his ministers and their replacement with liberals and moderate “socialists,” namely the Right Socialist Revolutionaries, of whom Kerensky, who rose to the head of the Provisional Government, was a member. To put it in Lenin’s terms, the February Revolution was only a regime change—the Provisional Government was merely a “government” in the narrow sense of the word—and had not smashed the state: the “special bodies of armed men” remained in place. The October Revolution was the beginning of the process of smashing the state—replacing the previously established (Tsarist, capitalist) “special bodies of armed men” with the organized workers, soldiers, and peasants through the “soviet” councils as executive bodies of the revolution, to constitute a new revolutionary, radical-democratic state, the dictatorship of the proletariat. From Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ perspective, the October Revolution was merely the beginning of the democratic revolution.
[...]
As Leo Panitch remarked at a public forum panel discussion that Platypus held in Halifax on “What is Political Party for the Left?” in January 2015, the period from the 1870s to the 1920s saw the first as well as the as-yet only time in history in which the subaltern class organized itself into a political force. This was the period of the growth of the mass socialist parties, around the world, of the Second International. The highest and perhaps the only result of this self-organization of the international working class as a political force was the October Revolution in Russia of 1917.
[...]
The October 1917 Revolution has not been repeated, but the February 1917 Revolution and the July Days of 1917 have been repeated, several times, in the century since then.
[...]
CC: I like to think of the arc of the 1960s and 1970s as a kind of “Neo-Narodnism.” The “back to the people” proletarian turn of the 1970s on the Left had a kind of a “pre-Marxist” or even non-Marxist flavor to it. The question of party building is vexed by this history.
Earlier, I cited Leo’s comment about the period of the 1870s to the 1920s being the first and only time in history that the subalterns had organized themselves as a political force—never before and never since.
[...]
In light of this history, it is important for us to reconsider what party building meant before World War I. It had a different character than what came later, in the 1970s, which was a weak echo of the 1930s and had more in common with liberalism. In other words, the “vanguard party” idea got completely distorted. The earlier idea was that the party was not simply identical with the self-organization of the working class. Rather, the party served a crucial role in facilitating the self-organization of the working class, while also serving a function beyond the membership of the party and even beyond the working class as such. For the party also took up the lead in various democratic struggles in civil society, and thereby led the petite bourgeoisie. It also strove to provide all sorts of social services to people. The party did not just aim at state power, but was the school of revolution—meaning that it was teaching people how they, themselves, could exercise state power after the revolution.
[...]
Nonetheless I think that the model of the SPD, which Lenin and the Bolsheviks followed, was a model of building up the working class so that, as Lenin put it, “Any cook could govern.”