TC
17th November 2006, 01:14
Its a horrible shame that there are thousands of people outraged at the intrinsic brutality of the capitalist system but unable to find a meaningful, effective outlet for that outrage. There is nothing going on now in the contemporary anglo-american first world left with revolutionary energy. All we have now is opotunities for activism that doesn't build any strength or momentum; activity is obviously futile if it cannot be expected to lead to any of the aims that the radical left has on a practical time scale. Self-satisfied excuses that we don't live in revolutionay time justifies an apparent belief that simply perusading people through literature and symbolic demonstration of a more perfect political line is the limit of activism. When the only activity around is clearly useless and ineffective the result is the cynicism and apathy that we see in the left today.
Leftists today have a a great deal of unrealized potential because the movement is organized along lines that don't use our numbers efficently and stifle progress. There are a couple of organizational models that aren't working:
The first is the one used by most Trotskyist parties. People who are politically aware join only if they already agree with the established line, the leadership is basically inaccessable and internal debate is limited across the organization and there is no real contest for leadership. The same forumaliac political activities are repeated, selling newspapers, supposedly building the party but in reality losing as many members or more due to high turnover caused by an understandable sense of futility in activity that has no momentum to it. Democratic centralism, which was a type of organization developed for parties that required the structure to resist infilitration and carry out illigal actions with military dicipline given that they were prepairing to actually attempt revolution on a short time scale, might make sense when revolution is imminant, outside of a revolutionary context can simply limit the sort of debates that could lead to progress.
The alternative model practiced by some local groups and anarchist groups is to attempt to have an absolute lack of formal organization, structure or leadership. These groups tend to get even less accomplished because with no defined structure they lack the means of effective action, where people can make plans and exicute them in an efficent manner. The supposed advantages that they proport to have over the other model are less evident in practice than in theory because in the absense of a formal leadeship, a defacto leadership of the people or person most effective in controlling the flow of organization, ususally the facilitator and people who called the meeting in the first place, will emerge anyways and often meetings conclude with similarly predetermined results.
An alternative model that seems to have fallen out of fashion but was effectively applied by the New Left: multi-tendency organizations with factions competiting in participatory democracy. Leftist organizations with one clique of old leaders tend to produce stagnation and those with no defined means of providing direction end up as talking shops...but when there are multiple groupings of leaders proposing directions and actions in a single organization competing for following, who are all visible in the divergent positions and who are organizationally accessable, so that debate doesn't lead to expulsion and changing your line doesn't mean changing your organization, more creative approaches can emerge. People have oprotunity to try things within supportive context to try different approachs and then people can choose to follow what works.
I think that that organizational model was what made the student movements of the 60s and 70s much more successful at developing socio-political significance than the current movement. Its a model that i think we should consider reviving.
Practically speaking, members of existing political groupings organized along the first two current models could found multi-tendency organizations on a local basis (rather than a national leadership basis), allowing them to expand their organizational capacities by pooling membership (thereby increasing what they can accomplish) while retaining political autonomy and identity, acting as both internal and external factions. It would be in the interests of these established political groups as they could recruit unaffiliated members of the multi-tendency organization if their activities and line were persuasive, and the direct engagement with other radical groups would provide a context for political development.
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Leftists today have a a great deal of unrealized potential because the movement is organized along lines that don't use our numbers efficently and stifle progress. There are a couple of organizational models that aren't working:
The first is the one used by most Trotskyist parties. People who are politically aware join only if they already agree with the established line, the leadership is basically inaccessable and internal debate is limited across the organization and there is no real contest for leadership. The same forumaliac political activities are repeated, selling newspapers, supposedly building the party but in reality losing as many members or more due to high turnover caused by an understandable sense of futility in activity that has no momentum to it. Democratic centralism, which was a type of organization developed for parties that required the structure to resist infilitration and carry out illigal actions with military dicipline given that they were prepairing to actually attempt revolution on a short time scale, might make sense when revolution is imminant, outside of a revolutionary context can simply limit the sort of debates that could lead to progress.
The alternative model practiced by some local groups and anarchist groups is to attempt to have an absolute lack of formal organization, structure or leadership. These groups tend to get even less accomplished because with no defined structure they lack the means of effective action, where people can make plans and exicute them in an efficent manner. The supposed advantages that they proport to have over the other model are less evident in practice than in theory because in the absense of a formal leadeship, a defacto leadership of the people or person most effective in controlling the flow of organization, ususally the facilitator and people who called the meeting in the first place, will emerge anyways and often meetings conclude with similarly predetermined results.
An alternative model that seems to have fallen out of fashion but was effectively applied by the New Left: multi-tendency organizations with factions competiting in participatory democracy. Leftist organizations with one clique of old leaders tend to produce stagnation and those with no defined means of providing direction end up as talking shops...but when there are multiple groupings of leaders proposing directions and actions in a single organization competing for following, who are all visible in the divergent positions and who are organizationally accessable, so that debate doesn't lead to expulsion and changing your line doesn't mean changing your organization, more creative approaches can emerge. People have oprotunity to try things within supportive context to try different approachs and then people can choose to follow what works.
I think that that organizational model was what made the student movements of the 60s and 70s much more successful at developing socio-political significance than the current movement. Its a model that i think we should consider reviving.
Practically speaking, members of existing political groupings organized along the first two current models could found multi-tendency organizations on a local basis (rather than a national leadership basis), allowing them to expand their organizational capacities by pooling membership (thereby increasing what they can accomplish) while retaining political autonomy and identity, acting as both internal and external factions. It would be in the interests of these established political groups as they could recruit unaffiliated members of the multi-tendency organization if their activities and line were persuasive, and the direct engagement with other radical groups would provide a context for political development.
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