Revolutionary "centrism" and patience?

[Die Neue Zeit]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1909/power/ch01.htm


To be sure, actual evolution has taken the road foretold by Marx and Engels. And the triumphant progress of Socialism is due, next to the extension of capitalism and therewith of the proletarian class struggle, above all to the keen analysis of the conditions and problems of this struggle supplied by the work of Marx and Engels.

In ONE point they were in error. THEY EXPECTED THE REVOLUTION TOO SOON.

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/629/macnair.htm


In this sense ‘Kautskyism’ means the struggle for an independent workers’ party, intimately linked to independent workers’ media, trade unions, cooperatives and so on, and for - at least symbolic - internationalism. On the other hand, it means the struggle against the ideas of short cuts to power that evade the problem of winning a majority, through coalitionism or ‘conning the working class into taking power’ via the mass strike. These are positive lessons for today’s left.

[...]

This strategic orientation demands patience. The fundamental present problem is that after the failures of the strategies of the 20th century, in the absence of a Marxist strategic understanding, most socialists are socialists by ethical and emotional commitment only. This leads to the adoption of ‘get-rich-quick’ solutions that enter into the capitalist politicians’ government games.

This is the trouble with the idea that the Ligue should join a new gauche plurielle project rather than addressing seriously the question of unity with Lutte Ouvrière; with Rifondazione’s decision to participate in the Olive Tree government; with the PDS’s participation in a coalition with the SDP in Berlin; with the SSP’s orientation to an SNP-led coalition for independence; with Respect. The result is not to lead towards an effective workers’ party, but towards another round of brief hope and long disillusionment.

A different sort of impatience is offered by those who split prematurely and refuse partial unity in the hope of building their own ‘Leninist party’: the decision of the far-left platforms (Progetto Comunista and Proposta) to split prematurely from Rifondazione; the SAV’s split orientation in the WASG-PDS fusion process; the splits of the Socialist Party and Workers Power from the Socialist Alliance; and the refusal of much of the left of the SA to work as a minority in Respect. We find that, although these sects sell themselves as ‘revolutionary’, when they stand for election either to parliaments or in unions their policies are broadly similar to the coalitionists. They are still playing within the capitalist rules of the game.

The left, in other words, needs to break with the endless series of failed ‘quick fixes’ that has characterised the 20th century. It needs a strategy of patience, like Kautsky’s: but one that is internationalist and radical-democratic, not one that accepts the existing order of nation-states.



The above, I think, is the reason why I've advocated mass disengagement from electoral "brand" politics and the tactic of organized mass spoilage as a sign of contempt for non-participatory parliamentarianism (http://www.revleft.com/vb/united-social-labour-t75056/index.html). Thoughts?

[trivas7]

Jacob --
What is your fetish with Kautsky (why is he so relevant to your social proletocracy? Sorry, I'm just not getting it)? :(

Your "united social labor" post sounds like an endorsement of De Leonism.

Does your project have anything to do with Ben Seattle's Proletarian Democracy (http://struggle.net/struggle/proletarian-democracy/index.htm#4) (check out his 'How to Build the Party of the Future')?

[Die Neue Zeit]

1) Could you PM me? [Forgive me if I don't recall whether you have my WIP or not.]
2) DeLeonism suffers from parliamentary reductionism. I don't support any parliamentary "road to power."
3) Actually, Ben Seattle's stuff on "How to Build the Party" was the basis of Chapter 4. :)

[Die Neue Zeit]

I was reading an anarchist website (http://tfgcasper.net/node/22) for a disturbing remark made by Lenin in his later years. Ironically this is from the EXACT same work where he debunks "permanent revolution" (http://www.revleft.com/vb/errors-trotsky-and-t78770/index2.html):


But the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class. The whole is like an arrangement of cogwheels. Such is the basic mechanism of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and of the essentials of transition from capitalism to communism.

Contrast this with the absolutism and passiveness of his theoretical mentor:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/road-power-and-t83963/index.html


Within The Road to Power, there is one more remark of serious concern, both for historical reasons and for modern revolutionary-Marxist militants:

The social transformation for which we are striving can be attained only through a political revolution, by means of the conquest of political power by the fighting proletariat. The only form of the state in which Socialism can be realized is that of a republic, and a thoroughly democratic republic at that. The Socialist party is a revolutionary party, but not a revolution-making party. We know that our goal can be attained only through a revolution. We also know that it is just as little in our power to create this revolution as it is in the power of our opponents to prevent it. It is no part of our work to instigate a revolution or to prepare the way for it. And since the revolution cannot be arbitrarily created by us, we cannot say anything whatever about when, under what conditions, or what forms it will come. We know that the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat cannot end until the latter is in full possession of the political powers and has used them to introduce the Socialist society. We know that this class struggle must grow both extensively and intensively. We know that the proletariat must continue to grow in numbers and to gain in moral and economic strength, and that therefore its victory and the overthrow of capitalism is inevitable.

How much further from the truth could the real founder of “Marxism” have ever gotten (at least before his turn to renegacy)? Did he not conclude in Sects or Class Parties that “the ideal organisation is the unification of all proletarian parties, the political societies, the trade unions, the co-operatives, as equal members, not of a Labour Party without a programme, as is at the present the case in England, but of a class-conscious, all-embracing Social-Democracy”? If, out of sheer dynamic-materialist necessity, such an ultimatist mass organization were to encompass the vast majority of the proletariat in very literal terms, thereby going beyond the false dilemma presented by mass movements and typical traditional “parties” (the cadres-only party wrongfully put forward as an international model by the Bolsheviks only well into the civil war, the mass-but-reformist party, and even mass revolutionary parties not encompassing the vast majority of the proletariat in very literal terms), would it not be entitled to initiate the political revolution?

And the modern compromise in that last sentence reiterated:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/social-proletocracy-revolutionary-t83064/index.html


A “Marxism” purged of reductionism, revisionism, and sectarianism becomes practically revolutionary when all circles almost collapse into one gigantic circle of full class consciousness