Question for Trotskyists

[Pogue]

Mainly UK ones cos I'm more involved with campaigns those guys are in and I'm referring specifically to their parties:

What role will the vanguard have in the revolution?
How will the vanguard avoid corruption/becoming the 'party class' post revolution, i.e. becoming the new tyrants beating us with 'the peoples stick'?

Specifically SWP: You're revolutionary, but support Respect and stuff? I'm confuzzled. Surely you just see the state as bourgoeisie filth and any peaceful 'democratic' gain as something the state will smash asap?

Not trolling, cos I've worked with the SWP and the like and I genuinely want to know. Wont your party just become as crap as the CP in China, Russia, NK etc.

[Yehuda Stern]

I'm not British and not an SWPer but I will try to answer your questions.


What role will the vanguard have in the revolution?

The vanguard's role is to build the revolutionary party and propagate its ideas to the rest of the working class. When the time comes, it's role will also be to lead the working class to victory. This will be done by exposing in different ways the reformist and centrist leaderships that will try to moderate the struggle, a goal that one would have to use many different tactics to achieve (talking and condemning naturally isn't enough; to support or spread illusions about those leaderships is, however, downright criminal).


How will the vanguard avoid corruption/becoming the 'party class' post revolution, i.e. becoming the new tyrants beating us with 'the peoples stick'?

Lenin offered four ways to lessen the danger, all of which are lessons from the Paris Commune:

- All elected officials can be recalled at any time.
- Every elected official must receive a salary no higher than that of a skilled worker.
- No permanent bureaucracy. "Every cook should be able to be a Prime Minister."
- No standing army, but the armed people.

However, these are only ways to mitigate the danger. The only real way to avoid corruption is to destroy its material basis in scarcity and imperialist encirclement, i.e. by spreading the revolution worldwide.

[Tower of Bebel]

- The party cannot encompass the working class as a whole, so the party must strive to unite the vanguard, the leaders of the working class, under its wings.
- The party must be organized in such a way that it becomes the most effective means of the proletariat to emancipate themselves. Democratic centralism is key to transform a party into a revolutionary vanguard party of the working class.
- The party must be guided by the principles of the proletarian state: all bourgeois liberties (free press, right of association, universal suffrage, etc.) and its necessary extensions (recallability and election of all officials, a salary similar to a worker's wage, etc.).
- The party must be independent of capitalist interests. It cannot govern the capitalist state and it cannot accept capitalist funding. It must attack the capitalist state, it must keep its proletarian character. It has to be a revolutionary party.
- The party must guide (shape) and lead the working class under the capitalist mode of production. It will lead the revolution to the destruction of the capitalist state and it will guide the workers to socialism.

The class struggle for democracy will be a way to defend (party) democracy, and democracy (criticism) will be the way to overcome the possible (destructive) division between top and base within the party.

[Die Neue Zeit]

- The party cannot encompass the working class as a whole, so the party must strive to unite the vanguard, the leaders of the working class, under its wings.
- The party must be organized in such a way that it becomes the most effective means of the proletariat to emancipate themselves. Democratic centralism is key to transform a party into a revolutionary vanguard party of the working class.

Hmmm... I suppose I'll voice at least some disagreement with the first point (I stated that not everybody would be in, but most workers would be). The 32-hour workweek should facilitate greater political activism. In order for the proletariat to emancipate itself, the majority needs to organize into a transnational class-strugglist party (participatory democracy before the revolutionary situation).

I do suppose, however, that while most people are capable of leaping from spontaneity and skipping class consciousness to socialist consciousness proper under the right circumstances, lots of them can't be "professional revolutionaries" (textbook interpretation). Some large party bureau for the activists proper would be needed.


The party must be guided by the principles of the proletarian state: all bourgeois liberties (free press, right of association, universal suffrage, etc.) and its necessary extensions (recallability and election of all officials, a salary similar to a worker's wage, etc.).

Don't forget selections by lot, too. This is critical in ending the aristocratic principle of selection.

[Pogue]

So you guys thus believe that you'd do things differently to how the parties in China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Russia etc did?

What about handing power over to the workers? When will this happen? Every practised case of Marx-Leninism has led to the state (the party) holding all power, wouldn't your party do the same?

[Q]

So you guys thus believe that you'd do things differently to how the parties in China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Russia etc did?

What about handing power over to the workers? When will this happen? Every practised case of Marx-Leninism has led to the state (the party) holding all power, wouldn't your party do the same?

The nationalisation of big companies under workers control and management has been a very basic position of the CWI since its inception, if that is what you're asking. We're for a centralised and democratic planned economy that provides in the needs of all under the accountability, correction and feedback of all.

[Pogue]

But would the state, formed by the party, control the economy and the industry? Or would it be direct workers control?

[Q]

But would the state, formed by the party, control the economy and the industry? Or would it be direct workers control?

We stand on direct workers control. The workers state, in our view, is for all intends and purposes a direct democracy.

[Pogue]

So after the vanguard has led a revolution, it will encourage the people to seize power and control everything themselves? So the party just ceases to be relevant after the revolution cos its job is done? Because this is why I am an anarchist - I think that if the party or any body holds power after the revolution they wont give it up. Thats why I dont like vanguards or states.

[Charles Xavier]

So after the vanguard has led a revolution, it will encourage the people to seize power and control everything themselves? So the party just ceases to be relevant after the revolution cos its job is done? Because this is why I am an anarchist - I think that if the party or any body holds power after the revolution they wont give it up. Thats why I dont like vanguards or states.

You need to read more theory, I highly recommend the communist manifesto. It will answer your question.

or read the sticky above...

http://www.revleft.com/vb/communist-theory-faq-t23569/index.html

[Pogue]

Clearly I need to read more theory, thats why I'm here in the learning section of a revolutionary leftist forum. I've tried reading the communist manifesto but I find it pointless to me, its hard to udnerstand and I don't see the need ot read a whole book for some simple answers. Why don't you answer me yourself?

[Q]

So after the vanguard has led a revolution, it will encourage the people to seize power and control everything themselves? So the party just ceases to be relevant after the revolution cos its job is done? Because this is why I am an anarchist - I think that if the party or any body holds power after the revolution they wont give it up. Thats why I dont like vanguards or states.

The vanguard is (unlike the Stalinist definition) not a group of elite know-it-alls but a layer of the working class that is militant and politically aware. The party consisting of these people is thusly a vanguard party. So your perceived difference between the vanguard and the working class is in fact no difference whatsoever. Furthermore, it is not the party that is able to just "take over", but a socialist revolution is a consciouss act of taking over power from the capitalists of the working class as a whole. The revolutionary party is merely an organisational and political means of getting us there.

[Charles Xavier]

Clearly I need to read more theory, thats why I'm here in the learning section of a revolutionary leftist forum. I've tried reading the communist manifesto but I find it pointless to me, its hard to udnerstand and I don't see the need ot read a whole book for some simple answers. Why don't you answer me yourself?

You need to learn the language of socialism, that link i post to the sticky will definitely put you in the right direction. If you are looking to understand socialist states and economy it cannot be done by rote, its essence needs to be understood.

Its like asking for the answer for a math question and we give it to you but you don't understand how we got to it. To understand how socialism will be different from one country to the next, its not something that is cut and dried.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/communist-theory-faq-t23569/index.html Is the best beginners material wrote by either Marx or Engels.

You are asking questions that might be burning in the back of your head but there are other things to understand previously. Before you will even understand our answers.

Learn the essence and come to your own conclusions, ask questions if you don't understand things, but asking us to tell you what to think is not something we can do properly.

Many of the others here, will pretend to understand everything, but rather they are mostly do nothing loud mouths, they learned by rote and do not understand the essence. I have only seen a good answer by Yehuda Stern . (http://www.revleft.com/vb/../member.php?u=16872)

The others do not know what they are talking about and are applying labels to everything they do not understand.

The question you are asking is what role does the working class have in a revolution. The answer is not one step. Read the article by Engels, when you finish ask the question again.

[Yehuda Stern]

So you guys thus believe that you'd do things differently to how the parties in China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Russia etc did?

Of course. Trotskyism sees Stalinism as thoroughly counterrevolutionary and anti-proletarian, and the histories of the regimes it set up in those countries proves that this position is correct. (That some "Trots" can still claim that some of these parties created workers' states, deformed or otherwise, is a funny contradiction which is better dealt with elsewhere)


What about handing power over to the workers? When will this happen?

It'll never need to "happen": the workers' will control the state from the get go. That's why it is called a workers' state.

[Pogue]

You need to learn the language of socialism, that link i post to the sticky will definitely put you in the right direction. If you are looking to understand socialist states and economy it cannot be done by rote, its essence needs to be understood.

Its like asking for the answer for a math question and we give it to you but you don't understand how we got to it. To understand how socialism will be different from one country to the next, its not something that is cut and dried.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/communist-theory-faq-t23569/index.html Is the best beginners material wrote by either Marx or Engels.

You are asking questions that might be burning in the back of your head but there are other things to understand previously. Before you will even understand our answers.

Learn the essence and come to your own conclusions, ask questions if you don't understand things, but asking us to tell you what to think is not something we can do properly.

Many of the others here, will pretend to understand everything, but rather they are mostly do nothing loud mouths, they learned by rote and do not understand the essence. I have only seen a good answer by Yehuda Stern . (http://www.revleft.com/vb/../member.php?u=16872)

The others do not know what they are talking about and are applying labels to everything they do not understand.

The question you are asking is what role does the working class have in a revolution. The answer is not one step. Read the article by Engels, when you finish ask the question again.

Arogant

[Charles Xavier]

Arogant
I didn't mean to come off that way. I was just trying to lead you to that work by Engels, its a very good introduction. I don't think I have all the answers. I'm learning just like you.


I think this is a very true statement when it comes to learning about Marxism.

Learn to struggle; struggle to learn.

(and I don't mean struggle as in have trouble understanding things to learn, I mean struggle as in the fightback)