Die Neue Zeit
22nd November 2008, 04:50
http://www.revleft.com/vb/sozialdemokratische-partei-deutschlands-t79754/index.html
"As we set about the task of rediscovering Lenin's actual outlook, the terms 'party of a new type' and 'vanguard party' are actually helpful - but only if they are applied to the SPD as well as the Bolsheviks. The SPD was a vanguard party, first because it defined its own mission as 'filling up' the proletariat with the awareness and skills needed to fulfil its own world-historical mission, and second because the SPD developed an innovative panoply of methods for spreading enlightenment and 'combination.' The term 'vanguard party' was not used during this period (I do not believe the term can be found in Lenin's writings), but 'vanguard' was, and this is what people meant by it. Any other definition is historically misleading and confusing. (http://books.google.ca/books?id=8AVUvEUsdCgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0)" (Lars Lih)
Proceeding from the above (although I was hoping for more discussion on, say, how the international proletariat's first vanguard party overcame the draconian Anti-Socialist Laws :( ), how decisive was the history of the USPD as a shortlived vanguard party in the German Revolution plus one or two years prior? It's also noteworthy that, last year, Die Linke ("The Left") in Germany commemorated the formation of the USPD:
https://secure.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/left-m10.shtml
At the start of April, the Left Party-Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) issued a press statement to commemorate the founding of the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) 90 years ago.
Under the heading “An Outstanding Role Model for Left Politics Today,” the national secretary of the Left Party-PDS, Dietmar Bartsch, described the founding of the USPD in 1917 as an event “worthy of commemoration.” He continued: “The Left Party-PDS, which is in the midst of a process of party reformation with the WASG (Election Alternative group), draws from many traditions. The USPD is one of them. This party maintained the anti-militarist tradition of German social democracy. With it emerged a new mass party and the prerequisite for a left alternative to the SPD (Social Democratic Party).”
Bartsch went on: “The USPD developed under the pressure of the war and as the product of a progressive process of differentiation in the SPD. Important Marxist social democratic theoreticians such as Eduard Bernstein, Rudolf Hilferding and Karl Kautsky, who regarded themselves as the upholders of social democracy, turned to the organisation. In the following years there were uncertainties and intense disputes over the political orientation of the party and its search for a realistic political strategy, conflicts that today one would probably be termed factional fights between ‘realist politicians’ and ‘representatives of the pure line.’ The subsequent splits and new unifications only served to complicate the creation of a uniform mass party which paid attention to the daily demands and needs of workers without yielding its claim to revolutionary, anti-capitalist politics.”
The statement concluded: “The internal struggles over orientation in the following years inevitably led to a further splintering of the workers’ movement and weakened the left in its fight against aspiring fascism. The attempt by Paul Levi to constitute a left socialist mass party based on the unity of the KPD (German Communist Party) and USPD-left, in the spirit of Rosa Luxemburg, failed. In its failure, as in its alternatives, the attempt provides an exemplary lesson for left policy today.
[I won't quote the rest of the article, though, since it promotes an ultra-sectarian viewpoint.]
"As we set about the task of rediscovering Lenin's actual outlook, the terms 'party of a new type' and 'vanguard party' are actually helpful - but only if they are applied to the SPD as well as the Bolsheviks. The SPD was a vanguard party, first because it defined its own mission as 'filling up' the proletariat with the awareness and skills needed to fulfil its own world-historical mission, and second because the SPD developed an innovative panoply of methods for spreading enlightenment and 'combination.' The term 'vanguard party' was not used during this period (I do not believe the term can be found in Lenin's writings), but 'vanguard' was, and this is what people meant by it. Any other definition is historically misleading and confusing. (http://books.google.ca/books?id=8AVUvEUsdCgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0)" (Lars Lih)
Proceeding from the above (although I was hoping for more discussion on, say, how the international proletariat's first vanguard party overcame the draconian Anti-Socialist Laws :( ), how decisive was the history of the USPD as a shortlived vanguard party in the German Revolution plus one or two years prior? It's also noteworthy that, last year, Die Linke ("The Left") in Germany commemorated the formation of the USPD:
https://secure.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/left-m10.shtml
At the start of April, the Left Party-Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) issued a press statement to commemorate the founding of the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) 90 years ago.
Under the heading “An Outstanding Role Model for Left Politics Today,” the national secretary of the Left Party-PDS, Dietmar Bartsch, described the founding of the USPD in 1917 as an event “worthy of commemoration.” He continued: “The Left Party-PDS, which is in the midst of a process of party reformation with the WASG (Election Alternative group), draws from many traditions. The USPD is one of them. This party maintained the anti-militarist tradition of German social democracy. With it emerged a new mass party and the prerequisite for a left alternative to the SPD (Social Democratic Party).”
Bartsch went on: “The USPD developed under the pressure of the war and as the product of a progressive process of differentiation in the SPD. Important Marxist social democratic theoreticians such as Eduard Bernstein, Rudolf Hilferding and Karl Kautsky, who regarded themselves as the upholders of social democracy, turned to the organisation. In the following years there were uncertainties and intense disputes over the political orientation of the party and its search for a realistic political strategy, conflicts that today one would probably be termed factional fights between ‘realist politicians’ and ‘representatives of the pure line.’ The subsequent splits and new unifications only served to complicate the creation of a uniform mass party which paid attention to the daily demands and needs of workers without yielding its claim to revolutionary, anti-capitalist politics.”
The statement concluded: “The internal struggles over orientation in the following years inevitably led to a further splintering of the workers’ movement and weakened the left in its fight against aspiring fascism. The attempt by Paul Levi to constitute a left socialist mass party based on the unity of the KPD (German Communist Party) and USPD-left, in the spirit of Rosa Luxemburg, failed. In its failure, as in its alternatives, the attempt provides an exemplary lesson for left policy today.
[I won't quote the rest of the article, though, since it promotes an ultra-sectarian viewpoint.]