Die Neue Zeit
28th December 2008, 02:35
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/12/25/the-fight-in-the-swp-part-five-lindsey-german/
This response to Lindsey German’s article is the fifth and concluding entry in a series of posts that is less about the specifics of the strategic and tactical differences between the SWP’ers and more of an attempt to take a step back and put the fight into a broader context. (I should add that I have a postscript planned that will present my own ideas about how to build a revolutionary party. Mostly they boil down to ideas I absorbed from Peter Camejo in the early 1980s and have since embellished with my own.)
In my view, the SWP’ers are simply reaping the fruits of a sectarian party-building methodology that will defeat the efforts of any Marxist to build a party like Lenin’s. Ironically, the Leninist party that they have in mind when they go about their tasks is not like the historical Bolshevik party but a schematic attempt to create a cookie cutter version of Bolshevism good for all countries and all times.
The man most responsible for this flawed methodology was Gregory Zinoviev, who made the same kinds of mistakes found in Regis Debray’s “Revolution in the Revolution”. Just as Debray sought to mechanically apply a rural guerrilla warfare strategy throughout Latin America that was based on a one-sided understanding of the Cuban revolution, so did Zinoviev seek to impose a one-size-fits-all version of the Russian party on the rest of the world. While it took about ten years for Latin American Marxists to figure out that the Debrayist conception was in error, the Zinovievist model persists until this day-75 years after it was conceived. Perhaps if Lenin had lived, another approach would have been taken. Even before Zinoviev came up with his party-building concepts, Lenin felt instinctively that something was wrong as this comment made in 1922 about attempts to codify a “Bolshevik model” would indicate:
[i]At the third congress in 1921 we adopted a resolution on the structure of communist parties and the methods and content of their activities. It is an excellent resolution, but it is almost entirely Russian, that is to say, everything in it is taken from Russian conditions. That is its good side, but it is also its bad side, bad because scarcely a single foreigner – I am convinced of this, and I have just re-read it-can read it. Firstly, it is too long, fifty paragraphs or more. Foreigners cannot usually read items of that length. Secondly, if they do read it, they cannot understand it, precisely because it is too Russian… it is permeated and imbued with a Russian spirit. Thirdly, if there is by chance a foreigner who can understand it, he cannot apply it… My impression is that we have committed a gross error in passing that resolution, blocking our own road to further progress. As I said, the resolution is excellent, and I subscribe to every one of the fifty paragraphs. But I must say that we have not yet discovered the form in which to present our Russian experience to foreigners, and for that reason the resolution has remained a dead letter. If we do not discover it, we shall not go forward.
Indeed!
In trying to preserve the legacy of "orthodox Kautskyism," Lenin may have implied here the SPD (http://www.revleft.com/vb/sozialdemokratische-partei-deutschlands-t79754/index.html) model and especially the USPD (http://www.revleft.com/vb/unabh-ngige-sozialdemokratische-t95038/index.html) model as better models. :(
This response to Lindsey German’s article is the fifth and concluding entry in a series of posts that is less about the specifics of the strategic and tactical differences between the SWP’ers and more of an attempt to take a step back and put the fight into a broader context. (I should add that I have a postscript planned that will present my own ideas about how to build a revolutionary party. Mostly they boil down to ideas I absorbed from Peter Camejo in the early 1980s and have since embellished with my own.)
In my view, the SWP’ers are simply reaping the fruits of a sectarian party-building methodology that will defeat the efforts of any Marxist to build a party like Lenin’s. Ironically, the Leninist party that they have in mind when they go about their tasks is not like the historical Bolshevik party but a schematic attempt to create a cookie cutter version of Bolshevism good for all countries and all times.
The man most responsible for this flawed methodology was Gregory Zinoviev, who made the same kinds of mistakes found in Regis Debray’s “Revolution in the Revolution”. Just as Debray sought to mechanically apply a rural guerrilla warfare strategy throughout Latin America that was based on a one-sided understanding of the Cuban revolution, so did Zinoviev seek to impose a one-size-fits-all version of the Russian party on the rest of the world. While it took about ten years for Latin American Marxists to figure out that the Debrayist conception was in error, the Zinovievist model persists until this day-75 years after it was conceived. Perhaps if Lenin had lived, another approach would have been taken. Even before Zinoviev came up with his party-building concepts, Lenin felt instinctively that something was wrong as this comment made in 1922 about attempts to codify a “Bolshevik model” would indicate:
[i]At the third congress in 1921 we adopted a resolution on the structure of communist parties and the methods and content of their activities. It is an excellent resolution, but it is almost entirely Russian, that is to say, everything in it is taken from Russian conditions. That is its good side, but it is also its bad side, bad because scarcely a single foreigner – I am convinced of this, and I have just re-read it-can read it. Firstly, it is too long, fifty paragraphs or more. Foreigners cannot usually read items of that length. Secondly, if they do read it, they cannot understand it, precisely because it is too Russian… it is permeated and imbued with a Russian spirit. Thirdly, if there is by chance a foreigner who can understand it, he cannot apply it… My impression is that we have committed a gross error in passing that resolution, blocking our own road to further progress. As I said, the resolution is excellent, and I subscribe to every one of the fifty paragraphs. But I must say that we have not yet discovered the form in which to present our Russian experience to foreigners, and for that reason the resolution has remained a dead letter. If we do not discover it, we shall not go forward.
Indeed!
In trying to preserve the legacy of "orthodox Kautskyism," Lenin may have implied here the SPD (http://www.revleft.com/vb/sozialdemokratische-partei-deutschlands-t79754/index.html) model and especially the USPD (http://www.revleft.com/vb/unabh-ngige-sozialdemokratische-t95038/index.html) model as better models. :(