The party question and partiinost

  1. Die Neue Zeit
    Die Neue Zeit
    THE PARTY QUESTION AND PARTIINOST



    “In order for the socialist and the worker movements to become reconciled and to become fused into a single movement, socialism had to break out of the utopian way of thinking. This was the world-historical deed of Marx and Engels. In the Communist Manifesto of 1847 they laid the scientific foundations of a new modern socialism, or, as we say today, of Social Democracy. By so doing, they gave socialism solidity and turned what had hitherto been a beautiful dream of well-meaning enthusiasts into an earnest object of struggle and [also] showed this to be the necessary consequence of economic development. To the fighting proletariat they gave a clear awareness of its historical task and they placed it on a condition to speed to its great goal as quickly and with as few sacrifices as possible. The socialists no longer have the task of freely inventing a new society but rather uncovering its elements in existing society. No more do they have to bring salvation from its misery to the proletariat from above, but rather they have to support its class struggle through increasing its insight and promoting its economic and political organizations, and in so doing bring about as quickly and as painlessly as possible the day when the proletariat will be able to save itself. The task of Social Democracy is to make the class struggle of the proletariat aware of its aim and capable of choosing the best means to attain this aim.” (Karl Kautsky)

    With this profoundly true and important paragraph, the merger formula of the revolutionary social democracy of the late 19th century and early 20th century, also the central theme of my earlier work and arguably even of this programmatic thesis, Karl Johann Kautsky summarized the fourth basic principle of Class-Strugglist Social Labour to be agreed upon. This principle of what can be called “partyism” touches upon numerous subjects, from consciousness and spontaneity to class independence to organization and bureaucracy to geography to revolutionary strategy.

    Crises of Various Types of Consciousness: Revisiting False Consciousness and Ideology

    Fetishizing Decentralized Social Movements and So-Called “Spontaneity”

    Class-Strugglist Labour: For the Politico-Ideological Independence of the Working Class

    Class-Strugglist Labour: “Workers Only” vs. “Workerism”

    Real Parties as Real Movements and Vice Versa: Alternative Culture and Bureaucracy Revisited

    Sociopolitical Syndicalism as Additional Partyism

    Transnational Organization, Modern Partiinost, and Programmatic Centrality

    Modern Partiinost as Revolutionary Centrism

    But why is all this “revolutionary centrism”? Didn’t revolutionary Marxists deride “centrism” just before the European bloodbath from 1914 to 1918? Rosa Luxemburg may have, but not Lenin:

    The difference between the conceptions "Marxist centre" (= independent policy, independent ideas, independent theory) and "Marsh" (= wavering, lack of principle, 'turn table' ("Drehscheibe"), weathercock).

    I shall conclude this chapter and transition to the next with a very lengthy quote, or rather a series of quotes, from Mike Macnair’s profoundly true and important series of articles (now compiled into the book Revolutionary Strategy: Marxism and the Challenge of Left Unity) dating back to 2006 in the Weekly Worker:

    Down to 1914, Russian Bolshevism was a tendency within the centre, not a tendency opposed to it [...] Without the centre tendency’s international unity policy there would have been no RSDLP; without the lessons the Bolsheviks learned from the international centre tendency, there could have been no mass opening of the Bolshevik membership in 1905, no recovery of the party’s strength through trade union, electoral and other forms of low-level mass work in 1911-14, and no Bolshevik political struggle to win a majority between April and October 1917.

    [...]

    It is important to be clear that the movement that the centre tendency sought to build was not the gutted form of the modern social-democracy/Labourism, which is dependent on the support of the state and the capitalist media for its mass character. The idea was of a party which stood explicitly for the power of the working class and socialism. It was one which was built up on the basis of its own resources, its own organisation with local and national press, as well as its own welfare and educational institutions, etc.

    [...]

    The centre’s strategy of patience was more successful than the other strategies in actually building a mass party. Its insistence on the revolution as the act of the majority, and refusal of coalitionism, was equally relevant to conditions of revolutionary crisis: the Bolsheviks proved this positively in April-October 1917, and it has been proved negatively over and over again between the 1890s and the 2000s. However, because it addressed neither the state form, nor the international character of the capitalist state system and the tasks of the workers’ movement, the centre’s strategy proved to collapse into the policy of the right when matters came to the crunch.

    [...]

    The Kautskyans were right on a fundamental point. Communists can only take power when we have won majority support for working class rule through extreme democracy. ‘Revolutionary crisis’ may accelerate processes of changing political allegiance, but it does not alter this fundamental point or offer a way around it. There are no short cuts, whether by coalitionism or by the mass strike.

    The present task of communists/socialists is therefore not to fight for an alternative government. It is to fight to build an alternative opposition: one which commits itself unambiguously to self-emancipation of the working class through extreme democracy, as opposed to all the loyalist parties.

    [...]

    Imitating the Russians was not utterly disastrous, as attempts to imitate the Maoists in more developed countries were in the 1960s and 1970s. This is attributable to the fact that most of what the Russians endeavoured to teach the Comintern in 1920-23 was in fact orthodox Kautskyism, which the Russians had learned from the German SPD.

    [...]

    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 ideas that the LCR 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 Prodi government; with Die Linke’s participation in a coalition with the SDP in Berlin [and Brandenburg]; 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 Sozialistische Alternative’s split orientation in the process of formation of Die Linke; the splits of the Socialist Party and Workers Power from the Socialist Alliance; and so on. 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.




    REFERENCES


    The Class Struggle (Erfurt Programme) by Karl Kautsky
    [http://www.marxists.org/archive/kaut...furt/index.htm]
    [http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/arch...rter/index.htm]

    Outline for An Article on the Struggle Against the "Marsh" by Vladimir Lenin [http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...lpha/marsh.htm]

    Revolutionary Strategy: Marxism and the Challenge of Left Unity by Mike Macnair