How to Build the [Mass] Party of the Working Class

How to Build the Party of the Working Class (by Ben Seattle)

"The most important task for revolutionaries in the present period is the creation of a genuinely revolutionary organization (or system of organizations) capable of uniting everything healthy in the progressive and workers' movements and laying the foundations for a mass workers' party that can overcome both the reformist and sectarian diseases and unite the majority of the working class around a program centered on the overthrow of bourgeois rule"



[More excerpts, but comrades should read the web site itself for the graphics]



This mass party will most likely emerge from a self-organizing network of cooperating (and competing) individuals and organizations.

This network may initially take the form of an informal and open community that is likely to emerge out of common work to build a revolutionary news service that will offer comprehensive news, analysis and discussion (from the perspective of the class interests of the working class) to many millions of people.

As this network (or informal community) develops and matures, it will likely witness the emergence of two primary poles of attraction corresponding to and reflecting the material interests and ideology of the two main contending classes in society.

One of these poles will represent the material class interest of the proletariat (ie: the working class) and be organized around the central mission of overthrowing the system of bourgeois rule and creating a society where everything is run by the working class. I will refer to this pole as the revolutionary pole.

...

As the many struggles of the working class develop--and as the struggle between the revolutionary and reformist poles develops--the nature of this struggle will become more clear to many millions of workers. This process may take a number of years--or it may take decades.

Eventually this process will mature to the point where the center of gravity within the workers’ network (or organization or party) will shift to the revolutionary pole. As this struggle continues to develop--a mass organization or party will emerge without a reformist pole and in which reformists are not welcome.

Many activists with experience in the antiwar and/or revolutionary movements may ask why the network (or organization or party) of the working class should contain within itself political trends which stand in direct opposition to the interests of the working class.

The answer to this question is that the process by which millions of workers learn about the nature of reformist and revolutionary politics—will take years (or decades). During this lengthy period many organizations will be created which are hostile to reformism and reformists—-but these will not tend to be mass organizations. The emergence of mass organizations without reformists--will require a period of struggle in which many millions of workers acquire bitter experience with the treachery of reformism.

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Efforts to create parties similar to the Bolsheviks in the Western imperialist countries have generally fallen victim to the reformist or sectarian diseases--or remained small, relatively isolated groups.

The problem may be that a party like the Bolsheviks cannot be created except by a process similar to that which created the Bolsheviks (ie: a lengthy period during which the two principal poles in the workers' movement were in open competition with one another and large numbers of workers had the opportunity to learn how each pole acted as the class struggle developed).

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The view that a mass revolutionary party can grow from a small group while keeping itself oriented along the correct line (as determined from applying so-called "democratic centralism" to the summation of experience) most likely originates in the practice of the Communist International which encouraged methods and beliefs similar to these--as well as what I call "cargo-cult Leninism" (ie: a political religion which repeats various phrases or actions Lenin used without understanding what Lenin actually meant by these phrases or what the aims were of his actions).

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Efforts to simply "grow" a small group into a mass party with the correct line--tend to leave the small group isolated and leave the mass of activists out of the process of struggle between reformist and revolutionary politics. Under these circumstances (with the mass of activists uninvolved in this struggle and largely unaware of it) the reformists will win because the revolutionary group will remain small and isolated.

The distinction here is between what I call the methods of "building a brick wall" and "casting a wide net".

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Many "cargo-cult-Leninists" believe they can build a mass revolutionary party by starting with a small group that has the correct line and recruiting activists to it until it becomes a large, mass party. This has never happened and it is not how Lenin built his party.

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The mass [pre-party] organization of the working class that I describe above would need to be a fairly loose organization in order to accommodate sections that have agendas in total opposition -- and would never agree to be completely controlled by their political opponents. These groups would need to agree to certain basic forms of cooperation (as for example the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks agreed to between 1903 and 1911) but, other than these basic forms of cooperation--these groups would insist on their freedom of action and their ability to do what they want.



My comments:

With the clarifications made, we can finally tie in the organizational contributions of all the three revolutionary "third-generation" Marxists: Lenin, Luxemburg, and Connolly.

The revolutionary and reformist poles are more or less proto-parties within some sort of mass network. You should clarify on the initial size of the two poles, because my thinking is that the revolutionary pole should start out as small as Lenin's Bolsheviks. Meanwhile, that mass network SHOULD be distinctively working class (and preferrably international in its operations, too). That past message of mine regarding the "Party of World Revolution" - that's an internationalist party that doesn't accept non-workers.

With this working-class distinction, the network as a whole could thus be akin to Connolly's "one big union" ("Add to this the concept of one Big Union embracing all and you not only have THE OUTLINE of the most effective form of combination for Industrial Warfare today..."), and will eventually give rise to Luxemburg's revolutionary mass party as the vanguard.

[More in the modern context]



Let's look at how this all might work (in the context of groups existing today) if the Revolutionary News Service took off and created a network or organization similar to what is shown in my diagram above.

Most of the hard-left groups that joined would only do so under duress: they would probably only join because the Revolutionary News Service was taking off and becoming popular and they (and their supporters) were concerned about being left out or left behind.

Groups such as the ISO, RCP and PSL / WWP would end up, on the basis of their practice (in my opinion) as part of the reformist pole. These groups do not see themselves in that way, of course. But that is how they would be regarded by militant activists when the movement develops and political consciousness and transparency increased.

Groups like the CVO and LRP and various individuals that have decisively broken with reformism and recognize the need to oppose the reformist influence would find themselves at or near the revolutionary pole. In such close proximity, they would tend to discover one another and, to the extent that they overcame the sectarian disease--might find renewed appreciation of their common interests.

Lenin’s maxim, “unity of action, freedom of discussion and criticism”, is a stratagem of the “democratic party of the advanced class”. Lenin, correctly or incorrectly, viewed organisation of the working class as essential to a political movement of the working class. Yet, for Lenin, which I consider correctly, ascertains that ‘organization’ means unity in practice/action but it does not necessarily mean unity in theory/thought.

“Democratic centralism” was a tactic of the RDSLP(B) during a particular period within the party.

^^^ Besides my administrative PM regarding your post above, are you sure that circumstantial discussive unity - which encompasses all of "freedom of discussion, unity in action" - cannot be both a strategem (just plain "circumstantial discussive unity") and a tactic (insert some "-ism" here)?

Shouldn't we eventually post this in a public forum, like the Theory forum? It's pretty important stuff which should really be displayed for more people to see...

^^^ It's double-posted in the Article Submissions forum and, for good measure, my blog (BTW, "outsiders" CAN see EVERY post in EVERY user group):

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?u=13895

It's posted here for a good discussion "inside" - without the usual revisionist Trotskyist, Stalinist, and Maoist noise hanging around to hijack the topic at the first opportunity.

“Democratic centralism” was a tactic of the RDSLP(B) during a particular period within the party.

Democratic centralism was not a tactic, but a principle. We must, however, be clear on what Lenin meant by the term, which has been greatly distorted.

The RSDLP was a decentralized organization prior to the 1903 Congress. Prior to that point, it consisted largely of various student circles coming in to existence, and then being shipped off to Siberia. There was no leadership, no history, or organization, just various circles and people putting out papers. It wasn't an organization at all. Imagine if all the socialist groups in the United States were really all part of one organization, but under massive state repression, and you get an idea of what the situation in Russia was.

What Lenin proposed was not a special type of organization specifically suited to life under Tsarism, but trying to organize the RSDLP to be more like the German Social Democracy, with elected and accountable leadership, trying to preserve the lessons that various activists gleaned before they were exiled. In other words, he was trying to change the RSDLP from a collection of debating societies to an actual party, but one which could survive under Tsarism.

^^^ You might want to repost those first two sentences of yours in the "democratic centralism" thread. I have to disagree with you on that one. The underlying principle is something that I call "circumstantial discussive unity."