(May the Dutch comrades of the Communistisch Platform pardon my use of English for my question.) Has the organization committed itself to a workers-only voting membership policy? Since Kautsky in his Marxist apogee defended this, I think it would a fundamental starting point for the new organization.
We are currently a group of less than 10 people... No, we don't have such a policy yet. Next year we will hold our first congress though and it might be a good idea to have some variant of this rule in the constitution.
I'm against such a rule. It would force us to have to decide who is prole enough to be allowed to join us, and to expel people when they lose their prole credibility, regardless of political views and alignment with our project. Whatever we'd base such a decision on, it couldn't be class itself though. Nobody is intrinsically a proletarian. Rather, proletarian is a condition that manifests due to the capitalist mode of production. It is the totality of the reproduction of labor-power. As such it'll involve many people who we can undoubtedly think of as proletarians, but also many cases where such classification is very difficult and even arbitrary. And for what purpose? To exclude people who we fear might derail our project due to their class? If we suppose capitalists are up for such raiding behavior (pretty unlikely in our case), then surely they won't tell us about their class character up front, nor would such a rule prevent them from hiring infiltrators. So such a degeneration isn't stopped by that rule. Yet it would require us to set up a prole-ness tribunal to investigate our membership and to exclude people who could contribute greatly. It seems like a really bad idea. I should also point out that we're not aiming to become a workers party. We aim to be a pressure group within the existing movement in order to win it for our principles (internationalism, democracy, class independence, revolution), and to create a viable basis for a party. So we do not aim to represent the proletariat. We aim to represent communism. Anyone who agrees with our principles and is willing to work with us is welcome, though our principles practically exclude most non-proletarians anyway.
To this post by Tjis, I would add that I remain sceptical to the aim of this rule: A workers-only membership rule aims to keep out non-proletarian interests. But is that the case? If we look at the trade unions we clearly see how bureaucrats works. Now, you may argue that these aren't 'real' proletarians, but that's a cop-out I think. In reality we see such influences (bureaucracy, nationalism, class collaboration) developing as a result of our work, as a movement, under capitalism. Therefore I prefer other safeguards, such as: - A democratic culture - An anti-authorarian culture - An educated membership, whereas 'education' shouldn't be the sole monopoly of the leadership - A 'multipolar' party-movement, where the leadership is mainly an administrative body and political decisions are much more done by the entire membership, possibly in the form of different 'centers' competing for hegemony. - A form of sortition in the leadership, definitely in the case of the controlling body that checks up on the elected fulltimers, if they still do their tasks properly.
DNZ, Would this policy be directed against (petty) bourgeois individuals or fulltime staff of the apparatus? Or both?
Comrade Tjis, according to the (perhaps late?) comrade Miles in the US, those who lose their prole credentials can switch over to some official sympathizer class or something. As for a "prole-ness tribunal," I wouldn't use such traditional mechanisms for occupational and career profiling. The 21st century has proliferated newer methods. There! The buzzwords for such a policy could be "occupational profiling" and "career profiling," in addition to "background checks." Comrade Q, this workers-only voting membership policy which I've been won over to years ago isn't a panacea, and I agree with your other safeguards, but why not add this as an additional safeguard? This applies to political education, where educated workers (like ourselves) should run the relevant bodies and not tenured professors, as well as to political agitation, where we shouldn't be at the mercy of students and "career activists." As for your example of trade unions, the "organized labour" bunch always flash out the card that says they're connected to the working class and serve immediate working-class interests. Comrade Rakunin, I think it's the former, not the latter. I support revolutionary careerism (the notion of having full-timers). Under such a policy, one would have to have a consistently background of working-class occupation(s) in order to transition into a full-timer.
