Preamble:
In a discussion I had with someone about the vanguard party I realised that we as CWI have an inconsistent, or worse, wrong stance: namely that about our call on new mass workers parties. I'll try to explain my reasoning step by step and in a question/answer form. I wonder if I'm making a mistake in my reasoning somewhere or that we may have a bigger issue. But lets start at the beginning...
The Problem:
We as CWI hold the analysis that after the transformation of the old social-democracy into open bourgeois parties in the period of the late '80-ies, early '90-ies, the working class was politically homeless. We're clear so far. But from this we conclude a dual task for our organisation:
1.Building our revolutionary organisation. This is pretty obvious and doesn't need explanation.
2.Rebuilding the workers movement. In countries (like the Netherlands) where there is an alternative left of the old social-democracy, we participate in it. In other countries where this is not the case we call for a (new) mass party most of the time.
I'll try to proof that this dual task is in contradiction with itself. But first, let's clear out some premises:
What is a vanguard party?
The working class has, as we know, different layers. One layer is more politically aware and active than the other. The most militant layer is what we call a “vanguard”. In more modern day language you could just as well call them militants or activists. Despite the fact that the working class in general carries out the revolution, it's the activists that are in the front row of all class struggle by leading it, organising it, etc.
The vanguard party (or if you will activist/militant party) is here the conception that we need to organise the militants in s political organisation to gain political clarity inside the vanguard and thereby for the workers movement.
Now, the vanguard is almost by definition a minority of the total working class (the big exception of course being periods of intense class struggle, like a revolutionary period). A vanguard party is thusly by definition a party of a small minority. This creates a paradox: what is the relation between the party ans the rest of the class and how do you prevent isolation? But more on this later. First...
What is the character of the mass party?
If we look into the history of mass workers parties we see an obvious problem: none of these parties have ever played a revolutionary role. Why is that? I could of course digg into the history books and talk about the German SPD, but our current day Dutch SP is a fine example aswell (although this party obviously represents a much smaller mass). If we look to the membership of the party we see that only 2 or 3% of the party is actually active in a more or less sense (mostly the latter) in the partylife. That isn't very strange, because we just stated that the vanguard is certainly not a majority within the working class, so within a mass party activists will also be a minority. But there are other reasons. The most important one I think is perhaps the very low barrier to become a member... If we look to the organisational principal of democratic-centralism, we see quite clearly why this is a problem.
Democratic-centralism implies, among other things, a balance between a central leadership anda democratic counterbalance from the membership. Important here is of course that the members are actively engaged in party life, because else the centralistic tendencies get the upper hand. And this is exactly what we see (in an extreme sense) in the SP: the party leadership can do whatever it pleases. And when members do want to get active, this is immediately suppressed, else members will look on the leaderships' fingers and that's not what the leadership wants of course. A classic bureaucratic reflex is to discourage normal members from actively participating in the party life as much as possible.
The consequences are obvious. When the revolution happens, the mass party plays a reactionary role. Indeed, the SPD is the classic example in this. When the workers needed them, they played an openly counter-revolutionary role.
The first important conclusion is then obviously: a mass party is because of its inherent character anti-revolutionary, or anyway a revolutionary mass party can be very easily couped by a rightwing leadership in times of low class consciousness.
Now we have that paradox again: If we try to achieve as big a unity among the working class as possible, how can we then organise it if not inside a mass party? How do we prevent isolation from the rest of the class (and with it the vanguard)?
The classic answer is: the union. Despite the fact that the union suffers from the same disease as the mass party (that is: an anti-revolutionary leadership), it has the great advantage that she's not organised around political but economical struggle. That is to say, it is an advantage for us to find activists to build our activists party and to keep in touch with the rest of the working class and to be able to give political leadership to it.
So, does this mean we don't have anything to gain from existing mass parties?
Sure we do. But I think we have a strange tradition here aswell. When Trotsky proposed the tactic of entrism he meant to work inside political formations for a short period to convince as many militants as possible to our program, and then move on. It's a tactic of primitive accumulation of activists.
Militant had its roots in a completely different situation. Ted Grant wasn't in favor of entering the Labour party at the end of the '40-ies. He much rather defended an independent organisation. However, the majority left for Labour and so did he. From this grouping Militant (and us) later arised. But the entrism of Militant had a completely different character than proposed by Trotsky and went beyond the tactic of primitive accumulation of activists. It became a goal in itself to remain active inside Labour. This later became the main reason for the split between the CWI and the IMT, but that's a different discussion.
The point I want to make is this: Conclusion 2: We're in the SP to build our organisation, not to build the SP (see first conclusion on why).
We're not doing this a lot/at all (because of multiple factors, mainly the repressive party bureaucracy). A logical conclusion from this is that political support isn't giving us any extra benefit, in fact it only adds confusion because we're linking ourselves to a mass party.
Is the call for a mass party, where it applies, universal in our international?
Not quite. The Belgian comrades for example call for a syndical party. In the context it simply means a party from union activists. In other words a vanguard party (thusly not a mass party). I think this is a more correct approach than the call for a mass party.
An answer on the problem?
I'm not sure if my logic is wrong at some point, if so I do like to hear why. But I'm afraid that by working towards a new mass workers party it'll be a formula for a new generation of betrayal, rightwing leaderships and more of that what we saw in the last century... What I do agree with is that a cooperation with other organisations can bring us forward. But this has to be specifically under a revolutionary flag (of course still using the transitionary method). A revolutionary workers party and thus a vanguard party.