Membership restrictions

  1. l'Enfermé
    On AIM we had a heated debate about whether or not MLs should be let into the party of our class, and it evolved into whether or not other revisionist Marxists should be let in as well, like Trotskyists, Left-Communists, and so on. We decided to cut it short and continue it here. Q and DNZ could participate too, this way.

    So, yeah, begin.
  2. Workers-Control-Over-Prod
    Workers-Control-Over-Prod
    I say: Yes, we should let in all wage earning workers who agree with the Worker Party's Program. In the advanced capitalist countries, the Peasantry, the class basis for Stalinism, virtually does not exist anymore, hence we must correct the false-consciousness of some Stalinist workers through debate.
  3. Die Neue Zeit
    Die Neue Zeit
    I said it before, and I'll say it again: it's all about workers accepting the political aspects of the Marx-Engels minimum program and agreeing to the two-pronged thrusts behind it (underlying principles and means to achieve them).
  4. bad ideas actualised by alcohol
    bad ideas actualised by alcohol
    The point is that "marxist"-leninists aren't marxists. They would never accept a marxist programme.

    Marxists see the proletariat as a revolutionary class. We don't need all kinds of revisionist currents in the party to make a majority. We need revolutionary theory. "Marxist"-leninists, anarchists etc, would not develop revolutionary theory but weaken it.

    If they accept a marxist programme they should be accepted, but I doubt that they would accept it and put it into practice.
  5. Q
    Q
    I agree with DNZ and NC: Acceptance of the programme should be the basis of unity. It's implementation is however a continuous open battle for political hegemony (against rightism, ultra-leftism, opportunism and other deviations).

    We will encounter many backward elements in the class. But instead of denouncing them, we should engage with them and win them over to the banner of the Marxist programme of universal human liberation.

    This doesn't imply "unity over everything" though. Like the SI for example banned anarchists, we too would have to critically seek unity on those lines that effectively unite our class as a longterm durable process and guard against those that seek "shortcuts" one way or another.
  6. Workers-Control-Over-Prod
    Workers-Control-Over-Prod
    I agree with DNZ and NC: Acceptance of the programme should be the basis of unity. It's implementation is however a continuous open battle for political hegemony (against rightism, ultra-leftism, opportunism and other deviations).

    We will encounter many backward elements in the class. But instead of denouncing them, we should engage with them and win them over to the banner of the Marxist programme of universal human liberation.

    This doesn't imply "unity over everything" though. Like the SI for example banned anarchists, we too would have to critically seek unity on those lines that effectively unite our class as a longterm durable process and guard against those that seek "shortcuts" one way or another.
    Yeah. I am personally very suspicious of the anarcho-syndicalist tendency. But individuals genuinely *accept* the program (point there, re. 'tendency hegemony'), there obviously is no reason to ban them so long they are of the working class.
  7. Art Vandelay
    I'm honestly a little concerned by some of the stuff that I have read on this matter, coming from comrades here. What some seem to be advocating is what I have been denouncing as slander from alot of the left-coms; ie: that we advocate allowing reformist elements into the party. I'm all for open debate and yes acceptance of the programme should be the basis of unity. That being said what you are advocating, by stating the M-L's should be allowed into the party, is advocating allowing objectively counter revolutionary elements into the party, which as far as I am concerned is down right betrayal to the proletarian cause.

    People who believe that the USSR was socialist until Stalin's death, like our friend WCOP here, don't have the same goals as us. If that is what you believe socialism is, then it has tangible effects on what you are attempting to establish.

    NC just recently shared an Engels quote with me which I think is relevant:

    One must not allow oneself to be misled by the cry for “unity.” Those who have this word most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension, just as at present the Jura Bakuninists in Switzerland, who have provoked all the splits, scream for nothing so much as for unity. Those unity fanatics are either the people of limited intelligence who want to stir everything up together into one nondescript brew, which, the moment it is left to settle, throws up the differences again in much more acute opposition because they are now all together in one pot (you have a fine example of this in Germany with the people who preach the reconciliation of the workers and the petty bourgeoisie)--or else they are people who consciously or unconsciously (like Mühlberger[*], for instance) want to adulterate the movement. For this reason the greatest sectarians and the biggest brawlers and rogues are at certain moments the loudest shouters for unity. Nobody in our lifetime has given us more trouble and been more treacherous than the unity shouters.
  8. Geiseric
    Geiseric
    Wait the minimum maximum program has some holes in it, and has nothing to do with a country like the U.S. which does not have a working class party. We need to actually build a working class party first, and struggle WITH not FOR the working class. We're running out of time, and we need to support demands, which the working class as a whole agrees with, but our program theoretically is only possible with the abolition of capitalism.

    Tendencies are usually, on this forum at least, mostly about historical things. ML's, if they are historically illiterate about the fSU, but still agree with the party program, should be allowed to join. Same for any other tendency. This is a working class party, to include the entire working class, be they reformist or revolutionary. It's our job to prevail over the reformists inside of the workers party, like Lenin and the Bolsheviks prevailed over the Mensheviks.

    However they can't say their opinions reflect the entire party, if they go all Stalinoid... We just need to have common sense.
  9. Die Neue Zeit
    Die Neue Zeit
    9mm, Broody hit the nail to some extent. Consider those same M-Ls you mentioned, and consider two specific examples: support for the Great Patriotic War, and support for the Popular Front.

    One of those has mostly historical and only very specific potential application today. The other has somewhat historical and mainly broad (and detrimental) potential application today.

    That's a reason for candidate vs. full membership: to combat possible views on the latter.
  10. Anglo-Saxon Philistine
    AIM the messenger client? (I'm new, don't shoot me.) Anyway, I agree in the main with cmrd. Guthrie; those Marxists-Leninists that support the general aims of the party, and I think that most Marxists-Leninists do, should be admitted. A comradely, democratic discussion and close connection to proletarian struggles can only help correct a comrade's incorrect ideas; this is something I think we should stress more. The proletarian party acts as a powerful force of ideological oversight and correction; our movement is scattered and atomised, so it does not have recourse to that force.

    This does not mean that every M-L, or every B-L for that matter, should be admitted. Shachtmanites, for example, I think should be excluded, since they are not revolutionary socialists but social-democrats. Likewise, the extreme tankies and "Stalinists" like Zyuganov and his "comrades". And ultrasectarians should be taken out and, er, we shouldn't shoot them I guess.