Interesting Ideas
Submitted by Arthur Bough on 13 October, 2005 - 12:24.
I think Martin has raised some interesting and important ideas in this review. It would have been useful to have linked this discussion to the contributions in other threads concerning building the revolutionary Party, What is Leninism, Schachtman's defence of Leninism, etc. which take up the same theme.
I would argue, as I have previously, that it is quite possible to adopt many, if not all, the Leninist concepts of organisation, and the need for ideological clarity etc. on which this is based (obviously not just that but the need for a disciplined organisation to give a lead under conditions of immediate class struggle - though as I have argued elsewhere, for example in opposition to the article by Shachtman, I am not sure they Bolsheviks were that entirely - certainly they were not without Lenin, which begs questions itself) without adopting the need for a Leninist Party.
I have no doubt that Marx and Engels above all others recognised the need for, and fought for ideological clarity, and were not afraid of attacking those whose ideas they believed were wrong or confused. I have no doubt that they would have seen the need to forge factions based around others who had similar ideas both in order to develop those ideas, and to try to get them adopted more widely. And yet to the end of their days this conception was bound inextricably to the belief that even more important than this ideological purity was the development of the working class movement itself. That in Marx's words in relation to the Gotha Programme "One step foreward of real progress is worth a hundred programmes", echoed later in Engels attitude to the building of a Workers Party in the US "On, however, inadequate a programme". And linked back to their conception of the role of Marxists in this process outlined in the Communist Manifesto that "The Communists do not form a separate party from the workers party."
I would argue that from the time of "What is to be Done?" This entire concept is thrown out. Lenin's concept is for the development of a professional party of revolutionaries, a vanguard, which by its nature can only ever be a minority. And its role is related to Lenin's concept of revolution - a concept of revolution which is based on sudden outbursts of anger aaginst the old regime, which is to be seized by the revolutionary party and carried through to completion. And that train of thought necessarily leads to a schism between "the revolutioanries", and "the reformists", a schism which ultimately must lead to the Commumnists creating their own party separate from the workers party.
It is that concept which has been the basis of all revolutioanry groups since. In my opinion it is not the organisational form of Leninism which is a problem, it is the politcs and ideology of Leninism which is the problem. If your concept of socialist revolution is one in which the workers can never gain space for themselves within capitalism to develop their own class consciousness, that workers cannot build upon their own strength within capitalism to win reforms and concessions, that begin to prefigure socialist society within capitalism, that they will always be dominated by bourgeois ideology short of the socialist millenium, then the Leninist Party follows as the only means of achieving a socialist revolution - though for reasons I have outlined elsewhere such a revolution is almost certainly doomed to degenerate or suffer counter-revolution.
But Marx did not believe that such was the fate of the working class, and history has shown that, indeed, such is not the fate of the working class. The dichotomy proposed by lenin, reform or revolution,and the basis on which this argument was put forward is false. Not only must workers fight for reforms within capitalism as Marx said in order to avoid becoming completely demoralised, but such reforms have been won, and have been consolidated within capitalism. Workers have found space within the system, and do have the potential for throwing off the shackles of bourgeois ideology if they are properly educated, and this growing awareness through education, and power resulting from increasing reforms adds to their power and development. Certainly for such reforms and progress to be effective it needs to be, for example, on a European wide basis rather than purely a British, French or German basis, but Marxists have always argued that socialism is oinly possible on such an international scale.
Of course such reforms like any pay icnrease or improvement in conditions are only partial victories which can be turned back, but all wars are won as a result of such partial victories, and in all wars setbacks occur too. The more the workers are eductaed and become aware of this fact the less likely such setbacks become, the quicker the recognition of the complete transformation of society is arrived at.
To argue for such a standpoint I would argue is not reformist but materialist. It combines the need and capacity to achieve reforms here and now through immediate class struggle with the need to develop amongst the working class as a whole or at least in its vast majority rather than just a revolutionary minority, a class consciousness and a clear udnerstanding of the necessity of a transformation of society, their role in bringing that about, and an understanding of the nature and structure of that future society. In none of that does the Leninist concept of effective organisation and ideological clarity conflict at all.
The conflict arises in this. That given the Leninist concepts about class consciousness, given the belief in the revolution effectively being a political revolution for the seizure of state power as the means by which the social revolution is brought about, and given the nature of the Leninist Party which then flows from this - Leninists must always put the idea of building the Party/organisation first. Exactly, how that manifests itself depends on the individual organisation. In the case of the SWP in opportunism, in the case of the old Militant leaching off any sizeable movement to raise finance sell papers etc. But the psychology remains the same - however much revolutionary organisations have proclaimed their commitment to building the movement they have done so always with their primary focus on building their own organisation - which is why they have looked for areas of work where they believed the richest pickings were, flitting from one campaign to another as they waxed and waned rather than focussing on long-term routine activity.
The "Entryist" tactic in the LP was a good example. Was the tactic designed to build the LP as the Workers Party? No it was designed so that individual organisations could try to recruit to their own organisation from within the ranks of the LP, or worse still to force a split. So for the sake of adding a few hundred extra members to this or that revolutionary orgaisation the "one step of real prgress" represented by the development of a workers party on "however unsatisfactory a programme" could be given up.
Engels said that as far as Marx was concerned "Only his best was good enough for the workers". Only when that is the psychology that drives action rather than how can we recruit a few more members will real progress be made. Only when it is recognised that socialism can only be built by a working class permanently conscious in its vast majority of its historic role, rather than by a Leninist Party will that psychology dominate the conscious and sub conscious activity of revolutionaries. To that extent I was interested in Danial randall's piece on the SSP.
Arthur Bough