Many people reading this article may ask themselves “why join the SWP in the first place?” Others still will ask “why go on to join the AWL?” These are legitimate questions. In fact, the answer to the question “why I left the SWP” revolves almost entirely around answering the other two.
Some people fill hours of their lives writing lists of incidents, outrages and ‘crimes against socialism’ carried out by the SWP. This documentation is a time-consuming and important work, but this article will be no such list. Others have provided us with impressionistic sketches of leading SWP ‘personalities’. These sketches have some value, but the eccentricities, downright rudeness and misanthropy of the likes of Alex Callinicos and Chris Bambery were not determining factors in my leaving the party – you can find strange behaviour across the Left. Some people probably think I’m strange!
My relatively short membership of the SWP taught me the valuable basics of revolutionary activity. I learnt the rudiments of organisation, how to engage with people on the streets and how to mobilise them. I gained the confidence to speak in front of large meetings and lead demonstrations, to write leaflets and have an argument. It was in the SWP that I became immersed in politics, an immersion that lasts to this day. The SWP formed me, as they have a great many others, into a revolutionary. So what went wrong?
Why I joined the SWP
The answer to this question is fairly straightforward and is a lesson to any revolutionary group. I first came into contact with the revolutionary left in the aftermath of September 11th 2001. It’s a cliché, I know, but that day really did change my life. My previous political life had been centred on the Labour Party; I thought of myself as a “Labour leftie” but had never come across any organisations inside the party. I’d been busy helping return Alan Simpson (the left-wing MP for Nottingham South) to parliament before the summer and had settled back into student life quite happily until that day in September.
Shortly afterwards I got involved in the local “Stop the War” (StW) group. The SWP, Socialist Party and AWL were all active around StW, but only the SWP went out of its way to recruit me and stamp its presence on whatever it was involved with. I’d be followed to the pub after meetings, people would be sent to argue with me, ask questions and ask me to join. They’d pop up in the most unlikely of places. Socialist Worker was a ubiquitous presence.
I could easily have joined any one of the groups at the time but only the SWP put real effort into recruiting an awkward character like me. After three months I’d torn up my Labour Party card. Five months later I eventually asked to join the SWP. They seemed pleased that their hard work had paid off. Like many people at the time I threw myself 100% into campaigning and educating myself about the world – the energy I put into StW was quickly absorbed by the SWP.
Within four months I ended up working for the party, first as an organiser in Leicester, then in the membership department at the national office. During this time I helped organise and lead demonstrations, spoke at meetings around the country and personally recruited scores of people to the party.
I had a fantastic time but was also exposed to some of the darker aspects of life in the SWP. It quickly became clear that decision making was not a democratic process. Each Wednesday the Central Committee would meet in a room at the far end of the print-shop and shortly afterwards the office workers would be “told” what needed doing. Basically, if something had to be done, someone was expected to put up their hand and say they’d do it. No questions asked. This person would then go off and tell others what to do and the message would eventually filter down. For places with full-time organisers, Bambery would get on the phone and with his usual charm offload the latest instructions.
This is just one example of the top-down, commandist way the SWP interprets “democratic centralism”. As a local organiser I was expected to “sort out” comrades who lagged behind the latest instructions. This could range from having a direct argument to “going around” (excluding) those who stood in the way. For someone used to being a dissenter in the Labour Party, used to asking questions, this proved to be too much.
Whilst I didn’t want to be a “leader” in the SWP, I wasn’t ready to leave either. I returned to Nottingham and went back to university. I threw myself into local activity again and started reading more and more – this time in a systematic way.
I quickly came into conflict with the new organiser in the city. The “new turn” in the SWP was to “go around” the central StW group and set up independent, local committees. Likewise, every area of Nottingham was to have its own ‘Marxist Forum’, local SWP committee and paper sales. No real explanation was given for this, but I had a feeling for what was going on – I heard it all before.
The local SWP had basically stalled. After two years on a constant war footing the majority of comrades had become less regular in their activity, one leading member had decamped abroad, others were drifting away. The proposed solution was rather like raising yield targets in times of drought. Pure Stalinism.
Around the same time Respect began to emerge as a central area of activity. In the run up to the European elections I, along with some non-SWP members, raised concerns about how Galloway had intervened to ensure that a Muslim man topped the candidate list. This was obviously done to exclude a woman candidate.
After that I was all but shut out of Respect organising. The last major “difference of opinion” was over the establishment of a local “Social Forum” by a group of students and activists from the StW campaign. I saw this as a natural development from people who wanted to generalise their political activity – the group had plans for campaigning on public services and other aspects of international solidarity. The SWP saw the group as a direct threat to Respect, and were determined that members should not get involved. I disagreed. How did the SWP organiser deal with this “little local difficulty”? Well, I was excluded from what passed for local decision making and characterised as having “academic” tendencies.
Why I joined the AWL
Most of my conflicts so far had been organisational. Although I disliked the way the SWP operated internally, I still largely agreed with the basic political perspectives — especially around the war on Iraq. The murder of Hadi Saleh (a leading Iraqi trade unionist) in January 2005 by an Islamist death squad opened a new political door. Almost immediately an email was posted to the local StW e-list from a member of the AWL calling for StW to condemn the murder.
At the time I’d bought the shameful lie that Saleh was in cahoots with the “imperialists” and attempted to justify StW’s silence. What followed was a fairly intense exchange between myself and probably every member of the AWL in Nottingham – they seemed to be making up for the wasted opportunity in 2001!
It’s largely true that your politics is shaped by whatever political organisation you join first. I’d been a particularly keen absorber of SWP “theory”, had amassed a collection of Cliff, Harman, Rees et al, and had made these ideas central to my politics. My critique of capitalism was refracted through the SWP as an organisation – as “the Revolutionary Party” – not through an independent, class-based understanding.
The SWP presents itself as the manifestation of the ‘best’ of the working class, in terms of individuals and ideas. Indeed, this is what a revolutionary party is meant to be. So when you’re presented from the outside with an example that not only challenges but crushes this understanding – the myth that the SWP is an internationalist, independent working-class party – the whole façade falls away.
That the SWP not only ignored but positively smeared Saleh is one of the “crimes” alluded to at the beginning of this article. My reaction to this crime was to reassess almost every aspect of what I thought about imperialism, the national question and the Middle East.
I started to read Trotsky and Lenin instead of Cliff and Harman, discovered Hal Draper (I’m looking for a T-Shirt that reads “Hal Draper Saved My Soul”) and discussed with AWL comrades.
I remained in the SWP and continued to attend StW meetings, trying in vain to get the local group to make the Iraqi labour movement a central concern, and repeatedly failing to get any words of sense from the SWP on my criticisms. Eventually, after banging my head against a brick wall for what seemed a long time, I left the SWP for good.
Why YOU should join the AWL
If you’re a SWP member and if you agree with any of what the AWL says then here’s my advice: The current crisis with the SWP/Respect will probably be resolved sooner rather than later. Now is the time to raise your criticisms, have the arguments you’ve been brewing and keep politically sharp.
In the past when large groups have disintegrated many hundreds if not thousands of excellent activists have dropped out of activity, it would be criminal if this happened to SWP members. Raise your concerns with close comrades, see if you can get them to agree with you and write your criticisms down.
Research and develop your thoughts and confront local organisers, NC members and visiting “national speakers”. Make contact with the AWL, either through the local branch or national office – let us know what you think and engage with our arguments. Most importantly, don’t just leave the SWP in disgust – leave for a clear political reason and take others with you if you can.
Most importantly, I think you should consider joining the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty in the fight for a real revolutionary party and independent working-class socialism.
Comments
Hal Draper
This is a question for Tom Unterrainer. I am the director of the Center for Socialist History. The Center is publishing Hal Draper's work, as well as that of other authors on the history of socialism. I am interested in how you came across Hal's stuff and what you have been able to get hold of. This is a sort of market research poll.
Ernie Haberkern
How Draper?
Hi Ernie,
Like many socialists I read 'The Two Souls of Socialism' (printed by Bookmarks, the SWP publishing outfit!) early on. The real motivation for reading Draper came from arguments with AWL members and from reading 'Solidarity' (the groups paper). At first I just printed off the archive on marxists.org (yes, all of it ... I even had it ring-bound!) then went about buying what I could from second hand stores and over the internet. It's as simple as that ... well, not that simple really. It's virtually impossible to 'happen across' anything by Draper in book shops or to buy from British online stores (Amazon lists some recently published items and refers to second hand dealers but they're not a 'desirable' source in my opinion). I think there's a case - well I would - for producing cheap editions, perhaps in pamphlet form, of some key articles. This should certainly be extended to any other classic third camp material in your archives.
Best wishes,
Tom
Goodbye Lenin
Authoritarianism and sectarianism aren't just problems of the SWP but of the whole of the Leninist left. It's always reassuring when comrades realise how poisonous and reactionary the SWP is (I grasped this at the age of 18 after being a member for about a year), but it's a shame when they just jump ship to another self-appointed vanguard of the working-class who believe that salvation lies in the works of dead Russians. Surely history has taught us that it's virtually impossible to reconcile the goal of "a real revolutionary party" with "independent working-class socialism"?
The Leninist Left
Kronstadt1921, can you give examples of the AWL acting in an authoritarian and sectarian way? I don't think we do. You say that we are a "self-appointed vanguard of the working-class"; well, you could say that about any organisation that puts the workers at the centre of its activity and wants to convince them of its politics: perhaps you belong to just such an organisation? Your comment is just a cheap jibe not an argument against? Yes, we think we can learn from the works of some dead Russians but there are others including some dead Americans (Hal Draper, Max Shachtman, Julius Jacobson etc) and we also believe that it is important to think for yourself.
I can't help nit-picking your last sentence. If it is "virtually impossible" then that implies that it is possible ('to reconcile the goal of "a real revolutionary party" with "independent working-class socialism"'). Yes, it is incredibly difficult, history certainly shows us that, but they are not mutually exclusive. If you think they are could you please say why?
Response to TB
My criticisms are not directed at the AWL specifically but at the Leninist/Trot left as a whole and which the AWL is part. As it happens, I think the AWL is one of the better Trot grouplets (especially when compared to the SWP), but nevertheless it pays homage to Lenin and Trotsky, two architects of Bolshevik totalitarianism and Red Terror in the Soviet Union. The left's continued obsession with the works of Trotsky and Lenin contains within it the kind of personality cult we saw in Russia.
I am a critical support of what passes for the libertarian communist movement in the UK today. I don't seek to create a party that will lead and control the working-class, which, ultimately, is the Leninist aim (although I don't doubt there are those who will sincerely claim this is not their aim). Parties inevitably become bureaucratic and detatched from those whose support they seek because they seek power ON BEHALF of that group, then dedicate themselves to retaining that power. The emancipation of the working-class must be carried out by the working-class itself, not by a self-appointed vanguard.
The Spanish proletariat did not require a revolutionary party to create a form of libertarian socialism during the civil war. Leninists often point out that the Spanish revolution failed, but only because the Fascists and Stalinists had more guns than the CNT-FAI and the workers, not because they lacked a vanguard party to lead them.
Lenin and Trotsky led the
Lenin and Trotsky led the party whose actions brought about the first stable seizure of power by the working class in history. Don't you think their works might be worthy of some attention? They also made history in circumstances not of their own chosing; this restricted their choices. If you have an aversion to their writings maybe Engels would be acceptable:
"The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply. What he can do depends not upon his will but upon the sharpness of the clash of interests between the various classes, and upon the degree of development of the material means of existence, the relations of production and means of communication upon which the clash of interests of the classes is based every time. What he ought to do, what his party demands of him, again depends not upon him, or upon the degree of development of the class struggle and its conditions. He is bound to his doctrines and the demands hitherto propounded which do not emanate from the interrelations of the social classes at a given moment, or from the more or less accidental level of relations of production and means of communication, but from his more or less penetrating insight into the general result of the social and political movement. Thus he necessarily finds himself in a dilemma. What he can do is in contrast to all his actions as hitherto practised, to all his principles and to the present interests of his party; what he ought to do cannot be achieved. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination. In the interests of the movement itself, he is compelled to defend the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises, with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests. Whoever puts himself in this awkward position is irrevocably lost."
Engels The Peasanat War in Germany Chapter 6
Was there another group in Russia in 1917 who could have side stepped this problem?
Totalitarianism?
Kronstadt,
1) As we see it, the purpose of a revolutionary party is to lead the working class and make it fit to rule. That is absolutely different from seeing the revolutionary party as an instrument of command. How do you 'lead' workers in struggle? By telling the truth and organising properly - so that workers respect what you say (because it's correct) and take their cues from you. You lead, ultimately, by telling it like it is, winning arguments, and being efficient organisers and fighters. That approach rules out the use of compulsion, lies, slander or command. How could a political organisation that wanted to promote its ideas and build the political power of the working class act in any other way? Otherwise you just wind up cheerleading for the status quo, pointing at what the workers are doing right now and calling it good, rather than fighting for them to move ahead and act in a different, better way.
2) The Spanish proletariat didn't have enough guns to defeat the Stalinists - true. But as well as that, they were disorganised and politically disoriented. The anarchist leadership of the revolution voted to make a coalition government with bourgeois liberals. They did that because they didn't have clear ideas of what working-class political power would look like. The immensely powerful workers' movement in Britain in the 1970s was ultimately defeated because of its syndicalist approach - it didn't take politics seriously, didn't develop a political organisation, and therefore couldn't pose any better political alternative to the Tories than a rightwing labour government; they didn't have a joined-up national political programme. We think that an organisation of the working class that understands the question of working-class political power (and strives permanently to understand it better) and can develop and implement a political strategy for the working class is crucial.
3) If Trotsky was such a totalitarian, why was he and everyone who agreed with him killed by the Stalinists? Why were the co-thinkers of Trotsky, the people who argued for democracy in revolutionary Russia, the first victims of the Stalinists? Why did Lenin spend his last years fighting to re-establish the working-class democracy that had been smashed by the invasions of the Civil War? Could it be that the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky are in fact profoundly opposed to the ideas and methods of bureaucrats and Stalinists? If you actually pay attention to the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky you will see that their fundamental concern is for democracy and mass participation.
You appear to have swallowed the arguments of the bourgeois anti-Communist historians of the C20th - hook, line and sinker. Bolshevism is Stalinism is Fascism; the 1917 revolution was a military coup led by the maniac Lenin and his militarised Party-cult; any socialist organisation is implicitly totalitarian. These arguments and the slanders and misrepresentations of history that support them are arguments that were developed by the bourgeoisie for the precise purpose of smashing and discouraging workers' organisation! If Lenin really was opposed to working-class democracy and workers' self-organisation, why is the bourgeoisie still going to such lengths to demonise and discredit his ideas in its academic institutions and its media? Surely if he was against working-class self-organisation the bourgeoisie would welcome him, and we'd see articles being written in right-wing journals about how he was actually a jolly good chap and very much misunderstood.
Ed Maltby
Participation
"Why were the co-thinkers of Trotsky, the people who argued for democracy in revolutionary Russia, the first victims of the Stalinists?"
They weren't, and nor were the first groups repressed the supporters of Trotsky, as early as the 1921 10th Congress of the Bolshevik/Communist Party there was a ban on factions. Trotsky supported this.
"If Trotsky was such a totalitarian, why was he and everyone who agreed with him killed by the Stalinists?"
"If Lenin really was opposed to working-class democracy and workers' self-organisation, why is the bourgeoisie still going to such lengths to demonise and discredit his ideas"
Ed, you like me will have heard many times the argument "If Hugo Chávez/Fidel Castro is so anti-working class, why do US imperialism oppose them so strongly..." The fact of opposition by the bourgeoisie is not in itself justification by any set of ideas or any figure.
What political alternative should the 1970s UK workers' movement have posed? The workers' government, you might say. I would be interested in how you think this ought to have come about, and in what way such a government would have exercised power except through the structures/organs of the bourgeois state.
what's your point?
David,
It would perhaps be more constructive for you to make explicit the political position which you counterpose to mine, rather than hinting at it obliquely through suggestively criticising what I've written. To be honest, I've never understood the political basis of the Commune, nor the substance of its disagreement with Trotskyism, and it's not for want of trying. I mean, you make some criticism of the worst, Stalinoid elements of orthodox Trotskyism, but they hardly apply to more critical, democratic tendencies like Workers' Liberty, do they? It's interesting that you concentrate on attacking Trotsky on this or that historical point (disingenuously), but have little to say on the question of organisation.
The ban on factions in 1921 was supported on the basis that, in the context of near-total collapse in Russia and serious organisational chaos, it was a temporary, emergency measure. Maybe the ban on factions was a blunt instrument for dealing with those problems, but bear in mind the immense strains the Party was under at the time. Trotsky made it clear as soon as he thought the ban had become obsolete, and fought against it. Also, the ban 'repressed' factions in the sense that they were expelled from the party - it didn't 'repress' them in the sense of killing or exiling their members, which seems to be your implication. Up until the Stalinist party apparatus forced them out, Trotsky and his co-thinkers fought hard for the expansion of democracy within the party and Russia, against the stalinists' brutal ultra-left attacks on the peasantry, against the bureaucratic actions of the Comintern in particular against the betrayal of the Chinese revolution and the Anglo-Russian committee's bureaucratic lash-up with the General Council of the TUC. Lenin's entire trajectory up until his death shows that his foremost concern was to re-establish strong organs of workers' democracy - to rebuild the soviets. And members of the Left Opposition were the first victims not only of the killings in the 1930s but also of the general clampdown in the party around 1928. Why might that be? And what argument are you making about Trotsky anyway? Are you making Niall Ferguson's argument, that Trotsky was just as much an ant-democratic conspirator as Stalin, and basically shared Stalin's political method? It's hard to guess, when all you do is make dark hints about how terrible Trotsky was, without ever actually spelling out where his mistakes were, what part of the Trotskyist tradition must be junked, etc.
As for your question about a workers' political alternative in the 1970s, I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make. That an attempt by the working-class to seize political power would be difficult and therefore there is no point going on about it? Or that it would necessarily result in a dictatorship? I'm genuinely interested. To answer your question, yes, basically, the workers' movement in the 1970s should have tried to organise a democratic challenge for political power - a rank-and-file movement to transform or split the Labour Party, to bring down the Tories and win political power: a workers' government. Were it to gain a majority in parliament, would a workers' government have to try to use the state infrastructure? Yes. Would the institutions of the state refuse to co-operate? Almost certainly. Would there have been a serious political confrontation between the state and the workers' movement in a situation like that? Yes. But the alternative to the workers' movement making a challenge for state power is for the workers' movement to ignore the question of state power. But the the bourgeois state won't ignore a powerful labour movement, even if the labour movement decides on some point of anarchist principle to ignore the state.
Stalinist repression and workers' government
To answer David's points:
1. We shouldn't confuse what happened in 1921 with the later development of Stalinism. You can argue - I would - that it was a serious error to ban factions in the Bolshevik party, that it was one of the things that aided the rise of Stalinism, but to say it was the 'original sin' from which Stalinism flowed is unmaterialist. The real reasons for the growth of a new bureaucratic class that usurped working-class power are ones that you surely know: the isolation of the revolution, the decimation of the party's cadre and the soviets and the atomisation of the working-class in the civil war, the subsequent chaos in both industry and the countryside. That is why the Trotskyists who led the rearguard resistance of what remained of the working-class Bolshevik party against that new class were the first to be repressed by it in the late 1920's. No-one was repressed by Stalinism in 1921 when it had not yet coalesced.
2. "The fact of opposition by the bourgeoisie is not in itself justification by any set of ideas or any figure." Agreed. I would simply point out that the writings and actions of Lenin and Trotsky show them to be partisans - often in incredibly difficult circumstances - of working-class self-rule unlike the totalitarian mass murderer Stalin (or the Bonapartist figure Chavez).
3. "in what way such a [British 1970's workers'] government would have exercised power except through the structures/organs of the bourgeois state".
I think it's quite easy to see how it could have come about: by linking together strike committees and trades councils, electing delegates to national bodies, organising essential services likes transport and food distribution, you would soon have a situation of dual power.
Is this the Trotsky of 1921
Is this the Trotsky of 1921 who is referred to above?
"They [the workers' opposition] have come out with dangerous slogans. They have made a fetish of democratic principles. They have placed the workers' right to elect representatives above the party. As if the Party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy! The Party is obliged to maintain its dictatorship . . . regardless of temporary vacillations even in the working class . . . The dictatorship does not base itself at every moment on the formal principle of a workers' democracy." (Trotsky’s speech to the 10th Party Congress.)
We read this stuff many times in Trotsky . . . and in James P. Cannon. It is a poisonous tradition that has seriously derailed the workers movement.
The trouble is, contemporaries of Trotsky did not have to wait until Stalin arrived to spot the problems of the nascent USSR - now usually brushed off as caused by Stalinism. The anti-democratic and therefore anti-working class strain in the bolshevik leadership was evident to many from the beginning. Makhno, for example, saw the Russian party as centralising and suffocating - http://libcom.org/library/idea-equality-bolsheviks-makhno
The Cheka was a creation of Lenin, after all . . . and please, let no one try to brush off the Cheka’s terrible crimes by saying only a few, not as bad as . . . The workers movement has been morally and politically corrupted by the defence of indefensible things in ‘soviet’ Russia.
This is Lenin: “Take 1918, when there were no such disputes; even then I pointed to the necessity for individual authority, to the need to recognise the dictatorial authority of individuals in order to carry out the Soviet idea. All talk about equality of rights is nonsense. We are not waging the class struggle on the basis of equality of rights, nor can we if the proletariat is to prevail. Prevail it can, because we have hundreds of thousands of disciplined people expressing a single will.” Lenin is wonderfully honest here (http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/apr/07.htm.) No excuses that the difficult conditions of the isolated revolution force extraordinary measures upon a reluctant party. “Dictatorial authority” was always the plan! This was the plan before the defeat of the German revolution. “Hundreds of thousands of disciplined people expressing a single will” is not Marx’s Association and never would turn into it. The Checka saw to that.
Sylvia Pankhurst saw, in Russia, workers trapped by a state that in 1921 was in active opposition to the left supporters of workers' democracy. In 1924 she wrote "If we pretend that the present regime in Russia is Communism, is actually the sort of life towards which we are striving, those who observe its shortcomings will naturally tell us that our ideal is a very faulty one." This was before Stalin could conveniently take the blame for all that had gone wrong in Russia. The realisation that the Russian revolution had failed is not a post-1929 hindsight. Many communist contemporaries of Trotsky could see that the contempt of democracy (and, therefore, of the working class) that all the Russian party leaders had was part of the death the revolution.
We know that, in part, this contempt for democracy stemmed from a realisation that the small number of workers in the cities were surrounded by a sea of peasants and they in their turn were surrounded by a sea of capitalist and pre-capitalist states. Democracy within Russia's borders would not bring socialism. But lack of democracy would not bring socialism either. To the Leninists, socialism was an economic plan, not the transformation of human relations. That's why they thought they could carry on - with economic plans.
Worker demonstrations against the Party whilst the 10th Congress sat shows that by 1921 the working class in the cities were far from unified behind Party rule (Getzler's book, link below, discusses these in some detail.) In fact, the cultural and social freedoms that had broken out with the revolution were inimical to one Party rule (see, for example, the story of the Lomonosov Porcelain Factory - http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/GALLERY/archive/hermitagerooms/RussianPorcelain/index.shtml - which did keep culturally afloat until about 1925.)
If we think that the isolation of the revolution in Russia justified iron discipline, a totalitarian party and the political police, we have slid onto Stalin's ground.
To my mind, Lenin had completely lost the point of it all by 1921. In his opening speech to the 10th Party Congress he said about Kronstadt "I have no doubt that this mutiny, which very quickly revealed to us the familiar figures of whiteguard generals, will be put down within the next few days, if not hours." The history of Kronstadt has now been written. We know for certain that Lenin lied to the Congress about Kronstadt and he knew it was a lie (see James D White on what Lenin knew: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lenin-Practice-Revolution-European-Perspective/dp/0333721578; on Kronstadt http://www.amazon.com/Kronstadt-1917-1921-Democracy-Cambridge-Post-Soviet/dp/0521894425/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259927826&sr=1-3) The party leadership had been in negotiation with the Kronstadt Soviet for some time before the attack. They had no doubt whatsoever that there were no Whites involved with the Kronstadters. Socialism was never going to grow from lies that. Smearing then killing political opponents so that the wreck of the 'revolution' could continue in lost isolation . . . is that not Stalinism?
I find it hard to see how Lenin and Trotsky can be said to be "partisans - often in incredibly difficult circumstances - of working-class self-rule" when that is not what they claimed to be doing. They claimed, in true Kautskian social democratic style, to be ruling on behalf of the 'interests' of the working class. Best not to ask the workers too often – they might go wrong in identifying their own interests. Friedrich Ebert, Clem Atlee and Tony Blair shared those values. They are just a left face of capitalist politics.
To my mind, Otto Ruhle got it right. "The revolution is not a party affair", he wrote in 1920. In a party "The leaders have the first say. They speak, they promise, they seduce, they command. The masses, when they are there, find themselves faced with a fait-accompli. They have to form up in ranks and march in step. They have to believe, to be silent, and pay up. They have to receive their orders and carry them out." It is hard to see that the Marxian free association can come from organisations wedded to the idea of a Kautskian hierarchical party.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1920/ruhle02.htm
I'm not suggesting that workers should not organise - but as a commune, not as a state in waiting. Most private organisations in civil society are more like a commune than a military state. Look at this guardening club, for example: http://www.faversham.org/pages/directory_item.aspx?i_PageID=11201. Democratic to its core. So is the SPGB(s). Compare those organisations to the SWP, whose inner life is the legacy of Leninism, a courtly politics which is still causing havoc in the workers movement. They turn socialism into an object of contempt rather than a slogan of liberty
I mean no disrespect whatsoever to AWL comrades whom I have always found to be great people and communist democrats. This website is an example. Perhaps that's because AWL, unlike so many ‘socialists’, hang on to that word Liberty.
[Do excuse so many links.]
Libertarian Bolshevism
Rhh1 -
I don't have time to reply fully right now. Perhaps predictably I think you're wrong about Russia; criticising Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks is fine and it'd be dogmatic and naive to suggest that nothing they did made it easier for the Stalinist counter-revolution to take place, but comparing them to Tony Blair is a bit ludicrous and misunderstands, I think, the entire Bolshevik project and the historical circumstances surrounding the way it developed. No-one in the AWL thinks that Russia - even before the mid-1920s - was a communist society, a socialist society or even a perfectly healthy, functioning model of workers' rule. But I think there's a lot more to the whole picture than your rather crude "it was pretty much fucked from the beginning and it was all Lenin and Trotsky's fault" schema.
I did want to ask one question, though; if you find the AWL to be an organisation peopled by "communist democrats" (thanks, by the way; I entirely agree), then how is it, in your view, that we're able to maintain an identification with the Bolshevik-Leninist tradition - including on the question of the party - and still maintain what is, broadly speaking, a "libertarian" culture? Presumably you must think that we're not really Leninists and that we're actually semi-anarchist libertarians in Bolshevik clothing? Or, alternatively, you could consider the possibility that a consistently anti-Stalinist, pro-democracy, libertarian Bolshevism isn't a contradiction in terms...
I'm not trying to be facetious; I genuinely want to know how you reconcile your positive view of us with your belief that "Leninism" necessarily leads to Stalinoid methods of organisation.
PS: If you want to post stuff with lots of links in it, it might be worth using a bit of basic HTML code so you can make sites you want to link to appear like this. The basic code is:
<@a href=http://www.the-site-you-want-to-link-to.com>the words you want to appear as the link<@/a>
But with the @s removed. Hope that helps in future.
Proud to be a vanguardist
Hi comrades,
More soon. But for now, on 'vanguardism':
The AWL does not claim to be the vanguard of the working class. In fact, we think a large part of the problem is that such a communist vanguard does not exist.
And in fact, vanguardism is the polar opposite of elitism. Hal Draper (in 'The Two Souls of Socialism'):
"The revolutionary-democratic advocates of Socialism-from-Below have also always been a minority, but the chasm between the elitist approach and the vanguard approach is crucial, as we have seen in the case of Debs [Eugene Debs, founder of the US socialist movement and passionate working-class revolutionary 'from below', in so far as this terminology is useful]. For him as for Marx and Luxemburg, the function of the revolutionary vanguard is to impel the mass-majority to fit themselves to take power in their own name, through their own struggles. The point is not to deny the critical importance of minorities, but to establish a different relationship between the advanced minority and the more backward mass."
Sacha Ismail
Thanks to rhh1 for a
Thanks to rhh1 for a constructive contribution to the discussion. A few points:
If workers are not to organise in a way where they offer a clear alternative state power, how will the power of the bourgeois state be smashed?
All groups are hierachical whether formally or informally, as dictated by knowledge, experience, intelligence, charisma, leadership and organisational skills etc of each comrade. Your newest most inxperienced comrade won't be editing the next edition of your group's newspaper- or at least I hope not. The AWL holds internal elections which keep comrades accountable. When your workers' commune has grown to the point where the bourgeois state considers it a threat, you will need some sort of hierachical discipline at least in the workers militia necessary for its self-defense, won't you?
I'm not sure Lenin can be both an advocate of a Kautskian party and responsible for the SWP's lack of democracy. The whole problem with the SWP and other left groups is that they fall for the bourgeois historians' idea that Lenin changed the Kautskian view of the party- a mass party, as open as possible, 'social democratic' in the sense understood at that time (not in the pejorative way you use the term)- to the idea that a party should be a hardened core of underground professional revolutionaries. It is from this mistake that their lack of internal democracy springs. Lenin only ever advocated adapting the Kautskian party organisation to the conditions of Russia under an oppressive Tsarist regime which wouldn't allow open social democratic political activity. Lars Lih's book Lenin Rediscovered is particularly good on this.
Spain
Will certainly check out the stuff on Kronstadt.
This has been partly covered already, but:
"The Spanish proletariat did not require a revolutionary party to create a form of libertarian socialism during the civil war. Leninists often point out that the Spanish revolution failed, but only because the Fascists and Stalinists had more guns than the CNT-FAI and the workers, not because they lacked a vanguard party to lead them."
In fact the FAI **was** a party (as I understand it, not particularly libertarian in its organisation). And what it created, despite the wishes and struggles of its supporters in the Spanish working class and peasantry was not libertarian communism, but participation in a counter-revolutionary bourgeois government. If the FAI had wanted to, it could instead have led the Spanish workers and people to overthrow the capitalists in Catalonia and very probably in Spain as a whole, changing the outcome of the revolution and civil war.
In other words, more proof, negative proof, of the need for a genuinely revolutionary vanguard.
Sacha Ismail
no "whites" involved?
the anarchist debating here, claims, that no "whites" had been involved in the kronstadt rebellion. but in the trotsky-biography of pierre broue, who checked the ex-secret archives of the cremlin, he does quotate fom letters, who show clearly, how the "white" leaders behind prepared some leaders of the rebellion to act like critical &alternative comunists.