By Ira Berkovic
Yves Coleman’s article in Solidarity 224 Five things Trotskyists Should Know About Today’s Young ‘Anarchists’ is a little difficult to get to grips with, much like the politics of the people — “today’s young ‘anarchists’” — whose corner Yves has chosen to fight. The mirroring of content and form is a neat trick, but it doesn’t make a fruitful exchange particularly easy.
Yves objects to a recent series of articles (presumably Martin Thomas’s review of Lucien Van Der Walt and Michael Schmidt’s book Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism), which he found “too much centred on ‘old-style’ 19th-century anarchism and not on today’s diverse, confused libertarian and anarchist currents.”
As a point-of-departure, this is a little unfair; the series was a critical review of a recently-published book about the “anarchist tradition” which was recommended by an anarchist in debate with us as the best statement of anarchist views. The series did not pretend to be a comprehensive engagement with all of today’s currents. If Yves’s objection is that we have not devoted sufficient time to attempting such an engagement, I can only suggest that he takes another look at our recent work and written material. He might try, just for starters, Ed Maltby’s “How to organise to change the world”, Bob Sutton on the dissolution of Climate Camp or my own “Open letter to a direct-action militant” or “Can we build a revolutionary workers’ movement?”
He should also note our working in and building up networks like No Sweat, Workers’ Climate Action and Feminist Fightback — direct-action, activist coordinations that unite Trotskyists, anarchists and others to organise on the basis of shared class-struggle politics within wider anti-capitalist milieus. Perhaps Yves considers these efforts inadequate or politically misguided, but to suggest that we only engage with anarchists as if they were all nothing more than slavish acolytes of Bakunin and Proudhon is unreasonable.
Unlike other Trotskyist organisations (such as the SWP, whose dreadful recent series on “anarchism” used the term interchangeably with “autonomism”), we have attempted to engage critically with anarchism both in its form as a discrete theoretical tradition and in its more diffuse modern manifestation.
So Yves’s ostensible starting point (merely to chivvy the AWL, without agenda, into an engagement with a different expression of “anarchist” ideas) is at the very least, misplaced. What’s the article’s purpose? In a correspondence reproduced on the anarchist-dominated website LibCom, Yves writes: “If you read my conclusion with accurate glasses it seems clear (at least to me) that if Trotskyists want to discuss with anarchists they should question … their program and leave Trotskyism in the ‘dustbins of history’”. I have no problem with Yves attempting to persuade us to break with Trotskyism, but if this is his aim he should be upfront about it.
I know Yves is committed to real debate — non-sectarian but sharp and serious. Despite his warm words for young anarchists uninterested in old texts, he has given much of his own energy in recent years to digging out and publishing... old texts of anarchism and Marxism. He should write, therefore, so that we can debate the words on the page without “glasses” — “accurate" or otherwise.
I agree that there are specific politics and general ways-of-thinking that have become incorporated into “Trotskyist” common-sense (most of them inherited wholesale from Stalinism) that do belong in “the dustbin of history”. But exactly what specific ideas Yves thinks we should throw out, and what ideas from anarchist traditions — if any — we should replace them with remains a mystery. He doesn’t spell it out in his article (or maybe I’m just not wearing the right “glasses”).
He is not even clear about whether he agrees with the politics of “today’s young anarchists”, whose defender and advocate he has apparently appointed himself. On “militancy at work”, for example, Yves argues that “young anarchists” are more interested in “direct action in their community” rather than the workplace. The implication is that precariousness has shifted the nuclear core at which capitalism can be challenged away from struggles in workplaces and the organisations that grow out of them (that is, unions).
Yves describes a “Trotskyist” strategy of “infiltrating the trade union bureaucracy” (appearing to denote by this, not just activities oriented to positions in the official machine, like say the SP’s in PCS, but any systematic engagement with trade-union organisation) and says some anarchists share it, but highlights the fact that many anarchists maintain an overt hostility to established labour movements. Certainly, some anarchists do think this. But are they right to think it?
Does the proliferation of precarious work (call centres, service and retail sector jobs etc.), particularly amongst young people, somehow alter the fundamental analysis that sees the wage relation, in workplaces, specifically (rather than what some anarchists mystically describe as “hierarchy” or “power relations”, pervading diffusely throughout all of society and no more or less hegemonic in the workplace than in a classroom or on a housing estate) as the nuclear core of capitalism? We believe that it doesn’t. Certainly, the “shape” of the working class has changed since the 60s, 70s and 80s but the essential DNA of capitalism has not.
On the question of “direct action”, to give another example, the debate is not whether we should organise it “now” (which the anarchists want, apparently), or reject it until we achieve a “primitive accumulation of militants (or cadres) to build the party”: we can all agree that “direct action now” is necessary. The questions are what kind of direct action, by whom, and for what? Yves’s article doesn’t scratch the surface of those fundamental questions, and is rather poorer for it.
Part of Yves’s problem is that, in attempting to speak on behalf of a milieu that is, by definition and by his own admission, diffuse, contradictory and “confused”, he can only deal in impressionistic brush-strokes. The politics of the people Yves is attempting to describe are not fixed. They are on a journey — some towards more theoretically-concrete “classical anarchism”, some towards anarcho-syndicalism, some perhaps towards the revolutionary syndicalism which bears a great deal in common with our own politics, some away from working-class anti-capitalism altogether and towards individualist lifestylist utopianism.
When the AWL meets people at various stages of that political journey, we attempt to engage with them, and not by throwing critiques of Bakunin at them but by trying to identify shared politics to organise around. That common organisation sometimes involves us learning from them, but it also involves identifying where we think they’re wrong and attempting to persuade them of our ideas.
It is on that terrain, on the terrain of which ideas are right and which are wrong, that the engagement between “Trotskyists” and “today’s young ‘anarchists’” must take place. The fact that, according to Yves, some “young anarchists […] are not looking for a coherent, scientific point of view” doesn’t change this; it simply means that that, too, is an, idea which needs debating.
Many of the ideas Yves describes — a focus on building cooperatives or social centres, an emphasis on organising “non-traditional” groups of workers, a perspective that sees squatting a building as equally anti-capitalist/revolutionary as organising a strike — are modern echoes of pre-Marxist utopian socialism. You can see them, alive and well, in the Occupy movement, many of whose activists see the establishment and maintenance of the protest camps as an end in itself rather than a symbolic act or an action designed to provide leverage to win political demands (as per the epigraph on Yves’s article — “when I cook for the Occupy movement, I contribute to changing the world”.)
21st century utopians (which would perhaps be a better label than “anarchists” for the people Yves is describing, although anarchism has always had utopian elements) start from an opposition to capitalism, but often without a clear analysis of what it is or how it works, and a vague idea of an alternative, but without an identifiable agency for achieving it.
The AWL believes that capitalism is not simply an accumulation of its symptoms or bad effects, but a specific system predicated fundamentally on the exploitation of wage labour. It can only be disrupted and overthrown by subverting that exploitative relationship.
This means that workers’ self-organisation, at the point of exploitation, is “privileged” as a form of organisation. It means that strikes, sit-ins and other forms of class-struggle direct action are “privileged” as forms of action. It means that the organisations organically generated from capitalist class relations (trade unions) are key sites of struggle, no matter how bureaucratic or badly-led they may be. And it means that only workers’ self-organisation and struggle can provide a basis for building a new society.
“Today’s young ‘anarchists’” — our 21st century utopians — don’t agree, Yves tells us. Fine. But, to be perhaps a little blunter than Yves would like, they are wrong. The Marxist critique of such perspectives is as valid now as it was in 1848, and is one aspect of our tradition that we are not prepared to junk.
If Yves wants to contribute more productively to a continuing engagement between the AWL and anarchists of whatever stripe and school, he would do better to say precisely which ideas he believes are right and which wrong, rather than setting himself up as an ostensibly-neutral (but in fact partisan) conduit for the constantly-shifting ideas of a layer of activists with which we already have a long experience of engaging.
Enough with the glasses, Yves; let’s have the debate in plain view.
• Coleman article: here.
• Libcom exchange: here.
• Maltby: here.
• Sutton: here.
Comments
Can you detail some AWL positions for me?
I think there's some interesting points to address here. As
I agree that there are specific politics and general ways-of-thinking that have become incorporated into “Trotskyist” common-sense (most of them inherited wholesale from Stalinism) that do belong in “the dustbin of history”.
it's obviously important for me to make sure that I fully understand your view on certain issues. It would neither be fair or productive for me to criticise the AWL for positions that you don't actually hold.
So, to try and pinpoint where some of the main points of disagreement may lay:
How do the AWL interpret democratic centralism and how do you put it into practise internally?
Does the AWL accept the existence of internal factions?
How does the AWL see the role and function of the vanguard party?
In what way, specifically, do you see Marxism as "scientific"?
Do you see the Labour Party as one of the "organisations organically generated from capitalist class relations"? Do you still see it as part of the labour movement?
Responses
How do the AWL interpret democratic centralism and how do you put it into practise internally?
Our policies are decided by collective discussion and majority votes. Once a policy is agreed upon, the discussion does not "end". Comrades who disagree with the policy are not expected to pretend otherwise, nor are they required to keep their disagreement "internal". They would be expected to explain the majority line, but are free to explain publicly that they are in a minority and give their reasons for disagreeing (in fact, if they are halfway serious about their ideas, they would be expected to do that). They are "forbidden" only from acting in such a way that sabotages or undermines the collective action of the majority in carrying out the agreed policy - in other words, they can explain their disagreement/difference publicly/externally, but they can't actively organise against the majority line.
This is from our constitution (available online here):
"All activists are obliged to support the majority decisions of the relevant AWL bodies in action. They also have the right to express dissenting opinions, to gain a fair hearing for those opinions, and to organise inside the AWL to change AWL policy.
"Activists should not pretend to hold beliefs contrary to their real ones. Minority comrades have a right to state that they hold a minority position, and to give a brief explanation, but without making propaganda outside the AWL against the majority line. They have a duty to state to the best of their ability what the majority line is, and in any vote or practical action they must support the majority line unless a decision has been taken to have a free vote."
Does the AWL accept the existence of internal factions?
Yes. From the constitution again:
"The AWL rejects the ideal of a monolithic, single-faction party, and strives to build a culture where differences are resolved by rational and constructive discussion without hard-and-fast factional lineups. It recognises, however, that as a last resort any group of members has the right to form a faction or tendency to fight for a particular point of view within the AWL, offer itself to the membership at the AWL conference as an alternative leadership, or campaign for election in the organisation.
"The AWL recognises a tendency as an ideological grouping organised for an ideological discussion within the organisation. The AWL recognises a faction as a group which sets out to fight either for a change of policy of the AWL on a particular issue or to replace the existing leadership by members of the faction.
1 - Members wishing to form a faction must circulate to all AWL members a platform explaining their views, signed by all members of the faction. The faction must make an uptodate list of its members available to any AWL member on demand. Membership in the faction must be open to all AWL activists who agree with its platform. Candidate activists can not be recruited to a faction.
2 - Factions can produce their own publications for circulation within the AWL, can hold internal meetings to put over their views, and can put up members for election on a factional platform. Factions have a right to proportional representation on the National Committee and in any election to delegates to conference.
3 - All faction meetings and documents must either be strictly internal to the faction, or open to all members of the AWL. This clause can not be used to restrict private conversation or correspondence between individual AWL activists. A faction must not carry its platform outside the AWL without the permission of the conference or the National Committee."
How does the AWL see the role and function of the vanguard party?
The "vanguard party" is the most politically-advanced workers organised into a collective political organisation. Its role is to help the rest of the class develop politically and organisationally to the point at which it is capable of taking and holding social power. In any revolutionary situation it is extremely likely that there would be more than one "vanguard party". This is a different conception from the anarchist caricature or Stalinist distortions of the idea, which conceive of a "vanguard party" as a monolithic bloc which gives the class its orders. A concept of a "vanguard" (more revolutionary layers with the working class, organising in discrete political bodies) was common to both Marxism and early anarchism.
In what way, specifically, do you see Marxism as "scientific"?
Because it starts from an analysis of material reality. We do not see it as a religious dogma or some special formula that can simply be applied to an issue to produce a cut-and-paste political line without actually having the analyse and assess the issue at hand.
Do you see the Labour Party as one of the "organisations organically generated from capitalist class relations"? Do you still see it as part of the labour movement?
Yes. Its historical origins as the political wing of organised labour (which still play a significant role in terms of workers' consciousness) and its ongoing structural link to unions representing the majority of organised workers in the UK make it very clearly "part of the labour movement". At times it's a more significant site of struggle than at other times (right now it's a more significant one than it was 5 years ago but a far less significant one than it was 25 years ago) but until that link to the unions - the bedrock organisations of the class - is literally or effectively severed then the Labour Party, like it or not, remains part of our movement.
Hope these answers were sufficiently clear. Other AWL comrades may have different interpretations on some of the questions.
-
Daniel Randall
Can I ask who advocated "the
Can I ask who advocated "the early anarchist vanguard party" or was involved in it or something of that sort? or as you put it ("vanguard" (more revolutionary layers with the working class, organising in discrete political bodies) was common to both Marxism and early anarchism.)?
There was Bakunin's rather authoritarian "invisible dictatorship", which whilst advocated by an anarchist, I'd say is well outside the remit of anarchist beliefs (taking anarchism here as an ideology, so therefore having to be a coherent set of ideas; this was not coherent with the rest of his anarchist beliefs for obvious reasons). Even then, whilst it was incredibly misguided, Bakunin was well aware of the various criticisms that would be volleyed against an organized, public face to anti-Capitalism calling it's self the most advanced organisation, which is the reason he made it invisible.
I also think that comrades in AWL should be willing to admit that their position is less authoritarian than that of Lenin and Trotsky, re-interpreting their works in a different spirit isn't a disadvantage. I know many of you are already willing to do this; others of you seem to use Lenin and Trotsky's writing as a crutch however and whenever there's something controversial you try and find a particular obscure part of Lenin or Trotsky's work and have it do all the work for you.
The anarchist view of the vanguard isn't a complete fabrication. You guys might interpret it differently though.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1904/tasks/ch05.htm
Thanks for your reply
I think this should be a fruitful discussion. To try and address some points:
He should also note our working in and building up networks like No Sweat, Workers’ Climate Action and Feminist Fightback — direct-action, activist coordinations that unite Trotskyists, anarchists and others to organise on the basis of shared class-struggle politics within wider anti-capitalist milieus.
I'd agree that Yves was being somewhat unfair there. On a personal level, I've been able to work productively with AWL activists in the past and I'm sure I will do in the future.
Unlike other Trotskyist organisations (such as the SWP)
Yes, but I don't think we should be using the SWP as a benchmark. Their stuff on anarchism is just embarassingly bad. (Although I'd suggest that's because it's aimed at stopping the SWP rank and file taking anarchism seriously, not at actually engaging with anarchism).
have no problem with Yves attempting to persuade us to break with Trotskyism, but if this is his aim he should be upfront about it.
Surely that can be taken as read? I'd say that I'd certainly think that the AWL should break with Trotskyism. If I agreed with the AWL, I'd obviously be a member. If AWL members agreed with me, they obviously wouldn't.
But exactly what specific ideas Yves thinks we should throw out, and what ideas from anarchist traditions — if any — we should replace them with remains a mystery.
Several things I can think of.
Firstly, I agree with Jordan that you should be clear that, actually, you've broken with Lenin and Trotsky on some pretty important issues. Your position on internal factions seems ok to me (although I'm not sure on the difference between not insisting disputes remain internal and not creating propaganda against the majority line?) but I actually think it's a pretty clear break with Leninism. I've seen no real evidence that the 10th Party Congress Ban on factions was intended to be temporary. And I think you should accept that Lenin, in particular, did place several of the seeds that grew later into Stalinism. With no real opposition from Trotsky.
In terms of non anarchist influences, I also think you should seriously reevaluate the Worker's Opposition platform. Not only do I think they've been shown to be right in many of the disputes with Lenin, I also think they're actually closer to many of your positions.
I also think the party model needs putting in the dustbin of history. On a practical level, it's fair to say that neither the traditional anarchist approach nor the Trotskyist vanguard approach have managed to produce revolutions. Over the past century, most revolutions have been nationalist, with a smattering of Stalinism. I don't see my politics as scientific, simply because I don't think the scientific method can be applied politically in that way. But, if you do, surely your methods need to be verifiable and repeatable? And I'd ask how long this particular experiment needs to be given before it's accepted that isn't the case.
Another issue is the fact that Trotskyists need to address is that their recruitment pool is now largely to overwhelmingly middle class. That's something they share with anarchist groups, to be clear. The last time the far left had a real organic link with the class was the CP in the 1930's. That's a critical flaw and one that very few people are currently seriously trying to address. Until we do, we can't move forward. I'd suggest that you don't have to agree with all the IWCA's politics to see their "hard slog on the ground" model as worthy of further close examination.
the AWL believes that capitalism is not simply an accumulation of its symptoms or bad effects, but a specific system predicated fundamentally on the exploitation of wage labour.
I wouldn't disagree, but I'd say that's one important facet of capitalism. It's also a social relationship.
This means that workers’ self-organisation, at the point of exploitation, is “privileged” as a form of organisation
This is another point of contention. I'm certainly not against trade unions (I'd advise anyone who can to join one) as I think they're important defensive class organisations. But I don't see them as a "privileged" form of struggle, simply an important one. Organisation at the community level is now as important as a form of class struggle. If we look at cuts to services, they attack workers at the community level and should be resisted on that basis as well. The Poll Tax campaign is an important example of a struggle that was first and foremost a community based struggle and was won on that basis. Anti-fascism is similar.
Where I think we disagree more strongly is the role of the Labour Party. The working class have split into pro and anti Labour factions and the latter is who we should be orientated to. Despite the formal trade union link, the Labour Party are not in any way a meaningful part of the worker's movement. Even in the past with "Old Labour" their role has always been to manage and defuse working class anger, not to harness it. And falling into line behind Labour at election time means that the current vacuum cannot be filled by the left. Instead, the danger is that working class people will see the far right as the only 'radical' opposition to the Labour Party.
So that's where I think some of the main arguments lay. In the interests of briefness, I haven't really gone into detail about where I think the problems lay with the modern anarchist movement. I think there's at least as many issues there. Some the same, some specific to anarchism.
Just a few questions on the
Just a few questions on the points you've made.
"I also think the party model needs putting in the dustbin of history. "
Do you mean the particular model for moulding what a party would look like or the model of using parties as revolutionary instruments at all? I would be inclined to agree with you if you mean the second one - for the fact that I think formalised groupings with detailed political prescriptions, mean that people are likely to take up positions they wouldn't have done for the fear of becoming an outcast - even to the point of avoiding quasi-party groupings (AFED and Solfed come to mind in the British anarchist movement). Edit:- On further reflection Solfed is not as comparable to AFED as I am making it sound.
My question would be, however, what is the alternative? There is always going to be a problem with networking if there's no structure at all. We wouldn't be here discussing this, if that was the case. So what are people going to orientate themselves around? Forum type models? Where a particular issue or perspective is decided (e.g. anti-capitalism) and then all other questions are left up for discussion and the internal politics just orientates around making sure this objective (of promoting discussion or networking or whatever else) continues. Do we have anti-capitalist think-tank type organizations (where instead of creating reports for the government they're just for the revolutionary 'public'). Do we just have temporary, issue groups for particular actions (so a revolutionary environmentalist action group for 'x' city, or a Save 'y' Primary School type thing).... Or if not, what? I'd be inclined to say a mixture of the previously mentioned things. I'd be interested to hear, if in fact you were meaning the second. I've thought rather a lot on the issue as I feel naturally hostile to joining groups which are based on some concept of authority/fixed political message.
Secondly, what do you mean by class? You've brought up the idea of Trotskyist and Anarchist groups being mainly recruited from the 'middle class'. You later talk about (the relationship of the labour party to) 'the working class'. There has been a tendency - in both Marxist and Anarchist camps - to suggest that there's only two main classes operating right now, (the working class and ruling class), but I think this personally conceals major differences between people's particular situation and also the fact that some people, compared to as things are, though not in the ruling class would still have to make some sacrifices in terms of economic goods (though I think they'd be benefited in other ways) under Socialism and this would also include looking at our effects in other countries, especially those which our economic situation in the UK relies on canibalising. Just looking at Britain as if it was an 'economy' which has a self-contained class structure, is imo, daft, due to the massive externalisation of costs that has gone on (it probably was daft even at the time of the Empire as well).
@ Jordan
Do you mean the particular model for moulding what a party would look like or the model of using parties as revolutionary instruments at all?
Primarily the former, but the latter in the sense of formalised political platforms. At the moment, I think we're in the situation where what is actually needed is a complete re-evaluation of where we are and where we go next. In the UK (and much of the rest of the world) we have a working class that has been repeatedly defeated, disfranchised and disillusioned. In the class war, the other side has been throwing 99% of the punches, certainly since the 1970's. Not only does revolution not seem feasible to most working class people, even social democracy is no longer widely accepted as an option. In that context, our function as class struggle activists has to be mainly defensive; to try and reverse some of the losses made. That means that any attempt to formalise how a future society should look is a distraction from the enormity of the task at hand.
My question would be, however, what is the alternative? There is always going to be a problem with networking if there's no structure at all. We wouldn't be here discussing this, if that was the case. So what are people going to orientate themselves around?
Currently, I think the way forward is loose networks of class struggle orientated activists. In the future, who knows? I don't think we should be trying to set that out at this point, it will depend on the details of the situation we're in. What I do think is that the models of the cobweb left (including anarchists) have been repeatedly shown to no longer be fit for purpose, if they ever were. You might say I'm a lot better at talking about what I think is wrong than coming up with real alternatives and that's a fair criticism of where I'm coming from.
On class, it's a complex question. Because I also see capitalism as a social relationship, it follows that I don't simply see class in terms of relationship to the means of production. There's three main factors, to paraphrase Zinn (I think). Economic status, social capital and function within capitalist society.
While I think that working class organisations should be made up primarily of working class people, that doesn't mean that I'm against middle class activists. As long as they are willing to relate to working class people as equals. I've seen far too many cases of middle class activists unconsciously reproducing their social role as managers and/or controllers within left activism to not be a bit cynical. But, that said, while I think you could make a good case for teachers being middle class, I also would suggest that they have far more in common with working class people than they do the ruling class, especially with the hit they've taken to pay and conditions. Stockbrokers on the other hand are far closer to ruling class interests than ours.
(And to tie this in to the op, these are the kind of questions I think the AWL needs to be looking at. In the same way as the Marxist analysis of the peasantry isn't really that relevant to modern Britain, it's also the case that the class system hasn't remained entirely static).
Fantasizing about the future at the cost of today
"I don't think we should be trying to set that out at this point, it will depend on the details of the situation we're in. "
How could we tell when we were in this 'situation' as you put it? It is, I think, more than clear that we could do with doing a great deal of thinking about what we're doing, rather than just repeating it day in day out as if we're expecting something to change. Some freak change could make our left wing politics appealing as they are now, but I seriously doubt it. We're just going to have to suck it up and work out what's wrong with them as they are. We're in a situation now, where we need to seriously rethink our politics, or as you put it "At the moment, I think we're in the situation where what is actually needed is a complete re-evaluation of where we are and where we go next." Such a re-evaluation could not come quick enough, because whilst we may be able to make appeals to the choir or to appeal to the sorts of persons who have already made themselves receptive , I think our rhetoric and our methods - are outdated to the point where it's cringe worthy. To be clear, here, I mean the revolutionary left in general, I'm not targeting you Duck or the AWL specifically, which would be unfair. We just look kookie to the vast majority of people, especially where, I think activists put forward clumsy analysis, without a slight bit of nuance in it, as if any normal person is going to believe the gospel of Lenin, Trotsky or Marx or even less likely, find it 'self-evident' and the same obviously, goes for the likes of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Luxemburg etc., though I do find Trots and Marxists more susceptible to this than anarchists.
Anarchists these days instead tend to go far too much the other way (though obviously this is not universally the case) and abandon thinking and talking about the thinkers that came before us– at least publicly, those these thinkers are obviously still influencing their thoughts and so I think that there is in this a certain amount of dishonesty – which leads, along with other factors that the same activists tend towards, cause them to fall into a feudalistic/aristocratic version of anarchism (and we must then ask ourselves whether this is anarchism being realised at all), where the elites control the agenda of the organisation, but through less obvious ways. The discussion of this point of anarchism I will gladly discuss if anybody wants to, but for now I will get back to my main enquiry.
The truth of parts of these works might be obvious to you now, comrades, but it isn't to everybody and we must remember this in our activism. We must ask ourselves, how are we going to convince ordinary people that what we want is good for all of us?
It's one of the normal retorts of the radical left to suggest that "the people of the time need to make that decision", when asked about what Socialism would look like or what our tactics should look like now, in five years time, in ten years time, in the future or other awkward questions. Of course, we can't imagine something now and expect it to fall into place, in the future as a blue-print. We must not use this as an excuse not to think about these issues and discuss these issues at all. Whilst great thinkers may arise in these revolutionary 'situations', or the movement may see new ways to deal with things (but why can't we think of those new things now?) I wouldn't count on it and instead, we might easily find ourselves, instead of progressing, in a 'situation' where difficulties will creep up on us and instead of us being able to take it in our stride, it will become crisis for the movement; as has happened so many times before.
We must learn to be ideological, but not dogmatic. Ideologically here being 'a complete and coherent set of principles or beliefs', but we must be honest about it and not fall into the trap of holding into the ideology of another at the detriment to developing our own ideologies.
There is much more i'd like to say, but I don't want to write too much for the moment, as long posts, with too many different topics, can de-rail a discussion.