Introduction. Anyone familiar with the socialist movement in the industrialized countries today must be struck by the huge gap between what’s needed — mass socialist parties with deep roots in the working class — and the reality — small groups of socialists with little influence. The following exchange contains a searching discussion of these issues between the noted Marxist scholar Paul Le Blanc, John Riddell, and a number of other socialist writers.
The exchange opens with an article by Le Blanc, continues with an exchange between Riddell and Le Blanc, and includes with seventeen reader responses. The discussion was first published in Socialist Voice in June 2008.
About the authors
Paul Le Blanc, a former member of the U.S. Socialist Workers Party, has been a long-time anti-war, anti-racist, activist in Pittsburgh. He teaches History at La Roche College. He is author of Marx, Lenin, and the Revolutionary Experience (Routledge 2006).
John Riddell, co-editor of Socialist Voice, has been a prominent figure in the socialist movement in North America and Europe since the 1960s. He is the editor of the six-volume anthology The Communist International in Lenin’s Time, (Pathfinder Press, 1984-1993), the author of COMINTERN: Revolutionary Internationalism in Lenin’s Time, and a co-author of Venezuela and the International Struggle for Socialism (Socialist Voice pamphlets, 2008).
Lenin and the Revolutionary Party Today
By Paul Le Blanc
Paul Le Blanc was a guest speaker at the “Socialism 2008? conference of the International Socialist Organization in Chicago, June 20, 2008. This article is based on his talk.
We are focusing here on someone generally acknowledged to have been one of the greatest revolutionary theorists and organizers in human history: Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, whose intimates knew him affectionately as “Ilyich,” but whom the world knew by his underground pseudonym — Lenin. He was the leader of the Bolshevik wing of the Russian socialist movement, and this revolutionary socialist wing later became the Russian Communist Party after coming to power in the 1917 workers and peasants revolution.
For millions Lenin was seen as a liberator. Appropriated after his death by bureaucrats and functionaries in order to legitimate their tyranny in countries labeled “Communist,” he was at the same time denounced for being a wicked and cruel fanatic by defenders of power and privilege in capitalist countries — and with Communism’s collapse at the close of the Cold War it is their powerful voices that have achieved global domination. But the ideas of Lenin, if properly utilized, can be vital resources for challenging the exploitation of humanity and degradation of our planet.
There are Marxist-influenced democratic socialists who would argue that “whoever wants to reach socialism by any other path than that of political democracy will inevitably arrive at conclusions that are absurd and reactionary both in the economic and political sense.” In fact, these are the words of Lenin himself. Many critics of Lenin have pointed to his repressive policies of 1918-1922, when the early Soviet republic was engulfed and overwhelmed by multiple crises, accusing him of being the architect of the Stalinist totalitarianism of later decades. Much of my recent book Marx, Lenin, and the Revolutionary Experience (Routledge 2006) is devoted to disproving this grotesque distortion. Contrary to the claims of his detractors, Lenin’s writings reveal a commitment to freedom and democracy that runs through his political thought from beginning to end. They also reveal an incredibly coherent analytical, strategic, and tactical orientation that has relevance for our own age of “globalization.”[1]
In my remarks today I would like to do three things. First, I want to touch briefly on what I think are essentials of Lenin’s thought. Second, I want to touch on a couple of major problems that have cropped up in efforts to build organizations aspiring to be Leninist. Third, I want to talk about the necessity of building such an organization.
Essentials of Lenin’s Thought
As we can see from some of his earliest writings, Lenin’s starting-point is a belief in the necessary interconnection of socialist ideas with the working class and labor movement. The working class cannot adequately defend its actual interests and overcome its oppression, in his view, without embracing the goal of socialism — an economic system in which the economy is socially owned and democratically controlled in order to meet the needs of all people. Inseparable from this is a basic understanding of the working class as it is, which involves a grasp of the diversity and unevenness of working-class experience and consciousness.
This calls for the development of a practical revolutionary approach seeking to connect, in serious ways, with the various sectors and layers of the working class. It involves the understanding that different approaches and goals are required to reach and engage one or another worker, or group or sector or layer of workers. This means thoughtfully utilizing various forms of educational and agitational literature, and developing different kinds of speeches and discussions, in order to connect the varieties of working-class experience, and, most important, to help initiate or support various kinds of practical struggles. The more “advanced” or vanguard layers of the working class must be rallied not to narrow and limited goals (in the spirit of “economism” and “pure and simple trade unionism”), but to an expansive sense of solidarity and common cause which has the potential for drawing the class as a whole into the struggle for its collective interests.
This fundamental orientation is the basis for most of what Lenin has to say. And as I was preparing the selection of Lenin’s writings on revolution, democracy, and socialism that Pluto Press is about to publish, (Revolution, Democracy, Socialism7) I was struck once again by the intellectual and practical seriousness (the lack of dogmatism or sectarianism) in the way Lenin utilized Marxist theory.
This came through in many different ways — such as his understanding of the necessity for socialist and working-class support for struggles of all who suffer oppression, and in his way of integrating reform struggles with revolutionary strategy. We see it in his insistence on the necessity of working-class political independence, and on the need for working-class supremacy (or hegemony) if democratic and reform struggles are to triumph. It came through in his approach to social alliances (such as the worker-peasant alliance) as a key aspect of the revolutionary struggle, and also in his development of the united front tactic, in which diverse political forces can work together for common goals, without revolutionary organizations undermining their ability to pose effective alternatives to the capitalist status quo.
We can see it in his profound analyses of capitalist development, and of imperialism and of nationalism. It shines forth in his vibrantly revolutionary internationalist orientation that embraces the laborers and oppressed peoples of the entire world. We see it and learn from it in his remarkable understanding of the manner in which democratic struggles flow into socialist revolution. It certainly came through in his analysis of the nature of the state in history and class society, and in his conceptualization of triumphant working-class struggles generating a deepening and expanding democracy that would ultimately cause the state to wither away. Interwoven with the analyses and theorizations about the oppressions of today, and about a possible future of the free and the equal, we find a tough-minded practical orientation of struggle involving strategy, tactics, education, slogans, and — of course — organization.[2]
And precisely here — James P. Cannon once argued — was “the greatest contribution to the arsenal of Marxism since the death of Engels in 1895.” That was the development of Lenin’s Bolshevik organization as a revolutionary vanguard party which (in Cannon’s words) “stands out as the prototype of what a democratic and centralized leadership of the workers, true to Marxist principles and applying them with courage and skill, can be and do.”[3]
Elsewhere I have summarized Lenin’s conception of organization in this way:
“It is … a serious “organization of real revolutionaries,” a “body of comrades in which complete, mutual confidence prevails” and in which all “have a lively sense of their responsibility.” For Lenin, the preconditions for this phenomenon are a commitment to a revolutionary Marxist political program and — flowing from that — an effectively, centrally organized party that encourages critical thinking and local initiative; the integration of such thinking and experience into a partywide process of development; and, inseparable from all of this, a deeply ingrained democratic sensibility that manifests itself even when unusual conditions preclude the formal observance of democratic procedures. A democratically centralized organization based on a revolutionary program — this was … the essence of the Leninist conception of organization.”[4]
Generations of revolutionary activists, in regions throughout the world, have found much of value in all this. Coming out of such a quintessentially American radical formation as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Jim Cannon later recalled the powerful impact of “the ideas of the Russian Bolsheviks” among U.S. left-wing activists in the wake of World War I and the 1917 Revolution. He cited IWW leader “Big Bill” Haywood, who commented in an interview with Max Eastman that the Leninist party was consistent with key insights of American radicalism:
“You remember I used to say that all we needed was fifty thousand real IWW’s, and then about a million members to back them up? Well, isn’t that a similar idea? At least I always realized that the essential thing was to have an organization of those who know.”[5]
There have been, since the Russian Revolution of 1917, many efforts — inspired by Lenin’s ideas and example — to create such revolutionary organizations of “those who know.” Some of these efforts have given us inspiring pages in the history of the labor movements and working-class struggles in various countries, although many have also been undermined and fatally compromised by the later impact of Stalinism in the world Communist movement. Parties organized according to the revolutionary ideas of Lenin are qualitatively different from those organized according to the authoritarian forgery of Leninism developed under the Stalin dictatorship.
But even anti-Stalinist versions of Leninism often amount to what Tariq Ali once called “toy Bolshevik parties.” They have often shown themselves to be quite different from, and inferior to, the revolutionary-democratic Bolsheviks of 1917. That’s certainly been the case in the United States during my lifetime. I think there are two problems that help make this so. Both have to do with a failure to connect socialism with the actual working class.
The Problem of Texts and Contexts
First of all, there is a profound difference between “the Leninism of Lenin” and the immediate possibilities that we face in a context that is, in some ways, qualitatively different from his. To transpose the texts that come from Lenin and his time into our very different reality can lead to serious political confusion.
Lenin’s Bolsheviks came into being within a very specific context. They were part of a broad global working-class formation, part of a developing labor movement, and part of an evolving labor-radical subculture. To try to duplicate Lenin’s party today, outside of such a context, will create something that cannot function as the Bolsheviks functioned in Russia, nor can it function in the way the early U.S. Communists functioned in the 1920s or in the 1930s.
The existence of a class-conscious layer of the working class is a necessary precondition for creating a genuinely revolutionary party. Workers’ class consciousness — that involves more than whatever notions happen to be in the minds of various members of the working class at any particular moment. It involves an understanding of the insight that was contained in the preamble of the American Federation of Labor from 1886 to 1955:
“A struggle is going on in all the nations of the civilized world, between the oppressors and the oppressed of all countries, a struggle between the capitalist and the laborer, which grows in intensity from year to year, and will work disastrous results to the toiling millions, if they are not combined for mutual protection and benefit.”[6]
Not all workers have absorbed this insight into their consciousness, but those who have done so can be said to have at least an elementary class consciousness.
Such consciousness does not exist automatically in one’s brain simply because we happen to sell our labor-power (our ability to work) for wages or a salary. But in the United States, from the period spanning the end of the Civil War in 1865 down through the Depression decade of the 1930s, a vibrant working-class subculture had developed throughout much of the United States. Often this “subculture” was more like a network of subcultures having very distinctive ethnic attributes, but these different ethnic currents were at various times connected by left-wing political structures (such as the old Knights of Labor, Socialist Party, IWW, Communist Party, etc.) and also, to an extent, by trade union frameworks. Within this context flourished the class-consciousness that is essential to the creation of a revolutionary party.
Those who founded the Trotskyist movement in the United States (which sought to build a revolutionary Marxist party — the Socialist Workers Party, the SWP) were a product of this radical workers’ subculture. And they sought to make their own revolutionary contributions to it, and to help it become a revolutionary socialist force capable of transforming society.[7]
After 1945, there was a dramatic break in the continuity of this labor-radical tradition due to the realities that resulted from the Second World War, and the transformation of the social, economic, political, and cultural realities in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. Essential specifics of workers’ occupations and workday experience underwent fundamental changes. The organizations associated with the labor movement were similarly transformed — impacted by a complex combination of assaults, co-optations, corruptions, and erosions. The communities, culture, and consciousness of the working class became so different from the mid-1940s to the 1960s that only faded shreds of the old labor-radical subculture remained.[8]
It is not the case that the working class was eliminated. The working class is bigger than ever. But there has been a combined decomposition and recomposition of the working class, and the old labor-radical subculture is long gone. It, too, needs to be recomposed, and within a very different reality than once existed.
Because of this, there was a significant disconnect between the actual working class and the organized Left (including the SWP) that sought to represent the best interests of that class. This had grave implications. Back in the 1950s, after decades of Leninist and Trotskyist experience in the United States, James P. Cannon commented:
“The conscious socialists should act as a ‘leaven’ in the instinctive and spontaneous movement of the working class. … The leaven can help the dough to rise and eventually become a loaf of bread, but it can never be a loaf of bread itself. … Every tendency, direct or indirect, of a small revolutionary party to construct a world of its own, outside and apart from the real movement of the workers in the class struggle, is sectarian.”[9]
The experience of many activists influenced by Lenin from the 1950s down to the present demonstrates that efforts to create Leninist parties all-too-often degenerate into the construction of sects, with well-meaning activists penned up in a world of their own, separate and apart from the working class.[10]
My generation of young 1960s and 1970s activists can hardly be said to have started out in a sectarian mode. We helped to fundamentally change the political, social, and cultural landscape of the United States. But we saw the real social struggles of our time as involving opposition to such things as racism and poverty and war and sexism, but definitely not as the central expression of an organized labor movement The unions had had become highly bureaucratized and relatively conservative, largely inclined to hold back from — or even oppose — the radicalization and social struggles of the time.
Little of this had changed when — as our experiences and growing awareness further radicalized us — many of us went in a Marxist direction. Although the writings of Lenin, Trotsky, and Cannon were avidly read, discussed, and internalized by young SWP activists such as myself, the context in which the revolutionary “teachers” from earlier decades had lived and the context in which the avid students of the 1960s lived were qualitatively different. The relationship of the new radicals to the rest of the working class, not to mention the culture and consciousness of both the actual proletariat and its would-be “vanguard” in the 1970s, were far different from what was true in the early 1900s or the 1930s.[11]
A failure to comprehend the meaning of this ruptured continuity contributed to the rise of a fatal disorientation that accelerated within the SWP as the 1970s flowed into the 1980s, culminating in fragmentation and implosion. This happened especially as we sought to — once again — fuse socialism with the working class. This did not come naturally to my generation, and many of us really didn’t know how to do it (though we were afraid to admit that).[12]
This failure, however, more or less afflicted all Marxist-oriented organizations in the U.S. from the late 1970s through the late 1980s. Ironically, this occurred as influences from the 1960s radicalization permeated much of the U.S. population, and as negative impacts from the early manifestations of “globalization” created remarkable new openings for left-wing developments within the working class. At the same time, much of the basis for the organized power of the working class — in the highly-unionized industries — was wiped out with the so-called “de-industrialization” of the U.S. economy. The labor movement’s ability to mount effective struggles went into sharp decline.
The Problem of Fusing Socialism with the Workers’ Movement
Sometimes clarity can be achieved if we shift from our own context to consider the experiences of comrades elsewhere. There is a working-class South African “township” activist, a revolutionary who has been on the cutting edge of the global justice movement that has challenged the imperialist thrust of modern-day “globalization.” His name is Trevor Ngwane, and he says this:
“Some in the anti-globalization movement say that the working-class is finished, that the social movements or even ‘civil society’ itself are now the leading force for change. But if we’re honest, some of these [so-called] social movements consist of nothing more than an office and a big grant from somewhere or other. They can call a workshop, pay people to attend, give them a nice meal and then write up a good report. They build nothing on the ground.”
Ngwane finds the abstraction of “civil society” even more problematical, a class-jumbled hodge-podge “expanding to the business sector,” mixed in with “NGOs [non-governmental organizations that deal with social issues] tendering for contracts for private government services.”[13]
Ngwane embraces aspects of the global justice movement (such as the World Social Forum) that involve dialogue, information-sharing, and coordinated efforts between activists like himself from various countries — but he stresses that “the working class … remains a key component of any alternative left strategy.” A majority of workers are not in trade unions, and problems faced by workers extend well beyond the workplace. This requires seeing the class struggle as something larger than union struggles. He adds that
“the high level of unemployment is a real problem here. It does make workers more cautious. We need to organize both the employed and the unemployed, to overcome capital’s divide-and-conquer tactics.”
As a township activist, he emphasizes,
“in the end we had to get down to the most basic questions: what are the problems facing people on the ground that unite us most? In Soweto, it’s electricity. In another area, it is water. We’ve learned that you have to actually organize — to talk to people, door to door; to connect with the masses.”
For Ngwane, however, this is necessarily linked with “the issue of political power,” and ultimately “targeting state power.” He concludes his discussion of local grassroots organizing with the comment that
“you have to build with a vision. From Day One we argued that electricity cuts are the result of privatization. Privatization … reflects the demands of global capital… We cannot finally win this immediate struggle unless we win that greater one.”
He then comes back to the essential point:
“But still, connecting with what touches people on a daily basis, in a direct fashion, is the way to move history forward.”[14]
The points that Ngwane makes are consistent with the points made by Lenin’s companion Nadezhda Krupskaya many years before, when she described how some ultra-left Bolshevik comrades asserted that the revolutionary goal precluded the struggle for “mere reforms.” Such a view, she insisted, was “fallacious,” because “it would mean giving up all practical work, standing aside from the masses instead of organizing them on real-life issues.” Referring to the actual history of the Bolsheviks, she insisted on the very same connections we find in the comments of Ngwane:
“The Bolsheviks showed themselves capable of making good use of every legal possibility, of forging ahead and rallying the masses behind them under the most adverse conditions. Step by step, beginning with the campaign for tea service and ventilation, they had led the masses up to the national armed insurrection.”
The blend of the practical and the principled, the interplay of the real struggles of the workers and oppressed with the revolutionary goal are here at the heart of Bolshevism:
“The ability to adjust oneself to the most adverse [non-revolutionary] conditions and at the same time to stand out and maintain one’s high-principled positions — such were the traditions of Leninism.”[15]
There is another point that was made some years ago by my mentor and comrade George Breitman of the Socialist Workers Party. In examining the mass radicalization that swept the United States during the 1960s and 1970s, Breitman identified the mighty social movements and the early beginnings of what some have labeled “identity politics” in this illuminating manner: “It is idiotic and insulting to think that the worker responds only to economic issues. He can be radicalized in various ways, over various issues, and he is.” Breitman developed this point:
“The radicalization of the worker can begin off the job as well as on. It can begin from the fact that the worker is a woman as well as a man; that the worker is Black or Chicano or a member of some other oppressed minority as well as white; that the worker is a father or mother whose son can be drafted; that the worker is young as well as middle-aged or about to retire. If we grasp the fact that the working class is stratified and divided in many ways — the capitalists prefer it that way — then we will be better able to understand how the radicalization will develop among workers and how to intervene more effectively. Those who haven’t already learned important lessons from the radicalization of oppressed minorities, youth and women had better hurry up and learn them, because most of the people involved in these radicalizations are workers or come from working-class families.”[16]
This perception was entirely consistent with the perspectives of Lenin, of course, who told us that a revolutionary socialist’s ideal should be “the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of people it affects; who … is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all his socialist convictions and democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat.”[17]
It seems to me that it is not a simple thing to meet this challenge of fusing socialism with the struggles, the movements, and the consciousness of the working class. I think a problem for many revolutionary socialists has been a trend toward sectarianism and what could be called “propagandism.” Their focus is discussing socialism and Marxist ideas in their own organizational universe, and from that universe sending out revolutionary socialist messages to the workers on planet Earth.
I think a problem for other revolutionaries has been a trend toward what Lenin criticized as “economism” — immersing themselves in the immediate struggles of one or another sector of the working class in a way that avoids efforts to spread socialist consciousness, in hopes that this consciousness will somehow spontaneously crystallize in workers’ minds through “pure and simple” economic struggles for higher wages or better conditions or more democratic unions (or other reform efforts).
It is not a simple thing for revolutionaries to find the right balance between, or the right blend of, talking about revolutionary theory and being involved in actual day-to-day workers’ struggles.
In the Socialist Workers Party of the late 1970s, large numbers of us went into the factories, shipyards, mines, garment shops, and other industrial workplaces of this country with the explicit intention to — as we put it — “talk socialism to workers.” I think that by the early 1980s, for the most part, we were getting it wrong. Despite the sometimes incredibly good work of individual comrades, the SWP as a whole tended to talk socialism at workers. Too many of us didn’t really listen to the people around us, didn’t really engage with their actual lives and struggles, and so we were incapable of making our socialist ideas relevant to their struggles and to their lives.[18]
But there are wonderful examples, including from our very own tradition of American Trotskyism, of those who got it right. Back in the 1930s, in his classic book American City, reporter Charles Rumford Walker described the role of Vincent Raymond Dunne in organizing the 1934 Minneapolis teamsters strike, one of the turning-points in the history of the U.S. labor movement. “Probably four or five hundred workers in Minneapolis knew ‘Ray’ personally,” according to Walker.
“They formed their own opinions — that he was honest, intelligent, and selfless, and a damn good organizer for the truck drivers’ union to have. They had always known him to be a Red; that was no news.”
Dunne explained what he was doing in this way:
“Our policy was to organize and build strong unions so workers could have something to say about their own lives and assist in changing the present order into a socialist society.”[19]
I think that’s the kind of involvement in the life and struggles of the working class, and the kind of balance, that a revolutionary socialist organization should strive for.
The Need to Share Knowledge and Skills to Change the World
I want to conclude with some additional thoughts on the need for the revolutionary organization that — so far — we do not have, and on the possibilities of developing it. I want to do this first by summarizing some of the points I have already made, and then reach for a new thought.
Most people in our country are oppressed, exploited, damaged, and made indignant — in many different ways — by the capitalist system. In order to overcome such things, they would greatly benefit from the contributions developed by previous generations of revolutionaries. In most cases, these are things of which they have no knowledge.
How will the experiences and invaluable lessons, the skills and the knowledge, of our revolutionary brothers and sisters of previous generations (and of our generation) be passed on to the rest of the working class today and tomorrow?
This will not happen automatically. It is certainly not in the interest of those forces that dominate the informational and educational and cultural media and institutions of our society to ensure that this knowledge is communicated to people — especially if those people are part of the diverse working-class majority.
The powerful elites secure their amazing privileges and vast wealth through their control and exploitation of the world’s laboring majorities. They prefer that the history of revolution and protest be consigned to what George Orwell called “the memory hole,” or to glorifications that distort everything, or to commemorative postage stamps. Everything emanating from the institutions of the status quo (with relatively few subversive exceptions) encourages people to do other things than engage with, emulate, and advance the efforts of past revolutionaries.
Genuine revolutionary and class-struggle knowledge, and the awareness of the people and the struggles through which such knowledge was accumulated, will surely evaporate unless some people draw together to preserve such things, and use them, and pass them on.
The skills and knowledge necessary to build effective protests, to advance life-giving reform efforts, and to create revolutionary possibilities, will only be passed on through the work of those who are dedicated to helping change the world — to challenge, undermine, push back, and overturn the powerful elites, to open the way for rule by the people, for the free development of each and all, in harmony with the life-nurturing environment of our planet.
But to be effective in doing this — now as before — it is necessary for at least a significant number of such conscious revolutionaries to concentrate and coordinate their efforts, to work together in a revolutionary socialist organization that is committed to the preservation, utilization, and spread throughout the working class of the perspectives, the knowledge, and the skills associated with the traditions of revolutionary Marxism. Without organization, their efforts will be too diffuse, too amateur, too isolated.
This runs into the problem already identified: Attempts by small numbers of people to construct a revolutionary party — even the so-called “nucleus of the revolutionary party” — outside the context of a broad labor-radical subculture generally tends to result in the construction of a political sect. The members of such a political sect by definition cut themselves off from the possibility, the actual work, of helping to create a broad labor-radical subculture capable of sustaining a revolutionary class-consciousness and class-struggle. A critic of my recent book Marx, Lenin, and the Revolutionary Experience has put it this way:
“A mass labour movement underpinned the emergence of the Bolsheviks as a mass party in the years 1912-17 in Russia and formed the world in which US Communism operated in the 1930s. Today all this is gone, argues Le Blanc, therefore Leninism must be a fish out of water, doomed to shrivel into marginal sects that fruitlessly try to impose models from classical Marxism without recognizing that the context that allowed it to emerge as a serious force has changed.”[20]
As the young bad guy says near the end of the film Cold Mountain: “That’s what they call a conundrum!”
It seems to me that the puzzle has a solution. The high risk, or even general tendency, of sectarianism is not the same as an “iron law” of sectarianism. It is possible and necessary for “those who know” something of the ideas and skills associated with the revolutionary Left to interact with those who don’t. But we have to do this in a systematically interactive way. We have to be able to learn from people, to listen to them, in order to be able to share knowledge with them.
Only in this way can left-wing knowledge and skills become relevant to their lives (to the lives of all who are engaged in this double-sided teaching process). Only in this way can socialism begin, once more, to permeate broader sectors of the working class, and become a greater force among its activist layers in the labor movement and the other social movements.
That is the challenge for us today and tomorrow.
Footnotes
[1] V. I. Lenin, “Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution,” Collected Works, vol. 9 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973), 29, and Paul Le Blanc, Marx, Lenin, and the Revolutionary Experience: Studies of Communism and Radicalism in the Age of Globalization, (New York: Routledge, 2006), 101-151. On democratic continuities, see Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Revolution, Democracy, and Socialism, Selected Writings, edited by Paul Le Blanc (London: Pluto Press, 2008, forthcoming). The policies of 1918-1922 reflect not the fundamental orientation championed by Lenin for over twenty years, discussed here, but rather the overwhelming crisis and extreme violence generated by international and domestic enemies in that period. See Moshe Lewin, The Soviet Century (London: Verso, 2005) and Arno J. Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
[2] One friend commented on this section that I am here “talking about the Transitional Program without mentioning it both in general and Trotsky’s specific writings.” In fact, I was not seeking (tacitly or otherwise) to map out Trotsky’s ”transitional program” conception – but my friend is, in a sense, right: in this 1938 document Trotsky was consciously attempting to summarize the Bolshevik-Leninist perspective. See Leon Trotsky, The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1977), Third Edition, especially the useful introductory essays by Joseph Hansen and George Novack.
[3] Quoted in Paul Le Blanc, Lenin and the Revolutionary Party (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1993), 1-2.
[4] Ibid., 53-54.
[5] James P. Cannon, The First Ten Years of American Communism (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1962), 304, 317-318. An outstanding work of recent scholarship on this reality can be found in Bryan Palmer’s invaluable James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007).
[6] Quoted in Paul Le Blanc, A Short History of the U.S. Working Class, From Colonial Times to the Twenty-first Century (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1999), 48.
[7] There is considerable evidence of the “labor-radical sub-culture” referred to here, one of the earliest being Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling, The Working-Class Movement in America (London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1891), reprinted with a substantial introduction by me providing much additional documentation (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2000). The analysis presented here was first put forward in my introductory essay to Paul Le Blanc, “Leninism in the United States and the Decline of the Socialist Workers Party,” ed., In Defense of American Trotskyism: Revolutionary Principles and Working-Class Democracy (New York: Fourth Internationalist Tendency, 1992), reproduced in George Breitman, Paul Le Blanc, and Alan Wald, Trotskyism in the United States: Historical Essays and Reconsiderations (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1996). It can be found on-line, along with a number of other items of relevance, at www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fit.htm8.
[8] A variety of informative and stimulating works – some conflicting with each other on one or another salient point – provide information and insights on what is described here: Stanley Aronowitz, False Promises: The Shaping of American Working-Class Consciousness, revised edition (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992); James Boggs, American Revolution: Pages From a Negro Worker’s Notebook (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1963); Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2003); Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Post-War America (New York: Vintage, 2003); Mike Davis, Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the U.S. Working Class, 2nd edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000); David M. Gordon, Richard Edwards, and Michael Reich, Segmented Work, Divided Workers: The Historical Transformation of Labor in the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Paul Le Blanc and Thomas Barrett, eds., Revolutionary Labor Socialist: The Life, Ideas, and Comrades of Frank Lovell (New York: Smyrna Press, 2000); John C. Leggett, Race, Class and Political Consciousness: Working-Class Consciousness in Detroit (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968); George Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Kim Moody, An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism (London: Verso, 1988).
[9] James P. Cannon, “Engels and Lenin on the Party” [Letter to V. R. Dunne, January 14, 1955], Bulletin in Defense of Marxism, no. 19, June 1985, 29-30.
[10] Some of this draws from Le Blanc, Marx, Lenin, and the Revolutionary Experience, 150-151, and Le Blanc, Lenin and the Revolutionary Party, 344, 348-349.
[11] Positive contributions of the “new left” are well recorded in Van Gosse, Rethinking the New Left, An Interpretive History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Further documentation on this can be found in Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines, eds., “Takin’ It to the Streets”: A Sixties Reader9, Second Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). A useful portrait of the SWP up through the early 1970s is offered in Barry Sheppard’s The Party, A Political Memoir, The Socialist Workers Party 1960-1988, Volume 1: The Sixties10 (Australia: Resistance Books, 2005; distributed in the U.S. by Haymarket Books). An excellent chronicle of an array of Maoist groups into which many young 1960s activists streamed is offered in Max Elbaum, Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che11 (London: Verso, 2002). A reflective review-essay of these last three titles can be found in Monthly Review’s MRzine – http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/leblanc120106.html12.
[12] An important contribution to this analysis comes from the perceptions of Frank Lovell, former trade union director of the SWP, which can be found in the above-cited Revolutionary Labor Socialist: The Life, Ideas, and Comrades of Frank Lovell and also in his essay “The Meaning of the Struggle Inside the Socialist Workers Party,” in Sarah Lovell, ed., In Defense of American Trotskyism: The Struggle Inside the Socialist Workers Party 1979-1983 (New York: Fourth Internationalist Tendency, 1992) – see www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fit.htm8.
[13] Trevor Ngwane, “Sparks in the Township,” in Tom Mertes, ed., A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? (London: Verso, 2004), 132-133.
[14] Ibid., 133, 134. On the World Social Forum, see the volume containing Ngwane’s comments, plus José Corrêa Leite, The World Social Forum: Strategies of Resistance (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005).
[15] N. K. Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin (New York: International Publishers, 1970), 167.
[16] George Breitman, “The Current Radicalization Compared with Those of the Past,” in Jack Barnes, George Breitman, Derrick Morrson, Barry Sheppard, Mary-Alice Waters Towards an American Socialist Revolution, A Strategy for the 1970s (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), 101. Also see Anthony Marcus, ed., Malcolm X and the Third American Revolution: Selected Writings of George Breitman (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2005).
[17] The quote is from What Is To Be Done? – see Le Blanc, Lenin and the Revolutionary Party, 67; Lenin, Selected Works, vol. I (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 164.
[18] One comrade from this period argues, persuasively, that SWP members were tending to “get it right” in the mid-to-late 1970s, with involvement in the important Steelworkers Fightback campaign of Ed Sadlowski, and also in the community control struggles in New York’s Lower Eastside.
[19] Walker and Dunne quoted in Le Blanc, A Short History of the U.S. Working Class, 85. See Charles Rumford Walker, American City: A Rank and File History of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), and the series by Farrell Dobbs – Teamster Rebellion, Teamster Power, Teamster Politics and Teamster Bureaucracy (New York: Monad/Pathfinder, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977) – the Dunne quote can be found on page 227 of this final volume.
[20] Mark Thomas, “Leninism With Reservations,” International Socialism, No. 114 (April 2007) – online at http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?s=contents&issue=11413.
Comment by John Riddell
Dear Paul,
Thank you for sending me your article “Lenin and the Revolutionary Party Today.” Reading it was a liberating experience. It is so good to hear a statement of the case for building a revolutionary organization that is decidedly anti-sectarian.
I’d also like to raise a few points where your argument could, in my opinion, be taken further.
1. You talk of the lack of a broad labor-radical subculture. However, if I may take Toronto as an example, there is such a subculture. In terms of activism, it includes thousands of people. That’s not a mass base; it is a lot fewer now than during some periods in the last half-century, but in some ways this subculture is more advanced. It is now largely free of the influence of Stalinism, which was so dominant in the past, and Social Democracy is much less influential. It is not marked by the ultraleftism so prominent in the sixties; its political activities are broadly speaking on the mark. Also, this subculture has links to a broader constituency: for example, the 50-odd Islamic anti-Imperialists whom we meet fairly frequently can on occasion mobilize thousands, and so on in other sectors.
Moreover, this subculture is not limited geographically. It extends out internationally into several continents, and all that tumult of world class struggle gets drawn into our little city.
In my experience, today’s revolutionary socialist groups have a conflictual relationship with this subculture. Each revolutionary group identifies its own organization with the historic interest of the working class and prioritizes its organizational purposes over the needs of the broader movement. This is widely perceived by activists and strongly resented. In addition, most revolutionary groups prioritize an orientation to the “masses” as against collaboration with activists.
2. You say that attempts to build a “nucleus of the revolutionary party” turn in a sectarian direction because of the lack of a context of a radical subculture. Yes, but there is more to it than that. The revolutionary groups attempt to follow a fixed model of Bolshevik organization, regardless of their stage of development. This inflexibility in organizational conceptions is actually the opposite of the Bolshevik approach.
In addition, each revolutionary group today has a body of doctrine going back a century, which provides a predetermined answer to every major question, plus an apostolic succession of guiding theorists whose views cannot be challenged. The group’s politics are fixed and inflexible. The Bolsheviks, by contrast, had less fixed doctrine. In Lenin’s time, there were repeated sharp shifts in their politics in reaction to changed conditions and the lessons of experience.
3. The Bolshevik organizational model implemented by revolutionary groups today actually differs radically from the Bolsheviks in decisive ways, for example:
The Bolsheviks encompassed a broad spectrum of revolutionary fighters; today’s revolutionary group embraces only one ideological current. The Bolsheviks were political heterogeneous; today’s revolutionary group can encompass only one font of political authority. An enduring difference between two central leaders usually leads to a split. The Bolsheviks held their discussions in public, before the working class; today’s revolutionary group discusses in private. The discipline of the Bolsheviks was directed primarily against the ruling class; the discipline of today’s revolutionary groups is directed primarily against each other. And so on.
4. In the classic era of Trotskyism, the workers’ movement was cleanly subdivided into Stalinist, Social Democratic and Trotskyist currents, with some centrist sub-currents. As Trotsky said, the Fourth International was the only revolutionary current worthy of the name. Now, these divisions are much less clear. Movements like the Venezuelan Bolivarians cannot be neatly assigned to any category. The division of 1914-1920 into revolutionary and reformist currents has broken down and must be fought through again.
5. In this changed context, and with the collapse of organized Stalinism, it is not so clear what Trotskyism represents.
I judge Trotskyism on the basis of the broad range of groups acknowledging this theoretical heritage. What I say here should not be viewed as a criticism of any specific group.
Trotskyism is certainly not the only revolutionary current today. With regard to many Trotskyist currents, the revolutionary quality seems purely verbal: they do not relate to living revolutionary movements. Trotskyism today tends to underplay anti-imperialist struggles. Trotskyism tends to ignore the peasantry. Trotskyism is characterized by a sceptical attitude toward mass struggles in poor and dependent countries. None of this was true of the Trotskyism of my youth. Criticism has its uses, but the revolution will not be made by scepticism alone.
On the whole, Trotskyism seems to have lost much of its revolutionary edge in the last 30 years. It needs to be revitalized through cross-fertilization with other class-struggle currents.
6. Recently we have seen signs of a renewed vitality of Trotskyist currents in the United States. A conference is coming up next month in New York, which includes speakers from many Trotskyist currents. This could be a step along a road to revitalization. It is always positive when revolutionary socialists find a way to discuss together and collaborate together.
But my mind keeps returning to your comment about the revolutionary group’s relationship to the broad labor-radical subculture. To say that this subculture doesn’t exist seems like a cop-out. We have to relate to what is there. An insistence on the uniqueness of Trotskyism as a revolutionary current can become a barrier to this. And to relate to labour radicalism, we have to come to grips with a number of aspects in our heritage which – whatever their original justification – have now become signposts to sectarianism. Only in that way will be able, as you say, “to learn from people, to listen to people.”
Thanks again for your stimulating comments.
John Riddell
Response by Paul Le Blanc
Dear John,
I want to emphasize how pleased I am to receive your comments and critical thoughts. I will respond to those point by point. I may also send you some posts that have been made to our pre-conference discussion-list that address some of the themes that arise in you remarks.
1. One fact that may not have been expressed clearly in what I have been writing is that I know the United States, and function in the United States, and my points regarding the lack of the labor-radical sub-culture that stretched at least from the Civil War to World War II is focused on the United States. I don’t assume that what I describe in the U.S. is global. It seems to me that the opposite is true — though I suspect there may be some element of relevance in at least some other countries. I would love to come to Toronto (I was there only once, and fleetingly) and see more of Canada as well. I don’t doubt at all what you say about the existence of some such sub-culture existing there, and I imagine there would be much for me to learn.
For that matter, I do think that there are elements for the recomposition of such a sub-culture in my own country. I believe a recomposition process is already underway, although it seems to me it has a ways to go before it crystallizes on a sufficiently mass scale and with sufficient clarity of consciousness within certain segments of the working class here.
You write:
“Revolutionary socialist groups have a conflictual relationship with this subculture. Each revolutionary group identifies its own organization with the historic interest of the working class and prioritizes its organizational purposes over the needs of the broader movement. This is widely perceived and strongly resented. In addition, most revolutionary groups prioritize an orientation to the “masses” as against collaboration with activists.”
That seems to me extremely problematical. Unfortunately, within the U.S. there is all too much of that as well. It seems to me that we might have different takes on certain details and specifics — I don’t know — but what you describe in general terms seems consistent with my own point of view.
2. I think I agree with what you say when you write:
“The revolutionary groups attempt to follow a fixed model of Bolshevik organization, regardless of their stage of development. This inflexibility in organizational conceptions is actually the opposite of the Bolshevik approach.”
Of course, here we have to walk through specifics. It is certainly, unquestionably the case that the “Bolshevism” of the SWP was increasingly problematical, increasingly rigid and distorted, from 1972 through the 1980s. I can cite many specifics (and I have — particularly in my long essay of long ago entitled “Leninism in the United States and the Decline of the Socialist Workers Party,” which can be found in the Fourth Internationalist Tendency section of the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line3).
I also agree that the misuse of revolutionary theory as Handy Dandy Manual for Know-It-Alls, all-too-prevalent among many would-be revolutionaries, must be rejected. What we need is a revolutionary Marxism that is a method for critical-minded analysis and guide to action (not abstention) that must be undergoing constant utilization, enrichment, refinement, modification, and development. It seems to me that the notion that Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky were people who may have been wrong about one thing or another (and MUST have been wrong about at least SOME things) is an essential element to any socialism that claims to be “scientific.” It does seem to me that these amazing comrades (and I would add others to the pantheon — especially Rosa Luxemburg, also Gramsci, arguably some others) gave us much that is fundamentally correct, but the only way to determine what is correct and what is not is to use it and evaluate it, in the process adding to the valuable elements that are already there.
Depending on how you define your terms, I think it may be a bit of an overstatement to say that “the Bolsheviks did not have much fixed doctrine,” but it is precisely because some of their key leaders — Lenin most of all — used Marxism as a truly revolutionary approach (a la Marx) that, as you say, “there were repeated sharp shifts in their politics in reaction to changed conditions and the lessons of experience.”
3. You write: “The Bolshevik organizational model implemented by revolutionary groups today actually differs radically from the Bolsheviks in decisive ways.” There may be some revolutionary groups that are better than this, but much of what you say is all-too-true. I pretty much like the points you make. It would be worth discussing them in greater detail, with more reference to specifics, in order to get the clarity that I imagine we would both be satisfied with. But the thrust of what you say is absolutely correct.
4. I continue to self-identify as a Marxist, a Leninist, and a Trotskyist. But to my mind, this needs to be understood in a new way, because the realities you point to — the divisions are much less clear than in 1938, there are and have been new revolutionary currents that do not fit into the old categories, “the division of 1914-1920 into revolutionary and reformist currents has broken down and must be fought through again” — are, in fact, realities.
5. You write: “In this changed context, and with the collapse of organized Stalinism, it is not so clear what Trotskyism represents.”
The usual thing I was taught in our movement in response to this question (what is Trotskyism?) was that Trotskyism represents revolutionary Marxism, the standpoint of Bolshevik-Leninism, extended into the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s, and beyond. What I have said about Lenin’s orientation goes for that of Trotsky. In addition to what Lenin said and wrote, it especially involves an analysis of fascism, an analysis of Stalinism and of the USSR’s bureaucratic degeneration, and the theory of permanent revolution (understood intelligently, not stupidly — see my article on uneven and combined development in International Viewpoint or my writings in the 1980s on the Nicaraguan Revolution). For me, a Trotskyism that Trotsky would relate to today would be consistent with all that can be found above.
I do not know if your criticism of “Trotskyism today” is applicable to all of the groups that present themselves as Trotskyist, but I believe that it is applicable to some, and I know that such “Trotskyism” is not the same as Trotsky’s actual perspectives — and it is certainly alien to my own views. I do believe that “the mainstream Fourth International is different,” though the weakness of the FI makes it difficult sometimes to identify some of the views of its “mainstream” (looking through International Viewpoint may be helpful in that respect).
I would not disagree with the statement that “Trotskyism seems to have lost much of its revolutionary edge in the last 30 years. It needs to be revitalized through cross-fertilization with other class-struggle currents.” In my most recent book (Marx, Lenin, and the Revolutionary Experience) I reached for some of that, and the same is true in my interview in the MRzine a couple of years ago — http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/yates280806.html4.
6. I believe the Trotsky Legacy Conference coming up at Fordham University in New York City, July 25-27, will be a place for important discussions having to do with the kinds of things we are discussing here. My hope is that it will be, as you say, “an initial step along the road to revitalization.”
This relates to the final point you make about the labor-radical sub-culture. You write: “To say that this subculture doesn’t exist seems like a cop-out.” It can be a cop-out if we use such a notion to do just that — cop out. We need to define what is in order to figure out what to do — or, as you put it, “We have to relate to what is there.” That is absolutely true. You say: “An insistence on the uniqueness of Trotskyism as a revolutionary current can become a barrier to this.” I agree with that. We can’t allow it to happen.
You assert that “to relate to labour radicalism, we have to come to grips with a number of aspects in our heritage which — whatever their original justification — have now become signposts to sectarianism.” I agree.
I believe there are essential elements from Marx, Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky, and others from the revolutionary Marxist tradition that are crucial for a victory of the workers and the oppressed worldwide. To pretend to be the Keepers of Revolutionary Truth is inconsistent with passing on the truths that these comrades helped to discover.
Those of us who have a sense of those genuinely revolutionary insights and perspectives have a responsibility to share them in ways that make sense and are useful to those engaged in struggles of today and tomorrow.
To be able to do this requires a certain openness that is consistent with the method of Marx, Lenin, and the rest. We have to be able “to learn from people, to listen to people,” if we have any hope of being able — and the same time — to share the genuine revolutionary Marxism that will be needed for the triumph of socialism.
That’s what I think, anyway.
Warm regards,
Paul Le Blanc
17 Responses to “Revolutionary Organization Today: Part Two”
1. Pance on 25 Jun 2008 at 6:23 am #
I was first introduced to the writings of Paul in the mid ’90s when I was wandering through the “Left” section of Toronto’s Worlds Biggest Bookstore. I read Paul’s book “From Marx to Gramsci” and my spirits were lifted. At last (after the downfall of existing Socialism), there was a book that said – at least the theory of worker emancipation is correct. Thank you for that book Paul. I wrote a review that was published in the short-lived magazine Ginger:
http://www.pance.ca/ginger/n02_review01.html
Personally I like going back to study the classics, but I agree with both your comments, that you’re probably not going to win any friends by arguing about 1917. Or as Boris Kagarlitsky said recently at a forum in Toronto – “the patient is dead” (see the video on YouTube).
Onward to 21st century socialism.
Pance.
2. Tom Barrett on 25 Jun 2008 at 9:32 am #
This exchange is what political discussion SHOULD look like.
I will be attending the Legacy of Trotskyism conference at Fordham University in the Bronx, NY, 25-27 July, and I hope that many Socialist Voice readers will be there. If the Fordham conference takes the tone of this discussion, it will be great.
What John says about Trotskyism as a political current distinct from Stalinism and Social Democracy is vital: that was the reality from the late 1920s until the early 1990s, that is, over the course of two generations. It was the reality in which most of us got our political education. It is no longer the reality today, and it changes EVERYTHING. We’re only beginning to draw the necessary conclusions, and in the course of doing that all kinds of organizational realignments must occur.
Arguments about 1917, 1937, 1945, 1953, 1973, or 1979 are interesting, but what we really need to concentrate on is what we do now. We cannot simply read what past leaders have written and find the ideas we need for the future.
3. Sam W. on 25 Jun 2008 at 10:06 am
Of course, the next question is: what sort of organization *should* revolutionary socialists be trying to build in the current period?
A shortcoming of “Left Refoundation”-oriented groups in North America (including Solidarity, the Pittsburgh branch of which I was a member along with Paul) has been a tendency to define themselves mostly *negatively*. They acknowledge (rightly) that they’re not the vanguard party or the embryo of the same; but give only a vague suggestion of what they *are*.
So, what is the alternative to the sect? Freedom Road has tried to suggest something with Which Way Is Left?, saying that what we need to strive for is a party based on unity formed through common practice and dialogue. No argument here. But *until* that magic moment of unity is reached, what are socialists to do? Join a sect? Or, as Hal Draper suggested, start a publishing venture? What?
4. Felipe Stuart Cournoyer on 25 Jun 2008 at 5:17 pm
The discussion initiated by Paul and John offers to provide an opportune path for a necessary rethinking by revolutionists from a Trotskyist heritage, a process of reassessing some of the basic postulates and assumptions of a wide range of Trotskyist currents and “internationals” today.
I worked in the Canadian section of the Fourth international for over two decades beginning in 1960. The failure of any part of the F.I. to understand the dynamics of the Nicaraguan revolution made me question its role. I left the F.I. and linked up with the FSLN in the early 80s. I continue to be a militant of the FSLN and orient to forces seeking to apply Marxism and Leninism to our reality. I am also associated with Socialist Voice as a contributing editor.
I believe that Trotskyism ceased to be the only alternative to Stalinism not with its ignominious collapse with the demise of the USSR, but with the victory of the Cuban socialist revolution and the consolidation in Cuba of a communist leadership. Since that time this current has been the one to best understand the openings in Africa and Latin America, and has played a key role in orienting revolutionists on both those continents. I don’t argue that this development and ongoing commitment of the Cuban communists unfolded without errors. But their basic outlook and course has been valid.
Castro recently stated that the Cuban socialist revolution is not a model for other revolutions to follow, but that it is a model for countries dominated by imperialism to defend their right to sovereignty and national self-determination. The approach of the Cuban communists is to collaborate with and help revolutionaries in other countries, but not to instruct them or impose models on them. This quality of leadership and collaboration was not learned overnight, but developed over decades of initiatives to support national liberation struggles in other countries and continents – with some successes and also some notable defeats including in Bolivia where Ché was assassinated in October of 1967.
The failure of most Trotstkyists currents to recognize this development and seriously orient to it, I believe, is the origin of their crises since the demise of Stalinism in its main bastions. Some Trotskyist groups are relating to the Venezuelan and Bolivian revolutionary processes with a sectarian and ultra left line that results from a “read our manual” approach to socialist internationalism. On the positive side, one can note that other Trotskyist groups are genuinely trying to learn from and become a part of these processes, or committed participants in the work of solidarity with them in the imperialist world and in other countries.
However, unless these formations recognize the achievements of the Cuban communists as the leading and most successful practitioners of Leninism and Marxism in our time, I believe they will end up in a dead end. An inability to learn from the Cuban communists is a sure sign of being off track, at least when it comes to struggles in the semi-colonial world and in Cuba itself.
John noted that
“In my experience, today’s revolutionary socialist groups have a conflictual relationship with this subculture. Each revolutionary group identifies its own organization with the historic interest of the working class and prioritizes its organizational purposes over the needs of the broader movement. This is widely perceived by activists and strongly resented. In addition, most revolutionary groups prioritize an orientation to the “masses” as against collaboration with activists.”
The mystery is why do they find they have to make a choice between a “mass orientation” and “collaboration with activists”? The issue is what is the orientation of the “activists”? From all the reports I have seen about work in Toronto and Vancouver (I am based in Managua), it seems to me that the activists relate to forces that can be mobilized around clear demands and slogans that can appeal to a mass audience. Why then do the “revolutionary groups” see a contradiction or pose the necessity to choose one course against another? Can it be that they are trying to apply manuals and text books in a lifeless, artificial manner?
Paul touched on this problem when he wrote:
“I also agree that the misuse of revolutionary theory as Handy Dandy Manual for Know-It-Alls, all-too-prevalent among many would-be revolutionaries, must be rejected. What we need is a revolutionary Marxism that is a method for critical-minded analysis and guide to action (not abstention) that must be undergoing constant utilization, enrichment, refinement, modification, and development. It seems to me that the notion that Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky were people who may have been wrong about one thing or another (and MUST have been wrong about at least SOME things) is an essential element to any socialism that claims to be “scientific.” It does seem to me that these amazing comrades (and I would add others to the pantheon — especially Rosa Luxemburg, also Gramsci, arguably some others) gave us much that is fundamentally correct, but the only way to determine what is correct and what is not is to use it and evaluate it, in the process adding to the valuable elements that are already there.”
John also noted that
“Trotskyism is certainly not the only revolutionary current today. With regard to many Trotskyist currents, the revolutionary quality seems purely verbal: they do not relate to living revolutionary movements. Trotskyism today tends to underplay anti-imperialist struggles. Trotskyism tends to ignore the peasantry. Trotskyism is characterized by a sceptical attitude toward mass struggles in poor and dependent countries. None of this was true of the Trotskyism of my youth. Criticism has its uses, but the revolution will not be made by scepticism alone.”
I concur with this assessment, but would add, in harmony with my above comments about the Cuban communists, that Trotskyism has not been “the only revolutionary current” since at least 1953-54 when the July 26 movement emerged.
As for the assertion that “None of this was true of the Trotskyism of my youth,” I would be less all embracing than that. The Trotskyism of my youth also included the Healyites, the Lambertistes, and the Latin American Posadistas. Of course, the Cuban revolution led these forces to split away from the F.I., but they still remained in the general Trotskyist camp. I leave out here any discussion of the attitude of two other significant Trotskyist currents, the International Socialists and the Woods-led In Defense of Marxism current.
I raise these points to emphasize that the problems we are dealing with stretch back to at least the early fifties, and it is not an accident that in those years the mainstream Trotskyist Fourth International underwent a severe split mainly over the response to the Cuban revolution.
None of the main currents in the Fourth International were able to understand the dynamics of the Nicaraguan Sandinista revolution. Both main factions in the 1970s were so bogged down in the fight over the orientation to “rural guerrilla warfare on a continental scale” that they failed to recognize that a process was well underway in Nicaragua that combined guerrilla warfare with urban insurrections led by the FSLN. This did not occur overnight, and differences around the course of the struggle against the dictatorship led to a three-way split in the FSLN that was only healed when all sides recognized the power and the potential of spontaneous urban insurrections. The Tercerista Tendency must be credited with having the most accurate read on these events and having prepared their militants to offer leadership to it. Once the reunification took place in March of 1979 the FSLN was in a good position not just to bring about the overthrow of Somoza but to take power. All this occurred with very little attention from the Fourth International or the US SWP, or any other Trotskyist organization. The Trotskyists in Nicaragua, aligned with the Moreno grouping in Argentina, were completely bi-passed and played zero role in the revolution. Some of them are still organized in a tiny group that has no relevance to current events and whose existence seems to be some kind of secret.
Following the victory of the revolution in Nicaragua some Trotskyist groups played important roles in solidarity work, but none of them developed a concrete and credible analysis of the revolutionary process. So we ended up with most of them attaching principal blame for the electoral defeat in 1990 on the FSLN leadership and not the long US-financed Contra war. This is not the place to go into those shabby “analyses,” but I still rankle at the futility of much of the discourse of the time coming out of New York, Buenos Aires, Paris, and London.
The discussion that Paul and John have initiated looks like a promising beginning to a much needed rethinking, from which all of us stand to learn as we try to strengthen and deepen our commitment to and understanding of genuine Marxism and Leninism.
Sol
Phil (Felipe) Stuart C.
Managua
5. Alan B on 26 Jun 2008 at 1:36 am
In my opinion, the “correct” form of organisation in the period before we get organised “properly” is the one that is best at recruiting and training cadres. (And, of course, not mistraining them too badly).
That might actually be an argument for the sect form in the meantime, although there might be alternatives that achieve the same, or a better, result.
Either way, we will need cadres. That is one of the few things I am sure about.
Alan B
6. John L on 27 Jun 2008 at 4:26 am
‘The conscious socialists should act as a ‘leaven’ in the instinctive and spontaneous movement of the working class. … The leaven can help the dough to rise and eventually become a loaf of bread, but it can never be a loaf of bread itself. … Every tendency, direct or indirect, of a small revolutionary party to construct a world of its own, outside and apart from the real movement of the workers in the class struggle, is sectarian.’ James P. Cannon
Paul LeBlanc has done all revolutionary socialists a major service with the publication of his book, Lenin and the Revolutionary Party. That said, Cde. LeBlanc, while laying out the contours of what a revolutionary vanguard would look like in the article, Revolutionary Socialist Organization Today, falls into the trap of saying that it’s not possible to build such a formation now — because of real world conditions and the real (low) levels of class consciousness amongst workers. A major task we face now is to rebuild the vanguard layer in the class and that has to be done consciously.
For Paul, party building is left to some future time when the consciousness of the class is better and the objective conditions are changed. Trying to build a vanguard formation *now* necessarily leads to the construction of a vanguard sect. I could not disagree more. This is the classic ‘anti-sectarian, sectarianism’ typified by the US group Solidarity.
I think it *is* possible to build a Leninist organization in this period. Of course, comrades have to be conscious of the need for democratic norms, to avoid inward-turning navel gazing and sectarian posturing. But the possibility AND the necessity of building a Leninist formation exist NOW — not in some distant future.
As a friend and comrade once said to me — You don’t wait for the flood to build a boat.
‘ The vanguard party is the highest expression and irreplaceable instrument of that class consciousness at all stages of the world revolutionary process. In the prerevolutionary period the vanguard assembles and welds together the cadres who march ahead of the main army but seek at all points to maintain correct relations with it. The vanguard grows in numbers and influence and comes to the fore in the course of the mass struggle for supremacy which it aspires to bring to a successful conclusion. After the overthrow of the old ruling powers, the vanguard leads the people in the tasks of defending and constructing the new society. A political organization capable of handling such colossal tasks cannot arise spontaneously or haphazardly; it has to be continuously, consistently and consciously built.’ James P. Cannon, The Revolutionary Party and its role in the struggle for socialism.
7. Mike on 28 Jun 2008 at 10:17 am # Paul observes that SWP members engaged in the “turn” talked socialism *at* their co-workers. This is true, that tendency existed and was often grotesquely manifested. I remember one manifestation of this in Militant quotas and gate sales. I “made” the turn in the early 80s, first by going into garment and then being abruptly asked to go into transit. In the NYCTA, I made a lot of friends among my coworkers, hung out with them, played paddleball, went hunting, went to bars, etc. Just being a social human being. And we had quite a few political discussions. I was involved in Nicaragua solidarity, so I brought that into the mix. There were transit and shop floor issues (which the SWP was reluctant to take up, again… Paul’s “gap”). I was elected safetyperson — and again, the SWP was reluctant for me to accept that nomination. So, the inability to engage was partly a result of individual socialization and partly a result of party policy. But, I think Paul also downplays a little, in that paragraph, the other side of the dialogue, an objective factor, which was the wall that had been built up around the workers themselves against radical ideas, and more important, modes of thinking.
8. John Riddell on 28 Jun 2008 at 2:05 pm # It is gratifying that Paul Le Blanc’s article, Lenin and the Revolutionary Party Today, found many readers and inspired a number of comments. Here is a quick personal response to a few points that were raised.
I am glad that Phil C. has raised the relevance of Cuban communism to any project for building a revolutionary current, a concept that is central to Socialist Voice, where this note is appearing.
Alan suggests that there “might actually be an argument for the sect” in their ability to recruit and educate cadres. He’s on to something here: the sect is under present circumstances the easiest way for socialists to organize and – also – the most durable. The problem is that the sect’s members are educated and trained mainly to close their minds to the ideas of non-members, the thinking of the working class ranks, and the lessons of reality. Sects obstruct the building of a revolutionary party and also cause considerable harm in conditions of mass upsurge.
John L. stresses the need to act now to build a vanguard organization: “I think it *is* possible to build a Leninist organization in this period.” John thus agrees with the central point in Paul Le Blanc’s article – the need for revolutionary Marxists to collaborate in making their experiences and understanding available for new generations of activists. But that does not mean we should try to construct a miniature of what we think this party will look like some decades down the road. The problem is to determine what form of organization is appropriate to our present situation.
The dilemma is captured by John L.’s metaphor: “You don’t wait for a flood to build a boat.” But what use is it to me to have a boat sitting on my lawn? And how likely is it that this boat-without-water is really seaworthy? Why not build a conveyance appropriate to today’s conditions? The best training for the big battles coming down the road is to do what corresponds to the challenge immediately before us.
Sam W. asks what is the alternative to a sect, and suggests, “Perhaps a publishing venture.” Socialist Voice is purely a publishing venture – there is no associated organization. We have done this for four years, and it has worked well, particularly in removing any obstacle to close collaboration with and membership in other socialist currents.
But we are not in any sense a model. Organizational forms flow from the circumstances in which we work. The difficult part to achieve collaboration among revolutionaries in political conditions that make this difficult, and to avoid sectarian pitfalls in the process. Paul Le Blanc’s article is a worthy contribution to that task.
John Riddell
9. Alan B on 28 Jun 2008 at 6:09 pm # First, responding to John: obviously, what I called the “sect form” is problematic. I could have played it safer and called it the “grouplet form”, but the fact is that a group built around a specific doctrine, and lacking mass roots, is in fact a sect, even if it isn’t a lunatic asylum like the Sparts.
Any form of organisation we form and use will need to actively engage in struggle, and try and overcome the problems that John raises. This, however, is a political problem, and not primarily one of organisational form. In particular, it requires serious questioning of the theory and practice of groups derived from Trotskyism, and a conscious attempt to overcome any problems identified. That means asking difficult questions, and providing honest answers, even when it is tempting to come up with excuses. I’ve tried. It hurts.
I’ve also spent some time considering alternative forms. I haven’t found one that doesn’t really replicate the vices of the grouplet form, or which is as effective in accumulating cadres. Some might be more effective at retaining existing cadres, but at the expense of recruitment and coordinated action.
But this wasn’t really why I am posting.
What I wanted to do was to point out that in several countries, currents derived from the Trotskyism tradition have actually eclipsed the old CPs. In almost all cases, these are situations where the far left is very weak, but still they present a situation where any future left revival will be influenced by these currents, rather than the old CPs and/or Maoism.
Examples relevant to Canada include Britain, Australia, and to a considerable degree, New Zealand. (One of the two dominant currents in NZ arose from a fusion between “pro-Trotsky” and “pro-Mao” groups). The US is a somewhat different case, as far as I can tell. I could also point out France, where the main Trotskyist currents (LCR and LO) have considerable, if presently rather soft, support, and where the much larger PCF seems to be gradually waning. There are also a number of Third World examples, which are probably less relevant.
This suggests that the Trotskyist project, as a whole, may not have been quite as much a failure as we might be tempted to conclude. Things certainly haven’t turned out the way they were originally envisaged, but, to a degree, the broad Trotskyist movement has, in fact, been one of the ways revolutionary Marxism has survived into the present, and will be transmitted into the future.
The key, of course, is “one of the ways”. That’s something we need to firmly understand. And even within the broad Trotskyist tradition we need to realise that no single strand holds all the answers either. But that’s easier said than done.
In fact, I think that we have most of the answers already, at least in a general sense. The problem is actually putting them into practice.
Alan B
10. Alan B on 28 Jun 2008 at 8:04 pm
An addendum to my previous comment: I think we have to be a bit careful when we are assessing the politics and practice of the Trotskyist movement in order not to get too narrow in how we approach things. In particular, when we are looking at organisational models, it’s not enough just to reject the way particular groups of Trotskyists have done thing. We also have to look at the alternatives, and how they have fared.
First, of course, we have to remember that Cannonism isn’t the only model of organisation used by Trotskyists. There are others, and some of them may be worth considering. Also, there are many other ways of doing things that have been tested outside the Trotskyist tradition, and this can provide us with useful information about what works and what doesn’t. (Personally, I spent a couple of years in the Australian Greens, and came out of it feeling much better about how the far Left does things).
We can, for example, look at the ways other, non-Trotskyist, tendencies have organised, especially in cases where groups have grown into mass tendencies from tiny beginnings.
In other words, our focus shouldn’t be too narrow. There’s a big world out there we can learn from.
But in the end, there is no substitute for actually trying to put our programs into practice. If they’re not tested, they’re wrong.
Alan B
11. Les Evenchick on 29 Jun 2008 at 2:52 pm
I found this exchange interesting but limited.
First, i would like t knw how to get invlved with the pre conference Trotsky Legacy discussion and the conference itself.
I tried to contact the only organizer whose name I had and received no response.
My email is piratefish@yahoo.com
I was an SWP member frm 1964-1967 in Boston.
I quit in 1967 over the directin the SWP was going. Things didn;t just start going wrong in 1972.
A key change was when the preconvention discussin period was reduced from 6mths to 3mths which in the days befre the internet meant that insufficient time existed for proopsals differing from those of the NC majority to be considered and discussed by the membership.
I left precisely because i saw no possibilty of carrying out a sucessful struggle against what i considered to be the bureaucratization of the SWP.
Anyway, i would like an pportunity to present my views to the upcoming conference by submitting a document fr discussion but as yet have no idea how to go about it.
The lack of publicity in the larger activist community makes me think that maybe this is just anther factional gathering. I hope i am wrng about that.
I am not currently affiliated with any Trotskyist organization and have not been since I quit the workers lague in 1971 (member frm 1970-1971)
Les Evenchick New Orleans
Operator of the currently inactive Trotsky@yahoogroups.com discussion list
Operator of Trotsky@yahoogroups.com
12. admin on 29 Jun 2008 at 3:01 pm
A google search turns up lots of info on the Trotsky conference. This site has the agenda, contact names and more: http://rustbeltradical.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/the-legacy-of-leon-trotsky-and-us-trotskyism/
13. admin on 30 Jun 2008 at 2:47 am
Relevant to this topic == a discussion of revolutionary regroupment has been launched in England. See http://revolutionaryregroupment.wordpress.com/
14. David Camfield on 30 Jun 2008 at 6:29 am
John R wrote in response to Paul L “You talk of the lack of a broad labor-radical subculture. However, if I may take Toronto as an example, there is such a subculture.”
I think there may be some disagreement about what is meant by “a broad labor-radical subculture.” In my view, Paul is right to say that one does not exist in the US, and I don’t believe one exists in the Canadian state either. My assessment of Toronto (where I lived from 1990 to 2003, and which I visit from time to time) is different than John’s.
There is no doubt that there are radical left milieux in Toronto. These are disproportionately drawn from the intelligentsia (a social layer mostly composed of white-collar workers with lots of post-secondary education, and university students). Some are active in community or campus groups of one kind or another, but very few are rooted in communities that are predominantly working-class or poor. Few people in the radical left milieux are union activists, and fewer still are private-sector union activists. I do not believe the radical left milieux in Toronto today are part of a “radical workers’ subculture” of the kind Paul writes about.
I believe that what Paul writes of the US is basically true in the Canadian context too, except in Quebec, where the radicalization of the 60s and 70s created a radical current within the working class that had no equivalent in English Canada. “After 1945, there was a dramatic break in the continuity of this labor-radical tradition due to the realities that resulted from the Second World War, and the transformation of the social, economic, political, and cultural realities in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. Essential specifics of workers’ occupations and workday experience underwent fundamental changes. The organizations associated with the labor movement were similarly transformed — impacted by a complex combination of assaults, co-optations, corruptions, and erosions. The communities, culture, and consciousness of the working class became so different from the mid-1940s to the 1960s that only faded shreds of the old labor-radical subculture remained.
It is not the case that the working class was eliminated. The working class is bigger than ever. But there has been a combined decomposition and recomposition of the working class, and the old labor-radical subculture is long gone. It, too, needs to be recomposed, and within a very different reality than once existed.”
I think this pamphlet is a useful reflection on these issues:
http://www.solidarity-us.org/sot
DC
15. Paul Le Blanc on 30 Jun 2008 at 10:48 am
I am very pleased that John Riddell’s and my exchange has generated such a good and interesting discussion. A number of contributions are the sort of thing that will make me want to read through them more than once and to think about them.
For now I want to restrict my comments, more or less, to a response regarding only one of the contriibutions. John L. wrote: “For Paul, party building is left to some future time when the consciousness of the class is better and the objective conditions are changed. Trying to build a vanguard formation *now* necessarily leads to the construction of a vanguard sect. I could not disagree more. This is the classic ‘anti-sectarian, sectarianism’ typified by the US group Solidarity.” First of all, a relatively minor point: I do not think the US group Solidarity (of which I am a member) is in agreement on the idea of “party building” in the future or ever. Solidarity includes Leninists, anti-Leninists, people who are not sure about Leninism, and people who don’t know or care about Leninism. There is no common viewpoint on the question.
I do want to clarify my own viewpoint, however.
As John Ridell suggested in his response, the comrade seems to have missed the fact that his position and mine are not so far apart as he perceived. Of course, it depends on what one means by the term “party-building” — but in my opinion revolutionary Marxists must be doing whatever they can NOW to build a genuine revolutionary party, while recognizing that such a party cannot actually be built now. Such a party must involve a percentage of the revolutionary vanguard layer of the working class — and until such a layer exists, such a party will not be possible. (Groups pretending to be such parties will be sects, trapped in their own little “revolutionary” universe.)
But we can and must do things NOW to help create the possibilities for such a party coming into being. And it seems to me that some of us can be most effective in doing this if we work together — as a democratic collective in agreement around basic revolutionary program — in order to carry out such good work. At the same time we should help draw together and train other activists — what I think one person in this discussion was referring to as “cadre.” While not pretending to be “the revolutionary party” (or even “the nucleus” of such a party), such a group could reasonably be said to be organized along Leninist lines.
As I indicated in my article, while a group existing along Leninist lines runs into the danger of becoming a sect (and most such groups have ended up as sects), there is no iron law dictating that this must be so.
I myself am hoping in the forseeable future to become part of a group (perhaps an existing group) organized along such lines. If I am part of such an organization, I will continue to work not only to help create the labor-radical sub-culture that I see as a necessary pre-condition for a revolutionary vanguard party, but I will continue to insist that there can be no genuine revolutionary vanguard party without the existence of a revolutionary vanguard layer of the working class (which is inseparable from the existence of such a sub-culture). I will push against its crystallization into sectarianism, so that it can make the greatest contribution possible to the coming into being of an actual revolutoinary party.
What we should do to help “prepare the groundwork for a party” is something that I very much am interested in talking about, at the upcoming Trotsky Legacy Cnference and after the conference. There are things that a number of us doing now that have been contributing to the sub-culture that I think we need to be building.
* One example is the Marxist Internet Archive and Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line – which is a huge accomplishment that places a rich Marxist library and invaluable information at the fingertips of anyone who has a computer and access to the internet.
* Another is Labor Notes and the periodic Labor Notes Conferences, which can and should be focal-points for all of us who want to help build a strong and concious labor left.
* Another essential project is US Labor Against the War.
* I think the role that Socialist Action has played in initiating the National Assembly to End the War and U.S. Occupatoin in Iraq, drawing together a broad and somewhat diverse network of anti-war forces, has been extremely important in “helping to prepare the groundwork” and – while it doesn’t self-identify as a “labor-radical” vehicle, it is – and the Cleveland conference of this past weekend has the potential for making a huge contribution to the kind of sub-culture that we need.
* I think the International Socialist Organization has made some very impressive contributions with three things in particular: 1) the publication of the impressive and high-quality International Socialist Review AND getting that publication into Borders and Barnes & Noble outlets throughout the country; 2) the regular “Socialism” conferences; and 3) the whole Haymarket Books project.
* I was able to draw some folks together, a few years ago, to help the Allegheny County Labor Council to develop a website that includes a substantial number of fairly short, readable Pittsburgh area labor history articles (about the uprising of 1877, the Homstead Strike, the founding and early ideals of the AFL, the founding of and the original nature of the CIO, and more – including a suggested reading list for those wanting to know more). This is a very modest thing, but I think it counts for something – and I think there are a large number of very modest things like that around the country that add up.
* In its own modest way, our upcoming Trotsky Legacy Conference (July 25-27 at Fordham University in New York City) is a contribution. One of the contributors to this Socialist Voice discussion has requested more infromation on that, which I will provide in a separate post.
These are just a few things that occur to me off the top of my head There is more brainstorming, discussion, and planning that will be worth doing on this matter.
-Paul Le Blanc
16. Paul Le Blanc on 30 Jun 2008 at 12:42 pm
As promised in my previous note, here is information on the upcoming Trotsky Legacy Conference.
The Legacy of Leon Trotsky and U.S. Trotskyism: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow JULY 25 — 27TH 2008, Fordham University, New York City
A diverse group of veterans of the Trotskyist movement have organized a conference to discuss and better understand past and present struggles, to clarify issues and to build the socialist movement today and tomorrow. It’s shaping up to be an exciting event!
Plenary Sessions include: Permanent Revolution and the Evolution of World Realities Social Movements and Class Struggle in the United States What Kind of Political Organization Do We Need? Lessons of the SWP Experience
Speakers will include:
*Esteban Volkov, Leon Trotsky’s grandson
*Celia Hart, Cuban revolutionary (likely via electronic hook-up)
*Bryan Palmer, author of “James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890-1928”
*Ahmed Shawki, Editor of International Socialist Review
*Gus Horowitz, SWP national antiwar director, and founding national co-coordinator, Student Mobilization Committee
*Suzi Weissman, biographer of Victor Serge; Host of KPFK radio show “Beneath the Surface,” Mondays 5-6
Workshops (preliminary list): SWP memory project, health care, women’s liberation, electoral action, student and youth, the national question, race-class-gender, gay issues and rights, Cuba, labor and the environment
Theoretical and political perspectives to be discussed:
*What remains relevant in the Trotskyist theoretical and political tradition?
* What do developments of the late 20th and early 21st century indicate regarding the value of such concepts as permanent revolution, workers’ states (and/or workers’ and farmers’ governments), workers’ democracy, the revolutionary potential of the working class, the revolutionary potential of social movements, Lenin on the vanguard party and democratic centralism, imperialism, the national question, and the relation of democratic struggles to the revolutionary struggle?
*And what we should do now?
* What is the best way to organize for change in the world today? What is the political situation that we face, particularly from the standpoint of those who continue to want to create a socialist society? What is the situation in Cuba today and how does that impact permanent revolution in Latin America in countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia? What are the dynamics in the Middle East created by US Empire building and US wars? What is happening on the Left, in the unions, in the immigrant rights movement, the antiwar movement, among environmentalists, and in other social movements? And what are the lessons of the SWP experience that can help to point the way forward today?
Cost: $60/day for room (dorms) and board (3 meals/day, on-site cafeteria) + a registration fee of $40/full conference or $25/day
Donations: We would like to offer scholarships to defray registration costs and expenses for those unable to afford them. ($100 or more gets you a DVD of some conference highlights; $50 gets you a CD of the same.) Please send pledges (payable before the conference) or donations to:
Paul LeBlanc
9000 Babcock Blvd Pittsburgh, PA 15237 leblanp1@LaRoche.edu
For more information, contact the Conference Coordinators: Linda Thompson: 203 453-2770, lthompson321@aol.com on the East coast & Robin David: 415 285-8548, robindavid@speakeasy.net on the West coast
We are looking forward to your support. There is a lot of excitement and interest generating for this event.
17. Mary Scully on 30 Jun 2008 at 1:10 pm
For my dispute with Paul LeBlanc on the mass left-wing subculture and Leninism see: http://www.socialistdemocracy.org/RecentArticles/RecentRediscoveringLeninismInvitationToDebate
This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm