Communist Cadre and Professional Revolutionaries
Posted by Mike E on June 25, 2010
In Nepal, the Young Communist League is playing a special role in training professional revolutionary cadre for the creation of a new socialist state
“There are ways in which a “revolutionary people” rises to the occasion, and makes up for the lack of trained cadre — by rapidly “stepping into the shoes,” by innovating, by unleashing its own great creative initiative. That is part of the communist mass line. And it is not like we should envision our communist movement as a mega-thinktank of revolution, preparing future generals and ambassadors in some academic way. Yes, we mainly “rely on the people” to solve the great problem of leading and administering all of society. and many many people will step forward to take up tasks they would NEVER dream they would do.
“But there is also, alongside that (alongside our PRINCIPAL mass line strategy for solving these problems) also a real need for highly trained and sophisticated political cadre — for statesmen, planners and organizers of a highly trained kind.”
“This is why I have always been wary of arguments that lightly condemn the communist ‘party-state.’ If we are not going to try to seize and wield the OLD state, and if we are not going to generate waves of new cadre within sophisticated party and army formations, where exactly will the many hundreds of thousands of cadre come from to create and lead the new state and the new order?”
By Mike Ely
Miles Ahead wrote:
“I’m all in favor of the need for a division of labor! but do think that perhaps division of labor gets muddled and misconstrued in practice with the concept of professional revolutionaries—even with the leadership and cadre in a revolutionary/communist organization…
“Within the concept of being a professional revolutionist, further divisions held sway in the hierarchy of the “professionally trained” revolutionary organization I had devoted my life to. The chasm widened and deepened between the theorists and the “practical” workers, leadership and led, under the guise of being professional revolutionaries.
“Without getting into some very crass (and ultimately demoralizing) examples, this experience did make me wonder—was there something inherent in Lenin’s call in the first place that would lead to this kind of practice, or was Lenin correct for his time and in general, but that his call left the door open for future revolutionaries’ misinterpretation, bastardization of the concept, or even an opening for political abuse?”
Part of the question of professional revolutionary is this:
An organization that aims at fighting for reforms needs to be able to organize a mass campaign. And the kind of cadre it trains and develops have to be able to organize a mass campaign (i.e. agitate, organize, fundraise etc.)
But a revolutionary movement aims to replace the existing state, develop an army, organize a planned economy. Its tasks at the moment (writing, organizing, fundraising, dealing with state repression, etc.) are only a distant precursor of the tasks it plans to undertake.
In mainstream bourgeois politics, a party has to have a “shadow government” — i.e. it has to have candidates prepared to take over ministries, fill in future resignations, staff the policy making positions. And in the U.S. there is a world of “think tanks’ where the oppositional parties prepare people and policies for future openings in “the administration.”
But in a revolution, the rising movement has to prepare much more than a “shadow government.” It essentially needs to create the beginnings of a “shadow state.” And that has historically been the task and conception behind the Leninist party (as it has developed, not necessarily as it described itself).
And what stands out (if you look at John Reed’s writings for a second, but realy any discussion of real revolutions) is the screaming problem of “finding people” to create the new institutions of power (after defeating and dispersing the old ones).
I wrote about this in regard to Kronstadt — in the sense that the advanced workers were whisked away from their factory (and soviet) posts by the revolution, as the cadre and supporters of the Bolshevik party suddenly had to staff a Red Army (as shocktroops and commisars) and the new Soviet Government (foreign ministry, economic requisition, logistics, security, transport ministry, etc. etc.)
One of my favorite memoirs of the Russian Revolution follows a pre-revolution leader of the Kronstadt sailors (Fedor Raskolnikov) as he is dispatched from one crisis spot to another.
One consequence of that is that socialdemocratic movements (focused on electoral posts and reforms) and social movements (focused on pressuring on the government and ruling class) — have different requirements for cadre development than seriously revolutionary movements.
There are ways in which a “revolutionary people” rises to the occasion, and makes up for the lack of trained cadre — by rapidly “stepping into the shoes,” by innovating, by unleashing its own great creative initiative. That is part of the communist mass line. And it is not like we should envision our communist movement as a mega-thinktank of revolution, preparing future generals and ambassadors in some academic way. Yes, we mainly “rely on the people” to solve the great problem of leading and administering all of society. and many many people will step forward to take up tasks they would NEVER dream they would do.
But there is also, alongside that (alongside our PRINCIPAL mass line strategy for solving these problems) also a real need for highly trained and sophisticated political cadre — for statesmen, planners and organizers of a highly trained kind.
One of the advantages of Mao’s road to power was that his party had administered a series of smaller “mini-states” (i.e. political base areas) and were able to develop policies, and cadre over time (with many experiments and experiences) — so that when they were faced with leading a countrywide process they were quite a bit more prepared and hardened than most oppositional movements. (Yenan became a great cadre school preparing communist recruits for a greatly expanded army after WW2, and then to create and lead a new China-wide government. And I suspect that the cantonments in Nepal have been playing that kind of a role in their revolutionary process — from some reports becoming universities of the revolution.)
This is why I have always been wary of arguments that lightly condemn the communist ‘party-state.’ If we are not going to try to seize and wield the OLD state, and if we are not going to generate waves of new cadre within sophisticated party and army formations, where exactly will the many hundreds of thousands of cadre come from to create and lead the new state and the new order?
In other words: Any serious political movement needs professionally trained cadre and leaders — and there will inevitably be large gaps between the understanding of those who lead the party and (hopefully growing and raw) ranks of party supporters.
And while that is true for all serious movements — it has particularly acute manifestations for movements that don’t intend to just pressure the old state or “take it over” with a new administration at the top.
The important point I draw from Miles’ comment is that the whole organization — the whole party – needs to be “preparing minds and organizing forces for revolution.” This is not just a problem for a few people “at the top,” while the task of everyone else becomes acting as “support staff” carrying out the routines of maintaining an oppositional movement (creating and selling the press, raising funds etc.)
If these issues aren’t placed in the hands (i.e. in the minds) of communists generally (and then increasingly in the hands of widening sections of the advanced) then we have no chance of actually making a movement that can make a new society. This too is a part of the mass line.
Many of the left groups i encounter have trained their cadre to be “movement organizers” — and despite their socialist and communist beliefs, they are organizationally incapable of even considering other tasks. You can sometime ask communist activists (with decades of participation) about their views on socialist planning, and they are often not really engaged or prepared on such questions.
You get a sense of the lack of preparation for anything else. (Who is prepared to engage the problems of a planned economy in a society like the U.S.? Who has studied communist military doctrine? What does it mean to say “we want socialism” but create an organization that only knows how to organize protests over and over?)
This was the question of “Jimmy Higgins” — what is the model of a good communist? Is it the self-sacrificing worker-activist with heart and class instinct? Or is it Principal Lung in “Breaking with Old Ideas” who is able to actually analyze, lead and take initiative in extremely complex and unprecedented conditions, based on a real grounding in political line and multi-sided experience?
When Miles talks about the gap between leaders and “practical workers” — there is a lot to think about. Did a widening gap flowed from the “concept of professional revolutionary”? did it flow from a particular conception of professional revolutionary? How much of a gap is inevitable or necessary?
My view is not to see that problem in terms of “the gap,” but in terms of the degree to which the bulk of party cadre were allowed to “settle into their tasks” — with semi-permanent lifetime assignments (accountant, typesetter, newspaper seller), with a intense workload that precluded political study, a policy of “political self-study” (that prevented study groups in the party, and became a practice “of the rich get richer.”)
This was initiated in the early 1980s under the slogan of “professionalizing the party” and developing a “well oiled machine.” And (at that time) there as a need for division of labor, skill development, creation of printshops, design groups etc. But there was not shakeup, no rotation, no crosstraining, no switching of tasks for many people — and a workload that forced many people to abandon ongoing and diverse study. In the absense of organized study groups, summer courses, hiatus-from-main-task, rotating of political cadre etc. — the slogan of professionalization of the party became a network of ruts, and a framework for a degree of depolarization of dedicated cadre. Avakian would later look over the apparatus he had led for decades and complain bitterly about the “moronization” of party membership — as if he had no responsibility for that, and as if the party core deserved to be disrespected in such a demeaning way.
In other words, there was a real problem of abandonment of ongoing political education among the rank-and-file. And a big part of that was the “control freak” fear of general discussion among the cadre — what else can explain that bizarre insistance on “self study” as the main form of internal political education.
I see all that as a problem rather independent from the need to have cores of professionally trained political cadre of various kinds.
But I don’t see this as mainly an argument against “professional revolutionaries.” After all, if a revolutionary movement doesn’t have cores of “professional revolutionaries” — how is it possible to fulfill its tasks? And doesn’t it (despite intentions) fashion itself into a defacto pressure group?
Miles Ahead said
OK…was going off of your response on the other thread, but what i wrote about half an hour ago was:
Thank you Mike for your in depth response. Usually I mull over various comments for a few days, trying to digest it all. But have to respond on the q.t. to one part of what you said:
Put that way, I think it is a particular “conception” (or as I said, a bastardization) of professional revolutionaries that is the “main deviation” if you will.”, and how that affects the theoretical and practical struggle, both within the organization itself, as well as on a broader scale.
Like you said,
I think inevitably there is going to be a “gap” (for lack of a better word) or not necessarily an antagonistic contradiction between leadership and led, but to make that into a principle, and not try and overcome those barriers, IMO leads to an organization of mainly sycophants amongst the rank and file cadre, and that becomes even more problematic than just being a “support staff.”
Thing is, and this is based on my experience—hopefully others have had better experiences—while paying lip service to being a “professional revolutionary”, the way it came down was – for the rank and file cadre to not just “settle into their tasks” but what was encouraged was to become more “professionally” adept at their assigned task; often times that was seen as their main (and sometimes only) contribution to the revolutionary struggle.
And more importantly, most often those “tasks” did not include being part of, or even questioning things, on a theoretical level.
Mike: “You get a sense of the lack of preparation for anything else.” How true.
But it isn’t just a “sense” of lack of preparation.
If the concept of being a professional revolutionary isn’t, in practice, more encompassing, if waging more collective theoretical struggle (and collective political education) isn’t seen as an integral part of preparing all the professional revolutionary forces, including the “organizers” in the field, this reverberates back onto the organization’s/party leadership, and their ability to lead. Thus, there is little, if any real preparation—in both an immediate revolutionary situation, nor thereafter.
And IMO, those seemingly professional revolutionaries are at times left impotent, with little flexibility at their command and an ability to both analyze and act, even lead,, in the midst of changing situations and circumstances. Seems to me, genuine professional revolutionaries need to raise the bar, most especially within their own ranks, and not lower it. And raising the bar is both the responsibility of the leadership as well as the cadre.
Kasama Observer said
Mike got it right when he said
Nepal is 1980 and before remained a group of feudal mini-states under shadow of feudal state at the centre which had elements of bureaucratic and comprador capitalism. Remote villages, highly inaccessible due to harsh mountainous terrain and snow fed fierce and deep rivers. There were no roads at the mountainous side of the country. Though production relations in those villages were primitive, they could be school for management of local economy and governance.
As most of the leaders of Nepali left movement are from well-to-do farmer families of these villages they might have learned management skills from their parents, ruling class of their villages. Armed with revolutionary education, they could use those management skills to those feudal mini-states into revolutionary base areas. That could be one of the reason that most of liberated zones or base areas developed during peoples’ war were in the remote hills.
After popular movement in 1990 there were voices among cadres of CPN (UML), then a largest communist party on Nepal, that now party engage in building communes among registered members and well-wishers. The argument was that communes will isolate exploitative classes from masses and emerge as fetus of revolutionary state. As leadership of that party had planned to turn that party to reactionary one, it did not listen to its cadres.
UCPN-Maoist had developed some communes, schools and rudimentary health care institutions in countryside during people’s war. They had peoples’ government, peoples’ courts, collective farming and collective small factories in some of their base areas.
Had they continued these institutions they could be best schools for policy development at the centre. Instead solving hypothetical problems for future they would have real problems to solve. Policies to solve these real problems work as building blocks for policies of future revolutionary state.
Even religious rights like Christian Missionaries and Indian Gurus like Sai Baba, Satpal Ji Maharaj, Kripalu Ji Maharaj, etc, mobilize huge number of Nepalis in productive works like school and factories in their names to make money out of their religious rhetoric.
In this context, when communists are largest electoral political force in Nepal, it would not difficult for them to mobilize cadres in productive activities while training them to solve day-to-day problems based on Marxists, Leninist, Maoists principles. It would greatly help in ratifying mistakes made by Bolsheviks and Chinese Communist Party.
To be able to deal with future political complexities and develop revolutionary ‘think-tank’ or ‘shadow government’ revolutionaries have to act now like Nepal Maoists were doing during peoples’ war or Indian Maoists are doing at Dandakaranya forests. I think it is easier to build sustainable cooperatives and communes at peace-time then at war-time as there is no alternative of war for final victory
EnCee said
Geez, I just get so much out of this site the more I visit. I love the level of discussion and discourse on getting to the meat of the problem with so many of these issues which, in my experience, never got discussed when I was in a party.
I don’t know if this throws a monkey wrench in there but here it goes.
One of the things I found which was a problem with the group I worked with was that people who became the “professional” revolutionaries seemed to become increasingly detached from any actual experience with the working class. For starters we had a rather privileged petty bourgeois lawyer take “time off” working to become a full time organizer. This was somewhat commendable, but when you consider he lived in a pretty nice house without fear of want it kind of put things in perspective. This might have been countenanced but in light of other actions it became increasingly questionable.
The one that gets me the most was the insistence on using young people who had limited work/life experience to staff the office. I can understand the appreciation for youth. They are young, they have a lot of energy, a lot of spit and vinegar, or what have you. Most of all, they have free time. But, promoting them as “leaders” of the working class when they have more experience working in a party apparatus rather than in an actual job seems to be missing something. This “trend” also manifests itself with older comrades, and can be seen with some of the older party formations. There are some people that are reaching the point or have reached the point where they have spent more time out of the workforce doing “party work” than actual time actually working.
I don’t want to go too overboard in my criticism. I appreciate your nuanced understanding that the new state apparatus of the working class needs to come from somewhere. But, for me at least, there seems to be a certain balance you need to reach between people being “developed” (or in some cases, groomed) for “leadership” positions and those who actually need to fight it out and emerge organically as leaders of their class. I think this is especially true in non-revolutionary periods. It’s not like the revolution is going to come tomorrow. I mean, we never know, but I think people can get a pretty good sense of whether or not revolution is within the realm of possibility to justify some of these questionable practices.
I don’t know if this criticism is myopic or if I am missing some fundamental appreciation of taking people out of the “class struggle” but given the times we live in I can’t help but think it leads to some fundamental errors in your political line and the development of your party. (Or, rather, the party I was previously part of)
The Marxist-Leninist party I was in always talked a lot about how you needed to prepare now, because once the revolutionary moment or opportunity arrived you needed to be prepared. But, increasingly that just seemed to justify keeping the same people in positions of power and to make it easy for the “leadership” to run things the way they wanted to.
This goes back to my previous examples. It was easier for the “privileged lawyer” to keep the “young activist” on board as a “developing cadre” because it suited his work style or preference. But, I felt it was a disservice to our party because it elevated certain people above others and more importantly overlooked developing and budding new people who had “different” qualities to contribute that may have expanded our potential in unforeseen ways.
b_y said
i want to say that i appreciate what miles ahead and encee are offering in terms of organizational critique in relation to party and pre-party formations. my earlier post in the INCITE! thread was anchored specifically in a discussion about nonprofits, but this is the direction i intended to head, and i think their posts are much more substantial in terms of experience and informed perspective than what i could’ve offered.
b_y said
but to acknowledge a point made earlier by tellnolies that i did not properly consider, professional cadre already functionally exist, sometimes including some of the most skilled and intelligent organizers of the movement. but they are working for a different employer (NPIC and unions), so to speak.
EnCee said
I tried posting this the other day. I not sure if it did not go through or if it displeased the moderator?
[moderator note to EnCee: The original comment got caught in the spam filter. As it was retrieved, it was made into its own self-standing post. Cheers.]
Joel said
This is why as far as I’m concerned that you need elections and you need people moving through the “leadership” positions. Not every year necessarily, but regularly.
The other benefit of having people having experience in “leadership” positions is that when they’re not formally in one, they want to know what’s happening etc. etc. and that keeps everyone else a little more honest.
I also think though that that video on group leadership has had a big impact on me. Getting new people to chant at rallies and chanting with them to back them up. Spreading “leadership” responsibility around so that it’s
A) Less stressful
B) Better for them, as they have experienced comrades around to support and back them up.