Kasama

“[During 1914-1918]  Lenin advanced a number of closely related strategic principles; some that reaffirmed radical positions that had been eroded and others that were essentially new.

“In the first place among these was the revolutionary obligation to utilize all forms of struggle against one’s own imperialism under conditions of imperialist war – including those forms that were “illegal”…

“In second place, Lenin challenged the trajectory of social democracy towards an institutionalized junior management role in various national capitalisms.

“In the third place, the Lenin of this period rejected conceptions of necessary protracted intermediate stages for the Russian revolution.”

“There was a time when I scraped through the Collected Works quite diligently, looking for major Lenin positions that appeared ‘correct’ to me – or, at least, ones that were better than Soviet Marxism’s permitted texts and the ‘famous quotations’… I think some of the Kasama neoMaoists are engaged in a parallel endeavor – attempting to credit Mao with the elements in Chinese development that they view positively, and separating him from those not so positive by assigning them to contending positions within the party, or to the ubiquitous ‘objective limitations.’”

This piece is excerpted from the version that  appeared in Sketchy Thoughts blog.  Replies by some who are mentioned, as well as others, can be found there as well as at  Gathering Forces and Kersplebedeb.  Don Hamerquist was a leading figure in the Sojourner Truth Organization (during 70s and 80s). Kasama is posting this in two parts (Part 2 is here) — and the subtitles of those two parts are ours.

Author’s note:

This is a rough piece, slightly modified from two earlier drafts that were circulated privately to generate some discussion. This version is also unfinished and its analysis and strategic and organizational conclusions are tentative and provisional. I apologize for this and for the casual citations and references to authors and political tendencies that I am just getting around to considering carefully. I’m putting the argument out in this form, hoping that any frustrations and irritations with the general sloppiness, as well as the likely differences with political characterizations that are seen as mistaken, will provide added leverage towards needed discussions on revolutionary strategy and organization. Some of the initial responses and reactions are being posted separately. These include a few responses from positions that are cited or criticized in the text. I have made some minor changes in this version as a result of these, but nothing, I think, that would undermine or deflect the thrust of any of the interventions. More such arguments have been solicited and will continue to be welcomed.

For Part 1:

Lenin, Leninism, and some leftovers

By Don Hamerquist

“Leninist socialism as defined in the period of Stalin contained something wrong somewhere…” (Binod, Nepal, August 2009)

This will be a start on some arguments that I have been threatening for a while… I regard myself as a Leninist – frequently to the dismay of others of the ilk – and have always attempted to work to the extent possible within or towards what I view as a Leninist organizational framework.

I begin from the extended discussion of the “What In the Hell…” post 01/13/2006. This opens with the question… “What in the Hell is the appeal of Lenin?”…

The “What in the Hell…” question is not directed to me, but to unidentified people who the blog author feels are otherwise semi-intelligent leftists. Nevertheless, leaving open if I can make the semi-intelligent bar, I’ll venture what will doubtless be seen as a pro-Lenin answer to the question. So this is my take on the appeal of Lenin – which also leads into positions on his continuing relevance and a number of related issues.

The Period of Insurrection

In the rapidly changing conditions between 1914 and 1918, Lenin’s writings and his political activity are a case study in the confrontation of major political questions and their practical resolution on the side of anti-capitalist revolution.

For radical anti-capitalists, the crucial elements of the period were the degeneration of the international workers movement into parliamentary reformism and national chauvinism and the transformation of proletarian revolutionary organizations and institutions into bulwarks of conservatism and caution. Towards the end of the period, this political environment was transformed by the rapid development of revolutionary potentials in Russia, and, to a lesser degree, throughout the world.

During these crucial years Lenin advanced a number of closely related strategic principles; some that reaffirmed radical positions that had been eroded and others that were essentially new. In the first place among these was the revolutionary obligation to utilize all forms of struggle against one’s own imperialism under conditions of imperialist war – including those forms that were “illegal”. This principle stressed turning the imperialist war into a (class) civil war and supporting and accelerating the national liberation aspirations and struggles of peoples oppressed by one’s own capitalism. This was not just a discussion topic or a matter of abstract stance. It was the grounding for Lenin’s practical political program in the turbulence of 1917. The fact that this position has become a mixture of meaningless and obscurantist slogans and debating points, notably in its current use by neo-trotskyists of the Marcy bent, does nothing to diminish its relevance in the WWI period.

In the second place, Lenin challenged the trajectory of social democracy towards an institutionalized junior management role in various national capitalisms. This role is a long established fact now, but prior to WWI it was still the focus of a strategic debate over social democratic and anarcho-syndicalist parliamentary and trade union tactics in the “advanced” capitalist countries. In 1917 Russia, Lenin and his allies presented a maximalist alternative, embodied in the prioritization of Soviet Power and the rejection of the path of the “Ten Capitalist Ministers”. These issues were at the core of the debates in the Petrograd Soviet during 1917 when Lenin’s distinctive positions developed from a small minority position within the Bolsheviks, themselves a distinct minority in the Soviet, into the hegemonic tendency.

In the third place, the Lenin of this period rejected conceptions of necessary protracted intermediate stages for the Russian revolution – and by implication elsewhere in the world – whether such stages were justified by an alleged backwardness of economic development or the limitations of working class consciousness – or any of a range of similar reasons. He emphasized the immediate anti-capitalist potential, including the possibility for a successful class challenge to capitalist state power – a working class insurrection – specifically, although not only in Russia. In taking this stance he also effectively de-emphasized the guiding, controlling and managing role of the organized revolutionary groups – a short-lived change in priorities that, I think, contains an implied critique of many subsequent problems in communist theory and practice.

In the fourth place, Lenin advanced this strategic perspective as part of an organizational separation from opposing social democratic and anarchist tendencies. Other revolutionaries of the period shared substantial political agreement with many of his positions and in some cases developed them earlier and expressed them more carefully and coherently. But most of them, with Rosa Luxemburg as the most obvious example, tended to function as organizationally indistinct minority tendencies in a larger social democratic and, sometimes, anarchist milieu. This limited their ability to test their positions through independent radical organizing initiatives and severely limited their options at moments of revolutionary crisis.

In my opinion, this Soviet Revolutionary period is a crucial episode in the historic struggle for the liberation of humanity from capital and the establishment of communism. It is one of the central human experiences that provide the hope for a different future. Notwithstanding the huge problems, some of which should have been apparent at the moment and others that can be seen clearly in historical hindsight, these political initiatives associated with Lenin, and the accessible history around them, are an example of a revolutionary praxis, warts and all, that should be more than enough to explain Lenin’s continuing interest to all revolutionaries – including those with differences extending beyond tactical emphasis to matters of principle.

Lenin fought for his perspective during this period, at times against a Bolshevik majority. He continued the struggle through the destruction of the Russian autocratic state, the overthrow of Russian capitalism, and the establishment of what he believed was a transitional “worker’s state” as a beachhead for an imminent international proletarian revolution. His approach expedited the development of a revolutionary project within the Bolsheviks – although without guaranteeing either its permanence or any specific outcomes. By any accounting, these are monumental historical achievements and it is childish to denigrate them. They still constitute the clearest attempt to collectively implement what Alain Badiou calls the “communist hypothesis”.

The legitimate critical review

The fact that this was an immense struggle under extreme conditions and with major limitations on understanding and resources doesn’t adequately explain, and certainly doesn’t justify, the eventual outcomes. The historical fact is that with dismaying speed, fetishized and mystified organizational forms swallowed emerging capacities to elaborate a revolutionary practice. Instead of facilitating the emancipation and liberation of the oppressed and exploited, monumental piles of shit in Russia and around the world were the result. This outcome was not the unavoidable collateral damage from the struggle against “class enemies,” real and fabricated, and it was not the inevitable consequence of any “objective conditions.” To a significant degree, it was the result of policies and approaches which had available alternatives, and, while the mere existence of other options does not prove they would have been more successful in either the long or the short run, could the outcomes have been much worse?

To me it seems undeniable that responsibility for the degeneration of the Russian revolution rests on Lenin. Particularly on the Lenin that is not the insurrectionist revolutionary of 1917, but the architect of the revolutionary party in 1903 and the theorist of the worker’s state in 1921 and the NEP in 1922. This full legacy is complex and ambiguous, but only apologists and ignorant people deny that it has elements that undermine the democratic and autonomous popular movements and institutions that must be the substance of the struggle for communism. But this darker side of Lenin is also relevant to our current problems and potentials – relevant to many important questions where none of us have been inoculated against screwing up, and, in fact, have become quite good at it. Accordingly this side of Lenin’s legacy does not subtract from his historical significance, it provides additional reasons to take it seriously.

If we are to actually learn from history, we must hold the Bolsheviks and Lenin responsible for how Russia developed and not waste time groping for partial and selective exonerations of this policy or that person. However, the process should not obscure the fact that the Russian experience is also our collective legacy. If it is scarred by bad answers, most were addressed to real questions, and many of these questions have not dissolved in the mist of history. We should not approach this collective legacy with the shallow and comfortable polarizations that have afflicted both M.L. and revolutionary anarchist perspectives. At this late date, it should not be seen as a moral divide between good and evil or a political divide between proletarian revolutionaries and petty bourgeoisie dilettantes. A clearer understanding of this legacy will help the left avoid the sterile confrontations between dogmatic and moralistic mindsets that obstruct the necessary discussions and joint initiatives within and between circles that should be able to move ahead in an increasingly cooperatively manner.

Most contemporary Marxist-Leninists spend little time on the full range of Leninist politics from the revolutionary period. (This is equally true of the bulk of their critics and some problems that originate from this additional fact will emerge down the road of this argument.) Instead, they emphasize the conception of the leading and guiding role of the centralized vanguard party – the repository for a determinate science of social formations and, as such, the ordained leadership of the people’s struggles without which these struggles must inevitably fail. The mythic Bolsheviks, “…a chain without weak links…” in the profoundly mistaken words of L. Althusser, becomes the unquestioned model.

This party-centric approach asserts that only revolutionary movements led by centralized and disciplined parties have significantly challenged capitalist power. I argued from this flawed premise with blissful ignorance for decades, so I certainly understand its hold on others. Without getting into all the problems of logic and historical understanding that the position raises, it should be enough to point out that, on the one hand, the 1917 Bolsheviks came nowhere close to this centralized and disciplined model, and, on the other hand, many subsequent insurrectionary situations have contained “communist” parties that were quite monolithically centralized and disciplined, but no more revolutionary than my television set – or the capitalist ruling class.

This questionable assertion of distinctive and unique accomplishment – “we Communists have made the revolutions – you anarchists (or Trotskyists in an earlier day) haven’t” – is typically combined with placing an exaggerated blame for failures and limitations on the equivocation and vacillation of the non-M.L.party left – on alleged errors of omission by radicals who failed to challenge for power or to fully support those that did. This cripples any examination of the exercise of working class authority and power prior to, during, and following revolutionary crises; and, more specifically, it is a sectarian barrier to a thorough criticism of the actions of organized revolutionaries in these periods. As a consequence, real mistakes of commission appear as unavoidable or as isolated “accidents”, and policies and attitudes that cannot be justified are rationalized and minimized in the name of single-minded revolutionary commitment to the ultimate goal. This mode of discussion also tends to divert attention from many less discussed historical examples where the M.L. Party itself is a major obstacle to revolutionary progress and not just a source of equivocation and vacillation.

However, the rejection of this party-centric religion does not mean we should embrace an alternative dogma. The Soviet experience was generally accepted by all contemporary classes and strata, friends and enemies alike, as a revolution to overthrow the power of capital. Whether or not the objectives were seen in a common way, and whatever the criticisms of the ultimate goals and the methods selected to reach them, this was the widely shared view. Now, independent radicals frequently assert that the actual outcomes of the revolution demonstrate the covert goals of Lenin and the Bolsheviks – their real motivation for seizing power.

Larry Gambone’s anarchist critique of “State and Revolution”, a reasoned treatment in my view, notes this general tendency among anarchists without indicating the extent to which he accepts it:

“A major bone of contention between anarchist and Marxists is over the notion of the “workers’ state.” Anarchists typically see these concepts as a Marxist desire to erect a powerful centralized state and party dictatorship over the working class.” (Porcupine Blog, “State & Revolution”, p. 1)

This typical view is the J. Edgar Hoover “Masters of Deceit” conception of communism in its anarchist clothing. To the contrary, the substitution of vanguard party for revolutionary class, the substitution of the party leadership for a developing critical cadre, the transformation of a revolutionary praxis into a religious view of truth and validity and science, the institution of the Taylorist factory regime, indeed the elimination of direct democratic participation in virtually every arena – all happened, but not because they were part of a covert authoritarian project from the outset. The Bolsheviks (and other “successful” communist parties) certainly included fakers and frauds – and perhaps even some “capitalist roaders” to use the Maoist tautology – but none of this defined the Soviet experience or determined whether or where it went off path – which it most assuredly did. The actual process was a complex transmogrification of mistaken means initially aimed at legitimate ends. We oversimplify and caricature this process only at the great risk of repeating some of its elements.

I don’t want to spend much time on this point since hopefully many radicals are moving beyond these oppositions, but I must point out that this particular dogma is an aspect of a deadening fatalism that is apparent in a wide spectrum of left perspectives – and not only anarchist ones. How can we approach politics as if what people and movements do and did, and how they understand what they are doing when they are doing it is not really that significant? But, if they can be completely misled for generations, engaging in massive self-sacrificing struggles for transcendent goals that only strengthen what is struggled against – ending with nothing more than what would have been possible with complete passivity and capitulation to capitalist rule…what else can we conclude?

(I remember how difficult it was for the Facing Reality Crew to explain why revolutionary political work was meaningful when state capitalism appeared as the ordained result of every conceivable political struggle and alignment of forces: “Organize a successful anti-capitalist insurrection – end up with state capitalism; get crushed by a fascist street force and lose to a totalitarian capitalist reaction – end up with state capitalism; shape a mass popular upsurge into a movement for basic structural reforms – end up with state capitalism.” Only a faith in some underlying teleology, not to be disrupted by meddling communists, differentiates this from various capitalist “end of history” and neoliberal “There Is No Alternative” conceptions.)

Serious discussions of the core issues and questions of Leninism and its successes and failures in Russia are needed to determine what it might mean if the particular insurrectionist “communist hypothesis” identified with Lenin is indeed “saturated” (exhausted?) as Badiou claims. I believe that it is not, at least not if it is explicitly separated from the “party/state” formation that emerged in both the Soviet Union and China, and I will make some arguments in this regard later in this piece. However, genuinely satisfactory answers to such questions are entirely dependent on the development of a working political and intellectual framework for the distressingly small cadre of radicals that are committed to liberatory working class revolution.

Not just a framework for talk: As Marx said in the Eighth Thesis on Feuerbach: “All mysteries…find their rational solution in human practice and the comprehension of this practice.” We certainly have lots of “mysteries,” but lack the collective political practice necessary to test and evaluate alternative strategic initiatives that might provide some rational solutions. In my opinion the necessary first step in this direction in this country, and perhaps elsewhere, is to self-consciously bring together social anarchists and those Marxist and Leninists that could live with the lower case ‘m’ and ‘l’ – although they may not have realized it yet. I’m well aware that there are many, perhaps most, in each camp that think this is impossible, unnecessary, or a mistake. I hope that later sections of this paper give some reason to believe they are wrong and helps build some bridges towards broader agreement among revolutionaries.

But first, back to Lenin…There was a time when I scraped through the Collected Works quite diligently, looking for major Lenin positions that appeared “correct” to me – or, at least, ones that were better than Soviet Marxism’s permitted texts and the “famous quotations” (also Althusser d.h.). My emphasis was “State and Revolution”, the “Testament” material, some stuff from around the 1905 upsurge, and, of course the extensive writings on dual power and insurrection in 1917 that I referenced earlier. The comparisons were with “What Is To be Done,” “Left Wing Communism,” and the generally bad stuff from the 10th and 11th Party Congresses. This dichotomized Lenin could be extended out much further, e.g., “Materialism & Empiro-Criticism” vs. “Philosophical Notebooks.”

(I think some of the Kasama neoMaoists are engaged in a parallel endeavor – attempting to credit Mao with the elements in Chinese development that they view positively, and separating him from those not so positive by assigning them to contending positions within the party, or to the ubiquitous “objective limitations.” That is another important discussion that I will only touch in this paper.)

I’ve come to the conclusion that such efforts are essentially for historians, not activists. This history will not be reinterpreted to any good and productive end by the likes of us before the development of the struggle makes the effort redundant. So I attempt to incorporate aspects of Lenin’s positions that I think are relevant and useful and discount and dismiss other points without assuming any obligation to reconcile contradictions to provide the appearance of systematic coherence.

“Vanguard Party”

Although I have been arguing that it is an essentially pointless exercise to try to determine what parts of Lenin are more authentically “Leninist”, this is no excuse for not examining some recurring themes in his writing and activity, particularly ones with current ramifications. The Leninist theme that is directly relevant to this piece concerns the nature and role of the “vanguard party” and I would like to spend some time on it.

There can be no doubt that Lenin was completely committed to the conception and the development of a unified, disciplined and centralized revolutionary party–a cadre party able to act as the leadership of the working class in struggle. In addition, and much more problematic–also far less clear in Lenin’s writings and political practice than with the “Leninists” that succeeded him–is the conception of the party as a core institution that should aim to unify, discipline, and centralize the entire working class and/or the “revolutionary people” around itself.

However, every one of these terms, “unified,” “disciplined,” “centralized,” etc., is ambiguous. Lenin interpreted and applied them all differently at different points – sometimes dramatically so, as with the famous critique of the “spontaneous movement” in “What Is To be Done” and the subsequent not so famous critique of the critique a couple of years later in “The Reorganization of the Party”.

Lenin wanted a revolutionary organization that was “professional,” even in 1905 when he called for a membership composition of “…one Social-Democratic intellectual to several hundred Social-Democratic workers.” (X, p.36). He wanted an organization that could think critically, even when he called for “…one-tenth theory and nine-tenths practice” (X, p.38). He wanted an organization that could act decisively and exercise effective discipline even when he said “Criticism…must be quite free…not only at Party meetings, but also at public meetings.” (X, p.442)

(You might note that I’m relying disproportionately on Vol. 10. Much of our Collected Lenin has not survived the move to the woods. While I do think that I could easily support the same points with other references, some may disagree.)

Consider again, as a contrast, Althusser’s statement about Lenin building the Bolshevik Party as the essential subjective element of the Russian revolutionary process– a “chain with no weak links.” This is the complete passage:

“Lenin was correct to see in it (“it” being the political circumstances of Russia in 1917 d.h.) the objective conditions of a Russian revolution, and to forge its subjective conditions, the means of a decisive assault on the weak link in the imperialist chain, in a Communist Party that was a chain without weak links.” (For Marx, p. 98. Althusser emphasis)

This historically laughable assertion illustrates the common core – the normative objective – of the dominant Marxist-Leninist conception of the vanguard role of the party – past and present. Althusser’s theoretical argument for the centrality of the party refers directly to his understanding of the famous “What Is To Be Done” critique of spontaneity. (see “For Marx”, footnote 7. p. 171.). Most of the current Marxist Leninist constellation, including some pretty bright and well read people, still holds to that rigid and a-historical view, actually more a characteristic of Kautsky and Plekhanov than Lenin. This is the case despite the fact that this critique is exactly what Lenin modified in the 1905 documents cited above, and despite the fact that most of Luxemburg’s contemporaneous criticisms of that document – which she viewed as Kautskyist – have been well vindicated by historical developments. (Her positions on a number of other questions, some directly related and some not, have also survived quite well, in my opinion.)

Many anarchists assert that the What Is To Be Done critique of mass spontaneity, at least as it has come to be interpreted, effectively denies the capacity of the working class to emancipate itself and robs the conception of communism of its central dynamic, the expansion of working class autonomy and human freedom. They argue that this underlies a number of the policy mistakes that followed the Russian October. I think they are certainly right on the first point and probably at least partially right on the second. The common M.L. conception of the revolutionary party elevates centralized party command over popular creativity and initiative and there is no doubt that this should be explicitly confronted and reversed to maximize revolutionary potentials. That was true in 1917. It is more clearly true now.

The problems with the militarized structure of command and discipline which was consolidated in the Russian Party and the Communist International within a few months of Lenin’s death are pretty obvious. I don’t see much point in running through another what’s wrong list for Chapter Six of Stalin’s “Foundations”. We’ve heard enough of “iron discipline” and know quite well that it is hardly true that once the “line is determined, organization determines everything.” However the trajectory that this issue followed from the Russian revolution to this disastrous end does raise some interesting questions – at least for me: Is there a clear path from Lenin’s approach to revolutionary organization to the Third International orthodoxy? If there isn’t, as I think is the case, is there a central weakness within Lenin’s perspective that facilitated this development? I think there is. Finally, and I confess, rhetorically, why doesn’t the general recognition of the problems of “actually existing socialism” lead to a more critical approach to communist organization among those thinking Leninists who are actually attempting to organize something?

The historical questions are complicated. At one end there is Lenin’s Kautskian “What is to be Done” argument for the necessity to introduce revolutionary consciousness into the working class from the “outside.” Almost twenty years later we have the terrible, at least I think they are terrible, statements in “Left Wing Communism” that ridicule any idea of a distinction or conflict, not to mention a contradiction, between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of a party in the name of the proletariat. But we also have Lenin’s explicit recognition, paralleling Luxemburg’s observations in Mass Strike and Gramsci’s in the Ordine Nuovo period, that in the upsurges of 1905 and 1917, the masses of people were more revolutionary than the social democrats and the majority of Bolsheviks. And on the organizational side there are the well known examples of major strategic differences within the Bolsheviks being tolerated and even debated openly beyond the party under the most extreme circumstances, e.g., the “strikebreaking” of Kamenev and Zinoviev, without these individuals, or the substantial minorities they represented in the Bolshevik party, being significantly sanctioned.

Lenin frequently referred to the backwardness of the party cadre and leadership, their inability to think dialectically, and their propensity to administrative solutions, resolving ideological and theoretical issues through bureaucratic authority – sometimes even militarily. This might be the basis for a criticism of Lenin for holding an exaggerated sense of his own relative capacities, although it would take a lot of arrogance to push this point very far. However, it is no indication that he believed that the vanguard party was any place near infallibility.

We also have the interesting late writings where Lenin is so concerned with the increasingly bureaucratic and administrative character of Soviet Power that he proposes a reorganization that would empower the non-party “Workers and Peasants Inspectorate” to oversee the functioning of the elements of the state and government, and, by inference, the party. This is also hardly compatible with an exaggerated sense of what the communist party is and what it can do. In fact, it seems more like a foreshadowing of the positive aspect of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, capsulized in the slogan, “Bombard the Party Headquarters.”

So I want to deal with two partial strands of the history. In one, the distinctively Leninist elements are in opposition to the future Bolshevik degeneration. In the other, his positions are a significant contribution to the process. The first strand relates to inner-party life, specifically the issues of debate and criticism that are codified under the heading of democratic centralism. The second theme I take from the anarchist, Larry Gambone (apologies if I get any of it wrong) who stresses Lenin’s conflation of the concepts of centralization and unification, in a way that facilitates a reliance on mechanical and instrumental management techniques rather than the expansion of popular participation in a more organic and (dare I say it) more dialectical approach to the revolutionary process. I’m dwelling on these issues, not only because they have substantial intrinsic historic interest, but because I believe the questions involved and the range of inadequate answers to them, still plague us.

I’d like to get at the first point through a discussion that developed in the French Communist Party long after Lenin and Stalin had left the stage. In 1977, L. Althusser published a series of articles on the 22nd Congress of the French Communist Party. (I’ve mentioned Althusser earlier, assuming people will have some knowledge of his biography and his theoretical output, both of which in my opinion are extremely important.) The French Party, taking advantage of the increasingly flaccid authority from Moscow, was moving towards the EuroCommunist stance of the Spanish and Italian parties in a belated and unsuccessful attempt to come to grips with the obvious problems of Soviet Marxism and the increasing failures of its own strategic perspective.

Althusser was a spokesperson for a minority tendency in the French party. He was on record as sympathetic to Maoism, had endorsed the ambivalent 70/30 attitude the Chinese Communists took towards Stalin, and seemed to agree, at least for a substantial period, with the Chinese hostility to the post 1956 Soviet critique of Stalinism. Althusser also was opposed to the parliamentary reformism and the so-called “socialist humanism” of Eurocommunism. Here again he incorporated the Chinese positions which, significantly, were not initially expressed as direct criticisms of the Soviets, but were addressed to “Comrade Togliatti,” the Italian communist and Comintern veteran who was an early advocate of what become Eurocommunism.

Althusser’s articles were thinly veiled criticisms from the left of proposed changes in the Party’s attitude towards democracy and state power, including its renewed emphasis on cross class unity and the “peaceful parliamentary transition to socialism.” But by 1977 the situation in China had deteriorated to the point where these politics no longer fit within a pro-Chinese stance and Althusser was limited to proposals to reform the structure and practice of the French C.P. to promote fuller debate and discussion of strategic issues within the Party and give he and his supporters’ arguments some space to gain strength. However, as Althusser notes, notwithstanding the 22nd Congress’ heavy emphasis on openness and democracy in the society, it had neither presented nor entertained initiatives to expand them within the party. So the prospects for his initiative were dim from the outset.

Althusser’s interventions immediately raised the issues of democratic centralism as it had come to be understood in Communist parties fifty years or so after the Russian Revolution. The emphasis in this concept always goes to the second term – centralism –where the ‘iron discipline’ originates. The democracy is normally more of a problematic afterthought that provides dangerous potentials for individualist and petty bourgeois weakening of the needed discipline and resolve – and to the extent it exists, it is always “guided” and managed – usually with a very heavy hand.

For better or worse, I have a good deal more experience with these matters than most current U.S. leftists, so it might not be out of order to indicate some typical operational features of democratic centralism. Challenges from below to basic strategic approaches or major theoretical concepts are seldom, if ever, in order. Open discussions of differences are generally limited to questions of “political line” and only permitted during designated and highly structured periods, usually pre-Congress/Convention discussions. (Many parties had very few full Congresses.) Minority arguments on “higher” bodies cannot be presented to the membership, except during pre-convention periods. Since the members of these “higher” bodies and “leading” committees are frequently co-opted or appointed, not elected, genuine differences are hard to formulate and motivate on any level. No “horizontal” political discussion or contact is permitted within the party – everything is channeled up through the structure and – sometimes -back down to the rank and file. Finally, there is no right, and very little opportunity, to raise differences within the party to individuals and groups outside of it, however relevant and important to broader constituencies the issues might be.

Implementation of this regime created ignorant and acritical communists around the world, most of them doggedly convinced of their collective capacity to provide infallible leadership for the working class, despite individually not knowing much of anything, including what was happening in the Communist movement or within the leadership of their own party. Of course, huge turnover, mass defections and some minor rebellions also resulted. All of this reaction, and particularly the rebellions, were lumped together as “deviations” and “factionalism.” Both charges carried serious weight in Party circles for a long time – not only did they invoke visceral fears of losing contact with the revolution, as perverse as that may seem now, they also brought to mind the bad things that happened to left and right deviationists and to factionalists when and where Communists gained some power.

Althusser’s articles include an instructive approach to factions and tendencies within the party. He asserted with his typical lack of historical references that “Lenin was against factions.”…and concluded that “Today the party expects something else, (other than factions d.h.) and it is right.” His practical suggestion was that party discussions on strategy should not be limited to specific periods before Congresses and that the rank and file should be aware of the differences that existed within their leadership – as was the situation, for example, in the Italian and Spanish parties at that time.

Althusser was unwilling to go any further to open up inner party life, but, predictably, his proposals went down the tube anyway. This was a sad and feeble protest. Althusser, a world class intellectual, seems not to have realized how far the democratic centralism that he was willing to accept had strayed from actual Bolshevik practice up to the 10th Congress of the CPSU in 1921 – when the Bolsheviks instituted a “temporary” ban on factions.

I have mentioned this 10th Congress period as the context for a number of Lenin’s positions that I think are among the least defensible. His support for the temporary ban on factions is one of these positions. The attack on factions at the 10th Congress was aimed primarily at the “Workers Opposition” of Kollantai and Schliapnikov, a substantial party leadership grouping that, among other things, was critical of the state capitalist features of the NEP and opposed to increasing bureaucratization and the general substitution of party authority for working class power. As I mentioned, the ban was presented as a temporary measure required by extraordinary circumstances coming out of a protracted civil war. It is also noteworthy that Lenin argued against any sanctions on the Worker’s Opposition that would have banned them from future leadership roles in the party. Not that it made much difference a few years down the road.

Significantly, I think, Lenin argued for this step, not on the predictable grounds of maintaining unity and discipline in the party, but because factional divisions shifted the locus of debate to subgroupings and obstructed a full discussion in the entire party. This is quite different, if not directly opposed to permanent limits on discussion inside the party enforced by hierarchical buffers that prevented the rank and file from knowing what their leadership was arguing about; by barriers against horizontal contacts within the party; and by a ban on open political discussions of many important issues outside of the party framework.

(Lenin’s argument supports a point that my particular “faction” in the CPUSA made regularly. In normal party operation, it is the leadership, typically the smallest bodies that meet most often, the Secretariat and the resident National Board in the old CPUSA for example, that constitutes a faction – monopolizing certain types of crucial information, holding closed discussions and debates and reaching decisions that bind minority positions to present a solid front of unanimity to the larger membership.)

In short, we have no historical reason to doubt that Lenin’s general position on party discipline at the 10th Congress was pretty much the same as the position that he had argued more than a decade before:

“The principle of democratic centralism and autonomy for local Party organizations implies universal and full freedom to criticise so long as this does not disturb the unity of a definite action…” (X, p. 443, emphasis in original)

Clearly, and the text makes it quite clear that Lenin understood this as well, this formulation is open to interpretation. While I know of no contrary statement from Lenin and it does describe how he worked at some crucial junctures, there is plenty of material for others to judge whether Lenin’s practice was generally in line with this position or whether it was an opportunistic response to a particular situation. I’m not looking to justify or condemn on these sorts of issues. My point is only that, in principle, this position is in clear conflict with the current understanding of democratic centralism, the understanding that is accepted and reinforced by Althusser and many others who define themselves as Marxist Leninist. I think that it is significant that both critics and worshippers usually credit Lenin with the same position on democracy within the party as the one clearly held by Stalin and, to some extent, Trotsky, but a position that is quite different from this explicit statement on the importance of clear and sharp open discussion.

Centralization and Unity

Whatever one’s attitude towards the Bolsheviks, the issues of organizational discipline and political unity are still relevant concerns for revolutionaries. Here I would make a short side trip to consider a piece on the Porcupine Blog website describing Larry Gambone’s approach to these issues in an organization of anarchist revolutionaries. In my opinion Gambone provides substantially less latitude for individual and minority positions, for public expression of differences, and for continuing substantive internal debate than that entailed by the Lenin position cited above. People should check it out for themselves. I suppose it might be argued that Gambone’s conception is actually more workable than Lenin’s, but that is another point.

Gambone also has a critique of Lenin’s “State and Revolution” on the same blog. I was struck with what he sees as the central weakness of Lenin’s line of argument. Gambone asserts that Lenin conflates the concepts of centralization and unity. I’m not sure whether I fully agree with his position in general, or specifically with respect to Lenin’s theoretical attitudes toward class and state. However, I found it a helpful way to characterize some problems with Lenin’s (any many others as well) positions on the role of the party on the practical issues that were confronted after the seizure of power.

Gambone is certainly right that organizational centralization is a problematic surrogate for political unification. Genuine political unity in a disciplined organization is inconceivable without a critical and a legitimately contested approach to all major strategic and theoretical issues. There can be no real political unity around positions that are not understood. The most extreme centralization in a party-type organization does not mean it has political unity – any more than it does or can in a military organization. The actual content of the Stalinist conception of the party is based on an essentially military model of leadership and discipline reinforced by a leadership monopoly of a determinist, pseudo scientific “materialist” and “objective” “theory” that supposedly provides it with unique access to objective truth. Thankfully, this model almost always has its cracks and imperfections, but to the extent it is consistently applied and enforced, it is a blueprint for religious cults, not revolutionary organizations.

When this process of bureaucratized centralization expands beyond the party and governs more and more aspects of society, it necessarily constricts the possibilities for autonomous development transforming all potential for actual unity into an imprinted uniformity. The beginnings of self government created in the Russian revolutionary process required cultivation, they could not survive the centralization through command of all elements of Soviet Society.

Of course such centralization never occurs in a political vacuum and it certainly didn’t in Russia. There were real problems confronted in post revolutionary Russia that cannot be reduced to an abstract lust for power by the Bolsheviks. As the likelihood of successful working class insurgencies in Europe diminished, the strategic problems of holding together the poor peasant/working class popular base for Soviet Power grew more pressing. The specter haunting the Soviets was not the Kolchaks or Denikins, the Allied Intervention, or any other attempt of the defeated ruling class to retake state power, it was the ‘Revolutionary Paris, Counter-revolutionary France’ dichotomy. The first generation Bolsheviks were always preoccupied with the memory of the Paris Commune. (Remember the story of Lenin dancing in the snow when the Soviets survived a day longer than the Commune.)

The Soviet response to the weakening of the strategic class alliance was to accelerate production, guided by limited and narrow economic notions of the forces of production, to meet the sometimes conflicting demands and needs of the working class (small) minority and the peasant (large) majority. That this was also Lenin’s response can be clearly seen in his remarks to the 11th CPSU Congress. (Zizek uses some phrases from this for one of his “ruthless Lenin” provocations.) This response was implemented through the party’s growing monopoly of positions of governmental authority. Less and less priority was put on transforming the relations of production and reproduction through the expansion of democratic and participatory institutions, and when moves in this direction potentially conflicted with economic growth, as they almost always did, the initiatives were routinely crushed.

It was true that significant economic growth was needed to satisfy enough of the practical expectations that people had of the revolution to maintain the class alliance between workers and peasants. However, when the growth was not easily achieved, the increasingly centralized party authority opted for capitalist conceptions of industrial efficiency, Taylorism and one man management. The centralization of the party took on an increasingly technocratic character, promoting notions that its leadership and “guiding role” could and should be exercised through monopolizing positions of bureaucratic authority. This essentially ended any discussions about alternative approaches. Where such alternatives emerged, including attempts to expand popular control, they first were seen as disruptive and – rather quickly – as counter revolutionary.

All sorts of bad things emanated from this supposed efficiency through centralization – the notion of worker’s organizations as ‘transmission belts’ for industrial policy; the formation of a professional military; one man management of the firm; the eradication of organized left opposition in the country. It is true that until he died, Lenin opposed one centralizing element, the heavy pressure to limit or eliminate the right of secession for nations historically oppressed by Russia. However that struggle was also eventually a losing one –doomed in substantial part by the priority on party “guided” and managed development that was blinded by the peculiar economist bias that the Chinese call the “theory of the productive forces.”

Revolutionary Organization and Working Class Self-Organization

I think that many contemporary Leninist conceptions of revolutionary organization are fundamentally misconceived, but my alternative to them–one that I am perversely determined to also call Leninist–regards the role of the party and of its cadre of communists as equally important, although with a quite different content. Since I am concerned with discussions of substance, not the labeling of categories, it may be confusing -even self defeating – to assert the claim to Leninism. I hope my attachment to the term comes across as more than stubbornness, since I mean it to go to the continuing relevance of Lenin’s approach to the “art” of insurrection which I intend to consider in a later section. I’ll continue to be an uncomfortable Leninist, until a more appropriate label is developed.

I’ve written a good deal about the topic of revolutionary organization. This emphasized the development of disciplined and organized revolutionary cadre able to think critically and act collectively and decisively. Rather than repeating the Gramsci-based arguments that I have used, or indicating the changes in my views over some four decades, I’d like to finish this piece with some observations on more practical and immediate issues of organization and perspective as I see them presented – or avoided – by class struggle anarchism and by some contemporary Marxists. Some of this will refer back to the prior section’s emphasis on Lenin’s legacy, but as much as possible I will deal with these issues as they come up in more current circumstances

I want to be clear from the outset that I’ve never been that familiar with anarchist tendencies and arguments and have also lost touch with some emerging trends in Leninism and neoMarxism that hopefully aren’t limited to the academy. So I reference current positions tentatively, to clarify my own views, not to critique arguments which I don’t present fully and may not adequately understand. I am completely open to criticisms in this regard and fully expect to modify my positions and arguments in response to them.

In this context, I want to make a few explanatory comments about some anarchists that I cite. I’m interested in the section of anarchism in the tradition of Bakunin, Parsons, Malatesta, and Durruti that is variously described as social anarchism, class struggle anarchism, anarcho-communism or anarcho-syndicalism. I’m only concerned in passing with the primitivists, the “national anarchists,” or any of the various schools of lifestyle or individualist anarchism, and I am aware of the distinctions between these approaches and those of the class struggle social anarchists. I also wanted to use modern sources connected to some important areas of on-going anarchist experience and theory in Spain, Italy, and Latin America.

I have referred to Larry Gambone on a couple of points already. My major reference will be to Tom Wetzel of the Worker Solidarity Alliance (I think). They both express substantial positions on questions I think are important. However, I have not read many of their writings and my understanding of their positions may be inaccurate or incomplete. While both of them are clearly distinct from other important anarchist trends, I’m not sure to what extent each of them reflect the class struggle social anarchism views that I would like to engage and I make no claims in that regard. I don’t even know if they would agree with each other on the topics being considered.

I’m choosing Wetzel because of some of his writing on working class organization and culture, his specific criticisms of Bolshevik attitudes towards working class autonomy, and the base-building dual power/dual organization perspective which he shares. I initially found his stuff on the “What in the Hell…” blog and ZNet, but have read only a small fraction of what he has written. I presume a more complete collection can be found on the WSA site. Wetzel appears to share a class analysis of capitalism that hasn’t persuaded me to date, but I do recognize the compelling problems that it addresses, specifically with reference to understanding post revolutionary Russia and China. I don’t think any differences over class analysis are significant to this discussion. I may also be mistaken on this point.

My ignorance makes Gambone a more dicey choice. I first encountered his “Porcupine Blog” on National Anarchist websites, including Troy Southgate’s neo-fascist, “Synthesis” magazine. A lot of Gambone is on Keith Preston’s more “anarchist,” and certainly more eclectic, National Anarchist, “Attack the System” site. (Wetzel’s ZNet “Re-imagining Society” article is included there as well but at least his name is misspelled.)

(I think the National Anarchism phenomenon merits way more of our attention than it has received – that won’t surprise any of the unlucky handful familiar with my positions on neofascism. However, Preston is obviously attempting to cast a wide net in his red/brown merger project, and it’s quite likely that he includes writings from a number of people that would be quick to disassociate from national anarchism’s key particularist organizing tenets. Hopefully this includes Gambone.)

I will focus this section around a few topics in no necessary order and somewhat jumbled together: the issue of “representation,” the class struggle social anarchist conceptions of dual organization and social insertion, Badiou’s conception of the “Event,” and possibly some speculation about that troubling erstwhile Kasama masthead slogan “Without State Power, all else is illusion.”

I probably should know who said that and what they might have meant, but it is intriguing to explore possible interpretations in full light of ignorance.

I think that most of us (but not all, unfortunately) can agree that many strategic problems concern how to conceptualize and implement Marx’s injunction – also Bakunin’s – that the emancipation of the working class can only be accomplished by that class itself. We can also agree with Wetzel that these problems have to be approached in light of the variations and uneveness (to say the least) in the understandings and activities of the international working class and in the differences in objective socio-economic circumstance which currently segment it. It is helpful as well, and here I don’t know whether Wetzel agrees, to approach the problems in light of the range of policies and institutions, both repressive and incorporative, that constitute the exercise of capitalist state power.

The Communist Manifesto spells out a couple of general principles for the relationship of communists to the mass struggles of working people. To paraphrase: communists should “represent” the interests of the whole in the movements of parts, and they should “represent” the interests of the future in movements of the present. Even before they objected to any group claiming to have the intellectual roadmap to the “future” or to “know” the interests of the “whole,” most lifestyle anarchists would be skeptical of this entire notion. They tend to see all efforts of a smaller group to project and implement appropriate strategies and objectives for a larger group, or for any of its individual members, as authoritarian. This leaves them with some problems in the face of capitalist power which has no inhibitions about crushing isolated small scale initiatives towards self rule, but they still do present a potent source of resistance to virtually any left political strategy for a so-called advanced capitalist society.

Some non-anarchist radicals – autonomists – have a slightly different critique of representation, one that is less concerned with its potential restrictions on individual liberty and more concerned with the relationship between revolutionaries and the working class and with the issue of “substitutionism.” Typically they see the changing class composition of the working class as the motor and primary determinant of historical change, but more or less independently of the conscious intent of its participants. Implicitly, and frequently explicitly, the importance of ideology and self conscious organization in the process of the class becoming “for itself,” is diminished, replaced by some assumption of an underlying historic dynamic. This position can develop from a “workerist” outlook of the Johnson/Forrest or Italian variety, or from some version of the “irreducible singularities” conception in Negri’s notion of the Multitude. In Negri’s case, possibly a meta-consciousness, a “swarm intelligence” will come into play. This view often argues that virtually every organized intervention by communists has and will result in a net subtraction from the working class struggle. Therefore the best course for communists is to stand aside and just “describe” – or to self consciously limit their role to helping out, possibly following some variant of Lynd’s notion of “accompaniment.”

Wetzel makes it fairly clear that he does not share these positions (“Anarchism, Class Struggle and Political Organization”, ZNet, p. 3), although I think some of his comrades may slip in that direction in their more generic criticisms of substitutionism – not that this criticism isn’t usually warranted. He, and most class struggle social anarchists, recognizes the unevenness in consciousness and development in the working class and the resulting role for an organized revolutionary grouping to motivate and consolidate organizing projects that advance and expand the general struggle. This necessarily entails a degree of “representation” of the interests and potentials of social groups that are not organized and politically unified by a revolutionary organization that hopefully is. However, it does not necessarily imply any delegation of authority from the one to the other.

I intend to raise some questions, and potentially differences, with this perspective, but I agree with the general thrust of the approach. However, before getting into those subjects, I want to consider some current attitudes towards these issues among the sections of the Marxist Leninist left that do not clearly place the emancipation of the working class (and humanity) as the historic role and responsibility of that class.