Letter to the Mayor, OPD and City Council on Occupy Oakland’s Move-in Day

Dear Mayor Jean Quan, Oakland Police Department, and Oakland City Council,

by Mike Ely

Chegitz writes:

“…no form of organization is immune from degenerating into something awful.”

And he gives the example of the collapse of the Socialist Party (which he has been part of) — which was constructed along different (more loose and anarchic) lines than the mini-parties we have otherwise been discussing.

I think Chegitz’s point is true, and its implications are worth exploring.

And this includes forms like the commune or soviet forms of governance by representative mass democracy — which solve some problems, but exist in the context of dynamics that inevitably create new and ongoing problems. And it is true for the vanguard party, both in the forms we are familiar with, but also in future forms of core organization that we might imagine or build.

Pointing out the organizational problems with previous mini-parties (and their peculiar versions of democratic centralism) also does not mean there is are necessarily organizational solutions to those problems.

If you have evidence of a form of organization producing troubling dynamics — the solution may involve some other form of organization, but let’s not assume that changes of form provide some simple, definitive corrective.

There may be better forms (political procedures, habits, structures)  — better for our purposes, better for our particular moment or our current stage of development — but the solution (to becoming exhausted, uncreative, marginalized, ossified, cultish, even corrupt) isn’t necessarily (or simply) to imagine some pre-figured and presumably immune alternative form(s).

There are no forms of organization (none!) immune to problems or counterrevolutionary pulls — though (again) some forms may be better than others (given specific conditions and purposes), and some creative organizational processes (of “party-building” and its reconception) may be more promising than others.

It is the point also made by Mao Zedong during debates over form at the height of the Cultural Revolution:

“If the Paris Commune had not failed but had been successful, then in my opinion, it would have become by now a bourgeois commune… In regard to the form of soviet political power, as soon as it materialized, Lenin was elated, deeming it a remarkable creation by workers, peasants and soldiers, as well as a new form proletarian dictatorship. Nonetheless, Lenin had not anticipated then that although the workers, peasants and soldiers could use this form of political power, it could also be used by the bourgeoisie, and by Khrushchev. Thus, the present soviet has been transformed from Lenin’s soviet to Khrushchev’s soviet.”

And Mao’s verdict remains highly controversial precisely because some people believe that a return to the commune form would (in China) have started to solve the problems of the “party/state” form — or (more precisely) that the decision not to return to the commune form (in the January uprising of 1967) represented the decisive victory of counterrevolution in China’s revolution.

Formalism and orthodoxy

Certainly I’m arguing against particular orthodox assumptions about party-building — that seek to solve current problems by recapturing an allegedly universal form in a pure and original (i.e. non-revised) state.

And we are also engaging with the illusions of  “formalism” generally — including the idea  that adopting  forms of mass democracy at every level is key to solving all the difficult problems of politics (including betrayal, exhaustion, and alienation).

The fantasy of orthodoxy (both in the common religious fundamentalist forms or, here, in the dogmatic habits among some communists) is that most problems have already been “settled” in some imagined “good old days” or in a series of previous prophetic verdicts. So (in that fantasy world) our job is to identify the previously-established “correct” form and then “apply it.”

It makes every problem excitingly simple… except that it doesn’t work.

This method is (by its nature) illusory and non-organic. The experience of previous party-building efforts after 1970 is that you can’t “solve the problems of the revolutionary 1960s by adopting wholesale the codified verdicts from the 1930s.”

The focus on “settled verdicts” is the advocacy of “closed system.” It crops up again because orthodoxy makes false and seductive promises: If you dress up in our past language and forms, you will have our success in your time and place. It offers to simplify the inherently complex, it claims to routinize the inherently non-routine. And that is tempting, especially to those who don’t know the particularities of history.

Orthodox methods can seem excitingly coherent and plausible — especially when they come wrapped, as Comintern pronouncements do, in a carefully invented aura of inevitability and infallibility. This is a “road once taken” that we should not repeat.

Anti-Leninism: That baby/bathwater problem

At the same time, I feel like we need to make a second argument:

That those problems that revealed themselves in the practice of particular past party-formations (both the mini-parties that dried up in the U.S., and the macro-parties that successfully contested for power) may not be solved by (simply) dumping whole framework of Leninist organizational discussion.

There is a lot to learn from the communist experiences of Lenin’s time (in its theories, controversies, and changing practices). And clinging to orthodoxy is (by the way) not one of Lenin’s legacies — since his approach, including on party building, was a masterpiece of creative rupture with Marxist orthodoxies and particular adaptations to contemporary (and Russian) conditions.

The problems arise from real world contradictions (tensions within the very process of politics and revolution) that aren’t “solved” by finding some magic organizational form (these tensions manifest themselves whatever form you adopt — and then play out according to the dynamics of the moment and the structure we have created).

Staying on a revolutionary road is a complex struggle — which cannot be pre-won by organizational statutes, it has to be creatively reinforced at every point (as the terrain changes, as the terms of struggle change, as the people come and go).

Example, we could write in some hypothetical statutes:

“Everyone will be equal, all decisions will be discussed at lower levels before being implemented by higher levels, the institutions of leadership will not become identified with particular individuals, leadership will be rotated through the organization with everyone receiving training and experience as facilitators and organizers of the project, the development of the least privileged requires the sharp constraint on the influence and prominence of those with specialized training and skills… etc.”

But what will then happen? Will that solve the problems of hierarchy, alienation and creative path-finding?

Such organizations either lockup and wither (because nothing can actually operate that way). Or they start to pay lipservice to those statutes while really (in a secret and non-transparent way) having defacto leadership processes (that are not legitimized or accountable). Or (most commonly) they do both.

Those outcomes have been seen over and over, and they demonstrate the problems with another form of organization: the one that enforces simple mass democracy as a universal principle and enshrines a determined rejection of any center of respected, trained, legitimized and talented leaders.

Successors and some problems of leadership

Chegitz’s other point is also (i believe) important:

“I’ve noticed where one or a few individuals are really the center of an organization, and without their input, the organization simply will not function. It’s especially noticeable in the SPUSA, where when a key individual leaves, a local or state organization will simply collapse, despite a number of people remaining. I don’t, personally know, how to counteract this.”

In fact, in human organization, the role of specific individuals matter. You can’t avoid that by statutory means (though people think you can). This is a larger problem Obviously the death of a Marx or a Lenin (or a Mao, or a Ho Chi Minh) had an effect on the movement that followed them. They weren’t that easy to replace — or (put another way) what replaced them was often not the same.

“Counteract this”? It is the problem of more people taking responsibility (and that in tern has elements of encouraging consciousness, creative thinking and training). Communists call this the “problem of successors.” And mainly it has emerged as a problem (not as an array of promising solutions).

Some people think that the answer is to forgo leaders from the beginning (to emphasize organization and process that prevents anyone playing a stable ongoing leading role), and encourage a kind of flattened mass democracy (rotating chairs, timing of who speaks and for how long, etc.) But the problem is that the resultant organization deprives itself of the major advantages that come with empowering some people to lead (if you have someone who can lead in a way that corresponds with the ethos and politics of the project). In some ways, we are lucky when we have decent leaders who have ideas, creativity, and who have earned a modicum of trust and legitimacy (in order to act as leaders).

In osme ways, the problem is closer to how Chegitz puts it: The problem is not having leaders (with is inevitable and positive in human organization). The problem is a) holding them accountable, and b) preparing more people to take up such roles (in various spheres) to make the overall structure less fragile and to solve the problem of successors.

The ideas of the rank-and-file are more than just raw material for leadership decision-making. Democracy involves elements of real power and ongoing accountability.

by Mike Ely

How should communists and revolutionaries be organized? Even asking that ruffles some feathers — since some communist currents have considered this a “settled question.”

Well, we should un-settle it — problematize it — for the simple reason that the  idea of a single “universalized” model of revolutionary organization has been a bad idea.

Its flaws and illusions have been revealed over the last decades — including in the grandiosity and self-delusion of various small self-declared “parties” within the U.S.

There are a number of issues involved — which we are only starting to touch on. But for now, we are exploring the communist organizational concept of “democratic centralism” (DC) — both what it means and whether it should be embraced as a common approach.

We have discussed how it got “settled” in the discussions of the new-born Third Communist International (between 1921 and 1924) and how the form of democratic centralism was further modified — especially in the “Bolshevization” campaigns of the late 1920s.

Now, Let’s go beyond the historical question of how specific organizational structures and processes got codified (“settled”) — let’s explore some of the concepts that pass as “settled,” their justifications and lessons.

RW Harvey writes:

“What is the bumper-sticker version of Democratic Centralism (DC)? A line arrived at via democratic discussion amongst the ranks, this discussion synthesized by the leadership, the crystallized line “sent down” and carried out unswervingly into practice. That practice initiates another spiral up and another spiral down.”

This is one version. One bumper-sticker. And many people have their own bumper sticker version (based on their read and their experiences). It stands out (to me) how different those are.

Chain of knowledge, Chain of command?

Here’s the form of democratic centralism I’m most familiar with. It has its own peculiarities (as you will see), but it also representative in someways ways of how democratic centralism has been practiced among communists. Note: The following argument is not mine.

It says:

There are two reasons for democratic centralism that form two defining constraints — security under hostile conditions and Marxist epistemology.

Of the two, security is the one revolutionary activists most easily understand (once they realize someone is out to get them).

But epistemology shapes the main and defining logic for a more specific practice.  Because it is the argument that justified a highly stratified and hardened centralism — even under long-term conditions of relative legality. (Epistemology refers to that philosophical realm that explores “where do correct ideas come from?” — i.e. how do we reach decisions that are the best.)

The epistemological argument runs as follows:

Communist decisions require oversight (oversight of our experience, oversight of the conditions nationally, oversight of the organization, etc.) So decisions cannot be made by the rank and file who by virtue of their position cannot have that oversight. Gaining oversight requires a specialized work — a lifetime spent watching and evaluating the overall form the point of view of Marxism Leninism.

The argument continues: a communist organization needs to operate by “need to know” — and so the rank and file can’t simply be privy to all the details. A great deal is kept secret. The organization should be essentially transparent (when you look down from its top positions), but it should be essentially opaque (when you look up from its base). This is where the security argument buttresses the epistemological one.

Note: this is (in part) an argument for trusted leadership making day to day decisions (which would be fine). But it is also an argument against many kinds of democratic oversight (as we will see).

Based on this view of communist epistemology (which is a reductionist overreaching in my view), it is believed that the simple nature of human learning requires us to structure communist organization as “a chain of knowledge and a chain of command.”

The chain of knowledge is the raw material of decision-making — it is goes up from the rank-and-file members and local bodies — toward the higher leadership. This is (ideally)  a rich, steady, even comprehensive flow of reports, “questions,” experiences, details of the “pulse of the masses,” research by specialized teams, and summations by lower level bodies etc. That raw material is then appropriated and “synthesized” at the leading levels, and turned into plans and decisions.

Those plans and decisions are then “bought down” — with discipline — in what is known as a “chain of command.”

In short: it is an explicit argument that views and opinions at the bottom are inherently inferior (fragmented, partial, subjective, uninformed) compared to the summations and views emerging at the top of these “chains.” It is really an argument against democracy. (And it seems to deny that arguments arising from the bottom could be, at times, superior to all the summations at the top…. and it denies that such emerging criticism from below can be the engine for correction of errors and the necessary removal of poor leaders.)

Plans and decisions are then discussed “on their way down” (i.e. after plans have become decisions, after embracing them is required of all members). In other words, They are discussed only to implement in a disciplined way (not to vet).

At that point the discussion (the only one that actually happens) is to “understand” better the decision, and to excavate “wrong lines” that disagree. I.e. at that point, questioning the policy is after the fact and after the decision has become centralized policy…. So naturally, there is a powerful dynamic here that suppressed questions and disagreements — since they are only allowed to surface in the context of already decided policies that are already organizational line.

And in fact, in the RCP, there was virtually never any discussions of policies that hadn’t already been decided. (Without going into specifics: The rare exception was the “going up” process before changes in party program, which virtually never happened. I was involved in creating the public 2changetheworld discussion about the RCP’s changing program — but there is no other public example of such discussion, and no party practice of ongoing internal theoretical journals open to the membership.)

If (at a lower level) you held a discussion that had not yet been approved and prepared by a higher level decision — you were guilty of factionalism (and violating Marxist materialist epistemology itself.)

And if you (as an individual) expressed a view on something (“I think conditions are right for us to form some student group, because of the increase in political activity and interests on campuses.”) — you were immediately challenged on epistemological grounds: “How can you claim to know that? Based on what? Are you reading the reports from the party nationally?”

This is a bit different from RW Harvey’s bumper sticker version which implies “lower levels discuss first, then upper levels decide.” In fact in the RCP, that view was explicitly rejected as ultra-democratic. The lower levels were explicitly not to discuss policies or even major issues of analysis  first (without the guidance of upper level decisions), since (rather obviously) such lively internal culture of discussion would have radically increased the amount of debate, questioning, diversity and stress within the organization.

There was also zero “representative” qualities to this view of DC — higher levels were not viewed as ‘gatherings of representatives of lower levels.” On the contrary, the leadership of each body and unit was seen as the representative of higher bodies to the lower bodies, and never as the representative of the lower bodies to the higher bodies.

That second notion: representing the lower on the higher was a quintessential example of what was forbidden as “factionalism” or “federationism” in the earlier RU days.)

More: The organization as a whole was explicitly not seen as the property of its membership… and the membership itself was never seen as any final arbiter of disputes or controversies.

The only function of “lower” levels and bodies was (supposedly) to shovel a steady stream of raw material upwards. Even  their opinions were themselves considers that kind of raw material (i.e. there was no power relation operational when lower levels expressed opinion, i.e. no democracy in evidence). I.e. it was simply supposed to be a “chain of knowledge.”

Problems with the “two chains” theory

Further, communist organizations don’t actually have a painstaking and respectful summation of the “raw material coming up from below.” The center of the RCP (to use one example) was universally called “the black hole.” Reports were very often not read, or not passed on (i.e. not passed up), especially if they potentially contradicted current conventional wisdom. The whole structure denigrated the views of those below (whose very structure and assumptions caused most divergence from the official line to be seen as backwardness or heresy).

In short, “democracy” within this structure was simply the right to give one-way “input” (i.e. “write it up and submit it.”) — without a right to be heard, or a right to circulate views within your unit/body, or a right to have a response. Democracy also involved an atrophied “right to elect” leadership — which in practice was ignored or ritualized into self-mockery.

And the assumption (taken from the Comintern) is that the party’s work is like some huge laboratory (literally like a chemistry lab) where we “take things out and test them” — and that a summation is only possible on the basis of a unified practice that is then subject to critical summation.

This is pseudo-science at best — since (in fact) the changes and repudiation of most communist party policies don’t come as the result of some grand, mechanical, laboratory-like testing process — but from quite different processes. And the argument for common, disciplined action isn’t epistemological in this way — it is that we can’t have a powerful impact if we don’t act together.

Flaws of non-democratic centralism

The problems of this kind of structure are massive:

Exaggerated secrecy and lack of real collective discussion leads to a massive lack of accountability. Inevitable failures are covered up — in a way that accumulates and becomes routine. And even corruption happens (in minor and occasionally major ways). In repeated cases, bodies were simply powerless to question or remove leaders who had developed serious problems — like escalating alcoholism, mental illness or paralyzing demoralization — until someone “at higher levels” noticed and took action.

Daphne Lawless captured a lot of this perfectly (while describing a very different organization) when she talks about:

“Backroom dealings, manipulations, telling ‘acceptable fictions’ to keep people enthusiastic, winning arguments by force of personality, using psychological arguments to discredit dissenters or simply not inviting them to the meetings any more, making excuses for or outright denying the mistakes or even crimes of “leading cadre”, declaring defeats to be victories or declaring them to be all the fault of unreliable allies…”

Politically, the assumptions of elitism have room to grow — in the RCP there was the growth of “one-person management” (and “positions-for-life”) at many levels, a withering of even the frayed pretense of democracy, increasingly open disdain for the lower ranks, and the maddening imposition of  arbitrary and even bizarre opinions from above couldn’t be challenged.

And over time, the emergence of “positions-for-life” has a terrible generational impact — where every leading post is held by a founding member, and younger promising people with disruptive new insights are instructed to”act according to the principles laid down.” If the RCP had allowed younger members into leadership bodies and if they had held regular congresses (with major pre-congress discussions) every few years, who doesn’t believe that the notorious anti-gay policies would have been challenged and defeated in the 1980s?

Cults of personality negate pretense of democracy

This whole process (within the RCP) received a further massive jolt when it was declared that a “special” leader had emerged — and that this affected the very way a party worked. Because now, it was supposedly necessary to (literally) transform the party into “the party of Bob Avakian” — i.e.  an “instrument” of that special, rare, previous, beloved leader. And sothe previous norms of democratic centralism were now seen as corresponded to a previous period (where his specialness had not been fully recognized — either out of ignorance or revisionist opposition).

Suddenly one person arose above the collectivity of the previous leadership core — and the basis of his legitimacy was not the “epistemology” of synthesis (since other leaders, and the leading body as a whole were privy to that) — but precisely his unique and special abilities. A bogus epistemology was replaced by a theory of special genius and (need I point out) the role of rank and file communists was even further demoted in that leap.

Bizarre as this is, lets not ignore two things:

First, this is not particular to the RCP, unfortunately.

And second, (more important perhaps), the previous assumptions of the “special position of leadership,” and the organizational habits built on that prepared the ground for this cult of personality (with its different assumptions and justifications). The victory of the present extreme cultish practices was made possible by the previous overly-commandist and undemocratic norms.

In addition: The current justification for cults of personality further underscored how the preceding “two chains” theory was philosophically bullshit.

Just to point out one obvious contradiction: The “chain of knowledge, chain of command” model assumes that plans, policies, decisions, analyses must be rooted in a synthesis of this organization’s practice (and the whole laboratory paradigm). If you are not in a position (within the hierarchy) to sum up that diverse-but-unified immediate practice (or aggregate the thinking and experience of others), then you are simply not in any position to come up with correct ideas. This is mechanical and highly empirical.

And yet then, the RCP’s leader Avakian  increasingly insisted that he had developed world-historic insights into many processes that his own organization has had zero connection with (i.e. building socialism, making revolution, leading mass movements, making alliances, electoral openings, military affairs of peoples wars, etc. etc.) So clearly his insights had come (far far far)  outside of the framework of  any organizational “chain of knowledge, chain of command.”

And so (logically) if Avakian could claim important contributions outside that framework, why couldn’t other parts of his communist organization potentially come up with correct insights, plans, criticism, overviews etc. without having some formal oversight of  a whole organization’s reporting system? Why would the pronouncements of the top leadership somehow be epistemologically superior to the theories of the lower levels?

And (need we say) it is actually true that people (sitting in all kinds of places within social hierarchies) are able to make all kinds of summations (including correct ones) based on indirect knowledge (of history, political economy, personal experiences, etc.) that don’t require their presences within any communist organization at all.

In other words, the epistemological argument for democratic centralism has been largely self-serving bullshit.

The need for structure, leadership and discipline

"Bombarding the headquarters" during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76) represented a huge break with the previous communist assumptions and practices of democratic centralism.

Let me back up talk for a moment about what is correct about the “epistemology and security” argument:

Often, when people discuss “democratic centralism” they do so in a simplistic, texual and literal way: “first we have democratic discussion that reaches a decision, then we have a collective responsibility to carry it out.”

I find that kind of formulation naive at best, and disengenuous at worst — since it doesn’t really engage any of the real life issues.

WHAT does “democratic discussion and decision-making” look like? What are its various forms and contradictions? Where is the locus of discussion and where is the locus of decision-making (since they need not be the same thing)? Are all decisions handled the same (don’t some decisions need broad approval of the rank-and-file, while other decisions require deep secrecy and simple centralism?)

The short story is that there are matters of epistemology, security, discipline and unified action to solve in any serious political movement.

First, you can’t have complex political decisions that are only made by some “direct democracy” process at the base. Local mass movements can function that way for a while (wildcat strikes, rent strikes, OWS, antiwar sit-ins and building takeovers, etc.) but not a mature and complex political movement over a large territory.

The classic and obvious examples of this problem involve discussions of military decisions: Military doctrine,  larger strategic war plans and the tactical decisions of battles can’t be decided by some quick up-or-down vote by the rank and file soldiers. They should be known and understood by all soldiers (especially in a revolutionary army) — as well as the political goals of the war. But decision-making in sharp conflict can’t rest mainly on immediate, localized mass democracy (especially once there are complex unknown factors and major sacrifices required).

And the soldiers themselves (going into battle) naturally want a) highly skilled, experienced and creative leaders making decisions, b) they want those decisions actually carried out (they don’t want people deserting or carrying out some hairbrained individual counter-plan), and c) they want real secrecy (preserving surprise) around military moves so the enemy can’t prepare.

There may be room in some armies and militias, for the rank-and-file electing non-commissioned leaders (sergeants) and low level commanders (captains etc.) — but even then, they want to obey those commanders, not have the unit’s every move subject to vote (or “blocking”) for obvious reasons. A militia that actually tried operated through direct democracy would always be on the defensive, and have great difficulty with creative offensive (where some forces needed to be sacrificed for victory) — as was evidenced (in controversial ways) during the Spanish Civil War.)

A communist movement needs security. It needs some level of a “need to know” policy (meaning that some information is only given to those specific people who “need to know” it, and is kept secret from everyone else). And this inherent need for levels of secrecy does affect many aspects of democracy:.

Every detail of the organization (every problem, controversy, person, action, etc.) can’t be known by everyone — since anything known by everyone is inevitably known by the movement’s enemies and persecutors.

A movement that doesn’t have secrets can’t be effective opposition to a vicious system. Some top leaders should be known to the membership. But there are good reason to keep part of any leadership core shrouded in some secrecy (to enable the organization to better survive potential decapitation strikes and roundups).

For example, for a membership to pick all top leaders (in a general presidential style election) would require that membership to be familiar with all current leaders at various levels and all promising people in the rank-and-file), their past, their responsibilities, their shades of views in detail and their differences — so that the membership can pick an appropriate core of leaders from among that field.

If you have a very small communist group that seems possible for a while — but soon, it may prove  be impossible (or unwise) to continue such a policy.

This suggests a policy where, for example, a trusted, legitimized leadership is selected by representative bodies of leaders (so that a leading committee can be picked by an organizational convention, or a leading person is selected by the body they lead, or a standing committee is selected by the leading committee they “stand in for” day-to-day).

In communist history, bodies have historically been chosen that way. But the process is often fake. In practice, leadership is often  “by cooptation” — where the current leadership picks who joins what bodies, and the voting is pro forma (unanimous, unvetted, uncontested etc.)

Second: It is true that the rank-and-file can’t pre-discuss every decision — both because there isn’t time for every decision to be studied, explored, debated organizationally. But also because there are questions of competence and investigation. Many decisions require a great deal of knowledge and investigation — which is possible for a smaller core of leadership, but which a whole organizational membership can’t do on every matter. This also argues against the rank-and-file simply and directly making every decision. (It is now possible, given online means, to essentially have votes on everything. If such methods were deployed, the flaws and naivite of ‘direct democracy” would become evident — within days, not months.)

The need for centralism and democracy is not the controversy

So where does that leave us…. well I think that SKS (and others) are right in saying that many forms of social organization have both centralism and democracy (so that there is mass consultation and involvement in decision-making and leadership accountability, but also a degree of initiative taken by leaders as needed by the organization’s tasks).

That is not controversial or unusual.

Communists add that additional point: Discipline. There is a responsibility to act in common. And of course, discipline is precisely an issue when people have disagreements, and carry out the majority view. And conscious self-sacrifice is an important feature of discipline (including, obviously, in military affairs).

And a degree of conscious (and even enforced) discipline  also makes sense:  We are not an academic arena that just plays with ideas without nodal points of resolution and ongoing action based on current understandings. Our point is to change the world. And really, it is hard to have an organization where the carrying out of difficult decisions is optional or completely uneven.

Discipline has often been extended — so that in communist organizations there was an assumed unanimity in speech and micro-actions — where every word out of everyone’s mouth is subject to discipline, oversight, and even zombie-like scripting. That comes across bizarre and alienating in many ways. And it is something quite unnecessary. It is wrong to allow a  political culture that gives lip service to critical thinking but ends up stressing the rote memorization of approved phrases and ideas.

I think we should explicitly examine and discuss the previous communist understandings of discipline. Mao writes for example:

“We must affirm anew the discipline of the Party, namely:

(1) the individual is subordinate to the organization;
(2) the minority is subordinate to the majority;
(3) the lower level is subordinate to the higher level; and
(4) the entire membership is subordinate to the Central Committee.

“Whoever violates these articles of discipline disrupts Party unity.”

This structure of subordinations is considerably more elaborate than “discipline means we act together.” I believe such structures are necessary at some points in a sharp political conflict. But what does that mean about how we operate at every previous point? Can we operate in such close order (when it is needed) without long habits and preparation in strict discipline? Can we build large national movements contesting for power without a  high degree of unanimity and discipline at its core (the kind that  so marked previous communist organizations).

Party as Proto-state leading to Party-State

This opens the door to an argument I will point to but not engage: It is that a political party of revolutionaries needs to be a kind of proto-state. If we are not planning to “lay hands” on the existing state machinery, then we need to be building (in parallel and at a distance) a replacement state machinery… and this will inevitably be some mix of energetic mass democratic forms (emerging from the people) and highly trained structured forms (emerging from “the party).

In a separate discussion, we need to engage these previous assumptions for a “party as proto-state” and  “state as party/state” — because the assumptions, arguments, and controversies are far from resolved.

Can we avoid this logic? Can we destroy the old state (and its machinery of law, policy and armed force) and erect a radically different state structure, without relying on the revolutionary party (and its army) to be both core and training ground for the new state? Where else do the institutions, training, policies, careers for the post-revolutionary days come from?

And (either way) what are the implications of this?

Particularity, contingency and context

For now:  I suspect that radically different forms of democracy and centralism are appropriate for different purposes. And that includes different points in the work and development of specific communist and revolutionary movement.

Only the highly naive or indoctrinated can believe that the Communist Party of China had the same kind of “democratic centralism” in the rural guerrilla zones that it had underground in the urban resistance cells, or that it had the same DC before the revolution, compared to after coming to power. Or that it was the same at the 8th Party Congress compared to Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Clearly, that history and practice can’t simply be captured by treating the various pithy commentaries of Mao as if they were “settled questions” or universally applicable.

Similarly, the Bolshevik experience is (as we have said here often) widely misunderstood — so that the famous organizational rules articulated by Lenin (in One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, the ones over which the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks split!) are assumed to have been applied (from then on) by those Bolsheviks. Or as if the “democratic centralism” articulated by the Comintern (after 1921) can be assumed to be a crystallization of the actual experience and practice of the Bolsheviks. Or as if the famous (and strict) ban on factions within communist parties (part of the “monolithic party” theory, and part of the idea that virtually all political proposals are either correct or dangerously reactionary) was actually Bolshevik practice (and universally applicable). The Bolsheviks had a riotous factional and intellectual life internally, and more, they were themselves a faction within a much larger movement — with a permeable and indistinct membrane separating them and other factions. The communist ban on organized factions came later (in the middle of the civil war) when the severely tested and rapidly mushrooming party was starting to shake itself apart. And Mao’s later views on “two line struggle” within the party (and his criticism of “monolithic party”) would seem to have implications for our future approach to organized disagreements within our ranks. (I’m not a fan of formallizing “multi-tendency” organizations — which seem to codify permanent (and liberal) disunity and allow an eclectic unclarity over key matters — but this is a matter that needs discussion.)

A movement just starting to gather forces and identifying its ideas needs a far different initial organizational form, than a mature movement with a highly developed unity and division of labor that is acting (and maneuvering) on a complex real-life political terrain.

We are determined to carry though some deep changes in communist assumptions, based on a century of experience with the Comintern models. Meaning, first off, we should reject the idea that any specific form of democratic centralism is “universal” — this has never been true (and even when communists said they were carrying out a common model, they weren’t — and they should have more actively sought specific forms for their specific conditions.)

Clearly, we intend to break with the highly commandist practices (and justifications) of “chain of knowledge, chain of command” of some previous experiences. And (in contrast to theories of direct democracy and extreme looseness) we develop a concept where there is both discipline and leadership accountability — once we choose to form an actual organization (which may be after a period of much looser exploration in network form).

Not every communist network is a “pre-party” formation. We can perhaps conceive of organizations today as “post-party” formations — i.e. their task is to wrap up a previous movement (through summation, self-critcism, retraining, new idea creation etc.), while starting on a protracted new organizational course of regroupment. That may prove to have its own  distinctive forms (as Lenin’s Bolshevik experience shows for its first ten years).

My own inclination has been to advocate “a communist pole within a broader revolutionary movement” — which is an Iskraist approach rather different from forming some compact mini-party with premature demarcations and immature programs.

We need a culture where there is room for dissent and debate — and where the quasi-religious anti-creative dynamics of group think and heretic-hunts has been understood and contained. We need to develop (currently unspecified) ways of having horizontal discussion without destroying necessary security (suggesting the need for discussion forums, both public and private, involving measured degrees of anonymity, specific agreed constraints, and vigilance toward suspicious activity.)

Finally, a lot of these organizational matters are not solved on the level of principle or ‘model.” Some may be very particular because of very particular conditions (including, for example, ongoing disagrements, or the degree of mutual trust among members, or the level of common language and assumption.)

Much lies ahead of us — in the realm of summation, debate and emerging practice.

The Comintern decided that all communist organizations in the world should have the same name, the same structure, the same organizational principles and the same approach to controversies.

To reconceive communist views, it is valuable to have some sense of the previous conceptions.

Here is a quick and concentrated presentation of the previous communist view of organization — codified by the Third Communist International. This essay is written by J. Peters, as a chapter within the “The Communist Party: A Manual of Organization” published by the CPUSA in 1935.

We also have to evaluate the distance between what is espoused here (as principles and procedures) and how things REALLY worked. It would be silly to be taken in by lip-service in politics. For example: Once all parties are required to carry out decisions of the Comintern, and once it is announced (see below) that members do not “question” such decisions… then what is the purpose or domain of internal discussion and democratic processes? Once leaders are picked by the International, then what is the meaning of elaborate plans to elect them within the party?

Basic Principles of Party Organization

by J. Peters

The Communist Party is organized in such a way as to guarantee, first, complete inner unity of outlook; and, second, combination of the strictest discipline with the widest initiative and independent activity of the Party membership. Both of these conditions are guaranteed because the Party is organized on the basis of democratic centralism.

DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM

Democratic centralism is the system according to which:

1. All leading committees of the Party, from the Unit Bureaus up to the highest committees, are elected by the membership or delegates of the given Party organization.

2. Every elected Party committee must report regularly on its activity to its Party organization. It must give an account of its work.

3. The lower Party committees and all Party members of the given Party organization have the duty of carrying out the decisions of the higher Party committees and of the Communist International. In other words, decisions of the C.I. and of the higher Party committees are binding upon the lower bodies.

4. Party discipline is observed by the Party members and Party organizations because only those who agree with the program of the Communist Party and the C.I. can become members of the Party.

5. The minority carries out the decisions of the majority (subordination of the minority to the majority). Party questions are discussed by the members of the Party and by the Party organization until such time as a decision is made by the Party committee or organization. After a decision has been made by the leading committees of the Cd., by the Central Committee of the Party, or by the National Convention, this decision must be unreservedly carried out even if a minority of the Party membership or a minority of the local Party organizations is in disagreement with it.

6. The Party organizations, Units, Sections, and Districts, have the full initiative, right and duty to decide on local questions within the limits of the general policies and decisions of the Party.

Decisions of Higher Bodies Binding on Lower Bodies

On the basis of democratic centralism, all lower Party organizations are subordinated to the higher bodies; District organizations are subordinated to the Central Committee; Section organizations are subordinated to the District Committee; Party Units (shop, street and town) are subordinated to the Section Committees.

All decisions of the World Congress and committees of the C.I. must be fulfilled by all parties of the C.I. All decision of the National Convention and the Central Committee must be fulfilled by the whole Party; all decisions of the District Convention and Committee must be fulfilled by the Section organizations of that District; all decisions of the Section Convention and Committee are binding on the shop, street and town Units in that Section.

A Party committee or Unit Bureau, throughout the whole of its activity from Convention to Con- given Organization. In cases where the elected Party committee is not capable of carrying out its task and the correct Party line, this committee can be changed through the calling of an extraordinary Conference by decision of the higher committees, or by the initiative of the lower organizations with the approval of the higher committees.

The Communist Party puts the interest of the working class and the Party above everything. The Party subordinates all forms of Party organization to these interests. From this it follows that one form of organization is suitable for legal existence of the Party, and another for the conditions of underground, illegal existence. Under conditions where there is no possibility of holding open elections or broad Conventions, the form of democratic centrallain necessarily has to be changed. In such a situation, it is inevitable that co-option be used as well as election. That means that in such a situation the higher committees will appoint the lower committees (for example, the Central Committee may appoint the District Committee; the District Committee may appoint the Section Committee, etc.). Or, in very exceptional cases, when the lower committee is to act quickly, this committee has the right to co-opt new members to the committee from among the best leaders of the organization; and this co-option must be approved by the higher committee.

But even in the most difficult situation, the Party finds ways and means of holding elections. The Conventions or Conferences under such conditions will necessarily be smaller. The organization will bs tighter so as to eliminate as far as possible the danger of the exposure of delegates to the class Party, and in this way cripple the revolutionary movement. Therefore, such a method is used by the Party in electing leading committees during such a period which eliminates the danger of exposure.

Democratic centralism therefore represents a flexible system of Party organization which guarantees all the conditions for combining the conscious and active participation of the whole Party membership in the Party life together with the best forms of centralized leadership in the activity and struggles of the Party and the working class.

PARTY DISCUSSION AND FREEDOM OF CRITICISM

The free discussion on questions of Party policy in individual Party organizations or in the Party as a whole, is the fundamental right of every Party member as a principal point of Party democracy. Only on the basis of internal Party democracy is it possible to develop Bolshevik self-criticism and to strengthen Party discipline, which must be conscious and not mechanical. There is complete freedom of discussion in the Party until a majority decision has been made by the Unit or the leading committee, after which discussion must cease and the decision be carried out by every organization and individual member of the Party.

It is clear, however, that basic principles and decisions, such, as for example, the Program of the Communist International, cannot be questioned in the Party.

We cannot imagine a discussion, for example, questioning the correctness of the leading role of the proletariat in the revolution, or the necessity for the proletarian dictatorship. We do not question the theory of the necessity for the forceful overthrow of capitalism. We do not question the correctness of the revolutionary theory of the class struggle laid down by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. We do not question the counter-revolutionary nature of Trotskyism.

We do not question the political correctness of the decisions, resolutions, etc., of the Executive Committee of the C.I., of the Convention of the Party, or of the Central Committee after they are ratified. Otherwise, every under-cover agent of the bourgeoisie and every sympathizer of the renegades would have an opportunity of continually raising their counter-revolutionary theories in the Units, Sections, etc., and make the members spend time and energy in discussing such questions, thus not only disrupting the work of the Party, but also creating confusion among the less experienced arid trained elements in the Party. (As a matter of fact, this is what enemies of the Party are always trying to do in the name of “democracy”.)

However, that does not mean that the problems dealt with in such decisions-and how best to apply these decisions-are not to be clarified in the Party organizations by discussion. On the contrary, a most thorough discussion for the purpose of making every Party member understand these resolutions and decisions and how to apply them is essential for effective Party work.

PARTY DISCIPLINE

Party discipline is based upon the class-consciousness of its members; upon the conviction that without the minority accepting and carrying out the decisions of the majority, without the subordination of the lower Party organizations to the higher committees, there can be no strong, solid, steeled Party able to lead the proletariat. This discipline is based upon the acceptance of the C.I. and the Party program and in the confidence of the membership in the Communist International and in the Central Committee.

There can be no discipline in the Party if there is no conscious and voluntary submission on the basis of a thorough understanding or the decisions of the Party. “Only conscious discipline can be truly iron discipline” (Stalin).

Why Do the Communists Attach So Much Importance to Discipline?

Because without discipline there is no unity of will, no unity in action. Our Party is the organized and most advanced section of the working class. The Party is the vanguard of the proletariat in the class war. In this class war there is the capitalist class with its henchmen and helpers, the reformist leaders, on one side, and the working class and its allies, on the other. The class war is bitter. The enemy is powerful; it has all the means of deceit and suppression (armed forces, militia, police, courts, movies, radio, press, schools, churches, etc.). In order to combat and defeat this powerful enemy, the army of the proletariat must have a highly skilled, trained General Staff (the Communist Party), which is united in action and has one will. How can an army fight against the army of the enemy if every soldier in the army is allowed to question and even disobey orders of his superior officers? What would happen in a war if, for example, the General Staff orders an attack, and one section of the army decides to obey and go into battle; another thinks that it is wrong to attack the enemy at this time and stays away from the battle; and a third section decides to quit the trenches and retreat to another position instead of going forward?

Unity in Action

Let us take an example from the class struggle. The District Committee decides that a demonstration should be held against police terror and gives directives to the Sections to mobilize the whole membership to get the greatest possible number of workers to the demonstration. The date and place of the demonstration are set by the District Committee. One Section, after receiving the decisions, works out plans to mobilize the masses, and activises the whole Section to work for the demonstration. Another Section does not think that the issue is very important and neglects to mobilize the membership; a third Section decides that the time set by the District Committee is not the best one and instructs its members to mobilize at a later hour; and a fourth Section decides to come at an earlier hour. What kind of a demonstration would it be? What would workers think and say about such a Party?

Our Party cannot lead the masses if there is not unity in action. Unity of will and action can be achieved only if all the members of the Party act as one — are disciplined. If each Party member should decide which decision of the Party he wanted to carry out; if each member would carry out only those decisions which he liked and ignored those with which he disagreed, it would be impossible to lead the masses in the struggle against capitalism. An army with that kind of leadership would be defeated.

Unified opinion is essential for unity in action, for successful work of the Communist Party. What would happen if each Party member would interpret a political issue individually and bring his individual opinion to the masses? The workers in a factory, for example, would get as many opinions on certain questions as there are Party members in the factory.

The unified opinion which is hammered out in the Party by discussion is necessary in order that the Party be able to lead the masses in their constant struggles.

WHAT IS SELF-CRITICISM?

Self-criticism is the most important means for developing Communist consciousness and thereby strengthening discipline and democratic centralism. Self-criticism helps to discover all the mistakes, deviations, shortcomings, which separate us from the masses, and to correct them. It helps us to discover and expose the harmful policies or practices of organizations and individuals who work against the interest of the masses. Self-criticism helps us to improve the work of the Party organizations; to exterminate bureaucracy; to expose the agents of the enemy in our ranks.

“Let us take, for instance, the matter of guidance of economic and other organizations on the part of the Party organizations. Is everything satisfactory in this respect? No, it is not. Often questions are decided, not only in the locals, but also in the center, so to speak, ‘en famille’, the family circle. Ivan Ivanovitch, a member of the leading group of some organization, made, let us say, a big mistake and made a mess of things. But Ivan Federovitch does not want to criticize him, show up his mistakes and correct him. He does not want to, because he is not disposed to ‘make enemies’. A mistake was made, things went wrong, but what of it, who does not make mistakes?

“Today I will show up Ivan Ivanovitch. Tomorrow he will do the same to me. Let Ivan Ivanovitch, therefore, not be molested, because where is the guarantee that I will not make a mistake in the future? Thus everything remains spick and span. There is peace and good will among men. Leaving the mistake uncorrected harms our great cause, but that is nothing! As long as we can get out of the mess somehow. Such, comrades, is the usual attitude of some of our responsible people. But what does that mean? If we, Bolsheviks, who criticize the whole world, who, in the words of Marx, storm the heavens, if we refrain from self-criticism for the sake of the peace of some comrades, is it not clear that nothing but ruin awaits our great cause and that nothing good can be expected?

“Marx said that the proletarian revolution differs, by the way, from other revolutions in the fact that it criticizes itself and that in criticizing itself it becomes consolidated. This is a very important point Marx made. If we, the representatives of the proletarian revolution, shut our eyes to our shortcomings, settle questions around a family table, keeping mutually silent concerning our mistakes, and drive our ulcers into our Party organism, who will correct these mistakes and shortcomings? Is it not clear that we cease to be proletarian revolutionaries, and that we shall surely meet with shipwreck if we do not exterminate from our midst this philistinism, this domestic spirit in the solution of important questions of our construction? Is it not clear that by refraining from honest and straight-forward selfcriticism, refraining from an honest and straight making good of mistakes, we block our road to progress, betterment of our cause, and new success for our cause? The process of our development is neither smooth nor general. No, comrades, we have classes, there are antagonisms within the country, we have a past, we have a present and a future, there are contradictions between them, and we cannot progress smoothly, tossed by the waves of life. Our progress proceeds in the form of struggle, in the form of developing contradictions, in the form of overcoming these contradictions, in the form of revealing and liquidating these contradictions.

“As long as there are classes we shall never be able to have a situation when we shall be able to say, ‘Thank goodness, everything is all right’. This will never be, comrades. There will always be something dying out. But that which dies does not want to die; it fights for its existence, it defends its dying cause. There is always something new coming into life. But that which is being born is not born quietly, but whimpers and screams, .fighting for its right to live. Struggle tween the old and the new, between the moribund and that which is being born-such is the basis of our development. Without pointing out and exposing openly and honestly, as Bolsheviks should do, the shortcomings and mistakes in our work, we block our road to progress. But we do want to go forward. And just because we go forward, we must make one of our foremost tasks an honest and revolutionary self-criticism. Without this there is no progress.”

(Stalin, Report to the Fifteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, pp. 65-66.)

Two Kinds of Criticism

Self-criticism is a natural part of the life of the Party. How can the members fail to criticize the Bureau or committee if its work is poor, if it makes mistakes? Without self-criticism there can be no Communist Party. But this criticism must never depart from the line of the Party, from the principles of Marxism-Leninism. We should make it very clear that there are two kinds of criticism: one which, on the basis of the line of the Party, on the basis of revolutionary theory and practice, analyzes mistakes and shortcomings, and offers concrete proposals for improvement in the work of the organization or individual member. This is Bolshevik selfcriticism: constructive criticism. A good example of such self-criticism is the Open Letter, adopted at the Extraordinary Party Conference. The other is the kind of criticism which is based on distortion of the line of the Party or does not offer any proposal to improve the work, or to correct mistakes. This is destructive criticism, which, if tolerated, inevitably leads not only to driving out new members, discouraging the weaker elements and disrupting the work of the Party, but also leads to factionalism.

WHAT IS FACTIONALISM AND WHERE DOES IT LEAD?

Comrade Stalin, in his speech on the Communist Party of the U.S.A., in 1929, gave an excellent answer to this question:

“. . . factionalism weakens the Party spirit, it dulls the revolutionary sense and blinds the Party workers to such an extent that, in the factional passion, they are obliged to place the interests of faction above the interests of the Party, above the interests of the Comintern, above the interests of the working class. Factionalism not infrequently brings matters to such a pass that the Party workers, blinded by the factional struggle, are inclined to gauge all facts, all events in the life of the Party, not from the point of view of the interests of the Party and the working class, but from the point of view of the narrow interests of their own faction, from the point of view of their own factional kitchen.

“. . . factionalism interferes with the training of the Party in the spirit of a policy of principles; it prevents the training of the cadres in an honest,, proletarian, incorruptible revolutionary spirit, free from rotten diplomacy and unprincipled intrigueLeninism declares that a policy based on principles is the only correct policy. Factionalism, on the contrary, believes that the only correct policy is one of factional diplomacy and unprincipled factional intrigue. That is why an atmosphere of factional struggle cultivates not politicians of principle, but adroit factionalist manipulators, experienced rascals and Mensheviks, smart in fooling the ‘enemy’ and covering up traces. It is true that such ‘educational’ work of the factionalists is contrary to the fundamental interests of the Party and the working class. But the factionalists do not give a rap for that-all they care about is their own factional diplomatic kitchen, their own group interests.

“It is, therefore, not surprising that poll-ticians of principle and honest proletarian revolutionaries get no sympathy from the factionalists. On the other hand, factional tricksters and -manipulators, unprincipled intriguers and backstage wire pullers and masters in the formation of unprincipled blocs are held by them in high honor.

“. . . factionalism, by weakening the will for unity in the Party and by undermining its iron discipline, creates within the Party a peculiar factional regime, as a result of which the whole internal life of our Party is robbed of its conspirative protection in the face of the class enemy, and the Party itself runs the danger of being trans:formed into a plaything of the agents of the bourgeoisie. This, as a rule, comes about in the following way: Let us say that some question is being decided in the PolitBureau of the Central Committee. Within the PolitBureau there is a minority and a majority which regard each decision from their factional standpoint. If a factional regime prevails in the Party, the wirepullers of both factions immediately inform the peripheral machine of this or that decision of the PolitBureau, endeavoring to prepare it for their own advantage and swing it in the direction they desire. As a rule, this process of information becomes a regular system. It becomes a regular system because each faction regards it as its duty to inform its peripheral machine in the way it thinks fit and to hold its periphery in a condition of mobilization in readiness for a scrap with the factional enemy. As a result, important secret decisions of the Party become general knowledge. In this way the agents of the bourgeoisie attain access to the secret decisions of the Party and make it easy to use the knowledge of the internal life of the Party against the interests of the Party. True, such a regime threatens the complete demoralization of the ranks of the Party. But the factionalists do not care about that, since, for them, the interests of their group are supreme.

“. . . factionalism consists in the fact that it completely nullifies all positive work done in the Party; it robs the Party workers of all desire to concern themselves with the day-to-day needs of the working class (wages, hours, the improvement of the material welfare of the workers, etc.) ; it weakens the work of the Party in preparing the working class for the class conflicts with the bourgeoisie and thereby creates a state of affairs in which the authority of the Party must inevitably suffer in the eyes of the workers, and the workers, instead of flocking to the Party, are compelled to quit the Party ranks . . . . What have the factional leaders of the majority and the minority been chiefly occupied with lately? With factional scandal-mongering, with every kind of petty factional trifle, the drawing up of useless platforms and subplatforms, the introduction of tens and hundreds of amendments and sub-amendments to these platforms.

“Weeks and months are wasted lying in ambush for the factional enemy, trying to entrap him, trying to dig up something in the personal life of the factional enemy, or, if nothing can be found, inventing some fiction about him. It is obvious that positive work must suffer in such an atmosphere, the life of the Party becomes petty, the authority of the Party declines and the workers, the best, the revolutionary-minded workers, who want action and not scandal-mongering, are forced to leave the Party.

“That, fundamentally, is the evil of factionalism in the ranks of a Communist Party.”

(Stalin’s Speeches on the American Comunist Party, pp. 27-30.)

Bob Lambert (far left), with his child. The undercover police officer had a relationship with a woman who is now taking action against the police

“Last month eight women who say they were duped into forming long-term intimate relationships of up to nine years with five undercover policemen started unprecedented legal action. They say they have suffered immense emotional trauma and pain over the relationships, which spanned the period from 1987 to 2010.

“Until now it was not known that police had secretly fathered children while living undercover. One of them is Lambert, who adopted a fake persona to infiltrate animal rights and environmental groups in the 1980s.”

The following appeared in the British Guardian. There are cases in the U.S. too of police infiltrators forming “relationships” with progressive people in order to penetrate radical circles.

Undercover police had children with activists

Disclosure likely to intensify controversy over long-running police operation to infiltrate and sabotage protest groups

by Rob Evans and Paul Lewis

• Attorney Jorge Gonzalez will present and argue a legal motion to dismiss all charges on the grounds of insufficient evidence.
• This hearing will deal with the FBI-instigated Sheriffs raid, arrest, and prosecution of Carlos.
• Carlos Montes has declared himself “not guilty” on 6 felony charges, dealing with an alleged 42-year old arrest and firearms code violations.
• Montes’ arrest is part of the FBI attack on 23 other antiwar and solidarity activists.

Join the national call-in day. Demand:

“Dismiss charges against Carlos Montes. There is no evidence!”

• President Obama at 202-456-1111
• Attorney General Holder at 202-514-2001

Contact info@stopFBI.net and let them know how your calls went.

Are you in Southern California?

The Los Angeles Committee to Stop FBI Repression says:

Occupy the Court!
Tuesday, January 24 at 8:00 a.m. (goes all day)

Criminal Courts Bldg., 211 W Temple St.
Los Angeles, CA
Dept. 123 on the 13th floor.
See map: Google Maps

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/292661287448761/

The following article appeared on the Dissident blog.

“It means that voices most often marginalized in society will have a harder time raising their voice without some police officer breathing down their neck informing them that they are violating some city rule that says they cannot exercise their First Amendment rights without doing this or without doing that. It means a march of immigrants where tens of thousands of people poured into the streets of Chicago in 2006 would be criminalized with city authorities identifying people so they could levy fines.”

Chicago City Council Passes Rahm Emanuel’s Anti-Protest Ordinances

By: Kevin Gosztola

Two ordinances drawn up for controlling protests and maintaining security in the city of Chicago during upcoming NATO/G8 meetings passed through the Chicago City Council today.

The ordinances, which organizers from Occupy Chicago and the Coalition Against the NATO/G8 (CANG8) call “sit down and shut up” ordinances, were proposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and were met with some opposition that led to revisions. But today they passed with only a handful of aldermen voting against the ordinances.

A joint statement released by Occupy Chicago and CANG8 reads:

At 12:30 today, Rahm Emanuel officiated over the death of the Bill of Rights in the City Council chambers.

Ordinances designed to severely restrict First Amendment rights of speech and assembly were presented on December 14^th.  The stated target was to prepare to repress protestors during the summits of NATO and the G8.

At first, aldermen and the media all agreed that no one would oppose Emanuel on this.

In response to mayor’s attack on civil liberties, the Coalition Against NATO/G8 War & Poverty Agenda (CANG8) joined together with Occupy Chicago and several unions to unite our efforts to defend of civil liberties in Chicago.  By last week, aldermen had felt so much pressure from constituents that they had to speak out.

Emanuel then moved to withdraw first one, and then another, of the most criticized pieces.  Protests continued to grow; Emanuel retreated further; the protests mounted, and he retreated even further.

Finally, a version was reached that the council opposition could vote for, hoping that the movement would not condemn them.  The final version is still a significant attack on democratic rights; its passage is a defeat for our movement.

The mayor has not achieved his true objective, though.  Emanuel looks at the new Chicago he has inherited, with protestors in so many places, and he wants to put the genie back in the bottle.  It’s not possible.

We have the right to protest against war, austerity, and inequality.  Mayor Emanuel, you’ll see us in the streets of Chicago:  our streets.

Firedoglake and The Dissenter have been covering the ordinances since Emanuel first indicated on December 14 that he would push for the passage of the ordinances. As mentioned, the ordinances were revised but they are still an attack on those who would dare to exercise their First Amendment rights in the city of Chicago. Worst of all, they are permanent changes and do not expire after the NATO/G8 meetings in May.

That is right—Emanuel is using the NATO/G8 meetings as a pretense to force suppressive measures that chip away at Chicagoans’ civil liberties upon the people of Chicago.

Andy Thayer of CANG8 describes the worst aspects of the ordinances that just passed:

• The minimum fine for violation of the City’s parade permit ordinance would jump four-fold, from $50 to $200.” The maximum penalty would stay at $1000 and/or 10 days in jail
• Ahead of demonstrations, “organizers would be required to provide the City with a list of all signs, banners, sound equipment or “attention-getting devices” that require more than one person to carry them,” creating “a license for the city to ‘ding’ organizers with absurd fines.”
• No-bid contracts for NATO/G8 remains intact
• Provision allowing “deputizing of ‘law enforcement’” is also still in the ordinance. This does not simply include the DEA, the FBI and the Illinois State Police but also “other law enforcement agencies as determined by the superintendent of police to be necessary for the fulfillment of law enforcement functions.” Thayer points out this could mean rent-a-cops, Blackwater, etc.
• All downtown protest marches would be required to get $1 million insurance coverage to “indemnify the city against any additional or uncovered third party claims against the city arising out of or caused by the parade.” They would have to “agree to reimburse the city for any damage to the public way or city property arising out of or caused by the parade.”

Thayer points out this could mean someone who is not associated with an organization could “crash” the event and cause property damage. The City would then insist organizers pick up the tab.

Additionally, on the issue of registering signs ahead of time, Thayer notes the city has been backpedaling but in the end they really just want to mislead everyone who thinks this is utterly ridiculous:

The City’s grand concession is that its earlier proposal demanded that all signs, banners, etc. be registered. This is now replaced by a requirement that “only” those such signs, etc. that require two or more people to carry them be registered. A mayoral representative, Michelle T. Boom, the Commissioner of the Department of Cultural affairs and Special Events, tried to soft-pedal this provision by implying that there would be no penalty for violation of it. But if that’s so, why include it in the ordinance at all?

Despite revisions, the ACLU argues they are not satisfactory enough. Of particular concern to the ACLU is not the provisions restricting demonstrations but rather the power it grants the city to expand surveillance in Chicago:

…[The proposals continue to contain an ominous provision – the ability of the Mayor to purchase and deploy powerful surveillance cameras across the City without any approval or any oversight. Nearly a year ago, the ACLU of Illinois released a report noting that Chicago’s surveillance camera system – widely recognized as the most expansive and most integrated system in the nation – acts without any public regulation to protect individual privacy. The ACLU called on the City to put a hold on deploying new cameras until the City Council could adopt regulations that require reasonable suspicion before the cameras’ most powerful technologies (zoom, tracking and facial recognition) are used. The ACLU report also called for the City Council to adopt a specific policy on the retention and dissemination of images captured by the cameras.

Occupy Chicago was there to protest the City Council vote on the ordinances, but many of them were not allowed into the chamber. Martin L. Ritter, a community organizer, reported “hundreds” of city employees used their IDs to get into the chamber and occupy seats that Chicagoans opposed to the resolution would have occupied.

On the second floor of city hall, Occupy Chicago reported Chicago police were “assaulting” some of their members. Writer Joe Macare, who was present for the vote, heard a call for “reinforcements.”

Occupy Chicago mic checked during the vote, “The first amendment…is not a privilege…..to those who can afford…..permits, fines & insurance.” They shouted “Shame!” and “Who do you work for?” The shouting echoed through the halls and even people on the 11th floor of City Hall could hear those protesting the ordinances.

Perhaps, this tweet shows best what the effect of these ordinances could be:

It means that voices most often marginalized in society will have a harder time raising their voice without some police officer breathing down their neck informing them that they are violating some city rule that says they cannot exercise their First Amendment rights without doing this or without doing that. It means a march of immigrants where tens of thousands of people poured into the streets of Chicago in 2006 would be criminalized with city authorities identifying people so they could levy fines.

Emanuel and the city council seem to have passed these ordinances to dare Chicagoans to defend their right to dissent. Citizens, especially major activist groups and community organizations in Chicago, are definitely going to respond and continue to build public opposition to these new rules. And civil liberties lawyers will likely jump at the opportunity to challenge the rules in court the first chance they get.

http://vimeo.com/30169457

How to make an Ecosocialist Revolution from Jill Hickson on Vimeo.

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How to make an ecosocialist revolution

by Ian Angus

Meetings such as this play a vital role in building a movement that can stop the hell-bound train of capitalism, before it takes itself and all of humanity over the precipice. Building such a movement is the most important thing anyone can do today – so I’m honored to have been invited to take part in your discussions.

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One hundred and fifty years ago, Karl Marx predicted that unless capitalism was eliminated the great productive forces it unleashed would turn into destructive forces. And that’s exactly what has happened.

Every day we see more evidence that capitalism, which was once the basis for an unprecedented wave of creativity and liberation, has transformed itself into a force for destruction, decay and death.

It directly threatens the existence of the human race, not to mention the existence of the millions of species of plants and animals with whom we share the earth.

Many people have proposed technological fixes or political reforms to address various aspects of the global environmental crisis, and many of those measures deserve serious consideration. Some of them may buy us some time, some of them may delay the ecological day of reckoning.

Contrary to what some of our critics claim, no serious socialist is opposed to partial measures or reforms – we will actively support any measure that reduces, limits or delays the devastating effects of capitalism. And we will work with anyone, socialist or not, who seriously wants to fight for such measures. In fact, just try to stop us!.

But as socialists, we know that there can be no lasting solution to the world’s multiple environmental crises so long as capitalism remains the dominant economic and social system on this planet.

We do not claim to have all the answers, but we do have one big answer: the only basis for long-term, permanent change in the way humanity relates to the rest of nature, is an ecosocialist revolution.

If we don’t make that transformation we may delay disaster, but disaster remains inevitable.

As the headline on Climate and Capitalism has always said: “Ecosocialism or barbarism: There is no third way.”

But what do we mean by ecosocialism? And what do we mean by ecosocialist revolution?

What is ecosocialism?

There is no copyright on the word ecosocialism, and those who call themselves ecosocialists don’t agree about everything. So what I’m going to say reflects my own perspective.

Ecosocialism begins with a critique of its two parents, ecology and Marxism.

Ecology, at its very best, gives us powerful tools for understanding how nature functions – not as separate events or activities, but as integrated, interrelated ecosystems. Ecology can and does provide essential insights into the ways that human activity is undermining the very systems that make all forms of life possible.

But while ecology has done very well at describing the damage caused by humans, its lack of social analysis means that few ecologists have developed anything that resembles a credible program for stopping the destruction.

Unlike other animals, the relationship between human beings and our environment can’t be explained by our numbers or by our biology – but that’s where ecology typically stops.

In fact, when ecologists turn to social questions, they almost always get the answers wrong, because they assume that problems in the relationship between humanity and nature are caused by our numbers or by human nature, or that they are just a result of ignorance and misunderstandings. If only we all knew the truth, the world would change. All we need to do is to tinker with taxes and markets, or maybe advertise birth control more widely, and all will be fine.

The lack of a coherent critique of capitalism has made most Green Parties around the world ineffective – or, even worse, it has allowed them to become junior partners in neoliberal governments, providing green camouflage for reactionary policies.

Similarly, many of the biggest green NGOs long ago gave up on actually building an environmental movement, preferring to campaign for donations from corporate polluters. Because they don’t understand capitalism, they think they can solve problems by being friendly with capitalists.

In contrast, Marxism’s greatest strength is its comprehensive critique of capitalism, an analysis that explains why this specific social order has been both so successful and so destructive.

Marxism has also shown that another kind of society is both possible and necessary, a society in which destructive capitalist production is replaced by cooperative production, and in which capitalist property is replaced by a global commons.

What we now call ecology was fundamental to Marx’s thought, and, as John Bellamy Foster has shown, in the 20th century Marxist scientists made major contributions to ecological thought. But on the whole, the Marxist movements of the 20th century either ignored environmental issues entirely, or blithely deferred all consideration of the subject until after the revolution, when socialism would magically solve them all.

What’s worse, some of the worst ecological nightmares of the 20th century occurred in countries that called themselves socialist. We only have to mention the nuclear horror of Chernobyl, or the poisoning and draining of the Aral Sea, to make clear that just eliminating capitalism won’t save the world.

Now there is an easy answer to that – we could just say that those countries weren’t socialist. They were state capitalist, or something else, so criticism of their environmental crimes is irrelevant. But green critics will rightly call that a cop-out.

People in the Soviet Union and the other soviet bloc countries thought they were building socialism. And for most people worldwide that was what socialism looked like.

So whether we call those societies socialist or give them some other label, we need to answer the underlying question: what makes us think that the next attempts to build socialist societies will do any better than they did?

Our answer has two parts.

The first is that eliminating profit and accumulation as the driving forces of the economy will eliminate capitalism’s innate drive to pollute and destroy.

While mistaken policies and ignorance have caused some very serious ecological problems, the global crisis we face today isn’t the result of mistaken policies and ignorance – it is the inevitable result of the way capitalism works.

With capitalism an ecologically balanced world is impossible.

Socialism doesn’t make it certain, but it will make it possible.

The second part of the answer is that history is not made by impersonal forces. The transition to socialism will be achieved by real people, and people can learn from experience.

This is demonstrated in practice by Cuba, which in the past 25 years has made huge strides towards building an ecologically sound economy, and which has repeatedly been one of the few countries that meet the WWF’s criteria for a globally sustainable society.

The lesson we must learn from that achievement and from the environmental failures of socialism in the 20th century is that ecology must have a central place in socialist theory, in the socialist program and in the activity of the socialist movement.

Ecosocialism works to unite the best of the green and the red while overcoming the weaknesses of each. It tries to combine Marxism’s analysis of human society with ecology’s analysis of our relationship to the rest of nature.

It aims to build a society that will have two fundamental and indivisible characteristics.

• It will be socialist, committed to democracy, to radical egalitarianism, and to social justice. It will be based on collective ownership of the means of production, and it will work actively to eliminate exploitation, profit and accumulation as the driving forces of our economy.
• And it will be based on the best ecological principles, giving top priority to stopping anti-environmental practices, to restoring damaged ecosystems, and to reestablishing agriculture and industry on ecologically sound principles.

A sentence in John Bellamy Foster’s The Ecological Rift precisely and concisely explains ecosocialism’s reason for being.

“There can be no true ecological revolution that is not socialist; no true socialist revolution that is not ecological.”

What is an ecosocialist revolution?

When we say revolution, we are talking about a profound change in the way humans relate to the earth, in how we produce and reproduce, in almost everything humans do and how we do it.

What we’re aiming for is not just a reorganization of capitalism, and not just changes in ownership, but for what Fred Magdoff, in an article in a recent issue of Monthly Review, calls “a truly ecological civilization – one that exists in harmony with natural systems.”

Magdoff lists eight characteristics that such a civilization would have.

It would:

1. stop growing when basic human needs are satisfied;
2. not entice people to consume more and more;
3. protect natural life support systems and respect the limits to natural resources, taking into account needs of future generations;
4. make decisions based on long-term societal/ecological needs, while not neglecting short-term needs of people;
5. run as much as possible on current (including recent past) energy instead of fossil fuels;
6. foster human characteristics and a culture of cooperation, sharing, reciprocity, and responsibility to neighbors and community;
7. make possible the full development of human potential, and;
8. promote truly democratic political and economic decision making for local, regional, and multiregional needs.

As Fred Magdoff says, a society with those characteristics would be “the opposite of capitalism in essentially all respects.”

Not easy or quick

Achieving such a change is absolutely essential – but we should not delude ourselves that it will happen simply or quickly.

I’ve found that most environmentalists and most socialists seriously underestimate just how big a task we have set ourselves, how big the change will have to be, how difficult it will be, and how long it will take.

Forty years ago, in 1971, Barry Commoner, one of the first modern socialists to write about the environmental crisis, estimated that in order to reverse the environmental destruction that he could then see in the United States and to rebuild industry and agriculture on an ecologically sound basis, “most of the nation’s resources for capital investment would need to be engaged in the task of ecological reconstruction for at least a generation.”

The rate and extent of environmental destruction has accelerated rapidly in the four decades since Commoner wrote that. The time required and the cost of the repairs and reconstruction have increased substantially.

For example, the United Nations recently estimated that it will take 30 years to clean up the devastating damage caused by Shell Oil in the Ogoni peoples’ homeland in the Niger Delta. That’s for an area of just 386 square miles – about one-ninth the size of Sydney.

The Niger Delta is a particularly horrible example of capitalism’s ecocidal role, of course, but there are many more examples around the world, enough to dash any hope for an easy turnaround.

That means that the title of my talk today is a little misleading. I can’t tell you how to make an ecosocialist revolution, because the necessary changes will take decades, in circumstances we can’t predict.

What’s more, the transformation will undoubtedly require new knowledge, and new science.

To paraphrase Marx, there is no recipe book for the chefs of the ecological revolution.

Getting to the starting point

But what we can and must discuss is, how to get to the starting point.

One of the pioneers of revolutionary socialism and environmentalism was the great British poet and artist William Morris. In 1893, he described the starting point this way:

“The first real victory of the Social Revolution will be a the establishment not indeed of a complete system of communism in a day, which is absurd, but of a revolutionary administration whose definite and conscious aim will be to prepare and further, in all available ways, human life for such a system …”

We could combine William Morris’s statement with Fred Magdoff’s terminology, to summarize the central goal of the ecosocialist movement today:

“A revolutionary administration whose definite and conscious aim will be to prepare and further, in all available ways, human life for an ecological civilization.”

In our new book, Too Many People?, Simon Butler and I express that idea this way:

“In every country, we need governments that break with the existing order, that are answerable only to working people, farmers, the poor, indigenous communities, and immigrants – in a word, to the victims of ecocidal capitalism, not its beneficiaries and representatives.”

And we suggest some of the first measures such governments might take. Our suggestions include:

• rapidly phasing out fossil fuels and biofuels, replacing them with clean energy sources;
• actively supporting farmers to convert to ecological agriculture; defending local food production and distribution;
• introducing free and efficient public transport networks;
• restructuring existing extraction, production, and distribution systems to eliminate waste, planned obsolescence, pollution, and manipulative advertising, and providing full retraining to all affected workers and communities;
• retrofitting existing homes and buildings for energy efficiency;
• closing down all military operations at home and elsewhere; transforming the armed forces into voluntary teams charged with restoring ecosystems and assisting the victims of environmental disasters.

Our suggestions aren’t carved in stone, and I’m sure many of you in this room can think of many other essential changes.

For other valuable ideas about what such a government would do, I encourage you to also look at the “short term agenda for environmental activists” in the final chapter of What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism, by John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, and at the program proposed here in Australia in the Socialist Alliance Climate Charter.

I stress that we shouldn’t wait for an ecosocialist government to make those changes. On the contrary, we should be fighting for every one of those measures today, as central elements of our fight for a better world.

Those are first steps, just the beginning – building a fully ecological civilization will involve much more.

The longer it takes us to build a movement that can get the process started, the more difficult the ecosocialist revolution will be.

Majority participation

I have stressed the complexity and size of the task before us not to discourage you, but to underline another essential point. Social changes this sweeping will not happen just because they are the right thing to do.

Good ideas are not enough. Moral authority isn’t enough.

An ecosocialist revolution cannot be made by a minority. It cannot be imposed by politicians and bureaucrats, no matter how well meaning they might be.

It will require the active participation of the great majority of the people. In Marx’s famous words: “The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the workers themselves.”

This is not because democracy is morally superior, but because the necessary changes cannot be carried through, and will not be long-lasting, unless they are actively supported, created and implemented, by the broadest possible range of people.

Only majority support and involvement can possibly overcome the opponents of change.

The only way to overcome the forces that now rule, the forces of global destruction, is to organize a countervailing force that can stop them and remove them from power.

That’s another fundamental truth about revolutions – there is no such thing as a win-win revolution, where everyone gains and no one loses. In a real revolution, the people who had power and privileges in the old society lose their power and privileges in the new.

A few of those people may join in the revolutionary cause, and if so we will welcome them to our cause. But most of them probably will not support the majority.

Today, as in every human society for thousands of years, there are powerful social groups that benefit from the existing situation, and they will resist change no matter how obvious the need for change may be.

We only have to look at the present US Congress or at Australia’s Parliament to see powerful people who will resist change even to the point of destroying the world.

The climate change deniers are not isolated cranks. They are well-financed politicians, backed by some of the world’s richest corporations, and they are prepared to bring the world down to protect their power.

You know, whenever we talk about revolution, the powers that be accuse us of plotting violence. In fact, most of the ecosocialists I know are pretty nonviolent in their personal lives. I admit that many of us in Canada like hockey, and I’m sure there are some footy fans here today, but that doesn’t translate into our political outlook.

We don’t want violence, and we will be pleased if the transition to ecosocialism is entirely peaceful.

Unfortunately, unlike in professional sports, what happens in a revolution isn’t entirely up to us.

As we’ve seen in many countries, the democratic election of popular governments by huge majorities has never stopped defenders of the old order from trying to regain power through violent means.

And as the people of Venezuela and Bolivia have shown, the best way to minimize and counteract the violence of the reactionaries is to mobilize the largest possible number of people to defend the revolutionary process.

A tale of two cities

What forces will determine the outcome of the global environmental crisis in the 21st century? Less than two years ago we had a strong foretaste of the class lineup.

In December 2009, the world’s rich countries sent delegations to Copenhagen with instructions not to save the climate, but to block any action that might weaken their capitalist economies or harm their competitive positions in world markets.

And they succeeded.

The backroom deal imposed by Obama was, as Fidel Castro wrote, “nothing more than a joke.” The follow-up deal that they negotiated in Cancun was no better.

The Copenhagen and Cancun meetings made it clear that our rulers do not want to solve the climate and ecological crises. Period.

They place their narrow economic and electoral interests before the survival of humanity. They will not change course willingly.

Five months after the Copenhagen meeting, a very different meeting took place in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

At the invitation of Bolivian president Evo Morales, some 35,000 activists, many of them indigenous people, came from more than 130 countries, to do what Obama and his allies refused to do in Copenhagen – to develop an action program to save the environment.

They drafted a People’s Agreement that places responsibility for the climate crisis on the capitalist system and on the rich countries that “have a carbon footprint five times larger than the planet can bear”.

The World People’s Conference adopted 18 major statements, covering topics from climate refugees to indigenous rights to technology transfer, and much more.

It is impossible to imagine such a program coming out of any meeting of the wealthy powers, or out of any United Nations conference.

Those two meetings, in Copenhagen and Cochabamba, symbolize the great divide in the struggle for the future of the earth and humanity.

On one side, a meeting dominated by the rich and powerful, determined to save their wealth and privileges, even if the world burns.

On the other side, indigenous people, small farmers and peasants, progressive activists and working people of all kinds, determined to save the world from the rich and powerful.

The Cochabamba conference was a big step towards a global movement that can actually change the world. It showed, in a preliminary way, the alliance of forces that must be forged in each country, and internationally, to end the environmentally destructive capitalist system.

We need students and academics and feminists and scientists – but we will not be able to change the world unless we win the active participation of working people, farmers, indigenous peoples and all of the oppressed.

These are the forces that the green left must ally with. These are the forces that we must win to the perspective of ecosocialist revolution.

What to do now?

Now at this point, you should be asking, “How can we do that? How do we win mass support for the program and objectives we know are essential?”

That is exactly the right question to ask. Because if we can’t translate our ideas and our program into action, then our ideas are irrelevant, and so are we.

To cite another famous comment by Marx, our task is not just to explain the world, our task is to change it.

As Marxists, we use our analysis of the world as a basis for determining what to do. First we ask, “what’s going on?” Then we ask, “What is to be done?”

When we ask those questions today, we are all intensely aware that although the need for revolution is very clear to us, we are in a minority, not just in society at large, but even within the left and within the environmental movement.

As Marxist scholar Fredric Jameson has written, we live in a time when for most people, “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.”

Most green activists do not see capitalism as the primary problem – or, if they do, they don’t believe an ecosocialist revolution is possible or desirable.

So the key task before us is not to proclaim the revolution from every street corner, but rather to find ways to work with the broadest possible range of people as they are today.

The Latin American Marxist Marta Harnecker has expressed it this way:

“Being radical is not a matter of advancing the most radical slogans, or of carrying out the most radical actions….

“Being radical lies rather in creating spaces where broad sectors can come together and struggle. For as human beings we grow and transform ourselves in the struggle.

“Understanding that we are many and are fighting for the same objectives is what makes us strong and radicalizes us.”

It is through struggles for change that we can win the people who today find it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

We cannot artificially create majority support, but fortunately we can depend on capitalism and imperialism to help us.

Long ago, Marx and Engels said that what the bourgeoisie produces, above all, are its own gravediggers.

In 2011, we have seen capitalism’s future gravediggers come into direct conflict with authoritarian governments, with imperialism, and with capitalist austerity programs, in countries as diverse as Chile, Spain, Greece, Tunisia, Egypt, Britain and even the United States.

We cannot tell in advance where mass struggles will break out, or what forms they will take. That’s not under our control. The best slogans in the world won’t do it. But capitalism will make it happen.

The real question is, will the next radicalization peter out, or be defeated – or will it move forward, and ultimately challenge capitalism itself?

The movement we need

There are no guarantees. Marxism is not deterministic. The ecosocialist revolution is not inevitable. It will only happen if people consciously decide that is necessary, and take the steps needed to bring it about.

As long ago as 1848, Marx and Engels posed an alternative: the class struggle would lead either to “a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large,” … or to “the common ruin of the contending classes.”

In this century of environmental crisis, the common ruin of all, the destruction of civilization, is a very real possibility.

One factor that will determine the outcome – in my opinion the single most important factor – is the role that will be played by the people in this room, and by others like you around the world.

Spontaneous uprisings such as those we’ve seen in Europe and North Africa this year are inevitable, but they are not, by themselves, sufficient to bring into being “a revolutionary administration whose definite and conscious aim will be to prepare and further, in all available ways, human life for an ecological civilization.”

That will not be achieved unless we are successful in creating, in advance, an organized movement with a clear vision, an ecosocialist program, that can bridge the gap between the spontaneous anger of millions of people and the beginning of the ecosocialist revolution.

Meetings such as this one can be part of the process of building that movement.

I don’t have a blueprint for how to build the movement we need. Indeed, one of the lessons we can learn from the failures of socialism in the 20th century is that centrally-dictated, one-size-fits-all plans for movement building will always fail.

Rather than a blueprint, let me suggest four characteristics that movements committed to ecosocialism must share if they are to have any chance of success.

1. Ecosocialists will extend and apply ecosocialism’s analysis and program. This might seem obvious, but it’s very important. In the past century, many Marxists tried to freeze Marxism. After the death of Marx, or Engels, or Lenin, or Trotsky, or Mao – each group had its own cut-off point – their Marxism stopped developing.

From then on, no matter what the situation, all they had to do was consult the sacred texts. All of the answers were there. Some organizations on the left still do this today.

That approach is completely alien to Marxism, which gives us a method, but not all the answers. It doesn’t even give us all the questions.

In their lifetimes, Marx and Engels studied the scientific, technological and other discoveries of their time, and learned from the struggles of their day. They used their new knowledge to extend, deepen or change their political conclusions.

Ecosocialism must follow their example.

There is not, and there will not be a perfect and immutable ecosocialist program, no document we can point to and say, “That’s it, no more changes, we know what to do in all circumstances.”

A key task for ecosocialists everywhere is to take the beginning points that ecosocialism offers today, and to build on them using the method of Marxism, the best scientific work of our time, and the lessons we learn in struggles for change. Then we must apply our new understanding in a wide variety of places and circumstances.

This hard to do, because it requires us to think, to understand our situations and respond appropriately and creatively, not just repeat the same old slogans.

Only if we do that can ecosocialism contribute effectively to saving the earth.

2. Ecosocialists will be pluralist and open. Another lesson we can learn from the 20th century is that monolithic socialist grouplets do not turn into mass movements. They stagnate and decay, they argue and they split, but they don’t change the world.

So I want to emphasize that I am not urging you to rush out and found yet another sect.

Ecosocialism is not a separate organization, it is a movement to win existing red and green groups and individuals to an ecosocialist perspective.

Our ecosocialist programs define who we are, they are the glue that holds us together. But within that broad framework, we need to understand that none of us has a monopoly on truth and none of us has the magical keys to the ecosocialist kingdom.

We will undoubtedly disagree on many issues, and our debates will be vigorous.

But if you agree that “there can be no true ecological revolution that is not socialist; no true socialist revolution that is not ecological,” then what unites us is more important than our differences.

We need to build a democratic ecosocialist movement together.

3. Ecosocialists will be internationalist and anti-imperialist. Within the broad environmental movement, ecosocialists must be the strongest voices for global climate justice.

All serious environmentalists must be internationalists, if only because ecosystems don’t respect national borders.

In particular, there is no national solution to climate change. It must be fought for country-by-country, but only international change can defeat it. International communication, collaboration, and solidarity are absolutely essential.

But for those of us who live in the wealthy countries, the imperialist countries, there must be much more to our internationalism.

It’s been said many times that the people of the global South, and indigenous people everywhere, are the primary victims of climate change and other forms of environmental destruction.

What isn’t said as often, but is even more important, is that the primary environmental criminals are “our” capitalists in the North.

That places a special responsibility on ecosocialists in the wealthy countries to combat the policies of our governments and of the corporations that are based in our countries.

Today, the most powerful and important struggles for ecological justice are taking place in the so-called Third World.

At the barest minimum, we in the imperialist countries need to publicize those movements and expose the role our home-grown capitalists play. We need to show our solidarity as concretely as we can.

We must give particular emphasis and support to the demands raised in the Cochabamba Peoples Agreement.

• We must demand that our governments give financial support for adaptation to climate change, including the development of ecologically sound agriculture.
• We must demand direct transfer of renewable energy and other technologies, so that the poorest countries can have economic development without contributing to global warming. (I want to stress that unless and until we win this, no one in the North has any right to criticize the energy and development choices made by progressive movements and governments in the Third World.)
• We must oppose so-called market solutions, and the commodification of nature. This includes rejecting carbon trading in all its forms.
• We must welcome climate refugees to our countries, offering them decent lives with full human rights.

4. Ecosocialists will actively participate in and build movements for a better world.  Finally, and most important, ecosocialists must be activists. We need to slow capitalism’s ecocidal drive as much as possible and to reverse it where we can, to win every possible victory over the forces of destruction. As I’ve said, our rulers will not willingly change – but mass opposition can force them to act, even against their will.

There are many environmental issues facing the world today, and I’m sure that ecosocialists will be active in a wide variety of campaigns.

But the scope and potential destructiveness of the climate emergency make it the most important issue, and we need to give it the highest priority.

Our goal must be to bring together everyone – socialists, liberals, deep greens, trade unionists, feminists, indigenous activists and more – everyone who is willing to demand that governments act decisively to bring down greenhouse gas emissions.

And at the same time, we need to unite the forces that understand the need to go beyond defensive battles, and lay the basis for a movement that can in fact initiate the ecosocialist revolution.

Fortunately those two tasks are not in conflict. Fighting for immediate gains against capitalist destruction and fighting for the ecosocialist future aren’t separate activities, they are aspects of one integrated process.

It is through united struggles for immediate gains and environmental reforms that working people and farmers and indigenous people can build the organizations and the collective knowledge they need to defend themselves and advance their interests.

The victories they win in partial struggles will help to build the confidence needed to take on bigger targets.

And it is only by participating in and building such struggles that the ecosocialist movement can grow, can win a hearing from wider numbers of people, and can ultimately make an ecosocialist revolution possible.

The challenge we face

The Peoples Agreement adopted in Cochabamba eloquently expresses the challenge before us.

“Humanity confronts a great dilemma: to continue on the path of capitalism, depredation, and death, or to choose the path of harmony with nature and respect for life.”

“It is imperative that we forge a new system that restores harmony with nature and among human beings.

“And for there to be balance with nature, there must first be equity among human beings.”

There, in three sentences, is the case for building a movement to save the world, the case for an ecosocialist revolution.

As I’ve said, it will not be easy, but I cannot think of a more important and worthwhile cause.

Working together, we can put an end to capitalism, before it puts an end to us.

Zinoviev's rules: a universalized party form for all countries and all moments

“I don’t believe in “Leninism” as it is usually understood today – or what Louis Proyect more accurately refers to as “Zinovievism”, after the 1920s leader of the Communist International who obliged foreign communist parties to adhere to a particularly narrow interpretation of how the Russian Bolsheviks worked.”

“The clear record of success shows that a small sect of ideologues, outside of the most intimate association with the class struggle (including any “full-time revolutionaries”) only has success in becoming a bigger sect, and then crumbling later on. The question of whether it propagates its ideas is a different one.

“A small intellectual group can function as a “think tank”, and perform valuable ideological work. But unless intimately linked to the class struggle as it is happening here and now, it will decompose into sectarianism in the way Duncan Hallas would have understood it – the important thing becomes “defending the ideas”, rather than making the ideas useful to change social reality. In the jargon of science, that’s called a “degenerating research programme”, and the path to becoming a religious rather than a political group.”

“Let us be more concrete. Backroom dealings, manipulations, telling “acceptable fictions” to keep people enthusiastic, winning arguments by force of personality, using psychological arguments to discredit dissenters or simply not inviting them to the meetings any more, making excuses for or outright denying the mistakes or even crimes of “leading cadre”, declaring defeats to be victories or declaring them to be all the fault of unreliable allies,. is not the way to “build cadre”. “

The follow is part of our series from the unfolding debates in New Zealand.  Daphne has been a member of Socialist Worker since 2001.  She stood as a RAM candidate for the Auckland City Council in 2007 and for Parliament in 2008. This piece first appeared in Socialist Worker’s Pre-Conference Bulletin, [Jan 2012], then on the  Unity Aotearoa blog.

As should be obvious: Essays like this, that are posted for discussion, do not necessarily represent the views of Kasama.

Goodbye Lenin?

by Daphne Lawless

“… we are each given the experiences we need and I do not regret the craziness of those initial years, even though I know now that much of my energy and actions was misplaced.”
- Llewellyn Vaughan Lee

This paper is an exploration of ten years experience as a member of a revolutionary socialist organisation, and a question about what happens next.

Since 2005 at least I have been attempting to reconcile the Leninist political tradition I was trained in with my personal experience of alienation and oppression (as a queer woman with extensive academic training, a medium-sized income in the publishing field and a long-undiagnosed cognitive abnormality) ; with my humanities training with its insight into mass psychology, ideology and “memetics”; and with my own, highly idiosyncratic vision of what a world which worked properly for human beings would be like. And this is where I have come to, so far.

The political is personal…

I have often talked to people about why I cannot simply do the kinds of things that I could do in my first years as a political activist. I used to be able to sell a socialist newspaper to my workmates, or at least try to; man a political stall and hold discussions with passers-by; participate in demonstrations; even recruit to the organisation. I castigated myself for a long time, blaming myself for “cowardice”, “lack of will”, etc. Any Marxist or feminist would recognize the effects of internalised oppression if this were in the capitalist workplace; it seems very wrong that we tend to resort to blaming of individuals for feelings that arise from our own movement.

But finally, and most simply, the thought struck me: I no longer believe. I no longer see, in other words, the essential relationship between these kinds of actions and bringing about the kind of social revolution that we need to preserve human civilisation and the integrity of the biosphere.

And let me be more precise. I still believe in “revolutionary politics”. Marxian political economy still seems to me to be the only intelligent way to describe the off-the-cliff trajectory of today’s financial capitalism, and the effects of alienated labour and oppression on the collective social and mental health of working people are clearly obvious. It’s also clearly obvious that the only way out is a social revolution which expropriates the ruling classes and their media/ideological enablers and puts real decision-making power and cultural capital into the hands of the working masses.

What don’t I believe? Well, I don’t believe in “Leninism” as it is usually understood today – or what Louis Proyect more accurately refers to as “Zinovievism”, after the 1920s leader of the Communist International who obliged foreign communist parties to adhere to a particularly narrow interpretation of how the Russian Bolsheviks worked. This doesn’t mean that I am rejecting the intellectual heritage of the Russian Revolution altogether, although I think we should be more critical of Lenin and Trotsky’s belief that a socialist state would be like a gigantic corporation or “central bank”. Efficiency under socialism will have to mean something other than the assembly-line mass-production model of a large capitalist bureacratic firm.

But the more important point is that I certainly don’t think that the “small group Leninist” model which remains with us from the post-war era until today – in Trotskyoid or Mao-oid flavours – is the way forward to social revolution. The two points behind this I see are one of strategy, and one of organisation.

As far as strategy goes, re-examining my Marxist ideas, it seems obvious to me that real change in the world can only be brought about by social revolution – a change in the real relations of power in society. This is of course intimately tied in with economic revolution – a change in the way that goods and services are produced, distributed and received. The question of political revolution – a question of who controls the organs of power – is, as any thinking Marxist knows, of less important than the first two.

The state is an outgrowth of social power relations – if society is not transformed, the state cannot be, not by the most enlightened of governments. And the question of state power is really the question of who owns the state – as, in our political tradition, we’ve fought for ages against the proposition that “state dominance of the economy = workers’ power or socialism”. If the state expropriates the bourgeoisie (as in Cuba), then unless the social relations of alienated, waged labour and production for profit change, the actually existing real functionaries of the state (the bureaucracy) become the new, collective bourgoisie. The socialist government of Venezuela have tried an alternative – attempting to create a new “balance of power” between a revolutionised state and the bourgeoisie, in the hope that mass self-organisation will have the space to flourish. The jury is still out on whether this is working. But the point is that gaining political power is not the decisive question in which class is going to rule.

An effective revolutionary socialist movement has to be a movement for social revolution. I’m no ultra-leftist – inserting ecosocialist ideas into mainstream “political debate” via activism in everyday campaigns, and participating in bourgeois elections, is an undisputed part of that. But building a party and providing leadership will never, ever be enough, if the masses inside and outside the party are not concretely challenging the relations of production, on the ground, right now. In the modern era, I would say this would involve not only wages and conditions struggles of organised labour, but the growth of “non-market” ways of producing the necessities of life – community gardens, open source / no-patent software, local systems of barter and exchange, co-operatives producing for need and not for sale. It’s happening right now, and are socialists taking it seriously or are we looking somewhere else for “real” revolutionary change? Any serious ecosocialist organisation, I feel, has to be up at the front of that as well as of the demonstrations and the election hustings. (One topic that we should be looking at, by the way, is the “Food Bill” currently making its way before Parliament, which would – if interpreted literally – actually make it illegal to sell or distribute home-grown produce without a licence.)

The other question is organisational. The clear record of success shows that a small sect of ideologues, outside of the most intimate association with the class struggle (including any “full-time revolutionaries”) only has success in becoming a bigger sect, and then crumbling later on. The question of whether it propagates its ideas is a different one. A small intellectual group can function as a “think tank”, and perform valuable ideological work. But unless intimately linked to the class struggle as it is happening here and now, it will decompose into sectarianism in the way Duncan Hallas would have understood it – the important thing becomes “defending the ideas”, rather than making the ideas useful to change social reality. In the jargon of science, that’s called a “degenerating research programme”, and the path to becoming a religious rather than a political group.

… and the personal is political

To be concrete, I no longer believe in the central concept of “democratic centralism” as it has evolved in the small-group Bolshevik tradition (that is, the “party” debates things internally and then presents a united front in word and deed), because I do not believe it works in practice. And the simple reason for this is that I have suffered under its pains and never enjoyed the promised successes. I have never been subjected to any of the cultish insanity or bureaucratic atrocities that you read of in the really scary groups. But I have experienced what it is like to be on the losing side of the argument, of feeling obliged to give the majority argument in public, to defend it… and then to watch it fail, to realise that your own instincts were correct, and then to realise that there is nothing to stop exactly the same thing happening again.

The theory behind democratic centralism is that if the leadership screws up then the leadership can be replaced, or forced to account for its failings. But this is much, much harder than it sounds in practice in a small voluntary organisation. The people with the most time, energy and self-confidence will tend to win every debate, unless they’re coming up against someone else equally strong in those regards. And every “victory” won by an incumbent leadership increases the habit of going along with what that leadership says.

What is worse is when the leadership dismisses dissent on the basis that only the leadership really knows what’s going on – claiming special insight on the grounds that only the leadership has the capacity to know whether the leadership’s initiatives have been successful. This may combine with the suggestion that dissent is due to ignorance of things that the leadership knows but doesn’t feel the need to prove, or a lack of “revolutionary optimism” or “closeness to the working class” of dissenters. This lends itself to a certain circular definition of leadership. It’s altogether too close to bourgeois democracy’s “cult of the expert”, the belief that only certain people are qualified to be leaders – which reminds me of the increasing professionalisation of union leadership.

You can’t have democracy in which the followers are disqualified from having their opinions taken seriously. If a group gets to the point where there is simply no ready alternative to the existing leadership (in part because all the contenders get slapped down hard and end up gun-shy), then it may end up in an ever-decreasing circle where the leadership’s mistakes can never be corrected except on the initiative of the leadership itself. The members of the organisation who have lost confidence in the leadership have nothing left to do but to “vote with their feet”, or else to simply shut up and plow their own furrow.

No-one is “to blame” for this. It is certainly not the fault of the personality of any comrade, since it happens in so many other groups. We are all doing our very best, by our own lights, to do some good in this world. And I also reject the sectarian answer that the problems of a political organisation can be traced back to its programme… if by “programme” we mean the line it takes in its publications. But if by “programme” we mean how it actually operates, internally as well as within the movement, then perhaps we begin to make some progress.

Tony Cliff suggested that “you don’t need a beautiful chisel to create Michelangelo’s David”, by which I assume he meant “ugly means can create beautiful outcomes”. That’s a supportable philosophical point. But I am increasingly also believing that, since we are a movement for the liberation of humanity into a new world where we live in harmony with each other and the rest of the natural world, change has to be prefigurative. “The master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house”, as the feminist Audré Lorde put it.

Let us be more concrete. Backroom dealings, manipulations, telling “acceptable fictions” to keep people enthusiastic, winning arguments by force of personality, using psychological arguments to discredit dissenters or simply not inviting them to the meetings any more, making excuses for or outright denying the mistakes or even crimes of “leading cadre”, declaring defeats to be victories or declaring them to be all the fault of unreliable allies,. is not the way to “build cadre”. (Not all of these things have happened in our organisation, but they have happened in others on the Left quite close to us, here and overseas.)

We keep saying that working people can only become fit to be the ruling class as part of the struggle to become the ruling class. Do we really believe that the traditions of the post-war small-group Leninist left have produced a layer of people who have been positively transformed by their years in the milieu? Why are there so many casualties? Of course people get discouraged by years of failure, although perhaps they wouldn’t if they weren’t enticed into activism on false promises of the imminent millennium.

But my own personal, Quixotic quest has been to reconcile being an effective political activist with personal healing, a way to come to terms in one’s own life with the effects of exploitation, alienation and oppression. I have always believed that the kind of political organisation that could really make a difference would make a difference for its own members as well as in the real world of the class struggle. Being a member of such an organisation would not be a comfortable escape from reality (as is the real motive behind sectarian decomposition), but would help comrades to live their lives in the world of exploitation, alienation and expression better, more healthily, as well as giving them the tools to change it in fundamental ways.

This is of course the same insight as many Marxist writers on pop psychology or pharmaceutical approaches to depression have had: that it’s not the individual’s fault they can’t deal with reality, it’s that capitalist reality is fundamentally unreasonable. But when the internal environment of a Marxist group is also fundamentally unreasonable – when it reproduces the hierarchies, dominance games and doublethink of the capitalist world – then you have to wonder what kind of a better or even different world can be produced by such a system.

Proposals

So, where does this leave me in practical terms? I completely endorse the analysis of American socialist Dan DiMaggio in his article “Road maps, dead ends and the search for fresh ground”, which has also been distributed. There is simply no point to building sect-type socialist organisations, around one particular “political line”, in the current era. That sort of behaviour will guarantee that the audience for socialist ideas remain tiny. In retrospect, it seems a terrible disaster that the Workers Charter newspaper, our most successful venture in almost a decade of broad-left initiatives, ran out of steam – if it still existed, perhaps in the form of a website, it would be exactly what I think we need right now.

I now do not think that collectively launching a terminal 5 website, devoted to promoting the collapse analysis, is a good idea at all. This is simply because I cannot imagine how this would mean anything more than “another sect” – another way of differentiating ourselves from the masses by a political line. Also, while I still find the analysis persuasive, I must admit that I feel like this is one more proposal which has been “pushed through” our organisation by force of personality. What is left of Socialist Worker cannot be cohered by “shared allegience to the collapse analysis” – that’s the outmoded Zinovievist way of thinking that I now reject. This hypothesis must be tested in debate and practice with the broader left – and I do not think that building a website designed to promote it is the best way to start that.

Instead, I propose we throw ourselves into building a broad eco-socialist website, including both posted articles and a moderated forum, through which networking of broad-left activists for theory and practice can organically grow into existence. The “collapse analysis” can and should be promoted there by those who find it convincing, without any expectation that there is a membership organisation based around “believing” it which must “uphold it in public”. I have no interest in belonging to such an organisation. We should call for volunteers as quickly as possible for an initial Editorial Board of such a website.

We should commit ourselves to starting eco-socialist local groups, with a perspective of eventually federating into a national Eco-socialist network. These should unite theoretical discussion and practical action around ecosocialist politics, between the existing socialist and anarchist Left, those sympathetic to such politics within Mana, the Greens or even Labour, and ordinary people who are increasingly aware that something’s got to “give”. This would not just be a “climate” group, in that it would treat the ecological crisis and the financial and legitimacy crises of capitalism as part and parcel of one another. Hopefully, such a group would have the kind of flexibility and internal culture which I have discussed above.

What of Socialist Worker as the lineal descendent of the Communist Party of NZ (established 1921)? I believe that SW’s current organisational model (with the CC pretty much including all the active members) is not fit for purpose and is a “Potemkin village”. But we should continue to exist as a loose network for the next little while, prioritising building the Eco-Socialist website and networking, while of course discussing theory and practice in the various struggles and campaigns that arise. But I would envisage that increasingly, as the website comes into action, there would be less and less “internal discussion” and more and more our activism and discussion would be as “broad eco-socialists”, on that website and in the local groups and the national network.

There then remains two possible futures for SW – that it should “wither away”; or it should regroup with other broad-party socialists. In my opinion the latter option would be preferable – if and only if there really are other Marxist activists in this country who are ready to take the serious step to trying to build a “new-age cadre movement” rather than a “Zinovievist” group, with its accompanying problems of internal dominance of a few “leaders” and intellectual petrification. I have no way of knowing which is more probable from where we stand now.