Alan Wald: "why not drop Trotskyism altogether"
ln...@columbia.edu
titled "The End of 'American Trotkskyism'?"
DEFINING TROTSKYISM
One of the key problems in the theory and history of U.S. Trotskyism
is the definition of Trotskyism itself. This problem immediately
underscores the need for an analytical method based on perspectives
and approaches, not absolutes and blueprints. It is, I think, fair and
plausible to include within Trotskyism all those who declare
themselves Trotskyists and exclude those who deny any such allegiance.
Nevertheless, accepting any and all self-definitions is problematic,
since some self-proclaimed Trotskyists are regarded by others as
palpably fraudulent, and some groups refusing a Trotskyist identity
have political views similar to Trotskyism. Thus, the "open-door"
policy of determining who is and isn't "Trotskyist," although it may
be the only option, can force a discussion of Trotskyism into all
sorts of byways and, necessarily, often into the very debates that
have made it appear sectarian, ingrown, and cultist.
Yet a constructive 1990s discussion of Trotskyism, although it has an
obligation to deal critically with sectarian offshoots that may well
have done more harm than good to Trotskyism's legacy, has to keep its
primary focus on the recoupable segments. One or another of the little
groups that may be traced back to Trotskyist origins or that may
consider itself the only "true Trotskyist" current may have produced
an impressive analysis of this or that conjunctural event, or led a
significant struggle here or there. However, in the end, one has to
come back to the question of "impact" to determine one's priorities
for focusing one's energies-the same question of "impact" that
relegates Trotskyism as a whole to a vital element, but not the
epicenter, of U.S. left-wing politics.
This issue of trying to define Trotskyism also raises the problem of
explaining why there have been so many schisms and divisions in the
U.S. Trotskyist movement, which parallels, although perhaps in more
intensive form, the experience of the Left as a whole. The unfortunate
result, as we all know, is that there now exists a plethora of
different socialist and communist groups and grouplets, most of which
are extremely hostile to one another. Many newly radicalizing students
and workers can hardly tell the difference among the groups. Thus
quite a few would-be socialists become perplexed if not discouraged by
the state of disorganization on the part of the so-called organized
Left. At the very least, this proliferation confuses the nonsocialist
public as to the meaning of the word "socialism," let alone
"Trotskyism." At worst, these divisions set the Left against itself
precisely when it needs to unify against common enemies of racism,
sexism, imperialism, and the exploitation of labor and the
environment. Yet one finds that the subject of schisms on the
Trotskyist Left is one that is rarely, if ever, treated with the
seriousness, subtlety, and sophistication it deserves.
Most often, intra-Left feuding and the creation of what seems to be an
endless list of new self-proclaimed vanguard parties bearing
pretentious and redundant names and initials give rise to ridicule and
cynicism on the part of those who either have abandoned or never took
to heart a commitment to build a socialist movement. On the other
hand, for those who are immersed in the difficult task of building
socialist organizations, the subject is so complex, and the issues so
volatile, that it is difficult to present an analysis with any
semblance of objectivity or that at least achieves the simulacrum of a
dispassionate statement of the two, three, ten, twenty, or fifty
different positions that can and have emerged over this or that
controversial political event.
Still, one has to say that, although one desires unity on the Left and
has a vision of a broad, nonsectarian, internally democratic,
multitendency, revolutionary socialist organization, it is pretty
obvious that some of the divisions that have occurred on the U.S. Left
have been necessary and important. To some degree, these divisions are
the same divisions that have occurred within the international
socialist movement of the last 150 years or so, and they reflect real
differentiations in strategy, tactics, and even morality that cannot
be overcome simply by goodwill. Here I am referring to the famous
disputes between Marxism and anarchism, Marxism and revisionism (of
the Bernstein type), bolshevism and menshevism, internationalism and
social patriotism, workers democracy and bourgeois democracy, and
Trotskyism and Stalinism.
Differences in these categories can be so momentous, can touch on such
fundamental questions relating to the strategy and the very nature of
social transformation, that I don't see how any "tactfulness," no
matter how artful, or how any "conciliationism," no matter how
magnanimous, can in the long run prevent differences of this order
from erupting and necessitating a parting of ways. After all, if an
interimperialist war breaks out and one faction in an organization
wants to support "its" country's war and the other faction takes an
internationalist position of urging all workers to refuse to fight,
these factions cannot coexist in the same organization.
Likewise, there have been situations such as the war in Vietnam, where
the French social democracy and later the U.S. social democracy
refused to demand the complete withdrawal of the imperialist troops
from the colonial country, and the revolutionary Left demanded "out
now" and supported the right of the Vietnamese to self-determination.
These are incompatible positions of historic magnitude. Such divisions
occur not only in wartime; there have been relatively small strikes,
such as the famous Ocean Hill-Brownsville teachers' strike of 1968,
where different radical groups were on opposite sides of the picket
lines: some supporting the union, and others supporting the Black
community.
Schisms of this character are subjects for highly detailed study; they
are, in fact, the classroom for learning the "ins and outs" of
politics. They should not be cause for dismay or demoralization in the
sense that they at least lend themselves to rational analysis, to the
potential assimilation of certain methodological principles that ought
to help prevent a repetition. These are real and clear-cut
distinctions. They are the kinds of differences that resulted at
certain past moments in the formation of Communist parties, Socialist
parties, Trotskyist parties, Leninist and non-Leninist parties, and so
on.
At the other extreme, and far more troubling, are splits and schisms
that seem less explicable. For example, there might be two Trotskyist
or Maoist factions of the same party that adhere to the same body of
theory yet go to war with each other over some passage in a document
that might seem obscure to the uninitiated. One faction ends up
expelling the other, and perhaps even goes so far as to denounce the
other as counterrevolutionary. Here, there might be all sorts of
possible explanations. There could be genuine differences in the
assessment of this or that event, although the question remains why
that should necessitate such a brutal schism. Why shouldn't a
socialist organization be broad enough to contain a variety of
opinions, with the factions and tendencies learning from one another?
Why not let the test of time resolve such episodic controversies as
long as there is agreement on the larger questions? Clearly this is a
reasonable perspective so long as one is not in the situation of
coping with provocations by police agents or a wrecking operation by
some external political group that has sent in or recruited agents
bent on destroying one's organization.
Yet one also has to be careful about relying on platitudes about
democracy and programmatic agreement that are likely to be violated
the moment one is faced with a real-life situation. The truth is that
sometimes the kinds of schisms described above are going to occur
whether or not they are objectively justified. They may reflect
internal power struggles for leadership of an organization, or severe
personality conflicts, or fits of subjectivity induced by conditions
in the outside world. People with socialist dreams still live in the
same world as everyone else and are subject to the same weaknesses as
everyone else. Or an internal struggle that seems cryptic could
actually be symptomatic of one faction or another drifting in the
direction of one of those historic dividing lines that seem to
necessitate separate organizations-that have always caused a parting
of ways, internationally and repeatedly, for a century and a half.
The list of schism-causing issues since the 1930s is unbelievably
long. There have been disagreements over the relationship of workers
to farmers; whether to work in existing trade unions or create new,
revolutionary unions; whether to work within, without, or
inside/outside the Democratic Party; whether to work with or against
the trade union bureaucracy; whether to support or oppose the
nationalism of oppressed minorities or condemn all forms of
nationalism. Other debates occurred over the relation of politics to
artistic and cultural work and the relation of socialism to feminism.
Moreover, it is necessary to realize that questions and disputes such
as these have been played out against the very complicated social
formation of the United States. Indeed, since the time of Marx and
Engels a debate has raged over why the United States, with what
appears to be the purest form of capitalism, has produced a
working-class movement with a remarkably low level of socialist class
consciousness in comparison not only to other advanced industrial
societies but even to numerous dominated Third World nations. This
debate has been recreated in many famous essays with variations of the
title, "Why No Socialism in America?", which means, why have socialist
class consciousness and mass organization been so limited? This could
give a U.S.-specific framework to certain controversies, especially
those around the most effective approach to the Democratic Party and
to nationalist movements of people of color.
Such complications notwithstanding, the question remains, why are
there so many splits, and what can be done about them? This cannot be
answered by any formula and least of all by platitudes,
pro-"pluralism" of all views, or pro-programmatic agreement. Formal
guarantees of democratic rights and procedures for resolving disputes
are absolutely essential, yet no one should have the illusion that
these cannot be readily twisted, reworked, and refunctioned by
majorities as well as minorities to justify almost any desired
behavior. The answer will come only through studying examples and
concrete experiences from all angles and, of course, through one's own
engagements in analogous situations in the 1990s and after. No formula
exists to protect socialists a priori from complex and painful
developments. One can, however, seek to foster a long-term commitment
to constructing a serious and democratic organization through
collaboration with diverse individuals who are all pledged to a kind
of collective political life, through which individuality is realized
with, not against or apart from, one's cothinkers.
The big question nonetheless remains: can Trotskyism play a uniquely
dynamic role in a current reconstitution of a revolutionary socialist
Left? The answer, I feel, will not be found in doctrine, by which I
mean adherence to labels, programs, slogans, or theory. As with
organizational "rights," the record now shows that all these can be
interpreted far too variously. The answer can lie only in method. We
have to go back and review the epistemological issues raised in Georg
Lukacs's famous essay that opens History and Class Consciousness,
"What Is Orthodox Marxism?" Lukacs claimed that the essence of Marxism
was method; Leninists, such as the Trotskyist George Novack,
intelligently observed that a method that can exist for long periods
of time without producing valid "programmatic conquests" must be
highly suspect. Therefore, Marxism must be more than a method and
embrace specific conclusions on historical experiences and political
policy as well.
By mid-1995, however, we can see for ourselves that reliance on the
more specific kinds of "programmatic conquests" is also highly
problematical, even if the more general propositions about class
struggle seem to be confirmed over and over again. Once a passage in a
programmatic document begins to be applied in practice, all hell
breaks loose. There are just too many divergent assessments of that
application to enable socialists to crow about "programmatic
conquests" with any certainty. The application of the "united front
tactic" in the opinion of one Trotskyist is nothing but "slimey
Popular Frontism" in the opinion of another; the defense of the
principle of self-determination to one is merely "tail-ending petit
bourgeois nationalism" to another, and so forth. As a consequence,
although not eschewing program entirely, we most return again to
method-method as inseparable from program.
METHOD AND POLITICAL PROGRAM
From this point of view, there are methodological aspects of
Trotskyism that the twenty-five years since the height of "the
sixties" have shown to be still necessary and valid. To be precise: in
the 1960s, there was at the outset a salutary repudiation among New
Left activists of both a pro-Stalinism that had illusions about the
USSR and the so-called anti-Stalinist Left that saw imperialism
(euphemistically labeled the "free world") as the lesser evil to "Red
totalitarianism." But this trend of thinking in the New Left was not
based on the Trotskyist method of starting from the objective
interests of the working class, regardless of the class's alleged
relation to the state or any party ruling in its name.
In fact, the New Left's superficial rejection of Stalinism in the form
of the USSR actually led many to a worship of Maoism, uncritical
Castroism, and other trends that later brought sharp disillusionment
and great losses. Trotskyism in the 1990s could contribute to
correcting such errors in regard to future revolutionary developments
in the Third World. In fact, some socialist activists from the
Trotskyist tradition have already set a good example through their
approaches to the Nicaraguan revolution and the El Salvadoran
struggle, and they may make other contributions if they treat in a
nondogmatic way the complex situations in South Africa, Haiti, and
elsewhere.
Still, so far as the United States is concerned, Trotskyism must be
rejected as an autarkic revolutionary movement projecting its own
hegemonic leadership, even with lip service to routine (although
necessary) expressions such as, "of course, we don't have all the
answers" (which usually means that we think we have most of them).
Trotskyism in the United States has been proved too often to be an
insufficient worldview, leading mainly to smug little groups that are
more like extended families, splitting apart in bitter family
quarrels. A diverse and flexible revolutionary socialist group is
quite an anomaly in the history of the U.S. Left in general and
Trotskyism in particular; in fact, it is precisely this kind of group
that the majority of self-proclaimed Trotskyists hate (as "soft," a
"swamp"), define themselves against, and want to see destroyed in
order to justify their own vanguardist existence.
If one's objective is to achieve a socialist movement with authority
based on real analytical cogency and power expressive of working-class
agency, the pantheon of Trotskyist thinkers and "Great moments in
Trotskyism" must not stand apart from or even above the rest of the
Left. Despite the extraordinary talents and contributions at various
times of Cannon, Shachtman, Dobbs, Draper, and C. L. R. James, no
Trotskyist leaders can credibly be seen as "the" guiding lights of
organizational strategy, political theory, and philosophy. Yet, within
a broader context, many of the historic Trotskyist cadres can be
appreciated as vital, stimulating, and serious contributors.
This issue is somewhat related to the famous charge of "Trotskyist
sectarianism," a charge leveled frequently at Trotskyism by its
various critics, although just as frequently by some Trotskyists
against others. The charge is difficult to evaluate because, as my
preceding analysis indicates, I think that there is considerable truth
to it, but opinions vary markedly as to where the borders of sectarian
behavior lie. From my experience, liberals and social democrats are
quite capable of sectarian behavior equal to that of revolutionary
Marxists, Dissent magazine being a good example in its hostile
attitude and unfair caricaturing of almost everything to its Left.
Moreover, it is possible to have very sectarian politics presented in
a nonsectarian manner, and nonsectarian views presented shrilly and
aggressively.
Nevertheless, Trotskyism has appeared to many people to be a politics
largely devoted to criticizing the Communist and social democratic
traditions for "betrayal." And this seems a rather preposterous if not
counterproductive stance, not because Stalinism is what anyone wants,
but due to Trotskyism's own comparatively poor showing in terms of
practical achievements." Moreover, a turn from the dogmas of Stalinism
to the various theories of state capitalism, degenerated workers
statism, and bureaucratic collectivism is unlikely to be the dominant
trend we will see among the new generation socialist activists.
In truth, although the more sectarian Trotskyists get attention
(including, sometimes, greater media notice due to their propensity to
differentiate themselves from the rest of the Left), there are many
other Trotskyists who work wholeheartedly for reform as a way of
raising political consciousness and strengthening the positions of
subaltern groups. But even this nonsectarian approach seems insincere
to many independent radicals, because most Trotskyists regard only a
tiny number of people-usually their group and affiliated
organizations, and certain select movements from the past-as genuinely
revolutionary."" To be genuinely "revolutionary" means to adhere to
particular policies (not just statements on paper, but interpretations
of such statements), although the term "revolutionaries in action" is
sometimes used for individuals who, without full political
consciousness, nevertheless take action that is compatible with the
theory. This latter label, however, seems to apply only so long as
someone is committing certain positive acts, and it can quickly be
rescinded when the actions are interpreted differently.
In any event, it is a dubious schema to regard someone selling a
revolutionary newspaper at Columbia University or collecting
membership dues in a downtown Los Angeles party headquarters as a bona
fide revolutionary socialist, whereas a peasant occupying land in
Latin America with the Bible as a guide may at best be considered a
revolutionary in action if his or her struggle happens to provoke a
crisis of the state that leads to a struggle for power. In my view,
rather than operating with a category of revolutionary essence, it
should be recognized that all individuals and groups have multiple
aspects and identities as they evolve and contexts shift.
Again, the argument is not that it is impossible or undesirable to
distinguish revolutionary from reformist theory or action. However,
such a task is much harder to, carry out than it appears to those
Trotskyists who spend so much of their time putting other groups and
individuals into "boxes" (that is, liberal, reformist, centrist,
revolutionary in action, and revolutionary) when the borders are
always shifting. A group or individual may share features of several
of these labels at once, or else be a "revolutionary" with zero impact
on the class struggle or a "liberal" such as Martin Luther King who is
a galvanizing force for social advancement.
Revolutionary socialists in the United States always have been and
apparently always will be faced with problematic leaderships at the
head of worthy struggles in far-off countries, whether the Sandinistas
in Nicaragua, the African National Congress in South Africa, the
Lavalas movement in Haiti, or the Cuban Communist Party. The approach
of comparing these leader-ships with mythical "true Bolshevik-Leninist
parties" and then decrying them as bankrupt and treacherous is hardly
more useful than uncritical adulation. In a way, both attitudes mirror
each other by being based on simplistic premises.
The methodological objective required is one that obtains a balance
between skepticism about political claims and sufficient belief in the
possibility of amelioration to act in genuine solidarity. My
understanding of the history of the Left exempts no leaders from
manifesting traits that are contradictory, including Lenin and
Trotsky. Certain individuals appear at times to point the way: women
and men who act as leaders in a community or in a factory. Yet,
invariably, even the most extraordinary individual leaders eventually
come up against real inadequacies in their capacity to lead, to
understand, and to commit resources. The goal of socialist political
cadres must be the development of a broad and democratically
functioning team leadership, based on an organization's
institutionalizing multiple tendencies and pluralism, that balances
out strengths and weaknesses in order to sustain a movement
diachronically as well as synchronically.
A big problem, of course, is that in an "individualist" culture, such
as holds sway in advanced capitalist countries like the United States,
very few individuals who achieve recognition for leadership talents
are willing to subordinate their egos to a team, which has
implications for revolutionary practice as well as for other
activities. They desire recognition, gratification, and admiration,
even if they are not directly motivated by monetary gains. Like many
medical doctors who believe that years of grueling self-sacrifice in
medical school entitles them to subsequent years of living well, not a
few revolutionaries who have made genuine sacrifices for a cause will,
after a period of time, think that this entitles them to various kinds
of privileges. If removed from a national leadership body or an area
of work where they have established a satisfying role for themselves,
such individuals may, after a period of apparent acquiescence,
suddenly undergo a kind of conversion and come up with a series of
exaggerated political complaints against the organization-very often
ones that are similar to those held by others who were driven out of
the organization previously. Then, if those now making the complaints
fail to win a majority, the organization is declared "undemocratic,"
even though it was regarded as "the most democratic in the world" just
a few years earlier, when the individuals now in opposition were part
of the majority.
Surely one of the most tragic features of the history of U.S.
Trotskyism is the inability of individuals, who were once comfortable
in an organization and then on the "outs," to recognize problems in
theory, practice, and organization until "one's own ox is gored." Like
those former Communists who believe that anyone who left the Communist
Party by a certain date (usually when they themselves left) is all
right, but those who remained afterwards are total dupes, many
Trotskyists also put a "date" on the degeneration of the group from
which they have broken. In most cases, this date roughly approximates
the time that they were deposed, although some go too far the other
way and write off the entire movement from start to finish. These
responses reflect all-too-human traits that recur so frequently that
they must be acknowledged and addressed; efforts to ignore, deny, or
simply denounce them have proved inadequate.
The more one critically reads the oral histories and autobiographies
of Trotskyist activists that do exist, mostly in unpublished form, the
more one sees that a crucial factor in many splits and disaffections
has been the blockage of an individual's rise to a full-time
leadership position. True, most political differences are real and are
even necessary for hammering out a political orientation. Yet the
transformation of a difference into the accusation of betrayal by the
majority leadership can often be simply the construction of a pretext
for an individual oppositionist and his or her circle to break away
and set up their own political fiefdom wherein, although smaller, they
will constitute the staff of generals. Sometimes, of course, the split
is caused by the majority group in power in an effort to remove a
potential future threat or distract the membership from objective
problems by blaming internal enemies. Usually, however, the dynamic
leading to a split occurs on both sides.
None of the above is by any means restricted to Trotskyist or Leninist
or even socialist organizations. Anarchist groups and religious sects
exhibit similar traits. The question is whether one should continue
the Trotskyist tradition of lining up on historical factional sides,
as if someone born in 1940 or 1950 or after was actually present as an
engaged participant at the time of the "French Turn" or the "Auto
Crisis." This relates to some of the controversies about the so-called
"Cannon tradition." Is the proper appreciation of Cannon, who
certainly represents a good deal of what is most recoupable in U.S.
Trotskyist history, to be achieved by retrospectively reinscribing
oneself as his right-hand man or woman in all the faction fights he
ever waged? Is this the most effective way to combat vulgar and
prejudiced anti- Cannonism? Might it not be more productive to step
back and extract whatever is valuable from all points of view in such
disputes to create a richer and more mature political culture that
won't snap so quickly into raging factions, which at the first sign of
serious disputation leads to crisis and split?
Clearly the rhetoric of "all-inclusiveness" and the abstraction of
democracy don't work. They disorient and incapacitate as one deals
with real-life situations, such as ultra-left elements in a coalition
or an organization that really do disrupt and paralyze and that may
even, under the most extreme conditions, have to be ejected for the
sake of democratic, majority-rule functioning. But the older
tradition, with its talk of political homogeneity and fidelity to a
precise (rather than general) program, doesn't work either. The
boundaries of what constitutes homogeneity are variously defined, as
are the interpretations of the allegedly "historic program. The method
required, then, must be based on approaches to problems and principles
of analysis, and these must be derived from the relation to goals.
CONCLUSION
In sum, why not "drop" Trotskyism altogether? First, one shouldn't
drop Trotskyism because politically active people need continuity if
they are going to avoid repeating errors of the past. The problems
telescoped in the Trotskyist tradition are hardly idiosyncratic;
rather, they are an important variant of problems faced by the U.S.
Left in all decades. Those who lived through the I 960s saw in the
fate of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) that one could not
entirely escape program, coherent organization, and a theory of social
formations. SDS's attempt to repudiate the Old Left, instead of
critically building upon and advancing its legacy, only hastened the
New Left's demise.
A second reason for coming to terms with and appropriating the best of
U.S. Trotskyism-that is, putting it up on the reference shelf
alongside the other potentially valuable traditions of class struggle,
but perhaps letting it protrude a bit and dressing it in a brighter
cover-is that there are recoupable elements in its theory and
tradition that are far superior to others available. The Theory of
Permanent Revolution, of course, still remains to be verified,
although the perspective of combining bourgeois-democratic and
socialist demands seems the most plausible for liberation of the
dominated countries. However, the Trotskyist focus on workers'
power-the assessment of strategy as well as the character of a social
formation from the perspective of self-control by the producers-and
the corollary arguments for separating party and state and the
necessity of revolutionary pluralism, all of which are argued so
compellingly in the Fourth International document "Socialist Democracy
and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat," provide a crucial
foundation. So does much Trotskyist work regarding independent
political action, nationalism, and self-determination.
However, because Trotskyism has had so little success in the United
States, the attitude of Trotskyism historically has appeared to be,
"if only we were in the leadership, we could set things right-because,
if we were in the leadership, the class consciousness of the
proletariat and its allies would have to be at a much higher pitch."
In the famous case of Trotskyist policy regarding the Popular Front
and World War II, for example, this stance is essentially the legacy
that Trotskyism bequeathed-the truism that the only real solution is
socialist revolution, and that that is obtained only by refusing to
subordinate the interests of the working class to the program of
liberal capitalism. But, Trotskyist or not, all reasonable people
ought to be haunted by the questions: What if revolution were not
possible then; what if the famous "crisis in leadership" (the failure
of correct ideas to win out) were overdetermined by factors that
simply could not be dislodged, even if Trotskyist organizations had
memberships of tens of thousands? What if, in fact, the Popular Front
did not, overall and in every case, facilitate the advance of reaction
but was the best that could be produced in certain situations because
socialist revolution was not then on the agenda? As a new generation
of revolutionary socialist activists emerges, they will have to go
back and reconsider these issues in order to develop a theory and
perspective on the course of world history that is genuinely produced
and not a mechanical hand-me-down. If those from the Trotskyist
tradition stand aside from such reconsideration or, even worse,
participate only as "seasoned experts," it will only heighten their
irrelevance; they must, of course, bring their experiences to bear,
but also genuinely listen to people from other traditions and keep an
open mind about the possibility of genuinely new issues arising.
Finally, in terms of future directions for research and theory, let me
conclude by mentioning one area that has preoccupied me, personally,
during the past decade, even before the "Crisis of 1989." In my view,
the Trotskyist criticism of the U.S. Communist or "Stalinist" movement
has been inadequate and reductive, which I discovered not only by
reading the new scholarship but also as I conducted extensive
empirical research based on about a hundred personal interviews and
the examination of sixty or so new archival collections dealing with
Communist Party activities. I raise this not as an academic question
but because I find that young people and left-wing scholars in search
of a U.S. radical tradition, especially one that is antiracist and
rooted in the working class, return again and again to the Communist
experience. I don't believe that this is only because at the height of
the New Deal and during the "Grand Alliance" the movement had a kind
of "power," because much of the scholarly interest also includes the
Third Period of the late l920s and early l930s, as well as the Cold
War era. I believe that it is because there is evidence that the
struggles and impact of cadres of the CPUSA outdistanced by far those
of any other organized socialist current. Even many who broke bitterly
with the CP-USA went on to play admirable roles in struggles during
the 1960s and after, and they frequently acknowledged the value of
their years in the CP-USA.
Given this reality, the issue of a compelling and subtle theorization
of the U.S. Communist movement also embodies the bigger question of
how one critiques and relates to other more successful movements that
one nonetheless believes to be profoundly flawed. Here it is
significant to note that many features of the traditional Trotskyist
critique of the Communist movement are far and away the most
influential in scholarship on the Communist Party, outside of CP-USA
circles themselves, of course. This was certainly the case after the
end of the 1950s, when the low-level anticommunist Redbaiters such as
Eugene Lyons faded from prominence. This Trotskyist critique, reworked
to fit various political perspectives, was embodied mainly in Theodore
Draper's early histories, Cannon's and Shachtman's writings, and in
writings by Irving Howe, Lewis Coser, Phyllis Jacobson, Julius
Jacobson, and Bert Cochran. The view was generally that CP-USA
rank-and-file activists were decent people, not dupes of the USSR but
dupes of their leaders, who, like the Soviet bureaucracy itself,
covered up crimes and perpetrated lies out of self-interest (varying
from monetary gain and power to more subtle psychological needs).
Moreover, these leaders remained leaders mainly by fidelity to
Stalin's shifting policies, in turn determined by Stalin's own need to
maintain power in the USSR. Of course, revolutionary socialists like
Cannon and the Jacobsons argued such analyses from an uncompromising
anticapitalist and anti-imperialist perspective, whereas others,
shading off into liberalism, combined features of this critique with
very different politics.
However, in the mid-1990s, we see that much current scholarship on the
CP-USA by leftists, most of whom are or were activists and "on the
side of the angels," is in aggressive rebellion against this legacy.
The main defender of Draper is Harvey Klehr, a neoconservative This
rebellion is not at all because many of these scholars, mostly
middle-aged professors of history, have been in or around the CP-USA;
actually, many of them had a connection with rival currents, including
the C. L. R. James tradition, Maoism, and even Trotskyism. I won't
repeat here what I've already published in reviews of the books by
Paul Buhle, Maurice Isserman, Robin Kelley, and Ellen Schrecker. What
I think is crucial to emphasize here is that this scholarship on the
CP-USA, although I disagree with much of it politically, has rendered
the whole subject of U.S. Communism far more absorbing, useful, and
relevant than ever before-and more than the study of Trotskyism has
ever been. This is because these scholars have moved from a focus on
documents, resolutions, and parallels with Soviet policy to paying
attention to human dimensions and engaging gender and race issues. It
is also because many of these scholars, although not eschewing the
idea of commitment, have the ability to step back and examine a
variety of perspectives on a problem somewhat dispassionately,
according to the attitude popularly attributed to Lukacs, "partisan
but objective."
What this means is that those trying to sustain what is useful from
the Trotskyist tradition need a less grandiose conception of
Trotskyism's historic role. The view that the task of modern
Trotskyists is to "reclaim a historic program" by using their
publications to distinguish themselves from other political currents
through defense of "the Trotskyist program" is far too simplistic.
There are too many opinions about what constitutes "the real historic
program" of Trotskyism, and, by incanting such mystical phrases, one
will only end up confusing oneself with, not distinguishing oneself
from, the discredited legacy of Trotskyist sectarianism. In the
tradition of "American Trotskyism," much of this outlook flows from
the belief held by James P. Cannon in the 1940s that the Socialist
Workers Party was the already constructed vanguard, with its main
objective being to win leadership of the masses. Although one has good
grounds to believe that this kind of faith was necessary for Cannon
and the SWP to survive the difficulties of the period, it surely must
be rejected as a model for today, even though the basic idea appears
in Cannon's otherwise inspiring "Theses on the American Revolution":
"The revolutionary vanguard party, destined to lead this tumultuous
revolutionary movement in the U.S. does not have to be created. It
already exists, and its name is the Socialist Workers Party. It is the
sole legitimate heir and continuator of pioneer American Communism and
the revolutionary movements of the American workers from which it
sprang. .. The fundamental core of a professional leadership has been
assembled. . .
"The task of the SWP consists simply in this: to remain true to
program and banner, to render it more precise with each new
development and apply it correctly to the class struggle; and to
expand and grow with the growth of the revolutionary mass movement
always aspiring to lead it to victory in the struggle for political
power."
This kind of thinking was not an aberration of the movement but flowed
directly from the tradition of "American Trotskyism" Similar ideas
appear in an article by Morris Stein, one of Cannon's most trusted
supporters, who served as SWP national secretary when Cannon was
imprisoned under the Smith Act:
"We are monopolists in the field of politics. We can't stand any
competition. We can tolerate no rivals. The working class, to make the
revolution can do it only through one party and one program. This is
the lesson of the Russian Revolution. That is the lesson of all
history since the October Revolution. Isn't that a fact? This is why
we are out to destroy every single party in the field that makes any
pretense of being a working-class revolutionary party. Ours is the
only correct program that can lead to revolution. Everything else is
deception, treachery We are monopolists in politics and we operate
like monopolists"
No doubt there are those who can sugarcoat and speciously "interpret
in the appropriate context" such statements, or even try to minimize
them in light of the fact that both writers (Cannon and Stein)
modified their views as time went on. But the Trotskyist tradition has
no hope of accomplishing anything more than the generation of small,
sectarian groupuscules unless it breaks radically with the key
features of this outlook. It must instead be recognized that no
program or group of cadres or organization exists as "the heir and
continuator" of the revolutionary tradition; that the programmatic
task is not to render it more precise and apply it "correctly" but to
profoundly revamp it in friendly interaction with rival perspectives,
aimed at developing method more than precise policy; that leadership
(even if united and to some degree centralized) is not something that
should fall into the hands of a single group but should grow
organically from the struggle with various kinds of political
activists Participating side-by-side with (and with veterans learning
from) the participants more than "leading" them; and that one should
be an antimonopolist in the field of politics, learning from and
defending the rights of Political rivals.
However, a repudiation of the strong elements of sectarianism leader
idolatry, hairsplitting, and so forth that have afflicted and disabled
U.S. Trotskyism has nothing in common with the vulgar anti-Trotskyist
views that the movement produced nothing of worth, that all forms of
anti-Stalinism must lead to deradicalization or "objectively" aids
reaction, that Trotskyism is simply Stalinism without power, and so
forth.
To sum up: Trotskyism!!! is dead. Long live trotskyism
For Marxist discussion: www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html
David Kephart
ln...@columbia.edu wrote in message <35c1cc42...@news.columbia.edu>...
>[This is also from the Wald-Leblanc book, an excerpt from an article
>titled "The End of 'American Trotkskyism'?"
>
>DEFINING TROTSKYISM
>One of the key problems in the theory and history of U.S. Trotskyism
>It is, I think, fair and
>plausible to include within Trotskyism all those who declare
>themselves Trotskyists and exclude those who deny any such allegiance.
And, with that inauspicious beginning, the author of this contribution
proceeds to divorce the word Trotskyism from any consistent revolutionary
program, practice, method,,,anything at all that might allow anyone who
would like to be a Trotskyist (i.e., a revolutionary Marxist) to find their
way to the working class and a party capable of leading it.
Above all, he disputes the Stein dictum:
>
>"We are monopolists in the field of politics. We can't stand any
>competition. We can tolerate no rivals. The working class, to make the
>revolution can do it only through one party and one program. This is
>the lesson of the Russian Revolution. That is the lesson of all
>history since the October Revolution. Isn't that a fact? This is why
>we are out to destroy every single party in the field that makes any
>pretense of being a working-class revolutionary party. Ours is the
>only correct program that can lead to revolution. Everything else is
>deception, treachery We are monopolists in politics and we operate
>like monopolists"
He counterposes this:
>...developing method more than precise policy; that leadership
>(even if united and to some degree centralized) is not something that
>should fall into the hands of a single group but should grow
>organically from the struggle with various kinds of political
>activists Participating side-by-side with (and with veterans learning
>from) the participants more than "leading" them; and that one should
>be an antimonopolist in the field of politics, learning from and
>defending the rights of Political rivals.
But would like to flatter himself that this represents the formula under
which:
>...a repudiation of the strong elements of sectarianism leader
>idolatry, hairsplitting, and so forth that have afflicted and disabled
>U.S. Trotskyism has nothing in common with the vulgar anti-Trotskyist
>views that the movement produced nothing of worth, that all forms of
>anti-Stalinism must lead to deradicalization or "objectively" aids
>reaction, that Trotskyism is simply Stalinism without power, and so
>forth.
All in all, a striking proof of the proposition that political views, if
they are
to be, as Trotsky described Marxism, "warlike from head to foot", cannot
be spun out of the fervent imagination of middle-class American radicals,
but must have an organic historical connection to the revolutionary
movement of the working class.
It should be clear that neither "individuals" by themselves (in
Wald-LeBlanc's
vocabulary, people who call themselves Trotskyists), nor the number of
individuals (in Wald-LeBlanc, social movements without consciously
revolutionary leadership), but only the quality of the leadership exercised
by a party (that is, a revolutionary vanguard party jealously guarding its
Marxist,
Leninist, and Trotskyist principles, as proven over a lifetime of
theoretical
and practical struggles) have any "impact" (and Wald-LeBlanc do not define
that term), that is, can survive the torrential movement of classes when a
revolutionary situation develops. Historically, this capacity has been
demonstrated by the party most dedicated to the historical interests
of the working class, since those are, quite succinctly, the establishment
of
a workers state and the abolition of capitalism, and therefrom all forms
of exploitation.
The party which abandons its principles in despair at the
lack of "impact" it has on the public opinion of self-styled radicals can
achieve only a better result on a public opinion poll. Wald-LeBlanc are
fitting
theoreticians for all such parties - and there are many. The "impact" sought
after by the revolutionary party, not the word Trotskyism, is the first
thing
to define.
What cracks the brain of Wald-LeBlanc is that the actual task confronting
the
working class in the United States is not an American problem,
but a world problem. Trotskyism in the United States as in any other
country is not national politics, but international politics. The dismay
before
the task of constructing revolutionary leadership expressed by
Wald-LeBlanc is the dismay and prostration of the middle-class
American citizen before the might of transnational capital.
The class element dissatisfied by capital's worldwide expansion, but
incapable of leading is the element represented by Wald-LeBlanc.
That is the petty-bourgeoisie. But precisely because they cower before
the big bourgeoisie, this class element most loudly complain, decry,
and ridicule the revolutionary current _prior_ to the development of
a revolutionary situation. This reduces to jeering at the Marxists
for having the guts to see the struggle through!
If the reader would rather see to the actual construction of Marxist
leadership in
the working class than attempt to deduce it out of thin air, the website to
visit
is: www.wsws.org; the party to consider is the only one with Marxist
internationalism at its core, the Socialist Equality Party.
Yes, it will take on its opponents who falsely claim to be Trotskyist, but
the SEP approaches this not as a sterile debate, but as a task arising
from a new conjuncture in the class struggle. No, it hasn't yet the numbers
to accomplish the socialist revolution, but, then again, if anyone had,
the task would have been finished long ago.
Louis N Proyect
>
> Yes, it will take on its opponents who falsely claim to be Trotskyist, but
> the SEP approaches this not as a sterile debate, but as a task arising
> from a new conjuncture in the class struggle. No, it hasn't yet the numbers
> to accomplish the socialist revolution, but, then again, if anyone had,
> the task would have been finished long ago.
Your association with Gerry Healy, the enemy of critical Marxist thought
and cult-builder, rules you out completely as a candidate to "accomplish
the socialist revolution."
Louis P.
David Kephart
leadership of the SEP and sections of the International Committee of the
Fourth International exposed Healy politically, despite his considerable
prestige and history in the Trotskyist movement.
The full details cannot be encapsulated in a single newsgroup post, but
anyone seeking to change the world (rather than merely change how one sees
the world) should be suspicious of this brand of dismissal:
Louis N Proyect wrote in message ...
It is not a question of candidacy, either in the intellectual or the
electoral sense, but of grasping the current changes in the class struggle.
Marxism is the only weapon the advanced workers have. Trotskyism is its
legitimate continuation. And the struggle of the ICFI against opportunism in
its midst, although it did not follow a straight line, testifies to its
revolutionary capacity.
Go wave the bogey of the imperfect / cult leader at those who did not
struggle against Healy's repudiation of Marxism, namely those around
Slaughter, Mr. Proyect. And, I might add, where is your _class_ assessment
of Healy, his accomplishments, and his weaknesses?
As for the small change of CLR James vs. this or that SWP figure, etc., that
is the most pathetic worship of the individual. When Cannon speaks out most
determinedly, for the central and unique role of the Trotskyist party, you
question him. When he and the rest of the SWP old guard sink back on their
laurels in the US trade union movement and cave in to centrist tendencies
themselves, you say he "thought better" -- or words to that effect -- of his
quite correct earlier stand.
You aim at a cult of individuals, all right: a cult of individuals who do
nothing.
Louis N Proyect
> It is not a question of candidacy, either in the intellectual or the
> electoral sense, but of grasping the current changes in the class struggle.
> Marxism is the only weapon the advanced workers have. Trotskyism is its
> legitimate continuation. And the struggle of the ICFI against opportunism in
> its midst, although it did not follow a straight line, testifies to its
> revolutionary capacity.
>
Straight line? Healy's international grouping was an embarrassment to
Marxism. It combined super-sectarianism with opportunist overtures to
sleazy characters like Qaddafi. I think you would do well if you took the
time to provide this newsgroup with an analysis of why Healy's
organization was so degenerate. This would make for interesting reading.
Louis P.
Fred Ferguson: mprinter@earthlink.net
Yes Louis, once again, you are right--the latter day Healy was a
power-mad, money-grubbing, unprincipled cultist who surrounded himself
with yes men and every pretty young female in the organization. But,
never forget that as Trotsky said about Stalin--Healy was once a
revolutionary and if the young, revolutionary Healy could have seen
what the old Healy would become, "he would have recoiled in horror."
Healy (along with that other degenerated old revolutioanry, James
Robertson), fought for revolutionary politics t the key moment in the
history of the Fourth International: when the Pierre Franks, Mandel's
and yes, Cannon, agreed to the Pabloite "reunification" of the
international organization.
Instead of tarring this fellow with the "Heally-crook-degenerate"
brush, deal with the politics of his posting: Wald's right-wing petty
bourg world-view?
If there were an uprising by the working class in this country, Wald
and every other social democrat (with apologies to Norman Thomas),
would be demanding police protection from the rabble in the streets.
Fraternally,
Fred Ferguson
Fred Ferguson: mprinter@earthlink.net
>On Sun, 2 Aug 1998, David Kephart wrote:
>
>>
>> Yes, it will take on its opponents who falsely claim to be Trotskyist, but
>> the SEP approaches this not as a sterile debate, but as a task arising
>> from a new conjuncture in the class struggle. No, it hasn't yet the numbers
>> to accomplish the socialist revolution, but, then again, if anyone had,
>> the task would have been finished long ago.
>
>Your association with Gerry Healy, the enemy of critical Marxist thought
>and cult-builder, rules you out completely as a candidate to "accomplish
>the socialist revolution."
>
>Louis P.
Louis:
While every thing you've said above about the "Septics" is true--its
also obvious that Kephart (whoever he is), has pulled down Wald's
pants in public, and shown the world what kind of half-assed "Marxist"
he is--or thinks he is.
Fraternally,
Fred Ferguson
Louis N Proyect
> Healy (along with that other degenerated old revolutioanry, James
> Robertson), fought for revolutionary politics t the key moment in the
> history of the Fourth International: when the Pierre Franks, Mandel's
> and yes, Cannon, agreed to the Pabloite "reunification" of the
> international organization.
I think all sides in this dispute were wrong. The notion of a Trotskyist
International organized on the basis of democratic centralism has a
built-in sectarian logic. What happened to Healy is that he took over the
IC when the SWP reunited with the ISEC. He began at that point to think of
himself as the avatar of Trotsky. All differences within his International
began to turn into class differences, where Healy represented the
long-term interests of the proletariat while the oppositon were tarred as
petty-bourgeois. My intention is to build a Marxist movement that does not
incorporate these Manichean conceptions. It all stems from the Zinovievist
Comintern, which fostered not only Stalinist authoritarianism but
Trotskyist authoritarianism as well. It became impossible to contain
powerful political differences in a Trotskyist group because of this
sociological reductionism. The end result of all this is the sort of
deranged split that took place in the tiny group in Detroit a few months
ago and whose internal struggles were reported on in apst. This surely is
not the way a Marxist party will be built in the US.
Louis P.
Marc Viglielmo
Louis N Proyect wrote:
"Zinovievist Comintern"?? Mr. Proyect, aren't you embarrassed? Let me
ask you (he said, trying to refrain from bursting out laughing), Mr. Proyect:
how is it that all the Marxists and/or Leninists writing in the thousands of
books and journals over the past several decades that deal with the history of
the Comintern -- how is it that no one until now has managed to identify this
problem of "Zinovievism"? How could they not identify this problem, and give
it a name, the way you have? BECAUSE EVEN THOSE WRITERS WOULD HAVE RECOGNIZED
HOW ABSURD IT WOULD BE TO CONFER AN ENTIRE "ISM" ON SOMEONE WHO WAS MERELY AN
APPARATCHIK OF LENIN, WHOSE WHOLE CAREER WAS SHAPED BY LENIN, AND WHO OWED ALL
OF HIS IDEAS TO LENIN. Proyect, it seems, either knows very little about
the history of the Comintern, or (as I suspect) has hit upon the idea of
creating "Zinovievism" as a means of saving his icon, the person of Vladimir
Ilyich Ulyanov. THE CREATION OF THE COMINTERN ITSELF WAS A SECTARIAN SCHEME,
UNSUPPORTED BY ANY MASS PARTY, CRITICIZED BY THE ONE DELEGATE AT THE MARCH
1919 FOUNDING MEETING WHO REPRESENTED A REAL PARTY (THE GERMAN DELEGATE).
It's all there, in the histories by Braunthal, Hulse and others.
Pity Proyect! The other Lenin-worshippers who may have rallied to the
cause of creating this new entity "Zinovievism" are gone from this newsgroup:
Kneisel, Holmes, Stevens and the rest (wait! -- maybe Lenoire will come to the
rescue!). Proyect continues to pound away at his computer, hoping that other
people will pick up on his latest attempt to salvage the Leninist mythology,
now reeling under the weight of the accumulated scholarship on the Bolshevik
faction and on the early years of the Bolshevik regime -- a body of schoarship
which Proyect studiously, and stubbornly, tries to avoid addressing at all
costs. Stites, Elwood, Kelly, Sochor, Mally, Fitzpatrick, Van Geldern,
Williams, Getzler -- the work of all these scholars, plus the books by
Balabanoff, Wolfe -- all of this must be ignored, must not be discussed, and
Proyect is just lucky that none of them are on this newsgroup. Why would any
self-respecting scholar want to waste their time arguing with a Marxist
activist who, because he has some progressive ideas about changing U.S.
society, leaps from there to believe that he actually knows more than these
scholars who have spent their LIVES in libraries, studying Russian, going to
Russia, studying the original sources.
And Proyect calls himself an intellectual! His method is
ANTI-INTELLECTUAL because it IGNORES SCHOLARSHIP WHICH IS INCONVENIENT FOR HIS
ICONOGRAPHY. He thrives for the moment on this newsgroup precisely because
the rest of the leftists (and even Watson!) are illiterate as far as this body
of work concerned.
And what about John Plant? Where are you, Mr. Plant? Would you care to
comment on the DOZENS of posts I've written in my silly attempt to educate the
people on this newsgroup about Bogdanov? (Yes, it really is kind of silly --
I'm sure that's what Sochor and the Revolutionary Russia group would tell me.)
Louis N Proyect
or alternately, democratic centralism? The tendency has been to assume
that there is an unbroken line between the small, sectarian groups of
today and the Bolshevik Party of the turn of the century. When
organizational changes have been made, the assumption is that these are
refinements to Lenin's party. For example, if Bukharin published ruthless
criticisms of Lenin's position on the national question in the newspaper
"The Star", an imigri Bolshevik paper, we have tended to assume that this
was an anomaly. The essence of Leninism is to defend a unitary political
line in the official party newspaper and Bukharin's "indiscipline" was a
sign of immature Bolshevism rather than a confirmation of its true spirit.
Tracing the evolution of Lenin's organizational approach to the rigid,
monolithic models of today requires an examination of official Comintern
documents of the early 1920s since these became the guidelines for
organizing Communist Parties. Most "Marxist-Leninist" parties of today
regard this period as a link in the chain between the historic Bolshevik
Party and what passes for Leninism today. Rather than seeing these
Comintern documents as a distortion of historic Bolshevism, we have tended
to regard them as hagiography. Part of the problem is that Lenin gave his
official blessing to these documents and this somehow gives them a
hallowed status. It is time to examine them on their own merits.
The first clear statement on organizational guidelines were contained in
the July 12, 1921 Theses on the Structure of Communist Parties, submitted
to the Third Congress of the Comintern. W. Koenen, a German delegate,
confessed that they were hastily drafted and were referred without further
discussion to a commission. Two days later, they were passed unanimously
without discussion. The purpose of the theses was to impose a uniform
model on Communist Parties worldwide.
For example, they state that "to carry out daily party work every member
should as a rule belong to a small working group, a committee, a
commission, a fraction, or a cell. Only in this way can party work be
distributed, conducted, and carried out in an orderly fashion." Of course,
what this led to everywhere is the immediate creation of fractions or
cells. Anybody who has been a member of a "Marxist-Leninist" group will be
familiar with this approach to political work. Nobody has ever thought
critically about what it means to have a "cell" or a "fraction" in a union
or mass movement that speaks with the same voice on behalf of a single
tactical orientation, but nevertheless the rule--hardly discussed at the
Congress--became law.
Poor Lenin was trying to sort out all sorts of problems that year and
probably didn't have the minutiae of organizational resolutions upper-most
in his mind, but there is some evidence that these sorts of rigid
guidelines did not sit well with him. A year later, at the fourth
congress, Lenin offered some critical comments on them:
"At the third congress in 1921 we adopted a resolution on the structure of
communist parties and the methods and content of their activities. It is
an excellent resolution, but it is almost entirely Russian, that is to
say, everything in it is taken from Russian conditions. That is its good
side, but it is also its bad side, bad because scarcely a single
foreigner--I am convinced of this, and I have just re-read it-can read it.
Firstly, it is too long, fifty paragraphs or more. Foreigners cannot
usually read items of that length. Secondly, if they do read it, they
cannot understand it, precisely because it is too Russian...it is
permeated and imbued with a Russian spirit. Thirdly, if there is by chance
a foreigner who can understand it, he cannot apply it...My impression is
that we have committed a gross error in passing that resolution, blocking
our own road to further progress. As I said, the resolution is excellent,
and I subscribe to every one of the fifty paragraphs. But I must say that
we have not yet discovered the form in which to present our Russian
experience to foreigners, and for that reason the resolution has remained
a dead letter. If we do not discover it, we shall not go forward."
This resolution, which was composed in haste and which Lenin described as
"too Russian", was never subjected to the sort of critical evaluation that
he proposed. The opposite process occurred. The rigid, schematic
organizational forms were not only accepted, but turned even more rigid
and schematic. Part of the explanation for this is that Lenin himself died
and nobody in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had the sort of
subtle understanding that he did about such questions. The party hack
Zinoviev became the supreme arbiter of organizational questions and took
the communist movement in exactly the opposite direction. The Comintern
ended up proposing organizational guidelines that were even "more Russian"
than the ones that were adopted in 1921.
The explanation for this is twofold. The party leadership--including all
factions left and right--understood only the outward forms of the
Bolshevik Party rather than its inner spirit. Also, the reversals in the
class struggle in the early 1920s--especially in Germany--tended to create
a crisis atmosphere in the Russian party and the Comintern. Under such
conditions, the tendency is to circle the wagons and enforce ideological
uniformity on the basis of the orientation of the current leadership.
Criticism is considered "anti-party" and ultimately an expression of alien
class forces.
Louis P.
Hunter H. Watson
<Pine.GSO.3.95qL.9808...@merhaba.cc.columbia.edu>, Louis
N Proyect <ln...@columbia.edu> wrote:
The flaw here is Louis' underlying presumption that had *Lenin* devoted
extra time to refining the Theses on the Structure of Communist Parties
they would remain valid today, e.g., that Lenin, like the Pope, but unlike
the "hacks" who were his colleagues, was infallible. Lenin, however, was a
terrible futurist. His record consists of one giant error in judgment
after another. The larger the issue the more faulty his analysis tended to
be. Accordingly, Marxist/Leninists today are functionally adrift. One
would think it is time to think for themselves, even to dispense with the
M/L label. But like the Catholic clergy and for identical reasons they
can't bring themselves to do it.
H.W.
Hunter H. Watson
wrote:
Very thoughtful post.
Can Proyect or anyone else provide me with Proyect's web page address? It
was referred to the other day here on apst.
Hunter Watson
Hunter H. Watson
In article
<Pine.GSO.3.95qL.9808...@merhaba.cc.columbia.edu>, Louis
N Proyect <ln...@columbia.edu> wrote:
The flaw here is Louis' underlying presumption that had *Lenin* devoted
Kristine Ramsay
Comintern, the Bolshevik Party. Of course, even the US delegates represented
thousands of workers organized in the Socialist Party. I don't know if the
learned V. has read the Comintern series edited by John Riddell, but I am sure
that he must recognize that a major change had taken place in world working class
politics with the Russian Revolution. In any case, the German representatives to
the founding congress of the CI, were delegated from a much smaller organization
than the RSDLP(B), the Spartacist League. I believe that the leaders of the SL,
Luxembourg and Liebnicht had already been murdered by the Stalhelm, with the
assistance of the SPD. The Bolshevik Party was a mass party by the time of the
October revolution, and had the overwhelming support of the toiling masses, both
the working class and the peasantry. Contrary to the fulminations of the
imperialists and their lackeys, the Revolution was a mass movement in the
interests of the mass of the people. Peace, land and bread were the slogans, the
proletarian revolution aligned with the peasant war; as Karl Marx had written
during the 19th century, the whole affair was splendid. My party is organizing to
carry out a similar revolution world wide.
Lucien Lenoire
Philip Ferguson
aka 'Kristine Ramsay', writes:
> My party is organizing to
> carry out a similar revolution world wide.
The Barnestown brigade are presumably doing this by losing most of their
members and slowly closing down branch after branch.
Lucien's wet fingers are still on the live wires!
Philip Ferguson
Hunter H. Watson
<pl...@csc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Of the Bolshevik-led revolution in 1917, the inimitable Lucien Lenoire,
> aka 'Kristine Ramsay', writes:
>
> > My party is organizing to
> > carry out a similar revolution world wide.
>
> The Barnestown brigade are presumably doing this by losing most of their
> members and slowly closing down branch after branch.
More humor at poor Lucien's expense. But the question Philip raises is
fundamental. Are Marxists giving up on armed revolution? Proyect has said
something to the effect that Castro throws in the towel but hasn't yet
given us the quote.
Hunter Watson
Marc Viglielmo
Kristine Ramsay wrote:
> during the 19th century, the whole affair was splendid. My party is organizing to
> carry out a similar revolution world wide.
> Lucien Lenoire
To state that the Russian party was the only mass party supporting the Comintern
is to admit that the Bolsheviks used their prestige as a party holding state power to
manipulate the international labor movement. Angelica Balabanoff goes into detail on
how the Bolsheviks used totally apolitical, amoral people as errand-persons in
official positions in the Comintern to pursue their sectarian ends. Luxemburg
specifically stated that she thought the moves to establish a new international were
premature. The German delegate went to the 1919 conference with instructions to
deliver that message. Lenin and Trotsky and the Bolsheviks had to table the whole
plan to found the international until an Austrian radical walked into the meeting and
spoke excitedly about the workers rising up in Europe. Carried away by the rhetoric
of this one person, the Bolsheviks reintroduced the proposal to found the
International, and the rest of the delegates, over the objections of the German
delegate, voted to form the Third International.
When I read this in the various books I read on the International (by Braunthal,
Hulse, Balabanoff, and others), I was utterly astounded. That the Comintern itself
was founded in such an obviously dishonest manner is such a devastating commentary on
the methods of the Bolsheviks. The only reason Leninists around the world continue to
uphold the formation of the Third International is that, for the most part, they are
ignorant of this basic history.
Hunter H. Watson
<kr...@pop.uniserve.com> wrote:
The Bolshevik Party was a mass party by the time of the
> October revolution, and had the overwhelming support of the toiling
masses, both
> the working class and the peasantry. Contrary to the fulminations of the
> imperialists and their lackeys, the Revolution was a mass movement in the
> interests of the mass of the people. Peace, land and bread were the
slogans, the
> proletarian revolution aligned with the peasant war; as Karl Marx had written
> during the 19th century, the whole affair was splendid. My party is
organizing to
> carry out a similar revolution world wide.
> Lucien Lenoire
According to the "Small Soviet Encyclopedia", Moscow, 1930, Vol. 2, p.
176, cited in Heller & Nekrich at p. 31, in April, 1917 the Bolshevik
Party had 77,000 members.
The most influential Western historian of Russia of this generation says:
"During and immediately after the October 1917 revolution, the event was
generally perceived as a classic *coup d'etat* rather than a popular
revolution, and the Bolsheviks' victory was attributed not to their
popular support but to their superior organization and greater
ruthlessness. This interpretation, formulated by participants and
eyewitnesses, dominated Western historical scholarship for half a century.
"Interestingly enough, it received tacit support from both Lenin and
Trotsky, neither of whom ever claimed--as far as I am able to determine
from their voluminous writings--that the Bolsheviks emerged victorious
because they had the masses behind them. Trotsky wrote in his History of
the Russian Revolution [L. Trotskii, *Istoriiia Russkoi Revoliutsii, Vol.
II, pt. 2 (Berlin, 1933), 319] that 25,000 or 30,000 people, at most, took
part in the events of October in Petrograd; this, in a city of 2 million,
and in a country of some 150 million. Lenin, himself, had unconcealed
contempt for the masses and their ability to do anything beyond surviving.
I do not know whether he had read Vilfredo Pareto or Gaetano Mosca, but he
certainly shared their faith in political elites. The following is a
quotation from one of Lenin's writings dating from July, 1917:
'In times of revolution it is not enough to ascertain the "will of the
majority." No -- one must *be stronger* at the decisive moment, in the
decisive place, and *win*. Beginning with the medieval "peasant war" in
Germany...until 1905, we see countless instances of how the better
organized, more conscious, better-armed minority imposed its will on the
majority and conquered it.' " (Pipes, "Three 'Whys' of the Russian
Revolution", pp31-32)
In fact, Lucien, only slightly more than 5% of Russia's industrial workers
belonged to the Communist Party and industrial workers were only 1 or 1.5%
of the population.
Pipes concludes: "It was thus the unspoken perception of the Bolshevik
leaders, and the explicit one of the earlier generation of historians,
that october 1917 was a *perevorot* -- an 'overthrow' -- rather than a
*revoliutsiia* -- an action accomplished by a 'better organized, more
conscious, better-armed minority [which] imposed its will on the majority
and conquered it.' In orher words, a *coup d'etat*. In the 1930s, eager to
acquire credit for his alleged role in the October events, Stalin began to
talk increasingly of the role of the party in winning the October
Revolution, a view he imposed on the Soviet historical profession. But
after his death, because Stalin had become unsavoury and the party wanted
to disassociate itself from him, the emphasis was shifted increasingly to
the population at large. By the 1960s, Communist historians began to
stress the alleged role of the 'popular masses' (the German *Volksmassen*)
in the Bolshevik triumph. This theme was picked up by the younger
generation of Western historians in the 1960s -- the era of detente--who,
for various reasons to which I have alluded, including disgust with
America's role in Vietnam and its allegedly provocative pursuit of the
Cold War, fell in step with the Soviet historical profession. They too,
came to stress the popular involvement in the events of October and to
argue that, far from imposing their will on the people, the Bolsheviks had
been forced into action by them. Except for a less adulatory tone in
regard to the classics of Marxism-Leninism and a certain respect for
Western scholarly manners (not always, however, observed), the works of
these 'revisionists' hardly differed in substance from those of their
Soviet counterparts." (Id. pp. 33-34)
That "intellectual" tradition is now thoroughly discredited.
Hunter Watson
A. G. Phillbin
^
^
^Kristine Ramsay wrote:
^
^> Marc Viglielmo seems to forget the party that was instrumental in founding
^ the
^> Comintern, the Bolshevik Party. Of course, even the US delegates represented
^> thousands of workers organized in the Socialist Party. I don't know if the
^> learned V. has read the Comintern series edited by John Riddell, but I am
^ sure
^> that he must recognize that a major change had taken place in world working
^ class
^> politics with the Russian Revolution. In any case, the German
^ representatives to
^> the founding congress of the CI, were delegated from a much smaller
^ organization
^> than the RSDLP(B), the Spartacist League. I believe that the leaders of the
^ SL,
^> Luxembourg and Liebnicht had already been murdered by the Stalhelm, with the
^> assistance of the SPD. The Bolshevik Party was a mass party by the time of
^ the
^> October revolution, and had the overwhelming support of the toiling masses,
^ both
^> the working class and the peasantry. Contrary to the fulminations of the
^> imperialists and their lackeys, the Revolution was a mass movement in the
^> interests of the mass of the people. Peace, land and bread were the slogans,
^ the
^> proletarian revolution aligned with the peasant war; as Karl Marx had written
^> during the 19th century, the whole affair was splendid. My party is
^ organizing to
^> carry out a similar revolution world wide.
^> Lucien Lenoire
^
^ To state that the Russian party was the only mass party supporting the
^ Comintern
^is to admit that the Bolsheviks used their prestige as a party holding state
^ power to
^manipulate the international labor movement. Angelica Balabanoff goes into
^ detail on
^how the Bolsheviks used totally apolitical, amoral people as errand-persons in
^official positions in the Comintern to pursue their sectarian ends.
^ Luxemburg
^specifically stated that she thought the moves to establish a new international
^ were
^premature. The German delegate went to the 1919 conference with instructions
^ to
^deliver that message. Lenin and Trotsky and the Bolsheviks had to table the
^ whole
^plan to found the international until an Austrian radical walked into the
^ meeting and
^spoke excitedly about the workers rising up in Europe. Carried away by the
^ rhetoric
^of this one person, the Bolsheviks reintroduced the proposal to found the
^International, and the rest of the delegates, over the objections of the German
^delegate, voted to form the Third International.
^ When I read this in the various books I read on the International (by
^ Braunthal,
^Hulse, Balabanoff, and others), I was utterly astounded. That the Comintern
^ itself
^was founded in such an obviously dishonest manner is such a devastating
^ commentary on
^the methods of the Bolsheviks. The only reason Leninists around the world
^ continue to
^uphold the formation of the Third International is that, for the most part,
^ they are
^ignorant of this basic history.
I believe the term for the type of enterprise (the Comintern) is "get rich
quick scheme." The Bolsheviks seriously believed (not without reason) that a
successful German workers' revolution was around the corner. Had the German
revolution been successful, the ranks and prestige of the Comintern would
certainly have swelled, with Social Democratic workers' leaving their parties
in droves. The Bolsheviks constructed a slipshod organization, made little
effort at the kind of organizational structure that would have made a real,
sustainable, and truly representative international possible. Angelica
Balabanoff's _My Life As A Rebel_ was an eye opener for me. As I recall, the
CI had a delegate who represented "the French Left," but who was dispatched by
no constituency and represented no organization. Thus the Comintern was held
together by a prayer (that the German revolution would succeed) and an
obnoxious clause (I forget which of the 21 conditions) that called for member
organizations to expel individual members who didn't agree with the 21
conditions. No thought was given, as far as I know, to political moves that
would have brought the Bolsheviks and their supporters closer to the mass of
European workers, such as making an offer to rejoin the Socialist
International as a faction (my own idea -- didn't read that one anywhere). The
Bolsheviks simply had no plan "B" in case of the failure of the German
revolution -- that is, until Stalin created one, the notorious "Socialism in
One Country." They gambled everything on one great event, and created an empty
structure that they hoped history would fill for them.