|
What
is Revolutionary Leadership?
Cliff Slaughter, Labour
Review, 1961
The following article,
written by Cliff Slaughter, was originally published over forty
years ago in Labour
Review, theoretical organ of the British Socialist Labour League
(SLL). It was reprinted, along with several others from the same
journal,
by the Spartacist group in 1964. His article remains a valuable statement
of the necessity to create a conscious Marxist leadership, organised
in a revolutionary party,
capable of struggling for the leadership of the working class against
the reformist and centrist purveyors of false (or bourgeois) consciousness.
'An important element in the strength of a party or a class is the
conception which the party or the class has of the relationship of
forces in the country.'
Leon Trotsky, 1931.
'But it is absurd to think
of a purely "objective" foresight. The person who has foresight
in reality has a "programme" that he wants to see triumph,
and foresight is precisely an element of this triumph.'
Antonio Gramsci.
'...every shortcoming in historical duty increases
the necessary disorder and prepares more serious catastrophes.'
Antonio Gramsci.
'The decisive
element in every situation is the force, permanently organised and
pre-ordered over a long period, which can be advanced when one judges
that the situation is favourable (and it is favourable only to the
extent to which such a force exists and is full of fighting ardour);
therefore, the essential task is that of paying systematic and patient
attention to forming and developing this force, rendering it ever
more homogenous, compact, conscious of itself.'
Antonio Gramsci.
(In this
article I have drawn heavily upon Gramsci, The Modern Prince and
to a lesser extent on Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness.)
Gramsci,
brilliant intellectual and founder of the Italian Communist Party,
and Trotsky, towering example of revolutionary leadership in theory
and in practice, had good reason to write the words cited above.
Trotsky,
exiled by the Stalinist bureaucracy, was urging a policy of United
Front on the Communist Party of Germany as the only defence against
the danger of Nazism. Gramsci, after the defeat of the Workers' Councils
movement in Italy, in which he himself was so prominent, found himself
in Mussolini's jail. Eventually Trotsky met his death, 20 years ago,
at the hands of Stalin's agents; Gramsci's health was destroyed in
prison and he died a young man, a few days after his release in 1937.
Neither
of these two men, the most original Marxist thinkers since Lenin, is
regarded with favour by the official 'Communist' movement.
Despite Khrushchev's admission that the trials of the 1930s were
based on confessions extracted by torture, the slanders about Trotsky's
plot
against the USSR, his alliance with Hitler, and so on, are allowed
to remain as part of the total censorship on his work that exists
in the Communist Parties. In 1957 a small selection of Gramsci's
writings
was published by Lawrence and Wishart. However, The Modern Prince,
longest essay in this selection, was quite heavily cut, and precious
little space was devoted to Gramsci's major contribution on Workers'
Councils. One appreciates the great effort made by Dr. Louis Marks,
the translator, to bring even this much of Gramsci to English readers;
at the same time it must be said that the cuts in The Modern
Prince are unacknowledged, and that several of the
omitted sections (dealing with Rosa Luxemburg, with 'Caesarism',
etc.) would have posed awkward
questions for Stalinists.
Stalinism and Historical Materialism
It
is characteristic that these two men should have laid great stress
on
the role of human consciousness, and of political leadership. Stalinism
can no more entertain such an emphasis than can Social-Democracy.
Reformism and opportunism are tied to the existing structures of
power: a confused
mixture of notions of fair play and expediency is the nearest they
ever get to theory. Their political actions are based on an adjustment
of the partial and temporary interests of sections of the working
class to the existing economy and state power. This is why opportunists
abhor
theory, for theory insists on an understanding of each problem in
terms of the all-round development of society, focused in our epoch
on the
working-class struggle for state power. Nor are the Stalinists in
any better position; in the 'Communist' movement Marxist doctrine
has hardened
into an ideology: that is to say, particular phrases are taken from
Marx and Lenin and used to justify the particular course taken by
the Soviet bureaucracy. The authority naturally accruing to the Russian
Communists after the October Revolution facilitated the spread of
the
degeneration of the Russian to the other Parties in the Communist
International. These parties were 'shaken up', their leaderships
changed, their structure
arbitrarily fixed (under the name of 'Bolshevisation' of course!)
until they were transmission belts for the international policies
of Stalin's
bureaucracy, rather than revolutionary parties of the working class.1 In latter years, despite the 'exposure' of Stalin by Khrushchev,
the political consequences of this relationship have even deepened,
though
of course they will inevitably produce a reaction inside the foreign
parties, and eventually in the Soviet Party. Peaceful competition
between the Soviet and the U.S. economies is now clearly stated to
be the major
form of the conflict between imperialism and socialism. For this
to go on, peaceful relations in the rest of the world must be preserved.
And so the 'Communist' parties 'take the lead in the fight for peace'.
As
a part of this process, certain theoretical distortions of Marxism
play an important part. Above all, Marxism is twisted into an economic
determinism. The dialectic is abstracted from history and reimposed
on social development as a series of fixed stages. Instead of the
rich
variety and conflict of human history we have the natural series
of slavery, feudalism, capitalism and socialism through which all
societies
pass. The USSR's present structure is thus sanctified as an 'inevitable'
successor of capitalism and any 'criticisms' of its social and political
structure must be regarded as 'secondary'. An apparent touch of flexibility
is given to this schematic picture by the doctrine that different
countries will find their 'own' roads to Socialism, learning from
the USSR but
adapting to their particular national characteristics. This is of
course a mechanical caricature of historical materialism. The connection
between
the struggles of the working class for Socialism in, say, Britain,
Russia and Vietnam, is not at all in the greater or lesser degree
of similarity of social structure of those countries, but in the
organic
interdependence of their struggles. Capitalism is an international
phenomenon, and the working class is an international force; the
USSR is the result of the first break-through of the world revolution,
a
result distorted by Russia's particular economic development before
and after the October Revolution, and by the impact of imperialism
and the fate of the working-class movement since then. Trotsky laid
a firm basis for the study of the relation between the Soviet workers'
state and the world working class in his writings between 1924, when
'Socialism in One Country' was first theoretically presented, and
his death in 1940.
There are many Socialists who are naturally repelled
by the bureaucratic distortion of Soviet society and of the Stalinist
Parties, as well as by the shameful record of Social-Democracy, and
yet fail to escape from the distorted theory and method of Stalinism.
Retaining that fundamental characteristic of Stalinism, loss of confidence
in the ability of the working class of the advanced capitalist countries
to conquer power, they dress up this loss of nerve with 'theoretical'
ideas which have been current in the anti-Bolshevik sections of the
Left since the October Revolution and even before. Elsewhere in this
issue Brian Pearce takes up certain historical questions bound up
with
the periodical 'discovery' that the USSR is a capitalist state, a
discovery which of course leads away from certain uncomfortable political
duties,
such as the defence of the USSR against imperialism. In this article
I want to take up another argument closely bound up with these same
ideas, viz., that the root of the trouble lies in the Leninist concept
of leadership of the working class by a centralized party – Lenin's
'party of a new type'.
The Role of Consciousness in History
Although
this
argument takes various forms (Lenin's type of party was suited to
autocratic Russia but not to democratic Britain; leadership will
emerge naturally
from the working class; all organisations develop bureaucracy; the
success of 1917 was a 'historical accident' taken advantage of by
a brilliant Bolshevik elite; Rosa Luxemburg and Trotsky predicted
the
degeneration of the party, etc., etc.), it is always underpinned
by a false conception of the role of theory and consciousness in
history, a
tendency towards economic determinism, a notion that the laws of
social development are something 'natural', standing above men and
deciding
their destinies. Political events and tendencies are seen as the
'natural' and inescapable reflection of economic interest; Marx's
concept of
the political and ideological superstructure on the economic basis
becomes a 'mere superstructure' of the economic struggle, as one
of the founders of the new 'Workers' Party' recently put it. This
implies
that politics is only the froth of history, whereas Marx was quite
clear that it is in the sphere of politics that men become more or
less conscious of the economic contradictions and fight out the issues.
Precisely in politics, in the struggle for state power, is the decisive
conflict fought out. Trade union and industrial struggle is a school
of politics for the working class, in the older capitalist countries
decades of trade union struggle were a necessary preclude to real
class conflict; but the overthrow of political power and the institution
of proletarian dictatorship is a qualitatively different question.
For this, organization of a more advanced character, and therefore
theory of a much wider and deeper character, is required. This means
a political party which subordinates all partial struggles to the
construction
of a leadership firmly welded to the working class and completely
devoted to the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Such a task
requires
the ability to learn from all past class struggles in society, particularly
the failures and successes of the working-class movement, and an
understanding of this history in relation to the total existing structure
of society,
not only in relation to the daily experience of the working class.
The consciousness and organisation required to achieve the greatest
social overturn in history, these are the basic reasons for what
has come to be known as democratic centralism, the bogey of so many
'Left-wingers'.
The revolutionary party must incorporate as far as
possible the understanding of capitalist society derived from all
past theoretical advances
and their testing-out by the working-class movement in history. In
this
tradition and theory there resides a more scientific truth than the
working class can derive from its experience of exploitation and
day-to-day struggle. Rather than humbly bowing before the experience
of the class
at 'the point of production', rather than assuming that the workers'
own experience will give rise to revolutionary consciousness, Marxists
must on the contrary subordinate their political and theoretical
work to the revolutionary party. This is the meaning of revolutionary
discipline:
that the consciousness represented by the Marxist party constitutes
a higher consciousness of the historical tasks of the working class
than does the immediate consciousness of the class itself. Only by
accepting the discipline of the party, then, does the individual
Marxist achieve the prospect of playing an independent historical
role. This
has nothing in common with the bourgeois notion of 'free' individuals
imposing their reason upon the world. Rather, an objective analysis
of capitalist production demonstrates that the working class is its
gravedigger; the working class is consequently the only independent
and decisive force in the modern epoch. But classes and social movements
have to be welded together as forces by consciously grasping their
situation and organising to overthrow the classes which stand in
their way. The relation between party and class is an aspect of this
process;
it is not enough for the workers to constitute a class 'objectively',
by reason of their all being wage-labourers: from being 'a class
in itself' the proletariat must become 'a class for itself'.
Now
Lenin's
primary concern was to find the form of organisation and strategy
which would express this political independence of the working class.
It
is true that in Russia his opponents, the Mensheviks, were victims
of the mechanical idea that the bourgeoisie was destined to come
to power after the defeat of Tsarism; they therefore disagrees with
Lenin's notion of the proletariat leading the struggle against Tsarism,
and
so the political independence of the class did not arise for them
until after the bourgeois revolution. However, Lenin's conviction
that the
working class was the leading independent force in the modern era
was part of his general view of 'imperialism' as the final stage
of capitalism.
The fundamentals of organisation required for a politically independent
working class are not in anyway specific to Russian conditions. Indeed,
the essence of Lenin's position against the Mensheviks should be
much easier to grasp in a country which is highly mechanised, where
a large
proletariat confronts a bourgeoisie firmly established in power.
Imperialism
and Lenin's Conception of the Party
It is important to stress the
connection
between Lenin's characterisation of our epoch and his ideas on organisation.
Imperialism, with its rapid expansion of capital investment, the
organisation of production on a very large scale, more and more domination
by finance-capital,
and the concentration of standing armies and repressive forces equipped
with weapons based on the highest levels of technique of mass production,
has given rise to social forces and ideas which restrict and hold
back the working class. In the imperialist countries themselves,
a considerable
stratum of the working class identifies its interests with the expansion
of capitalism itself. The new bureaucratic state provides a larger
number of administrative jobs for the upper layers of the working
class and absorbs most of the disappearing old middle class. A new
social
group of functionaries, officials, managers, teachers, has grown
up, and on the basis of this group, together with the skilled working
class,
a strong opportunist tendency developed in the Labour Movement. In
Britain, the early defeat of Chartism and the subsequent prolonged
economic expansion led to the development of craft unionism at the
expense of political organization. When the new general unions had
come on the scene, and the need for independent political representation
was recognized, it was not revolutionists who presented themselves
as the leaders, but men with a very different standpoint. Fabianism
started not from the conception of the working class as a revolutionary
force, with the struggle for reforms as part of the building of that
force, but from the idea that the state should intervene to alleviate
the insecurity and poverty caused by the unrestricted operation of
the capitalist market. The more extreme reformists thought that state
ownership of certain industries might be necessary to achieve this.
In Germany, although the Marxist phrases of the Erfurt programme
continued to dominate the statements of the Social-Democratic leaders,
a similar
development was taking place. The SPD (German Social Democratic Party)
became a church of the working class rather than a revolutionary
party. When the war of 1914-18 broke out, not only did the SPD deputies
vote
war credits to their 'national' governments, like almost every other
reformist party in Europe, but they boasted of the service they had
given the nation by helping create a disciplined, organized and cultured
working class. This conduct of the SPD at the outbreak of war closed
a chapter in the history of Marxism. In the epoch of imperialist
wars there must be parties of men steeled to resist all jingoism
and patriotism,
to proclaim the slogan 'Turn the imperialist war into a civil war!'
The working class of each country had the duty of 'revolutionary
defeatism' since the main question was one of cracking the front
of imperialism.
To many 'orthodox' Marxists this turn by Lenin was
a leap in the dark, adventurism, folly, typical of the 'Blanquist',
'voluntarist'
tendencies
for which he had been so often criticised. But Lenin's 'fantastic'
slogan was deeper and nearer to the needs of the masses than all
the 'realism' of the old Social-Democracy. The German Social-Democratic
leaders ended up, at the height of the Revolution in 1918, failing
to support the demand for the Kaiser's abdication; and they gave
'Marxist' reasons for doing it – 'For the Social Democracy, the external
form
of the State is unimportant'! And when pressure from below forced
their hands they issued a public statement to the effect that 'in
insistingupon
abdication, they had been motivated solely by the thought that only
abdication could preserve order and prevent the spread of anarchy'.
Without a doubt, a big factor in the fright of the Social Democratic
leaders was the fact that the Russian Bolsheviks were already in
power, and there was no telling where the process might stop in Germany.
But
again a 'Marxist' rationalization was offered: Scheidemann said afterwards,
'Political actions can, essentially, only confirm an economic development'.
It was just this kind of 'Marxism' that Lenin had to defeat in the
course of building a revolutionary party in Russia. His whole effort
was to assert the dominance of the role of the proletariat in determining
the course of history in the 20th century, a dominance flowing not
from any 'voluntarism' but from the nature of the crisis of capitalism,
the character of imperialism as the highest form of capitalist contradictions.
Kautsky
and others in the old Social-Democracy fell down on just this point.
They were great exponents of Marxism as an explanatory
theory
of past history, but Marx's conclusion about the necessity of proletarian
dictatorship on the basis of modern socialised production was not
fully grasped. To do this meant seeing the working class, its consciousness
and its organization, as themselves decisive forces in history, not
just as the results of history. That is the meaning of Gramsci's
remarks
at the head of this article. It is the direct opposite of Scheidemann's
'Political action can only confirm an economic development' and of
all nonsense about politics being 'only the superstructure of the
class struggle'. An interesting example of Lenin's method in these
questions
may be found in his writings during the period of reaction following
the 1905 revolution. A certain Levitsky, somewhat in the strain of
our own 'proletarian' Left-wingers, objected to the Bolshevik strategy
of the working class leading the struggle for liberty against Tsarism.
This he saw as a watering down of principle and advanced the slogan
'Not hegemony in the national struggle for political liberty, but a
class party!' Lenin roundly condemned this sectarian nonsense, which
amounted in effect to an abandonment of the political field to bourgeois
leadership.2
Spontaneity and Sectarianism
In the Socialist Labour
League recently, a small minority developed the idea that as the
Labour Party was drifting rapidly to the Right, the only way for
the Marxists
to preserve their integrity was to set up a party quite independent
in every way from the Labour Party. The Labour Party had ceased to
be a working-class party in any sense, and a party must be formed
which concentrated on the 'real' class struggle at 'the base', 'the
point
of production'. Not only did Behan and the others show, by this trend
their utter misunderstanding of the Marxist theory of society and
politics, but their conduct gave a valuable lesson in the political
importance
of theoretical weakness of this kind, showing that with an incorrect
theoretical approach and a wrong method, first-class historical blunders
can be made. Just when the crisis in the British working-class movement
approaches precisely its political peak, just when the contradiction
between Social-Democracy and the historical needs of the working
class is most sharply expressed in the issues of public ownership,
defence
and the relation between the organised working class and the Labour
Party – at this point the cry goes up: abandon ship! It is the industrial
struggle that matters above all! 'Reformism is best exposed at the
point of production'! – once again those who fail to grasp the nettle
of political action explain their failure with the most resounding
of 'Marxist' phrases. Precisely by clinging to such abstract generalities
do men get left behind by historical development. The essence of
dialectics is not the ability to stand by and pronounce what is base
and what
is superstructure, but to know when, where and how to act.
Behan insists on the need to go back to the programme of the Industrial
Rank-and-File
Conference of November, 1958, as if nothing has happened in the trade
union movement and the Labour Party since then. To confine the demands
and activity of the working class at this point to the factory level
would amount to betrayal; this is what was meant by the reply given
to Behan's group at the Socialist Labour League Conference. Our resistance
to sectarianism is not a doctrinal one only, but part of the lessons
learned from the beheading of the German working-class movement,
among others, when the Communist Party failed to follow the policy
of the
United Front of the working class from 1929 onwards.
One of the interesting
features of sectarians is their ability to take up very opportunist
positions on certain questions, and particularly on questions of
organization. Again the basic theoretical weakness here is lack of
understanding
of the role of consciousness. To criticise Brian Behan's 'Workers'
Voice' would amount to the mistake of taking on not the strongest
but the weakest statement of one's opponents' case, and so I take
certain
points in the first issue of that journal only as an aside, and in
order to introduce some more general points. In line with his idea
that the class itself must lead the revolution, Behan writes that
any workers' organization, shop stewards' committee, etc., may submit
amendments
to the Constitution of the Workers' Party. This gives an appearance,
of course, of a party open to the working class, not dictating to
it but responding to it, and so on. But it is clearly only another
example
of the old 'economism'. Certainly no workers' party will be successful
which is not responsive to changes in the moods of the working class,
but that is a matter of tactics, of timing, of the form of propaganda,
etc., and certainly not a question of programme, policy, constitution,
which are determined on a basis of theory. The correctness of the
policy of a Marxist party is not the extent to which it corresponds
to the
immediate consciousness of the workers. It is a matter rather of
correct theoretical appraisal of all the social forces at work in
a given period,
including the role of the class and the party itself.
This raises
the old question of the working class 'throwing up its own leadership'
in times of struggle. It is a fact that in every section of the working
class there spring up first-class militants with great organizing
power
and ability to advance the consciousness of their fellow-workers.
Without such spontaneous rank-and-file leadership there could be
no talk of
revolution. But a revolutionary leadership is not just the sum of
all these rank-and-file leaders, not just the 'linking-together of
rank-and-file
committees'. There must be beyond that, above that level, a political leadership. It is not just a matter of daily struggle between employers
and workers, which might even culminate in 'one big strike', but
of the conquest of state power, of asserting the revolutionary role
of
the working class in the transformation of every aspect of capitalist
society. The place of the workers in capitalist production is the
basis of their revolutionary historical role, but to assert that
role they
have to be organized politically and theoretically as well as industrially,
and the theory required to do this represents a higher form of consciousness
than that which flows from the experience of the proletariat. If
Lenin was right to condemn the 'Economists' for bringing no theory
to the
Russian workers other than the news that their industrial struggles
were vital, how much more necessary it is to insist on advancing
the theory required by the British working-class movement, with its
scores
of years of industrial organization, its opportunist leadership,
and the complex international problems of leadership that have developed
since Lenin's day?
This brings out
another fundamental weakness of sectarianism: its tendency towards
idealism. All the talk about 'no
compromises' and keeping clear of the rottenness of reformism amounts
to a fear of rubbing up against reality, and is accompanied by
the search for some section of workers which remains unaffected and
pure
despite the economic boom, as a jumping-off ground to defeat reformism.
No doubt it is a healthy reaction against bureaucratic reformism
to insist on the roots of militancy in the working class itself,
but there
is no substitute for fighting the political battle. It is not enough
to know that reformism is rotten, to condemn it roundly, and to
insist on one's separateness from it; the point is to take it seriously
as a force in the British working class and defeat it on the arena
of
struggle. At this point, the political mistake of sectarianism
ties
in with the theoretical mistake of economic determinism or 'economism'.
Somehow, it is assumed, the working class will develop revolutionary
consciousness because it is exploited. But the ideological struggle
within the working class is real, it has to be bitterly fought
and won before the class can be fully mobilised for battle. When
we say
that the long-drawn-out crisis of British imperialism rots away
the social basis of reformist politics, that is not to say that the
reformists
simply leave the scene and leave a vacant place for a naturally
radicalised working class desiring a new form of party. Such a party
has to be
built in the course of struggle with the reformists, and it
has to be built by those who grasp the historical process theoretically;
it does not grow 'naturally' or 'organically' out of the economic
base.
Theory and Ideology
in the Working Class
When we say that political ideas and movements
reflect the economic base we should
remember
that such reflection is a series of conscious acts. Men's consciousness
is formed in an environment of social institutions controlled
by the
ruling class, institutions of repression and institutions for
educational conditioning, staffed by people trained to operate these
institutions
as though they were part of a naturally or divinely ordained
system. The majority of labour's own organizations have become tied
to
this
structure of established institutions, and are staffed by the
'labour lieutenants of capitalism'. The proletariat's consciousness
of
its role has to be achieved in struggle against all these institutional
forms and their ideological results. Without the highest degree
of
centralized organization, these ideological battles cannot be
won. The crisis of imperialism, which is expressed in the colonial
struggle,
the arms race and atomic war as well as in the tendency towards
slump, constantly produces cultural decay and breakdown. Movements
of the
extreme Right, like Fascism, are able to call upon depraved elements
of the intelligentsia to mobilise petty bourgeois, lumpen proletarians
and even numbers of industrial workers behind the most foul and
hideous social programmes. The alternative of socialism or barbarism
did
not pose itself only after Hiroshima, but was clearly before
the eyes of
the Bolsheviks and Rosa Luxemburg during the First World War.
We are in an epoch which has been correctly characterized as one
of
a crisis
of leadership. What is needed above all is a strongly disciplined
leadership able to develop the theory of Imperialism, the Permanent
Revolution,
the relation between the Workers' States and the world revolution,
and to establish its leadership of the working class. Unless
this crisis of leadership is solved, there will be no 'natural' growth
towards
Socialism, but there will be all the danger of war and barbarism.
In this vital sense those who protest against 'vanguardism',
against
'too
much centralization', represent a reactionary tendency in the
working-class movement.
The opponents of democratic centralism like
to talk about
the inevitable crisis of capitalism as the source of revolutionary
action in the working class; this is counterposed to the so-called
'voluntarism' of the Leninists, who are supposed to think they
can suck revolutionary situations out of their thumbs. But preparation
of the class and of the party is the decisive question in social
crises. It is true that periodically capitalism has undergone
the most profound
crises. We need only mention the Great Crash of 1929 and the
consequent depression, and the post-war situation (1945) in Europe,
when there
returned, particularly in France and Italy, capitalists discredited
by their war record and faced with the armed working class. In
neither
of these cases was revolution the outcome. Instead, helped by
the Social-Democratic and Stalinist betrayals of the working
class,
the capitalists were
able to ride the storm and in the earlier case to establish regimes
which destroyed the possibility of revolution for many years.
The elementary mistake of supposing that in the Marxist view
consciousness
and organization
directly reflect economic need is one that must be conquered
if there is to be a victorious revolution. The ideological reflection
of changes
in the economy lags behind, the machinery of this 'lag' is the
structure of ruling-class power and education. There is necessary
a theoretical
leap in the working-class movement, the development of leadership
which can grasp the significance of the underlying crisis in
society
and
inform the activity of the class with that consciousness. What
is important for the revolutionary class is that it must not remain determined in
its thinking by the existing economy and institutions. As Gramsci
puts it: 'An appropriate political initiative is always necessary
to free the economic drive from the tethers of traditional policies'.(My
emphasis – C.S.)
Important here is the difference between the working
class and other
revolutionary classes in history. When Lenin says that the only
weapon
of the working class is organization, he means that whereas the
rising bourgeoisie, for instance, developed its own economy,
its art, its
religion, its schools, its philosophy, and so on, as the expression
and organization of its social consciousness, before the political
overthrow of the feudal political system, the proletariat does
not construct the institutions of capitalism (despite the Fabians
and
the New Left). Capitalism is the only system of production in
history whose
inner dynamic has pushed it to develop the productive forces
incessantly and to drive out all other forms of production. In
order to mobilize
for the overthrow of feudalism, it was sufficient for the bourgeoisie
and its allies to recognize and feel the political restrictions
upon their growing economic and cultural strength. Their own
organic development
within feudalism drove their 'own' institutions into conflict
with the political regime which prevented their natural expansion.
But
bourgeois power is total social power: capital dominates all
relationships like
an elemental natural force. In order to seize in consciousness
the nature of this power and to organize for its overthrow, there
is
necessary a scientific consciousness of the whole system of social
relationships,
and not just a sense of the degradation and exploitation suffered
in the process of production, or the abstract knowledge that
planned production
for use would be more reasonable. There is no repository of this
consciousness, and no guarantee of its necessary constant development
in theory and
practice, other than the proletarian party. To talk about the
working class 'itself' as an undifferentiated, potentially revolutionary
whole is to substitute myth for reality.
Because it is exploited
in an inhuman
system, commandeered and degraded in the service of capital,
the
working class is unevenly developed, apathetic under most circumstances,
split
into different sections, often backward in its view of most cultural
and social problems, unless there is a conscious leadership differentiated
from the class itself, not at the daily service of capital, determined
to explode the false consciousness in which men grasp reality
under capitalism. Abdication from the responsibility of constructing
such a leadership, under the guise of 'faith in the workers themselves'
is capitulation to the forces that numb the consciousness of
the working class-the institutions of capitalist society itself.
The
centralized
party is needed by the working class, then, for the purpose of
'breaking
up the unity based on traditional ideology, without which the
new force (the working class) would be unable to gain awareness
of
its own independent
personality'. (Gramsci). The working class cannot make do, like
the bourgeoisie in its revolutionary period, with a crude empiricism
or idealism. Because the whole of the capitalist structure must
be
grasped
in consciousness and because this whole and its laws of development
are different from the immediate consciousness and experience
of the proletariat, dialectical theory, advanced theory based
on the
notion
of developing contradictions in the material world, is the basic
element of revolutionary theory. Marx's achievement was to show
the working
class a mode of action based on this dialectical approach to
history. Bourgeois thought had ceased to develop just at this
point, and
it took the highest synthesis of philosophical and scientific
thought to make the leap forward. It is in this sense that one
should understand
Lenin's insistence that the programme and strategy of the revolutionary
party are based on theory, and that this theory is brought to
the working class from outside, from bourgeois intellectuals.
The development
of
theory among the revolutionary workers themselves, once that
leap has been made is, of course, a necessity for any revolutionary
party.
So
long as the working class is not mobilized by a party based on
such a theory, its consciousness remains determined by bourgeois
culture,
a culture which leads man to see society as a set of separate
things,
not open to his own control and overthrow, but naturally fixed
and with independent reality. Marxist theory explains, on the
other hand,
that the world of men is a man-made world, that the powers standing
over men are products of labour, and that if the whole system
of labour-exploitation is abolished, man will become free, will
dominate
social reality instead
of being at its mercy. A revolutionary party is one whose strategy
and tactics flow from this total conception. Without it, the
working classstruggles only against partial features of bourgeois
domination
and, unable to see their connection, tends to fall back after
partial victories and defeats.
Revolutionary Crises and the Vanguard
Party
Of course, the building of a leadership capable of theoretical
firmness and of combating those tendencies in the Labour movement
which reflect
other classes, is not the whole of the task by a long way. The
actual organization in a revolutionary crisis, the rapid changes
of tactics
necessary, the planning of insurrection and military operations,
all this quite clearly requires centralized authority and discipline
of
the highest order, and only a leadership developed over a long
period will be capable of the task. While this phase of the development
of the working-class leadership is not our immediate subject,
a few
general
points should be made here. Certain 'anti-vanguardist' groupings,
such as that represented by the journal Socialisme ou Barbarie,
put forward
the idea that the nearer the revolution approaches, and the more
the working class itself fills the historical stage, so the leadership
'must prepare its own dissolution'. It is difficult to see exactly
what this can mean, but at best it probably means that as the
class itself approaches revolutionary consciousness, the leadership
can
safely
quit the scene. Of course, the outstanding characteristic of
revolutions is the entry of the broadest masses into political
action, but
that is a very different notion from supposing that consciousness
of the
historical process is clearly fixed in the minds of the people.
The possibility of victory in such crises depends above all on
the preparation
of a leadership, and is inextricably bound up with the earlier
phases discussed in this article. Those masses intervening in
revolutionary actions are what Lenin called the untrained, undisciplined,
undirected
forces. The depth of the crisis arouses tremendous force, but
the great task of the party, the 'disciplined, trained units'
is to
give
this
force its maximum results, to make sure that it is not broken
against a wall, dissipated in useless channels, and so on. Rosa
Luxemburg,
whose shabby 'friends' emphasize her weakest point, and are incapable
of learning from her strength, encountered this dilemma in January,
1919. The working class of Berlin was led by rioters and provocateurs
to expose itself to bloody repression by the Social-Democratic
government; the young Communist Party had had no time to organize
the insurrection
or to knit together its followers in the rest of Germany. Such
a situation could confront the most mature leadership; and the
correct
lead to
the workers would be to sound a tactical retreat, as the Bolsheviks
did in the 'July Days' of 1917. But the German Communists lacked
the authority and the confidence for such a lead, and the suppression
of
the Berlin riots was only the beginning of the terrible carnage
of 1919, as workers in city after city took up arms against the
government,
only to be crushed and murdered in thousands.
Rosa Luxemburg
had criticized Lenin's centralism and 'overstress on organization'
and she had trusted
a little too much to the 'organic' growth of the struggle of
the
working class. Even though she had realized before Lenin the
reactionary tendency
of Kautsky and the German Social-Democratic leadership, she lacked
Lenin's political sense and initiative in seeing the need for
organizational expression of the opposition tendency in European
socialism. It
was not a question only of the Right wing having fallen into
conservative habits of distorting Marxism, but of the victory
of an alien class
tendency in the movement. And since the world had entered the
final stage of capitalism, the construction of a leadership devoted
unswervingly
to the political independence of the proletariat was vital. Because
this conclusion was not drawn earlier, because Rosa clung to
the view that an ideological (not organizational) struggle within
the
movement
would be sufficient towin the working class, the Left turn of
the masses in November, 1918, in Germany did not result in automatic
support for
Rosa's Spartacists, the future Communists, but for the 'Independent`
Socialists, who appeared to the masses as the Left of Social
Democracy.
In other words, the shift in the masses was not automatically
reflected in revolutionary politics, but was 'mediated' through
the existing
organisations and forms of consciousness.
One of the favourite
references
for opponents of the centralized 'vanguard' party conception
is the Paris Commune of 1871. It was as a result of the brief
experience
of workers' rule in that city that Marx sharpened his views on
the
state
and revolution. It was now clear, he said, that the bourgeois
state must be smashed, not 'taken over', and that the new state,
the
proletarian dictatorship, must be the rule of the workers themselves.
Latter-day
critics of Leninism hold up this picture as a contrast to the
centralized 'dictatorship' of Stalin's state and Lenin's party,
but in the
process they make a mistake which Marx himself could never have
made. The
conclusions drawn from the Commune about the form of the proletarian
dictatorship
are not in any way the same thing as the requirements of a revolutionary
party to conquer power! Socialisme ou Barbarie and similar
tendencies argue directly from the form of the future proletarian
state
to the character of the workers' party under capitalism. But
such
a party
must above all be capable of action and leadership, and it is
not identical with the class. We have mentioned the argument
that in
revolutionary
situations, 'the class itself' comes to the fore, and makes the
leadership more and more superfluous. Perhaps the best antidote
to that argument
comes from Marx himself. In a letter to Kugelmann, he made a
criticism of the political leadership of the Commune which sets
him quite
apart from those who invoke him against the Leninists. He criticized
the
Central Committee of the National Guard for holding democratic
elections at a time when it should have exerted its authority,
prolonged its
'dictatorship', in order to crush the enemy. For this, the best
proletarian elements would have to go to the front, and so a
more stringent regime
would have been necessary to retain revolutionary authority in
Paris itself. But in the absence of a firm revolutionary leadership,
it
was decided that democracy must have its day; the Commune was
defeated. This was only part of the consequences of lack of preparation
and
revolutionary
organization before the Commune (Trotsky – The Defence
of Terrorism).
Lenin and Inner-Party Struggle
Lenin's firmness
and sharpness in defending his political line and organizational
discipline
was
derived precisely
from this necessity for training a contingent which will not
be 'over-run' by the irregular troops' of the revolution, and
not
at all to any
personal ambition or dictatorial habits, as his opponents unceasingly
declared.
Bolsheviks are determined to base their party only on the firmest
theoretical principles, and to subordinate all party work to
these principles.
A movement of this kind examines scrupulously all political ideas
in the light of needs of the working class and the party, and
ruthlessly fights against all tendencies which divert the movement
from its
revolutionary
path. The method of analysis is always to test these ideas against
the needs of the classes in society, both in theoretical argument
and in the work of the party.
In the course of the 1903 conference
of the
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, scene of the famous dispute
between Lenin and Martov over the conditions of party membership,
Trotsky and others of the Iskra group originally supported
Lenin's political
line, but found themselves driven towards the opportunists by
what they considered to be Lenin's organizational rigidity. Trotsky
later gave his verdict on this episode, and it is worth quoting
as an antidote
to those who are fond of using Trotsky's early writings about
dictatorship
over the party. 'It was not for nothing', says Trotsky in My
Life, 'that the words "irreconcilable'' and "unsparing" occurred
so frequently in Lenin's vocabulary. Only the highest concentration
on the goal of revolution, free from everything pettily personal,
can justify this kind of personal ruthlessness...His behaviour
seemed to
me inadmissible, terrible, shocking. Yet at the same time it
was politically correct and therefore indispensable from the
point
of view of organization'.
It is in this very important sense that the lesson of building
the Bolshevik Party are lessons for all revolutionaries. The
whole method of building the party politically is involved. Lenin, who had
agreement with Martov on political questions at the beginning
of the Congress,
quite agreed that his difference over the rules was a small one.
It became important in the course of the Congress, as it became
clear that from this one opportunist formulation Martov was to
fall into
the hands of the opportunists. In order to preserve the narrow
circle atmosphere at the head of the émigré Marxists,
he was prepared to line up with the opportunists in opposition
to Lenin.
Lenin was
not only insisting on organizational points when he hammered
home the authority of the Congress and the leading role of the
majority.
The
Iskra-ites, including Martov, had not gone to the Congress
with a factional mandate – that would deny the supreme authority
of
the Congress,
always
so dearly cherished by Lenin – but what they did agree, on Lenin's
insistence, was to accept all the decisions of the Congress.
This
seemed 'innocent enough' at the time, as Lenin wrote, but once
'unfavourable'
decisions (e.g., on the composition of Iskra's Editorial
Board) were arrived
at, the discipline was broken. Lenin, convinced that without
a proletarian party of iron discipline there could be no revolution,
was prepared
to subordinate everything to insistence on this task. Martov's
indiscipline and veering towards the opportunists was a capitulation
to the bourgeois
tendency in the party, the tendency which shrank from independent
mobilisation of the working class for leadership against Tsarism;
hence a split
was necessary.
Political and organizational questions therefore
cannot be separated. In an epoch where the construction of a
leadership
of the working class is the most vital historical problem, it
is exactly
on the questions of concrete planning and discipline for revolutionary
work that political differences became explicit. Some Marxists
seem
to conceive of the party as simply a contractual discipline to
stop individuals from going off the rails as they react to class
pressure.
But it is more than that: it must become the vanguard of revolutionary
action, the representative of the general interest of the working
class.
In the construction of a revolutionary party, there is
a constant need
to strive to maintain a correct relationship between democracy
and centralism. The balance of this relationship tends to change
with
the objective situation. During times when the revolutionary
movement operates
under legal conditions, as in Britain today, it is essential
to have full democratic discussion on all questions concerning
the
working
class and the party. This does not, however, mean that democracy
is a free-for-all, with nothing being decided. To the Marxist,
democracy is a weapon in the struggle against capitalism. Discussion
is necessary
to arrive at decisions upon which the activity of the party can
be based.
The constant training of new leaders in the revolutionary
party
requires the greatest patience by the leadership. Local autonomy
and initiative, allowing the leaders and the rank and file to
learn from
their mistakes, is essential for the branches of the revolutionary
party. The more experienced the revolutionary leadership the
more flexible it will be in assisting the ranks by theory and
practice
to understand
the need for a democratic centralist party.
In such an atmosphere
differences of opinion can flourish provided such differences
do not set out to
overthrow the programme and policy of the Marxist movement. Fundamental
differences along these lines in an unfavourable objective situation
generally lead to a split. Splits of this kind cannot be avoided,
and a mature leadership will see to it that the experiences of
such
a struggle
are utilized to educate a membership in the superiority of the
democratic centralist method. Any premature attempt to resolve
the internal
crisis, based upon excessive centralism and factionalism, will
have serious
consequences for the revolutionary party. That is why a revolutionary
leadership must be the most vigilant custodian of party democracy
and the firmest defender of the discipline and rights of the
party as a
whole. It is the interrelationship between democracy and centralism
that constantly confuses the idealist opponents of Leninist organisation.
In their effort to run away from centralism they embrace a theory
of spontaneity and proceed to liquidate the party into the class.
The
Marxist's interpretation of democratic centralism is part of
the fact that he derives his political conclusions from an objective
historical study of the political situation, and not only from
the existing consciousness
of the class. The relation between democracy and centralism to
him is based upon the constant requirements of the class struggle.
The
great problem in Britain today is to obtain a Marxist conception
of the party. Capitalist propaganda constantly seeks to equate
Marxist discipline with Stalinism. When 'Socialist' opponents
of revolutionary
discipline make the same equation, they are reflecting capitalist
public
opinion, regardless of their good intentions in this sense they
play a definite part in obstructing the solution by the working
class
of its most pressing need.
Theoretical Differences – Practical
Consequences
One
aim of this article is to make a little clearer the reasons
why Marxists concentrate so much attention on theoretical discussion,
even
on questions which appear at times to be obscure and remote
from the struggle. There are always critics who say: the important
thing is
to get on with the struggle and get away from this arid and
doctrinaire
wrangling.
A good example is the 'Russian question'. The nature
of
Soviet society is a vital question for Marxists and it can
only be studied historically. After the Khrushchev exposures of 1956
certain
prominent 'New Left' ex-Communists said quite explicitly that
Russia had dominated the Left for too long and that in future
we should
concentrate on contemporary British problems. There were only
jeers for those who
wanted to know 'what Trotsky said in 1924', and yet without
a
study of the social roots of Stalinism, rather than the horrified
turning
of one's back on it, there could be no renewal of Marxism.
Even if the 1920s in Russia seemed irrelevant to British problems
in 1956,
it was an essential clue to the balance of forces in the class
struggle and the play of tendencies in the Labour movement
of
the world. Not
only that, but the very existence of the USSR, its bureaucracy's
domination over great parties all over the world, and its relationship
with imperialism,
all the time create situations where one's evaluation of the
Soviet social system takes on immediate importance, and for
the movement
to leave the question open is inadmissible.
One tendency which
attracts a certain number of 'Marxists' is that which considers
the USSR's
economy
to be 'state capitalism'. Now the actual consideration of 'State
capitalism' as a theory cannot be undertaken here, but some
of its adherents illustrate
very well the connection between organizational and political
questions. The claim that the USSR is 'state capitalist' is
usually accompanied
by the view that American, British and all advanced capitalisms
are tending in the same direction as the USSR-towards a bureaucratic,
state-controlled if not state-owned industry, with the workers
exploited
in ever larger
productive units. As in Burnham's Managerial Revolution (the
product of a similar breakaway from revolutionary Marxism in
1940), the
tendency of such theories is to assume that this bureaucratic
centralization ('statification', managerialism') actually corresponds
to the needs
of science and technique at their present level of development,
that
it represents a naturally higher stage than imperialism. And
so one is tempted to conclude either that all talk of the working
class
as a revolutionary force is nonsense (Burnham) or at least
that the age
of imperialism, with all the political conclusions drawn from
it
by Lenin, lie in the past. In the latter case what is required
is a completely
new analysis to tell us what sort of contradictions dominate
the new society and in what sense a revolutionary class might
overthrow
it,
whether that class is the working class, etc. What is usually
done (and it is very unsatisfactory) is to cling to the idea
of the
working class as revolutionary while rejecting: (a) the economic
basis (capitalism
and imperialism) for this; and (b) the organizational consequences
drawn by the Marxists.
As a result, we get among the 'state
capitalists' a very abstract, general protest against tyranny and
oppression, in many cases a strong leaning towards 'anti-totalitarianism'
in the style
of the cold war or State Department Socialists. Lenin's organizational
conceptions are seen as disastrous, for they paved the way
for
Stalin's dictatorship, a dictatorship not of the working class,
but over the
working class. Bureaucracy 'in itself' is seen as reactionary
since it offends against the idea of self-government by the
working class.
Currently circulating in translation is a programmatic
statement of the group around the French journal Socialisme ou
Barbarie.
This document
entitled 'Socialism Reaffirmed' arrives at the following conclusions:
'Moreover,
the objective existence of the bureaucracy, as an exploiting stratum,
makes it obvious that the vanguard can
only organize itself
on the basis of an anti-bureaucratic ideology....
'The main
features of a political organization that has become aware of the
need
to abolish the distinction in society between people who decide
and
people who
merely execute is that such an organization should from the
onset seek to abolish such a distinction within its own ranks.'
In
place of the
concrete development of organizational forms from the specific
development of stages of the class struggle and of the type
of
social crisis
arising under capitalism, indeed reacting in a quitetopsy-turvy
way to the
growing concentration of bourgeois state power, we have the
abstract argument from general principles. Thus, the aim is workers'
rule;
therefore the means, the movement, must do away with authority.
But how can the
working class combat alien tendencies, how can it consolidate
its victories and learn from its defeats, how can it organize
to crush
the powerful
enemy, how can it conduct the political struggle from hour
to hour, without a leadership, a leadership with authority? All
the concentration
and centralization of bourgeois power, its ideological weapons
and its control of leading political elements in the labour
movement, all of these make more vital the need for centralized and
authoritative
revolutionary leadership. Somehow we are asked to accept that
authority in itself is a bad thing, indeed the main enemy.
This
is really a
retreat
from Marxism. It is not bureaucratic or authority-wielding
individuals who rule the lives of men under capitalism, but the force
of
capital, produced by men, yet alienated from them in a structure
with its
own law of motion, its own imperious demands in terms of human
life and
effort. Our aim is not the abstract one of 'abolishing the
distinction between order-givers and order-takers" but the political
overthrow of the class whose interests lie in the perpetuation
of the domination
of capital, in order that the forces produced by man shall
be at his service. For that task we need, not an abandonment of
discipline
and
centralized authority, but its heightening to an unprecedented
degree. It is nonsense to suppose that as the working class
itself comes
on to the political scene, its consciousness developing to
new heights, the need for organisation and discipline will decline.
On the contrary,
a more active and politically conscious labour movement will
demand it all the more insistently. Just because the rise of
the working
class
is the most universal and world-shaking of all historical transformations,
against the strongest ruling class in history, so it requires
a higher degree of organisation than any previous class in
history.
Notes
1 For the process
by which the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
fell under control of Stalin's faction, representing the
class pressures of the petty-bourgeoisie in Russia on the basis of
the
international
defeats of the working class, see L. D. Trotsky, Third
International After Lenin, pages 147-163, and The Revolution Betrayed,
and
I. Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed.
2 Incidentally, Lenin's
insistence
on the
leading role of the working class even during the period
of defeat makes nonsense
of those of his critics who claim that only during the revolutionary
upsurge did Lenin stress this role of the proletariat (e.g.,
H. Marcuse, Soviet Marxism).
Back to International Trotskyism
|
|
