Most firefighters think the SWP/ruc (Wespec') is a load of ole bollocks

[LLETSA]

There are times in history when a revolutionary party would have led to the socialism...but there wasn't one. The former Communist Parties had massive numbers. If they weren't controlled by Stalin and directed from Moscow, they could have been more effective.

Your first sentence is nothing more than a phrase designed to keep the comrades' spirits up - at least if you don't flesh it out. And it still doesn't explain how the Leninist Party is possible in a place like Britain.

The CP's were by no means massive everywhere. In Britain, for instance, they had nearly 50,000 after the war, when there was a lot of good feeling about the role of the USSR in defeating Hitler. Prior to the war they were far smaller and in the period following it declined with each successive decade. Where the CP was big it was usually in places like France or Italy where a mass social democratic party like Labour didn't exist, and to a large extent they fulfilled the role of that mass social democratic party.

Furthermore, it is far too simplistic to say that they were 'controlled by Stalin.' For a variety of reasons the leadership and a majority of the membership willingly complied with the directives from Moscow and the leaders largely interpreted them in their own fashion. Interestingly, they did not see this 'Stalinism' as being in any way a departure from Leninism, but a development of it. When 'Stalinism' gave birth to Eurocommunism, many Eurocommunists in the CPs similarly did not see their politics as a departure from Leninism, but a development of it. The lesson: you can tell yourself that anything is Leninism at the same time as you try to square the circle.

 

[cogg]

The pamphlet referred to by levien is here:
http://www.swp.org.uk/RESOURCE/Conference2004.pdf

The grandly titled "building the party in the age of mass movements" is poor by even their standards. Instead of analysis, you get assertions based on no evidence. For a start, what are these mass movements they refer to?

Aparrently the most important thing for SWP members to do is: sell more copies of socialist worker and recruit more people to the SWP.

 

[fanciful]

well the cps might well have thought that stalinism was a development of leninism, no doubt you agree with the stalinists on that, but just because they believed it, it doesn't mean they were right. Or you for that matter.

 

[LLETSA]

well the cps might well have thought that stalinism was a development of leninism, no doubt you agree with the stalinists on that, but just because they believed it, it doesn't mean they were right. Or you for that matter.

Yes, but at least I have put forward a view. All you seem capable of doing is rely on sulky little content-free ripostes.

The Stalinists are as justified as the Trotskyists in tracing their roots back to their common source of Leninism. If you believe that they were wrong to do so, and that Stalinism was merely an aberration rather than an attempt to adapt to circumstances for which 'pure' Leninism was not suitable, then why not do what I have been asking Trotskyists to do throughout much of this thread and give a convincing explanation for their crushing failure to build a mass Leninist party anywhere? Taking into account the idea that a major reason could be the unsuitability of the Leninist Party to the circumstances within any society outside the one in which it was conceived.

Why do you keep avoiding the subject?

 

[Nigel Irritable]

I haven't been following this endless and tedious thread properly but I believe that LLETSA's question has been answered at least in part.

Trotskyists in the overwhelming majority of countries started out in circumstances where mass social democratic and stalinist parties already existed and claimed the adherence of almost all politically involved workers. This presented would-be revolutionaries with an extremely important strategic obstacle, one which was never fully overcome by any self-described revolutionary trend, Trotskyist, anarchist or otherwise. They quite simply were not involved in a "fair fight" of ideas with other trends in the workers movement and to the extent that they failed to understand that, and simply tried to counterpose themselves to these institutions they were doomed to remain marginal.

Where such obstacles were not in place various "revolutionaries" DID sometimes manage to build mass or semi-mass organisations, for instance the Bolsheviks in Russia, the Trotskyists in Sri Lanka and Bolivia or the anarcho-syndicalists in Spain.

The above is not to say that the existence of mass stalinist and social democratic organisations was the only problem facing those who wanted to build a revolutionary organisation of any stripe, obviously.

I must also confess that LLETSA's own proposals and ideas have eluded me. Is there some positive content to your critique?

 

[LLETSA]

's in the Thread!

I must also confess that LLETSA's own proposals and ideas have eluded me. Is there some positive content to your critique?

Amazing how people keep demanding to know this while confessing to not having followed the thread.

In any case it is not necessary to put forward an alternative to something in order to question it. The working class can certainly be said to be critical of Leninism (working class people know it when they encounter it, even if most can't put a name to it), but most people put forward no alternative. (Maybe they've only got 'trade union consciousness'....)

 

[LLETSA]

I haven't been following this endless and tedious thread properly but I believe that LLETSA's question has been answered at least in part.

Trotskyists in the overwhelming majority of countries started out in circumstances where mass social democratic and stalinist parties already existed and claimed the adherence of almost all politically involved workers. This presented would-be revolutionaries with an extremely important strategic obstacle, one which was never fully overcome by any self-described revolutionary trend, Trotskyist, anarchist or otherwise. They quite simply were not involved in a "fair fight" of ideas with other trends in the workers movement and to the extent that they failed to understand that, and simply tried to counterpose themselves to these institutions they were doomed to remain marginal.

Where such obstacles were not in place various "revolutionaries" DID sometimes manage to build mass or semi-mass organisations, for instance the Bolsheviks in Russia, the Trotskyists in Sri Lanka and Bolivia or the anarcho-syndicalists in Spain.

The above is not to say that the existence of mass stalinist and social democratic organisations was the only problem facing those who wanted to build a revolutionary organisation of any stripe, obviously.

I must also confess that LLETSA's own proposals and ideas have eluded me. Is there some positive content to your critique?

Why wasn't it a fair fight? I accept that the larger social democratic and Stalinist organisations possessed superior material resources, but my experience of being a Trotskyist was that this was partly made up for with the superior level of activism and that was encouraged as well as downright bordering-on-religious zeal (of the kind that went some way towards alienating working class mambers like myself, I might add.) It can't be said that we failed to get ourselves noticed within the labour movement and in other campaigns, and nor can this be said of your organisation as it was constituted then.

Meanwhile, you can't use the example of the Bolsheviks in Russia in response to the question of why no mass Leninist parties were constructed outside of the specific conditions of Russia. As for the other two, the example of Spain is also irrelevant to the question as it was not a Leninist current that was significant there but, as you say an anarcho-syndicalist one. As for Sri Lanka I am prepared to accept that it might be an exception - I know relatively little about the place - but the general point still applies about Leninism being unsuited to most of the world outside its Russian birthplace, particularly those at the centre of world capitalism -which Sri Lanka is not. Particularly as I don't accept that Stalinism is nothing to do with Leninism.

I accept that conditions have always been difficult for revolutionary socialists in the west, and they remain so. But what I am questioning, I would remind you again, is the idea that Leninism is the soluton to this. Couldn't it be said that the fact that the working class in the west was more interested in social democracy, and to a lesser extent reformism-inclined Stalinism than in the 'true' Leninism of the Trotskyists, be the ultimate indication of the unsuitability of Leninism to western societies?

 

[fanciful]

there were plenty of mass leninist parties constructed outside the soviet union see all of the ones built between 1918 and 1923 for example.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Amazing how people keep demanding to know this while confessing to not having followed the thread.

I asked you because I didn't want to wade through ten or so pages of bickering in order to find out.

In any case it is not necessary to put forward an alternative to something in order to question it.

I know.

Which doesn't change the fact that you haven't answered my question. You don't have to have an alternative. I'm asking you if you do.

 

[mk12]

LLETSA - your argument hinges on this - Because the western working class has never 'embraced' Leninism, it is a failed theory. For example, you say this The working class can certainly be said to be critical of Leninism. This is a crap argument. People's ideas change, as you know. I bet in 1916 Leninism was not 'embraced'. But things changed...

In Germany, a revolutionary party could have completed the revolution. But because the SPD had cloaked itself with Marxist rhetoric, they put their faith in that party. Then you saw how un-proletarian they really were after the war...

Your argument is so simplistic. Never has worked; and therefore it never will.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Why wasn't it a fair fight?

Because the social democratic and stalinist parties weren't just competing groups with competing ideas which happened to have "superior material resources". They were mass organisations which were deeply rooted in the working class and in particular the most politically active sections of the working class.

It's like asking why it isn't "a fair fight" between the TUC and the British branch of the Industrial Workers of the World. Mass organisations are better looked at as structural factors rather than simply rivals with more resources.

Meanwhile, you can't use the example of the Bolsheviks in Russia in response to the question of why no mass Leninist parties were constructed outside of the specific conditions of Russia. As for the other two, the example of Spain is also irrelevant to the question as it was not a Leninist current that was significant there but, as you say an anarcho-syndicalist one. As for Sri Lanka I am prepared to accept that it might be an exception

By deliberately restricting your question to that of "Leninist parties outside Russia" you stop yourself from seeing the whole picture. The issue is not that very few mass parties have been built by Trotskyists. The issue is that very few mass organisations have been built by any revolutionary current full stop.

You seem to want to locate the problem in a Leninist conception of the party and your desire is distorting your analysis. Anarchists, non-Leninist Marxists, Syndicalists, Trotskyists etc share the same history as far as building mass organisations is concerned. Trotskyists and anarcho-syndicalists stand out from other revolutionaries in this regard only in that they have at least on a few occasions managed to create mass or semi-mass organisations. If "Leninism" was the factor limiting the growth of revolutionary organisation then we would expect other revolutionaries to have done rather better wouldn't we?

Fanciful has done us something of a service by bringing up the fact that a more significant number of mass revolutionary organisations were born around the world in the wake of the Russian Revolution. What's interesting about these parties in the context of this discussion is not that they were Leninist, which of course they all were, but that they were born out of splits in existing mass workers parties. Where the existing mass parties unobligingly refused to throw up a substantial split, as in Britain, efforts to form a mass revolutionary organisation were normally stillborn. The CPGB for example, even in what I would regard as its revolutionary period, was rather marginal to the British working class.

 

[LLETSA]

there were plenty of mass leninist parties constructed outside the soviet union see all of the ones built between 1918 and 1923 for example.

Yes, and where they were involved in revolutionary struggle all of them went down to crushing defeat. Not entirely, or even primarily their fault, granted, but the drawn out period leading to the deaths of those parties, and the failure of the Trotskyist split from mainstream Communism to replace them, points to their unsuitability to the conditions under which the working class lived in western societies. Their rapid Stalinisation was indicative of two things: that they accepted the Russian revolution's transformation into a programme of forced industrialisation and modernisation as anything but a counter-revolution, and that they saw the political innovations that the Soviet party pressed upon them as being in direct continuity with Lenin. The failure of Trotskyism is related to the failure of Stalinism through their common roots in the Leninism that was devised primarily to meet the prevailing conditions of one particular society at a particular satge in its history and later, mistakenly and under the pressure of events, put forward as meeting the requirements of revolutionary socialists the world over. The results speak for themselves. In fact, it could be said that the Stalinists, in experimenting with national roads to socialism and so on, grasped the inadequacy of the Russian phenomenon of Leninism far better than did the Trotskyists.

 

[LLETSA]

You don't have to have an alternative. I'm asking you if you do.

Here you are:

Yes cockneyrebel, what ideology on the left can it not be applied to? That is exactly the point. It surely can't have escaped your notice that working class politics are at their lowest ebb for a hundred years, can it? Why Leninism? Because the majority of what is generally called the far left still adheres to that ideology and tries to use it a the basis for its unconvincing quest to 'revive socialism', despite it being a proven failure. All of those dwindling groups continue to go through the same arthritic motions, acting as it were 1975 and not 2005. You keep coming back objecting to the idea that Leninism is dead yet fail to put forward a convincing argument for the everlasting quixotic chase after the mass Leninist party.

It beats me how anybody can look at the situation since the end of the miners' strike and deny the idea that 'the whole of revolutionary socialism and and anarchism is failed and fucked.' The left still operates now as it operated then. It seems to have refused to learn any lessons from its failures. Instead it prefers to tinker with the same tired old formulas in different guises, hoping that people won't notice that its just the same old same old. "You're just a brand new second hand," as Peter Tosh put it.

'Where do we go from here...what have we got in the UK?' you may well indeed ask. Fortunately not everybody has opted for the head in the sand approach. The IWCA has responded to the crisis of working class politics by that astoundingly novel approach of...appealing directly to the working class. (Socialists used to do this at one time, believe it or not.) That's the working class as it is and not how lefties would like it to be, and not the same thing as getting lame resolutions on Iraq passed at your trade union branch. You constantly deride them as a miniscule group, however (is that horrible smell your singed arse, Mr Kettle, said Mr Pot), when really you and the rest of the left would do well to consider the kind of results they get from the hard work they do on the ground and wonder why they look so unique and refreshing.

There's no use in going round pretending that you're going to stop international wars and other grandiose stuff when you operate in the void that the left does. When the best you can come up with is another crushingly unappealing 'initiative' to unite the 'revolutionary left' as yet another springboard to the 'mass working class party (within which each grouplet will fight for the correct Leninist perspectives. Oh Jesus....) Is it merely an accident that each successive attempt of this kind is worse than the last?

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Aaaah. The IWCA. Is the IWCA an attempt to build a revolutionary organisation in your opinion?

 

[LLETSA]

LLETSA - your argument hinges on this - Because the western working class has never 'embraced' Leninism, it is a failed theory. For example, you say this The working class can certainly be said to be critical of Leninism. This is a crap argument. People's ideas change, as you know. I bet in 1916 Leninism was not 'embraced'. But things changed...

In Germany, a revolutionary party could have completed the revolution. But because the SPD had cloaked itself with Marxist rhetoric, they put their faith in that party. Then you saw how un-proletarian they really were after the war...

Your argument is so simplistic. Never has worked; and therefore it never will.

Do you honestly believe that the situation in the Tsarist Russian empire in 1916 is in any way comparable to western society today? That the type of party that was devised as a response to those conditions could be of any relevance in western society today?

Your argument would be worth taking seriously if Leninism had not proved inadequate at a time of international upheaval and class polarisation the like of which there is nothing comparable at present, in a society that was in no way as complex as the one in which we live now.

 

[LLETSA]

By deliberately restricting your question to that of "Leninist parties outside Russia" you stop yourself from seeing the whole picture. The issue is not that very few mass parties have been built by Trotskyists. The issue is that very few mass organisations have been built by any revolutionary current full stop.

I know. But how is that an argument for continuing with the Leninist party model?

 

[LLETSA]

You seem to want to locate the problem in a Leninist conception of the party and your desire is distorting your analysis. Anarchists, non-Leninist Marxists, Syndicalists, Trotskyists etc share the same history as far as building mass organisations is concerned. Trotskyists and anarcho-syndicalists stand out from other revolutionaries in this regard only in that they have at least on a few occasions managed to create mass or semi-mass organisations. If "Leninism" was the factor limiting the growth of revolutionary organisation then we would expect other revolutionaries to have done rather better wouldn't we?

You are underestimating the inevitable hold of the Russian revolution on militant socialists the world over throughout the twentieth century. This elevated the ideologies directly related to the revolution - Trotskyist Leninism and Stalinist Leninism -to prominence on the extreme left of the workers' movement.

Even if Trotskyists themselves couldn't see the connections between their ideology and methods and that of the Stalinists, it would seem that a majority of those militant workers who encountered both could. Furthermore, the hold of the Russian revolution on the imagination of the western far left ensured that most workers to whom it appealed felt that they might as well stick with the 'real Leninists' of the CPs, with their direct connection to the Russian revolution as it really was, rather than throw in their lot with the baying sects of Trotskyism.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

I know. But how is that an argument for continuing with the Leninist party model?

I was pointing out that your argument was *irrelevant* to the utility or otherwise of the Leninist conception of a party.

The reasons why it has been extremely difficult for revolutionaries to build mass parties/revolutionary unions/federations/collectives/whatever are independent of the type of organisation which any particular group of revolutionaries have been trying to build. In fact Leninist parties and anarcho-syndicalist unions arguably have the best record in terms of reaching mass size.

I don't regard that as an argument for or against continuing with Leninist organisational ideas. If it really was more difficult to build a mass revolutionary party than it was to build say an anarchist federation then that wouldn't alter in the slightest my opinion of whether or not a revolutionary party is *necessary*. Neither I suspect would the converse convince an anarchist that federations were a waste of time.

I think that a disciplined, democratic, mass revolutionary party equipped with a socialist programme will be necessary for there to be a succesful socialist transformation of society. Why it has proven so difficult to construct such a party, or any mass revolutionary organisation, is a topic that is worth discussing but it is a different topic.

 

[LLETSA]

Fanciful has done us something of a service by bringing up the fact that a more significant number of mass revolutionary organisations were born around the world in the wake of the Russian Revolution. What's interesting about these parties in the context of this discussion is not that they were Leninist, which of course they all were, but that they were born out of splits in existing mass workers parties. Where the existing mass parties unobligingly refused to throw up a substantial split, as in Britain, efforts to form a mass revolutionary organisation were normally stillborn. The CPGB for example, even in what I would regard as its revolutionary period, was rather marginal to the British working class.

But as I say to Mattkidd above, why should we expect history to repeat itself in far less favourable conditions? And why should we seek to create the same kind of organisations that failed the first time round - based directly on the experience of a revolution that failed in almost all of its original aims?

I agree with you that the CP in Britain remained marginal because of the existence of the Labour Party. Where there was no mass social democratic party and the CP became the primary organisation of the working class, this was usually in societies where those CPs were involved in militant struggle the like of which the UK simply did not experience. Yet those CPs ended up exactly the same both ideologically and organisationally as the British CP. Why? And while they largely took up the role played by the social democratic parties in other countries, no Trotskyist organisation was any more successful in appealing to the militant tradition that the CPs had 'betrayed' than they were in creating viable organisations in more stable societies like Britain. Why?

 

[Nigel Irritable]

The problem that the early CPGB faced wasn't that the Labour Party existed it was that the Labour Party didn't possess a significant revolutionary wing which would split away under the impact of the First World War and the Russian Revolution. The most important CPs were in their essence splits from already existing workers parties.

Why it was that the Labour Party didn't possess a left wing of this kind is an itself an interesting question, but it isn't one we are likely to resolve here. The question of why and how each of the CPs were Stalinised is another interesting question, and its something that Trotskyist writers in particular have considered in detail. For the purposes of this discussion however, the real question is why did Trotskyists - or ANY other revolutionary current - not manage to either win the battle inside the CPs, or split them significantly or to build organisations to replace them as they betrayed the revolutionary cause.

You are right to point to the prestige enjoyed by the Soviet Union as a major factor in preventing splits and so on, just as it had been in the succesful Stalinisation of all of the Comintern parties. I would also refer you again to my more general explanation of the difficulties facing small groups of revolutionaries in the face of already existing mass organisations.

Again though, I have to ask what precise relevance you think any of this is to the question of what kind of organisation revolutionaries need?

 

[mk12]

I think although 1916 is very different to today, the class struggle is very similar and it requires a revolutionary party to succeed.

The main reason for a party is because of 'uneven consciousness'. This is the case in every revolutionary struggle...in Spain 1936, you had workers who fought for Franco for example. Within the class itself, there are varying levels of consciousness at different times. Because of this inconsistency, Leninists argue that the most class conscious workers in society should join together and constitute a party. I don't think anarchists would reject this. After all, isn't A-Fed a grouping which aims at convincing other workers that capitalism is bad, and revolution is needed? Isn't this acting as a 'vanguard'? Isn't this playing a 'leading' role? The aim of a Party is that through interaction in struggle with the rest of the working class, it seeks to spread its ideas and to win a majority within the movement.

Now this is the role of a Party. Uneven consciousness is apparent today, as it was in 1916. I think tactics of the Bolsheviks and today will be different, but the fundamental aspects of Leninism - the necessity of a party - is just as much a necessity in 2005.

 

[joshjosh]

The aim of a Party is that through interaction in struggle with the rest of the working class, it seeks to spread its ideas and to win a majority within the movementQUOTE]
just like your party did at stop the war conference yesterday? i was there and thought that rather than try and spread its ideas (you're still a revolutionary group aren't you?) and win over sections of the movement to its politics it was doing the opposite

ho hum...

 

[mk12]

Jesus Josh. I am arguing for Leninism, and I have anarchists criticising me, AND Workers Power members!

 

[joshjosh]

Jesus Josh. I am arguing for Leninism, and I have anarchists criticising me, AND Workers Power members!

thats because part of the problem is that the practices, politics and tactics of the SWP over the years have done a lot to bring leninism into disrepute...

but you knew that anyway

did you hear about STW conference?

 

[emanymton]

did you hear about STW conference?

No why, What happened?

 

[joshjosh]

well, first of all they threw WP off the steering committee for being critical of the stop the war coallition (as if one person on a steering committee of 57 is going to be that damaging, and as if the StWC shouldn't be open to internal criticism) but thats not really the main thing that got to me.

yet again the SWP voted down motions for the immediate withdrawal of troops, for supporting the iraqi resistance and so on - i.e. ones that would give the STWC the politics to actually stop the war (it was quite interesting that a soldeir who was there applauded a call for victory to the resistance)

the whole thing was totally bureaucratically run as well. the steering committee took positions on which motions it supported and weighted the amount of speakers in favour of its position. andrew murray (the stalinist chair) cut speakers he disagreed with short but let the ones he agreed with speak for way more than the 3 minute limit.

there was plenty of other stuff as well.

i actually laughed out loud at one point when Alex Callinicos spoke against people calling for the immediate withdrawal of troops saying that we need to keep the movement broad (all the usual stuff) and when he finished the projector screen which had been blank up until then (at least whilst people spoke) flashed up the big 'BUILD 19.3' poster just in time for the SWP to applaud.... good stage management or what?

 

[emanymton]

Thanks, Usual stuff then.

 

[LLETSA]

Heads, arses, up....

thats because part of the problem is that the practices, politics and tactics of the SWP over the years have done a lot to bring leninism into disrepute...

but you knew that anyway

did you hear about STW conference?

So the antics of the SWP are what's mainly responsible for bringing Leninism into disrepute?

 

[joshjosh]

So the antics of the SWP are what's mainly responsible for bringing Leninism into disrepute?

did i say mainly? i think it was mainly stalinism, but there's tons of ex-SWP members who have such a negative experience that they're put off not just leninism but revolutionary politics full stop

 

[mk12]

But we are talking about Leninism, the strategy. Not the SWP...