Reconstructing Lenin: an intellectual biography

I hope that ‘Reconstructing Lenin’ by Tamas Krausz becomes established as a major reference in writing and discussion about Lenin and the Bolsheviks: not simply in academic circles, but (more importantly) among modern-day revolutionary activists. It deserves to become an integral part of the study of Lenin, Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution – a growing and sizeable field of study since the end of the Cold War - due to the author’s excellent political judgement, the wealth of relevant contextual material and the way if illuminates the coherence and continuity in Lenin’s political thought over time (and its relationship to Lenin and his comrades’ political actions).

It is a very substantial book, a work of exceptional scholarship accurately subtitled ‘an intellectual biography’ because the focus is largely on Lenin’s ideas and their development. To call it ‘exhaustively researched’ is an understatement: its ‘Notes’ contain well over 1000 references, drawing on an extraordinarily wide range of sources.

Originally written in Hungarian, the English translation will hopefully influence discussion about its subject in the English-speaking world. This translation, by Balint Bethlenfalvy with Mario Fenyo, is published by US-based left-wing publishers Monthly Review Press.

The author, Tamas Krausz, is a professor of Russian history in Budapest. He is long established as a leading Marxist intellectual in Hungary. The earliest reference to his own writing on Lenin that I spotted in the bibliography was from 1980, so this book has had a long gestation (it is described as ‘four decades in the making’ on the back cover).

The author’s location in a former Eastern Bloc state means he is acutely conscious of the massive and violent distortion done to Lenin’s ideas, reputation and legacy by Stalinism. He is determined to uncover the real Lenin, via close attention to Lenin’s own writings and a sensitive project of re-discovering the intellectual, political and social world that shaped him.

This is not, it should be noted, an introduction to Lenin, the Bolsheviks, or the times in which they lived. A certain amount of familiarity with the field is generally assumed, while much of the language is reasonably specialised. It is nonetheless accessible and readable, and I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to explore the field in some depth.

Although the focus is primarily on Lenin’s intellectual and political development, the opening (and long) chapter is biographical, from Lenin’s family background through his entire life. I thought this was excellent – genuinely insightful even for those of us familiar with Lenin and his life story, rooting the man in his time and place. It includes some fascinating, less well-known, details while recapitulating the essentials, giving a vivid sense of Lenin’s compelling personality as well as tracing the events of his life and how they intersected with wider political and social contexts.

It’s also worth noting here that two extensive appendices complement the main text perfectly. One of them is an extremely thorough series of brief biographical details of scores of socialists, political figures and so on relevant to a biography of Lenin. The other is a detailed time line of events between the revolutionary year of 1917 and Lenin’s death in 1924.Both of these are useful resources.

An innovative and coherent thinker

The book has three particular themes which should be flagged up. Firstly, Krausz is keen to root Lenin firmly in the Marxist tradition while grasping the intellectual contributions that made him innovative. He demonstrates, unanswerably, that Lenin made important contributions to the Marxist tradition – a necessary antidote to those who treat him as a purely pragmatic figure. But these contributions are nonetheless rooted in Marxism – Krausz explicitly rejects any suggestion that Lenin originated a new ism that is separate from Marxism, or one that constitutes a variation on Marxism.

Different chapters examine different important contributions – roughly chronologically, though there is inevitably much overlap. These include Lenin’s work on Russian capitalist development, imperialism, the national question, the state and revolution, and the relationship between struggles for democracy and struggles for socialism. Lenin made original contributions that form a vital part of the inheritance of classical Marxism and help us understand history and both understand and change the world we live in.

Secondly, Krausz makes a powerful case for Lenin’s intellectual and political coherence. This is not to underestimate his tactical or organisational flexibility – these are well documented. But his flexibility in practice was deeply rooted in a coherent and consistent worldview and set of ideas.

This is a vital antidote to the idea that Lenin was an opportunistic politician, twisting and turning to suit immediate practical interests with no intellectual compass. Even after 1917, when he repeatedly faced incredibly difficult obstacles as leader of a besieged and fledgling workers’ state, there was a coherent political worldview shaping his responses (whatever political expediency was, admittedly, required).

This, again, does not mean ignoring how Lenin’s ideas developed and evolved. There is no suggestion that he arrived fully formed, so to speak. Quite the opposite: the development of his ideas is traced in close relationship to the history of the society in which he lived. He is rooted historically by Krausz.

There is also a strong sense of interplay between Lenin’s thinking and that of other Marxists: he was ‘first among equals’, the leading figure in a talented and intellectually vibrant generation of radical socialists. There’s a lively sense of the many debates between Lenin and others, and the significance of these debates. It’s also clear that political experiences – above all the 1905 revolution – influenced the direction of Lenin’s thinking.

So Lenin made important political and theoretical contributions to Marxism which analysed a changing world: a world in which capitalism was spreading globally, while its European and north American core was evolving into a constellation of competing imperialist states, with the nation state increasingly intertwined with the capitalist economy. Capitalist development was uneven, with Russia characterised by a complex mix of new industrial methods and traditional (but evolving) agriculture. Classes were being re-shaped: the industrial working class was growing in many countries, but the peasantry was changing too.

Consequently, the prospects for revolution were changing too – new thinking was needed on the potential role of different classes in the revolutionary process, and on the nature and scope of revolution. Lenin’s analysis evolved over time and through debate with other Marxists, but nonetheless formed a coherent worldview that was consistent with the Marxist tradition.

Ideas into action

The third central theme in Krausz’s account concerns the relationship between ideas and action. Lenin was a revolutionary political leader. He didn’t simply develop analysis of the world; that analysis was, profoundly and throughout his adult life, geared towards changing the world. Krausz notes that Marx’s famous thesis – ‘the philosophers have interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it’ – has never been more acutely relevant than in the case of Lenin. A single-minded commitment to building an organisation capable of playing a decisive role in historical change dominated Lenin’s life up to 1917.

Krausz carefully traces the relationship between theory and practice, between Lenin’s ideas and the project of social transformation. He provides the big picture here, but also a multitude of specific tactical debates and decisions. He makes an interesting comment, for example, about how all the various factional disputes in the Russian revolutionary movement (over many years) had a strategic or tactical dimension. They were often influenced by theoretical issues, but there was only ever really a serious dispute if there were tactical implications (there were no splits over purely philosophical debates).

Krausz is attentive to the different aspects of debates and to what was going on at key turning points, e.g. the 1905 revolution, the ‘April Theses’ in April 1917, on the eve of insurrection in October 1917, etc. He expresses the theoretical underpinnings without reducing everything to them; concrete tactical disagreements can only be understood with attention to the concrete situation.

Lenin’s practical achievements – incomparable in the history of Marxism – were threefold: he had the leading role in building a revolutionary party in Russia before 1917, he was the principal leader in the ‘second revolution’ of 1917, i.e. that which led to the overthrow of the entire political and social order in October, and he was subsequently the head of government in a fledgling Russian workers’ state for several years (this last one remains a unique role in the history of revolutionary socialism). He was therefore, in turn, party builder, revolutionary leader and statesman.

Krausz is good at illustrating the continuity in Lenin’s personality, political qualities and ideas through all these periods, while also focusing on the distinctiveness of each context. The period of building revolutionary organisation, at varying stages from the 1890s until 1917, was the bulk of Lenin’s political life, and it proves especially fascinating in terms of potential implications for activists today. 

In addition to these central themes, ‘Reconstructing Lenin’ is a goldmine of details – biographical, political and historical. Although Lenin is at the centre throughout, it brings various other political figures of the time (Plekhanov, Kautsky, Luxemburg, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Bogdanov and many more) into focus, showing how they influenced Lenin or how he debated with them. It in some senses serves as a collective biography of the Bolsheviks, a compelling study of a revolutionary organisation that evolved enormously in changing circumstances.

I have just three very small criticisms. Firstly, although Krausz is brutally honest about the enormous problems faced after October 1917 - and indeed the mistakes he believes were made by Lenin and his government during this period - he refers very little to the actual positive achievements of revolutionary Russia (which were considerable). This makes his sketching of the context of Russia in the several years following the October Revolution a little unbalanced.

Secondly, I think he underestimates the possibilities for successful revolution in a number of European countries, especially Germany, during the same period, appearing to be rather mechanical and deterministic about the apparently near-inevitable failure of the European movements. Thirdly, I think he is guilty of somewhat understating Trotsky's achievements and stature as a political leader and thinker - not drastically so, but this is a minor problem of emphasis for me.

These minor points should not distract, however, from the larger achievement. Crucially, the question of how ideas interacted with efforts to change the world is a thread running through the whole book. The issue of what lessons revolutionary socialist activists can learn for today is not my main focus in this short appreciation, but the book provides a solid historical basis for that project.

Note: I recommend Chris Nineham's Counterfire review of the book.

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Unfinished Leninism - an extended review

Paul Le Blanc’s Unfinished Leninism, a collection of 12 essays, most of them previously published on socialist websites or in publications in the last few years, mixes biography, historical summary, polemic and contemporary strategy. It does not merely summarise the life of Lenin, his political ideas and the tradition with which he is identified; it also explains the relevance of the revolutionary leader, and of Leninism, to our own times.

The book aims to persuade readers that Lenin ought to be taken seriously, his ideas applied creatively to new realities. This is an unfashionable task: Lenin has long been written off as at best irrelevant, at worst dangerous, by mainstream politicians and academics. Moreover, he is also regarded as outdated or irrelevant by many on the left and among those who are entering radical or anti-capitalist politics. Marxism in general is no longer automatically a major reference point for radical activists.

The notion of revolutionary organisation in the tradition of Lenin and the Bolsheviks has become particularly marginal for a number of reasons: the small size of the revolutionary left can make it seem insignificant, the sectarian degeneration and impotence of much of it has made it unattractive, and the body of ideas – Marxism – which underpins it is still little understood. Numerous alternative ways of organising have been offered, though all of them have encountered profound difficulties. The case for a renewal of revolutionary organisation may be unfashionable, but in a world of growing inequalities, seemingly intractable crisis and deep social injustice, it is one that deserves serious attention.

A reviled figure

Lenin is an important figure in history as the leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917, a central figure in the international Communist movement that developed in its aftermath, and the first leader of post-revolutionary Russia until his death in 1924. Lenin has been reviled by successive generations of conservative politicians, historians and political commentators precisely because he was a key protagonist in a revolutionary, mass working class challenge to capitalism - to the wealth and power of the ruling class - of huge historic significance, serving as inspiration to workers and oppressed people worldwide. But he has also been a source of contention and disagreement among many who have rejected the status quo of exploitation, inequality and oppression because the Soviet Union became, under Lenin’s successor Stalin, a grotesquely undemocratic, unequal and violent society.

The view that Lenin led inevitably to the horrors of Stalinism became the orthodoxy in the Cold War era. It requires considerable historical analysis to uncover why the fledgling revolutionary state which emerged from 1917 became the opposite of what Russian workers, soldiers and peasants had struggled for. This largely falls outside Le Blanc’s remit in this book, but he directs readers towards such analysis and seeks to rescue Lenin from the crimes committed in his name.

The rise of Stalinism was made possible by the isolation of the revolution: though there were revolutionary upheavals and popular rebellions in several European countries, none of them resulted in the defeat of the old order. Meanwhile, revolutionary Russia was attacked by imperialist armies and, for a time, engulfed in civil war.

Economic hardship and the demands of protecting the new revolutionary state from attack and civil war had a devastating impact on the working class and the scope for any sort of meaningful working-class democracy. The rising bureaucracy became, in this context, more powerful, centralised, and removed from the experiences of ordinary workers.

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been some renewed interest in what the author dubs ‘Lenin studies’, with some fresh thinking unencumbered by the rigid orthodoxies of the Cold War era, yet the dominant interpretation of the upheavals of 1989-91 was that they ‘finished’ Leninism for good. This confirms notions of triumphant free-market capitalism and the elimination of any radical, progressive alternatives. Public perceptions of Lenin in the West are still mainly shaped by anti-Communist propaganda of the Cold War era and the association of Lenin with the subsequent Stalinist era.

Lenin’s Marxism

Lenin is also significant as one of the towering figures of Marxism. Le Blanc stresses Lenin’s continuity from Marx; his deep rootedness in the writings of Marx and Engels. At the same time he summarises Lenin’s special contributions to a rich political and intellectual tradition, one that depends always on being creatively applied to new situations and on interaction with the lives and struggles of working-class people.

Lenin was the author of such influential Marxist texts as What is to be done?, Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, State and Revolution and Left Wing Communism, an infantile disorder. Le Blanc argues – persuasively in my view, though some will disagree – that it is justified to talk of ‘Leninism’: a body of ideas and analysis that updated and developed Marx’s own writings, involving the application of Marxism to Russian realities and more generally to an era of capitalist expansion, imperialist competition and war. More positively, Lenin’s era witnessed the growth of mass socialist parties and trade unions, and successive waves of popular struggle, opening up new opportunities for Marxists but also presenting fresh challenges which Marx and Engels had not faced.

Lenin’s contributions included analysis of Russian capitalism’s particular development, an account of the emergence of modern imperialist rivalry in the era of monopoly capitalism, and a nuanced understanding of nationalism and national liberation movements. Le Blanc sketches the contexts which shaped the development of these ideas, including the debates which took place among Marxists. There is a fascinating essay examining the connections and differences between Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. They are often counter-posed to each other, but Le Blanc demonstrates that any differences between their outlooks were fewer than often supposed, while teasing out the significance of the genuine differences – for example over the national question - that did exist.

Lenin also developed important ideas about socialist strategy: a thorough and innovative understanding of the relationship between movements for democracy and the struggle for socialism. He developed a strategic perspective that linked Russian workers with the rural peasantry, and some original analysis of revolutionary processes. This was informed partly by his own revolutionary experiences in 1905 and 1917 as well as the legacy of earlier breakthroughs like the Paris Commune of 1871, which was the first experience anywhere of working-class people taking control, albeit briefly, of the running of a city.

The period following the Russian Revolution opened up further strategic challenges, which required new thinking. The urgent need to spread the successful revolution and simultaneously learn from the Russian experience, while engaging with distinctive situations in other countries, prompted the launch of the Third International (or Comintern) in 1919 and the developing body of ideas and strategy that went with it.  This included sharp critiques of both European reformist politics and the problems of ultra-leftism, and the emergence of the united-front strategy as a means of advancing working-class aims in non-revolutionary times.

I agree with Le Blanc when he writes that it is peculiar – when considering these contributions - for some contemporary critics to dismiss the idea that there is such a thing as Leninism, or that Lenin’s influence of the development of Marxism was either minor or largely limited to organisational questions. He also adeptly discredits the idea that ‘Leninism’ was an invention of those who followed Lenin and should be rejected on that basis. While it is true that Stalin and others created an ossified and obscenely distorted ‘Leninism’, there is nonetheless a real body of ideas associated with Lenin.

Lenin was shaped by the best of Second International (1889-1914) Marxism, but he also moved beyond some of its limits. Although one of an able generation of Marxists, also including Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg, and later Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukács, he did make his own distinctive contributions as part of a collective enterprise. Lenin can be seen as ‘first among equals’ in the development of Marxism during this period, interacting with the ideas of others and the debates among socialists while making significant innovations.

Revolutionary Lenin

In addition to Lenin’s significance as an influential historical figure and giant of Marxism, he is important because his life and work, more than that of anyone else in the history of socialism, is bound up with the whole question of how revolutionaries should organise and act in pursuit of their goals. He can reasonably be regarded as history’s greatest revolutionary leader. But what made that historical role possible? How did Lenin and his comrades actually organise themselves, and what lessons (if any) does this offer us today?

It is the questions of strategy and organisation that most often prompt debate about Lenin, and his legacy, in left-wing circles; this is as true today as it has ever been. Lenin was a pioneer of distinctively revolutionary organisation and the experiences of the Bolsheviks (the faction and later party that he led) from 1903 to 1917, are a particular focus for debate. Le Blanc challenges the oft-expressed idea that Stalinism originated in pre-1917 Bolshevik practices and the myth that Lenin undemocratically dominated the Bolsheviks, which was in fact a democratic, collective organisation in which debate flourished. He skilfully clarifies the genuine meaning of ‘democratic centralism’ for Lenin and his contemporaries.

He also critiques the idea, currently prevalent in some debates, that there was nothing especially distinctive about the Bolsheviks, treating the argument of Lars Lih (among others) that Lenin was essentially a standard Second International Marxist until 1914 with critical sympathy. He recognises the degree of truth in this. Lenin didn’t, prior to 1914, view the Bolsheviks as a new and special type of organisation or as substantially different from some European socialist parties, but he also explains how the Bolsheviks had in fact developed quite differently from the likes of the German Social Democrats, which had become increasingly geared towards parliamentary politics and compromise with capitalism. The outbreak of World War One, and corresponding collapse of most socialist parties into national chauvinism, was a turning point, after which the differences became sharper and the thinking of Lenin and other revolutionaries continued to evolve.

For those who seek to change the world, not merely understand it, wrestling with Lenin’s writings about strategy and organisation – and equally importantly his actions – is indispensable. The revolution he led was the only successful overthrow of capitalist state power in world history and, though it may have been beset by problems from the beginning, and unsuccessful in the longer term, the experiences involved remain a unique school in strategy and tactics for anyone wanting to end the miseries of capitalism and create a better world.

A central preoccupation for the author is the excavation of Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ deep commitment to democracy, the profoundly democratic possibilities inherent in the Russian Revolution and the democratic character of how Lenin and his comrades organised. He refutes several well-worn myths along the way, clearing away the misconceptions to present a view of Lenin as a radical democrat, and his revolutionary socialism as a political project with democracy at its core.

This is acutely relevant to our own times, in which democracy is visibly the loser in its struggle with capitalism, and when struggles for real democracy are integral to struggles against various aspects of the capitalist system. The recovery of Lenin’s radical democracy is especially necessary because of the widespread distortions of Leninism in the name of Leninism; most importantly those associated with the old Communist bloc, but also (as the author notes) the faulty versions of ‘Leninist’ practice that many well-meaning socialists have pursued in the West. These have seen dogmatic and somewhat sectarian groups competing with each other and largely cut off from influence over the broad working-class movement, therefore giving Leninist organisation a bad name.
 
The return of Lenin

The particular context framing this latest volume is twofold, with both social and more specifically literary dimensions. Firstly, there is the wave of insurgencies that have followed the emergence of a severe crisis for capitalism since 2008: Arab revolutions, Occupy, anti-austerity rebellions, the indignados and other manifestations of anti-capitalist revolt. This has, rather paradoxically, not led to a general revival of organised left-wing politics – though there are partial exceptions, such as in Greece, Spain and parts of Latin America –and it certainly has not proved the basis for a renewal of specifically Leninist (or revolutionary socialist) political practice.

However, the idea of revolution is certainly in the air, partly due to the Arab uprisings of 2011 and partly because the erosion and fragmentation of traditional parliamentary politics has fed a volatile situation in which rhetoric about ‘revolution’ (e.g. the public debate prompted by Russell Brand’s new book) is rather more mainstream than a few years ago, however ill-defined it might be.

The traditional revolutionary left, though, has in shrunk, fragmented and in many instances become politically sterile. The reference to the ‘return of a revolutionary doctrine’ in this book’s subtitle may for now be mostly wishful thinking, but the conditions clearly exist for considering that as a live possibility. The political radicalisation and volatility of recent years, the stirrings of debate about what is meant by ‘revolution’, and the small breakthroughs in ‘Lenin studies’, can all, in quite different ways, be seen as providing some basis for hope.

Secondly, there is a somewhat more favourable context for the publication of a new book on Lenin and Leninism, which is a partial revival in worthwhile scholarship on Lenin. Although the leader of the Russian Revolution largely remains a marginal, caricatured and derided figure, in politics, media and academia, there has been a series of books in recent years, generally written from a sympathetic left-wing perspective, that have generated some debate and welcome re-evaluation.

Lars Lih, who wrote the path-breaking 2006 book Lenin Rediscovered, has been foremost in re-assessing Lenin’s ideas, practice and context. Lih’s work in particular keeps cropping up – not without some criticism and disagreement, but with tremendous appreciation – in Le Blanc’s new collection. Canadian historian John Riddell’s on-going labour of love in editing the proceedings of the Comintern, from 1919 until the mid-1920s, is another vital reference point. Le Blanc’s essays involve reviewing some newer biographies and studies, but there are also references to older but still very useful works by the likes of Tony Cliff, Marcel Liebman and Ernest Mandel.

Le Blanc has decades of both study and practical experience to draw on in writing about his subject. His experience is as a revolutionary socialist activist in the US and he is acutely aware that the context in which he has been active is a radically different one from Lenin’s own, so any lessons from Lenin must be thought through in relation to contemporary reality. Unlike many of his peers, Le Blanc has remained a dedicated Marxist, though conscious of the need for an independent, critical and open Marxism which runs counter to the dogmatic orthodoxies which have so often plagued the avowedly Leninist left. He writes of the need for ‘guidelines’ rather than dogma when appreciating Lenin’s legacy.

I had previously read a number of the essays (though they all paid re-reading) and I heard their author deliver the talk at the Dangerous Times 2013 festival which is included here (and previously published on Counterfire). Le Blanc has previously written studies of the Marxist tradition, with a special focus on questions of organisation and strategy, and edited or co-edited selections of writings by Lenin, Trotsky and Luxemburg, all of which I warmly recommend. His concern in all these writings has been to update our understanding of the intellectual contributions of the most influential figures in the tradition and to indicate how they can serve activists in renewing the tradition. Consequently his style is lucid and accessible, blessedly devoid of academic jargon, and there is a rich sense of the wider context of socialist debate in Lenin’s own time.

The format, a selection of essays, written at different times for different audiences, inevitably leads to some repetition, but the author just about gets away with it. The selection animates a series of debates among contemporary writers and activists about aspects of both the historical record and the legacy. There are critiques of a range of recent works on Lenin, including a number of biographies, relevant historical works and the 2007 Lenin Reloaded collection of essays by left-wing intellectuals.

Overall the book succeeds as both an introduction to the life, times, ideas and legacy of Lenin, and as an insightful discussion of important issues for today’s activists. It can be dipped into and read in any order that suits the reader. Several essays could reasonably serve as an introduction to the topic, while others are more pitched at those familiar with certain debates.

When disagreeing with other writers, Le Blanc is admirably fair and does justice to any arguments he is disputing, though he is not afraid to criticise or re-think orthodoxies. The title is inspired in part by a fraternal disagreement with Alex Callinicos, chief theoretician of the British Socialist Workers Party, after he penned an article asking ‘Is Leninism finished?’ Le Blanc agrees with the answer proffered by Callinicos – no it isn’t finished, but is instead still acutely relevant – but points out that ‘finished’ has a dual meaning. It suggests ‘irrelevant’, but it can also mean ‘complete’.

The problem with Callinicos is that he appears to lapse into presenting Leninism as already complete, a doctrine to be passed down the generations rather than as a space for creative renewal. For Le Blanc, Leninism is unfinished in both senses: it is still relevant and it still requires constant updating and applying in light of new experiences. Rather than defensively repeating a doctrine, the advocacy of Leninism ought to be critical and creative.

The future of Leninism

The concluding essay is, appropriately, where Le Blanc is most explicit and forthright about renewing Leninism today and for the future. He rejects the notion that anything resembling a revolutionary party already exists anywhere in the world. We are instead at an earlier stage of development in renewing revolutionary organisation and it is necessary to avoid false or inflated ideas about the organisations we are building.

He convincingly argues that it is (self-) destructive for relatively small organisations to imagine themselves as the definitive Leninist party, when in fact they can at best be something far more modest: a contribution to the re-composition of an authentic revolutionary left. This does not mean treating the building of such organisations lightly; rather, it suggests seriousness of purpose combined with a healthy sense of perspective and openness to different possible realignments.

He reasserts the centrality of participation in actual working-class struggles and the need to relate Marxist ideas to people’s struggles and experiences. The fusion of socialism with the working-class movement is the historic core of the Marxist tradition, as a practical endeavour not merely a scholarly exercise, and it remains essential. But he also notes the difficulties we face when there is not the same kind of mass class-conscious working-class vanguard, with powerful traditions of struggle, ideas and organisation, which existed in roughly the first third of the twentieth century. The process of renewing revolutionary organisation thus goes together with processes of re-building the broader working-class movement and a recognisably left-wing culture.

He calls for a focus on democracy, not only as a topic of practical political struggle, but as something indispensable to how revolutionaries operate. Democracy is necessary in the broader movements we are part of, and inside our own organisations. This dedication to democratic practice is inextricably linked with the development of self-confident cadres who can think independently and engage in political debate. It is connected with the pursuit of a critically engaged open Marxism, willing to question orthodox interpretations and engage thoughtfully with changing realities.

The closing essay also emphasises the need for strategy. The ultimate goal for revolutionaries is the successful overthrow of capitalism and moving towards a democratic socialist future. This vision, the recognition of the potential inherent in current contradictions, and an awareness that current revolts can be the seeds of future social transformation, shapes revolutionaries’ perspectives. Elsewhere in the volume, Le Blanc cites Lukács, who wrote about the ‘actuality of revolution’ in his own short book on Lenin: the potential for revolution serves as a horizon for Marxist activists, and specific tactical decisions are made in the context of that broader worldview.

The ‘three whales of Bolshevism’ – a strategic perspective encompassing an 8-hour working day, land redistribution and a democratic assembly – guided the Bolsheviks between 1912 and 1917, providing a link between day-to-day struggles and the larger vision of socialism. A fresh strategic vision is needed to guide our own efforts today, suggests Le Blanc, and to provide that same bridge to a socialist alternative.

‘Unfinished Leninism’ is a source of ideas about how to build a stronger anti-capitalist left – more coherently organised, wider in its influence, and capable of applying the lessons of history to new challenges – as well as an historical introduction. Hopefully it will reach many of the activists who are searching for effective ways to organise for a future characterised by democracy, equality and human liberation.

This review was originally published on Counterfire.

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Why build revolutionary organisation today?

Image by Ady Cousins

I’ve recently read Paul Le Blanc’s very stimulating collection of essays, ‘Unfinished Leninism’, which re-states the validity and value of Lenin’s life, ideas and legacy for our times. My review for Counterfire will appear soon. But there is a specific issue raised by the selection of essays that I want to address here.

 

One big issue covered in the book is the much-debated topic of organisation, and whether the project of building explicitly revolutionary socialist organisation remains a worthwhile one. Paul Le Blanc thinks it is. I think so too. But in current circumstances the reasons for this are far from self-evident.

A sense of the possible

There is a big, general answer to the question ‘Why build revolutionary organisation?’ It is do with challenging the capitalist state for power, grouping together the most militant and class-conscious elements in a party, and the vital role of a party in the dynamics of revolution. The arguments are familiar to anyone who has spent time as part of the revolutionary left – whether here in the UK or elsewhere – and to many other socialist activists too. 

But that’s not what interests me here and I’m not going to recycle the arguments in this post. The focus here is more immediate. It is reflected in the addition of the word ‘today’ to the question above.

In current circumstances - which are distinctly non-revolutionary and characterised by the absence of a sizeable revolutionary left - what is the rationale for devoting time and energies to building revolutionary organisation? Why do this despite the many failed efforts of the past, the chronic problems of sectarianism and decline, and the fact that such a project is perhaps (even) more unfashionable than for decades?

Le Blanc makes the unarguable point that much of the historical record of building Leninist organisations in Western countries since World War Two does not exactly leave us with great grounds for optimism. In the context of a revolutionary left that is small, fragmented, frequently sectarian and too often intellectually and practically conservative, some serious and clear thinking is needed.

What is also needed is humility and a realistic sense of what’s possible in the immediate future. Le Blanc sees delusions of grandeur as one of the big problems. He distinguishes between a credible, rooted revolutionary party – which doesn’t exist anywhere today – and more modest revolutionary organisations that can do useful work in the here and now, while contributing to a future re-composition of the revolutionary left. This might one day take the form of a serious and sizeable party with a tight connection with broader working class struggles.

 

Le Blanc writes:

 

'A number of us have concluded that it is a fatal mistake for a small group to see itself as the nucleus or the embryo of a mass revolutionary party. Such a party will, in fact, be made up though the coming together of elements from a number of groups, as well as a number of people not presently in any group, and even more who do not presently think of themselves as socialists at all. It will crystallise through innumerable experiences and struggles, blending together with a broad labour-radical subculture of ideas, discussions, and creative activities.'

Three good reasons

So, in the absence of such a party and with more modest means at our disposal, what kind of organisation can realistically be created, and what should such an organisation be doing to justify its existence and the expending of time and energy by its activists? I think there are three central reasons for building such organisation in current conditions, which are applicable in many different contexts, but which certainly provide some sort of compass for those of us engaged in such a project in England (in my case through Counterfire).

Firstly, there is the role a revolutionary organisation can play in broader movements over such issues as war, austerity, climate change and racism. Whether specific revolutionary groups actually play such a role is of course a separate matter. They may operate in an at best semi-detached way, at worst entirely parasitic manner, to such movements. But it is also possible to play a constructive and even central role in broad campaigns.

This is what Counterfire strives to do in the People’s Assembly Against Austerity and Stop the War Coalition, for example, and what Scotland’s International Socialist Group does in the Radical Independence Campaign. It isn’t simply a matter of an organisation throwing its weight (relatively slight as it is) behind a coalition, but is also about strategizing for the movement: planning and arguing for certain strategy and tactics, etc.

 

In the absence of such coherent input from organised revolutionaries, it is easy for a protest movement – subjected to all sorts of pressures – to be pulled in different directions and for the agenda to be shaped by more conservative elements inside the broad labour movement.

Secondly, a revolutionary organisation enables the sustaining of the Marxist tradition. It is a place where new generations of activists can develop a wide-ranging political understanding of the world, underpinned by the Marxist tradition.

 

There are two interconnected elements: the sustaining of an existing body of ideas and writings, and fresh analysis of contemporary reality. The latter naturally depends on a strong grasp of the former, but it is also aided by a close connection with political activity and struggle. An organisation helps enormously with that.

Having an organisation helps with both the education of newer activists in the Marxist tradition – in all its richness – because a more systematic approach can be taken than is otherwise possible. But it is also enormously beneficial to theoretical innovation, which is more likely as part of a collective enterprise. Crucially, an organisation provides an environment in which ideas and action can be connected: the development of ideas is informed by political experience and changing reality, while the organisation’s ideas are applied to campaigning, mobilising and organising.

Thirdly, there is the task of laying the groundwork for future realignments on the left. We may not have a revolutionary party now – and there may not be the prospect of one, even, in the foreseeable future – but building revolutionary organisation now is a step in that direction.

 

It is impossible to imagine any serious party of thousands emerging without any pre-existing organisations. To take a historical example: the British Communist Party, flawed as it was, didn't simply spring into being in 1920 because people were inspired by the Russian Revolution, but was a fusion of a number of existing socialist organisations and strands.

The vanguard

One of Le Blanc’s arguments is that the development of an authentic revolutionary party is intertwined with the growth of a wider working class ‘vanguard’. This doesn’t refer to any organisation, but a looser layer of people who have a fair degree of class consciousness and experience of collective struggle, linked to the development a broad left-wing/radical political culture and sizeable, vibrant labour movement of some description. Le Blanc points to a passage in Lenin’s ‘Left Wing Communism, an infantile disorder’ that insists on this broader vanguard as a precondition for a genuine revolutionary party.

 

A similar argument can be found in an excellent Duncan Hallas essay from the early 1970s, 'Towards a revolutionary socialist party', subsequently included in the slim volume ‘Party and Class’. He was writing at a time when Britain had a strong shop stewards movement and a much bigger organised left and more powerful trade union movement than today.

Yet, perhaps disconcertingly for us, even then Hallas didn’t think there was already a strong vanguard layer of class-conscious workers and left-wing culture. He envisaged a future revolutionary party developing in tandem with the growth of such a layer, yet the latter process didn’t happen as he hoped. In the 1971 essay Hallas wrote:

 

'A new generation of capable and energetic workers exists but they are no longer part of a cohesive movement and they no longer work in a milieu where basic Marxist ideas are widespread. We are back at our starting point. Not only has the vanguard, in the real sense of a considerable layer of organised revolutionary workers and intellectuals, been destroyed. So too has the environment, the tradition, that gave it influence. In Britain that tradition was never so extensive and influential as in Germany or France but it was real enough in the early years of the Communist Party.'

It is clear that Hallas, who was a member of the International Socialists (an organisation of 1000-2000 members at the time), didn’t think there was already a revolutionary party. Such a thing was very much a hypothesis. It is clear that he viewed such a prospect as something other – and more - than a simple numerical growth of the existing IS group. It is implied that such a party would almost certainly combine a number of traditions or existing groups, but just as importantly would involve layers of workers not yet won to revolutionary politics or organisation.

Both elements of that hypothesis proved to be much harder than anticipated. Organisational unity between different elements of the existing left never happened. Hallas and others perhaps underestimated the differences between groups (not necessarily major formal theoretical differences, but differences of perspective, orientation and approach) and the extent to which particular groups had become defined by their own specific traditions.

But, perhaps more importantly in the final analysis, the wider vanguard layer declined rather than growing as Hallas had anticipated. The crucial change was the erosion of the independent rank and file strength of the shop stewards that followed the end of the long post-war economic boom and the end of the upturn in working class struggle in the mid-1970s. These developments were conditioned, though not entirely determined, by wider changes in the composition of the working class itself.

Renewal

 

Le Blanc and Hallas both wrote – one primarily focused on the US, the other on Britain – of how such a vanguard layer had once existed. It is easy to see, and quite indisputable, that such a layer doesn’t exist today in anything remotely resembling the same form. There is a danger, however, in becoming too fixed on particular criteria for the strength or weakness of such a layer – in thinking that what Le Blanc dubs a ‘radical-labor subculture’ in the American context must take certain forms.

The elements of the re-composition of such a vanguard, in a new form, are clearly present, if only partially developed. They are not primarily coalescing in the unions, though elements of the union movement – despite its activist base being much smaller than in its heyday – are part of it. This is especially the case where unions adopt a more political, ‘social movement unionism’ approach that self-consciously utilises the strengths of protest movements to enhance union organising, such as the NUT’s ‘Stand up for Education’ campaign. 

There are also the more-or-less organised elements found in such things as the People’s Assembly, Occupy protests, and various campaigns, but also – more loosely – a hard-to-define radicalisation that only sporadically finds organised expression.

The hollowing-out of the organised left means that such phenomena are often less stable, more volatile, and harder to pin down into something coherent and durable, than was once the case, although we shouldn’t exaggerate the differences as this is not entirely novel (think of the turmoil of 1968). The old organised left has declined partly for reasons outside its control – the larger defeat of the working class movement from the 1980s onwards, the sharp decline in strike levels, the shift to the right in social democracy, the ideological impact of the end of ‘Communism’ – but also partly because it failed to adapt properly to changed circumstances. The constant expectation that a return to 1970s-style class struggle, in much the same form as 40 years ago, is just around the corner has certainly not helped. 

Revolutionary organisation can be built in a new context, with some continuities but also some changes in relation to our heritage. It has to be rooted in the debates, movements and struggles of our time. And it is a project that requires a healthy does of humility and perspective, as well as seriousness and commitment.

Duncan Hallas: Towards a revolutionary socialist party
Paul Le Blanc: Organising for 21st century socialism
Lenin: An essential condition of the Bolsheviks' success

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10 points on revolutionary organisation and democracy

Working class democracy: Chartist mass meeting, Kennington, 1848

As part of my recent blog post 'Revolutionaries, movements and class' I briefly restated the case for revolutionary socialist organisation. This included the following:

 

'The need for revolutionary organisation remains rooted in an understanding that real change has to be fought for through action from below. We cannot rely on either politicians or bureaucrats to change things for us, but must instead build broad, democratic coalitions of resistance. To make permanent gains and bring about radical social transformation, revolution will be necessary, in which the repressive state is replaced with a new order based on mass democratic assemblies. To this end we need an organisation of revolutionary socialists rooted in, and shaping, broader working class struggles.'

 

I also indicated the centrality of democracy to the project of building such organisation.

 

'Democracy is at the heart of the authentic Leninist tradition. It is essential for effective action. The centrality of democracy applies not only to our social and political struggles, but also to our own organisation. We need to recover authentic democratic centralism and recognise that the genuine Leninist commitment to internal democracy is radically different from the 'sect' form, in which an ossified dogmatic orthodoxy is seen as needing protection against challenge in democratic discussion.'

 

In this post I want to elaborate on the theme of democracy in revolutionary socialist organisations. The 10 points below involve a fair amount of generalisation while being, in my view, especially pertinent to the period we currently find ourselves in. 

 

The continuing crisis of the SWP is part of the context here, but I am ultimately far more interested in positive ideas for building democratic revolutionary organisation than in diagnosing my former organisation's malaise. To a large extent the points here involve reflecting on my positive experiences as an activist in Counterfire - and in broader movement activity such as the North East People's Assembly - fused with some more general observations.

1) Building broad movements. Internal democratic culture can't be separated from an organisation's external activity. Activity in the wider world is the lifeblood of any group that wishes to be something better than a propagandist sect. 

 

A constant connection with reality is an important corrective to any tendencies to sectarianism or self-importance. If a group is not only 'intervening' in broader social struggles, but working with others in a constructive manner and building on-going political relationships, then this is especially so. When a revolutionary group is operating in a non-sectarian way beyond its own ranks - building coalitions, working co-operatively - the habits of openness, discussion and respect that characterise successful coalitions are likely to also characterise its own internal culture.

 

A high level of activity, with vibrant local groups where issues are discussed face to face in meetings, is essential. The more members who are active, the better. The more members who report and reflect on their experiences as an activist, the better. The more discussion there is among members, the better. Democracy is an active and collective process - day in, day out. It should be a habit to promote maximum participation in discussions, e.g. Counterfire's last national members' meeting was attended by a high proportion of our members, most of whom contributed in discussions.

 

2) Open marxism. Practical engagement in coalitions and broad struggles has to be accompanied with an intellectual openness that recognises that Marxism is a living tradition not a dead doctrine, an open and on-going project not a closed set of prescriptions. This is not the same thing as opportunistically abandoning Marxist ideas in favour of academic eclecticism (a genuine problem that becomes a bigger problem when revolutionary organisations decline or become more marginalised).

 

Tony Cliff opened his book 'Trotskyism after Trotsky' with these words:

 

'In The Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels argue that communists generalise from the historical and international experience of the working class. This experience is always changing and developing and therefore Marxism always changes; the moment Marxism stops changing, it is dead. Sometimes historical change happens slowly and almost imperceptibly, but sometimes the changes are radical. Consequently there are abrupt turning points in the history of Marxism.'

 

'Open marxism' means deploying the intellectual tools inherited from the Marxist tradition to analyse changing realities. The all-too-real abandonment of Marxist ideas by some encourages a dogmatic reaction by others. Both of these paths - eclecticism and dogmatism - should be rejected. In the current period a democratic, inclusive and open culture facilitates the kind of theoretical enquiry that is needed to wrestle with important changes: the impact of neoliberalism, changes in working class composition, the state of the trade unions, the causes, nature and effects of the present capitalist crisis, and so on.
 

3) Unity in action and freedom of discussion. This is a classic formulation in the revolutionary tradition, but is sometimes misunderstood (to put it generously). It doesn't mean that once a decision has been taken it is unacceptable for anyone to challenge that decision, attempt to overturn it at the next opportunity or express an alternative view. It simply means that decisions which affect an organisation's activity are binding on the members, e.g. if a group collectively and democratically decides - after discussion - to support a particular course of action in an industrial dispute then it's wrong for members in the relevant trade union to vote the opposite way to what has been agreed.

 

The vital thing about this formulation - unity in action, freedom in discussion - is that it enables coherent, unified and effective political action at the same time as enabling the fullest discussion about the issues. Indeed these two go together: they are not two completely different things which co-exist uneasily. It is necessary to reflect on the impact of agreed decisions through discussions. Sometimes it may be necessary to change course as a result. Unity in action relies upon freedom of discussion; freedom of discussion relies upon unity in action.  

 

4) Centralism means  there is democratic accountability. In 1978 Chris Harman wrote a piece demolishing the argument that centralism is somehow undemocratic. Quite the opposite, he argued: democracy and centralism are interdependent, and it is those who refute centralism who evade any democratic accountability. He wrote:

 

Ultra-left adventurers and self-seeking careerists alike often relish in the joys of ‘decentralisation’ – because it means a movement they can exploit to their own advantage without being bound by its discipline. Today in Britain, for example, lack of a common discipline is one of the hallmarks of the Tribune group of Labour MPs. Why? Because it allows the members to enjoy an aura of ‘leftness’ without impeding their pursuit of careerist and opportunist policies. In the same way it is precisely the lack of centralism of the Broad Left in a number of unions that gives it such an appeal to aspiring bureaucrats. It can elect them but not control them.'

 

Harman's examples here are especially targeted at those who can be considered 'leaders' but the same principle applies throughout an organisation. Allowing members to do their own thing, irrespective of collective decision-making, is not democratic. It undermines democracy. Accountability is essential.

5) Factionalising is a bogus concept. Some people who discuss democracy and revolutionary organisation make a big deal of the question of factions: are they permitted? when are they permitted? what rights do they have? I actually think that 'factionalising' has long been a non-issue in reality. In the internet age the whole notion of 'factionalising' as A Bad Thing is absurd. It is utterly anachronistic to attempt prohibitions on discussion among members in an organisation, when it's so easy to make contact with each other and have a dialogue, e.g. via facebook. What is labelled 'factionalising' would more accurately be called 'discussion'.

 

It's not so much a case of saying that faction rights are important and should be permitted. The important point is a deeper one: the whole notion of 'factionalising' is redundant and a group should, quite simply, allow complete freedom of discussion among its members. Mechanisms - conferences, meetings, bulletins - should be in place to allow for this discussion, while also adopting a laidback approach to discussion which takes place outside these mechanisms. There should be scope for the formation of factions, but this is only one aspect of a group's internal democracy.

6) Openness. This leads on to a more general observation about openness. The fact is that socialist groups have to be open about differences and 'internal' discussion because the growth of the internet means that everything gets out whether we want it to or not. We might as well embrace it. The age of the 'internal bulletin' is emphatically over.

 

I also think that political discussion, including and involving as many members as possible, is tremendously important and therefore a group should put the emphasis on opening discussion up rather than seeking to limit it. Using the internet is obviously essential to this and should be utilised, but the most important thing remains facilitating face-to-face discussion.

7) Permanent discussion not permanent factionalism. Some commentators on revolutionary organisation argue that permanent factions are a good thing. In fact they institutionalise differences. They make it extremely difficult for there to be healthy, genuine and open discussion of issues because members can instinctively rally to 'their side' instead of engaging properly with the issues. If discussion among members is typically mediated through factions that is in truth less democratic.

 

Permanent factions undermine unity because many members will tend to put loyalty to their own particular faction ahead of the needs of the whole organisation (and indeed the wider interests of the working class movement). They can encourage an excessive focus on internal differences - however minor - at the expense of looking and building outwards. Permanent discussion is far healthier than permanent factions.

8) Proposals not factions. The above points lead on to another: it makes far more sense to discuss concrete proposals on their own merits than it does to form factions which bundle together a whole set of issues. The emergence of factions can be polarising and unhelpful. A better approach is to focus on offering and discussing proposals, whether to a conference/national meeting or more informally. This, indeed, should be actively encouraged at every level of an organisation.

 

One problem with the existence of factions, and the disputes between them, is that it is alienating to the many members who are in no faction at all. Focusing instead on discussion and debate around proposals is much more inclusive. It is less polarising and prevents the development of 'organisations within organisations' (which is, among other things, a recipe for future splits).

 

9) Initiative is vital. Within an agreed national framework, grassroots members should get on with it. Local initiative is much healthier than passively waiting for some sort of 'centre' to tell you what to do. Local groups and activists are also capable of generating new experiences, insights and ideas, which can be fed into - and potentially generalised for - the national organisation.

 

Mistakes might be made, but the same is true whether initiative is coming from the national leadership or local groups. Mistakes can be a source of learning; they can be corrected. Local activists need to combine national-level discussions and priorities with their own knowledge of local circumstances. They need ownership of what they are doing and the capacity to determine what is needed in their own particular area.

10) Democratic culture is crucial for growth. The health of any group's democratic culture is as much about how issues are discussed as anything more formal: an avoidance of hectoring, bullying and appeals to 'the tradition'; encouragement to express different opinions, because discussion of them enriches everyone's understanding; a willingness to acknowledge errors and correct tactics which may not be working.

 

Meetings should be friendly and welcoming, new members should be encouraged to contribute ideas and participate in discussions, and there should be genuine openness to ideas offered by allies or sympathisers outside the organisation. If a group wants to function democratically and effectively and - above all - if it wants to grow, rather than simply perpetuate itself at the same low level, this kind of attitude is indispensable.

 

 

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What is left of Leninism?

This is my third blog post engaging with contributions to Socialist Register 2013: A Question of Strategy. The previous two posts are here and here. I am just finishing off an extended review of the Socialist Register volume, which will appear on Counterfire soon.

 

In a lengthy essay called 'What is left of Leninism? New European left parties in historical perspective' - which can be found in Socialist Register 2013: A Question of Strategy - Charles Post provides a sweeping historical survey of the 20th century revolutionary left. This includes the development of a number of mass Communist Parties in the early 1920s and, during the Stalinist era, their political degeneration. But it's the analysis of the radical left since 1968 that I want to focus on here. The essay's author is a sociology professor at City University New York (CUNY), but also an activist in the US revolutionary group Solidarity, and he has interesting insights into developments on the radical left in Europe.

In the 1968-75 period there was substantial growth in Trotskyist and Maoist organisations, shaped by the upsurge of student and worker militancy of those years and offering an alternative to both social democracy and official Communism. There was a widespread view, among revolutionaries at this time, that conditions were comparable to the post-1917 period and the growth of genuinely mass revolutionary parties was a viable prospect, just as happened in much of Europe (and to an extent beyond) during the years following the Russian Revolution. 

 

These prospects were dashed, as a period of working class retreat began in the mid-1970s and the neo-liberal offensive commenced. The European revolutionary left was thoroughly disoriented and suffered a series of splits; some groups collapsed, others declined. The authentic non-Stalinist revolutionary left never, in the 1970s, grew to the scale seen in some countries during the Third International period of the early to mid 1920s.

 

Surviving the downturn

The downturn period saw a largely successful neo-liberal assault on the working class, with a weakening of trade union power, a shift in weight from the rank and file to the union bureaucracy, a decisive move rightwards in the Labour Party and its continental equivalents, and the marginalisation of the radical left and its ideas (intellectually Marxism came under sustained assault). Post observes that only two small but substantial revolutionary organisations survived the downturn period with membership largely intact and a credible base among militant workers: the British International Socialists (IS) and the French Revolutionary Communist League (LCR). Both of these were Trotskyist organisations; the Maoist left, meanwhile, had almost entirely collapsed by the end of the 1970s.

 

The IS, which became the Socialist Workers Party in 1977, adapted well to changing circumstances and took important initiatives like the Anti Nazi League in the late 1970s, a united front that was successful in beating back the threat of the far right, while also sustaining a base in the trade unions despite vastly more difficult circumstances that the upturn in struggle in the early 1970s. The SWP came through the 1980s and 1990s with a solid activist base intact, with roots in an admittedly weakened organised working class, so that in the early years of this century it could play an impressive role in anti-capitalist and anti-war movements, and for a time in new left-wing electoral formations.  The LCR, similarly, maintained a credible layer of working class activists throughout the 1970s and 1980s, so that it was able to intervene in fresh workers' struggles from the mid-1990s onwards and, a little later, the anti-capitalist movement.

Post argues that these organisations were about as successful as could reasonably be expected in harsh circumstances. The aspiration to develop new mass revolutionary parties that could challenge reformists (in parliament and the trade unions) for leadership of the working class movement was, however, unfulfilled. The revolutionary left remained a small minority current, marginal to the broad labour movement.

This wasn't simply, argues Post, because there was a period of defeats for the working class or a crude result of economic and social changes. It was largely due to circumstances beyond revolutionaries' control, but these were as much to do with the nature of the working class movement as anything, i.e. the political and organisational domination of the working class by reformism, manifested in the weight of the trade union bureaucracy, the strength of long-established social democratic parties (like the British Labour Party) and the role of Communist Parties which had long since accommodated to the system. The revolutionary left repeatedly found itself confronting these obstacles within the broader movement. And when a new wave of anti-capitalist mobilising developed at the start of this century, radical consciousness tended not to translate into specifically Marxist ideas and allegiance to the revolutionary left.

 

New parties of the European left

This brings us to the development of new parties of the European left over the last decade or so. The space for such parties was created primarily by the capitulation of social democracy to neo-liberalism and - to a lesser but still important degree - the collapse of the Communist parties after 1989 and the fact that revolutionary organisations were too small to fill the gap. The character of these parties was also influenced by the development of generally street-based protest movements. In the early 2000s, with the rapid growth of anti-capitalist and anti-war movements, Italy's Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) held out great promise. But the PRC made enormous concessions to parties to its right, which effectively finished it as a credible left-wing force.

Since that time a number of new left-wing parties have emerged, some of which have since collapsed or fragmented while a few have been sustained fairly successfully. Germany's Die Linke, formed in 2007, is an interesting example because it resulted principally from a fusion of an old Communist left (based mainly in the East) with the left-wing of social democracy disenchanted with the neo-liberal trajectory of that political tradition (based mainly in the West). Die Linke has had some ups and downs since then and it is currently unclear how it will develop.

 

Some parties, like the earlier (2004-07) version of Respect in England and Wales and the Scottish Socialist Party, have been quite different in character: the revolutionary left has been the principal driving force, lending them considerable radicalism but without the benefits brought by large-scale cracks in the mainstream parties of social democracy or in the union movement. Reformism has remained a more powerful block than many revolutionary activists anticipated, despite a deepening loss of faith in mainstream politics among millions of people and the poor record of social democracy in office.

Newer parties of the left are sometimes held up as shining lights for us to follow, but Post argues that they have in fact suffered from a whole series of problems and, furthermore, they are incapable of successfully moving beyond the old divide in the socialist movement between reformism and revolutionary politics. Most of them have had an important degree of success, some continue to be successful, and they have generally been worthy of support and participation. But they have had difficulty grappling with such questions as how to connect parliamentary and electoral activity to extra-parliamentary activity, how to overcome the weaknesses of the trade unions, and how to prevent sliding to the right and into compromises with neo-liberal politics.

 

A third way between Labourism and Leninism?

Crucially, Post argues, it is simply impossible to successfully be both post-social democratic and post-Leninist. Ultimately, it is still necessary for the most advanced, revolutionary elements of the working class to organise independently in their own organisations, separate from reformist parties. This is one of the central lessons of 1917 and the period which followed the Russian Revolution.

 

The new parties of the left have not 'transcended the pre-1914 social democratic 'twin pillars' organisational norm where the party focused on electoral politics, while the union officialdom directed day-to-day class struggle in the workplace and beyond'. These new parties have reproduced the old challenges of social democracy, dating back to before 1914: 'the contradictions of entering capitalist governments, the relationship of electoral and routine trade union activity and mass, extra-parliamentary struggles, and the issues of war and peace'.

None of this remotely means that the new left parties are unimportant and should be disregarded. It does, however, strongly suggest that independent revolutionary organisation - and the united front method, whereby revolutionaries work with  those who have reformist consciousness in extra-parliamentary struggles over shared demands - is as necessary as ever. Post looks to 'the revival of the rational core of Leninism - the transcendence of the division of labour between party and unions and movements through the organisation of radical and revolutionary activists who attempt to contest the forces of official reformism over the conduct of mass struggle.'

 

Finally, Post points out that the political development of left-wing parties is shaped by two especially important factors: the outcome of extra-parliamentary struggles against austerity, and the relative strength within these parties of radical anti-capitalists, who can counter the pressures which are liable to pull such parties in a more moderate direction. Revolutionaries, if they can organise effectively, can influence the direction of credible left-wing parties where they exist. In all countries, whether there is such a party or not, revolutionaries have the challenge of shaping anti-austerity struggle beyond the realm of electoral politics and strengthening the radical anti-capitalist pole within those movements.

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Revolutionary organisation and the 'labor-radical subculture'

There's an exchange on 'revolutionary organization today' from 2008, featured on John Riddell's excellent blog, that I find very illuminating.

The starting point is a piece by Paul Le Blanc. John Riddell then responds to a number of issues raised in it, followed by Le Blanc's reply to Riddell, and finally there are shorter comments from a range of other socialists.

Paul Le Blanc has written or edited a number of books about the marxist tradition, including 'Marx, Lenin and the Revolutionary Experience'. Once a member of the US Socialist Workers Party (unrelated to its British namesake), he joined the US-based International Socialists Organization in 2009. John Riddell, the world's leading historian of the Comintern, is based in Canada and edited the six-volume anthology 'The Communist International in Lenin's Time'. 

The whole exchange is worth reading. It is a model of constructive dialogue on the revolutionary left, with the discussion enabling a richer understanding than the original article (admittedly first-rate) can provide on its own.

One of the central issues raised by Paul Le Blanc in his article is the relationship between revolutionary socialist organisation and what he calls a 'broad labor-radical subculture'. He considers how this subculture relates to class consciousness, how it has evolved historically (especially in the US), how revolutionary organisations have sought to relate to it, and current difficulties concerning this.

It is a cluster of issues that goes to the heart of any serious thinking about prospects for building revolutionary socialist organisation - not just in the US but elsewhere - today.

What I've done here is to extract the relevant section (on revolutionaries and the 'labor-radical subculture') from the article, then followed it with the relevant parts of Riddell's reply and of Le Blanc's subsequent rejoinder. Basically, I think John Riddell's comments are correct and worth exploring in greater depth, but all in all it's a very useful exchange.

From Paul Le Blanc's article:

First of all, there is a profound difference between “the Leninism of Lenin” and the immediate possibilities that we face in a context that is, in some ways, qualitatively different from his. To transpose the texts that come from Lenin and his time into our very different reality can lead to serious political confusion.

Lenin’s Bolsheviks came into being within a very specific context. They were part of a broad global working-class formation, part of a developing labor movement, and part of an evolving labor-radical subculture. To try to duplicate Lenin’s party today, outside of such a context, will create something that cannot function as the Bolsheviks functioned in Russia, nor can it function in the way the early U.S. Communists functioned in the 1920s or in the 1930s.

The existence of a class-conscious layer of the working class is a necessary precondition for creating a genuinely revolutionary party. Workers’ class consciousness — that involves more than whatever notions happen to be in the minds of various members of the working class at any particular moment. It involves an understanding of the insight that was contained in the preamble of the American Federation of Labor from 1886 to 1955:

“A struggle is going on in all the nations of the civilized world, between the oppressors and the oppressed of all countries, a struggle between the capitalist and the laborer, which grows in intensity from year to year, and will work disastrous results to the toiling millions, if they are not combined for mutual protection and benefit.”

Not all workers have absorbed this insight into their consciousness, but those who have done so can be said to have at least an elementary class consciousness.

Such consciousness does not exist automatically in one’s brain simply because we happen to sell our labor-power (our ability to work) for wages or a salary. But in the United States, from the period spanning the end of the Civil War in 1865 down through the Depression decade of the 1930s, a vibrant working-class subculture had developed throughout much of the United States.

Often this “subculture” was more like a network of subcultures having very distinctive ethnic attributes, but these different ethnic currents were at various times connected by left-wing political structures (such as the old Knights of Labor, Socialist Party, IWW, Communist Party, etc.) and also, to an extent, by trade union frameworks. Within this context flourished the class-consciousness that is essential to the creation of a revolutionary party.

Those who founded the Trotskyist movement in the United States (which sought to build a revolutionary Marxist party — the Socialist Workers Party, the SWP) were a product of this radical workers’ subculture. And they sought to make their own revolutionary contributions to it, and to help it become a revolutionary socialist force capable of transforming society.

After 1945, there was a dramatic break in the continuity of this labor-radical tradition due to the realities that resulted from the Second World War, and the transformation of the social, economic, political, and cultural realities in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. Essential specifics of workers’ occupations and workday experience underwent fundamental changes.

The organizations associated with the labor movement were similarly transformed — impacted by a complex combination of assaults, co-optations, corruptions, and erosions. The communities, culture, and consciousness of the working class became so different from the mid-1940s to the 1960s that only faded shreds of the old labor-radical subculture remained.

It is not the case that the working class was eliminated. The working class is bigger than ever. But there has been a combined decomposition and recomposition of the working class, and the old labor-radical subculture is long gone. It, too, needs to be recomposed, and within a very different reality than once existed.

Because of this, there was a significant disconnect between the actual working class and the organized Left (including the SWP) that sought to represent the best interests of that class. This had grave implications. Back in the 1950s, after decades of Leninist and Trotskyist experience in the United States, James P. Cannon commented:

“The conscious socialists should act as a ‘leaven’ in the instinctive and spontaneous movement of the working class. … The leaven can help the dough to rise and eventually become a loaf of bread, but it can never be a loaf of bread itself. … Every tendency, direct or indirect, of a small revolutionary party to construct a world of its own, outside and apart from the real movement of the workers in the class struggle, is sectarian.”

The experience of many activists influenced by Lenin from the 1950s down to the present demonstrates that efforts to create Leninist parties all-too-often degenerate into the construction of sects, with well-meaning activists penned up in a world of their own, separate and apart from the working class.

My generation of young 1960s and 1970s activists can hardly be said to have started out in a sectarian mode. We helped to fundamentally change the political, social, and cultural landscape of the United States.

But we saw the real social struggles of our time as involving opposition to such things as racism and poverty and war and sexism, but definitely not as the central expression of an organized labor movement. The unions had had become highly bureaucratized and relatively conservative, largely inclined to hold back from — or even oppose — the radicalization and social struggles of the time.

Little of this had changed when — as our experiences and growing awareness further radicalized us — many of us went in a Marxist direction. Although the writings of Lenin, Trotsky, and Cannon were avidly read, discussed, and internalized by young SWP activists such as myself, the context in which the revolutionary “teachers” from earlier decades had lived and the context in which the avid students of the 1960s lived were qualitatively different.

The relationship of the new radicals to the rest of the working class, not to mention the culture and consciousness of both the actual proletariat and its would-be “vanguard” in the 1970s, were far different from what was true in the early 1900s or the 1930s.

A failure to comprehend the meaning of this ruptured continuity contributed to the rise of a fatal disorientation that accelerated within the SWP as the 1970s flowed into the 1980s, culminating in fragmentation and implosion. This happened especially as we sought to — once again — fuse socialism with the working class. This did not come naturally to my generation, and many of us really didn’t know how to do it (though we were afraid to admit that).

This failure, however, more or less afflicted all Marxist-oriented organizations in the U.S. from the late 1970s through the late 1980s. Ironically, this occurred as influences from the 1960s radicalization permeated much of the U.S. population, and as negative impacts from the early manifestations of “globalization” created remarkable new openings for left-wing developments within the working class.

At the same time, much of the basis for the organized power of the working class — in the highly-unionized industries — was wiped out with the so-called “de-industrialization” of the U.S. economy. The labor movement’s ability to mount effective struggles went into sharp decline.

From John Riddell's response:

You talk of the lack of a broad labor-radical subculture. However, if I may take Toronto as an example, there is such a subculture. In terms of activism, it includes thousands of people. That’s not a mass base; it is a lot fewer now than during some periods in the last half-century, but in some ways this subculture is more advanced.

It is now largely free of the influence of Stalinism, which was so dominant in the past, and Social Democracy is much less influential. It is not marked by the ultraleftism so prominent in the sixties; its political activities are broadly speaking on the mark. Also, this subculture has links to a broader constituency: for example, the 50-odd Islamic anti-Imperialists whom we meet fairly frequently can on occasion mobilize thousands, and so on in other sectors.

Moreover, this subculture is not limited geographically. It extends out internationally into several continents, and all that tumult of world class struggle gets drawn into our little city.

In my experience, today’s revolutionary socialist groups have a conflictual relationship with this subculture. Each revolutionary group identifies its own organization with the historic interest of the working class and prioritizes its organizational purposes over the needs of the broader movement. This is widely perceived by activists and strongly resented. In addition, most revolutionary groups prioritize an orientation to the “masses” as against collaboration with activists.

You say that attempts to build a “nucleus of the revolutionary party” turn in a sectarian direction because of the lack of a context of a radical subculture. Yes, but there is more to it than that. The revolutionary groups attempt to follow a fixed model of Bolshevik organization, regardless of their stage of development. This inflexibility in organizational conceptions is actually the opposite of the Bolshevik approach.

In addition, each revolutionary group today has a body of doctrine going back a century, which provides a predetermined answer to every major question, plus an apostolic succession of guiding theorists whose views cannot be challenged. The group’s politics are fixed and inflexible. The Bolsheviks, by contrast, had less fixed doctrine. In Lenin’s time, there were repeated sharp shifts in their politics in reaction to changed conditions and the lessons of experience.


From Paul Le Blanc's subsequent response:

One fact that may not have been expressed clearly in what I have been writing is that I know the United States, and function in the United States, and my points regarding the lack of the labor-radical sub-culture that stretched at least from the Civil War to World War II is focused on the United States.

I don’t assume that what I describe in the U.S. is global. It seems to me that the opposite is true — though I suspect there may be some element of relevance in at least some other countries. I would love to come to Toronto (I was there only once, and fleetingly) and see more of Canada as well. I don’t doubt at all what you say about the existence of some such sub-culture existing there, and I imagine there would be much for me to learn.

For that matter, I do think that there are elements for the recomposition of such a sub-culture in my own country. I believe a recomposition process is already underway, although it seems to me it has a ways to go before it crystallizes on a sufficiently mass scale and with sufficient clarity of consciousness within certain segments of the working class here.

You write:

“Revolutionary socialist groups have a conflictual relationship with this subculture. Each revolutionary group identifies its own organization with the historic interest of the working class and prioritizes its organizational purposes over the needs of the broader movement. This is widely perceived and strongly resented. In addition, most revolutionary groups prioritize an orientation to the “masses” as against collaboration with activists.”

That seems to me extremely problematical. Unfortunately, within the U.S. there is all too much of that as well. It seems to me that we might have different takes on certain details and specifics — I don’t know — but what you describe in general terms seems consistent with my own point of view.

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