document id:
pof3-proyect
 author:
Proyect_Cox_Joćo
parent link
archive link
 publisher id:
CLD
 date written:
29-30 May 97
(notes for this file:) this discussion is part of "How to Build the Party of the Future"
1

"a deeply problematic statement"

Comments on Ben Seattle's organizational ideas

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   2  Louis Proyect -- May 29 
  25  Carrol Cox -- May 29 
  32  Joćo -- May 30
2
Louis Proyect -- May 29
3
Date:    Thu, 29 May 1997 15:53:42 -0400
From:    Louis Proyect 
Subject: M-I: Comments on Ben Seattle's organizational ideas
4
Ben Seattle:
5
This boundary must not be merely an ideological boundary--but an organizational one. There must be a clear boundary between organizations composed of workers and activists loyal to the proletarian outlook (what I will call here "homogeneous" organizations), and organizations consisting of activists with a broader spectrum of ideologies (ie: "heterogenous" organizations). It is not the case that the homogeneous (ie: communist) organizations must be composed of individuals monolithic in their views on every question. (This is a myth to which many subscribe--but it is a myth that is going to be smashed.) But the communist organizations must maintain their character as organizations resistant to the penetration and influence of bourgeois ideas.
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Louis Proyect:
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This is a deeply problematic statement. Homogeneity has been the goal of all "Marxist-Leninist" groups whether pro-Moscow, Trotskyist or Maoist. In every case the quest for homogeneity has produced cult/sect formations. Pro-Moscow formations have been immune to this to some degree because they have functioned much more like Social Democratic parties since the Popular Front era. The underlying dynamic is easy to understand. When a Marxist-Leninist group is formed it is on the basis of a PROGRAM which has usually been articulated by a charismatic leader who is understood to be the continuation of Lenin, Mao, Stalin or Trotsky. The PROGRAM represents the historical class interests of the proletariat. When a challenge is mounted to the PROGRAM, the authors of the challenge are invariably viewed as petty-bourgeois. Splits then occur. And the new formation goes about following the same formula: declare a new vanguard party on the basis of the corrected PROGRAM and all will be well. Trotskyism has perfected this procedure as should be obvious from the disintegration of Trotsky's movements into 10,000 irrelevant warring sects. Maoism follows close behind.
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Ben Seattle:
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The tendency of such a network might be to: (g) evolve (in the course of struggle) in the direction of communist organization, and (h) catalyze the development and maturation of the boundaries separating communist from reformist ideology and practice.
10
Louis Proyect:
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Networks have enormous potential for organizing the left in the sort of relatively quiescent political period we are passing through. In 1981 I got involved with the North Star Network, formed by Peter Camejo, an SWPer who had broken with sectarianism while living in Nicaragua on assignment from the party. The reason a network appealed to me is that I was working with IDMS databases at the time (the so-called CODASYL model) which were non-hierarchical. They also are known as "network" databases.
12
IBM databases are hierarchical:
13
         A          .
         |          .
       B---C        .
           |        .
         D---E      .
14
In a hierarchical database such as this, A is the parent of B and C, while C is the parent of D and E. Access to lower level segments can only come through a parent. This is how "Marxist-Leninist" parties are organized where A is the brilliant chairman.
15
Network databases look something like this:
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      D--B--C     .
      |  |  |     .
      ---A--E     .
17
In this type of database, there is no hierarchy. You can enter it from any point and any segment can open up a line of communication with any other. A party organized along these lines would tend to avoid the sorts of sectarian degeneration that has marked "Marxist-Leninist" formations.
18
Critics of this model might argue that a network can not operate in a disciplined fashion in the way that the Bolsheviks functioned. I would argue that discipline is a meaningless concept if it is not placed within the context of a mass movement. When, for example, there is a task to build the CIO or mass demonstrations against the Vietnam war, a left party will of necessity act in a disciplined fashion because of the exigencies of defending labor's historic interests or resisting imperialist genocide.
19
In today's world, the discipline of tiny "Marxist-Leninist" groups is internally oriented so as to insure that everybody thinks and speaks alike. Defending the "party line" in public flows seamlessly into members competing with each other to be the most ardent defenders of the line in internal meetings. Conformity to peer pressure rather than the sort of tough-minded critical attitude genuine revolutionary groups require becomes the norm.
20
Ben Seattle:
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In such an "information-dense" environment, sectarian formations would melt down like a lump of butter in a hot iron skillet. Sectarianism as a phenomena cannot exist in a information-dense environment. Sectarianism requires, for its survival, the more-or-less intact operation of various rationalizations (assumptions, mythologies and secular religions) for non-cooperation (or unprincipled manuevering) with other trends. Sectarianism within trends requires the isolation of the activists at base of each trend from information which would contradict (and ultimately smash-up) the particular belief system which justifies the particular sectarian practice of each particular sectarian trend.
22
Louis Proyect
23
The key is not information as much as it is connection to a living mass movement. Movements such as the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the fight to build industrial unions, etc. involving millions of people have the ability to politicize people. Marxist cadre involved in such movements and who can lead them to victory will be in a position to recruit them to a revolutionary organization. By the same token, it is only through continuous interaction with such movements that the revolutionary organization itself can validate the correctness of its orientation.
24
Information, however, is of vital importance in a way that I think Ben has not considered. One of the values of the Internet is that it provides a level playing field for the exchange of ideas. If, for example, a party resolution was submitted for discussion on a mailing list and party activists could choose to comment on them anonymously, then the sort of peer pressure I described above would be less of a factor. It takes a lot of guts to get up at a meeting and state that the party leadership is dead wrong on a particular question. People snicker and raise eyebrows. Snickering and raised eyebrows don't mean very much when the ideas have to be judged on their merit rather than by who is proposing them. Of course, peer pressure is much less of a problem in organizations that have dumped the whole "vanguardist" model.
25
Carrol Cox -- May 29
26
Date:    Thu, 29 May 1997 19:22:40 -0500 (CDT)
From:    cbcox@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Carrol Cox)
Subject: Re: M-I: Comments on Ben Seattle's organizational ideas
27
Louis (P)
28
For the most part your polemic against "vanguard" parties has been carried on in response to list members who represent such parties, and in the present all such "parties" are in fact isolated grouplets, which leads to an extreme intensification of all the real and possible defects of such vanguards and a nearly complete dissolution of their real and possible strengths. (Wow--that sen- tence got away from me.) It follows that you have been unable to test your ideas against principled opposition that shares funda- mental unity with you. A number of things follow from that, but one is that you begin (gradually) to write dialogues between hypothetical spokespersons for "the true way" and "the false way."
29
There is a related problem in the "debate" as so far carried on--a certain detachment from history, in that the parties thathaps history offers us have always been either mass parties which became bureaucratic (anti-worker) machines for gathering votes or vanguards which either became grouplets as history got away from them or governing elites in a would-be socialist nation under seige from imperialism. (Sorry--I keep producing paragraph- length sentences today: that probably says something about the inchoateness of what I'm trying to develop here.) The result is that both the "vanguard" you speak of and the "mass movement" to say is needed tend to become platonic essences. Perhaps that is simply another unavoidable manifestation of the present weakness of the left: we have no choice but to speak in such essences. In any case an awareness of the possibility/certainty of such platonic discouse might temper its ill-effects.
30
I stop arbitrarily, not seeing quite where this goes next.
31
Carrol
32
Joćo -- May 30
33
Date:    Fri, 30 May 1997 09:41:41 +0100
From:    Joćo Paulo Monteiro 
Subject: Re: M-I: Comments on Ben Seattle's organizational ideas
34
Louis Proyect wrote:
35
The PROGRAM represents the historical class interests of the proletariat. When a challenge is mounted to the PROGRAM, the authors of the challenge are invariably viewed as petty-bourgeois. Splits then occur. And the new formation goes about following the same formula: declare a new vanguard party on the basis of the corrected PROGRAM and all will be well. Trotskyism has perfected this procedure as should be obvious from the disintegration of Trotsky's movements into 10,000 irrelevant warring sects.
36
Here's an interesting inventary of contemporary trotskyist international groupings, posted by Chris Faatz on Marxchat. Of course, an exaustive taxonomy of the bolchevichi trotsquistium genre would need an investigation of years by trained personel, with a generous endowment from the Life Diversity Foundation.
37
Joćo Paulo Monteiro
38
[I put this on a separate page. Click here for tons of trots. -- Ben]