“Mass partyism”: a dissenting opinion

“One must not allow oneself to be misled by the cry for ‘unity.’ Those who have this word most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension, just as at present the Jura Bakuninists in Switzerland, who have provoked all the splits, scream for nothing so much as for unity. Those unity fanatics are either the people of limited intelligence who want to stir everything up together into one nondescript brew, which, the moment it is left to settle, throws up the differences again in much more acute opposition because they are now all together in one pot (you have a fine example of this in Germany with the people who preach the reconciliation of the workers and the petty bourgeoisie)–or else they are people who consciously or unconsciously (like Mühlberger, for instance) want to adulterate the movement. For this reason the greatest sectarians and the biggest brawlers and rogues are at certain moments the loudest shouters for unity. Nobody in our lifetime has given us more trouble and been more treacherous than the unity shouters.” — Friedrich Engels in a letter to August Bebel dated 20th June, 1873

Comrades modulus and Gavin have recently written and published two posts which bring up important issues. As any regular reader to Spirit of Contradiction (yes, all six of you) knows, they represent more or less the majority opinion of the regular contributors. Nevertheless I have seen it fit to give a dissenting opinion based on my own misgivings about their treatment of the subject. The subject, as always, is about the “party question.” In contrast to my usual style I will not engage in shameless self-promotion and link to previous posts of mine on the subject (I promise)¹.

I just hope I don’t sound too pretentious.

Part I: The background for a critique

A key issue surrounding both posts, whether it is readily apparent or not, is that of the evolution of political parties, insofar as they deal with the “party question.” Both posts consider their questions independently of a schema which understands their development from class struggle. This has serious implications for both comrade Gavin and comrade modulus.

To examine where they err it is necessary to avoid their error and place ourselves in an understanding of how parties form and how they evolve.

The proletariat occupies a particular position in the technical process of producing goods in relation to other people in this same technical process; according to this position it has corresponding material interests which fundamentally clash with those in other positions. This establishes the proletariat as a class; it has a position within the productive process which establishes its common interests while at the same time separates it from those with other fundamentally antagonistic interests². In order to protect their own interests as a class against their antagonists, they must engage in class struggle. In order to effectively wage this struggle it is necessary that they must cooperate and form organizations in order to efficiently advance their own interests. Such organizations include the trade unions (which arise to protect workers’ interests in the workplace and, as struggle expands and draws more and more workers into the fold, eventually whole industries), workers’ cooperatives, and, yes, political parties. It is this last category that we are most interested in. It is obvious to any student of the history of socialism that the evolution of modern communism (as a movement, a program, and a theory) has been a long process and did not spring up overnight as soon as class struggle began. Class struggle took on a form which was not immediately communist. However, in the struggle various demands are advanced, which represent the understanding by the proletariat of its own interests at a particular moment in struggle. These demands and understanding constitute a program. Corresponding to a particular program (and its corresponding vision of the future) are particular theories which come from proletarian-aligned intellectuals³. Both theory and program guide the struggle and move it forward, pushing the proletariat against the bourgeoisie more and more. In doing so the program and theory outstrip themselves; through its struggle the proletariat, through the reflection upon and connection of various individual events in the class struggle, is better able to understand its position and the antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and the more radical does its program and its corresponding theory become. Compare the Utopianism of the early French socialists to the vague revolutionary formulations of the “république démocratique et sociale” and the “droit du travail” in 1848 and the acceptance of the ideas of the démoc-socs which were inspired by a critique of the inequality and anti-democratic nature of French society and, later, to the minimum and maximum sections of the program of the French workers’ party in 1880 and the acceptance of Marxist communism, and also the move from Enlightenment-inspired abstract humanism (and this includes the Babeuvistes, who were comparatively advanced for their time) to more class-conscious/class-centric political ideas which occurs contemporaneously⁴. Thereby does the communist program develop; the proletariat is able to realize that only the total abolition of bourgeois society, and thereby all class society, is able to realize the liberation of the proletariat, and with it all humanity. But even the communist program is not the final development of this program; early communism was still Utopian in its assumptions and rough in its means, but the communist program and theory developed in tangent with class struggle, itself propelled by the aforementioned program and theory, and more and more assumed more theoretically developed forms as the movement progressed and the old ideas, practices, and programs proved to be outdated. Out of this political struggle for the realization of its program to be imposed by the state (either through the bourgeois state through immediate reforms or a working-class state for maximal demands), the proletariat develops for itself a specialized organ of political struggle, the workers’ party, which adopts the program and theory of the class movement at any particular period. However, it is true that there are always those who hold on to the old program and theory and do not march in tandem with the advance of the program — this is the source of the variety of socialist “sects.”⁵ Moreover, where there is an exceptionally advanced section of the working class which is at a higher level than the general workers’ party, they work within it⁶ so long as it proves to be ascendant and not a hindrance to the expansion and development of the struggle.

But this process does not take place in a vacuum — it takes place under the concrete conditions of bourgeois society. The bourgeoisie is constantly able to reproduce its own control over society through its ability to project the values and ideology derived from its own class position as “natural.” To cite an old saying, the proletariat “naturally” moves towards socialism, but bourgeois ideology imposes itself on the proletariat to an even greater degree. Under “normal” circumstances, therefore, it is not possible for a really radical party to gain the support of the majority of the working class — one can only gain popularity at the expense of programmatic integrity (“stepping backwards” as it were), as has historically been the case with the “official” communist parties, i.e. those parties which are descended from the Communist International and kept their name more or less intact. In France and in Italy, these parties only maintained their size by adopting more and more a purely “respectable” outlook and more and more fulfilling the role of your average social-democratic party (not in the sense of social-democracy from the 1870s to 1914) even if rhetorically they held off communism as a lofty goal to be achieved sometime in the next millenium. They maintained their support within the class not by being communist, but on the contrary, by acting and sounding less and less like a communist party and more and more like a party which, in the end, only wanted reforms. In the end it is telling that when the PCI dissolved into the PDS the PDS retained most of its support and the majority of its members. It is only with the heightening of contradictions, with the sharpening of class antagonisms and the destruction of illusions in bourgeois ideology and the greater material homogenization of the class that the proletariat in its majority is able to adopt the communist program. The task of the workers’ party, then, is to win over the class to the program of communist revolution where it is possible.

Part II: A critique of comrade Gavin’s conception of the party

The first lines of comrade Gavin’s article reject this view; in his vision, the idea that the “heightening of contradictions would provide us the objective conditions for stronger political awareness and thereby lubricate our ability to organize” is fundamentally incorrect. He backs this up by pointing out that “the left” (that is to say, the politically conscious section of the proletariat) has “stagnated.” How well does this criticism stand up? Not very well, it must be said.

First of all, it must be said that objective conditions may be favorable to the workers’ party, but that subjective conditions may not. After all, it does not automatically follow that the possibility of something translates directly into its success; always and everywhere there are specific, contingent circumstances which may impede the work of the workers’ party, including the party itself. Let us consult the old man Lenin on this topic:

“To the Marxist it is indisputable that a revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, it is not every revolutionary situation that leads to revolution. What, generally speaking, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall certainly not be mistaken if we indicate the following three major symptoms: (1) when it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the ‘upper classes,’ a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for ‘the lower classes not to want’ to live in the old way; it is also necessary that ‘the upper classes should be unable’ to live in the old way; (2) when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual; (3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be robbed in ‘peace time,’ but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis and by the ‘upper classes’ themselves into independent historical action.

Without these objective changes, which are independent of the will, not only of individual groups and parties but even of individual classes, a revolution, as a general rule, is impossible. The totality of all these objective changes is called a revolutionary situation. Such a situation existed in 1905 in Russia, and in all revolutionary periods in the West; it also existed in Germany in the sixties of the last century, and in Russia in 1859-61 and 1879-80, although no revolution occurred in these instances. Why was that? It was because it is not every revolutionary situation that gives rise to a revolution; revolution arises only out of a situation in which the above-mentioned objective changes are accompanied by a subjective change, namely, the ability of the revolutionary class to take revolutionary mass action strong enough to break (or dislocate) the old government, which never, not even in a period of crisis, ‘falls,’ if it is not toppled over.” — The Collapse of the Second International, dated 1915 (emphasis added by me)

Second of all, the notion that “the left” has “stagnated” since 2008 must be objected to. The expansion of neoliberalism as a government policy, which comrade Gavin introduces as evidence, in no way points to an expansion of support in neoliberalism among the proletarian class (you cannot say the same for parties like PASOK or the PSOE, but that does not point to the weakness of “the left” because the social-democratic parties as they exist today are not proletarian but bourgeois and only “left” in a consideration which abstracts from class); by contrast, austerity is being combated very bravely by workers around the world — from Spain to France to America and Canada. In South Africa the workers have been fighting for a living wage and against police brutality instigated by the supposedly “left” tripartite alliance of the ANC government, the CPSA, and COSATU. Across southeast Asia factory workers have been engaged in frequent, often violent conflicts with their employers. Strikes are on the rise in China. The revolution in Egypt, whose initial revolutionary act was fought by the workers but, owing to the proletariat’s weakness, was lead by bourgeois and conservative forces, is entering a new phase where the workers are growing discontented with the lack of change under the supposedly “revolutionary” bourgeois parties. Especially in Greece we have seen the political radicalization of the class, with mass support going to SYRIZA (which, as it is, does not yet constitute a really communist party, but contains the possibility to become one). Even the objection that the far-right has gained as well does not dampen the theory of favorable and unfavorable periods for the workers’ party — support by the working-class for the far-right parties, where they exist, is situated precisely on the rejection of the old system: the far-right has illegitimately appropriated ‘revolutionary’ rhetoric and gained from it immensely. This certainly doesn’t speak against the notion that the heightening of contradictions contains the objective conditions for the workers’ party’s success; rather, it speaks to the subjective weakness of communists⁷.

Third of all, and on a more general basis, the rejection of revolutionary situations, and therein the possibility of revolution, as something determined by objective forces, leads us into the opposite camp; namely, that revolution is something which we make by force of will, which goes against our fundamental understanding of how consciousness is determined in society and all historical evidence. This is notion, in my view, one of the things that is wrong with socialists today; it is assumed that all failures, big or small, are necessarily the result of not trying hard enough, as if you could storm the House of Commons by selling enough copies of the Socialist Worker and engaging in endless burnout activist tactics that do not significantly engage with the class at all, but rather with a finite circle of activist/student types which are constantly competed for. The illusion of doing something is worse than doing nothing at all because it contributes to a useless activist mentality that harms the party’s real work where it exists.

Gavin’s attitude towards the question of revolutionary situation colors his attitude towards “left unity.” If the question of mass support is abstracted from the conditions in which it can happen, or its dependence on objective conditions is either ignored or not considered, then a natural conclusion to reach is that the left is a failure because it is so divided. From there, Gavin considers the issue of left unity — its possibility, its potential successes, and its potential drawbacks.

Gavin goes on to claim that theoretical unity is only possible where an organization is moribund. This must be objected on several grounds.

Firstly, we must consider, once again, theories in their historical context. Theory as a general methodological framework for thinking about political action, whether it is Blanquism or Marxism, arises in accordance with a particular political program and practice; Marxism is the scientific explanation of the communist program, the world-historic role of the proletariat in the context of history as a whole. Therefore with a particular political program — and presumably we are speaking about a modern communist one — we have a corresponding theoretical framework, which with a modern program means revolutionary Marxism. Within this theoretical framework disagreement is possible, insofar as it is on the basis of scientific discourse and not pure silliness. But to insist on the highest theoretical framework available is not sectarian; it is common sense. Therefore the point about “moribund” or “cultish” organizations is misguided. But what about comrade Gavin’s consideration about disagreement between theoretical frameworks and the dynamic benefits thereof? A suitable response would probably be to compare such a thing to whatever dynamic benefits could amount from a disagreement between Aristotelian physics and modern physics; one is a higher, more developed theoretical framework. Even if we are to engage in such disagreement (which we inevitably will, whether we wish to or not), it doesn’t have to be within a single organization; polemics between organizations have indeed existed and given rise to a number of theoretical considerations.

Secondly, on a practical basis unity is possible, but only under certain given conditions. The first is that there is a similar vision of the future, which can be determined by comparing various maximal programs; but by doing this we see that relying on a common commitment to abstract principles is not enough. An Anarchist communist, a Marxist, and a Syndicalist could probably all agree on abstract principles of production for use, egalitarianism, and self-organization of society; at the same time the way these are conceived are radically different. The Anarchist communist wants freely associated local communes which engage and disengage in federalist structures as they please; the Marxist wants a more centralized structure representing the whole of society’s wants and needs; and the Syndicalist wants workers’ syndicates representing different trades interacting with each other at different levels. Given this wide disparity on views of the future, which come from the developed or undeveloped nature of their political program, it can be safely said that there can be no practical unity on this basis. The second condition, which is also contingent on acceptance of the first condition, is strategic unity, which I shall get into shortly.

Now, Gavin is, for all his errors, an intelligent person, so I assume he knows why I would connect a discussion of theoreticalunity and strategical unity; the two cannot possibly be separated. First of all, we must get it straight what we mean by “tactics” and what we mean by “strategy”: a strategy is a general plan to achieve an aim, and tactics are the methods by which this strategy is enacted; for example, we might say that in the US Civil War there was a strategy called the Anaconda Plan and that the siege of Vicksburg was a tactical decision within this strategy (this is probably an incorrect use of strategy/tactics in its military sense, and any military buff is welcome to rebuke me, but I think the general point has been transmitted). Unity is important on both counts, contrary to comrade Gavin’s assertions. Strategic unity is absolutely necessary because without it there is no reason to work together in a common organization; if you are going to insist on running candidates to win elections and I am going to insist on insurrectionary approaches, then in the long run it is absolutely impossible for us to work together insofar as the very vision of what our organization should do is fractured. Short-term unity or even moderate-term unity might be possible, but insofar as our long-term means do not coincide it is impossible for us to agree on any effective long-term action. Tactical unity is absolutely necessary in order to effectively complete a task; if we are, for example, going to participate in a general strike, it needs all the effort it can muster, and to that extent there must be unity. Decentralizing our efforts does not help us in any way. This is not to say that there cannot be debate about what is or is not correct tactics or the correct strategy (the former is a common topic of debate, the latter generally only comes up when there is an abysmal failure or there is a huge political shock necessitating a change in direction); it does mean, however, that whatever is chosen requires the utmost unity in being carried out. To be short, what we need is nothing more than the bogeyman of freedom of discussion and unity in action, the core principles of democratic centralism. In practice this subordination of the minority to the majority and the unity of action can only take the form of the subordination of local bodies representing smaller numbers of people to national and international bodies representing larger numbers of people; in this sense centralization is, for us, not merely a decision to take based on moral concerns, but a principle of effective practice, in contrast to comrade Gavin’s approach to the question of the degree of centralization, which is established by weighing both extremes (Anarchist horizontalism and bureaucratic “Leninist” centralism which is just centralism without democracy) and coming to a conclusion that somewhere in the middle is best.

A few parting notes: it must be noted that no one, save for perhaps a few so-called “ultra-left” tendencies, does not want a party without majority support in the working class. Lenin identifies it in Marxism and Insurrection as a necessary precondition for successful revolution. Moreover it must also pointed out that in the historical parties that Gavin identifies, there was mass membership, but it was nevertheless a membership which (1) serious paled in comparison to the total number of workers and (2) had a much broader base of support than its total membership would otherwise suggest. The difference, therefore, between a “mass party” and a party with mass support, is tenuous at best. The real differences lie not in the desire for mass support, but in the way in which we conceive the party’s functions, development, and organization — I have attempted to consider these questions within a schema which understands parties as they develop from class struggle, whereas I believe Gavin has not.

Part III: A critique of comrade modulus’ conception of the party

Comrade modulus, like comrade Gavin, looks at the party question in isolation of a genuine framework for understanding how parties develop. By placing himself outside such a framework comrade modulus observes the questions of party formation and party structure in an erroneous way; that is to say, he believes that parties and the structure of the workers’ party can be determined artificially. 

This is evident in his discussion of program. It is certainly clear that overly long and winding programs with long-winded theoretical declarations mixed in with actual demands are both annoying and useless, as good comrade Engels would agree⁸. On that issue comrade modulus and I have no serious disagreement. However, on the topic of the program in general, comrade modulus conceives of the program in an erroneous way; namely, “a programme must arise from the particular historical experience of a given party.” Naturally, such a formulation must be objected to.

Firstly, programs have not and cannot ever be based on the “particular historical experience of a given party.” Programs represent concrete demands made in the class struggle by the proletarian class; they are representative not just of the members of the working class who are also members of the party, but of the whole class. Therefore they must draw on the struggles of the non-party workers, both domestic and international. Regardless of whether it is a “mass party” is a small sect, the point of a program is to fight for the interests of a class, and no one section of the class, either a large or a small section, is ever going to know the general interests of the class in isolation; this is one of the biggest reasons for constant work among the non-party workers by the party, even in historical periods where conditions are unfavorable and it cannot hope to be very large. Whether or not comrade modulus considers these to be part of the “historical experience of a given party” is unclear, but the point needs to be made regardless.

Secondly, programs must draw not only on the limited historical experience of a single organization but the proletarian experience throughout history; historical experience is essential in guiding our action and our aims. Historical continuity between the proletarian struggle of then and the proletarian struggle of now gives us rich lessons and background to draw from. Otherwise, we are left to re-learn the experiences of the past all over again, which is not a virtue but a setback. Any workers’ party ought to draw on the experience of previous workers’ struggles and not just its own.

Given his thoughts on what a program ought to be, it is no surprise that comrade modulus gives us the idea of a mission statement. Any new party would have no historical experience and thus no program and thus nothing to guide it except a “mission statement.” In comrade modulus’ view, this mission statement ought to be “short, simple, unambiguous and immutable.” He gives an example of his own proposal, of which he acknowledges any potential shortcomings: “The party’s object is the conquest by the organised working class of state power.”

There is nothing wrong with a “mission statement” in principle; many socialist organizations have something analogous; for example, the International Socialist Organization has six paragraph one; Socialist Alternative has a five paragraph one; and so on. However, the problem of an extremely concise statement is that it is too broad; unity around principles or actions that are too abstract is ineffective, as has been discussed before, because the concrete visions of the future and strategical goals are so widely disparate that bridging them would be impossible. The conquest of state power by the organized working class is all good and well, but that means different things to different people. To a so-called “democratic socialist” it would mean running elections and winning power through the institutions of bourgeois power, with no recourse to violence; to a member of the communist left it would mean smashing the bourgeois state and replacing it with participatory organs of proletarian power; to a Trotskyist it might mean something between the two, with a “workers’ government”⁹ being the transitional point for the replacement of the bourgeois state with a really proletarian one. All of those visions are sufficiently exclusive of one another that no principled person from one group would have any sufficient basis for unity with another — their strategic trajectories come into direct conflict with one another at one point or another. Now, while this criticism is exclusive to modulus’ formulation of the concise “mission statement” in particular, excessive broadness is a problem of unnecessarily concise mission statements in general — and in no way does an excessively broad statement prevent “the very real threat of opportunism and degeneration.”

Comrade modulus likewise makes a mistake stemming from his conception of the party in his treatment of the subject of the so-called “economic functions of the party.” He is of the opinion that the party needs to “integrate within it all elements of proletarian economic power.” A point needs to be made on this.

This completely ignores the separate historical evolution of various organs of the proletariat for various specialized needs. It is clear that both my liver and my heart are organs of my body, in the same way that the party and a trade union are both organs of the proletarian class; at the same time they perform different functions and have different forms as a result. Parties represent the most politically advanced sections of the class in question, its “avant-garde.” Its members are bound together by adherence to a common program and a common set of principles. Therefore it is, in a sense, exclusive of people who do not share these commonalities — people who reject socialism cannot be a member of a socialist party and so on. They arise in the class struggle to fight for state power. By contrast unions are broad class organizations which represent workers in a particular place of work or industry; they work best when they are largest, and to that aim eschew most principles not immediately necessary for their continued existence. They must, by necessity, contain as many workers as possible, whereas a party, by contrast, can only accept those who adhere to its program (and for good reason, because a large party with an overly broad and ultimately useless program is one of the worst fates you could possible aim for with a proletarian party). Therefore, to attempt to incorporate the union organizationally within the party is a mistake, because it harms the effectiveness of the union; rather, communists should work within unions to win their sympathy for the party and its program, but remain separate organizations with separate membership criteria. In the one case you are making the unions an organ of the party and thus subject to the membership requirements of the party (unless they are administratively separate with different membership lists, etc., in which case they are essentially different organizations), and in the other case you are attempting to win over the members of an organization with broad membership requirements to communism. This criticism applies to all broad proletarian economic organizations.

Party structure in general, however, appears to an issue where comrade modulus would do well to view the party question in light of a materialist view of the evolution of political parties. It is one thing to say that a structure of “circles” is an ideal type of organization; however saying and being are not the same thing. Revolution is not a question of forms of organization; it is impossible to say a priori what specific party structures are most effective; it is only possible to tease out general principles of organization based on fundamental conditions of class struggle. I have in other posts (in keeping with my promise I will not link to them) asserted that three (more like two-and-a-half, given the conditional nature of one) are restrictive membership, centralism (subordination of lower bodies to higher bodies), and democracy (this is conditional on what extent democracy can be effectively utilized). Perhaps we are best to listen to comrade Damen¹⁰:

“Any revolutionary party which is not a mere abstraction has to address the problems of the class struggle in a historical climate in which violence and unchallenged authority dominates. In order to increasingly become a living instrument of combat it can only be organised around the most iron unity. Its ranks therefore have to be closed against the general thrust of the counter-revolution. The revolutionary party does not ape bourgeois parties, but obeys the need to adapt its organisational structure to the objective condition of the revolutionary struggle.” —Centralized Party, Yes — Centralism over the Party, No!, dated 1951 (emphasis author’s)

Finally, regarding “venture socialism”: I am not hostile to the expansion of the cooperative movement. Cooperatives form an important part of the workers’ movement; in the days of classical social-democracy they were seen as one of the three major components of the movement, along with trade unions and the party. They provide useful services (funds, publishing, etc.) for the workers’ movement and also provide a degree of independence for the workers involved (no threat of being fired and so on). However, the proposal to “create a new mode of production” within capitalism is a problematic one; insofar as they operate according to the economic laws of the broader capitalist economy (and they need to in order to interact with them on so fundamental a level; industries today are so interconnected it is impossible for one to not rely on other) workers’ cooperatives function not as “socialist” enterprises but as “collective capitalist enterprises.” Socialism as a mode of production can only be established through the general use of coercion to forcibly transform the relations of production and free the productive forces hitherto developed from their capitalist fetters. Cooperatives have two main advantages over “regular” enterprises: firstly, that they prove through experience the ability of ordinary people to manage their own economic affairs without interference from an alien management and bosses; secondly, that they can provide “starting points” for the general socialization of industry once such a program is underway. Regardless, a detailed criticism of “venture socialism” is outside the consideration of the critique of comrade modulus’ conception of the party.

Part IV: Conclusion

I will not claim that this critique is by any means totally comprehensive of every error made in both comrade Gavin’s and comrade modulus’ articles. Nevertheless, I have given what I feel to be a decent enough dissenting opinion on the issue of “mass partyism” and a discussion of the “party question” in general. Hopefully after this I can get around to writing an article that isn’t about the “party question” in some way…

Criticisms are welcome.