Re: Labor Party

[Walter Daum <WGDCC@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 11 May 1996 15:14:09 +0200 Hugh Rodwell said:
>People are talking at cross purposes in the debate over the pros and cons
>of a Labour Party in the States.
>
>Lenin distinguished between a party of the masses and a party of dedicated
>Marxist revolutionaries. Where there was no party of the class as such, he
>welcomed the formation of one.

Hugh's comment focuses on the issue neatly. The trouble with the labor party
about to be established by Labor Party Advocates in the U.S. is that it fits
neither of the two categories Hugh cites. It is certainly not a party of
revolutionaries (no one would deny that). And it is very unlikely to be a
party of masses. It is a formation engineered by a wing of the labor
bureaucracy in order to put pressure on the Democratic Party -- the party
they remain loyal to -- to give them some recognition, after two decades
of setbacks and defeats.

BTW, what do you have in mind when you say Lenin welcomed the formation of
a "party of the class as such"? Did L.  make a general statement to that
effect, or was he speaking of a specific country at a specific time?
For example, did he exactly "welcome" the British Labour Party when he called
it "an organization of the bourgeoisie, which exists to systematically dupe
the workers" in 1920?

In the same spirit, while it is fairly well known that Trotsky urged a
campaign for a labor party in the U.S. by revolutionaries in the late 1930's,
it is less well known that he had been against such a campaign 5 or 6
years previously, under different conjunctural conditions. It wasn't a matter
of correcting an error (at least in T.'s opinion) -- he made clear in 1938
when he favored a labor party that he still believed it to have been correct
to have opposed one in the early 30's.

My point is that building, or for that matter voting for, was for both
Lenin and Trotsky a tactical decision, sometimes useful for advancing the
workers' interests and the revolutionary cause, sometimes not.
>
>This was no end in itself, however, just a step towards preparing the
>consciousness of the working masses for conscious revolutionary action to
>realize their own interests in the revolutionary overturn of capitalist
>property relations.
>
Sometimes. But each "labor party" has to be considered on its own merits.

>The only guarantee for this realization of the interests of the working
>class lies in the conscious, internationalist, proletarian revolutionary
>party.

[snip]

>So, get that labour party off the ground!
>Don't think it'll solve anything by itself but build a revolutionary
>organization capable of challenging its class-collaborationist, popular
>front leadership.
>
>Support its leaders electorally on condition of their following policies in
>the real interests of the working class ('like a rope supports a dying man'
>- Left-Wing Communism).
>
But our "labor-party-to-be" is planning quite consciously not to run
candidates, at least for now. (Its June founding convention, it might
easily be argued, was scheduled too late to even consider running a
candidate against Clinton.) Many of its adherents, especially those
>from the trade union officialdom, will be openly campaigning for Clinton
and the Democrats at the same they nobly cast their vote for a "labor
party."

>Don't hesitate to fight for full rights for different groupings and
>organizations to organize and publish with full democratic rights within
>the framework of the Labour Party -- only with such a discussion will the
>mass of members be in a position to choose at each time the policies that
>make most sense to them, and to evaluate the consistency of judgement and
>policy on the part of the political lines vying for leadership within the
>party. Only in this way will a tempered united front of revolutionary
>tendencies emerge able to challenge the class-collaborationists
>successfully for the leadership of the mass labour movement.
>
The word is out now that anyone at he founding convention who so much as
mentions their membership in a left organization will be ousted.
I assume there will be protests against this. But some sections of
the left will go along with it -- either because they feel that left-
suppression is the "realistic" way to build a mass party, or because they
have dreams of getting in the bureaucrats' good graces at the start and
then asserting themselves later.  The pathetic thing is that such people
call themselves Trotskyists.

>Dialectics means among other things that things happening at the same time
>(like starting a mass Labour Party and building a revolutionary party of
>the vanguard) don't have to mutually exclude each other.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Hugh

No, they certainly don't have to exclude each other. But in this case
all indications are that they will. We shall soon see.

Walter Daum
<wgdcc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
League for the Revolutionary Party


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