Re: Revolutionary Party Building: Take Power or Die!

["João Paulo Monteiro" <jpmonteiro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Julio Pino wrote:

>  Therborn's point was that revolutionary parties are
> children born of crisis, and that they either seize the moment (and the
> hour and the day) and win over a large segment of the working class or they
> will suffer arrested development. Unless they grow in large numbers rather
> quickly oblivion awaits. (Curiously, ever since I can remember, the CPUSA
> has claimed a membership of 15,000! The RCP 500, the SWP "less than 1,000"
> and so on) I remember one veteran of the 1960s telling me this could be
> broadened into a historical law: revolutionary parties that fail to take
> state power in their founding generation tend to die. Think about it:
> Lenin, Fidel, Ho, Mao, Kim Il Sung, and Tito were all first-generation
> revolutionaries. Can you think of a single example of a revolutionary party
> that took power having outlived its founders? Of course it can persist, and
> even recruit, but when has it ever gotten a second chance to make history?

Experience tells us that either you have a mass party or a revolutionary
organization. You cannot have both in one, for a period extending into the
decades, in a capitalist society that has its reproductive (and integrative)
mechanisms in perfect shape. So, on the long run, the dialectics of
revolutionary praxis will always reach a breaking point. You will either pursue
a revolutionary anti-capitalist line totally detached from the everyday
developments of real class struggle or you will end up enmeshed in a web of
institutionalized compromise.

Speaking for what I see here in Portugal, I would still prefer to work from
within a mass party that has a clear proletarian identity, no matter how
reformist in its general outlook, than in sterile rrrrrrevolutionary
talk-shops. The problem is, when the moment for historical decision comes, you
will have to act quickly and decisively, scissioning and breaking up this
bloated political machine in order to open a way for the most determined and
conscious fraction of the class move forward.

But certainly things can be very different in other latitudes. Curiously, as I
say what should be done here in Portugal, I must also stress that I'm NOT doing
it. I have no patience for political work in the PCP as it presently stands.
It's beyond me, for reasons of personal idiosyncrasy.


> What does this mean for us right now? I think going out and building a
> party (or group or union or league) in today's political atmosphere would
> be next to suicidal. Lenin taught us ("What is to be Done?") that it's the
> program that builds the party, and not the other way around. What we need
> is not one more organization but a Marxist program for the 21st Century, a
> new Communist Manifesto. At the heart of that has to be the dictatorship of
> the proletariat, i.e. "what will the working class do when it rules?" The
> program must emerge from exemplary actions a la Seattle and Washington DC,
> through which people witness Communism in practice. Such practice will in
> turn tell us how to proceed further with the program.Youth especially are
> drawn to Communism because it proposes a new civilization built on higher
> ethical values, not because of economic predictions.

I agree.
I am very sympathetic towards the work these kids are doing in the US and it
confirms two ideas that have been present on my mind: that we should work and
dialogue more closely with the anarchists and that the internet can be a
powerful instrument for political work, both as vehicle for our rallying cry
and as a paradigm of new methods of organization.

The problem with the political program is that it must be supported by a THEORY
of the transition from capitalism to communism. Without a coherent theory of
the transition, we can only have programmatic opportunism. The old dichotomy
between a "minimal program" and a "maximum program" could be surpassed by a
transitional strategy à la Trotsky, whereby a batch of advanced reformist
objectives could be put forward as a rallying cry and a test on the adaptative
limits of capitalism. The result would be to convince the working masses of the
necessity of overthrowing the system altogether, by revolutionary means. The
problem is that, without a coherent and rigorous theory of the transition, we
cannot articulate an adequate transitional program.

I have done a few rough sketches of what a transitional theory could look like
in broad and very imprecise lines. I have had news that more gifted comrades
are working on it. But, on the whole, its very dispiriting to see that so
little of our already diminutive forces are concentrated on this most decisive
of tasks.

Dialogue on communism and transition can be found here:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/6446/Communism.html


João Paulo Monteiro