(1 of 3) -- Proletarian democracy requires independent organizations

["Ben Seattle" <Left-Transparency@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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          Proletarian Democracy
          Requires Independent Organizations
          (reply to José G. Perez)
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José -- Aug 27:
> I HOPE everyone here will agree that, under the conditions
> that have prevailed over the past 40 years, and especially
> over the past decade, it is unjustified to criticize the
> Cuban government for placing extreme limits on the actions
> of people opposed to the revolution
> ...
> You seem to have the attitude that the unity among
> revolutionary Cubans MUST be the result of repression
> rather than conviction and the political culture and
> traditions of the island.  I believe it is a FACT that
> there has been no significant, large-scale attempt to
> go outside and around the existing institutions [...]
> That there have been no such attempts on a significant
> scale is due not to repression, but to the obvious
> logic of Fidel's maxim, that division in the face of
> the enemy is not an intelligent and revolutionary
> strategy.
> ...
> It may seem that what's going on in Cuba is
> small potatoes compared to your dreams of what
> American workers democracy may be like ...

José's deepest desire is to defend the Cuban people and
revolution.  I think that everyone here understands José's
dedication to this cause.  US imperialism remains hell-bent on
crushing the example of revolutionary Cuba because the Cuban
people have dared to stand up and overthrow their oppressors.

And for forty years now heroic Cuba has stood up to, and defied,
mighty US imperialism.  And, in so doing, revolutionary Cuba has
been an inspiration to hundreds of millions, maybe billions, of
people around the globe--and has proven that imperialism is not
all-powerful.

The psychology and the emotions tied in with this are important.
Imperialism presents itself as omnipotent--and immortal.  But
revolutionary thinkers and activists know not only that
imperialism can be defeated--but also that it will eventually be
destroyed.

It is this last point which I believe is most important.  It is
not enough to think of heroic, revolutionary Cuba defying US
imperialism forever.  To think in this way is to confine our
perspective to that of rolling a heavy boulder up a hill--until
the end of time--without ever reaching the top.

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Losing sight of the goal
----------------------------------------

Our activity today will be greatly assisted if we expand our
perspective to include the destruction of US imperialism.

And while I greatly respect and admire José--I must remind him
that this is the perspective to which he appears to have lost
sight.

And, as a result, the efforts of José to defend the Cuban
revolution have tended to ignore the role of the
_t_h_e_o_r_e_t_i_c_a_l_  _c_r_i_s_i_s_  of marxism which has
paralyzed our movement--left our movement without the weapon of
revolutionary theory--left our movement naked and on its knees in
the presence of its enemies.

The destruction of imperialism is synonymous with the overthrow
of bourgeois rule in the advanced capitalist countries.  But
there can be no overthrow of bourgeois rule without the emergence
of a powerful mass movement centered around this objective.  And
it is inconceivable that such a movement could emerge unless
there is a credible  _a_l_t_e_r_n_a_t_i_v_e_  to the system of
bourgeois rule.

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What is a credible alternative?
----------------------------------------

A credible alternative is one that is fit for people who have not
had lobotomies.  Such an alternative, in a modern society, would
take into consideration the unfettered flow of information that
is required by a modern economy.  Such an alternative would take
into account the potential of the emerging revolution in digital
communications to mobilize and harness the revolutionary energy
of the masses.  And such an alternative would take into
consideration the need for groups of activists to have the
essential democratic right to make their views and opinions
known--and to mobilize public opinion against incompetence or
hypocrisy or corruption by their own state.

All of this spells out proletarian democracy.  No credible
alternative to bourgeois rule is conceivable without an
understanding of the nature of proletarian democracy.

And it is on the question of proletarian democracy that I have
come into contradiction with José.  Proletarian democracy is
inconceivable in a modern society with a modern economy if
workers do not have the right to create independent
organizations.

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Independent organizations
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José is a good man.  But he squirms like hell on the question of
the necessity of independent organizations.

(1) On the one hand José claims that the question of independent
organizations is a false issue--a diversion from the real issue
of how the working class will maintain control of its own state
apparatus.

(2) On the other hand José claims that Cuba has witnessed no
significant efforts to create independent revolutionary
organizations--and so cannot be accused of having repressed what
has never existed or never been attempted.

The exhaustion of my own time, and of the patience and enthusiasm
of readers, suggests that the discussion between José and myself
is winding down.  José cannot prove the points he would like to
prove.  And neither can I--at least in relation to point (2)
above.  I will show some of the weaknesses and holes in José's
arguments.  And I will encourage thoughtful readers to consider
some of the principles at stake.  We don't need to abandon our
defense of the Cuban people or revolution in order to seek
clarity on the fundamental principles that will guide a modern
society run by workers.  In fact the opposite is true.  We will
be able to do better to defend Cuba, or any other revolutionary
task, if we keep our eyes open.

I have come to the conclusion that imperialism will be
overthrown, not in the far-distant future--but almost certainly
within the lifetime of many people living today--maybe even
within the lifetime of some participants of this forum.  Long
before this happens however, the principal ideological (and
theoretical) obstacle to this (ie: the lack of a serious
challenge to the bourgeois chorus: "there is no alternative")
will be smashed.  The need to smash this obstacle will assert
itself again ... and again ... and again.  Life is green, as José
notes, and theory is gray.  Old theory will be smashed and new
theory will develop to meet the demands of life.

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Is Cuba a workers' democracy?
----------------------------------------

José says that we should not criticize the Cuban government for
placing extreme limits on the actions of people opposed to the
revolution.  I have another view.  As marxists we engage in
"ruthless criticism of all that exists".  The Cuban people have
every right to take whatever actions are _necessary_ to defend
their revolution.  From the point of view of science, from the
point of view of raising our consciousness about the nature of
proletarian democracy--we examine the actions that are taken--we
think things thru for ourselves--and we see what we can learn.
Some actions against counter-revolutionaries may be necessary to
defend the revolution.  Other actions may harm the revolution
more than they defend it.  We need to understand these things
concretely.

José has challenged me to provide an example of an independent
organization of workers that was suppressed.  José says that no
significant, large-scale effort has ever been made by
revolutionaries to organize outside and around the existing
institutions.

And José may very well be correct.  But what does this prove?

Efforts that are large grow from efforts that are small.  And if
small efforts are suppressed--they will have much less of an
opportunity to grow and become large.

But if José cannot prove his point here--neither can I.

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The CRSDP
----------------------------------------

In my last post I quoted from a correspondent who had engaged in
discussion with a supporter of a group of exile Cubans called the
"Cuban Revolutionary Social Democratic Party" (CRSDP).  I posted
the web site address but, since my Spanish is too poor, asked if
anyone could clue me in about them.  José checked out their site.
José learned that (1) The CRSDP does not oppose the imperialist
blockade against Cuba and considers the question unimportant.
(2) The CRSDP advocates that the Cuban economy should be
organized by the market.  And (3) the CRSDP leader gave an
interview in Miami claiming that Cuba was building biological
weapons.  The claim was so bizarre that the mainstream bourgeois
media would not touch it.  The first of these facts is the most
damning.  The CRSDP is not a revolutionary organization.  It is
not a workers' organization.  It is not "way to the left" of the
Cuban Communist Party.  The CRSDP appears to be the kind of
petty-bourgeois organization that typically ends up being used as
a pawn by US imperialism.  And such a fate is a reasonable guess
as to their likely future trajectory.  José is my opponent in
this discussion about proletarian democracy--but he is correct
about the CRSDP and deserves credit for exposing it.

My correspondent, incidently, checked out the site and confirmed
José's exposure--but noted that leftists exist on the periphery
of the CRSDP.  I replied that it is common that such
organizations encourage and maintain a left periphery.  The left
periphery provides camouflage for the organization--and the
leftists get the dubious benefit of maintaining the illusion that
the organization can be fundamentally changed.  It is a very
common arrangement in political ecosystems.  In fact I consider a
similar dynamic to exist in relation to the US Labor Party or the
Nader campaign.  Leftists are often attracted to such phenomena
because there is such a shortage of genuine alternatives.  But it
is nearly always better, in my view, for leftists to put their
energy into building organization that is genuinely independent
of bourgeois influence.  And if there are exile Cuban leftists in
the periphery of the CRSDP, then my view is that they should
break from the CRSDP and form their own organization.

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The Arnold August book
----------------------------------------

Louis posted a review September 3 of "Democracy in Cuba and the
1997-98 Elections" by Arnold August.  Based on the description
there, the Cuban electoral system is probably the most democratic
in the world.  Certainly it is far more democratic than the
electoral system found in the US which is dominated nearly
entirely by money.  For example, according to the August 8 Wall
Street Journal, which carried an article examining the political
influence of Hollywood, donations from this industry alone (ie:
individual, corporate and PAC donations from TV, movie and music
companies to federal candidates or to the national centers of the
Democratic or Republican parties, from 1999 to the present)
totaled approximately $18 billion!

That's billion with a "b", not million.

The Cuban electoral system, by contrast, is not corrupted by
money.  It does not cost anything to run.  There are no
significant campaign expenses.  Most of those elected are not
paid and must continue to work their regular jobs.  So the class
division between the wealthy officials and the voters is not so
pronounced in Cuba (if it exists at all) as it is in the US.

Does this mean that proletarian democracy exists in Cuba?  Not
necessarily.

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Proletarian democracy has
never existed in developed form
----------------------------------------

The big obstacle in understanding proletarian democracy is that
it is a phenomenon that has never existed except in an embryonic
and undeveloped sense.  The Paris Commune of 1871 was the world's
first example of proletarian democracy--but it was crushed after
two months and never had time to develop.  The early Soviet
Republic witnessed the contention of different political trends
prior to the summer of 1918 when the civil war unfolded and led
to the collapse of the economy and the need for a state of
emergency that was still in effect when Lenin was permanently put
out of action by his third stroke in March 1923.

The measures used by Lenin to suppress rival political trends
were, I should note, a good deal harsher than those used by
Castro.  Lenin noted, in his speech to the 11th Congress in March
1922, that public manifestations of menshevism were punishable by
being lined up against a wall and shot.

It may (or may not) suprise some readers that I consider Lenin's
actions in suppressing his opponents to have been both necessary
and correct.  The reason for this is not hard to understand: in
the extreme conditions of that time any other course of action
would have led to a relatively rapid restoration of bourgeois
rule.

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When suppression is necessary
----------------------------------------

There is no general rule that a workers' state must suppress
political trends that oppose it.  On the contrary, everything
depends on concrete conditions.  In favorable conditions the
suppression of opposing trends will do more harm than good.  In
unfavorable conditions, however, suppression will be necessary.
The conditions that existed in Soviet Russia at the conclusion of
the civil war were about as unfavorable as could be imagined.
The economy had essentially collapsed.  Even agriculture had been
severely disrupted and a terrible famine was taking shape that
would eventually kill, thru hunger and disease, an estimated
twenty million people.  Dissatisfaction with the Soviet
government was very high, particularly among the 80 percent of
the population that were peasants and who were forced to turn
over nearly all of their grain in exchange for worthless pieces
of colored paper.  The peasants had put up with this while the
civil war was fought because they hated the whiteguards and the
landlords more than they hated the bolsheviks.  But once the
whiteguards and landlords had been smashed--the pent-up
dissatisfaction of the peasants began to explode.  This was the
meaning of Kronstadt and numerous other armed peasant revolts.

If the mensheviks (and the other parties of petty-bourgeois
democracy) had been allowed political space to exist, to organize
and so on, they would have made unrealistic promises to the
peasants.  They would have promised the peasants the freedom to
sell their grain.  They would have promised an end to many of the
severe hardships.  They would have promised that all these things
were compatible with keeping the whiteguards and landlords from
returning.  And the gullible peasants would have believed all
this.

The end result is that if these parties had not been
suppressed--they would have come to power.  They would have
beaten the bolsheviks in any elections.  They would have then
suppressed the bolsheviks.  And at this point the bourgeoisie,
the whiteguards and the landlords would have returned--and
slapped down the petty-bourgeois democrats.  Lenin talks about
this near the end of "The Tax in Kind".

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And when suppression is not
----------------------------------------

Lenin never considered the suppression of the parties of
petty-bourgeois democracy to be part of the functioning of a
"normal" socialist society.  On the contrary, such measures were
necessary only because conditions were so unfavorable: the
economy had been destroyed, dissatisfaction was high and the
revolutionary forces were weak.  Once the economy was restored
(something Lenin estimated would take ten to twenty years) and
dissatisfaction lessened (ie: the Soviet state would have
material goods to give the peasantry in exchange for grain) then
things could be relaxed and a more normal society could emerge
that would be more similar to the open contention and rivalry tha
t charaterized the short period between the October 1917
revolution and the beginning of the civil war the following
summer.

The monopoly of power in a single organization, and the
suppression of opposing trends, while necessary, carried with it
a grave danger of abuse and the capture of this power by the
enemies of the working class.  Lenin recognized this and called
this "the real and main danger" in the same speech to the 11th
Congress refered to above (see the part where he says "History
knows all sorts of metamorphoses").  But while a single-party
system carried with it a grave danger of abuse and the permanent
suffocation of all independent political life (ie: precisely what
happened in the period after Lenin's death) there were no
alternatives at the time that would not have unleashed
instability and a return to bourgeois rule.

There is evidence that by 1922 Lenin was considering the eventual
establishment of a Bolshevik "two-party system", as is shown by
the following passage from George Seldes [1]:

> "To our questions, 'Will you ever permit another
> political party to exist in Soviet Russia?' Lenin
> replied:
>
>   "'The two-party system is a luxury which only
>   long-established and secure nations can afford.
>   However, eventually we will have a two-party
>   system such as the British have--a left party
>   and a right party--but two Bolshevik parties,
>   of course.'
>
> "Cesare said that Lenin's eyes twinkled when he said
> 'two-party system,' and that he finished his talk
> with a knowing laugh."

---( continued in part 2 of 3 )---