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

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

---( continued from part 1 of 3 )---

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The development of proletarian society
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The above remarks by Lenin, which I consider authentic, help us
to understand that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" does not
consist of a one-size-fits-all form good for all conditions and
all periods between the time of a successful revolution and the
time of a classless, and genuinely communist, society.  Just as
the form of bourgeois society changed considerably from the time
of the stern Oliver Cromwell to the modern bourgeois
democracy--so will the form of proletarian society also evolve.

In particular, the stronger the position of the working class,
the less will be the need to suppress the class enemy.
Suppression carries a considerable cost to the working class
(something which José explicitly recognizes when he acknowleges
that Cuba's press fails to fully reflect the rich political life
of the country) and so the working class is better off when less
repression is necessary.

Hence we can (at least approximately) identify at least four
(not-necessarily distinct) "stages" (they are not necessarily
stages--but I am not sure what else to call them) in the
evolution and development of working class rule.  Each "stage"
corresponding to an increase in the strength of the revolutionary
forces and an improvement in the conditions of the revolutionary
society:

-- Stage I --

     Single party rule.  All opposition suppressed.
     Disagreements within the ruling party kept secret.

-- Stage II --

     "Loyal opposition" in which more than one organization
     (or, equivalently, multiple trends within a single
     organization) openly contend with one another but are
     careful to keep their opposition within strictly defined
     limits to minimize the ability of the class enemy to
     take advantage of the contradictions.

-- Stage III --

     Open contention of rival political trends that emerged
     in the struggle against bourgeois rule.  Only the openly
     bourgeois or counter-revolutionary trends are suppressed.

-- Stage IV --

     Very little suppression even of openly bourgeois or
     counter-revolutionary trends.  The workers' state deals
     with these trends thru normal political means: drawing
     the masses into spirited debate to expose the true,
     reactionary nature of these trends and effectively
     marginalizing these trends and rendering them impotent.

We could also add a fifth stage (in which there was no state at
all) to represent genuine communist society.

-- Stage V --

     No suppression of anyone or anything by a state
     because there is no state.  No permanent bodies
     of armed men.  No police.  People generally
     "do the right thing" because that is what they
     want to do.

The first four stages above correspond, roughly, to workers'
rule.  Stage III corresponds to the Paris Commune of 1871 and to
the October 1917 revolution before the Civil War started in
mid-1918.  Stage III corresponds to how most progressive people
probably conceived of workers' rule prior to Lenin's revolution.

Stage I corresponds to the period following the outlawing of
factions in the party at the 10th Congress in March 1921.  Stage
II corresponds to what I believe Lenin was considering (in the
above passage by George Seldes) when he was confronted with the
dangers of Stage I but understood that the infant Soviet state
was far too weak and the situation far too precarious to survive
any attempt to go directly back to the stage that had existed
prior to the Civil War.  My reading of Lenin has led me to the
conclusion that he believed it would take at least ten years, and
more likely twenty years, before the economy was fully restored
and Soviet society would therefore be robust enough to go back to
Stage III, which Lenin considered to be the "normal" stage.

Based on his defense of the Cuban government José would appear to
be arguing that Cuba is mainly a Stage III society with a certain
number of Stage I or Stage II features thrown in.  I will return
to José's view below because I believe it is one-sided and
overlooks certain essential features.  But for now I will
continue.

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A modern economy requires Stage IV
----------------------------------------

Most of my theoretical work has been focused on Stage IV society
because only this corresponds to the needs of a modern society
with an advanced economy and infrastructure (ie: the internet and
so forth).  The contradictions inherent in trying to impose a
lesser stage (particularly Stage I) solution on a modern economy
are so great that proponents of this solution eventually reveal
that they are too out of touch with modern conditions--to be
deserving of the attention of working class and progressive
activists.  This, incidently, is the primary reason that
advocates of this solution have very little enthusiasm for
it--and mainly keep their mouths shut (and advocate that others
do the same) whenever the topic comes up.  This is the reason
that Carrol Cox recently said [2] that "probably even our
grandchildren" will not live to see the overthrow of bourgeois
society or that Macdonald Stainsby, when asked by Gunnar Kreku to
describe how the world run by workers would be different from the
police states that developed in the Soviet Union and China,
replied that it would be better not to think about this--that it
would be better to think about Colombia [3].

The easiest way to understand that a society with a modern
economy and infrastructure requires a Stage IV solution is to
consider matters from the point of view of the need to most
rapidly increase the productivity of labor.  Ultimately the
productivity of human labor determines everything else.

The suppression of the right to organize for people with
reactionary views--would eventually require that we cripple the
internet and take a series of clumsy and impractical measures to
"protect" the working class from wrong ideas.  Any serious person
who studies the development of modern society can begin to see
how removed such notions are from modern conditions.  Every
effort to completely suppress the organization and distribution
of backward or reactionary ideas--could not succeed except by
intimidating and suppressing the expression of a very wide range
of other views.  Reactionary and counter-revolutionary views
views do not necessarily express themselves with little flags
attached that say "reactionary".  There is no agency or single
point of control that could possibly decide what is (or is not)
permissible to express in public.  It would be easier to separate
a ton of the finest ground black pepper that has been thoroughly
blended with a ton of fly shit.

The internet is very rapidly (in world historic terms) evolving
into the heart of the modern economy.  To cripple its growth
would be to cripple the growth of the productivity of labor.  The
opposite is needed.  If workers at one production unit believe
that a problem needs to be addressed--these workers will need to
link up to similar workers at other production units.  Groups of
people with similar views on priorities (ecological vs.
production output, regional development, etc) will need to
combine their efforts and work together (ie: organize).  The
maximum mobilization of the energy of the masses is needed so
that they can intervene in every sphere of the economy, the
culture and the politics of society.

This is why I have explored methods that workers (and their
state) will use to defeat backward and reactionary ideas without
the need for clumsy efforts to outlaw their public expression.

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How will backward views be defeated?
----------------------------------------

The first line of defense will be to cut the linkage between
commercial resources (ie: money, paid labor, etc) and media
productions that promote reactionary ideology.  The workers'
state will not engage in significant censorship of leaflets or
web sites that are created with volunteer labor and without
commercial money.  The workers' state will, on the other hand,
have jurisdiction over and regulate the creation of all media
that involve significant commercial resources.  Hence there will
be no advertizing of greasy food or greasier politics.  No more
(for example) being bombarded with images of women's bodies that
are used to sell shit.  The first line of defense (ie: separation
of money and media) will cut the bourgeois apologists down to
size because they will be not be able to amplify their voice with
capital (to the extent it still exists in the transition society)
or similar resources to drown out the voice of working people.
At the same time the restriction of the state's authority to the
sphere of commercially supported media will greatly reduce both
the potential and the consequences of abuse by state authorities.

The second line of defense will involve the mobilization of the
masses to confront reactionary ideas in millions and billions of
individual encounters.  And the third line of defense will
involve the filtering process that will take place in the very
large number of independent forums that will exist and have
influence.  People with reactionary views will have the right to
voice their views--but they will have difficulty finding an
audience because both individuals and organized groups will first
expose them--and then simply tune them out.

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The danger of degeneration
----------------------------------------

It should be obvious to most readers that a Stage I type of
society represents the greatest risk of capture and degeneration.
The risk is highest when all your eggs, so to speak, are in one
basket.  The inability to bring political struggle out into the
open in full view of the masses--means that the political
struggle that inevitably takes place will be largely hidden from
the masses--and the masses will be rendered passive--will be
unable to play their role as the real rulers of society.

Stage I society lies right on the _boundary_ of what we could
call "workers' rule".  The historic example of this (ie:
post-Civil War Russia under Lenin) wasn't so much workers' rule
as a foothold, a military dictatorship that _aspired_ to create a
more stable economy and circumstances that would permit the
emergence of workers' rule for real.  I characterize Stage I
society as "workers' rule hanging by a thread".  And as soon as
the thread broke the inevitable happened.  If Lenin had lived
another twenty years maybe the degeneration of the party could
have been avoided and a Stage III form of workers' rule
eventually re-established.  And a powerful and secure workers'
state, with a stable economy and supported by a conscious and
politically active working class, would have eventually given the
world an example of a Stage IV society.

But that is speculation.

Sometime after the death of Lenin the Bolshevik leadership
separated off from the workers, becoming a class (or, for those
who don't like that formulation, a strata) for itself.  The
workers were atomized and rendered passive: unable to organize
independently, unable to think and act for themselves, unable to
have a real political life because their contact with political
ideas and their ability to express independent politics, was
suffocated.

And, unfortunately, this became the _model_ for future attempts
at workers' rule.  The Chinese revolution was inspired by Lenin's
revolution.  But the model that was emulated, after Mao's victory
in 1949, was very much flawed.  A single-party state, with little
room for open opposition, probably contributed greatly to the
famine that accompanied the Great Leap Forward.

I am not sure how to characterize the Chinese revolution.  I
believe that it is safe to say, by now, that it has degenerated
completely as any form of workers' rule.  How far it actually got
before it degenerated is unclear to me.  It was flawed from the
beginning and even the Cultural Revolution, originating as a
power struggle that in desperation mobilized a great deal of mass
energy in the first year and a half or two years, failed to
provide enough openings or generate enough clarity.

Historical experience strongly suggests that once an attempt at
workers' rule degenerates the only way for the working class
movement to reemerge is thru the painful path of full-scale
capitalist restoration.  This is because the revisionist rulers,
unable to compete with the free-market capitalists on the world
market, will turn their country over to them (in exchange for
being allowed to retain various privileges) before removing the
chains and the blindfolds that keep the working class passive.
The last best hope of breaking this pattern lies with the Chinese
working class.

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Is the suppression in Cuba necessary?
----------------------------------------

José's arguments in defense of the policies of the Cuban
government present Cuba as some sort of amalgam of what I have
called Stage I and Stage III societies.  The primary Stage III
features concern the Cuban Communist Party, which was created
from the fusion of three distinct political trends which fought
the Batista regime.  Since then, other revolutionary trends have
joined the CCP.  So José's argument appears to be that there are
political trends which discuss and debate Cuba's policies and
future--they just conform to Fidel's logic that "division in the
face of the enemy is not an intelligent or revolutionary
strategy".  And this brings us to a Stage I feature: the struggle
over political policy and line does not necessarily take place in
the open.  Now I should add that there are elements here on both
sides of the fence: José reports vigorous debate in all walks of
Cuban life.  So the struggle over politics and policy in not
necessarily secret.  On the other hand José also reports that the
press does a very poor job of reflecting these struggles.  So the
political struggles in Cuba are somewhere in between being open
and secret.  They are neither completely hidden nor completely
transparent.

What no one disputes is that people with certain politics are
shut up decisively: to "meet at someone's house, to issue a
leaflet for distribution at the workshop would end you up in
jail".

What José and I agree on is as follows: (1) there is a cost to
this kind of suppression that weakens the political culture of
Cuba (ie: the press is not nearly as vigorous as one would hope,
etc), and (2) that this kind of suppression is justified if it is
actually necessary to defend the revolution.

In spite of this agreement, however, José and I have a number of
key differences.  For example I would like to better understand
the concrete conditions that make it necessary to suppress groups
like the CRSDP rather than, for example, simply expose them and
use them as an example to raise the political consciousness of
the population.  Why be worried about their leaflets?  José says
this is partly an issue of "culture" and political maturity under
seige conditions.  I do not disagree with this.  But why would
the Cuban people not have this level of culture and political
maturity after 40 years?  I think that this is a reasonable
question to ask.

Even a group that has a counter-revolutionary agenda may have
valid criticisms of the Cuban government and may attract
supporters who are drawn to the valid criticisms and fail to
understand the core agenda of the group (which is often hidden,
so to speak, in the fine print).  For example my correspondent
asked his contact (a Cuban exile that supports the CRSDP) whether
it would be possible to challenge the Cuban Communist Party's
"complete historical capitulation to the Mexican PRI in terms of
relating [to] the Mexican masses" and was told that he was a
"payaso" [clown].  What I would like to know from José is whether
such accusations are completely devoid of substance (ie: both the
attitude of the CCP to the PRI and the lack of possibilities of
effectly challenging it).

I have heard all kinds of vague generalities: these people are a
fifth column of imperialism, they tell lies, they oppose the
revolution, Cuba is under seige, conditions are very harsh and
sacrifice is required.  And all of these generalities may be
true.  But this still does not tell us concretely why the
leaflets of this counter-revolutionary group would be so
dangerous that they can't be dealt with by other means (ie:
workers reading a few of the leaflets, deciding that they are a
waste of valuable paper, and thereafter telling the distributors
to put their leaflets where the sun don't shine, etc).

I think the answer that José is hinting at is that the Cuban
revolution, in many ways, is still weak--that if
counter-revolutionary groups were allowed to spread
leaflets--that a section of the population would believe what was
in the leaflets--and that it would be difficult to counter their
counter-revolutionary propaganda with revolutionary propaganda.

This is what José has not said explicitly.  But it fits in with
the logic of his position.

I think that two of the big questions here, in relation to Cuba,
are (1) whether the suppression that takes place is necessary and
(2) whether this suppression is directed only at
counter-revolutionaries.

I am skeptical on both questions but I do not have enough facts
to make a solid case.  I have studied the issue of proletarian
democracy both in the abstract and in relation to some concrete
issues.  But I am largely ignorant about Cuba and cannot prove
what I consider to be likely.

But I can explain the reasons for my skepticism.

Many of the defenses that José has made for the Cuban government
do sound very similar to those that others have made for the
hopelessly corrupt Soviet and Chinese governments.  Of course
this, by itself, proves nothing.  But it does show the need to be
skeptical and seek facts.  I also checked on the web to see what
Castro's position was on the brutal massacres that killed an
estimated two to three thousand people in Beijing and other
cities in June 1989.  I had heard that Castro supported these
brutal actions.  I could not confirm this directly but I did find
that in 1993 Fidel Castro presented the Jose Marti Order to the
president of China, Jiang Zemin--who supported the massacres.

Of course this is also not proof that Castro's government exists
as a parasite on the backs of Cuban workers in the same way that
the Chinese government exploits and represses the Chinese working
class.  But neither does it inspire confidence.

For that matter were there any protests in Cuba against the 1989
massacres?  It would not be a good sign, from my perspective, if
there were none--because it would suggest either that the Cuban
population has been forced into a position of passivity--or that
there were few possibilities to organize such protests.  I also
saw some material on the web that someone from Cuba who opposed
the 1989 massacres had been arrested although, considering the
general unreliability of sketchy and distorted bourgeois news
reports, it is difficult to get a clear idea of what the real
reasons were for the arrest.

So at this point I will simply ask José: if I were living in Cuba
and concluded that the 1989 massacre of thousands of Chinese
workers deserved a strong protest--would there be avenues for me
to organize these protests within the existing system?  Or would
I find myself arrested as a "counter-revolutionary"?  Or would I
simply be warned to keep my mouth shut?  Or is it your view that
Cuban workers should not concern themselves with issues such as
this?

I will also add here that I was not at all impressed with the
reply that José gave as to why there were no protests in Cuba
against the Contadora "peace process" that was imposed on
Nicaragua by US imperialism.  José replied that to have opposed
this imperialist blackmail would have been "demented".  José said
that the Sandinista government was weak and had no choice but to
accept the terms of this retreat.  Possibly this is true.  But
that would still be no reason to have cheered to the skies this
imperialist diplomatic manuever (as did most of the left in the
US and elsewhere) instead of exposing it as brutal imperialist
blackmail.

It is one thing to have a conception of tactics and where to aim
the main blow.  But it is never right to use this as an excuse to
lie to the masses.


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