Re: On organisation II

[Jurriaan Bendien <j.bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

subscriber Macdonald writes:

        I disagree. The reason that new generations have been able to read 
Trotsky
has to do with not the crazed attempts at copying his party, but rather
books of great lucidity like Deutscher's Stalin and three part [biography]
on Trotsky, as well as magazines like the NLR.

        I agree Deutscher's works were very important. In fact Pierre Frank said
once that no other books were as important in bring new people into the
Fourth International than Deutscher's biographies. However Deutscher was
not the only important writer, there were many others. Mandel sold more
books than Deutscher.
        The reason people were able to read much of Trotsky (and many other
Marxist writers) at all, was because FI sections organised to have his
books translated, printed and published.
        People such as George Saunders did a tremendous job translating 
Trotsky's
important political writings into English, and many similar people did the
same in other countries. I am appreciative of that because I have done
translation work myself, so I know what it involves.
        Deutscher believed after the fiasco of Stalinism that there was nothing
much that could be done, except to write a few good books that might
inspire a future generation - when the gulf between the idea of revolution
and social reality closed up again. The FI he argued was "still-born",
because its foundation wasn't based on a successful working-class
revolutionary movement. However he missed the real reason Trotsky and
others decided to go ahead with the FI.
        In a footnote to his short book "Trotsky: A study in the dynamic of his
thought", Ernest Mandel points out that Deutscher's view was really
idealist. If there wasn't any continuity of revolutionary PRACTICE, or
revolutionary ACTIVISM, then in the future there would not be anybody
around to read the books anyway, however good they might be. The tradition
would be wiped out and it would by then simply be irrelevant or unrecognised.
        In fact for most of today's teenagers the example of the Russian
revolution is as good as irrelevant. The concepts and theories of Marxism
will be relevant to them only insofar as they make sense of social reality
as it is now. Robin Blackburn said once "the main achievement of the 1968
generation in Europe was to create a new Marxist literature" and there is
something in that.
        Perry Anderson who took over NLR was inspired a lot by the FI and
specifically by Mandel from about 1968 onwards and thup to the early 1980s.
A lot of the people who wrote for NLR, were members or former members of FI
organisations. New Left Books published a lot of books written or
translated by, or brought to their attention by, members of the FI.
        The problem of organisation is at least in part connected with the 
problem
of how one can successfully assert ideas, meanings and theories different
from the status quo (such as, for example, on this mailing list). That is
why I think the points I have made are pertinent, and why I am not so
dismissive of a generation of militants in the past, who gave their lives
to communicate socialist and revolutionary alternatives.
        The problem with discussing the "model" of the Russian revolution and
Cuban revolution, is that, apart from mythology, you can very quickly get
bogged down in quarrels about correct interpretation.
        It seems more appropriate to seek out models and progressive tendencies 
in
the actual reality we are in now. The working classes in Cuba and Russia
were tiny at the time of the overturn of power and largely illiterate or
semiliterate. This is a very different picture from the educated, skilled
working classes in the advanced capitalist countries. They expect a culture
very different from Leninist and Stalinist villification. Biologically and
mentally the working class today is very different from 1917.
        Lenin's main achievement was to build a political apparatus with a clear
chain of command and a flexible attitude, which could be swung into action
in the context of a revolutionary crisis. But this apparatus itself was no
match for the initiatives of the working class itself, it was taken by
surprise time and again, lagging behind events. Furthermore Lenin had no
real answers to the problem of socialist construction. And the political
apparatus that he built, wasn't really well-suited to the task of socialist
construction. To a considerable extent it simply replaced or merged with
the Czarist political apparatus. That is why Leninism has only limited
relevance for us today, it doesn't have all the answers. It just tells us
that a group of really tough, intelligent people who are wellorganised can
conquer hegemony among the working class, and lead it in a revolutionary
crisis.
        One must furthermore be careful in drawing historical analogies with the
past as they are often really false analogies. If anything, what can be
learnt from political actors in the past is their methods, but even those
are often not well-described by historians. Most historical studies
concentrate on why events happened, not on how specifically individuals
achieved what they did. The amount of literature containing practical
details on the lives of great revolutionaries (how they did what they did)
is really astonishingly small.

Regards

J.