Re: DSP on Cannon (Re: Camejo's article)

["Jose G. Perez" <jgperez@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I will go Louis's critique of the early years of the American CP one better.

I believe the essential mistake, the original sin, of Cominternism in the
USA
was its existence.

The founding of an American Communist Party (or actually, parties, there was
more than one) was a colossal sectarian political stupidity.

Unlike the European social democrats, the American Socialist Party did not
betray the worker's movement by supporting "its own" imperialism in the
great slaughter. Its most prominent leader, Eugene V. Debs, took
a righteous, revolutionary stance, all the way to solidarizing with the
Bolshevik revolution and going to prison for his antiwar agitation. From a
prison cell in Atlanta, the SP ran Eugene Debs for president in 1920 -- a
proud moment in U.S. revolutionary history, which the oh-so-Bolshevik
American comintern sectarians would have nothing to do with.

The tendency of American rebels to try to make a carbon copy here of what
they imagined had been the organizational forms and tactics that brought
about the Russian victory is certainly understandable. In the 1960's we saw
a very similar thing in relation to Cuba, with the guerrilla "foco" becoming
the magin silver bullet that would slay the capitalist werewolf, much as the
"Leninist Party" of the 1920s. And, again, in the 80's, we saw attempt to
clone the succesful 1979 Nicaraguan experience, albeit this time with a
little bit more savvy, but still it didn't work.

It SHOULD have been the role of the more experienced Russian comrades to
urge their American comrades to follow a more "American" path. A party
running the likes of Eugene Debs for President from prison in 1920 should
have been plenty revolutionary enough for American Communists. If it was
possible for the Bolsheviks to cohabit with the Mensheviks in the RSDLP
until  the eve of WWI, and at the grass roots level, in the organizations
that did the actual political work, until 1917 in some cases, then shacking
up with the likes of the Debs's comrades in post WWI America should have
been no problem.

Worse, the American Bolsheviks not only walked out of the SP (and into
underground parties), they also abandoned the IWW, thereby handing on a
platter this promising class-struggle indsutrial union formation to
anarchist decentralizers who in no time flat succeeded in  reducing it to
complete irrelevance. All this stuff about 1925 "bolshevization" and
"factory nuclei" of the CP needs to be seen in THAT light.

And AFTER they wrecked what was universally regarded as THE workers party,
and one which, in the main, and especially through its most prominent
leader, passed with flying colors the acid test of imperialist war, and
AFTER they wrecked a splendid class struggle oriented industrial union
movement, THEN the American comrades want to "Bolshevise" and
"proletarianize" themselves by purging right-wing "Loreite" tendencies
because they wanted to play footsie with a populist electoral formation. If
the benighted cominternists hadn't BLOWN UP the mass workers party that
existed prior to the 1920s, and if they hadn't let the decentralizers hijack
the IWW into complete irrelevance, they probably would not have had that
tactical problem in 1924, the SP itself could have served as a vehicle for
expressing the resentment of small farmers and shopkeepers against big
capital, or would have been in a perfect position to ally with such
formations as arose from that unrest.

Jim Cannon's big criticism of Eugene Debs was that Debs didn't "get" the
organizational question. He wasn't a factionalist, he wouldn't get into the
pit for the mud-wrestling at party conventions to prevent wrongly-worded
resolutions influenced by the reformist right wing from being adopted, he
maintained comradely and even personally friendly relations with the "sewer
socialists." Debs himself may have been a Bolshevik from the tip of his head
to the sole of his feet, but some of his best friends were reformists.

Maybe Debs was wrong, I'm not sure, but one thing I am certain of is Cannon
was wronger. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the methods and
ideas about the "organization question" Cannon picked up in the Comintern
have been shown by history to be wrong. Zinovievist-Cominternism, "Leninist"
party building, "Bolshevik" organization is wrong.

The approach outlined in the Communist Manifesto, and especially in the
section on Communist and Proletarians, and in other writings by Marx and
Engels is the right one.

A few key ideas (at least, I think they are):

    First,  Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth: Communism is a *movement,*
with all that implies. The Communist *movement* is an organic byproduct of
capitalism and the class struggle it engenders. Precisely because it is a
*movement* there are different people MOVING in this direction who are at
all sorts of different levels of political understanding and ideological
development.

    Communism is the movement of the workers who become conscious of their
position as part of a class in capitalist society and understand, at least
at some rudimentary level, that to abolish the position of the proletariat
as an exploited and oppressed class, it is necessary to abolish capitalism.

    It is also, and very significantly in terms of this list, a "movement"
among layers of the petite bourgeoisie, and especially the intelligentsia,
who precisely because of their intermediate situation between the big
contending classes, often wind up becoming firm adherents of one side or the
other, and because of their background and training, provide the ideological
exponents of the side in the class struggle they have "defected" to.

    Both historically, and in terms of the development of individuals, the
first ideological, "spontaneous" expression of Communism is likely to be
some sort of romantic utopianism, and its first strategic political
expression, conspiratorial putschism, Blanquism.

    But when the movement becomes massive, the ideological and
political development of its members tends to become quite different. Masses
of people move towards communism by partial measures focused around concrete
problems; and by a desire and sense of strength from engaging in collective
mass political action. They may not have thought through at all the idea of
expropriating the capitalists class as a whole; but they very much are
convinced that this one particular bastard that is making their life
miserable needs to be put out of commission. They may not yet see the need
to take state power into their own hands, but they very much insist that the
state act on their behalf and in their interests in dealing with
such-and-such an sob or problem.

Another key idea: parties, real parties, are a CLASS question. The Chávez
party in Venezuela undoubtedly has organized expressions and forms, but the
Chávez party that massively mobilized and drove the coup plotters from the
presidential palace went way beyond and above that: it was the more
conscious sections of the working people mobilized as a political force in a
direct struggle over political power. The task is NOT to "build" the party
of the working class but to transform the working class into a "party."

    Think of party here not as a "political organization" but as a side to a
dispute. The working class needs to become a class-for-itself, a conscious
side in the political struggle.

Another idea: there is NO SUCH THING as "the organizational question" in
general, there is NO "classic model." Because a real communist party is the
organized expression of a class whose members have become part of the
communist movement, i.e., have become conscious of their class interests,
the specific, real, living, breathing organizational form that coheres and
transforms the movement into a fighting party in the strictest and narrowest
sense of the word depends entirely on the circumstances through which such a
development arises.

Final key idea: Linear scaling does not work. Size does matter. Quantity
changes into quality. A bean looks nothing like a beanstalk. If you want to
grow a mighty oak, you will look in vain if what you imagine that what you
start with is a tiny replica with microscopic leaves and branches.
Microscopic leaves and branches simply DON'T WORK. And if you came across a
just sprouted seedling, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between
this minute two-leaf wonder and those of countless other species unless you
had a cheat
sheet.

For Marx, Engels and Lenin, it was the totality of circumstances, and
especially the concrete political tasks, that determined organizational
forms. Marx and Engels, in particular, did not themselves take the
initiative to create ANY specific organizational forms or structures (unless
you count what's come to be known in history as "Dr. Marx's Circle" the
group of Marx's friends that met in a London pub in the 1850s). Marx and
Engels did not try to create organized structures for advanced workers to
join. They went the other way around. When they saw a structure that was an
organized expression of the more conscious elements of the workers movement,
THEY joined.

The organizational initiatives they themselves took tended more in the other
direction  -- to dispatch old forms that had overstayed their welcome.

Thus they deep-sixed the tightly-structured, disciplined Communist League
with the ink on the manifesto barely dry in 1848, because a revolution  had
broken out in Germany, and they thought the best vehicle for political work
was a broad political paper. They resurrected the League a year and a half
later, when they were forced back into exile, only to liquidate it again  a
couple of years later, when it became clear europe was in a prolongued
period of capitalist stability and political reaction without immediate
revolutionary prospects.

They joined the First International at its founding, but essentially
liquidated it when they felt it had outlived its usefulness, and instead
spent their time consulting and collaborating directly with national
parties, especially the German party.

In  its initial stages the only central structure of the second
international was Engels. Its initial congress was essentially a gabfest
only, leaving behind no organized structure. That was Engels's decision
based on the calculation that this would make it possible to draw in the
broadest array of forces.

This idea of a party "nucleus" that grows from small to big is wrong.
Biological organisms don't work that way and neither do political ones.

"Leninist party building" is simply NOT a "strategy," never was, never will
be.

José



~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.