Re: Sectarian factionalism (was Updating Louis report (was DSP, etc))

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

>>I wonder if someone could clarify the term "Zinovievist" for me.  Do you
mean "Leninist" or Stalinist or something in between?<<

I think --for me, at least-- "Zinovievism" is the legacy of the first years
of the Comintern and specifically of several things which I consider
shortcomings.

1) The "democratic centralist" party as a question of principle, as
something qualitatively different from and counterposed to the range of
organizational functioning that existed within the Marxist movement until
WWI, depending on local circumstances, traditions and so on. A tightly knit
cadre of "professional revolutionists" functioning in a disciplined manner
is often necessary under underground conditions, but this doesn't mean  the
party is or ought to be limited to this layer.

2) Elevation of a "communists only" party into an overarching principle
which marked a break with the Marxist tradition and understanding of parties
as political expressions of social classes. In Europe there were many strong
arguments in support of building genuinely marxist parties counterposed to
the existing class organizations, the main one being that the existing party
leaderships and structures had betrayed and defected to the enemy class.
Extending this strategic approach to the United States and the third world
was politically unjustified, albeit understandable.

3) The intervention by the international center, and by the national party
centers, and so on down the line into the political life and organic
evolution of subordinate units.

Underlying this is the idea that a select group of ultramarxist leaders can
and should substitute their own insight, experience and wisdom for the
process of political development and maturation that the working class has
to go through to become a class conscious of its own place in society and
political potential.

"Zinovievism" set the stage and prepared the ground for the emergence of
Stalinism but it was not yet Stalinism. It was an ultraleft, voluntaristic
misreading of the lessons of the Russian Revolution, in many ways remarkably
similar to the mistakes made in Latin America from an attempt to carbon-copy
the experience in Cuba to other countries, and which are expressed with
admirable directness and succintness in Regis Debray's book, "Revolution in
the Revolution?"

I believe it is legitimate to call it Cominternism or Zinovievism or some
such, and not Leninism or Stalinism. Not Stalinism because I think Trotsky's
analysis of the degeneration of the Soviet republic and the nature of
Stalinism as the political expression of a consolidated petty-bourgeois
caste is right on the money. I do not believe the case can be made that
defense of the narrow nationalistic caste privileges of a bureaucratic layer
sitting atop the USSR is what the early comintern was  about.

And not Leninism or Bolshevism because I think the evidence is overwhelming
that Lenin's faction of the RSDLP did not function in this way and with
these kinds of norms; further, Lenin had relatively little involvement in
the post-1917 Comintern work and when he did devote some time to that work,
it was to REVERSE mistakes initiated or unleashed by the comintern
leadership. His pamphlet on ultraleftism sought to combat some of the worst
sectarian expressions that flow from the "real communists only" mentaility
common in the Comintern at the time. His critical comments on the
organizational resolution, which he said was a wonderful resolution, what a
shame it was that it was completely useless, went totally in  the opposite
direction of the cominternist approach to replicate all over the world what
(people imagined) had been done in Russia. Finally, during Lenin's lifetime
no one (except a few critics) spoke of "Leninism"  and Lenin himself never
claimed to have made some new or original contribution to Marxism or the
workers movement with some distinctively "Leninist"  theory of the party or
organization. When he did try to systematically present Marxist theory (for
example, in State and Revolution) he was extremely careful and responsible
in pointing out that which directly came from Marx or Engels and his own
commentary, generalizations and applications of the Marxist understanding of
the state. If Lenin had thought what's come to be called "Leninism" .
Finally, the approach of building communist or even workers parties as the
central strategic axis of revolutionaries throughout the colonial and
semicolonial world is wrong, and the building of such parties was not the
only strategic axis of post-1917 Bolshevik intervention in the
anti-imperialist, anticolonial movement (see, for example, the Baku Congress
of toilers of the east, and so on).

José


----- Original Message -----
From: "Shane Hopkinson" <s.hopkinson@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, June 29, 2002 10:30 AM
Subject: Sectarian factionalism (was Updating Louis report (was DSP, etc))




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