Re: World Party of Socialist Revolution

[Shane Hopkinson <s.hopkinson@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Steve

I'll keep this brief as well but I wanted to just make few comments to
keep the discussion going.  (It took me a while to get all the threads
together since I don't as a rule read posts with this kind of subject
line but then I noticed your contribution and traced the rest.)

Anyrate I fished out my comments on 'Return to Materialism' which
I think relates to my previous post in relation to revolutionary
theories and
movements.  I think he makes some good points about the effects of the
whole Soviet experience and asks some good questions (eg 'why did so
many people believe the Moscow show trials were real') and paints a
picture of Lenin's party very different from the one I have been exposed

to (though I do plan to read the books Ben referred to).  I wouldn't
consider it Leninist to start a minority newspaper within the party,
but apparently this was more Cannon than Lenin.  Of course the
situation's
very different in terms of the scale of operations.

From: "Steve Painter and Rose McCann" <spainter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

>Good idea, Shane. I've been preparing a longer post on this topic, but
was
>interrupted by a seminar I helped to organise in collaboration with Bob

>Gould and others.

So what was the outcome? I assume that this was grist to the mill for
Bob's
book on the DSP.

>> I had in mind to write some comments about Camejo's 'Return to
Materialism' but this seems to have disappeared as a discussion point >>

>Yes, Peter's document was written a few years ago and much of it is out
of
>date. Its strength wasn't so much its immediate conjunctural analysis
and
>the references to the Alliance, Causa R, etc,

Indeed it looks quite silly in retrospect but at the time there was a
lot of hope
in these new formations - including the Brazilian PT.  I heard Peter
speak at
the first political event I ever attended (The Green Left conference in
Sydney)
and he was great I still use his examples a lot talking to people.  The
DSP uses
his 'Liberalism, Ultraleftism, Mass Action' pamphlet which is a good
read though
it is a bit dated (1971, focus on anti-war movement).  As I was
re-reading it I
realised that there is a real tension though.  He argues that people
radicalise around
concrete demands and mobilise on these, so multiple issue groups and
watered
down demands that are 'too inclusive' are too liberal.  Once people
begin to
radicalise he says then they can make the links with other stuggles.
All of which is
I think fair enough.  He concludes with comments about SWP in elections
but he
finishes by saying 'our campaigns speak for the full program' but 'at
the same time
we will unite on any issue around which people are willing to struggle
against the
ruling class...'.  While there is no necessary contradiction here the
reference to the
'full program' flies in the face of the rest of the pamphlet.  I do
think the strength
of socialism is its ability to make these links but thats not really the
same as having
a 'full program'.  Maybe I'm making too much of this?.

I really do like this pamphlet though its needs updating.  We have less
problem with
ultraleftism now than then.  There is still liberalism - or even
neo-liberalism which has
had the effect of channelling dissent into lifestyle solutions and a
broad notion of
'anarchist' ideas - not so much the politics of the Anarchist tradition
that people of this
list will know but a kind of small-a anarchism, a general distrust of
parties, politicians,
authority which makes organisation difficult.

>but the fact that it took up
>the problem of the Marxist left's isolation, looked at some reasons for

>that, and challenged some assumptions about organisational forms that
were
>widely accepted, largely unquestioningly.

Perhaps though his argument does rest in part on the success of the
organisations
he talks of.  He argues that the DSP is not sectarian, has important
potential but
is still struggling with misconceptions from the past.  This is going to
be true of
any thinking organisation after the collapse of the USSR.  As Peter
Boyle has said
in his posts it was this process that led to the break with the FI - a
recognition that
Nicaragua showed our idea of revolution was wrong (and thus wrong about
Cuba).
With the launch of Green Left (Issue 500 out now!) the old 'party line'
paper was
abandoned and the "Links" project seems quite consistent with the
critique of
Comintermism debated in this list.  And there is an internal debate
about the
culture of the party.

>Hal Draper does a similar thing more thoroughly in Towards A New
Beginning:
>An Alternative to the Micro-sect
http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/works/1971/alt/index.htm

I think this piece by Draper is excellent (as is his other one on 'What
is to be done?'
which I referred to earlier).  In essence he looks at two forms of
socialist organising
- the sect and (what I would call)  movementism - that is carrying your
ideas into the
social movements.  He critiques the  sect as a form of organisation and
of sectarian
readings of the history of the bolshevik party.  Draper argues for the
formation of a
'political centre' which he says is a more accurate description of what
Lenin did.
The early years of the Russian revolution were those of organising a
'political centre'
around 'Iskra'.  If anyone knows more about this I would like to get
some refs. It
seems to me we have more to learn from this early bolshevik work than
anything
else at present.

It is not too clear exactly what this would look like in practice (and
I'm trying to aviod a simple label like 'anti-party-ism, liquidationism
or what have you).
He defines a 'political centre' as distinct from a sect as "  a
non-membership propaganda
/educational center as distinct from a membership group enclosed in
organizational walls
? has taken the concrete form a publishing enterprise and its editorial
board, with more
or less an organizational apparatus attached to it for the purpose of
carrying out the political
tasks of the center."  As examples of 'political centers he gives: 1.
Monthly Review but it
has no organisation crytallisation (no cadres) and no perspective of
party building.
2 Liberation (pacifist) 3. Dissent (social democrat).  The idea of a
political centre then is
to promote your ideas into the social movements.  In our case the key
political task of the
centre is 'the formation of the prerequisites for a revolutionary
socialist party' which are:
 1. to create a body of doctrine, a body of political literature
expressing a unified kind of  revolutionary socialism.  2. form cadres
of party workers and militants around this political
core 3. establish its ?kind of socialism? as a presence in left
politics, with its own  physiognomy
and name.

Sounds good, he seems to draw on the history well and offer up
possibilities to explore
alternative ways of organising which is helpful but its not clear to me
how this would work.
He argues that it would produce a newspaper (but that this would not be
given the priority
given by sects - what exaclt is he thinking of here?) and it would
education people
presumably around some kind of general Marxist framework - not a
program? How would
 we reach such an agreement about what should be taught (even just on
this list for example?)

How would a 'body of doctrine' differ from a party program?

He seems to have in mind something less centralised but why is a
'political centre' less
so?

In producing a newspaper to organise around how would this be different
to the old
'party-line' newspapers or the more broader ones like 'Green Left'.  How

would it be financed and distributed.







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