Re: Democratic centralism: myth and reality

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Just in case you're not already familiar with it, Lou, i think Paul
> LeBlanc's _Lenin and the Revolutionary Party_  (Humanities Press, 1990) is
> worth a read.  Dayne

Paul's book is very good, but he still holds out hope that something like
Cannon's SWP can be rebuilt.

http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/american_left/reply_to_leblanc.htm

Reply to Paul LeBlanc on his interpretation of the SWP

The "Bulletin in Defense of Marxism" is a magazine published by former
members of the Socialist Workers Party who were expelled in the early 1980s
for their opposition to the party's turn against Trotskyism. One of the
best known members of this group is Paul LeBlanc, who co-authored
"Trotskyism in the United States" with Alan Wald. Shortly after the book
was published, I wrote a review that appeared on this mailing list and on
the alt.politics.socialism.trotsky newsgroup. In the current issue of
BIDOM, LeBlanc answers my review as well as another critical review by
Peter Drucker, author of biography of Max Schachtman.

In my original review, I claimed that the problems of the SWP can be traced
to the early days of the Comintern and that "there is much more to be said
about this." I am now keeping that promise and recounting this tale of woe
in my series "The Invention of Marxism-Leninism."

Most of what LeBlanc writes is an indignant response to my claim that James
P. Cannon, the founder of the Socialist Workers Party, appears as a
"practically flawless leader" in LeBlanc's eyes. This simple observation,
which Drucker shares, prompts LeBlanc to offer up a laundry list of
Cannon's sins and peccadilloes, among which is a drinking problem.

The problem with Cannon was not his personal failings and I should have
probably made this clearer in my review. The problem was that he functioned
as a Zinovievist. His understanding of "Marxism-Leninism" was shaped by the
misconceptions of the early Comintern. He was at the 5th World Congress of
the Comintern, the infamous "Bolshevization" congress. So was Vincent R.
Dunne, another leader of the American Trotskyist movement. They were both
members of the Communist Party at the time. When they came back to the
United States, they helped to organize the CPUSA's own "Bolshevization"
convention which resulted in the type of crude witch-hunt against
ideological deviations that marked Zinoviev's Comintern and which has
characterized American Trotskyism since its infancy. This was Cannon's
problem, not his foibles as an individual.

Much more to the point is LeBlanc's apologia for Trotskyist leader and
arch-Cannonite Morris Stein's remark at a 1946 convention that Trotskyists
"can tolerate no rivals." This sectarian boast was singled out by Alan Wald
as evidence of deep-rooted problems in the Socialist Workers Party. Drucker
is also troubled by these words, as any sensible Marxist would be. What is
LeBlanc's excuse? He tries to put the remark in the context of rivalry
between competing "vanguard" formations:

"In a broad sense, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, and the Social
Democratic Federation could be seen as 'vanguard' formations within the
working class of the 1940s and early 1950s--in the sense of containing
experienced cadres and spheres of political influence that were important
to the functioning of organizations (especially trade unions) within the
labor movement. But can it be claimed that any of these rivals to the SWP
could be considered a REVOLUTIONARY vanguard."

This is an enormous amount of confusion from somebody who has written a
first-rate study of Lenin. LeBlanc should understand that the word vanguard
has a much more precise meaning in Marxist terms. The Social Democracy of
Norman Thomas did not consider itself a 'vanguard' and it is preposterous
to group such a formation with the Communist Party or the Socialist Workers
Party. The CP and the SWP did consider themselves 'vanguards' in the
Leninist sense, but this as at the heart of the problem, after all.

In what sense can a group of several hundred people be regarded as a
'vanguard'? In the early 1950s, the Socialist Workers Party had no
influence in the labor movement or the civil rights movement. Unlike the
Communist Party, it was simply a group of socialists whose life revolved
around circulating propaganda. They printed a newspaper, they ran election
campaigns, they held forums to promote socialist ideas. There is nothing
wrong with this.

What is wrong is to assume that this type of activity qualifies you as a
'vanguard'. Vanguards are political formations that have won the allegiance
of the masses. The Bolshevik Party was a vanguard party. So was the July
26th Movement and the FSLN of Nicaragua. The Trotskyist movement has never
been able to exercise this type of influence because it has a sectarian
approach that it learned in the Comintern. This approach involves making a
litmus test out of some doctrines and regarding all who fail the litmus
test as "opponents" who deserve to be destroyed. This stance is repellent.

The program for the American socialist revolution can not possibly exist in
the bulletins and position papers of self-declared vanguards. It has to
emerge out of struggle and it has to reflect the contradictory aspects of
the various sectors of the revolutionary movement. The FSLN was the product
of various tendencies in the Nicaraguan revolutionary movement whose
clashing points of view simply reflected contradictory aspects of the
Nicaraguan class struggle.

The Bolshevik Party had much more in common with the FSLN than many people
trained in "Marxism-Leninism" understand. Bukharin was the editor of an
official Bolshevik newspaper that published harsh attacks on Lenin's views
on the national question. These differences were always discussed in the
open. Lenin stated that the purpose of Iskra was to allow differences
within Russian Marxism to be argued out in public view.

The American Trotskyist movement has never functioned in this manner. It
had a core of ideas that new recruits were INDOCTRINATED into. I was
indoctrinated. So was Paul LeBlanc and so was Alan Wald. Genuine
revolutionary parties do not emerge in this fashion. They represent the
coming together of a revolutionary socialist current in society. The terms
of agreement are worked out in struggle. No single formation has an inside
track to what the program of this revolutionary party will be. BIDOM does
not have the inside track. Neither do I, nor does Alan Wald. The sooner we
recognize this, the better off we will be




Louis Proyect
www.marxmail.org


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