Re: Democratic centralism: myth and reality

[Dayne Goodwin <dayneg@xxxxxxxx>]

Lou,
[in response to both your original Oct. 10 message on this subject and
your Oct. 10 response to my reference to Paul LeBlanc's book]
I'm glad to see that you're making a distinction between Lenin's
democratic centralism and the (U.S.)SWP's democratic centralism. Sometimes
i get the impression that you want to indoctrinate people on this list
against even trying to build a genuine vanguard revolutionary workers
organization, a 'Leninist-style' party.
        It has been a while since i read LeBlanc's book and i don't
remember it for however he evaluated Cannon but for its main purpose - a
deeper understanding of Lenin's party building work.  I think it is at
least a worthwhile antidote to the undemocratic 'democratic centralism' -
so-called "Leninism" - with which we who joined 'revolutionary parties' in
the 1960s and 1970s in the U.S. were indoctrinated.
        I'm encouraged that many of us who were party activists in that
period have learned that "democratic centralism" is an 'algebraic' formula
that can be filled with much more democratic and much less centralist
content.  I agree with your rejection of Morris Stein's 'monopolism in
politics' view.
        Presumably you would agree that a revolutionary socialist
organization does need to provide education on marxist theory and
collectively engage in learning from past revolutionary socialist
struggles and experiences.  Recommending that newcomers read Lenin or
LeBlanc would be an exercise in education, not indoctrination.
        I think those of us who joined the SWP benefited from a
comparatively good education in marxism (cf. my friend Max Elbaum's memoir
on the Maoist-Stalinist milieu, _Revolution in the Air_, in which he tries
IMO to put the best possible positive light on the simplistic 'marxism'
learned there).  I joined the Young Socialist Alliance in early 1969 in
remote Logan, Utah.  I think i benefited from exposure to SWP marxist
analyses and perspectives while my isolation protected me from the worst
of SWP organizational practice.
        In 1970 i went to the first SWP conference in Oberlin, Ohio where
i attended a multi-session class on 'SWP Organizational Principles' taught
by Farrell Dobbs.  The gist of it was a history of every significant
minority who had dared to question the central leadership and was soon
found out to be a dangerous 'petit-bourgeois' tendency which was summarily
purged.
        I became skeptical of SWP internal organizational practice while
enthusiastic about the primarily constructive, vanguard role the SWP was
playing in building the mass anti-Vietnam war movement(which the Logan YSA
replicated in northern Utah with some success).  I resisted the constant
pressure to move to a location where there was an SWP branch, except for
two periods of a total of about a year-and-a-half i spent in northern
California mainly working in the anti-war movement - while still dodging
the pressure to move from the YSA into "the" party.
        It wasn't until the SWP committed to building a branch in Salt
Lake City in 1976 that i finally joined and became a founding member of
the new branch.  My participation in building that new SWP branch gave me
an opportunity for fairly thoroughgoing examination of the SWP's
organizational practice, partly because of the direct involvement of
national SWP leadership.  My disagreements with SWP internal
organizational practices deepened.
        But i didn't see a better marxist organization around, so it
wasn't until the SWP really 'went off the rails' in the early 1980s that i
definitively walked away.
        Dayne

-   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -
On Thu, 10 Oct 2002, Louis Proyect wrote:
>
> >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
>       . . .
>  . . . 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. . . .
>       . . .
>  . . . 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. . .  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. . . .
>
> Louis Proyect













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