[PEN-L:9398] Re: The discussion about social democracy

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There has never been a successful resolution of the tension between
reformist groups such the SP or CP, and smaller Trotskyist or Maoist groups
that are self-avowedly revolutionary. (You PEN-L folks should count your
blessings that you don't seem attract anybody from the latter camp).

In countries like the US, England, Japan and France, etc., a left group
seeking massive influence must *deliver the goods* to the working-class.
Such goods include leading successful union battles, ending racial
discrimination, providing jobs, etc.

In the pursuit of the delivery of such goods, there is a powerful temptation
to use electoral politics as a mechanism. In point of fact, electoral
victories of reformist parties have actually made the lives of English and
French workers *better*.

Now the paradigm of small "Marxist-Leninist" groups is to reject this model
as reformism. They position themselves as "revolutionary". However, they
almost always lack the ability to deliver the goods and remain small and
isolated. They see their smallness and isolation as a vindication of their
revolutionary politics, since their function is to preserve a rock-hard
revolutionary program on the shelf for those explosive times when the
workers are good and ready to adopt them. They will of course look them up
in the phone-book at the proper time under the subject heading "REVOLUTION".

The real task is to confront the capitalist class along all of its weak
points, and to act in a consistently revolutionary fashion. By
revolutionary, I don't mean insurrectional. There is often a gross
confustion between the two terms. What I mean by revolutionary is to engage
in popular and working-class struggles on *their own terms* and attempt to
sharpen the class lines while doing so.

Lenin's concept of a vanguard is a useful guideline to the sort of activity
that we should aspire to. In a discussion with other Russian Social
Democrats, Lenin said that the German Social Democracy was the model of the
type of vanguard that was needed:

"Why is there not a single political event in Germany that does not add to
the authority and prestige of the Social-Democracy? Because Social-Democracy
is always found to be in advance of all the others in furnishing the most
revolutionary appraisal of every given event and in championing every
protest against tyranny...It intervenes in every sphere and in every
question of social and political life; in the matter of Wilhelm's refusal to
endorse a bourgeois progressive as city mayor (our Economists have not
managed to educate the Germans to the understanding that such an act is, in
fact, a compromise with
liberalism!); in the matter of the law against 'obscene' publications and
pictures; in the matter of governmental influence on the election of
professors, etc., etc."

In other words, a vanguard should defend the right of bourgeois politicians
to take office, the right of artists like Andre Serrano to create smut
without fear of censorship and the right of a university to choose its own
professors. Golly, doesn't Lenin sound like the kind of person you'd want to
invite to dinner. Where's all the horrible stuff about sending dissidents to
prison?

There have been two very harmful legacies of the Bolshevik revolution. The
first one people are generally familiar with and that is the industrializing
model of Stalin, that was based on fiat and was part and parcel of an
authoritarian regime.

Another legacy has been the belief that the early Comintern model was
genuinely Leninist. This model was in fact devised by Zinoviev and has
little to do with the actual history of the Bolshevik Party. The Bolshevik
Party was simply a consistently left-wing socialist party which never held
back from the necessity of confronting capitalism *without compromise of
principle*. The Socialist Party of Eugene V. Debs has much more in common
with Lenin's party than the bizarre Trotskyist, pro-Chinese, or pro-Albanian
sect-cults of the 1960s which had reputations for undiluted "Marxism-Leninism".

Social democracy both in the Second International and Eurocommunist flavors
is exhausted, as are these sectarian caricatures of Lenin's party. I have a
project to show exactly how these caricatures came into existence. Although
it is targeted for the lunatic world of the Spoons marxism-international
list, I will cc you kind folks when it is ready. I guarantee it will be both
enlightening and amusing. Peter Bohmer, of course, is not permitted to read it.

Louis Proyect