Return to materialism

Lenin and the mass working-class movement

To fully discuss these concepts it is best to go back and outline what Lenin advocated and did. Lenin was a member of the broad workers' movement in Europe, called at the time the Second, or Socialist, international. That mass movement found some expression in Russia and eventually was quite influential among working people and the intelligentsia since it advocated an end to the Czarist dictatorship and the establishment of democracy, the end of feudal relations on the land, a land reform and an eight-hour day.

In Lenin's day all organizations associated with socialism were rife with debate. All kinds of views permeated the movement and various newspapers advocated one or other point of view. One wing of the movement was concerned that the power of the movement had made it possible for leaders to benefit personally. For instance trade union leaders or elected members of parliament, by working out deals or compromises with representatives of capital, could betray the interests of workers in return for privileges for themselves.

Such people were referred to as "reformist", meaning they sought only to gain some reforms within the framework of capitalism, rather than fight for a new, socialist society. Lenin began arguing that in order to fight against such a disorientation of the socialist movement and in order to challenge capital it was necessary to have a more solid movement, both organizationally and ideologically. He noted that natural leaders arise in the day-to-day struggles of working people and that the role of the socialist party was to organize these leaders into an organization to act as a pole of attraction, a class-struggle alternative.

The goal was to help mobilize the whole working class, to unite the class in action. The starting point of Lenin's conception was the existing mass movement. That was just taken for granted in his days. Everyone was talking about what a movement or organization clearly competing for the support of the masses of workers should do.

Lenin's concept of a "party" has no meaning without a mass base. Certainly small groups could appear in a country to begin work to establish the ideas of socialism among their working people but such groups to Lenin were simply propaganda groups such as had existed in Russia in the 19th century.

Lenin's attitude towards such groups, how they should be structured, how they should organize, always depended on their specific circumstances. In the world Lenin functioned in, that was prehistory. He was arguing about what to do once the working class as a whole had its own independent movement both economically (unions) and politically (party).

The concept of a "correct program" abstracted from the actual process of a living mass struggles is the opposite of Lenin's method, which saw the program as something that evolves, itself a process, defined by not only a mass movement but, in Lenin's situation, a mass movement involved in revolutionary struggles. Lenin and all those around him generally had a materialist view of ideas and recognized that they reflected material events.

In the period of revolutionary upsurge in Russia from 1903 to 1918, in which Lenin's ideas of organization and party building were formed, there was no such thing as an abstract "correct program". The party's program clearly evolved. It was a process. It was repeatedly changed and modified. Looking back to that period you can see how fast positions taken by Lenin's party changed, how the organization was in continuous debate. Differences were the norm, not the exception. Major mistakes could be overcome because the power of the developing mass movement helped Lenin's organization readjust.

Lenin opposes soviets

One example was Lenin's opposition to the soviets, (workers' councils). With hindsight we can see that Lenin was sectarian in counterposing building a party to the councils. This position had serious negative effects in the struggles of the 1905 revolutionary explosion and its aftermath. Leaders in Lenin's party opposed him, positions were taken and carried out against his positions, ideas were publicly debated about these differences when legally possible.

Lenin's error was compounded when the revolutionary upswing of 1905 went into decline and he insisted the movement was not yet in decline. Quickly, as reality indicated otherwise, Lenin reversed his positions, including on the Soviets, which after 1906 he claimed should be supported.

Lenin's party, having tens of thousands of followers deeply rooted in the mass movement, rose and declined in active membership rather sharply depending on events. For instance, in 1912, after the defeat of the 1905 revolution, not a single unit of Lenin's party was still in existence or at least holding meetings in Moscow, the largest city of Russia.

Of course, that did not mean that thousands did not continue to agree with Lenin's party, but the repression made it difficult for its supporters to meet. The party that Lenin, the individual, participated in, which became known in history as the Bolshevik Party (meaning the Majority Party in Russian) had little, if any, similarity to what is often today called a Leninist party.

The idea that a group of a few hundred people who are not in the leadership of any mass movement, much less integrally involved in leading the working class as a social force, can be referred to as a Leninist party and having a "correct program" would never have crossed Lenin's mind. In 1918 Lenin would refer to such an idea as clowning.

Idealist error

By the 1940s, however, within the Trotskyist movement a conception had taken root that no matter how small or disconnected from the workers movement a group might be, if it had the "correct" program and a cadre, it was a Leninist Party and would eventually "win".

This was the "proven" Leninist way. What the Trotskyist movement did as a whole was drop the direct involvement with the living mass movement as a prerequisite for the development of a party. Thus "program" was separated from its social roots. In effect, program was separated from practice. Ideas were separated from their material basis.

In doing this, an idealist error, philosophically, was introduced. The first point of any program that has any meaning, and certainly one in which the word "correct" could in anyway be used, is one that has shown that a leadership link has been made with the working masses. Otherwise correct program begins to simply mean comments about the world, past history, predictions of events for the future, and so on.

The actual mass link is itself part of the premise of a program. For instance, recognizing in one's head what really happened in the history of the USSR is a good and useful thing. But it is not a program. Stating general outlines of the realities of capitalist society is useful, but it is not a program. A program is a living, complex process relating to the ongoing struggle that permeates our class-divided society — a struggle that is occurring now at this moment in a million different forms and at a whole spectrum of levels.

The rise of splits

But in this framework what then happens when two leaders disagree? Once you are functioning in this sectarian framework there is no way to resolve differences, and given that the very existence of the organization and its future success is believed to be tied to this ever-important "correct program", differences become very threatening.

Within the Trotskyist organizations a culture developed which formally claimed to allow differences to exist but in reality crushed any dissent. While the roots were very different, the forms in which dissent was crushed in Trotskyist groups had many similarities to how Stalinist groups crushed dissent. Of course, in Trotskyist groups dissidents were expelled, not shot.

Differences in sectarian groups inevitably led to splits. After a split, two organizations, each with its own "correct program", often confronted each other. The logic of this process was the proliferation of sects and cults. That process exploded within the Trotskyist movement.

The evolution of some of the groups became quite bizarre. Splits occurred in ever-growing numbers as groups became less and less involved in the living movements of their own countries. In fact, all social movements and mass struggles were more and more seen simply as recruiting arenas for the cult/sect with the correct program.

Cadres became the defenders of the Holy Grail, and usually there was in each group just one "Lenin of today" who could interpret and adjust the "program". If the "correct program" was maintained the masses would some day come. A sort of religious "our day will come" corollary developed to the correct program.

Posadas, Moreno, Healy, Barnes

One such cult was that of Juan Posadas. I had the opportunity to meet Posadas in 1960 in Havana, Cuba. This, man was clearly certifiable. He believed he could communicate with his dog. When the dog died the Posadista Central Committee sang the internationals at his grave. Posadas also believed he could communicate the situation in Vietnam to his six-month-old grandchild. In later years, when the child was five, he was added to Posadas political bureau for his enlightening views.

Posadas advocated nuclear war and other utterly insane views. His origin was in the Trotskyist movement and he had hundreds of followers, primarily in Latin America. I understand there are still a few Posadistas in the world although Posadas passed away some time ago.

Moreno in Argentina was another quite colorful, but slightly more rational cultist with thousands of supporters. In England you had Healy, a man clearly deranged, who believed anyone who disagreed with him had to be an FBI agent. Yet he also had thousands of devoted followers, including the movie actress Vanessa Redgrave.

While the three mentioned above may have been somewhat extreme expressions of this phenomenon, in general all groups calling themselves Trotskyist had elements of sectarian and cult-like existence by the 1960s.

Also, amazing as it might seem, while these organizations produced endless written materials on all kinds of political phenomena, almost nothing can be found seeking to explain this astounding phenomena of the cultification of Trotskyist organizations. If you look closely you will see some of the same processes at work, although in a less extreme form in other sect/cults like that of the Lambertist in France or the ISO out of England.

The one group that I had an opportunity to experience personally was the development of the Barnes cult in the United States SWP. The SWP today is completely disconnected from reality. Its cult leader holds a series of bizarre political positions evolving in a manner quite similar to Moreno or Posadas.

The question is, why did groups, whose origins are in the struggle against Stalinism, evolve in this direction? This includes every group in the world influenced by James Cannon, with the exception of the DSP in Australia. What are the material roots of this phenomenon?

Since the DSP was originally formed in association with the North American SWP, it is of value for the DSP to look clearly At the origins of the sectification of the North American SWP.

The SWP did not become a sect because of Barnes the individual. Barnes himself is a product of what was wrong in the SWP. In my opinion the problem goes back to the isolation of the SWP from roots in the mass movement and involvement in living struggles. The idealist error I have mentioned above become codified in the outlook of the SWP beginning in the 1930s. Its sect-like nature was already evident in the late 1930s and early 1940s, but became more pronounced as time went on.

Crises of the US SWP

With the recruitment of a new generation in the 1960s the SWP faced a crisis. Its participation in the antiwar movement around Vietnam brought it somewhat closer to involvement in a living struggle, an important encounter with reality and the political tempo of the nation, something it had not really experienced since the labor struggles of the 1930s, in which the SWP did have some important participation.

The impact and conflict of its sectarian idealism and its materialist involvement in a struggle created an interesting reaction in the culture of the SWP. Its older leadership, especially that of Farrell Dobbs, but also others such as Tom Kerry, felt threatened. Others, such as Joe Hansen and George Breitman, had mixed feelings. I believe some were starting to understand the sectarian nature of the SWP, especially Joseph Hansen.

Barnes was the youth "leader" hand-picked to fight against the introduction of reality and potential de-dogmatization of the SWP's sect-like existence. In the 1970s Barnes began a conscious campaign to rid the SWP of its infection by people not molded into sect-like thinking. In private discussion Barnes spoke openly of the need to drive out over 50 per cent of the membership of the SWP.

The political cover for this campaign was an ultraleft, workerist campaign consciously designed to drive out those not willing to accept a cult-like existence. This campaign was, of course, believed in the minds of people like Barnes and Dobbs to be defending the "correct program" protecting the "proletarian" SWP from the petty-bourgeois infection resulting from the rapid recruitment of members from university campuses.

This campaign had an ultraleft side, politically, since it had to promise the remaining members that all this was necessary to get ready for huge new opportunities, of which the petty-bourgeois members of student origin would only be in the way. The fact was, of course, that the remaining members had the same background as those driven out.

But by 1978 the SWP was passing resolutions talking about the coming "battles for power" and other projections totally disconnected from reality. The growth of ultraleft positions spread to international issues like the rather famous article that the SWP printed accusing the FSLN of being the main block to success in the struggle against Somoza in Nicaragua.

The SWP even held public forums titled "Why the FSLN failed" just months before Somoza was overthrown by the FSLN. After the FSLN victory the SWP shifted its position towards the FSLN.

In the end all of this had nothing to do with real events in the United States politically, or within the working class. It was a clash of reality with a sectarian methodology deeply entrenched in the SWP.

While this process was going on, one exceptional leader within the sphere of influence of the US SWP, who had his origins in the mass struggle against the war in Vietnam, stood up to Barnes. That was Jim Percy, of Australia. He sensed something was deeply wrong. The SWP veered for a short period of time away from its sectarian existence in the late 1960s and early 1970s, only to come back in spades to consolidate its sect idealist political framework.

Leftist politics

The appearance of the "correct program", "we are a Leninist Party" ideology has tended to always require a "leftist" view of reality and prognostications that cataclysmic events will soon catapult the sect into importance. This phenomenon is also to be found in all cults.

Posadas was more clear and extreme, since he projected two events that would make his cult the center of all world events. He projected nuclear world war or the landing of extraterrestrials as the catalyst for his group's ascendency.

The "leftist" side is necessary because the sect members have to be more radical than any living movement. The attraction of association with a living process has to be broken to maintain the sect. This requires forever knocking any positive development in social movements. Analyses have to be made continuously showing the failings of all movements and their inevitable collapse and failure.

This is done by looking at mass social movements primarily in a formalistic, programmatic framework. Since all mass movement by definition have only a partly formulated program it is easy enough to show their "failure to understand".

The history of the SWP is full of such examples. I will list a few here to help show concretely how, in effect, the policies of the SWP have always been politically leftist or dogmatic and sectarian. This is true not just for the period that the fully developed Barnes cult appeared, but almost from its origins in the struggle against Stalinism in the early 1930s.

One could argue that this was inevitable because of objective conditions. Whenever a group like the SWP attempted to engage in mass work it ran into the complete dominance of the left by the Stalinist Communist party. That fact is helpful in understanding what happened, but it does not change the fact of the SWP's dogmatic positions.

In the mid-1930s the SWP opposed the formation of a Labor Party in the United States. Nothing could have be more incorrect, since the rise of the CIO unions in the 1930s created the potential and a great deal of interest in launching a political party of labor. The failure, objectively, in United States history of such a party forming is one of the limiting factors on the labor movement today.

The blame for this failure falls primarily on the Communist Party and its Popular Front line, which was projected by Stalin to back the Democrats and on the Social Democrats, who also backed the Democrats. The SWP justified its anti-labor-party policy by counterposing a mass revolutionary socialist party to a labor party.

This confuses program with mass struggle in an idealist manner. The error is sectarian and similar to Lenin's error of opposing the Soviets. (Or of the DSP saying it does not advocate an Alliance like that of New Zealand but instead a more "politically correct" formation.)

Once the potential for the rise of a Labor Party passed, the SWP shifted to a position of advocating a Labor Party. In the early 1930s the SWP called Nicaraguan revolutionary leader Cesar Sandino a "traitor" to his people. This was explained with ultraleft arguments regarding Sandino's lack of a correct program, and so on. By the 1940s the SWP was opposing the proposal to vote an equal rights amendment (ERA) for women's rights to the US constitution. This was opposed as a petty-bourgeois proposal that working women were not interested in.

In the late 1940s, when the African-American nationalist movement began to grow, seeking to develop pride in its own community and culture, the SWP opposed it as a reactionary movement. In the late 1940s, when Farrell Dobbs had the first opportunity to speak on national radio to a large audience of the North American populace he brought them "greetings" from the Fourth International. In case anyone has any doubts, let me assure them nothing could be a more utterly sectarian approach to politics then to give a talk in such a manner, which had nothing to do with the realities of the North American people.

What this shows is how deeply imbedded sectarianism was in the culture of the SWP. In more recent times I could give a whole long list of positions, which most DSPers would quickly recognize as leftist or sectarian errors, since I lived the experience.

For instance when the civil rights movement exploded in the south of the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the SWP opposed its young members joining that living struggle. The explanation was made that we had the "correct program" and we needed to concentrate recruitment to our program rather than involvement in a struggle where we had no branches.

When the Vietnam War was coming to an end, the Vietnamese asked for world support in its effort to force the United States to the negotiating table. The SWP opposed the demonstrations that then ensued demanding the United States accept a negotiated peace settlement. When radicals in California launched an effort to establish a radical electoral formation called the Peace and Freedom Party (PFP), the SWP opposed it, denouncing the PFP as a liberal-bourgeois party.

The utter absurdity of that position was, of course, explained by looking at its platform rather than seeing the meaning and direction of the effort to launch candidates that would oppose the war in Vietnam and fight for social justice at home.

All of the above points occurred while James P. Cannon was alive. Cannon will go down in history as a giant for standing up to Stalinism and trying to keep alive the ideals of the early socialist movement, but Cannonism is not what the SWP literature claims: the Americanization of Leninism.

The SWP is not, nor has ever been, a Leninist party. It is absurd to think so, because it was always isolated from the working people as a social layer and as a movement. At best, it was a propaganda group that advocated the formation of a Leninist party, but existence was sect-like existence, and its political positions were ultraleftist or sectarian.

Differences

The culture that develops inside organizations with the we-have-the-correct-program view, as mentioned, never really allows differences although in the formal statutes it always claims to accept the right to minority views.

The SWP never had a culture permitting differences. Every group that ever raised any questions regarding any of its policies was eventually driven out.

In this sense it had no resemblance to the party Lenin led, which was continuously alive with debate and differences. Lenin's party had various newspapers that would debate each other publicly. In fact, in the 1908 period when Lenin was arguing against one grouping in his organization he accused them of hiding their minority views and not publishing them in their public organ.

I do not think most DSP members would think it Leninist for a minority to start up its own public organ and publish its differences with the majority. Well, that was the reality of Lenin's party. In that specific case Lenin even argued that the minority should not use the excuse that the party was not in a pre-convention discussion period to not publicly publish their minority views.

Страницы: 1, 2, 3