In the
first part of this article, we answered the accusation that we have become
“Leninists”, and that we have changed position on the organisational question.
We have shown not only that “Leninism” is opposed to our political principles,
but also that it aims to destroy the historic unity of the workers’ movement.
In particular, it rejects the struggle of the marxist lefts first within, then
outside, the 2nd and 3rd Internationals by setting Lenin against Rosa
Luxemburg, Pannekoek, etc. “Leninism” is the negation of the communist militant
Lenin. It is the expression of the Stalinist counter-revolution of the early
1920s.
We also reaffirmed that, while we have always identified with Lenin’s
struggle against economism and the Mensheviks for the construction of the
party, we also continue to reject his errors on the organisational question,
especially on the hierarchical and “military” nature of the organisation. On
the theoretical level, we disagree with Lenin on the question of class
consciousness, supposedly introduced into the class from the outside. At the
same time, these errors have to be situated within their historical context in
order to understand their importance and their real meaning.
What is the ICC’s position on What is to be done? and on Two
steps forward, one step back? Why do we say that these two texts of Lenin’s
are invaluable gains on the theoretical, organisational, and political level?
Do our criticisms of these texts - on points which are by no means secondary,
in particular on the issue of class consciousness in What is to be done?
- call into question our fundamental agreement with Lenin.
The ICC’s
position on What is to be done?tc "The ICC’s position on
What is to be done?"
tc ""
“It would be wrong and caricatural to oppose a substitutionist Lenin
of What is to be done? to the clear and healthy vision of a Rosa
Luxemburg or a Leon Trotsky (who during the 1920s was to become the ardent
advocate of the militarisation of labour and the all-powerful dictatorship of
the party!)”.[1]
Our position on What is to be done? begins with our method for
understanding the history of the workers’ movement, based on its unity and
continuity, as we explained in the first part of this article. It is not new,
and dates from the foundation of the ICC.
There are two main sections to What is to be done?, written in
1902. The first deals with the question of class consciousness and the role of
revolutionaries. The second deals directly with organisational questions. The
whole constitutes a merciless critique of the “economists”, who thought that
consciousness could develop within the working class solely on the basis of the
economic struggle. They therefore tended to under-estimate revolutionary
organisations, and to deny them any active political role: their task was
limited to “helping” the economic struggle. As a natural consequence of this
under-estimation of the role of revolutionaries, economism opposed the
formation of a centralised organisation able to intervene broadly and with one
voice on all questions, whether economic or political.
Lenin’s 1903 text One step forward, two steps back complements What
is to be done? on the historical level, and gives an account of the split
between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP which had just taken
place.
As we have said, the main weakness of What is to be done? is on
class consciousness. What was the attitude of other revolutionaries on this
question? Prior to the 2nd Congress, only the “economist”
Martinov opposed Lenin’s position. It was only after the Congress that
Plekhanov and Trotsky criticised Lenin’s incorrect idea of a consciousness
imported into the working class from outside. They were the only ones to reject
explicitly Kautsky’s position, adopted by Lenin, that “socialism and the
class struggle emerge in parallel, and do not engender each other [and
that] science is born not by the proletariat but by bourgeois intellectuals”.[2]
Trotsky’s response on this issue is correct enough, though it remains
very limited. We should not forget that we are in 1903, while Trotsky’s reply (Our
political tasks) dates from 1904. The debate on the mass strike had barely
begun in Germany, and was only
really to develop with the experience of 1905 in Russia. Trotsky clearly
rejects Kautsky’s position, and stresses the danger of substitutionism inherent
in it. But although Trotsky makes a virulent attack on Lenin’s organisational
positions, he does not distinguish himself completely from Lenin on the
consciousness issue. Indeed, he understands and explains the reasons behind
Lenin’s position:
“When Lenin adopted Kautsky’s absurd idea of the relationship between
the “spontaneous” and “conscious” elements in the proletariat’s revolutionary
movement, he was only making a rough sketch of the tasks of his time”.[3]
We should also point out that nobody amongst Lenin’s new opponents
protested at Kautsky’s position on consciousness before the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP, when they were all
united in the struggle against economism. At the Congress, Martov, the Menshevik
leader, adopted exactly the same position as Lenin and Kautsky: “We are the
conscious expression of an unconscious process”.[4] After the Congress, so little
importance was accorded the subject that the Mensheviks were still denying any
programmatic disagreement, and putting the split down to Lenin’s “crazy ideas”
about organisation: “With my poor intelligence, I am unable to understand
what may be meant by ‘opportunism on organisational problems’ posed as
something autonomous, bereft of any organic tie to programmatic and tactical
ideas”.[5]
Plekhanov’s criticism, while true, remains somewhat general and is
limited to re-establishing the marxist position on the question. His main
argument is that it is not true that “the intellectuals ‘worked out’ their
own socialist theories ‘completely independently from the spontaneous growth of
the workers’ movement’ - this has never happened and could never happen”.[6]
Before and during the Congress, when he was still in agreement with
Lenin, Plekhanov limited himself to the theoretical level on the class
consciousness issue. But he failed either to deal with the debates of the 2nd Congress, or to answer the central question:
what kind of Party, and what role for the Party? Only Lenin gave a response.
The central
question in What is to be done? - raise the consciousness of the classtc "The central question in
What is to be done?\:
raise the consciousness of the class"
In his polemic against economism, Lenin had one central concern on the
theoretical level: the question of class consciousness and its development in
the working class. We know that Lenin soon went back on his adoption of
Kautsky’s position, in particular with the experience of the mass strike in
1905 and the appearance of the first Soviets. In January 1917 - before the
beginning of the Russian revolution and in the midst of imperialist war - Lenin
returned to the mass strike of 1905. Whole passages - on “the interlocking
of economic and political strikes” - could have been written by Luxemburg
or Trotsky.[7]
And they give an idea of Lenin’s rejection of his initial idea, itself largely
the result of “overstating the case” for polemical reasons.[8]
“The real education of the masses can never be separated from an
independent political struggle, and above all from the revolutionary struggle
of the masses themselves. Only action educates the exploited class, action
alone allows it to measure its strength, broaden its horizon, increase its
capacities, enlighten its intelligence and temper its will”.[9] This is a far cry from
Kautsky.
But even in What is to be done?, the passages on consciousness
are contradictory. Alongside the incorrect position, for example, Lenin adds: “This
shows us that the ‘spontaneous element’ is fundamentally nothing other than the
embryonic form of the conscious element”.[10]
These contradictions are the expression of the fact that Lenin, in
common with the rest of the workers’ movement in 1902, did not have a very
clear or precise position on class consciousness.[11] The contradictions in What
is to be done?, as well as his later positions, show that Lenin was not
particularly attached to Kautsky’s position. In fact, there are only three
passages in What is to be done? where Lenin writes that “consciousness
must be imported from the outside”, and of these one has nothing to do with
Kautsky.
Rejecting the idea that it is possible “to develop the workers’
political class consciousness from within their economic struggle, that is to
say on the basis solely (or at least principally) of the struggle... [Lenin
replies that] ...political class consciousness can only be brought to the
worker from outside, in other words from outside the economic struggle, outside
the sphere of the relations between workers and employers”.[12] The formulation is confused,
but the idea is correct and does not correspond to the two other passages where
he speaks of consciousness being brought “from outside”. His thinking is much
more precise in another passage: “The political struggle of the
social-democracy is much wider and more complex than the economic struggle of
the workers against the bosses and the government”.[13]
Lenin very clearly rejects the position developed by the “economists”,
that class consciousness is a direct, mechanical, and exclusive product of the
economic struggle.
We stand with What is to be done? in the struggle against
economism. We agree also with the critical arguments used against economism,
and we believe that their theoretical and political content remains relevant
today.
“The idea that class consciousness does not appear mechanically from
the economic struggle is entirely correct. But Lenin’s error is to think that
class consciousness cannot be developed from the economic struggle, and must be
introduced from the outside by a party”.[14]
Is this a new appreciation on the part of the ICC? Here are some
quotations from What is to be done? that we adopted, in 1989, in a
polemic with the IBRP[15] in order to support then
what we are saying today: “The socialist consciousness of the worker masses
is the only basis that can assure our triumph (...) The party must always have
the possibility to reveal to the working class the hostile antagonisms between
its interests and those of the bourgeoisie. [The class consciousness
attained by the party] must be infused into the working masses with an
increasing fervour (...) it is necessary to concern oneself as much as possible
with the development of the consciousness of the workers in general. [The
task of the party is to] use the sparks of political consciousness that the
economic struggle generates in the spirit of the workers to raise them to the
level of social-democratic consciousness”.[16]
For Lenin’s detractors, the conceptions set out in What is to be
done? prefigure Stalinism. There is therefore supposedly a link between Lenin
and Stalin, including on the organisational issue.[17] We have already dealt with
this lie, on the historical level, in the first part of this article. We also
reject it on the political level, including on the questions of class
consciousness and political organisation.
There is a continuity running from What is to be done? to the
Russian revolution, but certainly not to the Stalinist counter-revolution. This
unity and continuity exists with the whole revolutionary process which links
the mass strikes of 1905 and 1917, which ran from February 1917 to the
revolution in October. For us, What is to be done? heralds the April
Theses of 1917: “... in view of the fact that [the masses] are
being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness,
persistence and patience to explain their error to them, to explain the
inseparable connection existing between capitalism and the imperialist war
(...) The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are
the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore
our task is (...) to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation
(...) especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses”.[18] For us, What is to be
done? heralds the October insurrection and the power of the Soviets.
Our present-day “anti-Leninist” detractors completely ignore this
central concern of What is to be done? with consciousness, thus adopting
one element of the Stalinist method which we have already denounced in the
first part of this article. Just as Stalin had the images of old Bolshevik
militants erased from photographs, so they erase the essential parts of Lenin’s
thinking and accuse us of becoming “Leninists”, in other words Stalinist.
For Lenin’s uncritical adulators, like the Bordigist current, we are
hopeless idealists because we insist on the role and importance of “class
consciousness in the working class” for the proletariat’s historical and
revolutionary struggle. For anyone who takes the trouble to read what Lenin
wrote, and to immerse themselves in the real process of political confrontation
and discussion of the time, both accusations are false.
What is
to be done?’s
distinction between the political and the unitary organisationtc "What is to be done?’s distinction
between the political and the unitary organisation"
What is to be done? brings other fundamental contributions at the
political and organisational level, in particular Lenin’s clear distinction
between the unitary organisations that the class creates for its day-to-day
struggle, and its political organisations.
“These circles, professional associations and organisations of
workers are necessary everywhere; they must be as widespread as possible, and
their functions as varied as possible; but it is absurd and damaging to confuse
them with the organisation of revolutionaries, to erase the line that separates
them (...) the organisation of a revolutionary social-democratic party must of
necessity be different in type to the organisation of the workers for the
economic struggle”.[19]
At this level, the distinction was not a new discovery for the workers’
movement. International, and especially German, social-democracy was clear on
the question. But in its struggle against economism (the Russian variety of
opportunism), and taking account of the particular conditions of the class
struggle in Tsarist Russia, What is to be done? goes further and puts
forward a new idea.
“The organisation of revolutionaries must include mainly and above
all men whose profession is revolutionary action. This characteristic common to
all members of such an organisation should efface any distinction between
workers and intellectuals, and still more between different professions.
Necessarily, such an organisation should not be very large, and it should be as
clandestine as possible”.[20]
Let us pause for a moment here. It would be wrong to see this passage as
solely determined to the historical conditions within which Russian
revolutionaries were working, in particular of illegality, clandestinity, and
repression. Lenin puts forward three points which are universally and
historically valid, whose validity has indeed been confirmed over and over to
this day. The first is that to be a communist militant is a voluntary and
serious act (he uses the word “professional”, which was also taken up by the
Mensheviks in the debates at the Congress). We have always agreed with this
conception of militant commitment, which combats and rejects any dilettante
attitude.
Secondly, Lenin defends a vision of the relations between militants
which goes beyond the division between worker and intellectual,[21] or “leader and led” as we
would say today, which goes beyond any vision based on hierarchy or individual
superiority, in a community of struggle within the party. He also opposes any
division between militants by trade or industrial branch. He rejects in advance
the factory cells which were set up during the “Bolshevisation” of the party,
in the name of “Leninism”.[22]
Finally, he considered that the party should “not be very large”.
He was the first to see that the period of mass workers’ parties was coming to
an end.[23] Certainly, this clarity was
fostered by conditions inside Russia. But it was the
new conditions of the proletariat’s life and struggle, expressed especially in
the “mass strike”, which also determined the new conditions of the activity of
revolutionaries, in particular the “smaller”, minority nature of the
revolutionary organisations in the period of capitalist decadence which opened
at the beginning of the century.
“But it would be (...) ‘tail-endism’ to think that under capitalism
the whole class, or almost the whole class, could one day raise itself to the
point of acquiring the degree of consciousness and action of its vanguard, of
its Social-Democratic Party”.[24]
While Rosa Luxemburg, Pannekoek, and Trotsky were among the first to
draw the lessons of the appearance of the mass strike and the workers’
councils, they remained prisoners of a vision of workers’ parties as mass
political organisations. Rosa Luxemburg criticised Lenin from the standpoint of
a mass party,[25]
to such a point that she too could fall into error, as when she wrote: “in
reality, the social-democracy is not linked to the organisation of the working
class, it is the very movement of the working class”.[26] She too was a victim of her
own “over-stating the case” in polemic, and of her position alongside the
Mensheviks on the organisation question during the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP, and so slid unhappily
onto the terrain of the Mensheviks and the “economists” by drowning the
organisation of revolutionaries in the class.[27] She was to correct her
position later, but it was Lenin who formulated most clearly the distinction
between the organisation of the whole working class and the organisation of
revolutionaries.
Who is a
member of the party?tc "Who is a member of the party?"
What is to be done?, and One step forward, two steps back, are
thus essential political advances in the history of the workers’ movement. More
precisely, the two works represent “practical” political gains on the
organisational level. Like Lenin, the ICC has always considered the
organisational question as a political question in its own right. The political
organisation of the class is different from its unitary organisation, and this
has practical implications, at its own level. Amongst them, it is essential to
have a strict definition of what it means to join and belong to the party, in
other words a definition of the militant, his tasks, his duties, his rights, in
short his relation to the organisation. The battle at the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP around the first article
of the statutes is well known: this was the first confrontation, within the
Congress itself, between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The difference between the
formulations proposed by Lenin and Martov may appear insignificant:
For Lenin, “A party member is one who accepts the Party’s programme
and supports the Party both financially and by personal participation in one of
the Party organisations”. For Martov, “A member of the RSDLP is one who
accepts the Party’s programme, supports the Party financially, and renders it
regular personal assistance under the direction of one of its organisations”.
The divergence lies in the recognition as members of the Party either
militants who belong to the Party and are recognised as such by the latter —
Lenin’s position — or militants who do not formally belong to the Party, but
who support it at one time or another, in one activity or another, or even
simply who declare themselves as Social-Democrats. This position of Martov and
the Mensheviks is thus broader, more “flexible”, less restrictive and less
precise than Lenin’s.
Behind this difference lies a fundamental question which quickly came to
light in the Congress, and which confronts revolutionary organisations to this
day: who is a member of the Party, and — still more difficult to define — who
is not?
For Martov, things were clear: “The more widespread the appellation
of Party member, the better. We can only be glad if every striker, every
demonstrator, taking responsibility for his actions, can declare himself a
member of the Party”.[28]
Martov’s position tends to dissolve the revolutionary organisation into
the class. It comes back to the same “economism” which he had previously fought
against, alongside Lenin. His argument in favour of his proposed Statute boils
down to liquidating the very idea of a vanguard, unified Party, centralised and
disciplined around a precise political programme, and a rigorous collective will
to action. It also opens the door to opportunist policies of unprincipled
“recruitment” of militants, which puts the Party’s long term development in
hock to immediate results. It is Lenin who is correct:
“On the contrary, the stronger our organisations of real
social-democrats, the less will be the hesitation and instability within the
Party, and the wider, more varied, richer and more fruitful will be the Party’s
influence on the elements of the working class around it, and led by it. It is
impossible to confuse the Party, the vanguard of the working class, with the
class as a whole”.[29]
The extreme danger of Martov’s opportunist position on the organisation,
recruitment, and membership of the Party very quickly appeared in the Congress
with the intervention of Axelrod: “It is possible to be a sincere and
devoted member of the social-democratic party, and yet be completely inapt for
the organisation of a rigorously centralised combat”.[30]
How can one be a member of the Party, a communist militant, an yet “inapt
for the organisation of a rigorously centralised combat”? To accept such an
idea would be as absurd as to accept the idea of a revolutionary and militant
worker “inapt” for any collective class action. Any communist organisation can
only accept militants who are apt for its discipline and the centralisation of
its combat. How could it be otherwise? Unless we are to accept that there is no
imperative demand on militants to respect the relationships of the
organisation, the decisions it adopts, and the necessity of its combat. Unless,
indeed, we reduce to ridicule the very notion of a communist organisation,
which must be “the most determined fraction of all the workers’ parties in
every country, the fraction that pulls forward all the others”.[31] The proletariat’s historic
struggle is a united class combat on the historical level, collective and
centralised on the international level. Like their class, the communists’
combat is historic, international, permanent, united, collective and
centralised, which is opposed to any individualist vision. “While critical
consciousness and initiative are of a very limited value for individuals, they
are fully realised in the collectivity of the Party”.[32] Whoever is unable to take
part in this centralised combat is inapt for militant activity and cannot be
recognised as a member of the Party. “The Party should only admit elements
capable of at least a minimum of organisation”.[33]
This “aptitude” is the fruit of communists’ political and militant
conviction. It is gained and developed in participation in the historic
struggle of the proletariat, especially within its organised political
minorities. For any consistent communist organisation, every new militant’s
conviction in and “practical” — not platonic — aptitude for a rigorously
centralised fighting organisation are both preconditions for his membership and
a concrete expression of his political agreement with the communist programme.
The definition of the militant, of what it means to be a member of a
communist organisation, is an essential question today. What is to be done?
and One step forward, two steps back provide the foundations for our
answers to many organisational questions. This is why the ICC has always based
itself on the Bolshevik combat at the 2nd RSDLP Congress to distinguish clearly and
firmly between a militant, who “participates personally in one of the Party
organisations”, as Lenin insisted, and a sympathiser, a fellow-traveller
who “accepts the Party’s programme, supports the Party financially, and
renders it regular [or irregular, we would add] personal assistance
under the direction of one of its organisations”, as it is put in Martov’s
definition, which was eventually adopted by the 2nd Congress. In the same way, we have always
defended the principle that “once you want to be a member of the Party, you
must also recognise the relationships of the organisation, and not just
platonically”.[34]
None of this is new for the ICC. It is at the core of its constitution,
as is proven by the Statutes adopted at its first International Congress in
January 1976.
It would be wrong to think that this question no longer poses any
problems today. Firstly, although its last political expressions are silent or
on the point of disappearing,[35] councilism remains today in
some sort the heir to economism and Menshevism at the organisational level. In
a period of greater working class activity, there is no doubt that councilist
pressure to “deceive oneself, close one’s eyes to the immensity of our
tasks, restrict these tasks [by forgetting] the difference between the
vanguard detachment and the masses that surround it”,[36] will find a renewed vigour.
Then again, even in the milieu which claims its heritage solely from the
Italian Left and from Lenin, in other words the Bordigist current and the IBRP,
Lenin’s method and political thought on organisation issues is far from being
put fully into practice. We need only consider the Bordigist PCI’s unprincipled
recruitment policy during the 1970s. This kind of activist and immediatist
policy ended up provoking the PCI’s explosion in 1982. We need only consider
the lack of rigour of the IBRP (which regroups the CWO in Britain and Battaglia
Comunista in Italy), which sometimes has difficulty in deciding who is a
militant of the organisation and who is only a sympathiser or a close contact,
despite all the dangers of such organisational vagueness.[37] Opportunism on the
organisational question is today one of the most dangerous poisons for the
proletarian political milieu. Unfortunately, the incantation of Lenin and the
“compact and powerful party” are no antidote.
Lenin and
the ICC - the same conception of militant activitytc "Lenin and the ICC\: the same conception of
militant activity"
What does Rosa Luxemburg say in her polemic with Lenin on the question
of the militant and his membership of the party?
“The conception expressed here [ie., in One step forward, two
steps back] in a rigorous and exhaustive manner is that of a relentless
centralism. The life-principle of this centralism is, on the one hand, the
sharp accentuation of the distinction of the organised troops of explicit and
active revolutionaries from the unorganised, though revolutionary, milieu which
surrounds them; on the other hand, it is the strict discipline and the direct,
decisive, and determining intervention of the central committee in all
activities of the local organisations of the party”.[38]
Although Luxemburg does not take an explicit position against Lenin’s
precise definition of the militant, her ironic tone in writing of “the
organised troops of explicit and active revolutionaries”, and her complete
silence when it comes to the political battle in the Congress around article 1
of the Statutes, show that her position at the time was incorrect, and
paralleled that of the Mensheviks. She remained a prisoner of the vision of a
mass party which the German social-democracy of the day put forward as an
example. She did not see the problem, and in fact avoids it by missing the
point of the debate. Her silence on the debate around article 1 of the Statutes
means that Lenin was right to reply that she “limits herself to repeating
empty phrases without trying to give them a meaning. She holds up scarecrows
without going to the heart of the debate. She has me uttering commonplaces,
general ideas, and absolute truths and tries to remain silent on the relative
truths which are based on precise facts”.[39]
As with Plekhanov and many others, Luxemburg’s general considerations —
even when they are correct in themselves — do not answer the real political
questions posed by Lenin. As we said in 1979, “Luxemburg’s general concern
was correct — the insistence on the collective character of the workers’
movement — but the insistence that ‘the emancipation of the workers is the task
of the workers themselves’ brought with it incorrect practical conclusions”.[40] She misses the political
gains in the Bolsheviks’ combat.
Without the debate on article 1, the question of the party, clearly
defined and clearly distinct both organisationally and politically from the
working class as a whole, would not have been definitively settled. Without
Lenin’s fight for article 1, the question would not be a prime political gain
on organisational matters, on which today’s communists must lean in building
their organisation, not just when it comes to accepting new militants, but also
and above all for establishing clear, rigorous relations between the militants
and the revolutionary organisation.
Is this defence of Lenin’s position on article 1 something new for the
ICC? Have we changed position? “To be a member of the ICC, [the
militant] must integrate into the organisation, participate actively in its
work, and carry out the tasks which are allotted to him” says the article
in our own Statutes which deals with the question of militant membership of the
ICC. It is perfectly clear that we have adopted, without any ambiguity, Lenin’s
conception, the spirit and even the letter of the Statutes that he proposed to
the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP, and certainly not those
of Martov or Trotsky. It is a pity that the ex-members of the ICC who today
accuse us of becoming “Leninists” have forgotten what they themselves adopted
at the time. Undoubtedly they were guilty of doing so without thinking, in the
flush of post-68 student enthusiasm. At all events, it is particularly
dishonest of them to accuse the ICC of having changed position, and to claim
that it is they who are faithful to the true, original ICC.
The ICC
alongside Lenin on the Statutestc
"The ICC alongside
Lenin
on the Statutes"
We have briefly presented our conception of the revolutionary militant,
and shown how much it owes to Lenin’s contribution in What is to be done?
and One step forward, two steps back. We have emphasised the importance
of translating this definition of the militant as faithfully and as rigorously
as possible into daily militant practice, through the organisation’s Statutes.
Here again, we have always been faithful to Lenin’s method and the lessons he
has left on organisational matters. The political struggle to establish precise
rules regulating organisational relationships, in other words Statutes, is
fundamental. The struggle to have them respected is equally so, of course.
Without this, grand declarations on the Party remain mere empty words.
In the framework of this article, space prevents us from setting out our
conception of the unity of the political organisation, and showing how Lenin’s
struggle at the RSDLP’s 2nd Congress against the survival of
circles, is a considerable theoretical and political contribution. But we want
to insist on the necessity of the practical importance of translating the need
for this unity into the organisation’s Statutes:: “The unitary nature of the
ICC is also expressed in these Statutes” (ICC Statutes). Lenin expressed this
reason and necessity very well.
“Aristocratic anarchism does not understand that formal Statutes are
necessary precisely to replace the limited ties of the circles with the wider
ties of the Party. The ties within or between circles neither could nor should
have taken on a precise form, since it was based on camaraderie and
uncontrolled and unmotivated ‘confidence’. Party ties cannot and must not be
based on either the one or the other, but on formal statutes, drawn up
‘bureaucratically’[41]
(from the standpoint of the undisciplined intellectual), and whose strict
observation will alone guard us from the whims and caprices of the circles,
against their petty arguments called the free ‘process’ of ideological struggle”.[42]
The same is true of the organisation’s centralisation against any
federalism, localism, or vision which sees the organisation as a sum of parties
or even autonomous revolutionary individuals. “The international congress is
the sovereign body of the ICC” (ICC Statutes). On this level also, we consider
ourselves the heirs of Lenin and of the necessary practical expression of his
combat in the organisation’s statutes, both for the RSDLP of the time, and for
the organisations of today.
“At the time when we are re-establishing the real unity of the Party,
and dissolving in this unity the circles which have outlived their usefulness,
this summit is necessarily the Congress of the Party, which is its supreme
organism”.[43]
The same is true for internal political life: Lenin’s contribution is
particularly concerned with internal debate, the duty — not merely the right —
to express any disagreement within an organisational framework and to the
organisation as a whole; and once debates are settled and decisions taken by
the Congress (which is the sovereign body, the organisation’s general assembly
in effect), then the subordination of both parts and individual militants to
the whole. Contrary to the widespread ieda that Lenin was a dictator who sought
only to stifle debate and political life within the organisation, in reality he
consistently opposed the Menshevik vision of the Congress as “a recorder, a
controller, but not a creator”.[44]
For Lenin and for the ICC, the Congress is a “creator”. In particular,
we utterly reject the idea of binding mandates for delegates to the Congress,
which is contrary to the widest, most dynamic, and most fruitful debate, and
which would reduce the Congress to being nothing but a “recorder”, as Trotsky
wanted in 1903. A “recording” congress would enshrine the supremacy of the parts
over the whole, the reign of “everyman master in his own house”, of
localism and federalism. A “recording and controlling” congress is the negation
of the congress’ sovereign nature. Like Lenin, we are for the congress as
“sovereign body” of the party, and which must have the power of decision and
“creation”. The “creative” congress implies delegates who are not the prisoners
of binding mandates.[45]
The fact that the congress is the sovereign body also implies its
preponderance over all the different parts of the communist organisation, in
programmatic, political, and organisational terms.
“‘The Congress is the supreme instance of the Party’.
Consequently, anyone who in one way or another prevents a delegate from
addressing the Congress on any question of the life of the Party, without
reserve or exception, transgresses the discipline of the Party and the rule of
the Congress. The controversy thus boils down to the dilemma: circle spirit or
Party spirit? Limitation of the rights of the delegates to the Congress, in the
name of the imaginary rights or rules of all sorts of colleges or circles, or
the complete, effective, and not merely verbal dissolution of all inferior
instances, of all the little groups, before the Congress”.[46]
On these points also we not only claim the heritage of Lenin’s combat,
we express these conceptions whose heirs we are, and which we believe we
continue, in our own organisational rules, in other words in our Statutes.
The Statutes
are not exceptional measurestc "The Statutes are not
exceptional measures"
We have seen that neither Luxemburg nor Trotsky reply to Lenin on
article 1 of the Statutes. They completely ignore both this question and that
of the Statutes in general. They prefer to remain at the level of abstract
generalities. And when they deign to evoke the Statutes, they completely
underestimate them. At best, they consider the political organisation’s
Statutes as nothing more than safety barriers, indicating the edge of the road
and the limits not to be crossed. At worst, they see them as nothing more than
tools of repression, exceptional measures to be used only with extreme caution.
We should point out in passing that this vision of the statutes is the same as
that of Stalinism, which also sees the statutes as instruments of repression,
though without the “caution”.
For Trotsky, Lenin’s formulation of article 1 would have left “the
platonic satisfaction [of having] discovered the surest statutory remedy
against opportunism (...) Without a doubt this a simplistic, typically
administrative way of resolving a serious practical question”.[47]
Without realising it of course, Luxemburg herself answers Trotsky, when
she says that in the case of a party that is already formed (eg a mass
social-democratic party as in Germany), “a more rigorous application of the
idea of centralism in the constitution and a stricter application of party
discipline can no doubt be a useful safeguard against the opportunist current”.[48] She agrees with Lenin for
the German case, ie in general. By contrast, for the Russian case, she begins
with “abstract truths” (“opportunist errors cannot be warded off in advance;
only after they have taken on tangible forms in practice can they be overcome
through the movement itself”), which are meaningless, and which in reality
justify “in advance” any renunciation in the struggle against
opportunism on organisational matters. Which she does not fail to do later on,
still in the case of the Russian party, by making fun of the statutes as “paper
paragraphs”, and “penpushers’ methods”, considering them as
exceptional measures:
“The party constitution should not be seen as a kind of
self-sufficient weapon against opportunism but merely as an external means
through which the decisive influence of the present proletarian-revolutionary
majority of the party can be exercised”.[49]
We have never agreed with Rosa Luxemburg on this point: “Luxemburg
continued to reiterate that it was for the mass movement to overcome
opportunism; revolutionaries could not accelerate this movement artificially
(...) Luxemburg never came to understand the fact that the collective
character of revolutionary activity is something which grows and develops”.[50] On the question of the
statutes, we are and always have been in agreement with Lenin.
The Statutes
as a rule of life and weapon of struggletc "The Statutes as a rule of life and weapon of
struggle"
For Lenin, the statutes are much more than mere formal rules of
functioning, rules to which we appeal in exceptional circumstances. Unlike
Luxemburg, or the Mensheviks, Lenin defined the statutes as rules of conduct,
the spirit which should animate the organisation and its militants from day to
day. Far from understanding the statutes as a means of coercion and repression,
Lenin saw them as weapons determining the responsibility of different parts of
the organisation and of militants towards the whole political organisation;
imposing a duty of open, public expression of political difficulties and
disagreements before the whole organisation.
Lenin did not think of the expression of viewpoints, nuances,
discussions, or disagreements as a right of militants, a right of the
individual against the organisation, but rather as a duty and responsibility
towards the whole party and its members. The communist militant is responsible,
before his comrades in struggle, for the party’s political and organisational
unity. The statutes are tools at the service of the unity and centralisation of
the organisation, and therefore weapons against federalism, against the circle
spirit, against cronyism, against any parallel life and discussion within the
organisation. For Lenin, the statutes are not simply external limits, they are
more than just rules: they are a political, organisational, and militant way of
life.
“Controversial questions, within the circles, were not settled
according to the statutes, ‘but through struggle and threats to leave’ (..)
When I was only a member of a circle (...) I had the right, to justify for
example my refusal to work with X, merely to invoke my uncontrolled,
unmotivated distrust. Now that I am a member of the Party, I no longer have the
right to invoke solely a vague suspicion, since this would open the door to the
crazes and extravagances of the old circles; I am obliged to give a motive for
my confidence or ‘suspicion’ with formal arguments, in other words to this or
that formally established measure of our programme, our tactics, or our
statutes. My duty is to no longer content myself with an uncontrolled ‘I have
confidence’ or ‘I have no confidence’, but to recognise that I am accountable
for my decisions, just as any fraction of the Party is for its, before the
Party as a whole; I must follow a formally defined path to express my
‘distrust’, to win others over to the ideas and desires which spring from this
distrust. We have risen from the uncontrolled ‘confidence’ of the circles to
a party conception, which demands the observation of strict procedures
and determined motives to express and verify confidence”.[51]
The revolutionary organisation’s statutes are not merely exceptional
measures, safety barriers. They are the concretisation of the organisational
principles proper to the proletariat’s political vanguards. They are the
products of these principles, at one and the same time a weapon in the fight against
organisational opportunism, and the foundation on which the revolutionary
organisation must be built. They are the expression of its unity, its
centralisation, its political and organisational life, and its class character.
They are the rule and the spirit which must guide the militants from day to day
in their relations with the organisation and other militants, in the tasks
entrusted to them, in their rights and duties, and in their daily personal
life, which can be in contradiction neither with their militant activity nor
with communist principles.
For us, as for Lenin, the organisational question is a political
question in its own right. More than that, it is a fundamental political
question. The adoption of statutes and the constant fight for their observance
lie at the heart of an understanding of and the battle for the construction of
the political organisation. The statutes are also a theoretical and political
question in their own right. Is this a discovery for our organisation? A change
of position?
“The ICC’s unitary nature is expressed also in the present statutes,
which are valid for the whole organisation (...) These statutes constitute a
concrete application of the ICC’s conceptions in organisational matters. As
such, they form an integral part of the ICC’s platform” (Statutes of the
ICC).
The
Communist Party will be built on the basis of Lenin’s political and
organisational contributiontc "The Communist Party will be built on the basis
of Lenin’s political and organisational contribution"
In the struggle of the proletariat, this struggle of Lenin was an
essential moment in the formation of its political organ, which was finally
concretised with the foundation of the Communist International in March 1919.
Before Lenin, the First International (the International Workingmen’s
Association) had been an equally important moment. An important moment after
Lenin was the fight of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left for its own
organisational survival.
There is a red thread, a continuity of organisational theory,
principles, and politics, that runs through these different experiences.
Today’s revolutionaries can only anchor their action in this historic
continuity.
We have quoted extensively from our own texts, which show unambiguously
what is our heritage as far as the organisational question is concerned. Our
method, in re-appropriating the political and theoretical gains of the workers’
movement is not an invention of the ICC. We are the heirs of the Italian
Fraction of the Communist Left and its publication Bilan in the 1930s,
and of the Communist Left of France and its review Internationalisme in
the 1940s. This is the same method we have always used, and without which the
ICC would not exist, or at least not in its present form.
“The most complete expression of the solution to the problem of the
role of the conscious element, the Party, in the victory of socialism, has been
given by the group of Russian marxists of the old Iskra, and notably by
Lenin who as early as 1902 has given a definition in principle of the problem
of the party in his remarkable work What is to be done? Lenin’s notion
of the Party was to serve as a backbone to the Bolsheviks, and was to be one of
that party’s greatest contributions to the international struggle of the
proletariat”.[52]
There is no doubt that the world communist party of tomorrow will not be
formed without Lenin’s contributions in the matter of principle, theory,
politics, and organisation. The real — and not merely verbal — re-appropriation
of these gains, along with their rigorous and systematic application to today’s
conditions, is one of the most important tasks for today’s little communist
groups, if they are to contribute to the process of formation of this Party.
RL
[1] ICC pamphlet on Communist Organisations
and Class Consciousness, 1979
[2] Kautsky, quoted by Lenin in What
is to be done?
[11] Marx’s work is much clearer
on the question. But much of the latter was unknown to revolutionaries of the
day, being either unavailable or unpublished. A basic work on the question of
consciousness, The German Ideology, was only published for the first
time in 1932!
[14]Communist organisations
and class consciousness, ICC pamphlet, 1979.
[15] This article (International
Review no.57) was written, not by the ICC but by the comrades of the Grupo
Proletario Internacionalista, which was later to form the ICC’s section in Mexico.
[16] “Class consciousness and the
Party”, in (International Review no.57), 1989.
[17] Amidst all the lies of the
bourgeoisie, we should note the little contribution from RV, ex-militant of the
ICC, who declares that “there is a real continuity and coherence between the
conceptions of 1903 and actions like the banning of fractions within the
Bolshevik Party or the crushing of the Kronstadt workers’ revolt” (RV,
“Prise de position sur l’évolution récente du CCI”, published by us in our
pamphlet La prétendue paranoia du CCI).
[21] We hardly need to remind our
reader here of the low educational level, and the extent of illiteracy among
Russian workers at the time. This did not prevent Lenin from considering that
they should and could take part in the activity of the party in just the same
way as the “intellectuals”.
[22] See the first part of this
article in the previous issue.
[23] “He also turned away from
the Social Democratic conception of a mass party. For Lenin the new conditions
of struggle meant that there was a need for a minority vanguard party which
would work for the transformation of economic struggles into political ones”
(Communist organisations and class consciousness, ICC, 1979).
[25] “This militant, who had
passed through the school of social-democracy, developed such an unconditional
attachment to the mass character of the revolutionary movement that, for her,
the party had to adapt itself to anything which bore this character” (Communist
organisations...).
[26] Rosa Luxemburg, Questions
of organisation in Russian social-democracy.
[27] Our reader will have remarked
also that this position leaves the door wide open to the position that sees the
party substituting itself for the action of the working class, to the point
where it exercises state power in the name of the class, or attempts to carry
out “putschist” actions, as the Stalinists were to do in the 1920s.
[28] Martov, quoted by Lenin in One
step forward, two steps back.
[37] We have already criticised
the vagueness and opportunism of BC in Italy on this question with regard to the
militants of the GLP (see World Revolution no.220). The case is not an
isolated one. An article recently appeared on the IBRP web site (www.ibrp.org)
entitled “Should revolutionaries work in reactionary trades unions?”. In this
unsigned article (retranslated back from the French by us), whose author could
be a member of the CWO, the question of the title is answered: “materialists,
not idealists, must answer in the affirmative”. Two arguments are put
forward: “There are many combative workers in the unions”, and “communists
should not despise organisations which regroup masses of workers” (sic).
This position completely contradicts that of Battaglia at its last Congress
(and therefore we presume of the IBRP), which defends the idea that “there
can be no real defence of workers’ interests, even their most immediate
interests, other than outside and against the union line”. Above all, the
problem is that we have no idea who wrote the article: a militant or a
sympathiser of the IBRP? And in either case, why no position on it, why no
criticism? Did the comrades forget? Or is it out of opportunism in order to
recruit a new militant who apparently has not completely broken with leftism?
Or is this simply an under-estimation of the organisational question? Once
again, for the groups of the IBRP this is reminiscent of Martov. Since then,
the text has been withdrawn from the web site, without further comment.
[38] Rosa Luxemburg,
“Organisational questions of Russian social-democracy”, in Selected
Political Writings, Monthly Review Press, 1971.
[39]
Lenin, “Reply to Rosa
Luxemburg”, published in Trotsky, Nos tâches politiques, Edition
Belfond.
[40]Communist organisations
and class consciousness.
[41] Another example of Lenin’s
polemical method, which took up his opponents’ accusations to turn them against
them (see the first part of this article).
[45] Eberlein, delegate of the
German Communist Party to what was originally to have been no more than an
international conference in March 1919, was mandated to oppose the foundation
of the Third, Communist, International. It was clear for all the participants,
in particular the Bolshevik leaders Lenin, Trotsky, and Zinoviev, that the International
could not be formed without the German CP. Had Eberlein remained a “prisoner”
of his imperative mandate, deaf to the debates and the dynamic of the
conference, then the International as world party of the proletariat would
never have been founded.
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