Reform and revolution

It is inherent to the nature of blogging culture that one's most passionate writing is sometimes posted on somebody else's blog. I've recently been engaged in a debate on a communist blog called Red Flags, and with my readers permission (don't all speak up at once), I'd like to repost my comments here. For the context, see this thread.

I.

I've been following the discussions on this page for a few months now, without chiming in. I tend to disagree with a lot of the tactical/strategic thought that is expressed here, but I am usually impressed with the level of discussion.

This particular discussion, however, is frustrating because so many people seem unwilling to engage with the fundamental criticism that Christopher Day (and leftspotter and a few others) are making, and have made in other ways in other threads. Regardless of what is meant by certain controversial terms like "instrumentalism" or "reformism," let's make it simple. There aren't enough anti-capitalist activists out there, the movement organizations that exist are too few, too small, and too weak. Nevermind whether communists should or should not be seen as "outsiders" or what level of "engagement" necessary to earn the "respect" of the "masses" (although Chris's points on these practicalities are quite valid, in my opinion). The main point is this: anyone who fancies him or herself a communist should be serious about building the power that will enable the working class to bring about revolution. If one is serious about this, there is no choice but to engage with the day-to-day work of recruiting activists and building new, bigger, stronger, and more militant organizations in workplaces, neighborhoods, campuses, etc. There's nothing wrong with selling DVD's or newspapers per se, but I don't understand why people don't get such a basic point: propaganda alone won't do it, we have to build POWER.

Lest this discussion remain in the abstract, let me offer some anectodatal evidence in support of Chris's (and my) criticism of the RCP. I am part of a sizeable clandestine organizition working in coordination with a large, progressive, mainstream labor organization to unionize thousands of low-wage non-union workers. In short, we are "salts" (or "submarinos" in Spanish, hence my screen name). Most of us "submarinos" are radicals of one stripe or another, and we view our work as an essential element of the class struggle. How can we overcome capitalism if the vast majority of workers are unorganized and cowed before the power of their bosses?

Our organization is far from uniform ideologically; we often argue over revolutionary theory even as we work well together in our day-to-day efforts. Like any movement organization, we have suffered from attrition, mainly because it's hard work and a lot of people just can't cut it. However, in the several years I have been involved with this organization, only two have left for explicitly ideological reasons. One was a liberal who decided she could be more effective by going to law school. The other quit more recently at the urging of his comrades (if they deserve such a term) in the RCP. They convinced him not only that he should spend time selling DVDs at anti-war marches (a questionable tactic in my opinion, but nothing that was inconsistent with our organizing work), but that in order to be a good communist he actually needed to quit our organization and leave his job in the middle of our organizing drive. Meanwhile, his fellow salts and hundreds of other coworkers are fighting to build an organization in the face of bribery, intimidation, and threats of dismissal and/or deportation.

How on earth does taking people OUT of the trenches in the heat of battle help lead us to revolution?

Let me close with a piece of wisdom from a revolutionary thinker whom many RCP supporters seem to have forgotten:

"The international movement of the proletariat toward its complete emancipation is a process peculiar in the following respect. For the first time in the history of civilization, the people are expressing their will consciously and in opposition to all ruling classes. But this will can only be satisfied beyond the limits of the existing system.

"Now the mass can only acquire and strengthen this will in the course of day-to-day struggle against the existing social order -- that is, within the limits of capitalist society.

"On the one hand, we have the mass; on the other, its historic goal, located outside of existing society. On one had, we have the day-to-day struggle; on the other, the social revolution. Such are the terms of the dialectic contradiction through which the socialist movement makes its way.

"It follows that this movement can best advance by tacking betwixt and between the two dangers by which it is constantly being threatened. One is the loss of its mass character; the other, the abandonment of its goal. One is the danger of sinking back to the condition of a sect; the other, the danger of becoming a movement of bourgeois social reform." -- Rosa Luxemburg

II.

Repeater alleges that the argument put forth by Chris, leftspotter, and myself "completely rejects the concept and necessity of leadership." Apparently he's lumping us together with the infantile (to use Lenin's word) crowd of ultraleftists (who like to call themselves Trotskyists or anarchists) who are so turned off by any exercise of leadership that they try to sabotage, intentionally or not, any movement organization they come into contact with.

With all due respect, nothing could be further from the truth. I believe very deeply in the concept of leadership, and in my understanding leadership involves agency and initiative. Quite the opposite of the attitude that "the masses can and do [build unions, make banners, do grunt work] on their own." That's not leadership, that's complacency. In fact, Repeater unintentionally argues my point for me by adding the off-hand comment that "currently they don't do enough of it on their own." I can't believe any self-respecting revolutionary would want to just sit around and wait for that situation to change.

To clarify my point, I don't argue that salting is the only valid way to excercise leadership. I think there are many other ways to exercise legitimate leadership, which may be further from "the trenches." Salts, and other rank-and-file union leaders, often leave the shop floor to be full-time organizers, so as to teach other workers what they've already learned: how to fight the boss, how to recruit and train other workers into the movement, etc. It's important that conscious socialists be active at all levels of the labor movement and other social movements, from the shop floor to the elected national and international leadership. And some people are probably best cut out out to be propagandists or theorists.

Which brings me to my main point: what's most important is not the "validity" or "legitimacy" of communist leadership, but its effectiveness. And that, in turn, brings me back to one of Chris's points, about what it means to be "advanced." Repeater doesn't want all the advanced to be stuck in the trenches when they could be doing more effective work somewhere else. Well, there are different ways to be advanced. One of them is believing in socialism, or having the correct "line." In my (Ivy League) exprience, lots of student activists are pretty advanced in this way. But many of these student activists couldn't organize their way out of a paper bag. Which is to say, not that they couldn't make a banner, not merely that they couldn't conduct some kind of reformist campaign, but that they couldn't perform the most fundamental act of revolutionary organizing: recruit and train new anti-capitalist, working-class leaders in the face of the fear and confusion that charactize our world. The only EFFECTIVE (not to say "legitimate") way to find and recruit such leaders is through engagement in day-to-day struggles in the trenches. The whole point of salting is to take those of us who are relatively "advanced" in the theoretical sense, and put them into the trenches so as to learn from experience how to be an effective organizer (to become "advanced" in the practical sense). And the more effective an organizer is, the more leadership he or she is called upon to take.

My problem with ivory-tower theorizing is not that it's "illegitimate," but that it's ineffective and therefore an abdication of revolutionary responsibility. That's the point I was trying to illustrate with my anecdote about the RCP supporter who just walked away from trenches in the heat of the battle.

III.

Dear Real John,

I appreciate your long and articulate response. I will interpret the sarcasm and personal attacks that are sprinkled throughout as symptoms of "passionate intensity," which I admire and identify with.
I hope (perhaps in vain) that this discussion can be more than a mere rehashing of the same debate that has been had a thousand times before, in which you call me a reformist and I call you a sectarian and then we hate each other for ever after.

Let's be clear that, while terms such as "reformism," "revisionism," "economism," etc, may be technical terms, they can also be wielded as insults. The same way that for me to call you a "sectarian" or an "ultraleftist" (another Leninist and therefore supposedly "technical" term) would be an insult and would not serve to advance the discussion very far.

For example, you accuse me of "economism" and "revisionism." If by "revisionist" you mean somebody who is faking socialist sympathies for the sake of luring the working class into an insidious capitalist trap, then I emphatically deny the charge. If by "economism" you mean that I think building the labor movement is the ONLY legitimate movement activity, then I'm sorry you misunderstood my position, and I would like to clarify.

I admire and take inspiration from the civil rights and anti-war upsurges of the 60s, including those that had no connection to economic struggle or the labor movement. I also admire those that were simultaneously civil rights struggles and union struggles, such as the farmworkers' movement in California, the New York City hospital strikes led by the then-independent union 1199, and the Memphis sanitation workers' strike, which unfortunately has the distinction of being the occasion of MLK's assassination. (It's worth noting that at the time of his assassination, MLK was planning for a large-scale economic struggle, the Poor People's Campaign, which many believe is what made him threatening enough to assassinate.)

I admire radical community organizations such as ACORN and the Los Angeles Bus Riders' Union.

I also admire the many current variations of the squatters' movement, such as the landless workers' movement in Brazil, the factory occupation movements in Argentina and Venezuela, and (on a smaller scale) the South Central Farmers in Los Angeles. (Wait, am I a reformist or an anarchist? I'm so confused!)

That said, it is my tendency to be most inspired by the old IWW and CIO dream of "organizing the unorganized." As such, I place the most hope for socialist revolution (especially in the heart of imperialism) in the rebirth of a militant labor movement, and specifically in the current labor upsurge led by SEIU and UNITE-HERE.

Part of the reason for this tendency is emotional and psychological: I was affected as a child by my parents' work experiences, and my entry into radical politics was through a militant union that was leading an audacious and inspiring struggle on my campus while I was in college.

But I also have analytical reasons. I believe that most (not all) people have their most direct experiences with the oppression that is capitalism on the job, where they spend the majority of their waking lives, and by means of which they feed and clothe themselves and their children. I believe, therefore, that the labor movement has the potential to appeal to immediate self-interest but also to build class-consciousness, and even, in an era when unions are doomed to fail unless they organize across national borders, to teach internationalism. To appeal to non-activists but also train activists to be stronger leaders. (And I count myself, without a hint of disdain, among the student radicals who at one time couldn't organize themselves out of a wet paper bag.) On an extremely practical level, I believe the labor movement is uniquely structured so as to simultaneously confront the power of capital and build a sustainable organization with resources (capital) of its own, capable of carrying the struggle forward for the long term. In sum, for all these reasons, I believe that labor organizing provides the best opportunity for uniting a broad segment of the working class and creating a powerful, multi-ethnic, and international movement against capitalism.

If that's what you mean by "economism," then I plead guilty, but I would like to point out that I am in good company. Take, for example, the following quotation from a movement leader better known for his attacks on trade-unionism than on his admiration of it:

"The trade unions were a tremendous step forward for the working class in the early days of capitalist development, inasmuch as they marked a transition from the workers' disunity and helplessness to the rudiments of class organisation. When the revolutionary party of the proletariat, the highest form of proletarian class organisation, began to take shape (and the Party will not merit the name until it learns to weld the leaders into one indivisible whole with the class and the masses) the trade unions inevitably began to reveal certain reactionary features, a certain craft narrow-mindedness, a certain tendency to be non-political, a certain inertness, etc. However, the development of the proletariat did not, and could not, proceed anywhere in the world otherwise than through the trade unions, through reciprocal action between them and the party of the working class."

No, that's not Andy Stern, that's Lenin. (It's from a chapter of "Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder" called "Should Revolutionaries Work in Reactionary Trade Unions?") Note that he considers an active and powerful union movement absolutely essential to the preparation of the working class for socialist revolution. Note also that currently, compared to the size of the global economy, the labor movement is miniscule to the point of being virtually non-existant.

Of course, Lenin also warns that unions tend to become parochial and conservative once they have established themselves. Anyone with the slightest familiarity with the history of Gompers' AFL or Meany's AFL-CIO knows about that phenomenon quite well. Don't assume, therefore, that I'm unfamiliar with the sobering history of the post-war CIO: the anti-communist purges, the merger with the AFL, the adoption of the Democratic Party's Cold War foreign policy, and the abandonment of the goal of organizing the unorganized. Without a doubt, that is one of modern history's greatest tragedies.

But the workers' uprising led by the CIO was not the only promising development that faded away or was co-opted instead of leading directly to global communism. All of the "reformist" movements I mentioned above fall into that category, but then again, so does the Russian revolution. Blaming a "revisionist coup" for the failure of the USSR is no more helpful than blaming George Meany for Walter Reuther's mistakes.

So then why did these movements fail? That's a good question, to which none of us, not even Bob Avakian, has a satisfactory answer. One could argue that the Cold War was the burial ground of both the CIO and the USSR, and that the USSR's attempt at "socialism in one country," and its consequent conversion into an imperialist power under the banner of socialism, was the mirror image of the CIO's absorbption into the American side of the Cold War. But I won't argue that for now, lest I aquire the label of "Trotskyist" in addition to the "anarchist" and "social democrat" labels whose burden I already bear. In any case, I'd prefer not to debate yet again whether capitalism was restored in the Soviet Union in 1924 or 1956.

As for the labor movement, I'll admit that I don't have the answer for how to make sure the organization I'm involved with is not co-opted in the future. That has a lot to do with organizational politics that have yet to take shape. But I'm not the first person to lack a clear road map to revolution. In the passage quoted above, Lenin calls for "reciprocal action between [trade unions] and the party of the working class."

Sounds like a good idea, but what exactly does it mean? And in a passage I quoted in an earlier post, Rosa Luxemburg posits that a revolutionary party "can best advance by tacking betwixt and between the two dangers by which it is constantly being threatened. One is the loss of its mass character; the other, the abandonment of its goal. One is the danger of sinking back to the condition of a sect; the other, the danger of becoming a movement of bourgeois social reform."

Reciprocal action? Betwixt and between? Those are not exactly detailed marching orders, but they are, intentionally or not, eloquent expressions of the uncertainty faced by all revolutionaries who, to their dismay, still live in a capitalist world. To invoke the unquestionable genius of Bob Avakian or the "science of MLM" does more to obscure the situation than to light the way. I believe we can best navigate these uncertainties by exercising a little humility and by trying to build common ground with as many anti-capitalist and potentially anti-capitalist forces as possible. We may trip up along the way, but that's life. We'll have to learn from our mistakes. In the meantime, I'll be helping build a militant, growing, and internationalist labor movement, so that the working class might at least have a fighting chance.

And if this attitude makes me a Menshvik, a revisionist, or (God forbid) a liberal, then so be it.