activism

Hugh Rodwell m-14970 at mailbox.swipnet.se
Sun May 3 07:24:43 PDT 1998


In all the discussion so far on how to bring about social change not a single person has mentioned the way the bourgeoisie gets things done.

It doesn't just theorize or agitate, it organizes politically. It seizes power and then legislates in its own interests. Since capitalism is a fundamentally contradictory social system, the interests of the bourgeoisie as a whole require labour power to be free, which creates conflicts of interest between the freedoms of a citizen, who can be both citizen and bourgeois *or* worker, and a capitalist, who is only a bourgeois. In the period of its decay, capitalism is forced more and more into exceptional political solutions (reactionary dictatorships) suppressing the freedoms both of workers and of citizens to assure its survival. Today the international monopoly character of imperialist capitalism even without reactionary dictatorships is creating insoluble contradictions between the interests of "free" labour and "free" capital as well as between the interests of "free" nations.

The interests of various sectors of the bourgeoisie are expressed by political parties which are thoroughly integrated in both the representational setup of their respective societies (parliament, congress, whatever) and the real command HQs, government (for laws, enforcement etc -- the overt chain of command) and business/capital (for the material interests for whose benefits the laws are made and the enforcement is done).

The leadership of the bourgeoisie is contested between its most powerful representatives and expresses itself in the overt or more usually covert programmes of its policy-makers.

The ironic and appalling thing is the way this blind spot in the debate so far is repeated in relation to the working class. Cox indeed even has the nerve to lecture Gar Lipow in the following terms:


>Now, one of the elements which has cast glue over this discussion is the
>urge for newfangleness illustrated by the term "activism" itself. Whether
>we are radical reformers or revolutionaries, we are our history, and
>thoughtless proliferation of new terminology tends to violate our history.
>And there is a very old terminology indeed for this discussion, "Practice"
>and "Theory." The *marxist* assumption is that theory is a moment in
>practice, but an absolutely essential moment, for it is through theory
>that we become conscious of what it is we do. Legitimate and crucial
>debates have been had and will be had among comrades on just how this
>complex of relations operates at a given time, but the debate and mutual
>understanding (which is of course fundamental to political solidarity) is
>aborted by bringing the slang term "activists," into this discussion, for
>that term is merely a casual reference, a sometimes useful
>shorthand, suitable for conversation, but it can only utterly obscure the
>issues which this thread is raising (or, rather, re-raising for the
>n-zillionth time).

*without* mentioning the deepest Marxist assumptions about getting things done -- political organization. The missing concept is Party.

Now the reason this concept is missing is simple. For most of the debaters here the socialist, Marxist party is the Stalinist bureaucratic machine that has propped up the capitalist mode of production since the second world war and aided counter-revolution since it usurped power from the revolutionary Bolshevik party in the Soviet Union in the mid-1920s. The collapse of Stalinism in 1989-91 left a huge hole in this view of the working class's political organization.

And this is a terribly senitive issue. Anyone raising the question of a revolutionary Bolshevik party must be prepared for the most intensive abuse and sustained attempts at gagging.

The bourgeoisie organizes to its heart's content, makes propaganda and agitation, keeps its hands firmly on the levers of mass repression and crushes "democracy" at will if the need arises -- but the working class is expected to make shift with spontaneous expressions of will arising from militant unionism or popular uprisings, often enough within the system of legality (sacred legality that is while this childish debate is allowed to take place) organized and defended with ruthless ferocity by its class enemies.

Marx and Engels organized revolutionary international parties. Lenin and Trotsky did the same. This is the tradition of revolutionary Marxism -- the First and Second, but especially the Third (in its early years -- say the first four congresses) and the Fourth Internationals -- in which Gar L will be able to find sensible answers to his questions about politicizing activism for the purpose of achieving real solutions.

As many have said, activists have theories whether they are conscious of it or not. The battle that matters is to take the leadership of the working class out of the hands of the current misleaders and class traitors so that the theories and practical alternatives offered to activists concentrate their efforts towards the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the setting up of a socialist regime of workers' democracy. And in this battle against class-collaborationist union leaderships and imperialist labour party leaderships, as well as against intellectual leaderships crippled by historical fatalism and sceptical of the power and capacity of the working class to take power and organize society in its own interest, the only weapon that can serve the working class on all fronts and keep a steady aim for the goals that matter is the revolutionary, internationalist Bolshevik party.

The real task of the present is therefore the building of such a party by fusing the best and most revolutionary elements of political activism, trade union militancy and intellectual criticism, whatever their ideological roots, around the vital historical legacy of Marxism and a mobilizing programme for dealing with the burning issues of the day.

Simple, but not easy.

The process is under way, of course, but it's not exactly the kind of thing that the bourgeois media consider newsworthy...

Cheers,

Hugh



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