activism

Louis Proyect lnp3 at panix.com
Sun May 3 08:02:12 PDT 1998


Hugh Rodwell:
>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.

Actually, all the abuse comes from your quarters, from people who think like you. You believe that the nucleus of the Bolshevik Party already exists, namely your own international sect. All that is needed is to add "human material" to it. This party-building model leads to nothing but pointless wrangling over doctrinal fine-points and needless splits. Lenin sought to unite all Marxists into a single party, not just Marxists who agreed with a "party line." Proof of this was Bukharin's public attacks on Lenin's position on the national question in an official Bolshevik newspaper in exile. Bukharin lacerated Lenin mercilessly. Lenin answered him publicly, as was the norm in Russian social democracy. The notion that Bukharin "broke discipline" by launching such a public attack is consistent with modern-day distortions of Leninism, but have nothing to do with the history of the revolutionary movement that Rodwell claims to be the sole inheritor of. In the cult-sect formation that Rodwell identifies with, monolithism is the order of the day. Not only is the "party line" promulgated in the newspaper, but the line itself is typically cooked up by the resident guru-genius who views himself as the living avatar of Lenin or Trotsky. Such formations are hostile to genuine creative Marxist thought and tend to have no impact on the living class struggle. In the entire history of the Trotskyist movement, there has never been even the whisper of a socialist victory. Such groups are content to function as sideline kibbitzers. Revolutionary parties are needed, but this bankrupt model of the early days of the Comintern must be rejected.

Louis Proyect



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