>The descent into nuttiness is marked by this:
>
>>The pusillanimous reformist "left" in this country, particularly
>>typified by the International Socialist Organization (ISO), now
>>points a finger at the American rulers' support to bin Laden and the
>>Afghan Taliban as "freedom fighters" during the Cold War. Left
>>unsaid is the ISO's own support for these reactionaries against the
>>Soviet Red Army.
>
>Whatever the ISO's position on the Red Army, this doesn't seem like
>the most urgent issue. But WV spends as much time attacking the ISO
>as they do attacking the bourgeoisie.
Thanks for responding to my post. I agree with you generally on the anti-imperialist and anti-terrorist material, but just want to make a comment on your quote above.
For the Sparts, the ISO is reformist, ie, bourgeois, so an attack on the ISO is consistent with the attack on the bourgeoisie. The first thing to be decided is whether the ISO is reformist or not. That can be a long discussion which I don't want to get into here. I just wanted to point out the consistency of their argument.
As you know, a main document for them is Trotsky's "Revolution Betrayed." A quote on page 267 states:
"In reality classes are heterogenous; they are torn by inner antagonisms, and arrive at the solution of common problems no otherwise than through an inner struggle of tendencies, groups and parties...one and the same class may create several parties...one party may rest upon parts of different classes."
I would add that some parties (perhaps the ISO) can vascillate between the two classes.
The capitalist class creates Republicans, Democrats, Reform Party, third parties, etc. The Democratic Party rests on the capitalist and working class (mediated by laborcrats). Where do the Spart's reformist left fit if the crucial discontinuity along the political spectrum is not between left and right but between political parties supporting revolution or reform?
For the Sparts the task is to "arrive at the solution of common problems", but this is accomplished "through an inner struggle of tendencies...", etc.
Combine the above quote with the following:
"The scientific task, as well as the political, is not to give a finished definition to an unfinished process, but to follow all its stages, separate its progressive from its reactionary tendencies, expose their mutual relations, foresee possible variants of development, and find in this foresight a basis for action." (Ibid, p.256)
The Sparts versus reformist leftists, which, as you say, seems to be every tendency but their own, is following Trotsky's method of analysis of the "unfinished process..separate its progressive from its reactionary tendencies, and expose their mutual relations..." The "inner struggle of tendencies, groups, and parties" reveal progressive and reactionary sides which are "exposed" for open debate. Problems arise if open debate is refused by one side or the other.
>I don't like this - in part for the style/language (this stuff should
>just go on the scrapheap), and in part for the Leninist loyalty to a
>Single Revolutionary Party, i.e. the Sparts :
>
>>We say: U.S. imperialism hands off the world! The main enemy is at
>>home! Our purpose is to build the proletarian, internationalist,
>>revolutionary party that will infuse the working class with the
>>understanding of its social power and historic interests as the
>>gravedigger of U.S. imperialism.
>
>Doug
My problem with this (aside from the style/language, which is supposed to be "agitational", I guess) is the phrase "infuse the working class with the understanding..."
This gives the impression that class consciousness is a "substance" existing outside the working class, but in the possession of the vanguard party, and thus can be brought in and "infused" (like oxygen) into a vacuum which exists at present.
I don't read this in Marx. This is more like the dicotomy between the "educator/educated" which Marx criticized in the fifth "Theses on Feuerbach." Marx states in the his theses that consciousness changes in the process of changing material reality. In this case, the revolutionary activity of changing the material means of production from private ownership to that of the associated direct producers.
Another quote from "Revolution Betrayed" (bear with me) addresses the reform/revolution interaction:
"There are incomparably more reformers in the world than revolutionists, more accommodationists than irreconcilables. Only in exceptional historical periods, when the masses come into movement, do the revolutionists emerge from their isolation, and the reformers become more like fish out of water." (Ibid, p.306)
Is it the "infusion" of class consciousness which sets the masses in motion, or is it the result of economic processes taking place in the material world? Trotsky's train of thought is "exceptional historical periods," (for Marx the result of material forces acting upon each other to be empirically investigated), "the masses come into movement", and "the revolutionists emerge from their isolation."
For Lenin and Trotsky, the revolutionists "emerge" as a previously formed vanguard or combat party to lead the movement of the masses.
Of course, Marx supported the foundation of working class parties independent of the capitalist parties, and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat has to be the work of the proletariat itself.
Can the class consciousness required for this be "infused" from outside the working class by a vanguard party, or is it a result of the process of revolutionary action of the working class itself necessary to establish working class rule?
But anyway, thanks for your response. I have several more strictly economic questions which I hope you can answer in the future.
Thanks, RS
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