> In the collected works of Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Gramsci, Lenin, Mao,
> Ho (and probably some other major theorists of Marxism) there is endless
> discussion of how leftists should relate to, act as a part of, mass
> movements.
>
> But in all that literature there is not one single word on the subject
> of how marxists should _start_ a mass movement.
Here's my opinion: Marxist theorists often fetishize the working class yet rarely identify with it, and much of their writing instead prefers to analyze it from an outsider, aloof perspective,
> And there never will be. Marxist theory cannot in any way contribute to
> the _initiation_ of a mass movement, and for a very fundamental reason:
> We simply don't know (and we never will know) how mass movements get
> started.
On July 20, 1870, Marx wrote to Engels: "The French need a thrashing. If the Prussians are victorious the centralization of state power will be helpful for the centralization of the German working class; furthermore, German predominance will shift the center of gravity of West European labor movements from France to Germany. And one has but to compare the movement from 1866 to today to see that the German working class is in theory and organization superior to the French. Its domination over the French on the world stage would mean likewise the dominance of our theory over that of Proudhon, etc."
Yet when the Paris Commune happened only a year later, frustrating these less-than-noble plans ("Our theory must win!" etc), and showing that perhaps it wasn't true that "the German working class is in theory and organization superior to the French," Bakunin observed:
"The picture of a Commune in armed insurrection was so imposing that even the Marxists, whose ideas the Paris revolution utterly upset, had to bow before the Commune. They went further than that; in defiance of all logic and their known convictions they had to associate themselves with the Commune and identify with its principles and apsirations. It was such a comic carnival game, but a necessary one. For such was the enthusiasm awakened by the Commune that they would have been rejected and repudiated everywhere had they tried to retreat into the ivory tower of their dogma."
Many Marxists likewise have repeated this dynamic of observing mass movements as outsiders, commenting ont hem and analyzing them from afar, to then rush in and identify with them and attempt to steer them into properly "Marxian" courses. (Many socialist parties see anarchists as "potential Marxists" and many of their papers devote a lot of time to recruiting anarchs from the anti-globbo movement - this is when political ideology becomes a game of Christian proselytization).
This isn't true of all Marxists by any means. But there is a lot of passive "we must wait until the stars and planets are in alignment before we act" kind of thinking out there, which is in no way conducive to Marxists doing actual organizing work.
However, as Harry Braverman - a Marxist - wrote:
"Socialism, a mode of production, does not grow 'automatically' in the way that capitalism grew in response to blind and organic market forces; it must be brought into being on the basis of adequate technology, by the conscious and purposive activity of collective humanity."
If nobody is doing actual organizing work, it will simply never happen. And commenting on the organizing work of others is not organizing.
Brian Oliver Sheppard
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"And Mr. Block thinks he may / Be President some day." - Joe Hill, "Mr. Block"