Charles your points are good ones and I will not split hairs. The context rather broad stroke and centred more on the rest of the world rather then the few exceptions which may or may not prove the rule.
Greg: "I am quite prepared to wipe off the self-identifieid Marxist organisations that now exist, if only on the basis that none seem in any realistic sense to be a part of worker's movement (nationally or internationally for that matter). I am with you on the next step, the tradition of formal partry organisation procliaming Marxism will probably never revive and I do not see this as a failure but a sign of historical sophistication (mind you I do not step away from various organisations filling the void much in the sense that Marx used in party of the working class in 1848 - something much broader than an organised party in the traditional sense)."
CB: "Greg, In the sense you and Justin are discussing, there are "no" more "workers" movements either. Opportunistic trade unionism is not a workers' movement. A "workers' movement" has to have some type of Marxist consciousness."
CB: "So, you two just dismiss the Cuban and Viet Namese Communist Parties as non-existent, or what ?"
CB: "What exactly is your reasoning that " formal" Marxist parties will have a flow after this ebb ?"
Parties which form governements are in a qualitative different position in terms of class struggle and are not easily compared to the problems of organisation excluded from such responsibilities. One factor needs to be taken into consideration, which niether makes such organisations good or bad, but state power also protects them from the ebbs and flows of immediate class struggle just as much as it might enable them to implement immediate class interests.
In any case there positions must be judged historically - we get into all soughts of problems when we attempt to judge their actions and prouncements purely on a political basis which does not take their governmental responsibilities into account.
>From the point of our (meaning the rest of the world) position the existence of such organisations must be secondary to our immediate problems (political inepitude). I am not trying to say anything extra-ordinary here, just shift it to a practrical plane.
I have no trouble in your charactization of the trade union movement, an important front but chroniclly incapable of political leadership (nor should we expect it to be, or try to make it so).
In this context I use the word movement ONLY to refer to the political movement (shorthand for the socialist or communist movement). The worker's movement whether active in struggle or apparently quite exists because of class existence, the political expression of it (the movement as defined above) is far more historically contingent. At the point where the lattter becomes virtually disconnected from the former (the worker's movement), yes I am prepared to dismiss it, in fact, I may point to it becoming by virtue of the position which it should occupy, to become a hinderance to the worker's movement.
Importantly, a leading body (the socialist/communist movement) which has the political responsiblity amongst other things of giving voice to the immediate interests of the worker's movement while safe-guarding its long term historical interests is not a position which can be held theoretically. Such leadership is a practical thing.
At a point (which I believe we have long since passed) that the leading movement largely disconnects from the class movement, but tenaciously occupies the vital territory of class leadership (class political consciousness - which more or less can be attributed to Marxism), a powerful contradiction arises.
It is not just that such organisations (really collections of them) have made political errors, or that their practice has gone awry, but historically they have turned into their opposite - that is they no-longer lead but act as black-guards and a reactionary force that retards, sabotages, creates illusions and disperses the worker's movement. Ideologically, politically and organisationally they have outlived their usefulness, everything about them is limited by the dead hand of history and the best that can be said about them is that they contain some really excellent fighters and some of those who will be vital for the next round in developing the working class movement politically.
Again Charles, although this is said in a dismissive tone and obviously sweeps very diverse organisations into a single category and then kicks it away altogether - I will stand by this absolutely - and not because of some abstract intellectual position, it may be expressed in such terms but it does not derive from them - rather this is a clear expression of more then twenty years of coal-face struggle where the intervention of the organisied socialist movement has in that time always been a crippling and counter-productive one for class struggle (ALWAYS - that is a big claim, but one I would stick to).
Now this results in some very un-lenin-like sounding formulations, in fact, it would be easy to make the claim that this is liquidationism of the first order. I have often come across the accusation (I am not suggesting you are using it but it would be fair if you did).
Liquidationism which seems to flow so readily from the critique above is in fact illusionary, for it would suggest thats these fragmentary grouplets hold the same position that social-democracy once did, or communist parties once held. Liquidating into some amorphous general struggle or specific battlefronts needs not be suggested because this is the conditon of such parties in terms of their membership, while their political activity as parties maims these very struggles.
The flow of membership through such organisations is often very swift, the individuals do not always evoporate into apolitical existence but often deposit themselves into less politically pure struggle. While the politics of the organisations are constantly at odds with real struggle and provides the mainspring for the process of serial liquidation.
Periods of improved recruitment leading directly to a fall in membership is not all that uncommon though no-one seems to pay attention to this, left political parties always grow as they get smaller, the really tiny ones sometimes maintain themsleves but always at the same level - getting smaller is not an option hence the tendency for a few to jump on just as a few have jumped off, or a momentary real growth followed by resuming the same size again. Liquidationism is not a call but the practice of the left as it is now organisied.
I would recommend that every communist remains at her/his post as long as they can put up with the chicanery of the organisation they are in or close-to.
My ruthlessness in this is that attempting to liquidate these organisations is counter-productive also, as much as I dispise these organisations they are the floating wreckage that a good number still cling to. Besides, the first test of a new form of organisation will be to sink these historical relics and rescue the communists, sink them politically (not organisationally white-ant them) as the communists leave.
The joke on me is that the very proposition within today's context is laughable.
However the shape of things to come is not all that difficult to envisage. Any critical understanding of left organisation as it now is suggests the way forward. Massive multi-lateral communications, organisational shape which encourages political navigation, combination, productive dispersement, making available resources for struggle, supplying a university-like form for self- and collective self-education. In a nutshell, working and practical democratic centralism on an international scale.
Hence I use the concept of party of the working class in the sense of Marx in the Communist Manifesto - not as an organisational form attempting to impose lock-step discpline on a membership, not as an organisation which places self-survival as the ultimate aim, but an organisational form which aids the working class in struggle and is capale of expressing that struggle in political consciousness.
It turns on two factors, the international development of capital which makes workers across the world direct competitors (and hence lays the practical basis for real solidarity and practical international combination) and the techniques of communication which helped bring about this further internationalization of capital - the humble computer and the lines of copper, glass fibre and radio beams that hold the world together in its present form.
Laughable when al the left can maintain a handful of webpages, a few lists and competes in this with dog-lovers enthusiasasts, right-wing nutters and fantasy game players (with most of the rest attempting to mate long distance). Not so laughable when the technology is looked at closely not for what it holds but what it is capable of holding, not so laughable when much of Marx, Lenin and swathes of others can be read by anyone who has access to a linked computer anywhere in the world, and not so when simple translation engines can make some sense of one language for another (with some care these primitive devices can be used accurately at there present state of development).
Sorry Charles and the rest of list I am perhaps the one contributor here chronically incapable of being short and concise.
Greg Schofield Perth Australia