From Jim Hillier on Leninist-International, Yoshie and Macdonald Stainsby list. Love his phrase, "apprentice charlatans."
From: Jim To: leninist-international at buo319b.econ.utah.edu Subject: L-I: Defending the line Date: Monday, August 10, 1998 2:05 AM
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I may not be the only one who wishes that Ben would stop telling us he is too busy to spend much time on e-mail in the introduction to long posts on how to conduct yourself in an e-mail debate [ :) ], but be that as it may, his latest post does deal with some important aspects of list culture and the way we can use this medium.
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Ben is very critical of Louis Paulsen, a bit unfairly in my opinion. Louis does not flame, even under duress and provocation. He sticks to the facts as he (or his party) see(s) them. What else can we ask of someone here? If he stretches people's positions a bit too far at times, this is certainly only a minor part of his polemics.
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Louis Paulsen's problem in any debate here is that he *must* defend his party's line. He has no choice. Nor does any one else whose party functions according to the dominant western conception of democratic centralism. I remember in the days of the battle over the nature of Cuba on the old Lenin List, for example, when Richard Bos made it clear to Adolfo that he was not going to change his position, which was, after all, not just his position but that of his party. And quite right too, considering his party's rules.
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Groups like the WWP have a line - on just about everything. Democratic centralism means, for such organisations, defending this line in public debate, be it on a demonstration, at a meeting, or in an e-mail forum. Defending the line is a very important part of such groups' activities, since propaganda in general is such an important part of their work. For some groups (not the WWP I suspect), such propaganda is just about *all* they do.
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I have been a member of such a group in the past. When I was with a group called The Leninist (now it calls itself the Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee), and we have at least one supporter of this trend - David Welch - on this list), our task on demonstrations was to sell the paper, and to engage people in discussions about our line, and to target representatives/paper sellers of other groups and draw them into an argument about certain points.
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Nothing wrong in that, of course. Except that the argument was not an open one, in which two communists examined each others' ideas and their own, admitting errors when they became clear. No. It was a form of warfare, in which any argument would do so long as you did not lose the battle. If you could throw the other person off the scent when s/he got close to one of the positions of your party which you did not actually think was right, then so much the better. And when you got into trouble - ie when you were losing - the main tactic was to shift the terrain as quickly as possible.
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In other words, we were apprentice charlatans.
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You cannot have an honest debate on that basis. At best, you have a debate in which you discover a weakness in your group's line, and then you take that back and argue it out within the organisation. I am far from convinced that this actually happens very often, and even less convinced that this is a sensible approach.
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By all means, we need to encourage discussions between comrades from different organisations and different traditions, but this needs to be open and honest. The problem is not so much with the individuals, but with the conception of democatic centralism.
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Democratic centralism for the Bolsheviks was not about defending ideas, but about carrying out actions. You could disagree with an action openly in the run up to it, and after it. This means not just within the party but in public, too. But if the majority vote for an action, then you carry it out.
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If you are representing the party, for example in an election, then this of course means defending the party line. But only while the activity is taking place. The way it functions now is very different. And it is debilitating: it turns us into unthinking sectarians, which is the last thing we want.
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I do not want any more of democratic centralism of this kind. I want a discipline party which is capable of carrying out united action; I do not want a party where your primary job is to learn a set of positions and go and argue with other paper sellers to show how clever you are or the party is.
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Louis Paulsen, and any other member of a party or group which adheres to this form of democratic centralism, can only enter into debate so long as he is defending the line, which is fine so long as s/he agrees with that line. But no-one can ever agree with everything their party leadership collectively says, or else we would not need democratic centralism at all - since we would be spontaneously arriving at the same conclusions as our other party members, or being led by someone who is so clever that they are always right on everything.
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We need democratic centralism because none of us has a monopoly on the truth, among other reasons. And we need open debates on the Internet and everywhere else because no one party or group has all the correct answers. This last point is of course very difficult to admit. Who in the Workers World Party, for example, *really* supports every statement of their leadership? And who in the Sparts? If anyone does, then obviously debates are only about converting people to the one true line. But there are just so damn many of these one true lines out there, and not all of them could possibly be correct. If your party *is* in posession of the one true line, it follows that all other groups are either stupid (they make mistakes because they do not understand the world) or liars (they defend wrong lines even though they know they are wrong). And if you are defending the intelligent truth against all manner of fools and liars, is it any big deal if you have to use a few underhand arguing techniques in order to defend your line in public? And so we come full circle.
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Actually, all of us are fools and liars in a world where all we have is competing tiny groups professing to have the correct line on everything, and calling on their supporters to go out into the world like Jehovah's Witnesses converting the masses and challenging the devil.
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Communism is for the truth, however unpalatable. And it is for reason, however difficult that may be. But to live up to this, we need to conduct ourselves very differently. Not just on e-lists (which are far less significant than some people seem to think), but in our parties.
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Our tasks and our methods are not in accordance with each other. Our methods are appropriate to building sects. Our tasks are the overthrow of capitalism and the building of communism.
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Jim Hillier
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