[lbo-talk] Louis Proyect on Party Building

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Sun Dec 25 13:31:00 PST 2011


CB: Suddenly, with the Occupation there are militant partisans of theworking class, very well organized and in every major city and manyother cities. They have their own "press" because of the internet.

[WS:] And how many of those militant partisans are there? Couple thousand at best. This is what Gramsci called 'commando action" - an action by a few dedicated volunteers. It will not work if it does not have massive following - which I do not think is happening now.

As I said before, the key to success is having a material base - not a bunch of volunteers no matter how dedicated. The business has it, the left does not. So the way to go is first to secure the material base, meaning economic institutions that control significant economic resources and are in a position to use these resources to support political action to advance the interests of labor. One example would be a strong cooperative movement or "social economy" as it is called in Francophone countries. While by itself it is just a form of economic activity, it can provide resources to fund political action in a similar way that corporate resources are used to fund political action in support of the interests of capitalists.

One such a material base is built, then volunteer action such as OWS has a chance of succeeding in mobilizing larger segments of society.

Wojtek



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