Many socialists follow the ideas of Lenin and, in particular, his ideas on vanguard parties. These ideas were expounded by Lenin in his (in)famous work, What is to be Done?, which is considered as one of the important books in the development of Bolshevism.
The core of these ideas is the concept of "vanguardism," or the "vanguard party." According to this perspective, socialists need to organise together in a party, based on the principles of "democratic centralism," which aims to gain a decisive influence in the class struggle. The ultimate aim of such a party is revolution and its seizure of power. Its short term aim is to gather into it all "class conscious" workers into a "efficient" and "effective" party, alongside members of other classes who consider themselves as revolutionary Marxists. The party would be strictly centralised, with all members expected to submit to party decisions, speak in one voice and act in one way. Without this "vanguard," injecting its politics into the working class (who, it is argued, can only reach trade union consciousness by its own efforts), a revolution is impossible.
Lenin laid the foundation of this kind of party in his book What is to be Done? and the vision of the "vanguard" party was explicitly formalised in the Communist International. As Lenin put it, "Bolshevism has created the ideological and tactical foundations of a Third International . . . Bolshevism can serve as a model of tactics for all." [Collected Works, vol. 28, p. 292-3] Using the Russian Communist Party as its model, Bolshevik ideas on party organisation were raised as a model for revolutionaries across the world. Since then, the various followers of Leninism and its offshoots like Trotskyism have organised themselves in this manner (with varying success).
The wisdom of applying an organisational model that had been developed in the semi-feudal conditions of Tsarist Russia to every country, regardless of its level of development, has been questioned by anarchists from the start. After all, could it not be wiser to build upon the revolutionary tendencies which had developed in specific countries rather than import a new model which had been created for, and shaped by, radically different social, political and economic conditions? The wisdom of applying the vanguard model is not questioned on these (essentially materialist) points by those who subscribe to it. While revolutionary workers in the advanced capitalist nations subscribed to anarchist and syndicalist ideas, this tradition is rejected in favour of one developed by, in the main, bourgeois intellectuals in a nation which was still primarily feudal and absolutist. The lessons learned from years of struggle in actual capitalist societies were simply rejected in favour of those from a party operating under Tsarism. While most supporters of vanguardism will admit that conditions now are different than in Tsarist Russia, they still subscribe to organisational method developed in that context and justify it, ironically enough, because of its "success" in the totally different conditions that prevailed in Russia in the early 20th Century! And Leninists claim to be materialists! Perhaps the reason why Bolshevism rejected the materialist approach was because most of the revolutionary movements in advanced capitalist countries were explicitly anti-parliamentarian, direct actionist, decentralist, federalist and influenced by libertarian ideas? This materialist analysis was a key aspect of the council-communist critique of Lenin's Left-Wing Communism, for example (see Herman Gorter's Open Letter to Comrade Lenin for one excellent reply to Bolshevik arguments, tactics and assumptions).
However, this attempt to squeeze every working class movement into one "officially approved" model dates back to Marx and Engels. Faced with any working class movement which did not subscribe to their vision of what they should be doing (namely organised in political parties to take part in "political action," i.e. standing in bourgeois elections) they simply labelled it as the product of non-proletarian "sects." They went so far as to gerrymander the 1872 conference of the First International to make acceptance of "political action" mandatory on all sections in an attempt to destroy anarchist influence in it.
So this section of our FAQ will explain why anarchists reject this model. In our view, the whole concept of a "vanguard party" is fundamentally anti-socialist. Rather than present an effective and efficient means of achieving revolution, the Leninist model is elitist, hierarchical and highly inefficient in achieving a socialist society. At best, these parties play a harmful effect in the class struggle by alienating activists and militants with their organisational principles and manipulative tactics within popular structures and groups. At worse, these parties can seize power and create a new form of class society (a state capitalist one) in which the working class is oppressed by new bosses (namely, the party hierarchy and its appointees). As we discuss in section H.5.9, their "efficiency" is a false economy.
However, before discussing why anarchists reject "vanguardism" we need to stress a few points. Firstly, anarchists recognise the obvious fact that the working class is divided in terms of political consciousness. Secondly, from this fact most anarchists recognise the need to organise together to spread our ideas as well as taking part in, influencing and learning from the class struggle. As such, anarchists have long been aware of the need for revolutionaries to organise as revolutionaries. Thirdly, anarchists are well aware of the importance of revolutionary minorities playing an inspiring and "leading" role in the class struggle. We do not reject the need for revolutionaries to "give a lead" in struggles, we reject the idea of institutionalised leadership and the creation of a leader/led hierarchy implicit (and sometimes no so implicit) in vanguardism.
As such, we do not oppose "vanguardism" for these reasons. So when Leninists like Tony Cliff argue that it is "unevenness in the class [which] makes the party necessary," anarchists reply that "unevenness in the class" makes it essential that revolutionaries organise together to influence the class but that organisation does not and need not take the form of a vanguard party. [Tony Cliff, Lenin, vol. 2, p. 149] This is because we reject the concept and practice for three reasons.
Firstly, and most importantly, anarchists reject the underlying assumption of vanguardism. As we discuss in the next section, vanguardism is based on the argument that "socialist consciousness" has to be introduced into the working class from outside. We argue that not only is this position is empirically false, it is fundamentally anti-socialist in nature. This is because it logically denies that the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself. Moreover, it serves to justify elite rule. Some Leninists, embarrassed by the obvious anti-socialist nature of this concept, try and argue that Lenin (and so Leninism) does not hold this position. As we prove in section H.5.4, such claims are false.
Secondly, there is the question of organisational structure. Vanguard parties are based on the principle of "democratic centralism" (see section H.5.5). Anarchists argue that such parties, while centralised, are not, in fact, democratic nor can they be. As such, the "revolutionary" or "socialist" party is no such thing as it reflects the structure of the capitalist system it claims to oppose. We discuss this in sections H.5.6 and H.5.10.
Lastly, anarchists argue that such parties are, despite the claims of their supporters, not actually very efficient or effective in the revolutionary sense of the word. At best, they hinder the class struggle by being slow to respond to rapidly changing situations. At worse, they are "efficient" in shaping both the revolution and the post-revolutionary society in a hierarchical fashion, so re-creating class rule. We discuss this aspect of vanguardism in section H.5.9.
So these are key aspects of the anarchist critique of vanguardism, which we discuss in more depth in the following sections. It is a bit artificial to divide these issues into different sections because they are all related. The role of the party implies a specific form of organisation (as Lenin himself stressed), the form of the party influences its effectiveness. However, it is for ease of presentation we divide up our discussion so.
The reason why vanguard parties are anti-socialist is simply
because of the role assigned to them by Lenin, which he thought
was vital. Simply put, without the party, no revolution would
be possible. As Lenin put it in 1900, "[i]solated from
Social-Democracy, the working class movement becomes petty
and inevitably becomes bourgeois." [Collected Works, vol.
4, p. 368]
In What is to be Done?, he expands on this position:
Thus the role of the party is to inject socialist politics into
a class incapable of developing them itself.
Lenin is at pains to stress the Marxist orthodoxy of his claims
and quotes the "profoundly true and important" comments of Karl
Kautsky on the subject. [Op. Cit., p. 81] Kautsky, considered
the "pope" of Social-Democracy, stated that it was "absolutely
untrue" that "socialist consciousness" was a "necessary and
direct result of the proletarian class struggle." Rather,
"socialism and the class struggle arise side by side and not
one out of the other . . . Modern socialist consciousness can
arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge . . .
The vehicles of science are not the proletariat, but the
bourgeois intellegentsia: it was on the minds of some members
of this stratum that modern socialism originated, and it was
they who communicated it to the more intellectually developed
proletarians who, in their turn, introduced it into the
proletarian class struggle." Kautsky stressed that "socialist
consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian
class struggle from without." [quoted by Lenin, Op. Cit.,
pp. 81-2]
Lenin, as is obvious, wholeheartedly agreed with this position
(any attempt to claim that he did not or later rejected it
is nonsense, as we prove in
section H.5.4). Lenin, with his
usual modesty, claimed to speak on behalf of the workers when
he wrote that "intellectuals must talk to us, and tell us more
about what we do not know and what we can never learn from our
factory and 'economic' experience, that is, you must give us
political knowledge." [Op. Cit., p. 108] Thus we have Lenin
painting a picture of a working class incapable of developing
"political knowledge" or "socialist consciousness" by its
own efforts and so is reliant on members of the party,
themselves either radical elements of the bourgeoisie and
petty-bourgeoisie or educated by them, to provide it with such
knowledge.
The obvious implication of this argument is that the working
class cannot liberate itself by its own efforts. After all,
if the working class cannot develop its own political theory
by its own efforts then it cannot conceive of transforming
society and, at best, can see only the need to work within
capitalism for reforms to improve its position in society.
Without the radical bourgeois to provide the working class
with "socialist" ideas, a socialist movement, let alone
society, is impossible. A class whose members cannot develop
political knowledge by its own actions cannot emancipate
itself. It is, by necessity, dependent on others to shape
and form its movements. To quote Trotsky's telling analogy
on the respective roles of party and class, leaders and led:
While Trotsky's mechanistic analogy may be considered as
somewhat crude, it does expose the underlying assumptions
of Bolshevism. After all, did not Lenin argue that the
working class could not develop "socialist consciousness"
by themselves and that it had to be introduced from without?
How can you expect steam to create a piston? You cannot.
Thus we have a blind, elemental force incapable of conscious
thought being guided by a creation of science, the piston
(which, of course, is a product of the work of the "vehicles
of science," namely the bourgeois intellegentsia). In the
Leninist perspective, if revolutions are the locomotives
of history (to use Marx's words) then the masses are the
steam, the party the locomotive and the leaders the train
driver. The idea of a future society being constructed
democratically from below by the workers themselves rather
than through occasionally elected leaders seems to have
passed Bolshevism past. This is unsurprising, given that
the Bolsheviks saw the workers in terms of blindly moving
steam in a box, something incapable of being creative unless
an outside force gave them direction (instructions).
Cornelius Castoriadis provides a good critique of the
implications of the Leninist position:
Thus we have a privileged position for the party and a
perspective which can (and did) justify party dictatorship
over the proletariat. Given the perspective that the
working class cannot formulate its own "ideology" by its
own efforts, of its incapacity to move beyond "trade union
consciousness" independently of the party, the clear
implication is that the party could in no way be bound
by the predominant views of the working class. As the
party embodies "socialist consciousness" (and this arises
outside the working class and its struggles) then
opposition of the working class to the party signifies
a failure of the class to resist alien influences. As
Lenin put it:
The implications of this argument became clear once the
Bolsheviks seized power. As a justification for party
dictatorship, you would be hard pressed to find any
better. If the working class revolts against the
ruling party, then we have a "spontaneous" development
which, inevitably, is an expression of bourgeois ideology.
As the party represents socialist consciousness, any
deviation in working class support for it simply meant
that the working class was being "subordinated" to the
bourgeoisie. This meant, obviously, that to "belittle"
the "role" of the party by questioning its rule meant
to "strengthen bourgeois ideology" and when workers
spontaneously went on strike or protested against the
party's rule, the party had to "combat" these strivings
in order to maintain working class rule! As the "masses
of the workers" cannot develop an "independent ideology,"
the workers are rejecting socialist ideology in favour of
bourgeois ideology. The party, in order to defend the
"the revolution" (even the "rule of the workers") has
to impose its will onto the class, to "combat spontaneity."
As we saw in
section H.1.2, none of the leading Bolsheviks
were shy about drawing these conclusions once in power and
faced with working class revolt against their rule. Indeed,
they raised the idea that the "dictatorship of the
proletariat" was also, in fact, the "dictatorship of
the party" and, as we discuss in
section H.3.8 integrated
this into their theory of the state. Thus, Leninist ideology
implies that "workers' power" exists independently of the
workers. This means that the sight of the "dictatorship of
the proletariat" (i.e. the Bolshevik government) repressing
the proletariat, who cannot develop socialist conscious by
themselves, is to be expected.
This elitist perspective of the party, the idea that it
and it alone possesses knowledge can be seen from the
resolution of the Communist International on the role
of the party. It stated that "the working class without
an independent political party is a body without a head."
[Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920,
vol. 1, p. 194] This use of biological analogies says
more about Bolshevism that its authors intended. After
all, it suggests a division of labour which is unchangeable.
Can the hands evolve to do their own thinking? Of course
not. Thus, yet again, we have an image of the class as
unthinking brute force.
The implications of this model can be draw from Victor
Serge's comments from 1919. As he put it, the party "is
in a sense the nervous system of the class. Simultaneously
the consciousness and the active, physical organisation of
the dispersed forces of the proletariat, which are often
ignorant of themselves and often remain latent or express
themselves contradictorily." And the masses, what is their
role? Well, the party is "supported by the entire working
population," although, strangely enough, "it maintains its
unique situation in dictatorial fashion." He admits "the
energies which have just triumphed . . . exist outside"
the party and that "they constitute its strength only
because it represents them knowingly." Thus the workers
are "[b]ehind" the communists, "sympathising instinctively
with the party and carrying out the menial tasks required
by the revolution." [Revolution in Danger, p. 67, p. 66
and p. 6] Can we be surprised that the workers have the
"menial tasks" to perform when the party is the conscious
element? Equally, can we be surprised that this situation
is maintained "in dictatorial fashion"? It was precisely
this kind of social division of labour between manual and
mental labour which helped cause the Russian revolution
in the first place!
As the Cohen-Bendit brothers argue, the "Leninist belief
that the workers cannot spontaneously go beyond the level
of trade union consciousness is tantamount to beheading
the proletariat, and then insinuating the Party as the
head . . . Lenin was wrong, and in fact, in Russia the
Party was forced to decapitate the workers' movement
with the help of the political police and the Red Army
under the brilliant leadership of Trotsky and Lenin."
[Obsolute Communism, pp. 194-5]
As well as explaining the subsequent embrace of party
dictatorship over the working class, vanguardism also
explains the notorious inefficiency of Leninist parties
faced with revolutionary situations we discuss in
section H.5.8.
After all, basing themselves on the
perspective that all spontaneous movements are inherently
bourgeois they could not help but be opposed to autonomous
class struggle and the organisations and tactics it
generates. James C. Scott, in his excellent discussion
of the roots and flaws in Lenin's ideas on the party,
makes the obvious point that since, for Lenin, "authentic,
revolutionary class consciousness could never develop
autonomously within the working class, it followed that
that the actual political outlook of workers was always
a threat to the vanguard party." [Seeing like a State,
p. 155] As Maurice Brinton argues, the "Bolshevik cadres
saw their role as the leadership of the revolution.
Any movement not initiated by them or independent of
their control could only evoke their suspicion." These
developments, of course, did not occur by chance or
accidentally. As Brinton notes, "a given ideological
premise (the preordained hegemony of the Party) led
necessarily to certain conclusions in practice."
[The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, p. xi and
p. xii]
Bakunin expressed the implications of the vanguardist
perspective extremely well. It is worthwhile quoting
him at length:
The idea that "socialist consciousness" can exist independently
of the working class and its struggle suggests exactly the
perspective Bakunin was critiquing. For vanguardism, the abstract
theory of socialism exists prior to the class struggle and
exists waiting to be brought to the masses by the educated few.
The net effect is, as we have argued, to lay the ground for party
dictatorship. The basic idea of vanguardism, namely that the
working class is incapable of developing "socialist consciousness"
by its own efforts, contradictions the socialist maxim that "the
emancipation of the working class is the task of the working
class itself." Thus the concept is fundamentally anti-socialist,
a justification for elite rule and the continuation of class
society in new, party approved, ways.
As discussed in the
last section, Lenin claimed that workers
can only reach a "trade union consciousness" by their own
efforts. Anarchists argued that such an assertion is
empirically false. The history of the labour movement is
marked by revolts and struggles which went far further than
just seeking reforms and revolutionary theories derived
from such experiences.
As such, the category of the "economic struggle" corresponds
to no known social reality. Every "economic" struggle is
"political" in some sense and those involved can, and do,
learn political lessons from them. As Kropotkin noted in
the 1880s, there "is almost no serious strike which occurs
together wwith the appearance of troops, the exchange of
blows and some acts of revolt. Here they fight with the
troops; there they march on the factories . . . Thanks to
government intervention the rebel against the factory
becomes the rebel against the State." [quoted by Caroline
Cahm, Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism,
p. 256] If history shows anything, it shows that workers
are more than capable of going beyond "trade union
consciousness." The Paris Commune, the 1848 revolts and,
ironically enough, the 1905 and 1917 Russian Revolutions
show that the masses are capable of revolutionary struggles
in which the self-proclaimed "vanguard" of socialists
spend most of their time trying to catch up with them!
These last two examples, the Russian Revolutions, also
help to discredit Lenin's argument that the workers cannot
develop socialist consciousness alone due to the power of
bourgeois ideology. This, according to Lenin, required the
bourgeois intelligentsia to import "socialist" ideology from
outside the movement. Lenin's argument is flawed. Simply put,
if the working class is subjected to bourgeois influences,
then so are the "professional" revolutionaries within the
party. Indeed, the strength of such influences on the
"professionals" of revolution must be higher as they are
not part of proletarian life. After all, if social being
determines consciousness than if a revolutionary is no
longer part of the working class, then they no longer are
rooted in the social conditions which generate socialist
theory and action. Rootless and no longer connected with
collective labour and working class life, the "professional"
revolutionary is more likely to be influenced by the social
milieu he or she now is part of (i.e. a bourgeois, or at
best petit-bourgeois, environment). This may explain the
terrible performance of such "vanguards" in revolutionary
situations (see section H.5.8).
This tendency for the "professional" revolutionary and
intellectuals to be subject to the bourgeois influences
which Lenin subscribes solely to the working class can
continually be seen from the history of the Bolshevik
party. For example, as Trotsky himself notes:
He pointed to the example of the First World War, when,
"even the Bolshevik party did not at once find its way
in the labyrinth of war. As a general rule, the confusion
was most pervasive and lasted longest amongst the Party's
higher-ups, who came in direct contact with bourgeois
public opinion." Thus the professional revolutionaries
"were largely affected by compromisist tendencies, which
emanated from bourgeois circles, while the rank and file
Bolshevik workingmen displayed far greater stability
resisting the patriotic hysteria that had swept the
country." [Op. Cit., p. 248 and p. 298] It should be
noted that he is repeating earlier comments from his
History of the Russian Revolution when he argued that
the "immense intellectual backsliding of the upper stratum
of the Bolsheviks during the war" was caused by "isolation
from the masses and isolation from those abroad -- that is
primarily from Lenin." [vol. 3, p. 134] As we discuss in
the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?", even Trotsky had to admit that during 1917
the working class was far more revolutionary than the party
and the party more revolutionary than the "party machine"
of "professional revolutionaries."
Ironically enough, Lenin himself recognised this aspect of
the intellectuals after he had praised their role in bringing
"revolutionary" consciousness to the working class in his
1904 work One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. He argued
that it was now the "presence of large numbers of radical
intellectuals in the ranks . . . [which] has made . . .
the existence of opportunism, produced by their mentality,
inevitable." [contained in Robert V. Daniels, A Documentary
History of Communism, vol. 1, p. 25] According to Lenin's
new philosophy, the working class simply needs to have been
through the "schooling of the factory" in order to give the
intelligentsia lessons in political discipline, the very
same intelligentsia which up until then had played the leading
role in the Party and had given political consciousness to
the working class. In his words:
Lenin's analogy is, of course, flawed. The factory is a "means
of exploitation" because its "means of organisation" is top-down
and hierarchical. The "collective work" which the workers are
subjected to is organised by the boss and the "discipline" is
that of the barracks, not that of free individuals. In fact,
the "schooling" for revolutionaries is not the factory, but
the class struggle. As such, healthy and positive discipline
is generated by the struggle against the way the workplace is
organised under capitalism. Factory discipline, in other words,
is completely different from the discipline required for social
struggle or revolution. Thus the workers become revolutionary
in so far as they reject the hierarchical discipline of the
workplace and develop the self-discipline required to fight
that discipline.
A key task of anarchism is encourage working class revolt
against this type of discipline, particularly in the
capitalist workplace. The "discipline" Lenin praises
simply replaces human thought and association with the
following of orders and hierarchy. Thus anarchism aims to
undermine capitalist (imposed and brutalising) discipline
in favour of solidarity, the "discipline" of free association
and agreement based on the community of struggle and the
political consciousness and revolutionary enthusiasm that
struggle creates. To the factory discipline Lenin argues for,
anarchists argue for the discipline produced in workplace
struggles and conflicts against that hierarchical discipline.
Thus, for anarchists, the model of the factory can never be
the model for a revolutionary organisation any more than
Lenin's vision of society as "one big workplace" could be
our vision of socialism (see
section H.3.1). Ultimately, the
factory exists to reproduce hierarchical social relationships
and class society just as much as it exists to produce goods.
It should be noted that Lenin's argument does not contradict
his earlier arguments. The proletarian and intellectual have
complementary jobs in the party. The proletariat is to give
lessons in political discipline to the intellectuals as they
have been through the process of factory (i.e. hierarchical)
discipline. The role of the intellectuals as providers of
"political consciousness" is the same and so they give
political lessons to the workers.
Moreover, his vision of the vanguard party is basically the
same as in What is to Be Done?. This can be seen from
his comments that his opponent (the leading Menshevik
Martov) "wants to lump together organised and
unorganised elements in the Party, those who submit to
direction and those who do not, the advanced and the
incorrigibly backward." He stressed that the "division of
labour under the direction of a centre evokes from him [the
intellectual] a tragicomical outcry against people being
transformed into 'wheels and cogs'" [Op. Cit., p. 21 and
p. 24] Thus there is the same division of labour as in the
capitalist factory, with the boss ("the centre") having the
power to direct the workers (who "submit to direction"). Thus
we have a "revolutionary" party organised in a capitalist
manner, with the same "division of labour" between order
givers and order takers.
As we discussed in
section H.5.1, anarchists argue that the
assumptions of vanguardism leads to party rule over the
working class. Needless to say, followers of Lenin disagree
that the idea that vanguardism results in such an outcome.
For example, Chris Harman of the British Socialist Workers
Party argues the opposite case in his essay "Party and Class."
However, his own argument suggests the elitist conclusions
we have draw from Lenin's.
Harman argues that there are two ways to look at the
revolutionary party, the Leninist way and the traditional
social-democratic way (as represented by the likes of
Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg in 1903-5). "The latter,"
he argues, "was thought of as a party of the whole [working]
class . . . All the tendencies within the class had to be
represented within it. Any split within it was to be
conceived of as a split within the class. Centralisation,
although recognised as necessary, was feared as a centralisation
over and against the spontaneous activity of the class. Yet
it was precisely in this kind of party that the 'autocratic'
tendencies warned against by Luxemburg were to develop most.
For within it the confusion of member and sympathiser, the
massive apparatus needed to hold together a mass of only
half-politicised members in a series of social activities,
led to a toning down of political debate, a lack of political
seriousness, which in turn reduced the ability of the members
to make independent political evaluations and increased the
need for apparatus-induced involvement." [Party and Class,
p. 32]
Thus, the lumping together into one organisation all those
who consider themselves as "socialist" and agree with the
party's aims creates in a mass which results in "autocratic"
tendencies within the party organisation. As such, it is
important to remember that "the Party, as the vanguard
of the working class, must not be confused with the entire
class." [Op. Cit., p. 22] For this reason, the party must be
organised in a specific manner which reflect his Leninist
assumptions:
The problem for Harman is now how to explain how the proletariat
can become the ruling class if this is true. He argues that
"the party is not the embryo of the workers' state -- the
workers' council is. The working class as a whole will be
involved in the organisations that constitute the state,
the most backward as well as the most progressive elements."
As such, the "function of the party is not to be the state."
[Op. Cit., p. 33] Thus, the implication is that the working
class will take an active part in the decision making process
during the revolution (although the level of this "involvement"
is unspecified, probably for good reasons as we explain).
If this is the case, then the problem of the mass party
reappears, but in a new form (we must also note that this
problem must have also appearing in 1917, when the Bolshevik
party opened its doors to become a mass party).
As the "organisations that constitute the state" are made
up of the working class "as a whole," then, obviously,
they cannot be expected to wield power (i.e. directly
manage the revolution from below). If they did, then the
party would be "mixed up" with the "irremediably confused"
and so could not lead (as we discuss in
section H.5.5,
Lenin links "opportunism" to "primitive" democracy, i.e.
self-management, within the party). Hence the need for
party power. Which, of course, explains Lenin's 1920
comments that an organisation embracing the whole working
class cannot exercise the "dictatorship of the proletariat"
and that a "vanguard" is required to do so (see
section
H.1.2 for details). Of course, Harman does not explain how
the "irremediably confused" are able to judge that the party
is the best representative of its interests. Surely if
someone is competent enough to pick their ruler, they must
also be competent enough to manage their own affairs
directly? Equally, if the "irremediably confused" vote
against the party once it is in power, what happens? Will
the party submit to the "leadership" of what it considers
"the most backward"? If the Bolsheviks are anything to go
by, the answer has to be no.
Ironically, he argues that it "is worth noting that in Russia
a real victory of the apparatus over the party required
precisely the bringing into the party hundreds of thousands
of 'sympathisers,' a dilution of the 'party' by the 'class.'
. . . The Leninist party does not suffer from this tendency
to bureaucratic control precisely because it restricts its
membership to those willing to be serious and disciplined
enough to take political and theoretical issues as their
starting point, and to subordinate all their activities to
those." [Op. Cit., p. 33] Yet, in order to have a socialist
revolution, the working class as a whole must participate in
the process and that implies self-management. Thus the decision
making organisations will be based on the party being "mixed
up" with the "irremediably confused" as if they were part of
a non-Leninist party.
From Harman's own assumptions, this by necessity results in an
"autocratic" regime within the new "workers' state." This was
implicitly recognised by the Bolsheviks when they stressed that
the function of the party was to become the government, the head
of the state. Lenin and Trotsky continually stressed this fact,
urging that the party "assume power," that the Bolsheviks "can
and must take state power into their own hands." Indeed, "take
over full state power alone." [Lenin, Selected Works, vol. 2,
p. 329, p. 328 and p. 352] Thus, while the working class "as a
whole" will be "involved in the organisations that constitute the
state," the party (in practice, its leadership) will hold power
(see
section H.3.8
for a further discussion of this Bolshevik
position). And for Trotsky, this substitution of the party for
the class was inevitable:
He notes that within the state, "the last word belongs to the
Central Committee of the party." [Op. Cit., p. 107] In 1937,
he repeats this argument, explicitly linking the "objective
necessity" of the "revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian
party" to the "heterogeneity of the revolutionary class, the
necessity for a selected vanguard in order to assure the
victory." Stressed the "dictatorship of a party," he argued
that "[a]bstractly speaking, it would be very well if the
party dictatorship could be replaced by the 'dictatorship'
of the whole toiling people without any party, but this
presupposes such a high level of political development
among the masses that it can never be achieved under
capitalist conditions." [Writings 1936-37, pp. 513-4]
This means that given Harman's own assumptions, autocratic rule
by the party is inevitable. Ironically, he argues that "to be a
'vanguard' is not the same as to substitute one's own desires,
or policies or interests, for those of the class." He stresses
that an "organisation that is concerned with participating in
the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the working class
cannot conceive of substituting itself for the organs of the
direct rule of that class." [Op. Cit., p. 33 and p. 34] However,
the logic of his argument suggests otherwise. Simply put, his
arguments against a broad party organisation are also applicable
to self-management during the class struggle and revolution.
The rank and file party members are "mixed up" in the class.
This leads to party members becoming subject to bourgeois
influences. This necessitates the power of the higher bodies
over the lower (see
section H.5.5). The highest party organ,
the central committee, must rule over the party machine, which
in turn rules over the party members, who, in turn, rule over
the workers. This logical chain was, ironically enough,
recognised by Trotsky in 1904 in his polemic against Lenin.
He argued:
Obviously once in power in 1920 this substitution was less of
a concern for him than in 1904! Which, however, does not deny
the insight Trotsky showed in 1904 about the dangers inherent
in the Bolshevik assumptions on working class spontaneity and
how revolutionary ideas develop. Dangers which he, ironically,
helped provide empirical evidence for.
This false picture of the party (and its role) explains the
progression of the Bolshevik party after 1917. As the soviets
organised all workers, we have the problem that the party
(with its "scientific" knowledge) is swamped by the class.
The task of the party is to "persuade, not coerce these
[workers] into accepting its lead" and, as Lenin made clear,
for it to take political power. [Harman, Op. Cit., p. 34]
Once in power, the decisions of the party are in constant
danger of being overthrown by the working class, which
necessitates a state run with "iron discipline" (and the
necessary means of coercion) by the party. With the
disempowering of the mass organisations by the party,
the party itself becomes a substitute for popular
democracy as being a party member is the only way to
influence policy. As the party grows, the influx of new
members "dilutes" the organisation, necessitating a similar
growth of centralised power at the top of the organisation.
This eliminates the substitute for proletarian democracy
which had developed within the party (which explains the
banning of factions within the Bolshevik party in 1921).
Slowly but surely, power concentrates into fewer and fewer
hands, which, ironically enough, necessitates a bureaucracy
to feed the party leaders information and execute its will.
Isolated from all, the party inevitably degenerates and
Stalinism results.
We are sure that many Trotskyists will object to our
analysis, arguing that we ignore the problems facing the
Russian Revolution in our discussion. Harman argues that
it was "not the form of the party that produces party as
opposed to soviet rule, but the decimation of the working
class" that occurred during the Russian Revolution. [Op. Cit.,
p. 37] This is false. As noted, Lenin was always explicit that
about the fact that the Bolshevik's sought party rule ("full
state power") and that their rule was working class rule.
As such, we have the first, most basic, substitution of party
power for workers power. Secondly, as we discuss in
section 6
of the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?", the Bolshevik party had been gerrymandering and disbanding
soviets before the start of the Civil War, so proving that it
cannot be held accountable for this process of substitution.
Thirdly, Leninists are meant to know that civil war is
inevitable during a revolution. To blame the inevitable for
the degeneration of the revolution is hardly convincing
(particularly as the degeneration started before the civil
war broke out).
Unsurprisingly, anarchists reject the underlying basis of
this progression, the idea that the working class, by its
own efforts, is incapable of developing beyond a "trade
union consciousness." The actions of the working class
itself condemned these attitudes as outdated and simply
wrong long before Lenin's infamous comments were put on
paper. In every struggle, the working class has created
its own organisations to co-ordinate its struggle (to use
Trotsky's analogy, the steam creates its own piston and
constantly has). In the process of struggle, the working
class changes its perspectives. This process is uneven
in both quantity and quality, but it does happen. As such,
anarchists do not think that all working class people
will, at the same time, spontaneously become anarchists.
If they did, we would be in an anarchist society today!
As we argued in sections J.3 and
H.2.10, anarchists acknowledge
that political development within the working class is uneven.
The difference between anarchism and Leninism is how we see
socialist ideas developing. In every class struggle there
is a radical minority which takes the lead and many of this
miinority develop revolutionary conclusions from their
experiences. As such, members of the working class develop
their own revolutionary theory and it does not need bourgeois
intellectuals to inject it into them.
Anarchists go on to argue that this minority (along with
any members of other classes who have broken with their
background and become libertarians) should organise and
work together. The role of this revolutionary organisation
is to co-ordinate revolutionary activity, discuss and
revise ideas and help others draw the same conclusions
as they have from their own, and others, experiences. The
aim of such a group is, by word and deed, to assist the
working class in its struggles and to draw out and clarify
the libertarian aspects of this struggle. It seeks to
abolish the rigid division between leaders and led which
is the hallmark of class society by drawing the vast
majority of the working class into social struggle and
revolutionary politics by encouraging their direct
management of the class struggle. Only this participation
and the political discussion it generates will allow
revolutionary ideas to become widespread.
In other words, anarchists argue that precisely because
of political differences ("unevenness") we need the
fullest possible democracy and freedom to discuss
issues and reach agreements. Only by discussion and
self-activity can the political perspectives of those
in struggle develop and change. In other words, the fact
Bolshevism uses to justify its support for party power is
the strongest argument against it.
Our differences with vanguardism could not be more clear.
As discussed in
section H.5.1,
vanguardism rests on the premise
that the working class cannot emancipate itself. As such, the
ideas of Lenin as expounded in What is to be Done? contradicts
the key idea of Marx that the emancipation of the working class
is the task of the working class itself. Thus the paradox of
Leninism. On the one hand, it subscribes to an ideology
allegedly based on working class self-liberation. On the
other, the founder of that school wrote an obviously
influential work whose premise not only logically implies
that they cannot, it also provides the perfect rationale for
party dictatorship over the working class (and as the history
of Leninism in power showed, this underlying premise was much
stronger than any democratic-sounding rhetoric -- see
"What happened during the Russian Revolution?").
It is for this reason that many Leninists are somewhat embarrassed
by Lenin's argument in What is to be Done?. Hence we see
Chris Harman writing that "the real theoretical basis for his
[Lenin's] argument on the party is not that the working class
is incapable on its own of coming to theoretical socialist
consciousness . . . The real basis for his argument is that the
level of consciousness in the working class is never uniform."
[Party and Class, pp. 25-6] In other words, Harman changes
the focus of the question away from the point explicitly and
repeatedly stated by Lenin that the working class was incapable
on its own of coming to theoretical socialist consciousness and
that he was simply repeating Marxist orthodoxy when he did.
Harman bases his revision on Lenin's later comments regarding
his book, namely that he sought to "straighten matters out"
by "pull[ing] in the other direction" to the "extreme" which
the "economists" had went to. He repeated this in 1907 (see
below). While Lenin may have been right to attack the
"economists," his argument that socialist consciousness
comes to the working class only "from without" is not a
case of going too far in the other direction; it is wrong.
Simply put, you do not attack ideas you disagree with arguing
an equally false set of ideas. This suggests that Harman's
attempt to downplay Lenin's elitist position is flawed. Simply
put, the "real theoretical basis" of the argument was precisely
the issue Lenin himself raised, namely the incapacity of the
working class to achieve socialist consciousness by itself.
It is probably the elitist conclusions of this argument which
drives Harman to try and change the focus to another issue,
namely the political unevenness within the working class.
Some go to even more extreme lengths, denying that Lenin
even held such a position. For example, Hal Draper argues at
length that Lenin did not, in fact, hold the opinions he
actually expressed in his book! While Draper covers many
aspects of what he calls the "Myth of Lenin's 'Concept of
The Party,'" in his essay of the same name, we will
concentrate on the key idea, namely that socialist ideas
are developed outside the class struggle by the radical
intelligentsia and introduced into the working class from
without. Here, as argued in
section H.5.1, is the root of
the anti-socialist basis of Leninism.
So what does Draper say? On the one hand, he denies that Lenin
held this theory (he states that it is a "virtually non-existent
theory" and "non-existent after WITBD"). He argues that those who
hold the position that Lenin actually meant what he said in his
book "never quote anything other than WITBD," and states that
this is a "curious fact" (a fact we will disprove shortly). Draper
argues as follows: "Did Lenin put this theory forward even in
WITBD? Not exactly." He then notes that Lenin "had just read
this theory in the most prestigious theoretical organ of Marxism
of the whole international socialist movement" and it had been
"put forward in an important article by the leading Marxist
authority," Karl Kautsky. Draper notes that "Lenin first
paraphrased Kautsky" and then "quoted a long passage from
Kautsky's article."
This much, of course, is well known by anyone who has read Lenin's
book. By paraphrasing and quoting Kautsky as he does, Lenin is
showing his agreement with Kautsky's argument. Indeed, Lenin
states before quoting Kautsky that his comments are "profoundly
true and important" [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 79] As such,
by explicitly and obviously agreeing with Kautsky, it can be
said that it also becomes Lenin's theory as well! Over time,
particularly after Kautsky had been labelled a "renegade"
by Lenin, Kautsky's star waned and Lenin's rose. Little
wonder the argument became associated with Lenin rather
than the discredited Kautsky. Draper then speculates that
"it is curious . . . that no one has sought to prove that
by launching this theory . . . Kautsky was laying the basis
for the demon of totalitarianism." A simply reason exists
for this, namely the fact that Kautsky, unlike Lenin, was never
the head of a one-party dictatorship and justified this system
politically. Indeed, Kautsky attacked the Bolsheviks for this,
which caused Lenin to label him a "renegade." Kautsky, in this
sense, can be considered as being inconsistent with his political
assumptions, unlike Lenin who took his assumptions to their
logical conclusions.
How, after showing the obvious fact that "the crucial 'Leninist'
theory was really Kautsky's," he then wonders "[d]id Lenin, in
WITBD, adopt Kautsky's theory?" He answers his own question
with an astounding "Again, not exactly"! Clearly, quoting
approvingly of a theory and stating it is "profoundly true"
does not, in fact, make you a supporter of it! What evidence
does Draper present for his amazing answer? Well, Draper argued
that Lenin "tried to get maximum mileage out of it against the
right wing; this was the point of his quoting it. If it did
something for Kautsky's polemic, he no doubt figured that it
would do something for his." Or, to present a more simple and
obvious explanation, Lenin agreed with Kautsky's "profoundly
true" argument!
Aware of this possibility, Draper tries to combat it. "Certainly,"
he argues, "this young man Lenin was not (yet) so brash as to
attack his 'pope' or correct him overtly. But there was obviously
a feeling of discomfort. While showing some modesty and attempting
to avoid the appearance of a head-on criticism, the fact is that
Lenin inserted two longish footnotes rejecting (or if you wish,
amending) precisely what was worst about the Kautsky theory on
the role of the proletariat." So, here we have Lenin quoting
Kautsky to prove his own argument (and noting that Kautsky's
words were "profoundly true and important"!) but "feeling
discomfort" over what he has just approvingly quoted! Incredible!
So how does Lenin "amend" Kautsky's "profoundly true and
important" argument? In two ways, according to Draper.
Firstly, in a footnote which "was appended right after
the Kautsky passage" Lenin quoted. Draper argued that
it "was specifically formulated to undermine and weaken
the theoretical content of Kautsky's position. It began:
'This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no
part in creating such an ideology.' But this was exactly
what Kautsky did mean and say. In the guise of offering
a caution, Lenin was proposing a modified view. 'They
[the workers] take part, however,' Lenin's footnote
continued, 'not as workers, but as socialist theoreticians,
as Proudhons and Weitlings; in other words, they take part
only when they are able . . .' In short, Lenin was
reminding the reader that Kautsky's sweeping statements
were not even 100% true historically; he pointed to
exceptions." Yes, Lenin did point to exceptions in
order to refute objections to Kautsky's argument before
they were raised! It is clear that Lenin is not refuting
Kautsky. He is agreeing with him and raising possible
counter-examples in order to refute potential objections
based on them. Thus Proudhon adds to socialist ideology
in so far as he is a "socialist theoretician" and not a
worker! How clear can you be? As Lenin continues, people
like Proudhon "take part only to the extent that they are
able, more or less, to acquire the knowledge of their age
and advance that knowledge." In other words, insofar as
they learn from the "vehicles of science." Neither Kautsky
or Lenin denied that it was possible for workers to acquire
such knowledge and pass it on. However this does not mean
that they thought workers, as part of their daily life and
struggle as workers, could develop "socialist theory."
Thus Lenin's footnote reiterates Kautsky's argument rather
than, as Draper hopes, refutes it.
Draper turns to another footnote, which he notes "was not directly
tied to the Kautsky article, but discussed the 'spontaneity of the
socialist idea. 'It is often said,' Lenin began, 'that the working
class spontaneously gravitates towards socialism. This is perfectly
true in the sense that socialist theory reveals the causes of the
misery of the working class ... and for that reason the workers
are able to assimilate it so easily,' but he reminded that this
process itself was not subordinated to mere spontaneity. 'The
working class spontaneously gravitates towards socialism;
nevertheless, ... bourgeois ideology spontaneously imposes
itself upon the working class to a still greater degree.'"
Draper argues that this "was obviously written to modify and
recast the Kautsky theory, without coming out and saying that
the Master was wrong." So, here we have Lenin approvingly quoting
Kautsky in the main text while, at the same time, providing a
footnote to show that, in fact, he did not agree with what he
has just quoted! Truly amazing -- and easily refuted. After all,
the footnote stresses that workers appreciate socialist theory
"provided, however, that this theory does not step aside for
spontaneity and provided it subordinates spontaneity to itself."
In other words, workers "assimilate" socialist theory only when
socialist theory does not adjust itself to the "spontaneous"
forces at work in the class struggle. Thus, rather than refuting
Kautsky by the backdoor, Lenin in this footnote still agrees with
him. Socialism does not develop, as Kautsky stressed, from the
class struggle but rather has to be injected into it. This means,
by necessity, the theory "subordinates spontaneity to itself."
Draper argues that this "modification" simply meant that there
"are several things that happen 'spontaneously,' and what will
win out is not decided only by spontaneity" but as can be seen,
this is not the case. Only when "spontaneity" is subordinated to
the theory (i.e. the party) can socialism be won, a totally
different position. As such, when Draper asserts that "[a]ll
that was clear at this point was that Lenin was justifiably
dissatisfied with the formulation of Kautsky's theory," he is
simply expressing wishful thinking. This footnote, like the
first one, continues the argument developed by Lenin in the
main text and in no way is in contradiction to it. As is obvious.
Draper argues that the key problem is that critics of Lenin
"run two different questions together: (a) What was, historically,
the initial role of intellectuals in the beginnings of the
socialist movement, and (b) what is - and above all, what
should be - the role of bourgeois intellectuals in a working-class
party today." He argues that Kautsky did not believe that "if it
can be shown that intellectuals historically played a certain
initiatory role, they must and should continue to play the
same role now and forever. It does not follow; as the working
class matured, it tended to throw off leading strings." However,
this is unconvincing. After all, if socialist consciousness cannot
be generated by the working class by its own struggles then this
is applicable now and in the future. Thus workers who join the
socialist movement will be repeating the party ideology, as
developed by intellectuals in the past. If they do develop
new theory, it would be, as Lenin stressed, "not as workers,
but as socialist theoreticians" and so socialist consciousness
still does not derive from their own class experiences. This
places the party in a privileged position vis-à-vis the working
class and so the elitism remains.
Ironically, Draper agrees with Kautsky and Lenin as regards the
claim that socialism does not develop out of the class struggle.
As he put it, "[a]s a matter of fact, in the International of 1902
no one really had any doubts about the historical facts concerning
the beginnings of the movement." The question is, "[b]ut what
followed from those facts?" To which he argues that Marx and Engels
"concluded, from the same facts and subsequent experiences, that
the movement had to be sternly warned against the influence of
bourgeois intellectuals inside the party." (We wonder if Marx and
Engels included themselves in the list of "bourgeois intellectuals"
the workers had to be "sternly warned" about?) Thus, amusingly
enough, Draper argues that Marx, Engels, Kautsky and Lenin all
held to the "same facts" that socialist consciousness developed
outside the experiences of the working classes!
Draper, after rewriting history somewhat in his laborious and
hardly convincing arguments, states that it "is a curious fact
that no one has ever found this alleged theory anywhere else
in Lenin's voluminous writings, not before and not after
[What is to be Done?]. It never appeared in Lenin again.
No Leninologist has ever quoted such a theory from any other
place in Lenin." However, as this theory was the orthodox
Marxist position, Lenin had no real need to reiterate this
argument continuously. After all, he had quoted the acknowledged
leader of Marxism on the subject explicitly to show the
orthodoxy of his argument and the "non-Marxist" base of those
he argued against. Once the debate had been won and orthodox
Marxism triumphant, why repeat the argument again? As we
will see below, this was exactly the position Lenin did
take in 1907 when he wrote an introduction to a book which
contained What is to Be Done?.
In contradiction to Draper's claim, Lenin did return to this
matter. In October 1905 he wrote an a short article in praise
of an article by Stalin on this very subject. Stalin had sought
to explain Lenin's ideas to the Georgian Social-Democracy and,
like Lenin, had sought to root the argument in Marxist
orthodoxy (partly to justify the argument, partly to expose
the Menshevik opposition as being "non-Marxists"). Stalin
argues along similar lines to Lenin:
Stalin stresses the Marxist orthodoxy by stating Social-Democracy
"comes in and introduces socialist consciousness into the working
class movement. This is what Kautsky has in mind when he says
'socialist consciousness is something introduced into the
proletarian class struggle from without.'" [Op. Cit., pp. 164-5]
That Stalin is simply repeating Lenin's and Kautsky's arguments
is clear, as is the fact it was considered the orthodox position
within social-democracy.
If Draper is right, then Lenin would have taken the opportunity
to attack Stalin's article and express the alternative viewpoint
Draper is convinced he held. However, Lenin put pen to paper to
praise Stalin's work, noting "the splendid way in which the
problem of the celebrated 'introduction of a consciousness from
without' had been posed." Lenin explicitly agrees with Stalin's
summary of his argument. He argues that "social being determines
consciousness . . . Socialist consciousness corresponds to the
position of the proletariat" and then quotes Stalin: "'Who can
and does evolve this consciousness (scientific socialism)?'"
and answers (again approvingly quoting Stalin) that "its
'evolution' is a matter for a few Social-Democratic intellectuals
who posses the necessary means and time.'" Lenin does argue
that Social-Democracy meets "an instinctive urge towards
socialism" when it "comes to the proletariat with the message
of socialism," but this does not counter the main argument that
the working class cannot develop socialist consciousness by it
own efforts and the, by necessity, elitist and hierarchical
politics that flow from this position. [Lenin, Collected
Works, vol. 9, p. 388]
That Lenin did not reject his early formulations can also be
seen from in his introduction to the pamphlet "Twelve Years"
which contained What is to be Done?. Rather than explaining
the false nature of that work's more infamous arguments, Lenin
in fact defended them. For example, as regards the question
of professional revolutionaries, he argued that the statements
of his opponents now "look ridiculous" as "today the idea
of an organisation of professional revolutionaries has
already scored a complete victory," a victory which "would
have been impossible if this idea had not been pushed to the
forefront at the time." He noted that his work had
"vanquished Economism . . . and finally created this
organisation." On the question of socialist consciousness,
he simply reiterates the Marxist orthodoxy of his position,
noting that its "formulation of the relationship between
spontaneity and political consciousness was agreed upon by
all the Iskra editors . . . Consequently, there could be
no question of any difference in principle between the draft
Party programme and What is to be Done? on this issue." So
while Lenin argues that he had "straighten out what had
been twisted by the Economists," he did not correct his early
arguments. [Collected Works, vol. 13, p. 101, p. 102 and
p. 107]
Looking at Lenin's arguments at the Communist International on
the question of the party we see an obvious return to the ideas
of What is to be Done?. Here was have a similar legal/illegal
duality, strict centralism, strong hierarchy and the vision of
the party as the "head" of the working class (i.e. its
consciousness). In Left-Wing Communism, Lenin mocks those who
reject the idea that dictatorship by the party is the same as
that of the class.
Ultimately, the whole rationale for the kind of wishful thinking
that Draper inflicts on us is flawed. As noted above, you do not
combat what you think is an incorrect position with one which
you consider as also being wrong or do not agree with! You
counter what you consider as an incorrect position with one
you consider correct and agree with. As Lenin, in WITBD,
explicitly did. This means that later attempts by his followers
to downplay the ideas raised in Lenin's book are unconvincing.
Moreover, as he was simply repeating Social-Democratic orthodoxy
it seems doubly unconvincing.
Clearly, Draper is wrong. Lenin did, as indicated above,
actually mean what he said in What is to be Done?. The
fact that Lenin quoted Kautsky simply shows that this
position was the orthodox Social-Democratic one, held by
the mainstream of the party. Given that Leninism was (and
still is) a "radical" offshoot of this movement, this should
come as no surprise. However, Draper's comments remind us how
religious many forms of Marxism are. After all, why do we
need facts when we have the true faith?
As noted above, anarchists oppose vanguardism for three reasons,
one of which is the way it recommends how revolutionaries should
organise to influence the class struggle.
So how is a "vanguard" party organised? To quote the Communist
International's 1920 resolution on the role of the Communist
Party in the revolution, the party must have a "centralised
political apparatus" and "must be organised on the basis of
iron proletarian centralism." This, of course, suggests a
top-down structure internally, which the resolution explicitly
calls for. In its words, "Communist cells of every kind must be
subordinate to one another as precisely as possible in a strict
hierarchy." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress
1920, vol. 1, p. 193, p. 198 and p. 199] Therefore, the vanguard
party is organised in a centralised, top-down way. However, this
is not all, as well as being "centralised," the party is also meant
to be democratic, hence the expression "democratic centralism."
On this the resolution states:
For Lenin, speaking in the same year, democratic centralism meant
"only that representatives from the localities meet and elect a
responsible body which must then govern . . . Democratic centralism
consists in the Congress checking on the Central Committee,
removing it and electing a new one." [quoted by Robert Service,
The Bolshevik Party in Revolution, p. 131] Thus, "democratic
centralism" is inherently top-down, although the "higher" party
organs are, in principle, elected by the "lower." Without this,
of course, there would be no "democratic" aspect to the party.
The real question is whether such democracy is effective, a
topic we will return to. However, the key point is that the
central committee is the active element, the one whose
decisions are implemented and so the focus of the structure
is in the "centralism" rather than the "democratic" part of
the formula.
As we noted in
section H.2.14,
the Communist Party was expected
to have a dual structure, one legal and the other illegal. The
resolution states that "[i]n countries where the bourgeoisie . . .
is still in power, the Communist parties must learn to combine
legal and illegal activity in a planned way. However, the legal
work must be placed under the actual control of the illegal party
at all times." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress
1920, vol. 1, p. 198-9] It goes without saying that the illegal
structure is the real power in the party and that it cannot be
expected to be as democratic as the legal party, which in turn
would be less that democratic as the illegal would have the real
power within the organisation.
All this has clear parallels with Lenin's infamous work,
What is to be done?. In that work Lenin argues for "a
powerful and strictly secret organisation, which
concentrates in its hands all the threads of secret
activities, an organisation which of necessity must be
a centralised organisation." This call for centralisation
is not totally dependent on secrecy, though. As he notes,
"specialisation necessarily presupposes centralisation,
and in its turn imperatively calls for it." Such a
centralised organisation would need leaders and Lenin
argues that "no movement can be durable without a stable
organisation of leaders to maintain continuity." As such,
"the organisation must consist chiefly of persons engaged
in revolutionary activities as a profession." Thus, we
have a centralised organisation which is managed by
specialists, by "professional revolutionaries."
[Essential Works of Lenin, p. 158, p. 153, p. 147
and p. 148]
This does not mean that these "professional revolutionaries"
all come from the bourgeoisie or petit bourgeoisie. According
to Lenin:
Thus the full time professional revolutionaries are drawn from
all classes into the party apparatus. However, in practice
the majority of such full-timers were/are middle class. Trotsky
notes that "just as in the Bolshevik committees, so at the
[1905] Congress itself, there were almost no workingmen. The
intellectuals predominated." [Stalin, vol. 1, p. 101] This
did not change, even after the influx of working class members
in 1917 the "incidence of middle-class activists increases at
the highest echelons of the hierarchy of executive committees."
[Robert Service, The Bolshevik Party in Revolution, p. 47]
An ex-worker was a rare sight in the Bolshevik Central Committee,
an actual worker non-existent. However, regardless of their
original class background what unites the full-timers is not
their origin but rather their current relationship with the
working class, one of separation and hierarchy.
The organisational structure of this system was made clear
at around the same time as What is to be Done?, with
Lenin arguing that the factory group (or cell) of the
party "must consist of a small number of revolutionaries,
receiving direct from the [central] committee orders and
power to conduct the whole social-democratic work in the
factory. All members of the factory committee must regard
themselves as agents of the [central] committee, bound to
submit to all its directions, bound to observe all 'laws
and customs' of this 'army in the field' in which they
have entered and which they cannot leave without permission
of the commander." [quoted by E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik
Revolution, vol. 1, p. 33] The similarities to the structure
proposed by Lenin and agreed to by the Comintern in 1920 is
obvious. Thus we have a highly centralised party, one run by
"professional revolutionaries" from the top down (as we noted
in
section H.3.3
Lenin stressed that the organisational principle
of Marxism was from top down).
It will be objected that Lenin was discussing the means of
party building under Tsarism and advocated wider democracy
under legality. However, given that in 1920 he universalised
the Bolshevik experience and urged the creation of a dual
party structure (based on legal and illegal structures), his
comments on centralisation are applicable to vanguardism in
general. Moreover, in 1902 he based his argument on experiences
drawn from democratic capitalist regimes. As he argued, "no
revolutionary organisation has ever practised broad
democracy, nor could it, however much it desired to do so."
This was not considered as just applicable in Russia under the
Tsar as Lenin then goes on to quote the Webb's "book on trade
unionism" in order to clarify what he calls "the confusion of
ideas concerning the meaning of democracy." He notes that
"in the first period of existence in their unions, the
British workers thought it was an indispensable sign of
democracy for all members to do all the work of managing the
unions." This involved "all questions [being] decided by the
votes of all the members" and all "official duties" being
"fulfilled by all the members in turn." He dismisses "such
a conception of democracy" as "absurd" and "historical
experience" made them "understand the necessity for
representative institutions" and "full-time professional
officials." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 161 and pp. 162-3]
Needless to say, Lenin links this to Kautsky, who "shows the
need for professional journalists, parliamentarians, etc.,
for the Social-Democratic leadership of the proletarian class
struggle" and who "attacks the 'socialism of anarchists and
litterateurs' who . . . proclaim the principle that laws
should be passed directly by the whole people, completely
failing to understand that in modern society this principle
can have only a relative application." [Op. Cit., p. 163]
The universal nature of his dismissal of self-management
within the revolutionary organisation in favour of
representative forms is thus stressed.
Significantly, Lenin states that this "'primitive' conception
of democracy" exists in two groups, the "masses of the students
and workers" and the "Economists of the Bernstein persuasion"
(i.e. reformists). Thus the idea of directly democratic working
class organisations is associated with opportunism. He was
generous, noting that he "would not, of course, . . . condemn
practical workers who have had too few opportunities for
studying the theory and practice of real [sic!] democratic
[sic!] organisation" but individuals "play[ing] a leading role"
in the movement should be so condemned! [Op. Cit., p. 163]
These people should know better! Thus "real" democratic
organisation implies the restriction of democracy to that
of electing leaders and any attempt to widen the input of
ordinary members is simply an expression of workers who
need educating from their "primitive" failings!
In summary, we have a model of a "revolutionary" party which is
based on full-time "professional revolutionaries" in which the
concept of direct democracy is replaced by a system of, at
best, representative democracy. It is highly centralised, as
befitting a specialised organisation. As noted in
section H.3.3,
the "organisational principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy"
was "to proceed from the top downward" rather than "from the
bottom upward." [Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 7, pp. 396-7]
Rather than being only applicable in Tsarist Russia, Lenin
drew on examples from advanced, democratic capitalist countries
to justify his model in 1902 and in 1920 he advocated a similar
hierarchical and top-down organisation with a dual secret and
public organisation in the Communist International. The
continuity of ideas is clear.
What to make of Lenin's suggested model of "democratic
centralism" discussed in the
last section? It is, to use
Cornelius Castoriadis's term, a "revolutionary party
organised on a capitalist manner." He argues that in
practice the "democratic centralist" party, while
being centralised, will not be very democratic. In
fact, the level of democracy would reflect that in a
capitalist republic rather than a socialist society. In
his words:
"This division of labour is supposed to be limited by 'democracy.'
But democracy, which should mean that the majority rules, is
reduced to meaning that the majority designates its rulers;
copied in this way from the model of bourgeois parliamentary
democracy, drained of any real meaning, it quickly becomes a
veil thrown over the unlimited power of the rulers. The base
does not run the organisation just because once a year it elects
delegates who designate the central committee, no more than the
people are sovereign in a parliamentary-type republic because
they periodically elect deputies who designate the government.
"Let us consider, for example, 'democratic centralism' as it
is supposed to function in an ideal Leninist party. That the
central committee is designated by a 'democratically elected'
congress makes no difference since, once it is elected, it
has complete (statutory) control over the body of the Party
(and can dissolve the base organisations, kick out militants,
etc.) or that, under such conditions, it can determine the
composition of the next congress. The central committee
could use its powers in an honourable way, these powers
could be reduced; the members of the Party might enjoy
'political rights' such as being able to form factions,
etc. Fundamentally this would not change the situation,
for the central committee would still remain the organ
that defines the political line of the organisation and
controls its application from top to bottom, that, in a
word, has permanent monopoly on the job of leadership. The
expression of opinions only has a limited value once the
way the group functions prevents this opinion from forming
on solid bases, i.e. permanent participation in the
organisation's activities and in the solution of problems
that arise. If the way the organisation is run makes the
solution of general problems he specific task and permanent
work of a separate category of militants, only their opinion
will, or will appear, to count to the others." [Social and
Political Writings, vol. 2, pp. 204-5]
Castoridis' insight is important and strikes at the heart of
the problem with vanguard parties. They simply reflect the
capitalist society they claim to represent. As such, Lenin's
argument against "primitive" democracy in the revolutionary
and labour movements is significant. When he asserts that
those who argue for direct democracy "completely" fail to
"understand that in modern society this principle can have
only a relative application," he is letting the cat out of
the bag. [Lenin, Op. Cit., p. 163] After all, "modern society"
is capitalism, a class society. In such a society, it is
understandable that self-management should not be applied
as it strikes at the heart of class society and how it
operates. That Lenin can appeal to "modern society" without
recognising its class basis says a lot. The question becomes,
if such a "principle" is valid for a class system, is it
applicable in a socialist society one and in the movement
aiming to create such a society? Can we postpone the
application of our ideas until "after the revolution" or
can the revolution only occur when we apply our socialist
principles in resisting class society?
In a nutshell, can the same set of organisational structures
be used for the different ends? Can bourgeois structures be
considered neutral or have they, in fact, evolved to ensure and
protect minority rule? Ultimately, form and content are not
independent of each other. Form and content adapt to fit each
other and they cannot be divorced in reality. Thus, if the
bourgeoisie embrace centralisation and representation they have
done so because it fits perfectly with their specific form of
class society. Neither centralisation and representation can
undermine minority rule and, if they did, they would quickly be
eliminated. This can be seen from the fate of radicals utilising
representative democracy. If they are in a position to threaten
bourgeois society, representative government is eliminated in
favour of even stronger forms of centralisation (e.g. fascism
or some other form of dictatorship).
Ironically enough, both Bukharin and Trotsky acknowledged that
fascism had appropriated Bolshevik ideas. The former demonstrated
at the 12th Congress of the Communist Party in 1923 how Italian
fascism had "adopted and applied in practice the experiences of
the Russian revolution" in terms of their "methods of combat." In
fact, "[i]f one regards them from the formal point of view, that
is, from the point of view of the technique of their political
methods, then one discovers in them a complete application of
Bolshevik tactics. . . in the sense of the rapid concentration of
forced [and] energetic action of a tightly structured military
organisation." [quoted by R. Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik
Regime, 1919-1924, p. 253] The latter, in his uncompleted
biography on Stalin noted that "Mussolini stole from the
Bolsheviks . . . Hitler imitated the Bolsheviks and Mussolini."
[Stalin, vol. 2, p. 243] The question arises as to whether the
same tactics and structures serve both the needs of fascist
reaction and socialist revolution? Now, if Bolshevism can
serve as a model for fascism, it must contain structural and
functional elements which are also common to fascism. After
all, no one has detected a tendency of Hitler or Mussolini, in
their crusade against democracy, the organised labour movement
and the left, to imitate the organisational principles of
anarchism or even of Menshevism.
Simply put, we can expect decisive structural differences
to exist between capitalism and socialism if these societies
are to have different aims. Where one is centralised to
facilitate minority rule, the other must be decentralised and
federal to facilitate mass participation. Where one is top-down,
the other must be from the bottom-up. If a "socialism" exists
which uses bourgeois organisational elements then we should not
be surprised if it turns out it is socialist in name only. The
same applies to revolutionary organisations.As the anarchists
of Trotwatch explain:
If you have an organisation which celebrates centralisation,
having an institutionalised "leadership" separate from the
mass of members becomes inevitable. Thus the division of
labour which exists in the capitalist workplace or state is
created. Forms cannot and do not exist independently of
people and so imply specific forms of social relationships
within them. These social relationships shape those subject
to them. Can we expect the same forms of authority to have
different impacts simply because the organisation has
"socialist" or "revolutionary" in its name? Of course not.
It is for this reason that anarchists argue that only in
a "libertarian socialist movement the workers learn about
non-dominating forms of association through creating and
experimenting with forms such as libertarian labour
organisations, which put into practice, through struggle
against exploitation, principles of equality and free
association." [John Clark, The Anarchist Moment, p. 79]
As noted above, a "democratic centralist" party requires that
the "lower" party bodies (cells, branches, etc.) should be
subordinate to the higher ones (e.g. the central committee).
The higher bodies are elected at the (usually) annual
conference. As it is impossible to mandate for future
developments, the higher bodies therefore are given
carte blanche to determine policy which is binding on the
whole party (hence the "from top-down" principle). In between
conferences, the job of full time (ideally elected, but not
always) officers is to lead the party and carry out the
policy decided by the central committee. At the next
conference, the party membership can show its approval of
the leadership by electing another. The problems with this
scheme are numerous:
Equally, in order that the "higher" bodies can evaluate the
situation they need effective information from the "lower"
bodies. If the "lower" bodies are deemed incapable of formulating
their own policies, how can they be wise enough, firstly, to
select the right leaders and, secondly, determine the appropriate
information to communicate to the "higher" bodies? As such,
given the assumptions for centralised power in the party, can
we not see that "democratic centralised" parties will be
extremely inefficient in practice as information and knowledge
is lost in the party machine and whatever decisions which are
reached at the top are made in ignorance of the real situation
on the ground? As we discuss in
section H.3.8, this is usually
the fate of such parties.
Within the party, as noted, the role of "professional revolutionaries"
(or "full timers") is stressed. As Lenin argued, any worker which
showed any talent must be removed from the workplace and become a
party functionary. Is it surprising that the few Bolshevik cadres
(i.e. professional revolutionaries) of working class origin soon
lost real contact with the working class? Equally, what will their
role within the party be? As we discuss in section 3 of
the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?",
their role in the Bolshevik party was essentially conservative in
nature and aimed to maintain their own position. As Bakunin argued
(in a somewhat different context) Marxism always "comes down to
the same dismal result: government of the vast majority of the
people by a privileged minority. But this minority, the Marxists
say, will consist of workers. Yes, perhaps of former workers,
who, as soon as they become rulers or representatives of the
people will cease to be workers and will begin to look upon
the whole workers' world from the heights of the state. They
will no longer represent the people but themselves and their
own pretensions to govern the people." [Statism and Anarchy,
p. 178] Replacing "state" with "party machine" and "the people"
by "the party" we get a good summation of the way the Bolshevik
cadres did look upon the party members (see
section H.5.9). It
also indicates the importance of organising today in a socialist
manner rather than in a bourgeois one.
That the anarchist critique of "democratic centralism" is valid,
we need only point to the comments and analysis of numerous
members (and often soon to be ex-members) of such parties. Thus
we get a continual stream of articles discussing why specific
parties are, in fact, "bureaucratic centralist" rather than
"democratic centralist" and what is required to reform them.
That almost every "democratic centralist" party in existence is
not that democratic does not hinder their attempts to create one
which is. In a way, the truly "democratic centralist" party is
the Holy Grail of modern Leninism. As we discuss in
section H.5.10,
their goal may be as mythical as that of the Arthurian
legends.
As we discussed in the
last section, anarchists argue that
the way revolutionaries organise today is important. However,
according to some of Lenin's followers, the fact that the
"revolutionary" party is organised in a non-revolutionary
manner does not matter. In the words of Chris Harman, leading
member of the British Socialist Workers' Party, "[e]xisting
under capitalism, the revolutionary organisation [i.e. the
vanguard party] will of necessity have a quite different
structure to that of the workers' state that will arise in
the process of overthrowing capitalism." [Party and Class,
p. 34]
However, in practice this distinction is impossible to make.
If the party is organised in specific ways then it is so
because this is conceived to be "efficient," "practical"
and so on. Hence we find Lenin arguing against "backwardness
in organisation" and that the "point at issue is whether our
ideological struggle is to have forms of a higher type to
clothe it, forms of Party organisation binding on all."
[contained in Robert V. Daniels, A Documentary History of
Communism, vol. 1, p. 23] Why would the "workers' state"
be based on "backward" or "lower" kinds of organisational
forms? If, as Lenin remarked, "the organisational principle
of revolutionary Social-Democracy" was "to proceed from
the top downward," why would the party, once in power,
reject its "organisational principle" in favour of one
it thinks is "opportunist," "primitive" and so on?
Therefore, as the vanguard the party represents the level
to which the working class is supposed to reach then its
organisational principles must, similarly, be those which
the class must reach. As such, Harman's comments are
incredulous. How we organise today is hardly irrelevant,
particularly if the revolutionary organisation in question
seeks (to use Lenin's words) to "take over full state power
alone." [Selected Works, vol. 2, p. 352] These prejudices
(and the political and organisational habits they generate)
will influence the shaping of the "workers' state" by the
party once it has taken power. This decisive influence of
the party and its ideological as well as organisational
assumptions can be seen when Trotsky argued in 1923 that
"the party created the state apparatus and can rebuild it
anew . . . from the party you get the state, but not the
party from the state." [Leon Trotsky Speaks, p. 161] This
is to be expected, after all the aim of the party is to take,
hold and execute power. Given that the vanguard party is
organised as it is to ensure effectiveness and efficiency,
why should we assume that the ruling party will not seek to
recreate these organisational principles once in power? As
the Russian Revolution proves, this is the case:
As such, to claim how we organise under capitalism is not
important to a revolutionary movement is simply not true.
The way revolutionaries organise have an impact both on
themselves and how they will view the revolution developing.
An ideological prejudice for centralisation and "top-down"
organisation will not disappear once the revolution starts.
Rather, it will influence the way the party acts within it
and, if it aims to seize power, how it will exercise that
power once it has.
For these reasons anarchists stress the importance of building
the new world in the shell of the old. All organisations exert
pressures on their membership and create social relationships
which shape them. As the members of these parties will be part
of the revolutionary process, they will influence how that
revolution will develop and any "transitional" institutions
which are created. As the aim of such organisations is to
facilitate the creation of socialism, the obvious implication
is that the revolutionary organisation must, itself, reflect
the society it is trying to create. Clearly, then, the idea that
how we organise as revolutionaries today can be considered somehow
independent of the revolutionary process and the nature of
post-capitalist society and its institutions cannot be maintained
(particularly is the aim of the "revolutionary" organisation is
to seize power on behalf of the working class).
As we argue elsewhere (see section
H.2.10 and
J.3) anarchists argue
for revolutionary groups based on self-management, federalism and
decision making from below. In other words, we apply within our
organisations the same principles as those which the working
class has evolved in the course of its own struggles. Autonomy
is combined with federalism, so ensuring co-ordination of decisions
and activities is achieved from below upwards by means of mandated
and recallable delegates. Effective co-operation is achieved as
it is informed by and reflects the needs on the ground. Simply
put, working class organisation and discipline -- as exemplified
by the workers' council or strike committee -- represents a
completely different thing from capitalist organisation and
discipline, of which Leninists are constantly asking for more
(albeit draped with the Red Flag and labelled "revolutionary").
And as we discuss in the
next section, the Leninist model of
top-down centralised parties is marked more by its failures
than its successes, suggesting that not only is the vanguard
model undesirable, it is also unnecessary.
In a word, no. Vanguard parties have rarely been proven to be
effective organs for fermenting revolutionary change which is,
let us not forget, their stated purpose. Indeed, rather than
being in the vanguard of social struggle, the Leninist parties
are often the last to recognise, let alone understand, the
initial stirrings of important social movements and events.
It is only once these movements have exploded in the streets
that the self-proclaimed "vanguards" notice it and decide it
requires their leadership.
Part of this process are constant attempts to install their
political program onto movements that they do not understand,
movements that have proven to be successful using different
tactics and methods of organisation. Rather than learn from
the experiences of others, social movements are seen as raw
material, as a source of new party members, to be used in order
to advance the party rather than the autonomy and combativeness
of the working class. The latest example of this process is the
current "anti-globalisation" or "anti-capitalist" movement which
started without the help of these self-appointed vanguards, who
have since spent a lot of time trying to catch up with the
movement while criticising its proven organisational principles
and tactics.
The reasons for such behaviour are not too difficult to find. They
lie in organisational structure favoured by these parties and the
mentality lying behind them. As anarchists have long argued, a
centralised, top-down structure will simply be unresponsive to
the needs of those in struggle. The inertia associated with the
party hierarchy will ensure that it responds slowly to new
developments and its centralised structure means that the
leadership is isolated from what is happening on the ground
and cannot respond appropriately. The underlying assumption of
the vanguard party, namely that the party represents the interests
of the working class, makes it unresponsive to new developments
within the class struggle. As Lenin argued that spontaneous
working class struggle tends to reformism, the leaders of a
vanguard party automatically are suspicious of new developments
which, by their very nature, rarely fit into previously agreed
models of "proletarian" struggle. The example of Bolshevik
hostility to the soviets spontaneously formed by workers during
the 1905 Russian revolution is one of the best known examples of
this tendency.
Murray Bookchin is worth quoting at length on this subject:
"As the party expands, the distance between the leadership and
the ranks inevitably increases. Its leaders not only become
'personages,' they lose contact with the living situation below.
The local groups, which know their own immediate situation better
than any remote leaders, are obliged to subordinate their insights
to directives from above. The leadership, lacking any direct
knowledge of local problems, responds sluggishly and prudently.
Although it stakes out a claim to the 'larger view,' to greater
'theoretical competence,' the competence of the leadership tends
to diminish as one ascends the hierarchy of command. The more
one approaches the level where the real decisions are made, the
more conservative is the nature of the decision-making process,
the more bureaucratic and extraneous are the factors which come
into play, the more considerations of prestige and retrenchment
supplant creativity, imagination, and a disinterested dedication
to revolutionary goals.
"The party becomes less efficient from a revolutionary point of
view the more it seeks efficiency by means of hierarchy, cadres
and centralisation. Although everyone marches in step, the orders
are usually wrong, especially when events begin to move rapidly
and take unexpected turns -- as they do in all revolutions. . .
"On the other hand, this kind of party is extremely vulnerable
in periods of repression. The bourgeoisie has only to grab its
leadership to destroy virtually the entire movement. With its
leaders in prison or in hiding, the party becomes paralysed;
the obedient membership had no one to obey and tends to flounder.
Demoralisation sets in rapidly. The party decomposes not only
because of the repressive atmosphere but also because of its
poverty of inner resources.
"The foregoing account is not a series of hypothetical inferences,
it is a composite sketch of all the mass Marxian parties of the
past century -- the Social Democrats, the Communists and the
Trotskyist party of Ceylon (the only mass party of its kind. To
claim that these parties failed to take their Marxian principles
seriously merely conceals another question: why did this failure
happen in the first place? The fact is, these parties were
co-opted into bourgeois society because they were structured
along bourgeois lines. The germ of treachery existed in them
from birth." [Post-Scarcity Anarchism, pp. 194-8]
Thus, the evidence Bookchin summarises suggests that vanguard
parties are less than efficient promoting revolutionary change.
Sluggish, unresponsive, undemocratic, they simply cannot
adjust to the dynamic nature of social struggle, never mind
revolution. This is to be expected:
As we discuss in
section 3 of the appendix on
"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"
the example of the Bolshevik
party during the Russian Revolution amply proves Rocker's point.
Rather than being a highly centralised, disciplined vanguard
party, the Bolshevik party was marked by extensive autonomy
throughout its ranks. Party discipline was regularly ignored,
including by Lenin in his attempts to get the central party
bureaucracy to catch up with the spontaneous revolutionary
actions and ideas of the Russian working class. As Bookchin
summarises, the "Bolshevik leadership was ordinarily extremely
conservative, a trait that Lenin had to fight throughout 1917
-- first in his efforts to reorient the Central Committee
against the provisional government (the famous conflict
over the 'April Theses'), later in driving the Central
Committee toward insurrection in October. In both cases he
threatened to resign from the Central Committee and bring
his views to 'the lower ranks of the party.'" Once in power,
however, "the Bolsheviks tended to centralise their party to
the degree that they became isolated from the working class."
[Op. Cit., pp. 198-9 and p. 199]
The "vanguard" model of organising is not only inefficient
and ineffective from a revolutionary perspective, it
generates bureaucratic and elitist tendencies which undermine
any revolution unfortunate enough to be dominated by such a
party. For these extremely practical and sensible reasons
anarchists reject it wholeheartedly.
In summary, vanguard parties have been proven to be less than
effective in a revolutionary sense. Their top-down centralised
structure is simply not responsive enough to the needs of social
struggle and so usually remain out of touch with such movements,
spending most of their time trying to catch up with them. As we
discuss in the
next section,
the only thing vanguard parties
are effective at is to supplant the diversity produced and
required by revolutionary movements with the drab conformity
produced by centralisation and to replace popular power and
freedom with party power and tyranny.
As we discussed the last section,
vanguard parties are not
efficient as agents of revolutionary change. So, it may be
asked, what are vanguard parties effective at? If they
are harmful to revolutionary struggle, what are they good
at? The answer to this is simple. No anarchist would deny
that vanguard parties are extremely efficient and effective
at certain things, most notably reproducing hierarchy and
bourgeois values into so-called "revolutionary" organisations
and movements. As Murray Bookchin argues, the party "is
efficient in only one respect -- in moulding society in its
own hierarchical image if the revolution is successful. It
recreates bureaucracy, centralisation and the state. It
fosters the very social conditions which justify this
kind of society. Hence, instead of 'withering away,' the
state controlled by the 'glorious party' preserves the very
conditions which 'necessitate' the existence of a state --
and a party to 'guard' it." [Post-Scarcity Anarchism,
pp. 197-8]
Thus, by being structured along hierarchical lines that reflect
the very system that it professes to oppose, the vanguard
party very "effectively" reproduces that system within both
the current radical social movements and any revolutionary
society that may be created. This means that once in power,
it shapes society in its own image. Ironically, this tendency
towards conservatism and bureaucracy was noted by Trotsky:
In such circumstances, it is unsurprising that urging party
power and identifying it with working class power would have
less than revolutionary results. Discussing the Bolsheviks
in 1905 Trotsky points out this tendency existed from the
start:
He quotes Krupskaya on these party bureaucrats, the
"committeemen." Krupskaya argues that "as a rule" they
"did not recognise any party democracy" and "did not want
any innovations. The 'committeeman' did not desire, and
did not know how to, adapt himself to rapidly changing
conditions." [quoted by Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 101] This
conservatism played havoc in the party during 1917,
incidentally. It would be no exaggeration to argue that
the Russian revolution occurred in spite of, rather than
because of, Bolshevik organisational principles (see
next section).
These principles, however, came into their own
once the party had seized power, ensuring the consolidation
of bureaucratic rule by an elite.
That a vanguard party helps to produces a bureaucratic regime
once in power should not come as a surprise. If the party,
to use Trotsky's expression, exhibits a "caste tendency of
the committeemen" can we be surprised if once in power it
reproduces such a tendency in the state it is now the master
of? [Op. Cit., p. 102] And this "tendency" can be seen today
in the multitude of Trotskyist sects that exist.
In spite of the almost ritualistic assertions that vanguard
parties are "the most democratic the world has seen," an
army of ex-members, expelled dissidents and disgruntled
members testify that they do not live up to the hype. They
argue that most, if not all, "vanguard" parties are not
"democratic centralist" but are, in fact, "bureaucratic
centralist." Within the party, in other words, a bureaucratic
clique controls it from the top-down with little democratic
control, never mind participation.
For anarchists, this is hardly surprising. The reasons why
this continually happens are rooted in the nature of
"democratic centralism" itself.
Firstly, the assumption of "democratic centralism" is that
the membership elect a leadership and give them the power to
decide policy between conferences and congresses. This has
a subtle impact on the membership, as it is assumed that the
leadership has a special insight into social problems above
and beyond that of anyone else, otherwise they would not
have been elected to such an important position. Thus many
in the membership come to believe that disagreements with
the leadership's analysis, even before they had been clearly
articulated, are liable to be wrong. Doubt dares not speak
its name. Unquestioning belief in the party leadership has
been an all to common recurring theme in many accounts of
vanguard parties.
Conformity within such parties is also reinforced by the
intense activism expected by members, particularly leading
activists and full-time members. Paradoxically, the more
deeply people participate in activism, the harder it becomes
to reflect on what they are doing. The unrelenting pace
often induces exhaustion and depression, while making it
harder to "think your way out" -- too many commitments have
been made and too little time is left over from party activity
for reflection. Moreover, high levels of activism prevent
many, particularly the most committed, from having a personal
life outside their role as party members. This high-speed
political existence assure that rival social networks
atrophy through neglect, so ensuring that the party line
is the only one which members get exposed to. Members tend
to leave, typically, because of exhaustion, crisis, even
despair rather than as the result of rational reflection
and conscious decision.
Secondly, given that vanguard parties are based on the belief
that they are the guardians of "scientific socialism," this
means that there is a tendency to squeeze all of social life
into the confines of the party's ideology. Moreover, as the
party's ideology is a "science" it is expected to explain
everything (hence the tendency of Leninists to expound on
every subject imaginable, regardless of whether the author
knows enough about the subject to discuss it in an informed
way). The view that the party's ideology explains everything
eliminates the need for fresh or independent thought, precludes
the possibility of critically appraising past practice or
acknowledging mistakes, and removes the need to seek meaningful
intellectual input outside the party's own ideological fortress.
As Victor Serge, anarchist turned Bolshevik, admitted in his
memoirs, "Bolshevik thinking is grounded in the possession of
the truth. The Party is the repository of truth, and any
form of thinking which differs from it is a dangerous or
reactionary error. Here lies its spiritual source of it
intolerance. The absolute conviction of its lofty mission
assures it of a moral energy quite astonishing in its
intensity -- and, at the same time, a clerical mentality
which is quick to becoming Inquisitorial." [Memoirs of
a Revolutionary, p. 134]
In fact, the intense levels of activism means that members are
bombarded with party propaganda, are in endless party meetings,
or spend time reading party literature and so, by virtue of the
fact that there is not enough time to read anything, members
end up reading nothing but party publications. Most points of
contact with the external world are eliminated or drastically
curtailed. Indeed, such alternative sources of information
and such thinking is regularly dismissed as being contaminated
by bourgeois influences. This often goes so far as to label
those who question any aspect of the party's analysis
revisionists or deviationists, bending to the "pressures
of capitalism," and are usually driven from the ranks as
heretics. All this is almost always combined with contempt
for all other organisations on the Left (indeed, the closer
they are to the party's own ideological position the more
likely they are to be the targets of abuse).
Thirdly, the practice of "democratic centralism" also aids this
process towards conformity. Based on the idea that the party must
be a highly disciplined fighting force, the party is endowed with
a powerful central committee and a rule that all members must
publicly defend the agreed-upon positions of the party and the
decisions of the central committee, whatever opinions they might
hold to the contrary in private. Between conferences, the party's
leading bodies usually have extensive authority to govern the
party's affairs, including updating party doctrine and deciding
the party's response to current political events.
As unity is the key, there is a tendency to view any opposition
as a potential threat. It is not at all clear when "full freedom
to criticise" policy internally can be said to disturb the unity
of a defined action. The norms of democratic centralism confer
all power between conferences onto a central committee, allowing
it to become the arbiter of when a dissident viewpoint is in
danger of weakening unity. The evidence from numerous vanguard
parties suggest that their leaderships usually view any
dissent as precisely such a disruption and demand that dissidents
cease their action or face expulsion from the party.
It should also be borne in mind that Leninist parties also view
themselves as vitally important to the success of any future
revolution. This cannot help but reinforce the tendency to view
dissent as something which automatically imperils the future of
the planet and so something which must be combated at all costs.
As Lenin stressed an a polemic directed to the international
communist movement in 1920, "[w]hoever brings about even the
slightest weakening of the iron discipline of the party of the
proletariat (especially during its dictatorship) is actually
aiding the bourgeoisie against the proletariat." [Collected
Works, vol. 31, p. 45] As can be seen, Lenin stresses the
importance of "iron discipline" at all times, not only during
the revolution when "the party" is applying "its dictatorship"
(see
section H.3.8
for more on this aspect of Leninism). This
provides a justification of whatever measures are required to
restore the illusion of unanimity, including the trampling
underfoot of whatever rights the membership may have on paper
and the imposition of any decisions the leadership considers
as essential between conferences.
Fourthly, and more subtly, it is well known that when people take
a public position in defence of a proposition, there is then a
strong tendency for their private attitudes to shift so that
they harmonise with their public behaviour. It is difficult to
say one thing in public and hold to a set of private beliefs at
variance with what is publicly expressed. In short, if people
tell others that they support X (for whatever reason), they will
slowly begin to change their own opinions and, indeed, internally
come to support X. The more public such declarations have been,
the more likely it is that such a shift will take place. This has
been confirmed by empirical research (see R. Cialdini, Influence:
Science and Practice).
This suggests that if, in the name of democratic centralism,
party members publicly uphold the party line, it becomes
increasingly difficult to hold a private belief at variance
with publicly expressed opinions. The evidence suggests that
it is not possible to have a group of people presenting a
conformist image to society at large while maintaining an
inner party regime characterised by frank and full discussion.
Conformity in public tends to equal conformity in private. So
given what is now known of social influence, "democratic
centralism" is almost certainly destined to prevent genuine
internal discussion. This is sadly all too often confirmed
in the internal regimes of vanguard parties, where debate is
often narrowly focused on a few minor issues of emphasis
rather than fundamental issues of policy and theory.
It has already been noted (in
section H.5.5) that the
organisational norms of democratic centralism imply a
concentration of power at the top. There is abundant
evidence that such a concentration has been a vital feature
of every vanguard party and that such a concentration limits
party democracy. An authoritarian inner party regime is
maintained, which ensures that decision making is
concentrated in elite hands. This regime gradually dismantles
or ignores all formal controls on its activities. Members are
excluded from participation in determining policy, calling
leaders to account, or expressing dissent. This is usually
combined with persistent assurances about the essentially
democratic nature of the organisation, and the existence of
exemplary democratic controls -- on paper. Correlated with this
inner authoritarianism is a growing tendency toward the abuse
of power by the leaders, who act in arbitrary ways, accrue
personal power and so on (as noted by Trotsky with regards
to the Bolshevik party machine, as mentioned above). Indeed,
it is often the case that activities that would provoke
outrage if engaged in by rank-and-file members are tolerated
when they apply to leaders. As one group of Scottish
libertarians notes:
As in any hierarchical structure, the tendency is for those in
power is to encourage and promote those who agree with them.
This means that members usually find their influence and position
in the party dependent on their willingness to conform to the
hierarchy and its leadership. Dissenters will rarely find their
contribution valued and advancement is limited, which produces
a strong tendency not to make waves. As Miasnikov, a working
class Bolshevik dissident, argued in 1921, "the regime within
the party" meant that "if someone dares to have the courage of
his convictions," they are called either a self-seeker or, worse,
a counter-revolutionary, a Menshevik or an SR. Moreover, within
the party, favouritism and corruption were rife. In Miasnikov's
eyes a new type of Communist was emerging, the toadying careerist
who "knows how to please his superiors." At the last party congress
Lenin attended, Miasnikov was expelled. Only one delegate, V. V.
Kosior, "argued that Lenin had taken the wrong approach to the
question of dissent. If someone, said Kosior, had the courage
to point out deficiencies in party work, he was marked down
as an oppositionist, relieved of authority, placed under
surveillance, and -- a reference to Miasnikov -- even expelled
from the party." [Paul Avrich, Bolshevik Opposition to Lenin]
Serge notes about the same period that Lenin "proclaimed a
purge of the Party, aimed at those revolutionaries who had
come in from other parties -- i.e. those who were not
saturated with the Bolshevik mentality. This meant the
establishment within the Party of a dictatorship of the old
Bolsheviks, and the direction of disciplinary measures,
not against the unprincipled careerists and conformist
late-comers, but against those sections with a critical
outlook." [Op. Cit., p. 135]
This, of course, also applies to the party congress, on paper
the sovereign body of the organisation. All too often,
resolutions at party conferences will either come from the
leadership or be completely supportive of its position. If
branches or members submit resolutions which are critical of
the leadership, enormous pressure is exerted to ensure that
they are withdrawn. Moreover, often delegates to the congress
are not mandated by their branches, so ensuring that rank and
file opinions are not raised, never mind discussed. Other,
more drastic measures have been known to occur. Victor Serge
saw what he termed the "Party steamroller" at work in early
1921 and saw "the voting rigged for Lenin's and Zinoviev's
'majority'" in one of the districts of Petrograd. [Op. Cit.,
p.123]
All to often, such parties have "elected" bodies which have,
in practice, usurped the normal democratic rights of members
and become increasingly removed from formal controls. All
practical accountability of the leaders to the membership
for their actions is eliminated. Usually this authoritarian
structure is combined with militaristic sounding rhetoric and
the argument that the "revolutionary" movement needs to be
organised in a more centralised way than the current class
system, with references to the state's forces of repression
(notably the army). As Murray Bookchin argued, the Leninist
"has always had a grudging admiration and respect for that
most inhuman of all hierarchical institutions, the military."
[Toward an Ecological Society, p. 254f]
The modern day effectiveness of the vanguard party can be
seen by the strange fact that many Leninists fail to join
any of the existing parties due to their bureaucratic
internal organisation and that many members are expelled
(or leave in disgust) due to their attempts to make them
more democratic. If vanguard parties are such positive
organisations to be a member of, why do they have such big
problems with member retention? Why are there so many vocal
ex-members? Why are so many Leninists ex-members of vanguard
parties, desperately trying to find an actual party which
matches their own vision of democratic centralism rather
than the bureaucratic centralism which seems the norm?
Our account of the workings of vanguard parties explains, in
part, why many anarchists and other libertarians voice concern
about them and their underlying ideology. We do so because
their practices are disruptive and alienate new activists,
hindering the very goal (socialism/revolution) they claim
to be aiming for. As anyone familiar with the numerous groupings
and parties in the Leninist left will attest, the anarchist
critique of vanguardism seems to be confirmed in reality while
the Leninist defence seems sadly lacking (unless, of course,
the person is a member of such a party and then their
organisation is the exception to the rule!).
Yes. Our theoretical critique of vanguardism we have presented
in the last few sections is more than proved by the empirical
evidence of such parties in operation today. Rarely do
"vanguard" parties reach in practice the high hopes their
supporters like to claim for them. Such parties are usually
small, prone to splitting as well as leadership cults, and
usually play a negative role in social struggle. A long line
of ex-members complain that such parties are elitist,
hierarchical and bureaucratic.
Obviously we cannot hope to discuss all such parties. As such,
we will take just one example, namely the arguments of one
group of dissidents of the biggest British Leninist party,
the Socialist Workers Party. It is worth quoting their
account of the internal workings of the SWP at length:
"Once a new perspective is declared, a new cadre is selected
from the top down. The CC select the organisers, who select the
district and branch committees - any elections that take place
are carried out on the basis of 'slates' so that it is virtually
impossible for members to vote against the slate proposed by the
leadership. Any members who have doubts or disagreements are
written off as 'burnt out' and, depending on their reaction to
this, may be marginalised within the party and even expelled.
"These methods have been disastrous for the SWP in a number of
ways: Each new perspective requires a new cadre (below the
level of the CC), so the existing cadre are actively
marginalised in the party. In this way, the SWP has failed
to build a stable and experienced cadre capable of acting
independently of the leadership. Successive layers of cadres
have been driven into passivity, and even out of the
revolutionary movement altogether. The result is the loss
of hundreds of potential cadres. Instead of appraising the
real, uneven development of individual cadres, the history
of the party is written in terms of a star system (comrades
currently favoured by the party) and a demonology (the
'renegades' who are brushed aside with each turn of the
party). As a result of this systematic dissolution of the
cadre, the CC grows ever more remote from the membership
and increasingly bureaucratic in its methods. In recent
years the national committee has been abolished (it obediently
voted for its own dissolution, on the recommendation of the
CC), to be replaced by party councils made up of those
comrades active at any one time (i.e. those who already
agree with current perspectives); district committees are
appointed rather than elected; the CC monopolise all
information concerning the party, so that it is impossible
for members to know much about what happens in the party
outside their own branch; the CC give a distorted account
of events rather than admit their mistakes . . . history
is rewritten to reinforce the prestige of the CC . . . The
outcome is a party whose conferences have no democratic
function, but serve only to orientate party activists to carry
out perspectives drawn up before the delegates even set out
from their branches. At every level of the party, strategy and
tactics are presented from the top down, as pre-digested
instructions for action. At every level, the comrades 'below'
are seen only as a passive mass to be shifted into action,
rather than as a source of new initiatives."
"The only exception is when a branch thinks up a new tactic
to carry out the CC's perspective. In this case, the CC may
take up this tactic and apply it across the party. In no way
do rank and file members play an active role in determining
the strategy and theory of the party -- except in the negative
sense that if they refuse to implement a perspective eventually
even the CC notice, and will modify the line to suit. A political
culture has been created in which the leadership outside of the
CC consists almost solely of comrades loyal to the CC, willing
to follow every turn of the perspective without criticism . . .
Increasingly, the bureaucratic methods used by the CC to enforce
their control over the political direction of the party have
been extended to other areas of party life. In debates over
questions of philosophy, culture and even anthropology an
informal party 'line' emerged (i.e. concerning matters in
which there can be no question of the party taking a 'line').
Often behind these positions lay nothing more substantial
than the opinions of this or that CC member, but adherence
to the line quickly became a badge of party loyalty,
disagreement became a stigma, and the effect was to close
down the democracy of the party yet further by placing
even questions of theory beyond debate. Many militants,
especially working class militants with some experience
of trade union democracy, etc., are often repelled by the
undemocratic norms in the party and refuse to join, or
keep their distance despite accepting our formal politics."
[ISG, Discussion Document of Ex-SWP Comrades]
They argue that a "democratic" party would involve the "[r]egular
election of all party full-timers, branch and district leadership,
conference delegates, etc. with the right of recall," which means
that in the SWP appointment of full-timers, leaders and so on is
the norm. They argue for the "right of branches to propose motions
to the party conference" and for the "right for members to
communicate horizontally in the party, to produce and distribute
their own documents." They stress the need for "an independent
Control Commission to review all disciplinary cases (independent
of the leadership bodies that exercise discipline), and the right
of any disciplined comrades to appeal directly to party conference."
They argue that in a democratic party "no section of the party would
have a monopoly of information" which indicates that the SWP's
leadership is essentially secretive, withholding information from
the party membership. [Ibid.]
Even more significantly, given our discussion on the influence
of the party structure on post-revolutionary society in
section H.5.7,
they argue that "[w]orst of all, the SWP are training a
layer of revolutionaries to believe that the organisational norms
of the SWP are a shining example of proletarian democracy, applicable
to a future socialist society. Not surprisingly, many people are
instinctively repelled by this idea." [Ibid.]
Some of these critics of Leninism do not give up hope and
still look for a truly democratic centralist party rather
than the bureaucratic centralist ones which seem so common.
For example, our group of ex-SWP dissidents argue that
"[a]nybody who has spent time involved in 'Leninist'
organisations will have come across workers who agree
with Marxist politics but refuse to join the party because
they believe it to be undemocratic and authoritarian. Many
draw the conclusion that Leninism itself is at fault, as
every organisation that proclaims itself Leninist appears
to follow the same pattern." [Lenin vs. the SWP:
Bureaucratic Centralism Or Democratic Centralism?] This
is a common refrain with Leninists -- when reality says
one thing and the theory another, it must be reality that
is at fault. Yes, every Leninist organisation may be
bureaucratic and authoritarian but it is not the theory's
fault that those who apply it are not capable of actually
doing so successfully. Such an application of scientific
principles by the followers of "scientific socialism" is
worthy of note -- obviously the usual scientific method
of generalising from facts to produce a theory is
inapplicable when evaluating "scientific socialism" itself.
However, Rather than ponder the possibility that "democratic
centralism" does not actually work and automatically generates
the "bureaucratic centralism," they point to the example of the
Russian revolution and the original Bolshevik party as proof
of the validity of their hopes.
Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to argue that the only reason
people take the vanguard party organisational structure seriously
is the apparent success of the Bolsheviks in the Russian revolution.
However, as noted above, even the Bolshevik party was subject
to bureaucratic tendencies and as we discuss in the
section 3 of the appendix on
"What happened during the Russian Revolution?",
the experience of the 1917 Russian Revolutions disprove the
effectiveness of "vanguard" style parties. The Bolshevik party
of 1917 was a totally different form of organisation than the
ideal "democratic centralist" type argued for by Lenin in 1902
and 1920. As a model of revolutionary organisation, the
"vanguardist" one has been proven false rather than confirmed
by the experience of the Russian revolution. Insofar as the
Bolshevik party was effective, it operated in a non-vanguardist
way and insofar as it did operate in such a manner, it held back
the struggle.
H.5.1 Why are vanguard parties anti-socialist?
"Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers
only from without, that is, only outside of the economic
sruggle, outside the sphere of relations between workers and
employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain
this knowledge is the sphere of relationships between all the
various classes and strata and the state and the government --
the sphere of the interrelations between all the various
classes." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 112]
"Without a guiding organisation, the energy of the masses
would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston. But
nevertheless, what moves things is not the piston or the
box, but the steam." [History of the Russian Revolution,
vol. 1, p. 17]
"No positive content, nothing new capable of providing
the foundation for the reconstruction of society could
arise out of a mere awareness of poverty. From the
experience of life under capitalism the proletariat
could derive no new principles either for organising
this new society or for orientating it in another
direction. Under such conditions, the proletarian
revolution becomes . . . a simple reflex revolt against
hunger. It is impossible to see how socialist society
could ever be the result of such a reflex . . . Their
situation forces them to suffer the consequences of
capitalism's contradictions, but in no way does it
lead them to discover its causes. An acquaintance with
these causes comes not from experiencing the production
process but from theoretical knowledge . . . This
knowledge may be accessible to individual workers, but
not to the proletariat qua proletariat. Driven by
its revolt against poverty, but incapable of self-direction
since its experiences does not give it a privileged
viewpoint on reality, the proletariat according to this
outlook, can only be an infantry in the service of a
general staff of specialists. These specialists know
(from considerations that the proletariat as such does
not have access to) what is going wrong with present-day
society and how it must be modified. The traditional view
of the economy and its revolutionary perspective can only
found, and actually throughout history has only founded,
a bureaucratic politics . . . [W]hat we have outlined
are the consequences that follow objectively from this
theory. And they have been affirmed in an ever clearer
fashion within the actual historical movement of Marxism,
culminating in Stalinism." [Social and Political Writings,
vol. 2, pp. 257-8]
"Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology being
developed by the masses of the workers in the process of
their movement, the only choice is: either bourgeois or
socialist ideology. There is no middle course . . . Hence,
to belittle socialist ideology in any way, to deviate
from it in the slightest degree means strengthening
bourgeois ideology. There is a lot of talk about spontaneity,
but the spontaneous development of the labour movement
leads to its becoming subordinated to bourgeois ideology
. . . Hence our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to
combat spontaneity, to divert the labour movement from
its spontaneous, trade unionist striving to go under the
wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of
revolutionary Social-Democracy." [Lenin, Op. Cit., pp. 82-3]
"Idealists of all sorts, metaphysicians, positivists,
those who uphold the priority of science over life, the
doctrinaire revolutionists -- all of them champion with
equal zeal although differing in their argumentation,
the idea of the State and State power, seeing in them,
quite logically from their point of view, the only
salvation of society. Quite logically, I say, having
take as their basis the tenet -- a fallacious tenet in
our opinion -- that thought is prior to life, and
abstract theory is prior to social practice, and that
therefore sociological science must become the starting
point for social upheavals and social reconstruction --
they necessarily arrived at the conclusion that since
thought, theory, and science are, for the present at
least, the property of only a very few people, those
few should direct social life; and that on the morrow
of the Revolution the new social organisation should
be set up not by the free integration of workers'
associations, villages, communes, and regions from
below upward, conforming to the needs and instincts
of the people, but solely by the dictatorial power of
this learned minority, allegedly expressing the general
will of the people." [The Political Philosophy of
Bakunin, pp. 283-4]
H.5.2 Have vanguardist assumptions been validated?
"It should not be forgotten that the political machine of
the Bolshevik Party was predominantly made up of the
intelligentsia, which was petty bourgeois in its origin
and conditions of life and Marxist in its ideas and in
its relations with the proletariat. Workers who turned
professional revolutionists joined this set with great
eagerness and lost their identity in it. The peculiar
social structure of the Party machine and its authority
over the proletariat (neither of which is accidental
but dictated by strict historical necessity) were more
than once the cause of the Party's vacillation and
finally became the source of its degeneration . . . In
most cases they lacked independent daily contact with
the labouring masses as well as a comprehensive
understanding of the historical process. They thus left
themselves exposed to the influence of alien classes."
[Stalin, vol. 1, pp. 297-8]
"The factory, which seems only a bogey to some, represents
that highest form of capitalist co-operation which has
united and disciplined the proletariat, taught it to
organise . . . And it is precisely Marxism, the ideology
of the proletariat trained by capitalism, that has
taught . . . unstable intellectuals to distinguish
between the factory as a means of exploitation (discipline
based on fear of starvation) and the factory as a means
of organisation (discipline based on collective work . . ).
The discipline and organisation which come so hard to
the bourgeois intellectual are especially easily acquired
by the proletariat just because of this factory 'schooling.'"
[Op. Cit., p. 24]
H.5.3 Why does vanguardism imply party power?
"The alternative [to the vanguard party] is the 'marsh' --
where elements motivated by scientific precision are so mixed
up with those who are irremediably confused as to prevent any
decisive action, effectively allowing the most backward to
lead." [Op. Cit., p. 30]
"We have more than once been accused of having substituted for
the dictatorship of the Soviets the dictatorship of our party.
Yet it can be said with complete justice that the dictatorship
of the Soviets became possible only by means of the dictatorship
of the party. It is thanks to the clarity of its theoretical
vision and its strong revolutionary organisation that the party
has afforded to the Soviets the possibility of becoming transformed
from shapeless parliaments of labour into the apparatus of the
supremacy of labour. In this 'substitution' of the power of the
party for the power of the working class there is nothing
accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at all.
The Communists express the fundamental interests of the working
class. It is quite natural that, in the period in which history
brings up those interests . . . the Communists have become the
recognised representatives of the working class as a whole."
[Terrorism and Communism, p. 109]
"The organisation of the party substitutes itself for the
party as a whole; then the central committee substitutes
itself for the organisation; and finally the 'dictator'
substitutes himself for the central committee." [quoted
by Harman, Op. Cit., p. 22]
H.5.4 Did Lenin abandon vanguardism?
"the question now is: who works out, who is able to work out
this socialist consciousness (i.e. scientific socialism)?
Kautsky says, and I repeat his idea, that the masses of
proletarians, as long as they remain proletarians, have
neither the time nor the opportunity to work out socialist
consciousness . . . The vehicles of science are the
intellectuals . . . who have both the time and opportunity
to put themselves in the van of science and workout socialist
consciousness. Clearly, socialist consciousness is worked
out by a few Social-Democratic intellectuals who posses the
time and opportunity to do so." [Collected Works, vol. 1,
p. 164]
H.5.5 What is "democratic centralism"?
"The Communist Party must be organised on the basis of democratic
centralism. The most important principle of democratic centralism
is election of the higher party organs by the lowest, the fact
that all instructions by a superior body are unconditionally and
necessarily binding on lower ones, and existence of a strong
central party leadership whose authority over all leading party
comrades in the period between one party congress and the next
is universally accepted." [Op. Cit., p. 198]
"A workingman agitator who is at all talented and 'promising'
must not be left to work eleven hours a day in a factory.
We must arrange that he be maintained by the Party, that he
may in due time go underground." [Op. Cit., p. 155]
H.5.6 Why do anarchists oppose "democratic centralism"?
"The dividing up of tasks, which is indispensable wherever there
is a need for co-operation, becomes a real division of labour,
the labour of giving orders being separate from that of carrying
them out . . . this division between directors and executants
tends to broaden and deepen by itself. The leaders specialise
in their role and become indispensable while those who carry
out orders become absorbed in their concrete tasks. Deprived
of information, of the general view of the situation, and of
the problems of organisation, arrested in their development by
their lack of participation in the overall life of the Party,
the organisation's rank-and-file militants less and less have
the means or the possibility of having any control over those at
the top.
"In reality, a Leninist Party simply reproduces and
institutionalises existing capitalist power relations
inside a supposedly 'revolutionary' organisation:
between leaders and led; order givers and order takers;
between specialists and the acquiescent and largely
powerless party workers. And that elitist power relation
is extended to include the relationship between the party
and class." [Carry on Recruiting!, p. 41]
"The first problem is the issue of hierarchy. Why should
'higher' party organs interpret party policy any more
accurately than 'lower' ones? The pat answer is that the
'higher' bodies compromise the most capable and experienced
members and are (from their lofty heights) in a better
position to take an overall view on a given issue. In fact
what may well happen is that, for example, central committee
members may be more isolated from the outside world than
mere branch members. This might ordinarily be the case
because given the fact than many central committee members
are full timers and therefore detached from more real issues
such as making a living . . ." [ACF, Marxism and its
Failures, p. 8]
H.5.7 Is the way revolutionaries organise important?
"On 30 October, Sovnarkom [The Council of People's Commissars]
unilaterally arrogated to itself legislative power simply
by promulgating a decree to this effect. This was, effectively,
a Bolshevik coup d'etat that made clear the government's
(and party's) pre-eminence over the soviets and their
executive organ. Increasingly, the Bolsheviks relied upon the
appointment from above of commissars with plenipotentiary
powers, and they split up and reconstituted fractious Soviets
and intimidated political opponents." [Neil Harding, Leninism,
p. 253]
H.5.8 Are vanguard parties effective?
"The 'glorious party,' when there is one, almost invariably lags
behind the events . . . In the beginning . . . it tends to have an
inhibitory function, not a 'vanguard' role. Where it exercises
influence, it tends to slow down the flow of events, not 'co-
ordinate' the revolutionary forced. This is not accidental. The
party is structured along hierarchical lines that reflect the very
society it professes to oppose. Despite its theoretical pretensions,
it is a bourgeois organism, a miniature state, with an apparatus
and a cadre whose function it is to seize power, not dissolve
power. Rooted in the pre-revolutionary period, it assimilates all
the forms, techniques and mentality of bureaucracy. Its membership
is schooled in obedience and in the preconceptions of a rigid dogma
and is taught to revere the leadership. The party's leadership,
in turn, is schooled in habits born of command, authority,
manipulation and egomania. This situation is worsened when the
party participates in parliamentary elections. In election
campaigns, the vanguard party models itself completely on
existing bourgeois forms and even acquires the paraphernalia
of the electoral party. . .
"For the state centralisation is the appropriate form of
organisation, since it aims at the greatest possible uniformity
in social life for the maintenance of political and social
equilibrium. But for a movement whose very existence depends
on prompt action at any favourable moment and on the independent
thought and action of its supporters, centralism could but be a
curse by weakening its power of decision and systematically
repressing all immediate action. If, for example, as was the
case in Germany, every local strike had first to be approved
by the Central, which was often hundreds of miles away and was
not usually in a position to pass a correct judgement on the
local conditions, one cannot wonder that the inertia of the
apparatus of organisation renders a quick attack quite impossible,
and there thus arises a state of affairs where the energetic and
intellectually alert groups no longer serve as patterns for the
less active, but are condemned by these to inactivity, inevitably
bringing the whole movement to stagnation. Organisation is, after
all, only a means to an end. When it becomes an end in itself, it
kills the spirit and the vital initiative of its members and
sets up that domination by mediocrity which is the characteristic
of all bureaucracies." [Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism,
p. 54]
H.5.9 What are vanguard parties effective at?
"As often happens, a sharp cleavage developed between the
classes in motion and the interests of the party machines.
Even the Bolshevik Party cadres, who enjoyed the benefit
of exceptional revolutionary training, were definitely
inclined to disregard the masses and to identify their own
special interests and the interests of the machine on the
very day after the monarchy was overthrown. What, then,
could be expected of these cadres when they became an
all-powerful state bureaucracy?" [Stalin, vol. 1, p. 298]
"The habits peculiar to a political machine were already
forming in the underground. The young revolutionary
bureaucrat was already emerging as a type. The conditions
of conspiracy, true enough, offered rather merge scope
for such formalities of democracy as electiveness,
accountability and control. Yet, undoubtedly the
committeemen narrowed these limitations considerably
more than necessity demanded and were far more intransigent
and severe with the revolutionary workingmen than with
themselves, preferring to domineer even on occasions
that called for lending an attentive eat to the voice
of the masses." [Op. Cit., p. 101]
H.5.10 Why does "democratic centralism" produce "bureaucratic centralism"?
"Further, in so far as our Bolshevik friends reject and defy
capitalist and orthodox labourist conceptions, they also
are as much 'individualistic' as the anarchist. Is it not
boasted, for example, that on many occasions Marx, Lenin
and Trotsky were prepared to be in a minority of one -- if
they thought they were more correct than all others on the
question at issue? In this, like Galileo, they were quite
in order. Where they and their followers, obsessed by the
importance of their own judgement go wrong, is in their
tendency to refuse this inalienable right to other
protagonists and fighters for the working class." [APCF,
"Our Reply," Class War on the Home Front, p. 70]
H.5.11 Can you provide an example of the negative nature of vanguard parties?
"The SWP is not democratic centralist but bureaucratic
centralist. The leadership's control of the party is
unchecked by the members. New perspectives are initiated
exclusively by the central committee (CC), who then
implement their perspective against all party opposition,
implicit or explicit, legitimate or otherwise.