Date: Sun, 4 May 1997 10:33:21 -0400
From: LPA <blissett-AT-unpopular.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Re German Revolution, Bologna et al


After reading Harry Cleaver's recommendation of Sergio Bologna's "Class
Composition and the Theory of the Party at the Origin of the Workers'
Council Movement", unlike Paul Mattick I took the trouble to reread the
text for the first time since the seventies. It's such a horrible text,
that I understand why Mattick felt relieved that he did not have to reread.
What made me angry was not just the way it insulted the intelligence of me
and my fellow readers, but also that of the working class members of the
IWW - "No Wobbly ever bothered to think about what the future society would
be like." He says this in comparison to De Leon's fantasies about having a
fancy office after having taken power. Now let's be clear, it's one thing
for a 'revolutionary' cadre to fantasise about how many workers they'll
boss around after the revolution, but you can hardly expect the worker to
have parallel fantasies about how many party cadre they'll be able to carry
on their back, It is clear that in the IWW halls there were frequent
fervent discussions about the future society, and the attached libraries
offered a broad range of socialist reading material, but likewise the
experienced wobblies didn't tolerate preppy utopianism.
        If a historian is an intellectual who obfuscates working class
history for the bourgeoisie, then clearly Harry Cleaver is quite right when
accuses Bologna of being a historian. An example of this is where he
discusses how the workers' movement split into three parts under the impact
of the first World War, distinguishing between the patriotic social
democrats, the revolutionary pacifists and "the Bolsheviks or, rather,
Lenin and a few others who foresaw the possibility of turning the
imperialist war into a civil war." Here he neglects to mention that these
'few others' included Henriette Roland Holst and Anton Pannekoek of the
Dutch SDP, who were both prominent activists in the workers' council
movement. Pannekoek had links with the Bremen revolutionaries who published
first Lichtstrahlen and then Arbeiterpolitik and formed the International
Socialists of Germany (ISD) by August 1917. Bologna makes no mention of
this political current who played a role in organising a strike by several
thousand shipyard workers as part of the mass wave of strikes sparked of by
the walkout by 400,000 metal workers. Bologna merely mentions that the
metal workers were "under the USPD umbrella" and that "it was within the
USPD that the ideological battle concerning the councils movement took
place." This is simply untrue.
        In fact Bologna's whole article makes frequent reference to Rosa
Luxemburg, a centrist who through the USPD maintained illusions in
salvaging the patriotic SPD (which in fact was propelled to power by the
councils, only to organise the repression of the revolutionary elements).
He makes no reference to the German Communist Left - the KAPD, which split
from the German Communist Party (KPD) after a gerrymandered conference.
Politically they opposed parliamentaryism and refused to go back into the
unions. In effect Bologna discusses the workers' council movement at the
same time as sewing shut the mouths of those who were its bravest
champions.
         As regards Cleaver's description of the article as "an analysis of
how particular forms of working class struggle emerge from particular
compositions of the class and thus how particular forms, e.g., councils or
Leninist parties, should never be taken as universals", it makes me wonder
if he too hasn't read the article since the seventies. Bologna, outlines
Lenin: "that the distinction between a network of acting minorities and a
network of professional revolutionaries is only simply a question regarding
the historical stages of the class struggle and therefore the different
levels of development of spontaneity. [...] both must be seen as
expressions of the movement's level of growth: the former being more
backward than the latter." Bologna preserves this platonising concept,
which erects a universal ladder of escalation which would be more at home
on a masonic tracing board than in a text of revolutionary theory. Towards
the end of the text he pretends that in Germany "the revolutionary cadre
had simply preached  resistance to the war or pacifism against militarism,
and at the war merely demanded the abolition of hierarchies. In Russia , on
the other hand the Bolsheviks had undertaken the task of forming the Red
Army." Aside from being untrue when the stitching keeping the mouth of the
German Communist Left is removed, this also reveals a complete
misunderstanding of the Bolshevik project and how it was in applicable to
Germany.
        Lenin's notion of the party derives more from Francis Bacon's
seventeenth century "New Atlantis" than anything from Marx. Bacon's utopian
work gives "a model of description of a college instituted for the
interpreting of nature and the production of great and marvellous works for
the benefit of men, under the name of Salomon's House". This organises
society around the principles of the new learning i.e. science. And Lenin
is above all interested in science, both social and physical - "The history
of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own
efforts is able only to develop trade-union consciousness . . . The theory
of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophical, historical and
economic theories elaborated by educated members of the ruling class, by
intellectuals." (What is to Be Done?) The role of the Bolshevik party was
to function as means by which this 'new' scientific consciousness would be
relayed through the entire society, by taking society over. Hence Lenin's
stress on professional revolutionaries and introducing consciousness from
outside of class experience. In a similar manner that state form which
existed in Russia was petrified, unable to bend flexibly and develop a
close relationship with even the reformist social democrats and the unions.
Such a state could be supplanted by a centrally organised party such as
that of the Bolsheviks.
        The situation in Germany was different. There was no question of
spreading science, or 'westernising' society. As Bologna points out in his
discussion of the German tool and machine industry, here was a workforce
linked to the technology of the work place. Also, in Germany, the Party did
take over, the SPD. They used the councils and unions to consolidate their
power, which they had already developed by working in collaboration with
the imperial government during the war. Pannekoek had already warned that
there would be those 'socialists' who would want to partake in the
capitalist reorganisation of production. This they proceeded to do, at the
same time using the Frei Korps to eliminate the revolutionary opposition.
In the end the Red Army was used in a similar way when they suppressed the
Kronstadt Soviet.
        Where does all this leave us? I am certainly very happy that
Bob/Subversion have taken the trouble to put up the sort of material that
Bologna ignores on their website. This goes some way to clarifying matters.
Through Unpopular Books I intend to publish Otto R=FChle's "The Revolution is
Not a Party Affair" along with other texts (his "Report from Moscow" and
the Executive Committee of the Third International's "Open Letter to the
Membership of the KAPD") which deals with the split between the German
Communist Left and the Bolsheviks - basically the two components of the
Zimmerwald Left who had first proposed the setting up of a Third
International before the Russian Revolution. There are also other texts
such as the GIK's "Thesis on Bolshevism" (also published as "The Bourgeois
Role of Bolshevism") which I hope to have an electronic version ready soon.

        for communism, Leutha Blissett


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