File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_2001/aut-op-sy.0106, message 205


Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 10:37:42 -0700 (PDT)
From: Thomas Seay <entheogens-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Hardt-Negri's Empire: a critique, part one


Louis,  I am assuming that you inteneded this critique
to go to the autopsy group and not as an opening salvo
to the "Empire" reading list.

You wrote:
<<It is not on the basis of abstract socialist
propaganda but rather the dialectical interaction
between experiences based on local struggles,
either at the plant-gate or the rural farming village,
and ideas transmitted to fighters by Marxist
activists, the "vanguard" in Lenin's terms. The
construction of such a vanguard remains as urgent a
task as it
was in Lenin's days, a period not unlike our own which
faced thinkers notunlike Hardt and Negri.>>

I have only begun my reading of "Empire", but I must
say that as I approach the question of socialist
revolution anew, I am struggling with the question of
"vanguard" party.  On the one hand, I am totally burnt
out on the idea.  In my youth I was in a "Vanguard
party" (I am an American too and as you know there
were so many vanguard parties here that they were
running out of appropriate names by which to call
themselves).
The "democratic centralism" was a sham...and I believe
it was so across the "Vanguard" spectrum (maoist,
trotskyist, etc).  My god, I would have hated to live
in any society created by one of those groups.

On the other hand, I hear your point about
"economism".
That is how is it possible to really overthrow
capitalism without a Party.  All these spontaneious
movements will just crop up making their quantitative
demands, but how do we make the qualitative leap
toward socialism without a party (or even several
parties) which direct that struggle toward that aim.

So, you see, I am caught in this dilemma...I am
reasonably open to all arguments except those that
have not considered this problem critically.

Thomas

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