Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 14:40:08 +0000
Subject: M-G: Re: "Broad" or "Narrow" - the trade union bureaucracy. Was 


>
> Adam,
> 
> I cannot write much as I'm currently otherwise very busy, but I had to answer 
> the above, whic completely misunderstands the nature of the Russian SDLP, and 
> the split between the bolsheviks and the mensheviks. The bolsheviks did not 
> split with the mensheviks because they were reformists, they split with them 
> because the mensheviks refused to follow the decisions of the RSDLP - i.e. the 
> mensheviks put themselves outside the party, refused to recognise its official 
> structures once they had lost the arguments and the votes.
> 
> Lenin (and the bolsheviks) did not argue that revolutionaries should not build 
> broad parties, they just said we should do it in particular ways, ways that 
> make possible the creation of a mass working-class revolutionary party. 
> Interpreting that as you have done above may provide an ideological 
> justification for the SWP at a point when 8 million workers are organised in 
> unions affiliated to the Labour Party, but it is not 'orthodox' Marxism, or 
> Leninism, and it is not even very good sense.
> 

I think that you are all  missing the point.  The SWP is quite like 
the Party organisation of the Mensheviks. It is relatively open and 
broad because the entry qualitifation does not require agreement with a Marxist 
programme as conceived by Lenin.   In that sense it cannot operate in 
a democratic centralist manner as conceived by Lenin. Why, because 
the membership as untrained cadres cannot contribute to the 
democratic debate which tests and changes the programme. Hence the 
programme becomes the property of various leadership cliques.
Louis P and Adam are in agreement on the type of organisation that is needed, 
except that neither can see that their prescription is one for a 
bureacratic clique. 

Nicks point is insufficient however,  because the difference between 
Bolsheviks and Mensheviks on party organisation flowed from their different 
conceptions of the role of the party as vanguard (Bolshevik) or 
tailguard (Menshevik).  This difference in method was in turn the product of 
a proletarian vs petty bourgeois class position. The Bolsheviks 
recognised that the proletariat, if led by a vanguard would become a 
revolutionary class. The Mensheviks fearing  this, and wishing to 
retain their positions of authority over the working class, 
rationalised Marx's method into a  stage theory in which workers would
spontaneously develop according to some historic schema.  The Mensheviks 
would retain control of  course because they alone had the intellectual key 
to this stageist schema. How is this different from the SWP? 

Not until we get this question clear, and its importance for today, 
are we going to convince people like Mark that this discussion has 
any relevance for this list.  For me there is no  use building a 
revolutionary party today unless we avoid making the mistakes of the 
past. The biggest lesson is not to build a Menshevik type party 
dominated by petty bourgeois intellectuals who substitute themselves 
for a proletarian vanguard.  That is why the historic fight between the 
Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks remains at the heart of revolutionary 
politics today. 

Dave.


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