From: JEFF SPARROW <jeffs-AT-werple.net.au> Subject: M-I: Bolshevism, Louis, etc Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 12:06:29 +-1100 LOUIS: One of the worst features of Trotskyist sectarianism is its tendency to turn every serious political fight in a party into a conflict between a "proletarian" and a "petty-bourgeois" wing. Jeff: It's even more ludicrous in terms of the tiny groups that exist today. The SWP at least had a couple of thousand members and some serious working class supporters. There is nothing more tragic than reading of splits in tiny Trot groups in which a majority of twenty describes a minority of ten as "petty bourgeois". The other thing about this kind of method is that it's never clear whether the use of class terms is meant as an empirical description or as a political characterisation. Cannon seems to slide between the two. That is, "Proletarian Party" is full of snide remarks about the opposition being a pack of professors in opposition to Cannon's group of horny handed sons of toil. But would it have been a sufficient rebuttal to produce evidence of the numbers of genuine workers amongst the opposition? What would this have proved? Are workers always right? Are those from p-b backgrounds (like, for example, Lenin) always wrong? In any case, what do you say about the class position of someone (like Cannon) who has spent thirty years as a paid full-timer in the revolutionary movement? Are their conditions of life so different from other intellectuals? Louis: Where did they pick this "workerist" reductionism from, one has to wonder? It comes from the "good" Comintern of Trotsky and Zinoviev. Trotsky used it in an especially hamfisted manner in the Cannon-Schachtman fight you allude to. In his factional interventions, Trotsky described the Schachtman group as a "scratch" that could turn into "gangrene" if the party wasn't careful. Jeff: I dunno that Trotsky's intervention was so "hamfisted." If you read his letters during the crisis, the thing that stands out is his genuine attempts at conciliation. In the midst of it all, one of his letters begins with (paraphrasing from memory): "Max, old friend, I fear that this time you are on the wrong side of the barricades. Why don't you come down to Mexico so we can have a long talk about this?" I think the fault, initially at least, was much more with Cannon. After all, the way the SWP has always presented the documents is in terms of a political fight carried out by Trotsky ('Defense of Marxism') and an organisational fight carried out by Cannon ('Defense of a Proletarian Party'). That to me seems much closer to Zinoviev than anything in Trotsky's intervention. It's an approach that had disastrous consequences once Trotsky was no longer around to provide political leadership. (Tim Wohlforth's book on American Trotskyism is really good on how, after Trotsky's death, Cannon simply followed the same method by ceding political control to people like Mandel and Pablo). As for Trotsky, well, I think he did the best he could in very difficult circumstances. In hindsight, it is pretty clear that the Opposition was a rotten bloc of people with widely disparate politics united only by an opposition to Cannon. Trotsky did come up with a whole series of organisational compromises to avoid a split, which were refused by the opposition. And while I think Trotsky does go a bit over the top with all the "gangrene" stuff, it's worth remembering that he was writing in a time in which the revolutionary traditions of Marxism were in danger of disappearing. If ever there were a time in which it was important to be hard politically it was then, in order to preserve some of the lessons of Bolshevism for future generations. Louis: Of course, the big question is how Trotsky got the right to recommend to Cannon that he "hold back" and offer the minority major organisational concessions to "prevent a split". Or, how did he get the right to involve himself in the faction fight of the American SWP? He of course learned this from the practices of the early Comintern, and without skipping a beat, incorporated it into the Fourth International. Jeff: I'm not sure I understand your point here. Are you arguing against the idea of an International as such? I mean, I can see a case for claiming that the Fourth International was subject to delusions of grandeur (a bunch of tiny groups very much dependant on the prestige and political acumen of Trotsky himself). But if you accept the idea of an International, well, of course Trotsky had the 'right' to intervene. In any case, it's clear from the documents that if he hadn't the Americans would have made much more of a hash of things. LOUIS: Well, as it turns out, Lenin was the biggest softie on police agents that the socialist world has ever seen. Even when his comrades kept insisting to him that Malinovski was an Tsarist agent, Lenin kept supporting him. It was virtually impossible to give him the boot. With respect to the single political expulsion of Bogdanov, I base my case on a reading of Noel Harding's "Lenin's Political Thought" and Paul Le Blanc's "Lenin and the Revolutionary Party". The only expulsion mentioned is the Bogdanov affair. If, of course, you come up with contrary evidence, I am willing to listen. Jeff: It kind of depends on what you mean by 'expel'. For most of their history, the Bolsheviks simply weren't the kind of 'professional' organisation that Lenin often stated that he want. So, for example, until really late in the piece many Bolshevik groups had no separate existence from the Mensheviks, even though Lenin was clear that they should. But there's plenty of cases of Lenin using fairly heavy handed organisational methods against his opponents. Amongst many of the Russian revolutionaries, he seems to have had a reputation for being a 'hard' organisational man, who was given to a fair bit of bureaucratic maneouvring. So I must say, I find the idea of the "factional" Trotsky as opposed to Lenin the softie a bit hard to swallow. But it's a while since I read this stuff. If I get a chance, I'll go back to the musty old books and try to find some quotes. LOUIS: There is no sin in "going overboard" during a period of upsurge like Russia in 1905, or France in 1968. What is a sin is to view capitalism as being in constant crisis. This helps to keep Trotskyite sects in a constant state of alert and allows the leadership to deploy members around the map the way Kasparov moves pieces around on a chessboard. A much better posture for socialists is to maintain a completely adversarial stance toward the capitalist class and its parties without looking at the calendar so much. Jeff: This is all very well, but it's self contradictory. How can you keep an "adversarial stance [..] without looking at the calendar" and still be able to "go overboard" when a revolutionary situation presents itself? Obviously, you do have to behave differently depending on the political climate. It would be ludicrous to imagine a mass organisation can simply operate in the same way no matter what is happening politically. The difficulty is, of course, knowing how to assess the climate when you are a tiny group on the very margins of society, which is the position the far left finds itself in today. The way I see it, you do have to make assessments about the political situation and the opportunities that it presents to you. However, as a small organisation, you have to be reasonably relaxed about it. You don't have a great deal of knowledge about what is happening in the working class, and so your assessments are most likely to be flawed. So you try to do the best you can, you attempt to avoid Messianism and you honestly discuss your fuck-ups. --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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