From: Carrol Cox <cbcox-AT-rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: MR Sept 1968. French Upheaval and Leninism
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 11:46:10 -0600 (CST)


Lou P writes:

<<My problem with the MR article is that it conceives of a Leninist party
in an orthodox Cominternist fashion. This is no surprise since the entire
Marxist left in 1968 had not really thought through the question of
"democratic centralism", the "vanguard", etc. After the Marxist left
imploded in the 1980s, it was up to many of us to perform an autopsy.>>

I don't think the core point Sweezy and Huberman raise is necessarily
implicated in their (or our) conception of "the Party," but rather how
*any* communist party, primarily engaged in certain varieties of "reform"
or "defensive" struggles, can *remain* a communist party and not sink into
some variety or other of social democracy, thus becoming a barrier rather
than a part of revolutionary action.

Their two empirical points are historically accurate:

(1) No workers revolution has occurred in a bourgeois democracy

(2) All revolutions that did (even temporarily) succeed were led by
parties engaged in illegal struggle.

That does *not* establish *in principle* that a wholly legal party can
remain committed to workers revolution, it is merely an empirical summary,
but as Thoreau said someplace about finding a trout in the milk can, it
should give one furiously to think.

Lenin's point about *What Is To Be Done* being outmoded does justice to
only one aspect of the work. If one abstracts from its more concrete and
immediate content, it has surprising accuracy as a *description* and
analysis of *actually existing* organizations of all kinds inside
capitalist society. That is, "democratic centralism" can be read as
descriptive rather than merely prescriptive.

This perspective would not refute Lou's critique of what he calls
"orthodox comintern" interpretation of "Leninism," but it would require
some restatement of the critique.

Please, everyone, note that *all* conceptions of revolutionary strategy
and revolutionary parties in the advanced capitalist world exist only in
the mind: we have no positive models with a record of success.

Carrol


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