Dilemma With No Way Out?

– Continuation of the
organisational debate

31 Jan 2024

Comrades from the German-speaking blog Communaut continued their historical

debate about organisational forms – check out the translations of the first
contributions here. Although there are no direct references, this debate forms part
of a wider international grappling, e.g. in the US amongst the DSA Communist
Caucus, the Marxist Unity Group, but also in the UK amongst comrades from Notes
from Below. The following text is a second reply by comrades who defend the
concept of a ‘mass party’ to the criticisms they received – to read the critical
positions see link above. We have published the comrades’ previous reply here.

Dilemma With No Way Out?

In the first part of this reply we dealt with the historical points of contention and
once again tried to explain our position on the basis of our understanding of the
historical material. In this second part we now want to shed more theoretical
light on the question of organisation. In doing so, we will 1.) underpin our basic
thesis that the working class must organise politically in order to be able to act
as a class. 2.) We will elaborate on the fundamental dilemma of class
organisations in capitalism and argue that this dilemma cannot be circumvented
by simply not organising, but should instead be answered through organisational
means. In this sense, we want to 3.) clarify once again our critique of the
spontaneist hopes in our milieu and finally 4.) define more precisely our idea of
party, programme, and strategy.

Class Organisation as Necessity

In the first part we already repeated the basic observation that the capitalist
mode of production is based on an indissoluble antagonism of interests between
capital and labour. At least within our milieu, this will hardly have met with
opposition – but a disagreement about the consequences to be drawn from this
basic determination seems very much to exist. In our view, the significance of
the class antagonism in capitalism is not simply rooted in this antagonism per se,
but results from the peculiar position of the proletarianised. They are in a state
of fundamental precariousness, which Marx called “absolute poverty”: a poverty
that does not consist in one lack or another, but in the complete exclusion from
the means of their own reproduction (cf. MEW 42: 217f.). According to Marx’s
analysis, the wage-dependent class has no choice but to unite if it wants to
defend and assert its interests as a class – and not simply as competing
individuals. Since the individual worker “as a ‘free’ seller of his labour power,
succumbs without resistance once capitalist production has reached a certain
stage of maturity” (MEW 23: 316), he or she must organise with others. The
wage-dependents “begin to form coalitions against the bourgeoisie” (MEW 4:
470). The fact that since the beginning of the capitalist epoch the wage-
dependent, despite all adverse conditions, internal competition, division,
atomisation and repression, have united again and again to fight over their
interests, illustrates this assessment. The impossibility of realising its interests on
an individual basis makes the proletariat a universal class. Every previous one
could “not liberate itself as a class, but only in isolation”. The proletariat, on the
other hand, because of its position, must “abolish the very condition of its
existence hitherto (which has, moreover, been that of all society up to the
present), namely, labour” (MEW 3: 76f.).
The Marxist hypothesis is thus that the working class – as a class separated from
the means of production – must necessarily organise itself in order to be able to
improve its situation in the long term. This is not a historico-teleologically
bourgeoisified automatism, but requires wilful, collective action. (1) Class
consciousness arises as an effect of this organising. Only this contains the
possibility of forming the isolated proletarianised individuals into a class for
themselves. (2) Class struggles at the point of production cannot play this role
alone because of their episodic and minoritarian character. It is precisely because
workers are separated from the means of their reproduction – and not merely
because they can exercise power at the point of production by refusing to work
– that they can function as a revolutionary subject for Marx and Engels. (3) In
this perspective, struggles, strikes, etc. are not considered valuable in
themselves, but only from the perspective of further organisation: “the actual
result of their struggles is not immediate success, but the ever-widening
unification of the workers” (MEW 4: 471). Accordingly, it is a gross simplification
when Felix Klopotek reduces the “real movement” of communism to the
“tendency of increasing socialisation in capitalism”, socialist theories, and
spontaneous movements. (4) For Marx and Engels, it was not only in the
increasing integration of production and exchange processes that the material
conditions “for a classless society could be found latent” (MEW 42: 93). At least
as important for them was the increasing political organisation of the
proletarianised into a party. Various statements and resolutions by Marx and
Engels show that this by no means meant only a historical party or philosophical
concept of whatever kind, but a formal, political party, with membership lists, a
programme, and with the aim of being represented in parliaments. (5) For
example, the programme of the French Workers’ Party, written by Marx in 1880,
states “that collective appropriation can only proceed from a revolutionary
action by the class of producers – the proletariat – organised in an independent
political party” (MEW 19: 238).
Klopotek, on the other hand, considers the organisation of the proletariat as a
politically independent party to be a “phantasm”; as such, in his view, it would
“always already be integrated into democracy.” (6) Marx and Engels, on the
other hand, were firmly convinced that it is only through association in a political
party that wage-dependents learn what is necessary to be able to administer a
future society on their own. In their eyes, the degree of organisation of the class
gives information about how much the class has already gained in maturity. (7)
Kautsky summed up this view in the statement that the proletariat “in and
through struggle” should organise and enable the most advanced and at the
same time the most backward elements of the wage-earning class to lead “that
tremendous economic transformation which will finally put an end to all misery
arising from servitude, exploitation, ignorance on the whole face of the earth.”
(8) For the centre-wing within the SPD [The German Social Democratic Party],
these remarks formed the basis for the critique of the mass strike strategy. (9)

Class Organisation as Dilemma

By the time of the Second International, the pitfalls associated with the
necessary organisation of the working class had also become so obvious that
they demanded theoretical and strategic clarification. The tendencies towards
bureaucratisation and reformist degeneration were already becoming slowly
visible in Marx’s time. (10) In this phase of the development of the workers’
movement however the dispute over the question of organisation was
predominated by the partly anti-democratic, partly anti-political ideas of Lassalle,
Bakunin, or Proudhon and their followers. (11) It was only in the mass strike
debate – which was to a large extent also a debate about the question of
opportunism and bureaucratisation, as can be seen above all in Luxemburg’s
contributions – that these new problems associated with the social democratic
mass organisations became the subject of a decisive debate.
In this context, the dilemma with regard to trade unions had already been clear-
sightedly formulated by Kautsky: “We look away from the other advantages
which the trade unions offer to the workers. But strangely enough, the stronger
they become, the more they improve the situation of the workers, the more
cautious they become in every strike movement – but of course, the more
violent and tenacious the struggle becomes once it comes to one. That is to say,
it seems strange only at first sight that as the strength of the organisation
grows, its desire to take up every struggle does not increase in the same
measure. If one looks more closely, this phenomenon is quite natural. The
organisations now have something to lose: the gains they have hitherto wrung
from the employers, the war treasure on which a good part of their ability to
fight rests, and finally, and most importantly, the confidence of their members.”
(12) According to Kautsky, it is only through a powerful trade union that provides
strike funds and the necessary know-how that strikes can become “powerful”
and “tenacious” – but only if they occur. It can be observed however that
increasing organisational capacity and size are often precisely not accompanied
by self-confident militancy, but rather the opposite occurs: the more formidable
the organisation, the more timidly it launches an open conflict, the more likely it
is to avoid decisive confrontations or serious strikes, and the more it relies on
negotiation and moderation.
The reason for this, as Kautsky writes, “strange” development has not been
theorised by anyone as thoroughly as by Claus Offe and Helmut Wiesenthal. (13)
They explain the opportunism which, in their view, develops sooner or later by
necessity as a fundamental dilemma of working class organisations. Wage
earners, because of the heterogeneity of their life situation and the competition
among themselves, could not simply add up their interests, but have to
coordinate and to a certain extent redefine them in a dialogical process in order
to arrive at a collective class interest. First of all, therefore, they emphasise that
in order to find these collective interests, the formation of organisations and the
creation of a culture of solidarity and collective identity are essential. (14)
Such an organisation goes through several stages in its development process. In
the first stage, the workers’ organisation is still at a low level of organisation, a
dialogical form of balancing interests between leadership and the rank-and-file
dominates, and the internal bureaucracy is still barely developed and has
therefore not yet been able to become independent. At this level, militant
conflicts with the side of capital still have to be conducted in order to gain
concessions. In the second stage of the organisation’s development, however,
this form of exercising power is already receding into the background. The
mobilising capacity and membership of the organisation have reached a point
where the threat of strikes and direct actions – and not their actual
implementation – is sufficient to get the other side to give in. The potential of
power functions as if it were the application of power and thus the exercise of
power at the negotiating table can remain purely virtual. However, the strength
of the organisation at this stage is thus based on its control over its rank-and-file,
whose spontaneity now becomes a threat to it. This problem exists both for
trade unions and political parties, which also face the temptation at a certain
point to use their voter base merely as a threat to achieve short-term goals by
reformist means. This also results in what Robert Brenner has called the paradox
of social democracy (15): the trade unions and parties tend towards reformism in
the long term and are forced to hem in the struggles of the rank and file. By
demobilising them, however, they simultaneously hollow out the potential for
exercising power and thus the basis of their organisation’s strength. According
to Offe and Wiesenthal, the solution for the trade union or party in the third
stage is the opportunist path, which consists of the organisation decoupling
itself from its base. It now tries to institutionalise and legalise the positions it has
gained through its members’ willingness to act, in order to make itself
independent of this willingness to act. At the same time, it is changing its
internal structure in such a way that it maximises the independence of the
functionaries from the collective expression of the will of the members. It
achieves this by bureaucratising and professionalising its internal processes and
procedures, and by individualising its members. Offe and Wiesenthal thus
describe this strategy not, as usual in the Leninist tradition, as betrayal by a
labour aristocracy bribed by imperialist surplus profits, but as a organisational
practice that becomes rational once they have reached a certain point in their
development.
This development is further facilitated by the tendency towards
bureaucratisation of workers’ organisations. The trend feeds on the class
relation itself: since, due to the social division of labour, workers under
capitalism are deprived of technical and intellectual skills and the time necessary
to advance their interests beyond temporary actions such as strikes and
demonstrations, the obvious way to do this is by freeing up special functionaries
who can devote themselves fully to organisational and political activities. This
layer of paid functionaries, however, also develops subjective interests at the
same time, which accommodate the opportunist strategy: they live off the
organisation and they are at the same time much more directly involved in
labour relations with the class enemy. (16)
In their critique (17) ARS therefore correctly emphasise that “mere bureaucracy”
is not the only force that binds workers’ organisations to the existing and that
the integrative tendencies go much deeper: the dilemma is structural. There is a
tendency within proletarian organisations towards opportunist strategies and
these are encouraged and ideologically flanked by the political and legal
institutions of the bourgeois state.
As shown in the first part of this reply, Kautsky and the centre wing of social
democracy had no solution to this dilemma. Rosa Luxemburg saw before her the
problem clearly, but was only able to confront it in appearance, through an
evasive movement. Instead of opposing opportunism and its bureaucratic
support layer within the organisation, the means to solve it was outsourced to
the spontaneous movements. The cost-benefit calculations that organisations
make at a certain point to weigh up whether uprisings, strikes, or the like were in
the party’s or union’s best interest would, according to Luxemburg, be rendered
superfluous by spontaneous struggles: “the moment a real, serious period of
mass strikes begins, all these ‘calculations of cost’ become mere projects for
exhausting the ocean with a tumbler.” (18)
Spontaneity as a Way Out?
In our opening text, we tried to show that for all the scepticism about naïve
spontaneity – the belief that “the movement” will surely find its way – the
dilemma of class organisation is not really recognised within our milieu. The
tendencies towards opportunism described above are seen as irreparable. Hence
the conclusion that one must keep a distance from existing organisations, such
as the big trade unions or workers’ or left parties, and join together in
communist circles instead.
These circles could then – at least according to the hope – exert a radicalising
influence on spontaneous mass movements in the course of their upsurge.
Following Luxemburg’s thoughts, the organisational dilemma is to be
circumvented in this way. Unlike her, however, who hoped for a revival of
bureaucratised social democracy through the mass strike, the spontaneous
movement is harshly opposed to the old institutions of the workers movement.
(19) We have already addressed the fundamental doubts we harbour about this
orientation in the first text. Off the back of Felix Klopotek’s critique, who in turn
positions an extreme version of spontaneism against us – a position which in
turn is probably not shared by all those we addressed with our first text – we
want to try again to outline the spontaneous movement’s limits.
According to Klopotek, the “momentum of mass movements” (20) is supposed
to guarantee against any tendency towards bureaucratisation and integration.
With that said, according to this view this momentum is both a tender plant and
a raging river at the same time. It usually comes unexpectedly and hesitantly at
first, it must be defended against any attempt to make it organisationally
permanent, and will eventually, when it has reached a certain size and
momentum, clear away everything that could stand in the way of revolution. As
soon as the mass movement has reached an adequate level of intensity,
“everyone does the right thing as if by themselves” (Klopotek). Klopotek’s
thesis of spontaneous-organic self-organisation may still have some plausibility
with regard to riots, but it already proves untenable when considering a simple
demonstration or strike: a minimum of organisation is necessary for the
preparation and successful planning, coordination, and implementation of such
actions. First of all, someone has to get the ball rolling, start a call, inform
colleagues, convince them, decide on the aims and implementation, etc. etc.
During a strike, you are also in a constant political confrontation with the other
side, which requires that morale is kept high and finally, at a certain point, a
decision has to be made about escalation or withdrawal. All this requires
reasonably complex processes of decision-making and organisation. Sometimes
there may be mass dynamics that make the process seem self-propelling, but
these are often the result of previous organising processes. The tenacious work
of persuasion or the initiative of individual activists, often trained in the
organisations themselves, who drive the struggle forward and create optimism
against spreading doubts, becomes invisible in the course of such dynamics. The
result of their activity appears to be completely decoupled from it. This could be
called spontaneist mystification: the mediating movement disappears in its own
result.
Klopotek’s “idealisation of spontaneity” (21) becomes even more untenable
when applied to a revolutionary situation. In such a process, presumably
extremely chaotic, which would almost certainly last for months if not years, and
in which political coordinates and social relations are fundamentally shaken up, it
will be incredibly difficult to determine what “the right thing to do” is, what the
right tactics are, the right slogans, the right next steps. The problem of
organising described above would be complicated many times over. In such a
situation, nobody does the right thing “by themselves”. The opposite
assumption seems more plausible: under such circumstances, many things will
go wrong and it would be necessary to create structures that are able to correct
mistakes and adapt actions to changing situations.
It seems obvious to us that spontaneous processes of self-organisation reach
definitive limits where it is no longer a question of coordinated action within the
framework of a demonstration or at the level of a company on strike, but where
a revolutionary movement is to work together at the level of a city, a region, a
country, a continent or even globally. For purposeful, collective action to be
possible at this level, organising is essential and some difficult questions arise:
how can multiple interests be coordinated? How can broad democratic
participation and control be realised under conditions of revolutionary turmoil?
How can politically effective decisions be made without undermining discussion,
participation, and collective decision-making? In the absence of an appropriate
organisational framework, the energies of the mass movement will simply fizzle
out. They may have within them the forces of destruction and immediate
appropriation – as was said, a riot may succeed spontaneously – but to set the
transformation of society in motion requires a planned and coordinated
approach with organisational structures that are up to the task. This is why we
have criticised the idea formulated by the comrades from Kosmoprolet,
according to which the revolutionary transition can only be imagined as a “wild
movement of occupations.” (22) Here, too, the problem of coordination and
decision-making is left out in favour of the hope of a self-reinforcing and self-
organising process which, starting from individual appropriations, should
proceed to the reorganisation of production on a communist basis.
With the organisational tasks facing the movement of the working class,
however, only a first barrier to the spontaneist hopes for the self-organising
forces of movements is addressed. A second barrier results from the conflict
over the political and ideological sovereignty of interpretation within class
struggles. These do not of themselves bring about the negation of the existing
order. The struggles of workers to secure and improve their material existence
are open to different and sometimes contradictory political evaluations, which
lead to different and sometimes contrary political actions. As Offe and
Wiesenthal’s reflections above make clear, the working class is confronted with
the complex task of reconciling the heterogeneous interests in its ranks, defining
a common interest and overcoming the adversities associated with collective
action. (23) In their attempts to organise and in their struggles, workers are
always exposed to the influence of antagonistic political forces that struggle to
determine the interpretation of the dispute, to adjust the demands of the
workers, and to fit them into the framework of the prevailing order. This
ideological confrontation can already be observed in every major strike: when
the media and politics mobilise against the strikers, (24) for example, when
management tries to demoralise the strikers, and when finally the trade union
leadership steps in to break up the dispute. This ideological confrontation is also
reflected in major politics, where parties with different programmes compete to
define the lines of social and political development. Fredo Corvo describes this
quite aptly: “The causes of each of these problems [of workers], as well as
possible solutions, are the subject of all kinds of circulating opinions, picked up
by traditional and ‘social’ media, filtered for ‘popularity’ and selected by
bourgeois political and trade union organisations according to bourgeois
ideologies and the bourgeois interests behind them.” (25) At present, the party
and media landscape here presents itself as a “plural version of a single party”
(Agnoli) that organises and legitimises the “trampling and crushing” of the
proletarianised as an inevitable fate.
In the face of this ideologically as much as practically integrating machinery, the
working class can only establish its self-understanding as a class and its
independence vis-à-vis the other social classes politically. For this, it needs the
development of organisational forms and structures of collective decision-
making that allow workers to unite as a class and act as a class. The name we
chose for this in our first text, following Marx and Engels, was the party: “In its
struggle against the collective power of the owning classes, the proletariat can
only act as a class if it constitutes itself as a special political party in opposition
to all the old parties formed by the owning classes.” (MEW 18: 149) The function
of the party would be the intervention of the working class as a class – as a
whole, not individual segments – in major politics, in order to represent the
“interest of the movement as a whole” (MEW 4: 43) and to develop and
propagate a proletarian position on all the problems that arise in a society at a
given moment. The name to which this organisation answers is secondary: “If
the working class is to take power, it must lead society as a whole. To do so, it
must address all questions animating politics in the society as a whole and all its
elements. To do so is to become a political party even if you call yourself an
‘alliance’ or ‘unity coalition’ or whatever. To fail to do so is to fail even as an
‘alliance’ or ‘unity coalition’.” (26)
But the organisations of the class are also objects of a constant political struggle
between proletarian autonomy and state-loyal integration into the ruling order.
With opportunism we have outlined above a central integrative tendency within
the workers’ movement, the cause of which is structurally inherent and develops
naturally out of the class relation. Therefore, we consider it crucial that
communists participate in the classes’ attempts at self-organisation and work
against bureaucratisation within their organisations. The function of an avant-
garde located in this context could be to work out the “concrete analyses of
concrete situations” called for by ARS and – analytically armed and with its own
organisational capacities as well as the political capacity for initiative, persuasion
and mediation – to play a role that is both unifying and radicalising. An urgent
task would be to support the search for strategies of collective action so that
class action and a common class identity can take the place of individual
adaptation to seemingly overpowering conditions. In order for the subordination
of wage earners to the interests of capital to give way to a class-struggle
orientation, the widespread resignation with the status quo and the feeling of
hopelessness and lack of alternatives would first have to be overcome. Another
essential task would be to formulate a political alternative to the bourgeois -
capitalist order and establish it as a point of reference for class action, i.e. to
frame the particular demands and struggles as moments of a comprehensive
striving for social and political liberation. This would mean linking the experience
of and resistance to exploitation and domination with a plausible programme for
overcoming them, in order to open up a new communist horizon for individual
and collective action. (27) It would have to be possible to expose class
antagonism in everyday struggles, on the basis of “continuous agitation against
(and hostile attitude to) the politics of the ruling classes” (MEW 33: 332f.), so
that the working class does not simply remain a “plaything” in the hands of the
bourgeois class. In this respect, we agree with Fredo Corvo when he writes:
“Only when workers recognise their own interests as a class vis-à-vis other
classes in the constantly changing and shifting phenomena of crisis can a
spontaneous struggle emerge.” However, we are less convinced by his
suggestion that the task of political intervention and enlightenment should be
handed over to a “conscious minority” organisationally separate from the
unconscious majority. (28)
Elite Party as a Way Out?
Corvo opposes our “Bolshevism” with the position of the KAPD [German
Communist Workers’ Party] as the “party of the most conscious workers, i.e. a
minority of the working class.” (29) According to him, the “most conscious
workers” could have a “real influence on the proletarian struggle and decision-
making in the councils”. At the same time, this organisation would be immune to
the tendencies towards bureaucratisation and opportunism described above.
Not through democratic mechanisms of control from below, but solely through
the “self-activity of the members”. If we accept his claim, which is not
substantiated further, and assume that such an organisation would indeed be
resistant to the described dangers of bureaucratisation, then everything stands
and falls with the question of whether such an elite party would actually be able
to exert a decisive influence on an unfolding class movement and what the
relationship between party and movement would be in this respect. It would
also be necessary to define more precisely what is meant by a party of the “most
conscious workers” – the Angry Workers suggest in their text Insurrection and
Production that such a party would have to comprise 30-40% of the working class
(30) and saw its task as “gathering the most advanced elements of the
workforce.” (31) Their [KAPD] policy in favour of their maximum programme of
rejecting any “reformist and opportunist methods of struggle” (32) did not bring
them closer to their goal of pushing the German soviet movement forward. On
the contrary, after the mass movements around 1917 and the spread of
resignation among the radicalised sections of the workers’ movement, it lost its
membership base and suffered from its own fragmentation due to internal
political conflicts. (33) In the constant search for the truly revolutionary
organisation, one process of splitting was followed by another. Concerned with
the purity of its principles, it was less and less able to influence the real class
struggles and the consciousness of the mass of workers: “they thought they
could swim against the current and carry it with them, but the result was their
isolation in tiny sects quarrelling with each other over the right faith.” (34)
Where Corvo gets the certainty that the “most conscious workers” would exert
their influence on the fighting organisations of the class is therefore not clear to
us. As we showed in the first part, this hope also contradicts developments in
Russia, where it was the broad organisation of the Bolsheviks that enabled them
to exert influence on the council movement. What is interesting is the
theoretical justification he holds out to us, which seems to us to be somewhat
characteristic of the council communist position. It was no longer the
development of the consciousness of the great mass of workers about social
conditions and their historical task that was to be decisive, but rather the
unconscious, as for example Anton Pannekoek explained in 1920: “The
determining forces lie elsewhere, in the psychic factors, deep in the
subconscious of the masses.” (35) The mass organisations of the working class
had only led to their pacification. Instead, the KAPD now aimed at a different
relationship between party and class: the party would organise only a small but
conscious minority of the class, which in turn is to provide knowledge and
orientation at the moment of the spontaneous movement of the masses. In the
process of revolution and its self-activity, the majority of the workers would then
also come to consciousness. Fredo Corvo is completely aligned with this
theorisation when he quotes Paul Mattick: “If capitalism develops and lives
‘blindly’, then the revolution against capitalism can also only take place ‘blindly’.
Another view breaks through historical materialism. And more, it turns against
all historical facts. To count on a moment when the masses already know exactly
what they have to do before the action is nonsense. Their compulsive action
creates the possibility of a conceptual grasp of the new situation only with
success.” (36) With Mattick, workers appear as stimulus-response machines:
“The compulsion to action must be stronger than capitalist ideological
influence.” (37) But is this really the view of historical materialism? In terms of
theoretical history, we understand this view as going back less to Marx and
Engels than to their contemporary opponents. Hence Bakunin saw the masses as
“moved only by their momentary, more or less blind passions.” These passions,
and not their consciousness, were in turn what would give them their
revolutionary orientation. In this sense, he also declared that “Marx […]
corrupts the workers by turning them into rationalists.” (38) Accordingly, it was
necessary to unleash the passions of the masses and lead the resulting “popular
storm” as “invisible pilots” of the revolution. Bakunin was convinced that what
was needed was a conspiratorial clique of revolutionaries capable of leading a
revolution. Instead of a leadership determined and recallable by the organised
masses, there should be the secret, unbound, and therefore undemocratic
leadership of “really strong men” who are “sufficiently seriously ambitious for
the victory of their idea, not that of their person.” (39) Does the conception of
the elite party of the “most conscious workers” not recall the thoughts
formulated here? And when Pannekoek declares: “During the revolution, the
party must draw up the programmes, slogans and directives which the
spontaneously acting masses recognise as correct, because in them they find
their own aims in the most perfect form and lift themselves up by them to
greater clarity” (40) – is he not thus in line with Bakunin, for whom “the hundred
international brothers as ‘mediators between the revolutionary idea and the
popular instincts'” (MEW 18: 346) were enough to carry out a revolution? This
does not make the reflections wrong per se, but it is a questionable reference in
terms of theoretical history to present them as an expression of “historical
materialism”. The assumption that the revolution could take place “blindly” in
this sense, that it is based on the “subconscious of the masses” rather than on
their conviction and conscious will, leads strategically to the extensive
abandonment of the political terrain in favour of the bourgeois forces in and
outside the workers’ organisations. On the one hand, by the fact that their
leadership is no longer challenged at all via the established trade unions, for
example, but on the other hand, by the quantitative weakness of the communist
circles alone, which find no reach for their pronouncements. The argument
hinges on the hypothesis that during a phase of crisis the struggles would come
to a head and then there would be greater receptivity to one’s own ideas, these
would then spread through a process of the radicalisation of the class and would
guide action.
Marx and Engels, in any case, advocated the development of a broad
organisation of the proletariat, which they hoped to establish through a process
of self-education. In contrast to Mattick and Bakunin, they emphasised the
ability of the proletariat to gain clarity about its own situation and saw this
process of mass enlightenment as a condition for a successful revolution:
“Where it is a question of a complete transformation of social organisation, the
masses themselves must be involved, must themselves have already understood
what it is about, what they stand up for with life and limb”. (MEW 22: 532)
According to Engels, there can be no question of a blind process of revolution.
Rather, he and Marx – and in this they were followed by the SPD centre around
Kautsky, but also by the Bolsheviks – saw the attainment of a political majority as
their fundamental task even before a future revolutionary uprising. (41) Fredo
Corvo reverses this connection and sees the majority as an effect of the exercise
of power: “only when the workers as a class exercise all power over society can
communist consciousness develop on a large scale.” (Corvo) The Angry Workers
also clearly express this outlook in their text Insurrection and Production. There
they write that in the course of a communist revolution, “30-40% of the working
class, formed in previous struggles” (42) would have to seize the key industries
in a coordinated act, and only in the course of this, and following the takeover of
the economy, would the masses turn to the communist course. However, in our
view, such a revolution by a decisive minority is neither legitimate nor covered
by historical experience, let alone particularly promising. For if this minority of
the class, which is an even smaller minority in relation to the whole of society,
proceeds to such an appropriation movement before a political majority exists
for such an upheaval – how can it be assumed that such an attempt would not be
put down by the troops still loyal to the government and with the support of
large sections of the population? While the Angry Workers declare that it is
necessary to “split the forces along class lines”, (43) such a process does not
happen overnight and not through an exemplary offensive by militant nuclei, but
requires a preparatory, patient agitation within these forces. And – this now
addressed to the comrades of Kosmoprolet, who adopt this consideration of the
Angry Workers (44) but not their organisational ambitions – would this not
require an organisation that can carry out such a delegitimising agitation in a
coordinated and consistent way and actually bring about such a split before such
an uprising breaks out? (45)
Addressing the Dilemma
If the overcoming of the bourgeois mode of production is to take place as the
self-liberation of the working class, and if it is to be overcome in favour of a
conscious, democratic, cooperative regulation of social affairs, then this requires
an active majority of the class and at least acceptance by a majority of the
population in general. Neither can the collective self-liberation of the working
class take place “blindly”, nor can it be enforced by a decisive minority against
an active or passive majority. Therefore, from our point of view, it is necessary
for communists to influence the consciousness-raising process of the majority
with their programme before the social contradictions come to a head, to
promote the class-formation process of the wage-dependents, and to prove
themselves as their propulsive part within the organisations of the class. For this
reason, we see the necessity for communists to strive for political connection
with other communists and to organise themselves on this basis with class
comrades and to begin to challenge the ideological supremacy of the capital-
loyal forces within the existing class organisations today.
Hence, we agree with those comrades who consider political intervention by
communists in class struggles as necessary. In our conviction, however, this
intervention would also have to be extended to all forms of class organisation
(trade unions, neighbourhood associations, cooperatives, etc.), even if their
leadership – as in the case of the DGB trade unions [Deutscher
Gewerkschaftsbund – the German Trade Union Confederation] – is entirely in
favour of class compromise. Whether this is sensible and promising in each case
must be decided on the basis of a concrete assessment of the possibilities of
work in these institutions. We are not categorically attached to these
organisations, but they are first of all the places where many wage-dependents
are organised and fight out their extremely limited (workplace) disputes with
capital. It therefore seems to us at least nonsensical to ignore the organisations
per se and only work beyond them or against them. On these grounds,
strengthening or building alternative, class-struggle trade unions would not be
opposed in principle. It has to be weighed up, however, whether such work is
more effective than the struggle within the already existing trade unions. It
should be noted that if the above analysis of opportunism as a natural tendency
of workers’ organisations is correct, the task and the problems in the medium
term will change little. In any case, one would be confronted with the task of
defending a class-struggle orientation against this development and establishing
democratic modes of organisation that consciously counteract these
organisations’ tendencies towards [bureaucratic] independence and integration.
In our view, however, in order to actively participate in the process of class
consciousness-building within existing organisations or in more spontaneous
confrontations, an organisational basis is needed that goes beyond the
prevailing small group system. Neither these nor the involvement of isolated
communists could have any real influence on the development of consciousness
within, for example, trade union institutions.
As a reference point for a political organisation which overcomes the
coexistence of such micro-groups, we have chosen the name party. We are well
aware that overcoming small groups does not and cannot create a mass party of
the working class, but at best a political association of communists of different
colours on a more binding level. The concept of the party is therefore not the
immediate goal for us but a strategic point of orientation which we have gained
from the above considerations on the necessity of an independent organisation
of the working class. Here, as was said, the name is secondary; what is decisive is
the function of the political organisation: its aim is to intervene in major politics
in order to represent the “interest of the whole movement” (MEW4: 46) and to
develop a proletarian position on all social questions, with the claim to lead
society as a whole. This overall interest is not itself a given, but the object of
theoretical and political analysis and can only be determined in the process of
continuous discussion and propagated by means of political intervention within
class struggles.
The guiding principle for us is the idea of unification around political goals – laid
down in a political programme – which allows for a relative plurality within the
organisation. An organisation that takes up the real diversity of the proletari an
way of existence today in such a way that it leaves room for diverse tactics and
views that can only be discussed through an open, democratic process and
cannot be dogmatically unified.
Party and Programme
ARS object that we have left our concept of the party undefined. According to
our comrades, whoever speaks of a “party” “can be sure nowadays that the
other person understands something that is not only to do with political camps
or currents, but with legal form, party book, statutes, and participation in the
parliamentary game.” (46) From our point of view, formal regulations such as
statutes and membership cards would naturally be elements of a party-like
organisation. Even if we do not see a party as an achievable goal in the near
future, a political organisation of communists should even today distinguish
itself from the unstructured small groups that currently define our milieu and
establish a structure of membership and decision-making that allows it to work
together with a larger number of people in a democratic and disciplined way and
to take collective decisions. This requires a certain degree of procedural
formalisation, which is expressed in, among other things, the regulations
mentioned. We do not know what criticism ARS might have of these things. Do
they reject formalised structures and procedures all together? If they reject such
organisational forms for the political organisation of communists, what about
the coordination of interests at the level of society as a whole? In our view, this
debate is crucial because it determines the possibility of the self-government of
the working class: does it succeed in developing political forms that make it
possible to take decisions democratically at the local, regional, national and
ultimately global level and to exercise effective control from below over those
who are entrusted with responsibility? As the working class takes responsibility
for exercising central political authority, the accountability of that authority will
become increasingly important. Communists today should already be able to find
organisational forms that answer these questions on a small scale. In any case,
the unstructured group that decides questions by consensus in person does not
solve this problem. On the contrary, they reproduce hierarchies that commonly
result from the social i.e. class-based as well as gendered division of labour,
instead of counteracting them. (47)
As far as participation in parliamentarianism is concerned, we left a definite
answer open-ended in our text. We did this because we do not consider the
question of our presently purely hypothetical party’s possible participation in
elections to be a question of principle, but rather a purely tactical one. (48) This
means that on the basis of a concrete analysis of the situation, it would have to
be determined whether participation in elections would help or hinder the long -
term, strategic goal of building a fundamentally oppositional party. The intention
should not be to “join in the parliamentary game” (49) but to make our
principled opposition to the existing visible, i.e. “to oppose the bourgeois
majority in the government at every turn.” (50) However one may feel about
parliamentarism, a Marxist construction of a party is not primarily about
contesting elections, but about developing and propagating a proletarian
position on all the problems that arise in a society at a given time. It would not
be an electoral association, but “a grouping that can develop political self -
consciousness in the oppressed classes, assert it in actions, and thereby expand
it. Participation in electoral campaigns and activity in parliaments (such as
defending the rights of parliament against the executive) is only a means of a
socialist party’s work, not its main task.” (51) No syndicalist grassroots union, no
mosaic of social movements or “plural forms of organisation”, and no
conspiratorial Leninist sect with a strictly bureaucratic-centralist structure can
ever fulfil this function, since they lack the structured openness and reach t hat
only a thoroughly democratically organised mass party can have. In our view, the
party would be conceived as a link between the organisations that the class
creates for self-defence (trade unions, tenants’ associations, cooperatives, etc.)
and a programme that formulates the tendencies therein into a comprehensive
alternative to the capitalist order. In doing so, we think that relevant sections of
the class would have to organise themselves in such a party-shaped political
association in the long term in order to be able to serve as a centre of gravity for
the broader workers’ movement. This could support the propulsive moments in
the spontaneous struggles of the class and help orient them towards a
communist upheaval and reconstruction of society. The reason for the central
role we attribute to the revolutionary social democracy of the pre-war period lies
in having represented such a party, which enabled the proletariat to form a
comprehensive view of society as a whole and thus also to form itself
subjectively into a class.
With regard to the movements of recent years that reject political
representation by a majority, such as the gilets jaunes in France, ARS write: “To
want to satisfy these movements with the very form of organisation [the party]
that they have rejected is not a promising strategy.” Our strategic reference to
the party as a form of organisation is apparently understood by them as if we
henceforth want to convince the masses of the idea of the party as preachers.
We wrote, however, that we do not see ourselves at the beginning of party
building, but first of all want to emphasise the political significance of the party
and rehabilitate it as a point of orientation for the activity of communists. In any
case, we would not be concerned with propagating a form of organisation that
would solve any problem as such, but with the question of how the idea of a
communist revolution could become a material force. In this respect, it makes no
sense from our point of view to act as propagandists for “the party”. On the
other hand, a successful intervention in such movements would presuppose a
higher level of organisational and ideological coherence on the part of
communists – a political organisation that would be able to have a radicalising
effect on such spontaneous class movements. This would presuppose a
relationship of interaction between the spontaneous movements, which develop
their own forms, which communists can more or less influence, and the party of
communists, which argues for its programme within the broader class
movements. [53] Far from attributing magical abilities to the programme in
terms of consciousness-raising, as the comrades accuse, it is simply a matter of
concretising the political goals of communists as – according to their own claim –
the propulsive part of the class movement. We are aware that we do not have
any rousing class movements at present and that the remnants of the
communist tradition are currently incapable of playing such a role, but this does
not mean that this alone is the raison d’être or, more specifically, the function of
communists as a special part of the workers’ movement. The programme can,
however, have a consciousness-raising effect in two ways: on the one hand, by
the fact that in the daily struggles the formulated goals are recognised as being
in agreement with our programme (we are the party that takes on these
problems), and on the other hand, by the fact that it actually presents an
alternative to the prevailing order as a concrete perspective of struggle (we are
the only party that stands up for a radical solution). That is, by defining the steps
to be taken on this road as tangible goals and thus being able to serve as a
rallying point for those in struggle.
In order to establish the connection between the spontaneous struggles of the
class and a communist programme, a mediating practice of clarification,
education, agitation, and organisation is obviously needed at the same time.
Clarification would have to be provided on the social and political conditions,
lines of conflict, and developmental tendencies. The intellectual, social,
technical, and political abilities of the members and sympathisers of the
communist movement must be developed. For this we need an independent
press, ideally also at the local and workplace level, leaflets on current events,
theoretical journals, independent research, our own spaces for events and
meetings and for collective and individual discussion with comrades and
colleagues.
Agitation aims at making our aims known to many people, for example, by taking
a stand on urgent questions of the day or by advocating a particular partial aim.
In these debates, it could become clear to a wider public what we stand for, and
sympathisers would be given a place where they can join forces with like-minded
people.
Finally, the political work would aim for growth by recruiting new members,
expanding financial and material resources, and increasing the organisation’s
reach and local roots as well as its international network. At the same time, it
would also mean engaging in the reconstruction and renewal of the wider
workers’ movement and encouraging its tendencies towards self-organisation,
since what matters in the end is the ability of large sections of the class, not just
the party, to act politically. How this can be done most effectively must itself be
the subject of theoretical and political understanding.
There is agreement between us and our critics that within the workers’
movement, and especially within its organisations, there is a strong tendency
towards integration into the ruling order. The mass organisations that still exist,
such as the DGB trade unions, and here especially the apparatus of full-time
officials, are capital’s pillars within the workers movement, oriented towards
making politics for the workplace and perpetuating the wage workers’ role. We
also agree that the problem is not just the bureaucracy of these organisations,
but grows structurally out of the class relation. In this respect, we believe that
these are obstacles that could be removed by specifically working towards
appropriate institutional forms of organisation and decision-making structures.
We have to find a way of dealing with such forces and tendencies in the
organisations of the class – at the latest by the point at which a spontaneous
mass movement breaks ground in the hoped-for way, and, contrary to our
expectations, actually proceeds to wild appropriation, because structures for
coordination would emerge which would be subject to the same kind of dangers.
Then, too, it would be a matter of establishing decision-making mechanisms that
would allow the working class to organise its struggle and then democratically
regulate the concerns of society as a whole.
In our view, however, we should work to establish such forms today and think
that they are instruments that can counteract the self-sufficiency of a layer of
professional activists or politicians. By this we mean measures that would make
the leadership and officers accountable to the membership. As we wrote in our
initial text: “In our view, what is needed are effective mechanisms of democratic
control from below, which would allow the rank and file to challenge decisions
of the leadership, a limitation of salaries of key officials to an average wage , and
forums for free discussion among the members of the organisation.” Democratic
control, it should be added here, means election at any time by the membership.
In addition to limiting salaries, the most frequent possible rotation of posts,
especially among higher officials, would limit the independence of a leadership
layer from the grassroots. Furthermore, each local section as well as each
interest group (youth, women’s, or minority organisations) should be given the
opportunity to organise independently and to publish their own positions, which
can also be openly directed against the line of the leadership. The possibility of
forming permanent and temporary factions within the party structures is a
prerequisite for a party in which the working class, and not a group of
bureaucrats, can exercise power. However, in all this, the binding nature of
international as well as national, democratically made, programmatic decisions
must be guaranteed. For many comrades, this may sound authoritarian. In
reality, however, it was the right wing of the SPD’s overruling of valid decisions
by the International that expressed itself in the approval of war credits and the
shift towards truce and bellicism. A certain democratic centralism and a measure
of party discipline are therefore necessary to contain the reactionary and
reformist elements which necessarily emerge from the workers’ movement. In
all this, however, there is still no guarantee that this containment will succeed.
However, we have no choice but to try to fight against these objective
tendencies through institutional mechanisms and political principles, since we
only have the choice between disorganised insignificance and the struggle for
democratic forms of organisation of the class.
With these remarks, we want to respond to the view that the concept of party
remained too indeterminate in our first text. However, we see the
considerations outlined here on mechanisms of democratic control from below
as also relevant to the struggle with existing organisations, be they our own
groups or broader alliances of sections of the class.
Conclusion
We hope that these more detailed explanations have made the sometimes
apodictic initial theses more comprehensible, and have cleared up some of the
confusion and questions on the part of the comrades. In summary, we would like
to briefly outline our basic conviction and possible further tasks.
From our point of view, the necessity of political organisation in the sense
described here has not changed fundamentally through all the changes in
bourgeois society in the course of the last century: what has transformed are the
conditions under which the proletarianised have to organise themselves, which
of course also affects the forms in which such organising takes place. For
example, under the condition of the welfare state and the cultural integration of
the proletarianised into the ruling order, it seems unpromising, at least for the
moment, to build an alternative culture around a separate universe of workers’
associations, choirs, support funds, pubs, etc. The old workers’ milieu has been
transformed. The old workers’ milieu with its counterculture was a spontaneous
product of a proletariat that was also politically excluded from the polity. An
attempted re-enactment of this development phase is unlikely to radiate beyond
a nostalgic communist milieu. On the other hand, the development of
communication technologies offers new possibilities for aggregation, discussion,
and decision-making, some of which – as in the “digital parties” – have
challenged established practices and structures within political organisations.
(52) The supersession of Fordist mass production and culture has also set in
motion a process of class recomposition and individualisation, which is reflected
in a decreasing concentration of wage earners on the one hand, and on the
other has strongly differentiated the class socialisation process. In addition – and
this probably weighs most heavily – the workers’ movement has suffered
devastating and profound defeats and continues to find itself on the defensive.
Collective resistance and class power has given way to individualisation and
resignation. The old organisations do not appear to be a point of reference for
many discontented people, and when their anger is discharged it often currently
seeks other means. (53) There is thus much to support ARS’s thesis that we will
continue to have to deal with a variety of different organisations and ways of
organising in the future. The spontaneous forms of self-organisation start from a
low level of social and political cohesion. (54) This does not mean that we should
consider organisational plurality as a value in itself, but rather that we need to
understand how the working class organises itself in the given circumstances
and can exercise power through these organisational practices, and promote
and further the process of class formation that is expressed in it.
Nevertheless, the basic fact that wage earners, because of their separation from
the means of production, have to unite in order to improve their situation as a
class has not changed. In our view, all the social and political metamorphoses
that the anti-authoritarian milieu like to cite as justifications for the necessary
end of party and organisation are aggravating conditions under which the still
necessary political organisation must take place today: the global growth of a
surplus population, the unprecedented fragmentation between mental and
manual labour, the atomisation of the proletarianised, the integration
mechanisms of the bourgeois-democratic state, the problem of a socialist
transformation against the background of the climate problem, etc. etc. – all
these are, in our opinion, arguments for party and organisation, since the
solution of those problems presupposes national and international association,
proletarian political autonomy, and coordinated decision-making mechanisms.
The “transformation of society requires a positive programme and the
organisational capacity to present an alternative to the present order.” (55)
Finally, the conscious and democratic regulation of social concerns should
replace the dynamics of the capitalist mode of production which dominate
people. This goal cannot be achieved at the given level of development of the
productive forces – the global division of labour – through disparate and local
movements of appropriation, but requires the conscious and purposeful
interaction and coordination of the processes of appropriation at the national
and transnational levels. It seems to us, therefore, ultimately unavoidable that
before a potentially revolutionary crisis of bourgeois society comes to a head, a
democratic, international, communist mass party be able to formulate a real
alternative and bring it to bear in the social struggles. Against this horizon, which
lies at an indeterminate distance, we want to conclude with some concrete tasks
which, from our point of view, could be usefully tackled today. The prerequisite
for this, which is certainly not currently given within the blog context, would be
that we would agree on the principles formulated here. In this respect, we
currently see these as merely hypothetical developmental steps. Nevertheless,
we hope that our practical perspective will become somewhat clearer. These
would be small steps, but in them perhaps also steps pointing the way towards
overcoming the communist circles’ inertia and absence of practical orientation,
in favour of a concrete working perspective. In the medium term, this work
would be measured by whether it succeeds in making a modest contribution to
the reconstruction of a socialist workers’ movement in the 21st century.
In view of the mainly theoretical working circles within the milieu, it would be a
step forward in our perspective if the currently purely spontaneous
development of work projects could be superseded in favour of a common
understanding of pressing questions and problems of Marxist theory, and of a
research and work programme to be drafted on this basis and to be approached
through a division of labour. (56) The aim of such an undertaking should be to
practically bundle and focus weak capacities, to gain a clearer understanding of
the present political and social (class) relations in terms of content, and to try to
identify realistic possibilities of political intervention for communist political and
organisational work with a long-term orientation. Long-term politics means: no
campaign work that consumes time and energy, but patient but consistent
attempts to support or form class organisations and to interweave them with
one’s own educational and agitational work.
As a precondition for such intervention and organisational work, the prevailing
informal mode of organisation would have to be overcome in favour of
transparent, formalised structures with a functioning division of labour and
delegation of tasks. This would require the clarification of fundamental political
and organisational issues, which could serve as the foundation for a renewed
political practice.
From our point of view, it would be even better than an amalgamation of the
modest groupuscules in the milieu – which, according to the current state of the
debate, nobody wants anyway – if it were possible, on the basis of the political
principles and objectives mentioned, to enter into discussion with other groups
that share these principles and to sound out the possibility of joint actions, a
longer-term collaboration, or even a union. The guiding principle should be to
unite on the basis of shared political goals and to maintain an openness to the
clarification of theoretical and tactical differences, with the aim of preparing for
the long-term construction of a democratic communist party.
Notes
(1) The unfortunate circumstance that class formation is not an automatic result
of the class relationship becomes tangible in the so-far only sporadically arrested
trend towards the dissolution of class organisations, class identity, and thus of
collective class action. The historical background of this process is, on the one
hand, the terrorist smashing and integration of the workers’ movement under
fascism and its bureaucratic atomisation under Stalinism. On the other hand, as a
result of the crisis of 1973 and in the course of the continuing downturn of the
world economy, capital has succeeded in largely dissolving even the social -
corporatist positions of the working class. Collective class power and resista nce
has given way to individual adaptation. At the same time, however, this
development shows the coherence of the Marxist diagnosis of the necessity to
act as a class. For the weakening of class organisations correlates with an
increasing class polarisation, which is reflected on the part of wage earners in
precariousness, the loss of real wages, and increased labour intensity, among
other things.
(2) See also Marx’s programmatic remarks in The Poverty of Philosophy: “Large-
scale industry concentrates in one place a crowd of people unknown to one
another. Competition divides their interests. But the maintenance of wages, this
common interest which they have against their boss, unites them in a common
thought of resistance – combination. Thus combination always has a double aim,
that of stopping competition among the workers, so that they can carry on
general competition with the capitalist. If the first aim of resistance was merely
the maintenance of wages, combinations, at first isolated, constitute themsel ves
into groups as the capitalists in their turn unite for the purpose of repression,
and in the face of always united capital, the maintenance of the association
becomes more necessary to them than that of wages […] In this struggle – a
veritable civil war – all the elements necessary for a coming battle unite and
develop. Once it has reached this point, association takes on a political
character.” (MEW 4: 180)
(3) Hal Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution. Volume II: The Politics of Social
Classes, New York 1978: 40.
(4) Felix Klopotek, Ungenau und Dogmatisch [Inaccurate and Dogmatic], 2021.
(5) cf. Monty Johnstone, Marx and Engels and the Concept of Party, 1967. In the
German debate on Marx these positions are often blamed on Engels and Marx’s
clear statements in this regard are either ignored or removed from his
theoretical edifice as exoteric, ideological, or philosophical remnants. Thus, even
the homeland of academic Marxology has not yet produced a work on Marx’s
political writings that even comes close to the quality of Hal Draper’s
comprehensive study of Marx’s theory of revolution.
(6) Klopotek, Ungenau und Dogmatisch
(7) Hal Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory, Vol. II, New York 1986, 53.
(8) Karl Kautsky, The Road to Power, Chapter 9, 1909.
(9) See Mike Macnair, Revolutionary Strategy, 2008, 54f.
(10) In a circular letter to Bebel, Liebknecht, and Bracke in 1879, Engels already
addressed the first opportunist tendencies in the party – namely the break with
party discipline by voting for a government budget. Marx blamed this on the
“parliamentary idiotism” (MEW 34: 413) rampant in the party, and the efforts to
abandon the proletarian programme in favour of appealing to the petty
bourgeoisie and in the end to declare socialism a distant final objective for t he
reassurance of the ruling class (ibid.: 394 onward).
(11) cf. Hal Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, Vol. IV, New York 1990. LK
History of the Workers’ Movement, Die internationale Arbeiterassoziation [The
International Workers’ Association], 2021.
(12) Karl Kautsky, Der politische Massenstreik [The Political Mass Strike], Chapter
1, 1914.
(13) cf. Claus Offe, Helmut Wiesenthal: Two Logics of Collective Action. Theoretical
notes on social class and organisational form, 1980.
(14) This element of class organisation was already mentioned by Marx in The
Poverty of Philosophy, when he reported on the astonishment of the English
economists at the fact that “the workers sacrifice a large part of their wages in
favour of associations which, in the eyes of the economists, have been
established only for the sake of wages” (MEW 4: 180). Direct individual economic
interests are set aside in favour of political class interests, which can only
become rational on the basis of a culture of solidarity. Endnotes emphasise this
function of a cultural class identity in their text on the history of the workers’
movement, A History of Separation, arguing that the workers’ “moral
community” was ultimately an “ad hoc construction” (Endnotes 4, Unity in
Separation, 102, 2015). We are more sympathetic to Vivek Chibber’s view, who
describes the creation of a solidaristic class identity as a “social intervention”,
but at the same time states that it is by no means a construction, but is always
grounded in material interests (cf. Vivek Chibber, Rescuing the Class from the
Cultural Turn, in The Catalyst, Vol. 1, 2017).
(15) Cf. Robert Brenner, The Paradox of Social Democracy, 2016.
(16) “With the development of an apparatus, one of the central features of class
society is transferred to workers’ organisations: the social division of labour. In
capitalism, this assigns the work of immediate production to the working class,
while the production and appropriation of culture – as well as all the tasks of
accumulation – are virtually the monopoly of other social classes and strata.”
(Ernest Mandel, Organisation and the Usurpation of Power, in Power and Money. A
Marxist Theory of Bureaucracy, London 1992, p. 60) “The emergence of a new
division of labour between apparatus and member leads almost inevitably, at the
level of mentalities (ideology), to phenomena of organisational fetishism. Given
the extreme division of labour that generally prevails in bourgeois society, the
fact that people are trapped in a tiny sphere of activity tends to manifest itself in
a consideration of that activity as an end in itself. This is especially true of those
who identify with an apparatus, who live permanently within it and derive their
livelihood from it: the full-time employees, the potential bureaucrats.” (Ibid. 66)
(17) Aaron Eckstein, Ruth Jackson, and Stefan Torak, Kein Mystik in Zeiten der
Schwäche [No Mysticism in Times of Weakness], 2021.
(18) Rosa Luxemburg, Mass Strike, Party and Trade Unions, Chapter 4, 1906.
(19) Endnotes, Spontaneity, Mediation, Rupture, in Endnotes 3, 2013.
(20) Klopotek, Ungenau und Dogmatisch
(21) Robert Schlosser, Anmerkungen zur Organisations- und
Strategiedebatte [Notes on the Organisation and Strategy Debate], 2021.
(22) Friends of the Classless Society, Umrisse der Weltcommune [Contours of the
World Commune], in Kosmoprolet 5, 2018.
(23) By this we mean the fact that each individual depends on his/her wage
income for better or worse and is structurally at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the
individual capitalist and the capitalist class. Collective resistance is therefore
associated with high risks for wage workers (loss of wage labour with all its
consequences, etc.), risks that are more likely to be taken on the basis of a
collective identity and must be practically cushioned by organisation. Otherwise,
it is much easier to bow one’s head, push upwards and kick downwards.
(24) cf. Johannes Hauer, Das alte Schmierenstück. Zur Mythisierung eines
Arbeitskampfes [The Old Rag. On the Mythification of a Labour Struggle], 2014.
(25) Fredo Corvo, Bolschewismus als alternative zu selbstgewählter
Ohnmacht? [Bolshevism as an alternative to self-imposed powerlessness?], 2021.
(26) Mike Macnair, Revolutionary Strategy, 2008, 118.
(27) To exercise such an avant-garde function is not to be above mistakes, but a
self-commitment to correcting mistakes, to develop one’s own capacities, and to
maintain a fundamental openness to the “innovations in the class struggle”
through spontaneous mass practice.
(28) Fredo Corvo, Bolschewismus als alternative zu selbstgewählter Ohnmacht?,
2021.
(29) Ibid., also all other quotations in this section not shown.
(30) http://www.trend.infopartisan.net/trd1116/t211116.html, which would put us
on the level of the old SPD for Germany. Fredo Corvo’s point of reference,
however, is decidedly not this form of mass political organisation, but the KAPD,
which organised a much more modest circle of very conscious workers. We find
it difficult to share his optimism about this approach. Historically, at any rate,
there is little to suggest that such an organisational practice and the strategy it
entailed would be successful. The KAPD saw itself as representing a “purely
revolutionary line.” KAP und Union, in KAZ (Berlin), quoted in Arnold, Volker
(1985), Rätebewegung und Rätetheorien in der Novemberrevolution [Council
Movement and Council Theory in the November Revolution], 166.
(31) Programm der KAPD [Programme of the KAPD], 1920
(32) Ibid.
(33) The conflicts within the KAPD/AAU [General Workers’ Union], which led to
numerous splits and expulsions, revolved above all around the party’s
relationship to the workers’ union and the question of participation in day-to-day
non-revolutionary struggles. The first split took place in the East Saxon Workers’
Union around Otto Rühle. Rühle was an advocate of unitary organisation, based
on the idea that the conventional separation of party and trade unions in the
workers’ movement was outdated. Strong opposition was formed, especially in
Saxony and Hamburg, to the party-like organisation of the KAPD in general and
to the subordination of the AAU to its directive. After Rühle’s expulsion from the
party, these unions founded their own federation, the Allgemeine Arbeiter-
Union Einheitsorganisation (AAUE) [Unitary General Workers’ Union], in October
1921. This not only challenged the KAPD’s claim to leadership, but also split the
workers’ unions. Six months later, the party was again in crisis: the Berlin KAPD
fell out over the question of participation in wage strikes and several members,
including the co-founder of the KAPD Karl Schröder, who saw participation in
wage strikes as a slide into reformism, were expelled. This process of splits
continued both within the KAPD/AAU and in the AAUE, most particularly up until
1923.
(34) Henry Jacoby (1971), Utopie als Gegenbild [Utopia as Counter-Image], in
Rühle, Otto, Baupläne für eine neue Gesellschaft [Blueprint for a New Society], p.
253.
(35) Anton Pannekoek, World Revolution and Communist Tactics, 1920.
(36) Paul Mattick, quoted in Corvo.
(37) Ibid.
(38) Michael Bakunin, quoted in Franz Mehring, Karl Marx. Geschichte seines
Lebens [Karl Marx. The Story of his Life], Chapter 5.
(39) Michael Bakunin, Letters to Albert Richard on the Alliance 1868/1870, in
Michael Bakunin, Gesammelte Werke [Collected Works], Vol. III; Berlin 1924. 97
onward.
(40) Anton Pannekoek, World Revolution and Communist Tactics.
(41) Such a political majority need not, however, be identical with a
parliamentary majority, see Mike Macnair, Revolution and Reforms, 2019.
(42) Angry Workers of the World, Insurrection and Production, 2016.
(43) Ibid.
(44) Friends of the Classless Society, Umrisse der Weltcommune
(45) To once again tie the argument back to history: Rabinowitch’s study
highlights the Bolsheviks’ successful struggle for influence in the Petrograd
Garrison for the later success of the revolution. All parties struggled for
influence over the soldiers stationed in Petrograd: “But more than any other
party, the Bolsheviks devoted attention and an enormous effort to this cause.
(…) The sustained Bolshevik campaign to gain influence in the garrison began
almost immediately after the emergence of legal Bolshevik party organisations.
(…) The Bolsheviks’ attempts to gain a foothold in the Petrograd garrison were
by no means immediately successful. In March such efforts were hampered by a
shortage of trained agitators (and in any case the troops were probably content
to follow the Soviet). (…) From then on, the revolutionary programme of the
Bolsheviks found an ever-growing following. (…) By the middle of May the
effect of this propaganda must already have been noticeable. (…) Party cells had
been founded in most of the larger units of the garrison.” (Alexander
Rabinowitch, Prelude to Revolution, Bloomington 1991, 49 onwards)
(46) Eckstein et al, Kein Mystik in Zeiten der Schwäche.
(47) Cf. Macnair, Revolutionary Strategy, 28.
(48) Rosa Luxemburg, Eine taktische Frage [A Tactical Question], 1899
(49) Eckstein et al, Kein Mystik in Zeiten der Schwäche
(50) Wolfgang Abendroth, quoted in Richard Heigel, Wolfang Abendroths
Parteitheorie [Wolfgang Abendroth’s Theory of the Party], in Utopie kreativ, No.
187, 2006, 415.
(51) Beyond this, however, we should support every development in the
direction of a political unification of workers and, if possible, participate in it.
(52) See Paolo Gerbaudo, The Digital Party. Political Organization and Online
Democracy, London 2019.
(53) translib’s Gilets Jaunes working group, 100 Euros und ein Mars [100 Euros
and a Mars], 2020.
(54) An approach to thinking about organisational change and the interaction of
multiple organisations and ways of organising can be found in Rodrigo Nunez:
Neither vertical nor horizontal. A Theory of Political Organization, London 2021.
(55) Donald Parkinson, Nothing new to look at here. Towards a critique of
communization, 2015.
(56) On this point, there seems to be some agreement at least with Klaus
Klamm, who in his recent contribution to the debate suggests a more systematic
orientation for theoretical work.