I had written, "This is an utter mishmash, containing too many errors
to be answerable in a post." Lou's concise response shows that to
have been wrong, but the various idiocies regarding WITBD are
not only so facile but have been answered so many times that it has,
I think, become almost a touchstone for good faith whether a
critic of Lenin (and Leninism) shows awareness of that tradition.
One point I have not seen made except in the Draper article is a
matter of what had become (according to Drape) a tradition in
Second International Parties.
***
As the Russian situation developed from 1902 to 1914, it turned
out -- in hindsight -- that there was something distinctive about
Lenin's
'concept of the party,' even though he was not specifically aware of it.
There are two points to be made under this head, the second being the
more important.
.................................
(2) _Split and Unity_. This involved the second distinctive feature
of
Lenin's party concept. One can distinguish three approaches to this
question, as follows.
(a) There were those who believed in _split at any cost_, that is,
the
revolutionary wing in a reformist party must split away at the most
opportune moment, and organise its won sect. This is the characteristic
theory of sectism.
(b) There were those, and they were legion, who believed in _unity
at any cost_. The unity of the mass social-democratic party must never
be breached; a break was the ultimate disaster. This was the mirror
image of the first approach: the fetishism of unity.
This approach was the dominant one in the International, including
the German Party. What it meant in practice was: accommodation with
the right wing, even by a majority left wing. If the right wing must be
persuaded from splitting at any cost, then the majority left had to make
concessions to it, sufficient to keep it in the party.
One of the most enlightening examples of this pattern took place
in the Russian party soon after the 1903 congress, at which Lenin's
wing won majority control with the support of Plekhanov. The
Menshevik minority then split. Thereupon Plekhanov, under pressure,
swung around and demanded that the majority of the _Iskra_
editorial board be handed back to the Mensheviks, for the sake of
'unity.' In short: if the Mensheviks had won the majority, there is no
doubt that Lenin would have stayed in the minority; but if the left
wins, the right picks up its marbles and quits; then for the sake of
'unity' the left has to hand control back to the right. . . .
(c) Lenin's distinctive approach was this: he simply insisted that
where the left won majority control of a party, it had the right and
the duty to go ahead with its own policy _just as the right wing
was everywhere_. The Bolshevik-Menshevik hostilities hardened
when Lenin rejected Plekhanov's demand to reverse the outcome
of the congress. This distinctive approach was: unity, yes, but not
at the cost of foiling the victory of the majority. Unity, yes, but on
the same democratic basis as ever: the right wing could work to
win out at the next congress if it could, but it would not do to
demand political concessions as a reward for _not splitting_.
(Draper, pp. 195, 196-97)
Actually, I suspect that most of those (like Rob) who grossly
distort Lenin's "theory of the party" have something of an inkling
of this perspective. That is the principle they are actually operating
from is that communists, _regardless_ of their appeal to the mass
movement, should on principle turn over leadership of mass
organizations to anti-communists. Rob's principle is that if he
wins, we should go along. If "we" win, he has a divine right to
threaten us with a split unless we turn the leadership over to
him.
Carrol
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