Comrades,
There is a point I brought up in my reply to Jim on 24th April which no one
has commented on, perhaps because it comes after text of articles from the
Parti Sosialis Malaysia which I included.
The points read:-
The SLP may not be a revolutionary party at this point in time but it would
be playing a positive role if it helps re-build class consciousnous and
militancy among workers, especially after so many setbacks like the smashing
of the unions under Thatcher, capitulation and betrayal by union leaders,
the collapse of the Soviet Union and so on.
It's for this reason that I tend to agree with an argument on the
downwithcapitalism list that revolutionaries in the United States begin by
building up workers support and membership of the Labor Party and work to
take control of it or if the Labor Party is too beholden to the Democratic
Party and reactionary union leadership, then create a mass workers' party
which will fight along both parliamentary and militant means.
The Communist Party of the Philippines which is banned, works through what I
believe is a legal National Democratic Front, while the banned Provisional
IRA has the legal Provisional Sinn Fein and in Malaya, the banned Communist
Party of Malaya worked with the legal Socialist Front -- a forerunner of the
Parti Sosialis Malaysia and was thus able to gain a lot of support and
influence in labour unions.
IE. The communist parties above recruit the most progressive and
revolutionary members from the the legal parties and front organisations
above, so do comrades see this approach as a good starting point towards
building up a membership drawn from the most progressive and militant
sections of the working class, rather than a party of revolutionary
intellectuals trying to make inroads into the working class.
To reiterate the idea here:
Under certain circumstances in their respective countries, the
Marxist-Leninist party sets up a broad-based, progressive workers' party as
front and this front party will take part in bourgeois elections and also in
the workers' militant actions to defend their interests in the workplace, to
defend social gains such as welfare and healthcare, to fight against racism
and sexism.
The reason for this broad-based workers' front party is to restore the class
consciousness lost after all these years of setback of the labour movement
in countries like Britain, the United States, Malaysia and so on, as well as
the setback of the left by the betrayal and eventual collapse of socialism
in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the present revisionism in
China which has rendered it no more effective as even a moral force for
socialism in the world today.
For example, if such a broad-based workers' party could say gain some
electoral or militant victory and reverse some of the bourgeosie's worst
assaults on the working class, it would be a tremendous psychological boost
for a working class consciousness in many developed and developing countries
today.
The danger of this approach is that the broad-based party can be hijacked by
trotskyists, anarchists, revisionists and the bourgeoise.
What do comrades think about this approach?
Basically, communists must study how early communist movements managed to
gain such a strong support base within the working class, what social,
political and economic factors existed then which favoured communists
gaining support from workers, what has changed since then and what has to be
done today in order to advance and to build up the communist party as a real
workers' party and not one mainly comprising intellectuals and
professionals -- which is the case with the many Marxist-Leninist sects,
each claiming to be the "vanguard of the proletariat," while squabling with
each other over issues of Marxist-Leninist purity.
BTW. GLComParty has provided an explanation of the composition of the early
CP USA, its turn to Black and Asian workers and it's latter revisionism and
turning into a left appendage of the Democratic Party.
Basically communists are going to have to virtually start from scratch
again, while learning from the experience, success, mistakes and failures of
communists in socialist states in the past and updating their theory in
accordance with contemporary conditions of today's world.
Fraternally
Charles
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