> On Jun 23, 2026, at 07:33, Anthony Teso via groups.io
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> https://open.substack.com/pub/anthonyteso/p/rebuilding-the-party-backwards?r=2sbdk&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web]
That was thought provoking. I have several thoughts to share.
1. Building the party from an intellectual center ("from scratch") is an
interesting concept. Page 2 says that the center is anchored to a "strong
program." What makes a program a strong one?
2. You write that "a party is a machine that produces more cadre than it
loses." Is a party only composed of cadre? I assume "cadre" in the Leninist
sense as a professional revolutionary. What about cadre who become spouses,
parents, pursue scientific studies or hobbies or a professional career? Do they
get a vote? What about the kids? What about factions and governance? The party
must function differently in the US today than in the Russian Empire. A
revolutionary organization that is forced underground by repression can't base
itself on diverse community of fellow travelers; it will be for the disciplined
few. But the revolutionary party should take advantage of the civil rights
working people have won. Arguably, a public party that gets large will include
a great variety of people doing a great variety of things, and these people may
want a role and a say in the party as it becomes a mass party.
3. In section IV, I'd only add that federal workers fought back in groups like
the Federal Unionist Network (FUN), constrained by their union's integration
with the US Democratic Party, which you described in the first paragraph. US
federal laws make many strikes illegal and make all political strikes illegal.
I joined a video meeting of FUN last year where Randi Weingartner and some
other labor grandees gave forceful and inspiring speeches. But nothing
happened. Given their strategy, nothing can happen for them that won't be
granted by the courts or a Democratic Party majority in Congress.
4. Section V is well put. I notice that you use the terms "clean" and "dirty"
break independent of the DSA. I suppose it might apply to the labor movement as
well. Your point may be independent of the DSA, but it is certainly relevant to
the DSA chapters, members, and "electeds." From Zohran to local city
councilors, these DSA elected politicians have function as capitalist
politicians with a socialist reform platform: They run their own campaigns,
raise their own funds into accounts in accordance with US election laws; they
assemble their own political platforms; make their own political endorsements,
and eventually they will come to run the DSA like Democratic Party elected
officials run the Democratic Party.
5. I liked section VI a lot, too. "Mass workers’ parties have historically come
out of upsurges and ruptures that no one manufactured in advance. The job is to
be organized enough to intervene when the conjuncture breaks, not to build the
finished vehicle beforehand."
Give spontaneity its due: Working people invent new organizational forms.
Soviets, Workers Councils, the unicameral legislature of the Paris Commune, and
other socialist organizational structures didn’t come from parties or
theoreticians but from the people themselves, often drawing on and improving
earlier, inherited forms of organization.
This note is already too long. But some consideration needs to be given to
governance of the center and the party it constructs. Will we end up with what
we have today throughout the left? I haven't found organizations that were
truly based on little "d" democracy, or if they were, power was passed up to
national committees, political committees, and to an office that houses a
perennial leader.
thanks, Mark
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