Tony: "An organization built on the expectation of imminent vindication has nothing to offer its members when vindication does not come"
*That is well put. Most of us joined the revolutionary left on the understanding that our chosen group would steadily accumulate cadre in anticipation of a working class radicalization and, on the basis of our correct line, would be well positioned to displace the disgraced reformist leadership of the class - if not imminently, then almost certainly in our lifetime. Few of us would have joined without that conviction. When growth stalled and went into decline in the 70’s, the more disillusioned cadre left sooner and the more committed and hopeful left later, after trying to set things right through splits and regroupments with disaffected factions from other tendencies.* Tony: "If exit were a rational adjustment to the balance of forces, the adjustment would look like sustained socialist activity at a lower temperature: reform organizing, union work, and patient education carried on for decades at the class's actual pace. Some of your comrades did exactly that, and I honor it. But that is not what the drain mostly looked like. Mostly it looked like an exit from organized socialist politics altogether, into private life, careers, and, at best, a ballot every few years. If the workers' caution were the lesson, the lesson would have produced cautious socialists. It produced ex-socialists." *The party’s trade unionists could not conduct “sustained socialist activity at a lower temperature” so long as they were required to circulate party literature and a line derived from a more militant period when class and political consciousness was higher and protest had not yet been steered into institutional channels. Most retreated quietly into private life and careers, but some remained active as “independent" Marxists in the unions and mass organizations and are well represented on this list. Many became the kind of “cautious socialists” who dropped out of the movement and made their peace with capitalism as loyal Democrats and social democrats outside of the US.* Tony: "Your explanation is that the cadres who left encountered objective reality in the unions and workplaces, recognized the workers' necessary caution before an adverse balance of forces, and adjusted. The turn away from the vanguard party was not accommodation to backwardness but an appreciation of constraint. I think this explanation proves too much.” *It was both an accommodation to backwardness and an appreciation of constraint. One was not in contradiction to the other. I don’t believe I suggested otherwise.* Tony: "That pattern points not at the cadres' discovery of objective truth but at the sect form's inability to metabolize defeat. The conclusion is not that the organization was refuted. It is that a particular form of it was, and that we need a form built to survive long unfavorable periods rather than one that promises they are about to end. That has been my argument throughout this exchange, and your attrition point strengthens it rather than answering it." *This is what lies at the heart of our differences. You appear to attach great importance to the subjective factor even though you have denied subscribing to "crisis of leadership” theory as the primary reason for the sorry state of the contemporary left and trade unions. Each Trotskyist and ML’ist group attributes the sectarian or opportunist failings of the others to an incorrect program and lack of internal democracy without explaining why all, including their own, have stagnated equally in relation to the historic tasks they set for themselves.* *As you know, my own view is that the decline or neutering of the mass workers’ parties is integrally related to the decline of the industrial unions which founded and sustained them. It was the shift from an industrial to a service economy based on a transient and scattered relatively powerless workforce which sapped the labour movement of its vitality more than a “bureaucratic leadership” which restrained the ostensibly more militant impulses of their members. The union leaders I encountered were often former union activists who rose from the ranks and were, despite their privileges and integration into the labour relations system, still ahead of or at least in tune with the consciousness of their base rather than behind it.* *The other reasons for the precipitous decline of the industrial unions from the mid-70’s were the advances in communications and transportation technology and the opening of new zones of exploitation in the formerly closed markets of eastern Europe and China. Each of these developments made capital more mobile and Western workers more vulnerable to layoffs and consequently less willing to take risks. The increasingly cautious mood of an insecure rank-and-file could not help but make an impression on those who observed it first-hand.* Tony: "You write that historical materialism convinced you the working class revolts only when it has nothing left to lose and is otherwise indifferent to calls for revolution, especially from outside. The second half of that sentence is true and important...The first half is empirically false as a general law”. *I'm sorry if you treated my use of the expression “nothing to lose” literally rather than as a metaphor. It was not meant to suggest the masses have to be reduced to complete immiseration in order to act. They commonly take go the streets in defence of their democratic rights and living standards, especially when societies are plunged into disorder and the ruling class can no longer provide for their physical and economic security, often during a losing war (the war-revolution thesis). They express themselves by calling for peaceful reform before taking up arms to overthrow a collapsing ruling class which is unwilling or unable to do so. The uprisings you cite in Russia 1917, Germany 1918, and Spain 1936 all began with demands for bourgeois democracy. I don’t consider Portugal 1974 or France 1968 to have been social and political crises on that scale.* *Accordingly I have no difficulty agreeing with your statements that revolutionary situations result from "the breakdown of the state's capacity... meeting a class with organization and rising expectations”, that "destitution alone produces despair as reliably as revolt”and that illegal strikes, popular councils, factory occupations, and land seizures were all part of a process leading to armed insurrection.* Tony: "Workers are indeed indifferent to calls for revolution from outside and responsive to struggles for reform. Agreed without reservation...What preserved the lessons of the last defensive fight, trained the militants, and kept the strategic horizon open so that when the reform struggle hit the limits of the system, somebody was there who had prepared for exactly that?...The answer is the organized socialist current inside the class's own movement. That is the party question, restated in your own words. You closed the door on it in the first paragraph and reopened it in the last.” *I haven't "closed the door on the party question". I still hold to the view which I've expressed previously that a centralized and disciplined party would be required to lead a successful socialist revolution. If there is any justification for them today it is that they provide sustained activity and skills training for a tiny cohort of radicalizing youth. In a revolutionary crisis they would contribute their experience to the disaffected masses exiting the disintegrating reformist parties. But that is not the nature of the current epoch even though the groups still act though it is - which is why their program, structure, rhetoric, and iconography lacks lacks wider appeal given the present level of consciousness. However, the groups appear content to remain on the sidelines, reckoning this is the price they must pay until they will become an essential component of the leadership of the revolutionary masses when the final conflict finally arrives.* Tony: "On your reply to Mark about entryism: here I think we are close. You are right that the expelled Trotskyists faced no good choices and right that the entryists who stayed were mostly absorbed. But the lesson cuts deeper than tactics...how a small propaganda current merges with the actual movement of the class rather than orbiting it. The problem was being a sect...Your experience tells you the builders mostly leave. Mine tells me they leave sects. The conclusion I draw is to stop building sects, not to stop building them.” *I suggested that neither entry nor independence worked because of the unfavourable objective circumstances resulting from the gradual decline in class struggle after WW II. This ensured the Trotskyists would remain a sect - a problem which later engulfed all tendencies on the far left. Sectarianism IMO was a consequence not a cause of their isolation from the “actual movement of the class”.* *Which raises the obvious question: What is Tempest’s prescription for merging with the working class that other tendencies have not tried over many generations? We would all welcome a theoretical breakthrough which allows an escape from the present impasse.* Best, Marv -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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