In the latest issue of International Socialism, a quarterly put
out by the British SWP, John Molyneux has an 8600 word article “On
Party Democracy” that raises some interesting questions but fails
to get to the heart of the real problem in self-declared Leninist
vanguards like the SWP. The real threat to democracy in such
formations is not ham-fisted bureaucratic interventions, such as
the kind that typified the American SWP during its sad decline or
the CPUSA throughout most of its life. It is instead
self-censorship by the rank and file all the way up to key leaders
who are very wary of challenging adopted party positions out of
fear of being tarnished as “petty bourgeois”, not “understanding
Marxism” and all the other insults that have found their way into
this political subculture over ninety-plus years. As painful as it
is to hear yourself addressed in such terms at a party meeting, it
is even worse to become ostracized as is the fate of most
dissidents who have the temerity to challenge the wisdom of
whoever is at the very top of the party hierarchy. In the case of
groups like the American SWP, this tends to be a single person who
functions like a virtual pope. In healthier groups, such as the
British SWP, it tends to be a core of people whose ranks change
over the years.
For reasons that are not totally clear to me, Molyneux frames his
discussion in terms of a response to a German sociologist of the
early 20th century named Robert Michels who eventually became a
fascist. Michels, who believed that the abuse of power is a
function of “the cult of veneration among the masses”, wrote:
"As the chiefs become detached from the mass they show themselves
more and more inclined, when gaps in their own ranks appear, to
effect this not by popular election, but by co-optation, and also
to increase their own effectiveness wherever possible by creating
new posts upon their own initiative. There arises in leaders a
tendency to isolate themselves, to form a sort of cartel, and to
surround themselves, as it were, with a wall, within which they
will admit those only who are of their own way of thinking."
Hmmm, sort of rings a bell, doesn’t it?
read full article:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/john-molyneux-on-party-democracy/
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