Obama’s charismatic promise of change has convinced a large portion of the left that in order to achieve their long term goals, they must rally behind Obama. But this will not help to advance the anti-war and revolutionary movements; it will lead those movements into complete stagnancy. Obama and the Democratic Party are representatives of the rich ruling class of big-time capitalists, people who have no desire whatsoever to end the imperialist wars, because they see them as an investment for future gains, i.e. economic leverage gained by having completely control over the Middle East‘s vast oil resources.. It is an illusion that the Democratic Party can be changed into a party of the people, and thus, supporting candidates like Obama would be a step backward for the anti-war movement.

It is by now common knowledge that the Republican Party is a party of imperialism and war, but it has also become increasingly obvious that the Democrats are guilty of the same thing. The Democratic Party as a whole has consistently supported the war in Iraq since day one. The only real attempt at “opposition” to the war was their “non-binding” resolution to oppose Bush’s troop surge, but when that resolution was a flop, they turned around and gave Bush and the Republicans exactly what they wanted. Before and since, the Democrats’ only “opposition” to the war in Iraq has been that the current strategies aren’t “working,” and their plans for “change” have merely been different ways to achieve the same imperialist goals as the Republicans: securing Iraq’s oil and establishing a permanent military base in the region.

To understand this, one must understand that all politicians in both parties are representatives of the bourgeoisie, the rich ruling class of big-time capitalists like those that run American big business. It is no secret that to win an election, one must raise money, and lots of it. To attain this money, candidates must gain the support of the people with the money, i.e. big business. The war in Iraq puts the United States in control of the country’s oil, which represents an extremely valuable investment that the ruling class will not willingly give up. To gain the funds necessary to run for office, all candidates must gain the support of the ruling class by pandering to its interests. The Democratic Party is not an exception to this. Nobody is claiming that the two parties are the same, but the Democrats simply represent a liberal alternative to achieving the goals of the ruling class: the same goals that the Republicans support. For example, big leaders in the Democratic Party (like Pelosi) have consistently voted to escalate the war and have even been at the forefront of some of this pro-war legislation. Whether or not the government continues its imperialist war effort is not dependent upon what particular administration holds office. Rather, the problem of war is rooted in the very economic system that we live in a system that needs to expand and secure its “fix“ from other areas of the world, and neither party is going to change that.

There are a number of “progressive” candidates in the Democratic Party (including Obama) who mouth off a bit about Bush and the war in Iraq, and in doing so, they give hope to a lot of Americans. But these candidates are on a leash, and they have a special role: to put an anti-war façade on the Democratic Party so that behind the scenes, it can go on passing pro-war legislation. These “progressives” are allowed to mouth off in hopes of promoting the illusion that if activists lay down their militancy and kiss the asses of various politicians, that the Democratic Party can be transformed into a party of the masses. Yet, what these “progressives” say has no real bearing on the legislation that the Democratic Party passes, as the Party is careful to make sure that the interests of the ruling class are served no matter what.

For example, in March of 2007, the media reported on a meeting between House Speaker Pelosi and some of the “progressive” Democrats. In it, the “progressives” agreed to make sure that Pelosi’s $100 billion escalation of the Iraq war passed in the “Out of Iraq Caucus.” Then, when the Party was sure that the bill would pass, they allowed these “progressives” to vote against the bill when it reached the floor. This is a prime example of how the Democrats use their “progressives” to promote themselves as an anti-war party only when they are sure that their pro-war legislation will pass anyway!

More recently, the Senate (which is controlled by the Democrats) rejected a resolution that would pressure Bush to begin troop withdrawal, and then they easily approved a $165 billion war-funding bill. Bush plans to veto the bill due to some domestic programs that are attached to it, but military leaders are confident that they will get their war funding one way or another.[1] Further, even though there are Democrats talking of “withdrawal,” their plans leave thousands of troops in the region, and while Obama is allegedly committed to a withdrawal of combat troops within 16 months, his plan is full of escape clauses that free him from that responsibility. Obama, the Democrats, and the ruling class have no reason to be ending the war any time soon.

Still, many anti-war groups insist that supporting candidates like Obama will make it easier for change to happen in the future. But by supporting Obama, the mainstream anti-war movement is showing the Democrats that they don’t need to change anything they’re doing, because the anti-war movement (potentially their biggest threat) already supports them! If Obama is elected president, he will likely find that he has no choice but to continue the war in Iraq. Regardless of what his personal beliefs may be, he is a tool used by the Democratic Party and the ruling class of capitalists to give imperialism a friendlier face. Any promises of change are an illusion, because the ruling class does not want the war to end. If the anti-war movement fails to address this, fails to break from the economic and political system that leads to war, and instead rallies around Barack Obama, the politicians will be allowed to continue passing pro-war legislation, because the anti-war movement will not be a threat. In other words, if we cannot show the ruling class and all of its representatives that we do not support them and their interests, and that we are a threat, then they have absolutely no reason to end the war.

“We have a couple of immediate basic tasks: Obama must be the Democratic Party candidate—By Any Means Necessary. We should plan to camp right outside of Denver during the Democratic Party’s Convention and hold anti-war demonstrations and our own left convention. If right wing Democrats try to force Hilary-Herbert Humphrey-Clinton on us we march on the convention and make sure Obama gets the nomination–By Any Means Necessary. In November, we must make sure Obama defeats the war criminal John McCain. And finally, after the election, we must be prepared to convene anywhere in the country ( Florida , Ohio etc.) to make sure that the Supreme Court does not decide the contest.”[2]

This is a perfect example of how mainstream anti-war organizations are giving up their militancy (i.e. they refuse to break from the economic and political system of imperialism) in favor of kissing ass. Yet these organizations will often claim that they recognize that Obama is an imperialist politician who serves the class interests of the capitalists. They claim that their hands are clean, and that they are not claiming that the Democratic Party can be fundamentally changed. But they are allowing politicians like Obama to promote the liberal illusion that the Democratic Party can be changed into a party of the people, and they do not challenge this position in any way. Instead, they are rallying around Obama! So indirectly, they are promoting liberal illusions through their failure to make a decisive break from the Democratic Party.

This is comparable to the progressive movements in the U.S. immediately before the government’s involvement in WWI. Woodrow Wilson was running for president on an “anti-war” program, and the American progressive movement felt that because of this, they would have to support him. Yet this ignored the reality that the ruling class wanted the U.S. to enter WWI one way or another, and that Wilson was an agent of that class. They did nothing to awaken people to this, and within six months, Wilson had entered the U.S. into the thick of WWI. Like then, if we do not break entirely from imperialism and its agents now, we will stagnate and the government will continue to do as it pleases and continue the war in Iraq.

Regardless of whether or not you as individuals choose to vote in November, we must realize that what is needed at this time in the anti-war movement is mass organization and mass action that breaks from both imperialist parties and the entire economic and political system under which we live. Only in this way will we show the ruling class and its representatives that we are a threat. If we are serious about an end to the Iraq war, than we must cut our ties completely with the Democratic Party and its allies.

FOOTNOTES

1 http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=181093

2 From the article “OBAMA 2008: BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY: An Appeal For Revolutionary Unity” by Keith Joseph (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/now-the-debate-over-obama/)

The most important task for revolutionaries at this time
is the creation of a genuinely revolutionary organization
(or system of organizations) capable of uniting everything
healthy in the progressive and workers’ movements
and laying the foundations for a mass workers’ party that
can overcome both the reformist and sectarian diseases
and unite the majority of the working class around
a program centered on the overthrow of bourgeois rule

Why do we need organization?

Revolutionary organization will give the working class the ability to raise its consciousness, coordinate its actions, overthrow the system of bourgeois rule and create a world of peace and abundance for all.

What form will our organization take?

The revolutionary organization of the working class will eventually take the form of a party with a mass character. This party may take the form of a single organization–or it may take the form of a system of organizations which share common core values and have the ability to combine their efforts when necessary and, so to speak, strike with a single fist.

Party will emerge from network

This mass party will most likely emerge from a self-organizing network of cooperating (and competing) individuals and organizations.

Network will self-organize around revolutionary news service

This network may initially take the form of an informal and open community that is likely to emerge out of common work to build a revolutionary news service that will offer comprehensive news, analysis and discussion (from the perspective of the class interests of the working class) to many millions of people.

Poles of attraction will emerge

As this network (or informal community) develops and matures, it will likely witness the emergence of two primary poles of attraction corresponding to and reflecting the material interests and ideology of the two main contending classes in society.

The revolutionary pole

One of these poles will represent the material class interest of the proletariat (ie: the working class) and be organized around the central mission of overthrowing the system of bourgeois rule and creating a society where everything is run by the working class. I will refer to this pole as the revolutionary pole.

The reformist pole

The other pole will represent the class interests and ideology of the bourgeoisie (ie: the largest capitalists who own or control the corporations, the government, the mass media and all the influential institutions of society) and will be organized around the mission of keeping the working class passive or restricted to useless (or marginally useful) activity aimed at making conditions of life for the working class less bad while leaving intact the foundations of bourgeois rule.  I will refer to this pole as the reformist pole.

Competing agendas

The primary axis of political development of this community/network/organization will be the struggle between these two poles of attraction as each works to win activists and workers to their respective programs.  Each pole will have its own agenda.

The revolutionary pole will work to lend assistance to independent struggles of workers and activists and raise their consciousness concerning the nature of the society in which they live. The reformist pole will do everything possible to promote illusions.  It will assist popular struggles at times and at other times will do its best to sabotage struggles—depending on what it can get away with.

The revolutionary pole will tell the workers and masses the truth and represent their interests.  The reformist pole will promote illusions and represent the interests of the bourgeoisie with which it will have a defacto alliance and which will support the reformist pole with favorable publicity, resources, tactical concessions, “respectibility” and a thousand other levers which will help the reformist trends to win the support of workers.

Emergence of mass organization without reformists

As the many struggles of the working class develop–and as the struggle between the revolutionary and reformist poles develops–the nature of this struggle will become more clear to many millions of workers. This process may take a number of years–or it may take decades.

Eventually this process will mature to the point where the center of gravity within the workers’ network (or organization or party) will shift to the revolutionary pole. As this struggle continues to develop–a mass organization or party will emerge without a reformist pole and in which reformists are not welcome.

Why will this take so long?

Many activists with experience in the antiwar and/or revolutionary movements may ask why the network (or organization or party) of the working class should contain within itself political trends which stand in direct opposition to the interests of the working class.

The answer to this question is that the process by which millions of workers learn about the nature of reformist and revolutionary politics—will take years (or decades). During this lengthy period many organizations will be created which are hostile to reformism and reformists—-but these will not tend to be mass organizations. The emergence of mass organizations without reformists–will require a period of struggle in which many millions of workers acquire bitter experience with the treachery of reformism.

The experience of Russia (1903 to 1912)

In Russia the process described above took place in roughly the period from 1903 to 1912. In Russia the main organization of the working class was called the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). By 1903 (shortly after the birth of this party) it became clear that two antagonistic poles of attraction had emerged within it. These poles became known as the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

At that time the nature of the differences between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks was not clear to most members and supporters of the RSDLP. These members and supporters insisted that the two poles (ie: the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks) cooperate with one another–and they did so–while at the same time each pole also created its own “party within the party”. At the time most members and supporters of the party were not aligned with either of the two poles (please refer to the first diagram above–the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks are colored red and blue and the undecided section is colored yellow).

Over the course of the years that followed the nature of the two poles and their differences became clear to most members and supporters of the party. By 1912 both the Bolshevik and Mensheviks sections had grown at the expense of the undecided section. By this time the militant workers concluded that the Mensheviks had an agenda that was not compatible with their class interests–and the formal cooperation between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks ended–and the RSDLP split up.

A few years later, in 1917, the Bolsheviks led a revolution against the provisional government of the bourgeoisie and landlords. The leading politicians in this government were Mensheviks.

The experience of the Communist International

(1919 to 1935)

The Communist International was founded in 1919 and the basic idea was to export and accelerate the process of differentiation between the reformist and revolutionary poles within the working class movement–so that revolutionary parties could be more quickly put together in other countries.

For a while this was successful. Parties could only be part of the Communist International if they made a decisive break with their reformist wings. The result was the relatively rapid creation of many parties worldwide that had a revolutionary orientation and which were no longer dominated by the reformist methods and ideology which were undermining the struggle of the workers.

The methods of the Communist International allowed workers in many countries to bypass the lengthy period of struggle between reformists and revolutionaries that had taken place in Russia–and advance directly to the goal of a mass revolutionary organization that was not hobbled by reformist treachery.

This success was possible because the Communist International was, in some ways, hierarchical in its nature.

By this I mean that the success, prestige, accumulated revolutionary experience and influence of the Bolshevik Party in Russia allowed the Russian comrades to help give useful direction to parties around the world. (This is not to say that the various communist parties that were created simply followed orders from Moscow–it was not that simple–but rather that the experience and prestige of the Russian Party had a deep influence on activists in both the leadership and base of the various parties around the world and became a powerful factor in the internal struggles within these parties.)

But this kind of quick success carried a risk–because the “knowledge base”, so to speak, was lopsided: the Russian party had far more revolutionary experience than the other parties and therefore had enormous influence on them. This worked as long as the Russian party was capable of giving other parties around the world effective leadership and could assist these parties to better understand their circumstances and tasks.

However, by the early 1930′s, the Russian party had degenerated. In particular, Stalin was frightened by the installation of Hitler into power in Germany in 1933–and understood that Western imperialism (ie: Britain, France, the U.S., etc) intended to use Hitler as their tool to invade and lay waste the Soviet Union. (This was the real logic behind the Western policy of “appeasement” to Hitler–this was a policy of giving Hitler the resources he would need to carry out his invasion of Russia.)

Desperate to “make a deal” with the Western imperialist countries (ie: so that they would pull back on Hitler’s leash) Stalin used his considerable influence (beginning with the 7th Congress of the Communist International in 1935) to lead the communist parties worldwide into the reformist sewer under the flag of Dimitrov’s “united front against fascism”.

In the years that followed nearly all of the communist parties in the world degenerated–and the working class movement has never recovered from this treachery.

Cargo-cult attempts to clone Lenin’s party

In the years since, there have been innumerable attempts by revolutionary activists to duplicate Lenin’s success and create revolutionary mass organizations that were not crippled by reformist methods, reformist ideology and reformist treachery. Generally speaking, all of these attempts have failed.

The most successful of the efforts to create a party like the Bolsheviks are probably those that were part of the national liberation struggles of the Chinese and Vietnamese peoples. These struggles were successful in regard to the effort to free their respective countries from foreign domination. These struggles were less successful in creating parties of the working class.

Efforts to create parties similar to the Bolsheviks in the Western imperialist countries have generally fallen victim to the reformist or sectarian diseases–or remained small, relatively isolated groups.

The problem may be that a party like the Bolsheviks cannot be created except by a process similar to that which created the Bolsheviks (ie: a lengthy period during which the two principal poles in the workers’ movement were in open competition with one another and large numbers of workers had the opportunity to learn how each pole acted as the class struggle developed).

We cannot “grow” a small group into a mass party

It appears likely (for several reasons) that a mass party without a significant reformist component cannot be created by “growing” a small group and keeping the reformists out as it grows. Groups that attempt to grow in this way generally either eventually collapse into reformism themselves in an effort to escape their isolation–or fall victim to the sectarian disease as they compete with other similar groups for the warm, living bodies of activists who are new on the scene and are looking for some organized force with which to hook up.

The lengthy sorting process that the RSDLP went through had the virtue of allowing workers to see (on a very large scale) the struggle between the reformist and revolutionary poles. This helped activists and workers to understand that the struggle between these two poles was the principal struggle within the workers’ movement. This represented a higher degree of clarity and political consciousness than is held by many activists today who have come to believe that the basic dividing lines in the movement are those between the various political religions (ie: trotskyism, maoism, anarchism, etc) that have emerged as significant militant trends in the wake of the failure of the 1917 revolution.

The view that a mass revolutionary party can grow from a small group while keeping itself oriented along the correct line (as determined from applying so-called “democratic centralism” to the summation of experience) most likely originates in the practice of the Communist International which encouraged methods and beliefs similar to these–as well as what I call “cargo-cult Leninism” (ie: a political religion which repeats various phrases or actions Lenin used without understanding what Lenin actually meant by these phrases or what the aims were of his actions).

But the problem here, as I noted, is that these methods do not tend to work well when there is no international leadership with enough experience and prestige to help the small groups correctly orient themselves and unite.

Which is better ?

Building a brick wall ? Or casting a wide net ?

For this reason I have concluded that revolutionary activists today must recognize that the revolutionary organization we need must emerge from a lengthy period of principled struggle between these two principal poles and this lengthy struggle must take place within the context of a mass organization or a large and informal network or community of activists. Efforts to simply “grow” a small group into a mass party with the correct line–tend to leave the small group isolated and leave the mass of activists out of the process of struggle between reformist and revolutionary politics. Under these circumstances (with the mass of activists uninvolved in this struggle and largely unaware of it) the reformists will win because the revolutionary group will remain small and isolated.

The distinction here is between what I call the methods of “building a brick wall” and “casting a wide net”.

The first method corresponds to restricting one’s efforts to creating and attempting to “grow” a small, “pure” organization into a mass party.

The second method corresponds to creating a larger and more informal network or community and participating (with a smaller, more disciplined and advanced organization) in a protracted and open struggle within the larger organization/network/community in such a way that the entire community has opportunities over the course of time to witness this struggle and participate in it and draw conclusions.

Can we build a “party of a new type” ?

The standard cargo-cult Leninist view is that Lenin built a “party of a new type” (ie: with “democratic centralism” — without reformists — and without the class enemy having a home within the workers’ party) and that this somehow means that, at that time, the world somehow entered a new stage — and that this is how we build a party.

(Interestingly enough–such a view would hold that either the Bolsheviks were mistaken to co-exist with the Mensheviks within the RSDLP for a period of ten years–or that the world somehow changed in the period between 1903 and 1912.)

This is not true. Nor was this Lenin’s view.

A small, disciplined organization with the “correct line” (or what it thinks is the correct line) cannot “grow” itself into becoming a mass party.

What such a small group can do is participate in the open struggle against reformism (and for a correct line in any number of areas) within the context of a larger mass organization which aspires to be revolutionary.

But this means that some kind of larger organization (or network or community which has many of the features of an organziation) must exist. This larger organization must have a mass character (meaning that it is large and includes activists from many trends) and it must aspire to be revolutionary and be generally recognized as having potential to make good on this aspiration.

It also means that this larger, mass organization (which will contain activists from many trends) will not have unity on some of the most fundamental and decisive questions. More than this — this organization or network must be permanently characterized by political transparency and by active and highly public confrontations between opposing views.

What this larger organziation will be is:

1. a platform for a lot of practical work to assist the independent struggles of the workers
2. a platform for the struggle of trends within the workers’ movement and a laboratory capable of proving to many millions which trends are aligned with the class interests of the workers and which trends represent the voice and views of the class enemy.

Cargo-cult method cannot create the revolutionary pole

The experience of many attempts to create revolutionary organizations suggests that the cargo-cult method of growing a small organization while keeping it correctly oriented and united around a single monolithic “correct” line is not only incapable of creating a mass party–but is also incapable of creating the revolutionary core that would participate with skill in the struggle to expose the nature of reformism.

The overwhelming result of practical experience is that such groups fall victim to reformism or sectarianism or both. The main “revolutionary” groups within the left all have strong cult-like features (some with strong comical overtones) and “democratic centralism” (which once was a living concept that allowed the majority of activists at the base of an organization to exercize control over the direction and fate of the organization) has degenerated into a set of principles mainly used to stiffle independent thought and maintain a cult.

I believe it is likely that the process of struggle between the revolutionary and reformist poles within the context of a larger mass organization or network (as I have outlined above) will have the effect of throwing together, so to speak, individuals and groups which today may not even be aware of one another (or are barely on speaking terms if they are aware of one another).

Revolutionary core will emerge from primal struggle

It will be this “throwing together” of disparate groups and individuals that takes place in the context of the protracted and primal struggle for the ascendency of revolutionary politics over reformist treachery — that is most likely to forge the revolutionary pole of the larger mass organization. And it is this revolutionary pole which will emerge as the core of a mass revolutionary party that has made a decisive break with reformist methods, reformist ideology and the reformist social stratum (ie: liberal-labor politicians, trade union bureaucrats, religious misleaders, poverty pimps, “progressive” media personalities and professional “opinion leaders”) — which will lead the working class to victory over the system of bourgeois rule.

Ben Seattle
http://struggle.net/ben/

What will be our common work?

The concept of a single organization that contains opposing factions only makes sense if the organization has a program of common work that the opposing factions (as well as the undecided sections–which for a long time would be the majority) can easily support and get into.

If the organization is doing useful work–then I think activists will want to be part of it. If it is not–then they won’t.

The program of common work that I see as emerging would revolve around the creation and development of the revolutionary news service (as outlined above). This would involve a certain amount of technical work but more than this would involve investigating, writing and editing articles and helping to guide or moderate discussion on the articles.

This means that the different individuals or political organizations within this network would maintain a common database of public domain (ie: free of copyright) articles (including text, graphics, video, summaries, comments and rating and filtering data, etc) and would be able to freely use and modify anything contributed to this database for their web and/or printed agitation.

Other kinds of principled cooperation between people and organizations in this network might include such things as the following:

(1) Agreements to give credit (and a link) to a person or organization when an article of theirs is used or modified.

(2) Agreements to give a public answer to public questions or challenges made by a person or organization within the network (within the limits of practicality).

(3) Agreement that no statement could go out in the name of the entire mass organization without a supermajority vote of some kind (ie: such as two-thirds, or something like that) and that each person or organization would identify itself as a section or contingent of the organization rather than claiming to represent the entire organization. This would mean leaflets might be signed something like: “The ABC contingent of mass organization XYZ”.

The aggregation of work and content, the agreements to give credit and links for content used and the agreement to give public replies to public challenges would make it and easier for activists to understand the political differences between the different sections and would increase political transparency.

These modest measures would represent an improvement over the current situation where many leftist groups routinely act as if their critics and other groups do not exist.

Sidebar Articles

(Available on the web along with illustrations at http://struggle.net/Ben/2008/222-HowTo.htm )

• We need answers to these questions
• A revolutionary news service will be the central task
  that will unite all the warring factions of the left
• Attempts to create working class parties and an international organization of the working class
• Do we create a mass revolutionary party by
  (1) building a brick wall or (2) casting a wide net ?
• We need to hear your voice
• What does the word “party” really mean ?
• What is Political Transparency … and why do we need it?
• The revolutionary party will need an open and informal community
  to help it spread its influence and resolve its disagreements
• We must resolve the crisis of theory–and dare to talk about our goal
• Related Reading
• What will be our common work?
• Who’s Who in the Ecosystem?
• What is “cargo-cult Leninism” ?

If there’s anything the recent economic turbulance has shown us it’s that laissez faire economic policies – aside from being blatently oppresive – simply don’t work.

But so far the talk in the mainstream press has completely bypassed the question of how to solve our financial system and rather focused on propping it up.

In the United States, the governments hopes to solve a problem brought on by bad debt by, you guessed it, lending more money from foreign investors: $150 billion worth.

In Canada, they decided $60 billion in tax cuts that will primarily benefit the rich, and which will likely lead to deficiets and thus service cuts, is the best way to keep a dying system on life support.

These, obviously, won’t work.

But in the discussion of how to fix the system that is beginning to pop up, we must avoid the temptation of quick-fix regulations. While regulations do a good job of keeping a malicious dog on a leash, they don’t change the nature of the beast.

The major banks will still try to dupe lenders into taking expensive loans with hidden fees, and will do whatever they can to pass off the risk to others on the open market – only they will have to work around whatever new rules are cocked up.

They will do this just like every other sector continues to employ similar tactics to achieve their goal of higher profits at any cost.

It’s tough to stay true to solving the larger problem when you’re out of work or facing lower wages and the government is holding a big wad of cash to ease your worries, but just accepting that cash means accepting your position at the bottom of the heirchy. We will all be back in this situation in a few years, and as the markets grow ever more complex, the fallout will grow ever more severe.

The only permanent solution is to change the system that created the problem in the first place

So the revolution is a success: now what?

So far there is no single answer. This is a problem. One can understand uncertainty regarding how the final collapse of class socities would unfold, for that is still an untried exercise and a long way off. But on the issue of the first step, this is a debate that needs to rage towards a real answer.

One concept that has been raised frequently is centrally planned economics, (usually) as a temporary transtitional period. Personally, I feel this is a step backwards.

How do you transition to a future classless society by centralizing power and planning in the hands of an even smaller group of people than capitalism does, nomatter how good their intentions?

You can’t.

The true measure of a revolution is not how it uses power to help the people, but how well it gives that power back to the workers who create it.

I would advocate that an immediate collectivisation should take place. This doesn’t necessarily mean that everything would happen overnight, but over the course of a year or two all businesses would be democratically controlled by their workers as cooperatives. In the meantime, the market itself continues, but the power is spread out to the workers themselves.

I don’t believe there is such thing as an industry that cannot collectivize this way. Yes, capitalists will resist, and yes the government can and should facilitate worker take-over businesses, but it should not take control of them itself.

Of course, this is not a final destination, and the market forces that still hold some sway will have to be replaced. “The invisible hand” can still pickpocket, bringing about disparity in this case.

But once workers have control over their firms, then workers can organize the new structure of the economy by organizing together in each sector democratically. They will construct the new infrastructure of the economy that links each sector together, and sees them cooperate towards common goals. In this way, the organization is conducted in a grassroots way by the workers for the workers. Over time, this new infrastructure replaces the market in how goods are distributed.

This is not an arguement against solidarity, either. I would be the first to espouse a common push to achieve socialism and recognize that in order to bring power to the working class, we must all work together despite our differences. But we must work together as equals.

On the other hand, a centralized economy is awfully similar to capitalism in several ways. It creates a class of people who direct an economy, and it is self-perpetuating in that those people with power are reluctant to give it up.

Centralized Economies are an appealing tool, for they offer the allure of complete control and certainty in the transition process. Unfortunately, it is that very trait that makes them nearly certain to fail. It is that very trait that moves workers in the opposite direction.

With a new year setting in, public support for the Iraq war has plummeted and it has become the general consensus in the American working class that it is time to get out. However, George W. Bush recently stated that the U.S. occupation of Iraq could ‘easily’ last another 10 years.[1]

So what are we to do?

Many would say that the quickest way to end the war is to vote for an anti-war candidate for president in 2008. It has been more than clear for a considerable time that the Republican Party is a party of imperialism and war, but what is not so clear to much of the population is that the Democratic Party is also and imperialist party that has consistently supported the war since day one.

The only feeble attempt at opposition to the war that the Democrats managed was the “non-binding” resolution to oppose Bush’s “troop surge.” But this resolution was a flop and when it was shot down, the Democrats stuck their tails between their legs and gave Bush and the republicans exactly what they wanted: more troops and more money for the criminal war in Iraq.

And it has been the same story ever since. The only basis for the Democrats’ supposed “opposition” to the status quo is that the current strategy isn’t “working,” and this becomes clear when one looks at their legislation. The only difference between what the Democrats advocate and what the Republicans do is that the Democrats have a different way of achieving the same imperialist goals as the Republicans. Both parties are committed to establishing a permanent military base in the middle east and taking advantage of its oil resources, and both parties have yet to seriously propose a total withdrawal from Iraq.

There has been talk of “partial” withdrawal and a replacement of U.S. troops with UN troops. But the current plans for partial withdrawal call for thousands to remain in Iraq and thousands more to remain in the region to “re-intervene” if the things go badly. Secondly, putting UN troops in Iraq still continues U.S. imperialism and the imperialism of other nations because the UN is dominated by the U.S. and other imperialist powers.

The fact that the Democratic Party is an imperialist party that is not really against the war has become apparent to many. But there is still a strong tie to the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party in the anti-war movement. These “progressives” appeal to anti-war activists because they occasionally mouth off about Bush and the war in Iraq, and they promise to oppose it if the people vote for them. But these progressive have a special role: they make the Democratic Party appealing so that, once in power, they can go on passing pro-war legislation.

The American people spoke when, in 2006, they voted the Democrats into power in both houses of Congress. They demonstrated that they wanted a change of course. However, since then, no change has happened, and that has enraged many. It is the job of these progressives to appease the masses and keep them docile so that they do not become a threat.

For example, in March of last year, MSNBC and some other media such as the Wall Street journal reported on a closed-door meeting between Nancy Pelosi and some of these “progressive” Democrats. In it, these “progressives” promised that Pelosi’s $100 million escalation of the Iraq war would pass in the “Out of Iraq Caucus,” and then they promised to vote against the bill when it reached the floor! Sure enough, when the Democrats were sure the bill would pass, these “progressives” voted against the bill, and the Party allowed some of their top presidential candidates (like Clinton and Obama) to oppose it as well, while Edwards opposed it from outside the Senate.

So what do we get by voting for a Democrat in 2008? Absolutely nothing. Except of course a continuation of the bloody, imperialist war in Iraq. Consistently, the Democrats have promoted themselves as an anti-war party while passing pro-war legislation in practice.

Yet countless people still insists that by standing behind whoever is nominated as the Democratic candidate this year will make it easier for the anti-war movement to win. Here’s a question: How exactly does supporting a candidate not remotely committed to ending the war make it easier for the anti-war movement to win? It doesn’t.

By voting for imperialist politicians, we are showing them that they don’t need to listen to us, because we already support them. No change will come about by voting for a Democrat in November. On the contrary, it will ensure the continuation of the status quo. If we can’t show the politicians that we don’t support them, they have no reason to do anything.

What is really needed at this point is to understand why the war in Iraq started and why neither party is interested in ending it any time soon. The answer is imperialism: it is an economic and political system into which we are born where the government uses its military and economic power to force its influence upon other nations for the profit of corporations (like big oil). It’s not a policy, so it cannot be “fixed” by any saviors from above. Since all politicians take huge amounts of money from corporations that thrive on the profits of imperialism, both parties will fight tooth and nail to continue the status quo, as it gives them large piles of money.

Imperialism and capitalism are inseparable. The root of the problem is in the nature of our economy, and as long as capitalism exists, there will be endless war and destruction. Anti-war organizations need to first break from both imperialist parties, but then they must also stop fearing the use of the word “capitalism” and make a decisive break from the entire economic system under which we live.

Only in this way will the anti-war movement show the ruling class of big-time capitalists that it is a threat, and only in this way will the government feel pressured enough to end the war.

FOOTNOTES

[1]http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=1413

That scene is a perfect example of what many self-styled revolutionaries actually do. Enter “The Wreath Underground”, a group of university students at the University of British Columbia trying to stop development on the campus by, get this, smashing windows.

No doubt by invoking the Weather Underground in their name, they are trying to portray a grander vision than simply how the campus should develop.

Yet smashing windows isn’t revolutionary. It’s petty, and it’s regressive. The capitalist classes can point to this and say “look, we told you so,” and all we have is an even more staunchly capitalist society with a few broken windows which, incidentally, somebody will get rich off replacing.

But this is a metaphor for the radical left right now. We spend too much time talking about what we want to dismantle and not what we want to build. After all, revolution isn’t about destroying capitalism so much as it is about building in its place an egalitarian society that raises the workers standard of living.

We can certanly sympathize with the protesters. Anyone who has tried to stand in the way of moneyed interest should know that it is virtually impossible to stop – public consultations are a rubber stamp process that only serve to let us vent our rage, rather than truly influence change.

But if we ever hope to convince anyone of anything, then painting ourselves as vandals and criminals is the wrong path to take. We have to show a compelling and credible alternative to capitalism, to show that it can work, and to show true leadership and resolve in the face of adversity.

For when groups such as “The Wreath Underground” finish smashing windows, they just run back into their own glass houses.

Read the story: http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=96fa0fcc-dff5-44cc-bb46-dfa67da2f6f6&k=11565

However necessary a vanguard party is, the Left as a whole is currently confused and disoriented because not only is there no vanguard, but the whole idea of a vanguard has become muddled and distorted by the degeneration of the workers’ state in the USSR and the flat-out non-existence of the workers’ state in other “communist” nations.

The massive amount of misconceptions that came out of the October Revolution of 1917 will be difficult to clear up, but it is possible.

Unfortunately, the main reason those misconceptions have NOT been cleared up at this point is because of the countless cult-like organization where Marxism and Leninism have been converted into a sort of religion. These groups denounce the failures of the USSR and other regimes on the surface, yet they turn around and throw phrases at us like “democratic centralism” and “dictatorship of the proletariat” without understanding what those phrases actually mean.

These organizations claim to support democracy and genuine workers’ rule, but when asked the tough questions like “will one party hold a monopoly over political power?” they cannot answer! When asked about the need for the entire working class to have CONCRETE democratic rights of free speech and organization, they cannot answer! When asked about whether the workers will have direct control over their vanguard organization, they will not answer!

This is extremely confusing for people on the Left and it has led to the complete theoretical bankruptcy of nearly all 21st century “Marxist” thought.

We have to be clear that classes are led by parties. I believe that history has demonstrated that a vanguard party in some form will be a necessary tool in mobilizing the masses.

However, if we want to create a successful vanguard capable of mobilizing the masses and ending bourgeois rule, I believe there are several things that have to be done:

1. This organization must implement the principle of COMPLETE TRANSPARENCY. Workers need to be able to see what goes on behind the curtain and provide input, or else it’s not really their organization is it?

2. We must dare to talk about our goal. We must make clear that workers’ rule WILL NOT look like the degenerated police state of the USSR. Further, we must also drive home that even workers’ rule is not our ultimate goal. Stateless, classless society with peace and abundance is our long-term goal, with the necessary precursor of workers’ rule as a short-term goal.

3. We must make clear that in a post-revolutionary situation, the vanguard party CANNOT be the ruling party. If there is one party that maintains a monopoly over political power, it must suppress all that oppose it to maintain this position. This includes the suppression of those who expose the possible corruption, hypocrisy, and degeneration that may exist within the party. Thus, a monolithic party-state will lead to degeneration (this is what has happened every time to date) and is contradictory to the concept of workers’ rule.

4. Above all, we have to be clear that workers will have concrete democratic rights of free speech under workers’ rule.

We have to be sure not to separate democratic rights from popular support, however. Revolutions like the Hungarian revolution ultimately failed because the revolution did not have popular support.

If the vanguard party does not have the popular support of the masses before and after the revolution, it cannot allow democratic rights of free speech and organization because the unhappy population will go along with anyone who opposes the vanguard, and thus the bourgeoisie will be able to manipulate the masses and retake power.

However, workers’ rule will be suffocated and in its place will arise a corrupt bureaucracy if such democratic rights of free speech do not exist.

So, we had damn well better make sure that the vanguard party has the support of the masses.

Many Leftist organizations insist that one party (the “real” Marxist party) will have to maintain a monopoly over political power because they are the only “real” representatives of the class, and that socialism cannot afford “breaks in the ranks.”

But if the “real” Marxist party has the popular support of the masses, it will not need to suppress democratic rights, and thus, workers will be able to expose any potential corruption from within the party and deal with it. In short, workers’ rule will be successful.

Further, the key to gaining the popular support of the masses is to assure them that true workers’ rule will not have to suppress democratic rights. So it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: if we gain popular support, workers will have democratic rights of free speech and workers’ rule will be successful; if we assure the masses that they will have democratic rights and workers’ rule will be successful, we will have popular support.

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Appendix A: On Centralism

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One of the reasons for the rejection of the concept of a vanguard party is that it has a tendency, many claim, to become a corrupt group of elitists who do not really represent the class. They assert that such a party is naturally undemocratic. It is true that vanguard parties in the past have has this problem, but this is no reason to reject the entire notion of a vanguard party. The Left in a state of confusion and disarray, and a vanguard in some form will be a very usefull and, I believe, necessary tool in organizing the masses. Unfortunately, this issue is not being resolved because of the prethera of “Marxist-Leninist” groups that continue to assert that centralism is a necessary feature of a vanguard party in the 21st century.

Lenin’s ideal vanguard organization was one that would have been completely transparent, where the “entire political arena is as open to the public view as is a theatre stage to the audience.” In this way, elitism and corruption that could emerge in the party would be exposed, and the masses would be able to assert genuine control over the vanguard organization. In short, transparency would allow such a party to belong to the working class.

However, the implementation in Russia was quite different. The extremely harsh political conditions led Lenin to believe that the vanguard would need a more centralized and secretive structure. Members of the party had to distribute pamphlets and newspapers in secret, as they were illegal, and they often had to avoid Russia’s secret police. Further, such a centralized structure can be useful in terms of military effectiveness, as it was understood that in Russia, such military discipline would be necessary in order to effectively confront the powerful Czarist regime.

The first thing we have to understand is that this centralized structure comes with a fairly large number of problems. Centralization and secresy, which was intended to keep the Russian government “out of the loop,” in many cases kept the workers “out of the loop” as well. And organization can also be so secretive that members of the party don’t know what’s going on. Although this ensures that no one will leak any information, it can lead to huge misunderstandings in a time when clarity is needed. Moreover, if the workers cannot see what goes on behind the curtain, corruption, hypocrisy, elitism, etc. can all go unchecked.

The second thing we have to realize is that the centralization of the vanguard party in Russia was a measure designed for Russia specifically. Russia was an extremely backward society. It is wrong to believe that such measures will be necessary in a stable, modern society like the United States, for example. And the risks of centralism today far outweigh its benefits.

It is necessary for vanguard organizations in the 21st century to adopt a much more transparent program similar to that which was advocated initially by Lenin in “What is to be Done?” The workers must be able to see what goes on behind or else it’s not really their organization.

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Appendix B: What about counter-revolutionaries?

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This came up in a discussion when I mentioned that the vanguard party cannot be the ruling party:

>not necessarily. The revolution may need to defend itself and thus need to
>defend the workers. a party of opposition may be to the state a party of counter-
>revolution.

Indeed. But first of all, it is not practical or necessary to suppress such parties for this reason:

The authority to decide what is acceptable, healthy, or unhealthy in culture must be given to the working class and not a centralized point of control.

Frank (founder of the CVO and a proponent of single-party rule) argues:

> To even gain power and therefore have democratic rights
> like freedom of speech the proletariat is going to have
> to deny such freedoms to others.

This is simply not true. In capitalist nations, the bourgeoisie firmly hold power, but the workers still have democratic rights of free speech even though what they say goes against the very existence of the bourgeoisie [this is why we are able to have this discussion ]. But no one who truly understands how our society works would say that the workers rule.

Similarly, the democratic rights of those who oppose workers’ rule will not need to be suppressed for the workers to rule.

Secondly, if the vanguard party has the popular support of the masses, it will have nothing to fear from allowing democratic rights. Specific, corrupt individuals may have something to fear from it, but workers’ rule, as a whole, will have nothing to fear. On the contrary, workers’ rule NEEDS these democratic rights.

Further still, there is a major difference between closing a bourgeois TV station that exploits its workers and limiting the ability of people to organize in the streets and distribute leaflets, etc. The first would be completely acceptable. But the second is extremely dangerous and such suppression has led to the degeneration of every single workers’ state to date.

The fetish with centralized control over politics and economy that has infected a large portion of the Left comes from a misunderstanding of what happened in the USSR. The suppression of democratic rights in the USSR didn’t start with Stalin. It started with Lenin. But the fundamental difference between these two people was that Lenin made clear that the limitations on democratic rights and the merger between party and state were temporary emergency measures. Lenin knew it was a gamble but in Russia there were two options: a) Hand over power to the bourgeoisie, or b) temporarily suppress democratic rights to allow the Bolsheviks time to repair the shattered economy, so that there might be a chance that workers’ rule would be possible in the future.

But Lenin was incapacitated and Stalin took over. Stalin turned these temporary emergency measures into supposedly necessary and essential features of socialism. And although most organizations on the Left denounce the Stalin of the 1930s that murdered a huge portion of the working class, they do not denounce the early Stalin that asserted that the suppression of democratic rights was essential to socialism. And this is where the Left is crippled theoretically.

It is completely backward to assume that such measures, which were recognized by Lenin to be temporary emergency measures that were necessary specifically in Russia, will be necessary in a stable modern society.

In fact, such suppression will not only be dangerous to the emergence of genuine workers’ rule, but it will be detrimental to the economy. Suppression of democratic rights will necessarily mean the censorship of the internet to some extent. And since so much of the economy has gone digital, this will mean that limiting the internet will cripple a modern economy’s ability to function and sustain itself. One only has to look at China to discover the impracticality of censoring democratic rights.

In short, we need new paradigms that apply to modern societies like the ones in which we currently live and are applicable to the 21st century. And to be able to mobilize the masses and guide them to victory, political organizations will have to make this point clear; they will have to physically go out an tell people that complete democratic rights will be essential to workers’ rule, instead of just “implying” it the same evasive way that people use to justify the corrupt Soviet and Chinese regimes. Because without doing this, the masses will remain confused and will be turned off by the increasing cultishness of mainstream Leftist organizations.

The party can lead the class, but the party is not the class. If one party rules, the class does not. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

“The proletariat cannot achieve the socialist revolution unless it is prepared for this task by the struggle for democracy; victorious socialism cannot retain its victory and lead humanity to the stage when the state withers away unless it establishes complete democracy.” — V.I. Lenin

Free trade is like an aging socialite. Every birthday it looks in the mirror, it sees more wrinkles and gray hair.

On January 2, the FTA agreement, which brought free trade to Canada and the United States, turned 20, and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives rang in the bash with a bright light to expose every one of those wrinkles, every gray hair.

When this baby was born, the upper classes lauded the deal as one that would bring prosperity to  both countries. In Canada, they told us that we would see more, higher paying jobs, rising living standards that would be shared among all economic groups, whether working class or owners.

Canadians didn’t buy it: The free trade Progressive Conservative Party got a minortiy of 43 per cent of the votes, whereas the Liberal and New Democratic Parties, both of which fought free trade, received a combined 51 per cent of the vote. Yet the Progressive Conservatives won a majority government. Free trade was realized.

Since that time, who has been proven right?

That’s where the Centre for Policy Alternatives study comes in. They took a look at companies as part of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, the group of top companies that effectively negotiated the agreement on behalf of Canada, to see how their companies had done.

They’ve done remarkably well. Out of 41 companies with available statistics, they more than doubled their combined revenue to $310 billion from $142 billion.

The workers lost. At the same time as revenues soared, they cut their combined workforce by over 188,000 jobs.

But here is where it gets interesting.

The 13 companies in the group that increased their combined employmemnt by 88,580 increased their revenues by $65 billion. The 28 companies that reduced their workforce by 205,062 workers managed to increase their revenues by $93 billion.

The big three auto-makers shrank their workforce by over 50 per cent, to about 43,000 from 87,626, but increased their revenue by 70 per cent to 67.3 billion in those 20 years, while at the same time losing market share to other companies.

Oil companies saw the largest rise in profits, a 290 per cent jump to $53.4 billion from $13.7 billion. Again, that came at the expense of more than 6,000 jobs.

What this amounts to is a massive incentive to cut jobs, to put ordinary working people out of work, so that companies can pass on exorbant profits to their shareholders who never put a day’s work into building the company.

At the same time, workers’ real incomes have been stagnant or dropping for 80 per cent of the population.

We can do far better. If workers had the power to decide the future of their economy democratically, then we would see a situation where workers interests were put first. However workers are kept confused by the actual reslults of trade agreements such as NAFTA and the FTA and currently the SPP agreement. That is evidenced by continued public support for free trade that can’t be ignored by socialist movements. As long as workers are left in the dark about how the economic system works, how can they be expected to understand the need for change?

If socialists hope to achieve any change, we must reach out to everyday working class people and get this message across.

The full report can be found here: http://www.policyalternatives.ca/documents/National_Office_Pubs/2007/FTA_20_Years_Later.pdf

It’s definately worth a read.