15.02.1996
Reconstruction of the left
Bob Smith of the CPGB faction, For a Permanent Party Polemic Committee, poses his questions about the reconstruction of the left to comrade Arman Arani of the Organisation of Revolutionary Workers of Iran on the anniversary of the Iranian revolution
Given the still living experience of the Iranian revolution of 1979, and the intense political and economic contradictions of the Islamic Regime, it is quite possible to conceive of another Iranian Revolution in a relatively short time span. What sort of revolution is your organisation working for? And in particular, what is your organisation’s understanding of the dictatorship of the proletariat?
I think we can dissect the whole question into two distinct parts. One, what kind of revolution we are struggling for after the overthrow of the Islamic regime. Secondly, given the events that we have witnessed after the Great October Revolution in Russia and the fall of the Soviet Union after seventy years, what kind of lessons can be learnt. In this context the questions of party, state and the “dictatorship of the proletariat” are on the agenda of working class revolutionaries and parties everywhere.
At the present time in different countries the left is completely disorganised and small segments are trying to organise themselves around particular issues of varying importance to the working class. A great number have lost interest in revolutionary activities.
As we look around we can see this dissension in the left throughout the world, and the total lack of influence of the left on the class struggle everywhere. The left has been marginalised wherever you look.
Further if we look at the developed capitalist states throughout the world, we see that the workers’ movement is experiencing tremendous pressure from the capitalist states, and the whole agenda of the working class is to defend some of the gains it has made in the past in terms of the welfare state: the great strikes in Germany by the metal workers and the general strike in France in defence of gains made by them in the wake of the achievements of workers in the Soviet Union and other countries shortly after World War II. Capitalism, because of its contradictions, is no longer able to proceed with business as usual.
It is now trying to disassociate itself from the whole structure of the welfare state, and this has brought about restructuring and downsizing, which has led to 35 million unemployed in OECD countries. In response the workers’ movement is struggling everywhere to counteract these pressures. This has led to a tremendous upswing in the workers’ movement in a number of countries.
But these workers’ movements have no perspectives for overthrowing the whole system - basically these movements are just directed towards some sort of social democracy. Workers have no organisation which can lead them through these day-to-day struggles and also give them a revolutionary perspective to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism.
Marx described capitalism as being a system where commodity production brings dissension between the working class and the means of production, which in turn leads to the alienation of the working class. Workers have experienced a tremendous amount of alienation and resentment as a result of the development of an oppressive political structure in the name of socialism, communism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. This alienation finally led to the overthrow of that state which bore very little resemblance to the Great October Revolution. But at the same time these workers see the spectre of millions of miners in the old Soviet Union striking to overthrow the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and establish a counterrevolution. It is not enough for the left just to claim, ‘We are for socialism, for communism; we are for the workers’.
We cannot now attract many followers. At least we cannot make inroads within the working class until we reassess our theoretical and organisational foundations. These would include the party question, the programme and the nature of the ‘socialist’ state. This reconstruction must be very critical. Marxism is basically a revolutionary perspective of how to change the world. We cannot call ourselves the followers of Marx and Engels by simply holding to certain dogmas that have developed as a result of the experiences of the Soviet Union. The ideological divisions stemming from these dogmas prevent us from making any headway towards a revolutionary perspective in the future. At this point most of the left has its feet in the concrete of ideological absolutism and sectarian wrangles.
What we need to do is look a little closer at what happened in the Soviet Union. Although it called itself the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, in reality the working class had no control over political, economic and social structures. After the fall of the Soviet Union it was clear that the dictatorship of the proletariat could mean different things to different people.
In the old Soviet Union it meant the leaders and the hacks of the Communist Party had complete control over millions of workers. Then came the bureaucratisation of the whole political and economic structure under Stalin. There was nothing in the development of all this that could be called the dictatorship of the proletariat.
If I could interrupt you, comrade; in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union there were some 21 million Party members. And these 21 million Party members had a class base which consisted of three generations of the Soviet proletariat. So to say that the proletariat had no connection with the Soviet state seems false. These 21 million Party members managed the schools, police, courts and all branches of the state infrastructure, including the armed forces. Surely this is the proletarian class, through its proletarian Party, building the embryonic proletarian state.
I believe that in the formal sense you can call these 21 million people the workers. You can also say that the Party was representing the whole working class, and the Soviet state was generating the views of the working class. In this formal sense you could call the Labour Party in Britain a working class party. Isn’t it a fact that over eight million organised workers in Britain are affiliated to the Labour Party? Didn’t the unions select the national executive of the party and the candidates for council and parliamentary elections?
In the Soviet Union many registered as Party members because there were gains to be made: ie, good schools, training, leisure facilities and a good proportion of the national income that was being thrown in the direction of the Party membership. I won’t dispute your argument that many of the Party activists came from the working class. But could you seriously argue that these workers were emancipated in the sense that Marx talks about in the Communist Manifesto?
I believe that these workers to whom you refer, after the revolutionary fever was over, were pursuing their own long-term interests through black market operations and embezzlement. Plus the fact that great atrocities were carried out against the Party, its leadership and working class activists.
If the Party had virtually degenerated into a career structure, does that not indicate that the problem for revolutionaries today is to focus on the nature of the Party rather than, as your organisation has advocated, the self-activation of the class as a whole?
Before I take up the Party question, I want to return to your first question concerning the dictatorship of the proletariat. I’m just trying to tell you that the kind of Soviet structure that we saw fall in 1989 was not the dictatorship of the proletariat because it was not organised on the basis of the participation of the working class as a class. In fact the rot began at first within the state structure. All democratic institutions through which the workers and masses could express their views were dissolved. Even factions within the CPSU were completely disbanded. The Party was one of the last lines of defence through which the workers lost ground to an oppressive and brutal state structure.
It is important to note that there is always a contradiction between the stage of development of socialist theory and the level of socialist consciousness of the working class. The former is usually developed by communist theoreticians who are generally organised around the Party platform. But the level of consciousness of the workers is a concrete material and historical phenomenon. Putting the main responsibility of socialist transformation on the shoulders of the intellectuals within the Party and disregarding the level of consciousness of the workers will create disaster. In addition Marxism is the signpost for the self-emancipation of the masses by the masses. By disregarding this element of self-emancipation, no party leadership, however sincere, revolutionary and determined, can escape the fate of the communist parties in the USSR, China and elsewhere. Without exception most of the leaderships of these communist parties were in their time sincere revolutionaries and died in the hope of being remembered in this way.
But if those mass of workers with all their stratifications primarily have the consciousness of bourgeois ideology at the beginning of a revolutionary process, how can they, the day after the revolution, begin to exercise their own dictatorship against the deep legacy of bourgeois rule? Doesn’t that responsibility fall, in the first place, on the most conscious elements of the class which have gravitated towards the communist collective - the Party?
I don’t believe that we can create the true dictatorship of the proletariat by organising a Party whose leaders call themselves the central committee and whose central committee calls itself the Party, while the Party hacks call themselves the class. This has nothing to do with the class. The experience of the Stalinist style of the party, as well as the Trotskyite variants, after 70 years of the Soviet Union, definitely represents the wrong view of the relationship between the masses and the Party and the structure of the state.
If we counterpose mechanically, as I think you might be in danger of doing, the Party to the class, are we not in danger of undermining the Leninist concept of the leading role of the Party?
Firstly, putting the Party against the class is truly a mechanical concept. That is precisely what your kind of Party will do. Secondly, your question reminds me of a metaphor used by one of the theoreticians of the guerrilla movement in Iran. Comrade Pouyan, a great revolutionary who gave his life fighting against Savak, presented the guerrillas as the vanguard of the working class, as the engine which pulls the train.
The third element of my reservations about the type of party you are advocating is that it is closer to a Zinoviev-type than a Leninist one! In fact even Stalin argued against Zinoviev, who was advocating that the politburo represented the central committee, which represented the Communist Party, which in turn represented the class. This is mechanical. Even Stalin argued against this, saying that the Party has its power through its links with working class organisations. The type of party we are proposing tries to link itself with the class to raise its consciousness by working with it day in and day out. This cannot be done unless we fight for self-emancipation of the class.
I believe the revolutionaries within the Communist Party can organise themselves in society without trying to capture the power. Once you try to capture the power, and work in the name of the Party, and in the name of the working class, and present yourself as the only working class party, then you are in danger of building the type of parties we have seen built in the Soviet Union and China. I believe the only way we can get away from this experience is to have the workers participate in the structures of the state, economic and political. I see Marxism as the liberating force for the working class and by that force socialism will put the cause of the working class - its own emancipation - into the hands of the working class. Revolutionaries also present their demands to the class at large. But revolutionaries don’t have their own agenda separate to the working class.
I’m sure, comrade, that all Marxists would agree that the essence of the Marxist project is the self-emancipation of the working class, but surely Marxism-Leninism as a distinct ideology must project the Party as the general staff, the hammer of the working class. In a perfect world the working class as a whole would establish its own organs of self-emancipation, but the transition from capitalism to communism must surely pass through the dictatorship of the proletariat which would be surrounded by hostile imperialist forces. Doesn’t life then necessitate a strong general staff - the Party, and they must implement the dictatorship of the proletariat not only against the international bourgeoisie, not only against their own bourgeoisie, or the vacillating strata of petty-bourgeois forces, but even against backward, reactionary sections of the proletariat?
It is important to note that without the Party the working class alone cannot emancipate itself, but you cannot substitute the Party for the masses. The Party we are advocating is not a hammer. It leads not the intellectuals but the class. You say that the Party must implement the dictatorship of the proletariat against not only the bourgeoisie, but also the vacillating strata of the petty-bourgeoisie. At the same time you are also advocating the elimination of backward elements of the proletariat. This way you remove everybody from the revolutionary picture.
The Party can never impose itself on the class. Our sort of Party will get its legitimacy from its interaction with the class, in the defence of its overall historical needs. In doing so our Party will strive not to pit itself against the class or pit one section against another, as you are advocating. It will strive to connect different sections around the general good of the whole. The essential element of our Party is the elevation of the consciousness of the masses through day-to-day experiences.
I have problems with the term Marxism-Leninism. When we use that term someone else comes along and uses the term, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Another one comes along and adds the label Titoism, and so on. And so we have a church of five or ten apostles of latter-day saints who each have their own followers, and they all want to proceed with the high priest of their own church. This has nothing to do with Marxism. I believe if you visualise the Party under these types of idealisms you actually get into that type of dogma where you cannot associate freely with other revolutionaries, and you will never have any influence in the working class. So I want to disassociate myself from this type of word-mongering.
Secondly I want to say that experience shows that the Party which actually called itself the hammer and the vanguard of the working class in eventuality degenerated.
In your question about the dictatorship of the proletariat you asked what sort of contours I would associate myself with in respect to the Party question in Iran. The reconstruction of the left, which is not being addressed by many of the small ideological sects, has to start with the abandoning of the notion of an ideological Party. What I mean by an ideological Party is a Party which takes any specific interpretation of Marxism or Leninism as the basis of its membership criteria.
I believe the reconstruction of the left today has to start with the establishment of a non-ideological Party. It leads the movement of the class towards a revolutionary perspective but does not require the class and the Party members to adhere to a dogma or any ideological abstract which has nothing to do with the workers’ movement in their task of overthrowing the capitalist system and establishing a socialist state. Criteria for Party membership should not be whether they believe in Marx, or Lenin, or god, or whether they’re for or against Trotsky.
It is quite clear that social democracy is an ideology, and it is equally clear that anarchism is a distinct ideology. Marx and Engels made a sharp break with anarchism in the First International, and Lenin broke with left social democracy in the Second International, so it seems a dangerous term to talk of a non-ideological Party.
I certainly have sympathy with the notion that the Party should not be constructed round any one particular nuance of what did or did not happen in the Soviet Union, but to talk of the Party as non-ideological, seems to be taking down vital barriers which could then allow social democracy or anarchism to take hold.
In the tradition of Marx and Marxism when we talk of ideology we are not talking about historical or dialectical materialism, or for that matter socialism, which Lenin called the three component parts of Marxism. Ideology in the tradition of Marxism is a set of a priori abstract principles by which one may organise one’s world view. No element of Marxism has anything to do with dogma. Marx in his criticism of Feuerbach in the German Ideologyasserted that ideology is inverted consciousness.
To idealise a phenomenon like the Party or the state or even the programme of the Party on the basis of abstract principles and try to impose these on concrete reality has nothing to do with Marx and Marxism. In the kernel of your views, comrade, there is a confusion between theory and ideology which is nothing but dressing dry dogma as a liberating formula.
I believe the experience accumulated in the past 70 years suggests that an ideological Party becomes the tool of some shrewd politician who uses the ideology as a measuring rod to exclude revolutionaries and the masses from participating in the revolutionary process.
You warn us against anarchism and social democracy. Anarchism wants no state, but workers in the construction of socialism have to establish their own state, which we call a commune type state. Anarchists could not survive in a situation of this sort. The commune state in 1871, which Marx analysed, showed that many anarchists participated in the construction of the Paris Commune, and themselves became very active because they couldn’t continue as non-committed revolutionaries. Some of the greatest names in anarchism gave their lives in the defence of the commune.
On the other hand the workers’ state that we are struggling for has nothing to do with social democracy. Social democracy does not want a revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist state structure. It is advocating reform so that the workers will work harder and the capitalists will gain more economic surplus. We are calling for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a workers’ state through the liberating force of millions in the construction of socialism.
We are calling for a non-ideological Party which would have non-ideological criteria for its membership. It would be based on a democratic centralist platform with the widest debate and open polemic, and submission of the minority to the majority at the time of action - a structure in which you can have factions within the Party. Membership criteria are: the acceptance of the political programme, participation in the work of a Party unit and the contribution to the achievement of Party objectives.
If you call for membership on the basis of support for a programme, surely the programme itself is ideological - how could it be otherwise in class society?
The programme of the Party must absolutely be non-ideological. It is not an assembly of a series of abstract principles. That would produce no real influence in the movement of the class.
The bourgeoisie does not necessarily advocate laissez-faire as an abstract dogma, as perceived by Adam Smith and other classical economists. It goes to the masses with a specific programme and thus tries to establish a hold on the working class.
Our programme uses Marxism and the experience of many revolutions in a given concrete situation. I submit that the programme written by Lenin was not ideological. It called for the masses - workers and peasants - to take the land, to participate in the revolutionary overthrow of the Tsarist regime. It called for bread, land and freedom. Lenin knew an ideological programme would not influence the working class.
Aren’t we confusing here the revolutionary slogan and the revolutionary maximum programme of the Bolsheviks?
In a truly non-ideological programme it is essential that there is an organic relationship between the day-to-day exigencies of the revolutionary movement and its long-term objectives. In such a programme the maximum demands should never suffocate the daily activity of the party and its short-term political perspectives. The programme should distinguish between those demands that will be achievable as a result of a long historical socialist transformation and those which result from political actions of the class. For example, you cannot destroy either religion or family by political or administrative means.
The maximum programme of the Bolsheviks came as a result of Marxist analysis and a materialist outlook, as applied to the concrete conditions in Russia. It used the historical and dialectical materialist method to analyse and explain, but in no way was it ideological - Lenin said that even those who believe in god can be a member of the Party.
I want to go further in disassociating myself from the ideological Party and ideological state. I believe all the states that have been organised in the aftermath of October replicated the Soviet model of Party and state. You cannot liberate the workers on such a basis. That leads me to the next question: what sort of state structure are we struggling for? The left cannot be revived on the basis of the reconstruction of just the Party structure and its relationship to the class. A thorough renewal can only be achieved if we put the building of our state, its relationship to the Party and to the class onto the agenda.
I understand your organisation is in favour of pluralism within the dictatorship of the proletariat. Does this include the right not only of other socialist-orientated parties, but indeed pro-capitalist parties to organise?
I think this is a very important question, comrade, because once we have reconstructed the Party, its programme and its relation to the class, then we must address ourselves to the question of the nature of the state and its own relationship to the Party and the class.
To answer your question in a clear and direct manner: I submit that Marx was the first revolutionary who proclaimed his defence of full and unabated political freedom, not just for communists or the proletariat, but every social stratum. It was through the effort of Marx and Engels that a clause in the Erfurt programme was inserted in defence of that principle. In fact in the first programme of the RSDLP, written essentially by Lenin in 1903, an almost identical clause was inserted in the programme. The same clause appeared in every programme until October.
It was only after October, when the left opposition was crushed by Lenin, that the soviets were left to rot and internal factions within the Bolshevik Party disbanded. In response to Rosa Luxemburg’s criticism Lenin said they were responding to the concrete situation in Russia, but that does not mean that this has to be replicated everywhere. Even in the Paris Commune unlimited freedom of expression and organisation was achieved by the communards and enjoyed by all, including bourgeois parties. What you are advocating bans not only the bourgeoisie, but also the petty-bourgeoisie and what you call backward workers from the political process of a socialist state. In fact this road has already been travelled, but reached a dead-end when Lenin and the Bolsheviks after October stipulated that only wage earners had the right to vote and those who paid wages had no right of participation in the political process. In 1936 Stalin was forced to remove that clause in the new constitution.
If the self-emancipation of the working class is to mean anything we need a workers’ state or a commune type state in which the structures of the state will be completely democratic in the sense that the workers will themselves be organising the means of production at the point of production. This doesn’t contradict the idea of having a master or general overall plan by the Party and the institutions of the workers’ state. We believe we can bring our programme to the masses and win the masses to our side. This is done through the workers’ councils, involved not just in economic, but all levels of political decision making, from local to national. This will bring democracy into the state from the bottom to the top. This is the way we can eliminate bureaucrats and those who misuse power in the workers’ state structures. By this type of democracy the bureaucrats can be recalled immediately and questioned about any wrong-doings. This is the most democratic type of structure.
The Party as a leading force will prepare a programme, bring it to the masses and try to win them over. This type of socialist democracy is the true dictatorship of the proletariat which is the most democratic state on the face of the earth. But it is a dictatorship because it has a particular class interest. We don’t believe that only one party can present different shades within the working class, unless it tries to impose itself in a dictatorial manner. We do not oppose one party winning the whole working class - this is good, but we do not legislate against other parties.
So what exactly does your organisation understand by the ‘leading role of the vanguard party’? How do you exercise that leading role?
In order to understand the leading role of the vanguard party, I refer you to the second section of the Communist Manifesto which states that the essential difference between the communists and other working class parties is that, firstly, communists defend the interests of the whole class. Secondly they defend the long-term line of march of the class. The leading role of the Party is manifested in the organic relationship of the Party and the class. The Party has no preconceived, abstract dogmas of its own. In terms of its leading role in the organisation of the workers' state and the construction of socialism, our Party will be involved in the day-to-day organisation of the working class and will have a programme of its own. It presents its programme to the masses, tries to win the masses over. Other socialist parties are free to present their programmes to the class. The development of socialism will be based on the synthesis of these various programmes. Pluralism is an essential element of socialist democracy and the workers’ state cannot be scared of the bourgeois parties.
The bourgeoisie in the socialist state can organise its party and take its ideas to the masses. We believe that socialism has nothing to fear from the programme of the bourgeoisie, because once the workers are in power and truly liberated, then they will defend the state against attack. The Paris Commune is a great example for us. It shows us how to organise the masses against that type of counterrevolution. But if they come to the workers to try to get votes we do not stop them doing this. You warn that imperialism will try to organise force from outside. This is very possible and we believe they may do this, but the way to counter this is not to form a one-party dictatorship. If we have the masses on our side, even if imperialism attacks at least we have the masses to defend the workers’ state and to construct socialism.
In order to divide the working class the bourgeoisie appeals to various sectional interests both nationally and internationally. It is only the most conscious workers organised in the vanguard Communist Party that can see the general and overall interests above any particular interest. Only the vanguard Party is able to organise the defence of the general interest of the working class as a whole. Left to its own spontaneous defence, it would likely succumb to sectional interests, particularly in the earlier phase of the national dictatorships.
The first part of your statement is completely true - I agree with it, but the second part I do not believe is true. Once we are attacked from either outside or from within, the only viable alternative we have is not to establish a dictatorship of one party and destroy every element of democracy in the workers’ state. Even if we had to do this for a very short time in an extreme emergency, we would not continue it for 70 years, as happened in the Soviet Union. The only viable alternative is to rely on the workers as a class; on their participation and their initiative; their self-emancipation and their dedication to the revolution and construction of socialism.