Why a Revolutionary Party is Important

Why a Revolutionary Party is Important In my previous blog I set out my thoughts on ‘What Revolutionary Socialists should do now’. These thoughts, though originally inspired by reading Bukharin on ‘The Economic of the Transition Period’ this was only the starting point. What I set out was my thoughts on the general approach that should be taken. The immediate situation is that there is a major strike wave affecting many industries and organisations including rail workers, education, post, warehouses, health. The economic situation is one of economic uncertainty, massive increase in the cost of living, widespread poverty only partly relieved by food banks, and increasing pressures in particular upon women and children, with many women forced into low paid jobs and zero hour contracts and children being forced into inadequate nursery provision. Social services are in serious decline. The Labour Party, to which the working class looked to safeguard their interests, are no longer acting on their behalf in any sense and scarcely deserve the description of a reformist organisation. Clearly in this situation the priority has to be supporting this strike movement and urging those on strike to seek the maximum that can be achieved. In developing my thoughts on all of these matters I turned to Trotsky’s ‘Lessons of October’. I will return to this later, but one point that Trotsky makes very strongly, which is directly applicable to the present strike situation, is, to quote, “If vacillations on the part of leaders, which are transmitted to followers, are generally harmful in politics, then they become a mortal danger under the conditions of an armed insurrection”. We are not in the condition of ‘an armed insurrection’ but those workers on strike are in a condition of ‘direct class conflict’. What we are witnessing are the vacillations of union leaders who are transmitting this to their members. This creates a dangerous situation which can lead to the failure to win what is possible or even to defeat. But what I was trying to deal with in my previous blog was the general situation, over the longer term, not just the immediate situation. There is no doubt that within the working class there is a deep rooted sense of solidarity. This is clearly shown when issues arise about which the working class feel strongly. However, there is also a mixed consciousness. Throughout the ‘Lessons of October’ Trotsky speaks of an active working class and an active peasantry. He also speaks of the political leadership within the Party. It is clear from his writing that this is not a completely united leadership, far from it. But there were key members, led by Lenin, who had a grasp,of the essentials of what needed to be done, who, by their actions and the forces of their arguments, were able to win the support of the mass of workers and peasants, The present situation in Britain as in other countries is very different. It was my aim in the previous blog to suggest ways forward to overcoming the present weaknesses within the organisation of the working class. The situation within the ruling class is extremely precarious. They are in crisis. I dealt previously with the many elements of that crisis affecting the whole world. The ruling class is weak and divided. But there is a lack of organised opposition. In the Russian context there were serious differences among the political leaders of the ‘left’. The one we are most aware of is the Menshevik Bolshevik divide, but even within the Bolsheviks there were major differences. These differences were fought out within the Soviets. Throughout the ‘Lessons of October’ Trotsky emphasises the overriding importance of the Communist Party. He writes “Without a Party, apart from a Party, over the head of a Party, or without a substitute for the Party, the proletarian revolution cannot conquer.” But in Britain we do not have ‘a revolutionary Party’. We have a number of parties each claiming to be revolutionary. In the main, these different parties emphasise different aspects of the class war and compete with the other parties on the basis of their differences to the detriment of the much wider areas of agreement. Trotsky notes that the tradition of the revolutionary party is built not on evasions but on critical clarity. There is no mechanism within which these various groups can hammer out their differences. There is a sense that many of these differences will disappear in the course of the class war. In other places, Trotsky has argued strongly for the ‘United Front’. This is mainly perceived as a means of ‘uniting in action’ reformist and revolutionary groups in action on specific issues, most notably in opposing right wing extremists and fascists. There is a need to create a Communist Party that can bring together the divergent views of revolutionary socialists and provide the critical clarity of which Trotsky speaks. Trotsky quotes Marx to the effect that “Insurrection is an Art”. The whole of ‘Lessons of October’ deals with the question of insurrection. We have to think in terms of our situation in which insurrection is not an immediate consideration. Our thoughts must be on how to build an effective working class organisation and movement that can place the working class into a position that the Russian working class found itself at the beginning of the previous century. Having stated that “Insurrection is an Art”, Trotsky goes on to state that “a party which pays superficial attention to the question of civil war in the hope that everything will somehow settle itself at the crucial moment, is certain to be shipwrecked” Trotsky notes that “consciousness, premeditation, and planning played a far smaller part in bourgeois revolution than they are destined to play in proletarian revolution. In both the motive force was furnished by the masses, but they were much less organised and much less conscious than at the present time. The leadership remained in the hands of different sections of the bourgeoisie who were able to bide their time to seize the favourable moment when it could profit from the movement of the lower classes and throw its whole weight onto the scales and seize state power”. “The proletarian revolution is precisely distinguished by the fact that the proletariat - in the person of its vanguard - acts in it, not only as the main offensive force, but also as the guiding force”. Trotsky goes on to write that “the Party has become all the more important in view of the fact that the enemy has become more conscious. The bourgeoisie in the course of centuries of rule has perfected the political schooling far superior to the schooling of the old bureaucratic monarchy. If parliamentarism served the proletariat to a certain extent as a training school for revolution, then it also served the bourgeoisie to a greater extent as the school of counter-revolutionary strategy.” What we must also consider is that the working class is far better educated in a general sense than was the working class that Trotsky spoke of. The class, as a whole, has enjoyed greater prosperity and a very different cultural lifestyle. The working class is far more differentiated. I discussed these factors in my previous article. In this process the inherent solidarity has become hidden and there is a much greater need to involve people in the decision making process. This is an important aspect of the critique that the mass of the population makes against the dominant ruling elite. This can have a negative effect upon the position held by the people and leave them vulnerable to the massive propaganda machine, through the press, media, education and other forms of expression within modern life. We work within a different cultural environment and have to take note and react accordingly. We have to be prepared to start with people where they are and enable them to reason from the facts to the correct conclusion. In doing this we may find that on certain issues they are ahead of us and better informed than we are. Trotsky notes that “even the most revolutionary party, must inevitably produce its organisational conservatism; for then it would be lacking in necessary stability. In a revolutionary party the vitally necessary dose of conservatism must be combined with a complete freedom from routine, with initiative in orientation and daring in action” In my previous article I tried to emphasise the need to build a mass revolutionary party. To do this we have to be fully integrated in all aspects of working class life. The need to prioritise is clear, we can each only do so much. But the critical task of a revolutionary socialist is to assess the prevailing situation, within the areas of life in which they are involved, and determine what are the essential activities related to those areas. Early in his analysis, Trotsky wrote “A revolutionary party does not reject reforms. But the road of reforms serves a useful purpose in subsidiary not in fundamental questions. State power cannot be obtained by reforms. Pressure can never induce the bourgeoisie to change its policy an a question which involves its whole fate, The war created a revolutionary situation precisely by reason of the fact that it left no room for any ‘reformist’ pressure.” We have to be clear, our aim is to break the capitalist state and create a new form of ordering social and economic life. In this process we have to be clear of what this class war entails. There are fights we have to fight, as Lenin says we are the tribunes of the oppressed, but such fights are subsidiary to the class struggle between the proletariat and the capitalist class. Such subsidiary reforms and struggles are but episodes in the class war we have to fight and to win.. Scribar 17.3.23