How do we counter the 'revolutionary party' idea?

While there's nothing inherently wrong with revolutionary political organisations, the idea behind parties like the SWP is substitutionism - that is, substituting their particular party for the proletariat itself. So, ultimately, the Party is everything while the working class is seen as some kind of stage army, waiting in the wings to be wheeled on and off the historical stage under the leadership of the professional revolutionary leadership from the Party.

In the substitutionist's world, what's right for the Party is logically right for the class. High paper sales, high recruitment, tight adherence to the Party line, U-turns or formal deviations, or in the case of the SWP, cynical opportunism, is right for the class.

And should such a party ever get anywhere in terns of seizing power (the ultimate aim of parties like the SWP), then what's good for the Party is again good for the class. Of course, we've been here before: marxist leninism, stalinism, maoism, trotskyism; chekas, purges, gulags; splits, expulsions, endless u-turns and deviations... 'tis all good for the class.

Alternatively, as Marx himself said, "the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves."

Read this:

http://www. swp.ie/content/why-do-we-need-revolutionary-party [link broken]

It's almost certainly the basis of their talk. A com mentioned the other day that the swappies had dug this particular corpse up and were parading it around.

Check out for e.g.

For anarchists, class war is always asymmetrical warfare. I think Turbulence wrote on the dangers of symmetry (a.k.a. apeing the enemy so as to take their place), but I can't find the exact reference. Orwell certainly did.

edit: They are unlikely to talk about "trade union consciousness" or any of that stuff from "What is to be done?". They're thick, but not that thick (mostly).

also, "badly prepared shreiking hippies" - you mean, there are other types of shreiking hippies?

One thing they might counter with is, 'what have you got that's better than the SWP?' So something else you might want to think about is an alternative for people to get involved in if not a political party like the SWP.

Possible suggestions... local solidarity group... grassroots workers' group... class struggle group... AF group... SolFed group...

If they're looking to recruit at the college, you could counterpose the idea of a non-party 'radical student group' (preferably under a better name). There was an Anarchist group at Warwick for several years, and some of us in Leicester are looking at the idea of setting up a group for students who don't want to be in Trotskyist organisation (it's SPEW rather than SWP here, but that's fairly irrelevant).

Good point. It's the trots auto assumption that anarchos do zilch; maybe lay down the practical alternative to becoming a leninist drone. Beware you may end up talking world revolutions, palestine and north africa inside of 60seconds and that's a sure fire way of gauging how nuts they really are.

You could just leave them to it, given that they're marginal and will quickly bore the pants of anyone they do manage to recruit that has any critical faculties of their own.

Except, the trouble with the SWP is that, although marginal, they are still the most visible sign of radicalism, rebellion and (at least on the surface) revolutionary politics. Many well intentioned young people join and become quickly disillusioned with anything resembling revolutionary politics once the SWP has annihilated all such sentiments. So I think it's important that we try to "head 'em off at the pass" by demonstrating that there are revolutionary alternatives to groups like the SWP.

The SWP and their ilk have an advantage over more radical currents in that they always have stuff for young members to do. Postering, selling the paper, stacking meetings etc as well as all the legwork for even the lamest reformist campaigns around. Most of this is pointless, largely serving to reproduce the party but for more radical currents there generally isn't this constant activity that people can be immediately plugged into.

I was thinking about his in regards to the Kony2012 thing. First I'm actually quite shocked by it, shouldn't be but still is. That stuff is insane.

One of the problems with the ultraleft is the reduced space to act created by having a proper analysis. Not surprisingly this space is also very much at odds with life under capitalism making the threshold quite high both theoretically and practically. Both the SWP type paperselling etc and the Kony2012 donating and buttonclicking is within framework of most peoples lifes whilst creating the illusion of doing something.

It's probably worth pointing out the weaknesses of these strategies whilst pointing out how initially they feel useful for new people. The problem is that the thin edge of the libcom wedge is still quite deep so it's hard to offer alternatives. See the alternatives mentioned in the Kony 2012 blog by RobRay not something a disconnected, alienated and squeezed contemporary wage slave can sort out.

What about a 'radical student group' (only with a better name)? Instead of tying themselves to the SWP students could still organise themselves, it would be open to everyone even if they didn't want to be Trotskyist and could still get involved in campaigns or protests that were worthwhile. Some people are trying to set up a group here in Leicester along those lines (I think, I also think I'm supposed to be one of them). There was an Anarchist Students group at Warwick for a few years, I'm sure there are several non-party/anarchist/radical student groups around.

I absolutely agree with Serge that groups like the SWP often cause people to give up on the idea of radical politics, because they're such a soulless experience. Sell papers, recruit members, learn why your quite sensible ideas are wrong and some random and stupid position that doesn't make sense needs to be defended, leave the organisation in disgust. An alternative to that I think is called for everywhere!

I think the best point is that communism being a system of bottom up decision making needs to empower workers through the process of struggle to take on the management of the economy. Centralism and top down decision making is going to fail to do that

explain prefigurative organising

yeah I know many an anarcho who was nearly completely burnt out of politics due to their time in the SWP.

As Serge said, press for the alternatives. Solfed, Afed, making your own, etc, etc. Stress the the difference in democratic organization and decision making. I mean, democratic centralism is a bloody oxymoron, it can't be too hard to debase. i also find talking to party socialists is like a skewed lesson in Russian history, you might want to brush up on some of it, just to highlight that the Bolsheviks were disingenuous to their democratic pretensions near enough from the start 'yes you can have your soviet, but only if it is a bolshevik soviet' (simplification I know, I know). Trotsky smashing the autonomous uprising in Krondstadt and institutionalising the alienated Taylorist production methods is always a good one to bring up. It is a debate between ends and means, a split that the CC will often highlight to throw the people to the dogs in the name of socialism.

I suggest going a totally different route. Point out (or make a leaflet about) how the SWP's practices are actually totally at odds with those of the Bolsheviks they idolize. Here's what I mean (although this was written with the American ISO in mind): http://planetanarchy.net/isobolsheviks.htm

Instead of challenging the "need for a party" argument directly (since it is a circular one), undermine all the assumptions underpinning the argument by exposing the huge discrepancies between the SWP's practice and that of the Bolsheviks.

Another route to go might be to point out the absurdity of 2-3 groups with SWP politics in the U.K. (SWP, Counterfire, a few others). If they can't unite with comrades they agree with on 99.999% of the time, how are they going to lead a revolution?

Though, as a former IS member in the Netherlands, I like the method that Binh suggests - pointing out the contradictions between the Bolsheviks in Russia and the Trotskyist groups now - it isn't sufficient. The problem goes much deeper.

In so far as the Bolsheviks behaved a s a party, i.e. most of the times, they contradicted the revolution in progress. The few months where they did not consistently contradict the revolution - August 1917 to January 1918, and now I am being VERY generous - were the few months in which the strength of workers' initiative forced the Bolsheviks to behave almost like revolutionaries, almost like the IWW or the CNT in their best days, i.e. most UN-party-like behaviour... But then, they went with the tide, they were swept along. The best that can be said is that they LET themselves be swept along, that they did not oppose the tide.

Bolshevism only worked as e revolutionary force at the moments where they did NOT operate party-like, when top down controls brok down, when worker-Bolsheviks set the tone and leaders had to follow, i.e. when it did not behave as Bolshevism. When the strength of workers'initiative became less, it became clear that Bolshevism as a party had not been dead, only temporarily asleep. Tradional leadership behaviour and structures and pretenses regained their hold, and they clashed more and more with the bottom-up revolution, or what was left of it. And THAT is what parties do: putting limits on revolutions, submerging them in their own favoured power-structures.

So, yes, let's use Bolshevims against its latter-day fanclubs, it can be fruitful and it is fun; but don't neglect the thourough criticism that Bolshevism-as-a-party itself deserves.

hmmmmm.

Binh, I'm not sure about your post. Are you suggesting there is some sort of Bolshevik hay day we can compare contemporary pseudo-bolshies to?

Roo. I don't necessarily disagree with what your saying. But the tone. There seems to be a 'good' vs. 'bad' bolsh. thing going on which I don't really agree with. What your post seems to suggest was the high tide in bolshy activity. I would suggest there was just a high tide in workers struggle which, had more to do with soviets rather than bolsheviks, only later were soviets only recognized as legitimate in so far as they pulled the party line, i,e. only in so far as they were bolsh. I don't see the point of using bolshivism against its latter day fan club because this is what bolsh. was, a revolutionary discourse with a stifling and opportunist political practice. I feel your post really lets off bolshivism from responsibility for how much of a cluster fuck the revolution really was.....

Arbeiten, I'm suggesting that the modern day wannabes are absolutely nothing like the original in terms of what they do and how they operate. This is separate from the question of whether what they did was good or bad. Just run with the assumption they make that it was good, so the contradiction between how they operate and how their idols functioned becomes even more clear. See the link I posted for example.

Arbeiten: we don't really disagree, and I was more or less expectiong reactions like these; ) I don't think that I really let Bolshevism off from responsibility for the mess they made; I only say that, during those months in 1917-1918, Bolshevism was dragged along into un-Bolshevik territories;) And it was not able to resist that, because it was not (yet) the totally cohesive force that it pretended to be, and that it became later. I fully share your rejection of Bolshevism in general, as a party political project. I only think that, during those months in 1917, things were a bit more complicated, because Bolshevism was not yet the finished thing it later became.

Maybe a bit dated - 1995 - but a general history of the SWP and their ideas from the SPGB.

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/study-guides/where-swp-coming

Obviously this depends on the audience, and if you're dealing with people who (claim to) directly model themselves on the Bolsheviks then pointing out the discrepancies makes sense. But my experience of the SWP is that most of their members are Leninists/Trotskyists in name only (if that) - even more likely to be the case if this is a public meeting with non-members (or new members) present.

Folks are much more likely to get involved with the SWP and similar parties based on what they're doing in the here and now, their involvement in protest movements (particularly student stuff) and so on, rather than some sort of historical nostalgia for the Bolsheviks. So pointing out the inconsistency between their "idols" and their current practice isn't necessarily that helpful. If nowt else, they can always come back to any claims of inconsistency by (validly) pointing out that 2012 Britain is different to 1917 Russia and that ways of organising differ accordingly.

If anything, my main experience of the SWP on anarchism is that they engage in exactly this sort of "critique" - their pamphlet released last year spent ages on Bakunin, Kropotkin and the other beardies, plus some stuff about the First International and Spain, but didn't really have a word to say about what anarchists are actually doing today. Which made it bit useless from my perspective.

IMO it may be more useful to put the emphasis on contemporary and practical issues rather than focusing on the historical or theoretical side of things - tho that may just be a personal bias based on how I tend to learn.

That said, they are quite likely to go on about Russia so it'd be good to be familiar with the history. In particular, focusing on the way the Bolsheviks in power clamped down not only on monarchists, right-wingers, counter-revolutionaries and the like, but also on socialists, anarchists and other revolutionaries (this wiki article might be useful in that regard). This ties into the "revolutionary party" idea in that, by treating building/securing the party and building/securing socialism as basically synonymous, all sorts of violence and repression becomes justifiable.

Often these discussions get sidetracked into debates on what exactly is meant by a party, with Trots insisting that if anarchists form formal organisations then they're obviously forming a party even if they don't call it that. Would be best to avoid getting bogged down in semantics of what is meant by a party and focusing more on the structure and content of the organisation, the problems of centralisation, the way "democratic centralism" rarely functions the way it's claimed to, etc.

Would also agree with the above posters that it's best to point to alternatives (AF, SF, solidarity networks, etc.) rather than purely reacting to what they have to say.

I'd also say that people are more likely to get involved with the SWP if they appear less rather than more bolshevikky.

S-J - how did go?

True. And they've used Luxemburg to various extents throughout their history for this purpose.

what about the party anarchists?

http://www.lac-arg.org/2012/01/22/hacia-la-construccion-del-partido-libertario/

Problem is that most people join the SWP not because they agree with all of its positions but because theres nowt else out there, as evidenced by its continual massive turnover.. As such i'm not sure if theres that much mileage in writing about the SWP specifically?? I think its more important to present a visible alternative where you are in terms of specifically anarchist groupings/networks and broader class struggle.
Not thats neccesarily an either/or sitution like, just thinking of it in terms of the amount of hours you could potentially spend on writing about the swappies.