I think forming mass organizations is crucial because it is thru the experience of running struggles themselves,
Well, I see it as a choice between building the revolutionary organization and putting energy and resources in building the revolution, and building the mass org. The mass org is the vehicle of the organic expression of the working class in their own class interests. I don't see us working to specifically build the mass org as primary, but as a secondary activity. We should be building the specific org, communist culture, and of course, class consciousness.
the main strategy is developing mass organizations that the members control, mass organizations that people can use to manage their own struggles.
How do you resolve this without it turning into a "front" organization?
But the idea is to transform the labor movement into a vehicle of worker self-management of their struggles, thru a variety of possible tactics.
Worker self-management is important to foster, but we must not forget militancy and horizontalism.
And I couldn't agree more with you abou this:
The specific organization should not aim to concentrate the knowledge and positions of control in its hands. That is a vanguardist position. The specific organization should aim to develop the knowledge, skills, self-confidence of the members of the mass organizations, so that they can be an effective factor in running that organization.
We must see ourselves as teachers of a sort, but also students from the workers.
I think we agree a lot more than we disagree. The role of the mass org to the specific org seems to be the crux of our disagreement.
TreeofWhatshisname:
Clarity is not the same as brevity.
So, even though I strive to be clear in my Essays (I constantly re-write them to that end), I never aim for brevitry for its own sake.
I have written two summary Essays of all of my ideas. The first I wrote is over 75,000 words long!
So I wrote a summary of that, and that is 20,000 words long.
I hope they are clear, but I do not really care if they are brief, or otherwise.
Anyone who wants a brief summary of difficult ideas in philosophy is asking for the impossible.
Sure, some claim to be able to do this (in introductory books,etc.), but I would argue they are pandering to superficiality.
And the analogy with Quantum Mechanics (QM) I gave was deliberate, for some of its foremost theorists say things like 'If you claim to understand QM, then you do not understand QM.'
However, if some cannot be bothered to wrestle with my full essays, I do not really care.