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http://libcom.org/library/sociology-leninist-organizations Leninists believe that there needs to be a revolutionary workers’ organization in order for the working class to challenge the capitalist system. Realizing that it is difficult to build a revolutionary workers’ organization, Leninists have often built an intermediate form instead, recruiting and convincing individuals to the idea of building such an organization in the future. The disparity between recruiting people to ideas and building working class power is rarely acknowledged beyond the belief that they will get to it eventually. The fundamental flaw of the Leninist Model, as we will call it, is this notion that a revolutionary workers’ organization, or the precursor to it, can be recruited into existence. On the contrary, such an organization can only be built as a product of struggle, and yet Leninists have sought to recruit people to Marxist ideas even in the absence of struggle. The idea that a revolutionary cadre can be built by recruiting people, more often than not middle-class, rarely with any material stake in the success of the organization or the struggles they are involved in, is an idealist and moralistic conception that is completely contrary to any understanding of Marxist theory or even to the writings and experience of Lenin himself. Leninists assume, nonetheless, that because they believe this effort is at the service of class struggle that it will all work out fine, as though their organization is exempt from the forces that affect all other institutions in capitalist society. This article will attempt to provide the beginnings of a materialist analysis of how Leninists have sought to build revolutionary workers’ organizations but have more often built bureaucratic sects instead. The problem is not just that it is quite hard to build the former but also that it is quite a bit easier to build the latter. Sectarian behavior is “normal” and “natural” and Leninists have usually formalized their sectarianism with bureaucratic rules and norms rather than built structures to counteract it. This article will also attempt to bring in some theoretical tools from outside of Marxism, particularly from the sociology of organizations and social psychology, which should help enlighten rather than negate the Marxist method. We will focus on the Leninist Model, specifically the one subscribed to by the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP) for the last few decades. That is, an organization which focuses on recruitment to a very specific set of Marxist ideas; which subscribes to a particular form of democratic centralism in which the leadership debates their views in secret and then present a united front to the membership, who then debate their views in secret and present a united front to the world at large; which places a high priority on recruitment to the organization itself; but which nonetheless engages in social movements including protests and strikes in order to recruit people to this project. There are problems with the rules of democratic centralism, but the problem lies not in the rules themselves. Rather, the rules merely legitimize the organizational behavior that flows inherently from the Leninist Model. The rules and norms are merely symptoms. What needs to change are the fundamental organizational methods which have distorted the behavior of Leninists without them even realizing it. Article continues here: http://libcom.org/library/sociology-leninist-organizations _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
