Cde Xoli,
In the Communist University we use the method of the late, well-known,
South American Paulo Freire.
We dialogue. We dialogue with each other, and not with ghosts.
We like to look at situations remote in place and/or time, as a way to
stimulate dialogue. In the end, the dialogue is always about ourselves
and the problems that we face. Any text that we read is used as a
"codification", or basis for a discussion.
Your riddle is not suitable to such a purpose. You give no facts but
only conclusions. You conclude that there has been a change in class
power relations in three countries. Which are they? What is the actual
political economy of those countries? By political economy I mean the
disposition and weight of the different class forces that exist in
those countries, and to complete the picture, the trajectory of these
classes?
Is the working class growing? Who is employing these workers? On what
terms? Is the peasantry stable? How much of a petty-bourgeoisie is
there? How big is the middle-class salaried bureaucracy? Which classes
are growing, and which declining? Which, if any, of these classes is
organised as a class, self-consciously? One could ask many more such
questions.
What does a Bolivarian circle do? Does it do political education? What
texts do they read?
If you are talking about Venezuela, and elections, don't forget the
Caracazo, and the attempted coup that Chavez led in 1992 after which he
spent two years in prison. If you are talking about Bolivia, please
don't insult the people's struggle by saying it was just a matter of
walking up to the ballot box, courtesy of the bourgeoisie.
What Lenin was saying in "What is to be Done" is that the working class
cannot win power through trade unionism or syndicalism. Permanent
revolution requires a revolutionary political party, and a good one.
Must stop there comrade.
Asikhulume! Let's dialogue!
VC
Xoli Dlabantu wrote:
Cde VC,
If Lenin lived this very day...what would he say about the
Bolivarian Revolution principles...a revolution through election in
three different Latin Americal states?
Most kind regards
Xoli Dlabantu
On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 2:07 PM, DomzaNet <[email protected]>
wrote:
Lenin against Syndicalism
"Demagogues
are the worst enemies of the working class" - Lenin
These Generic Courses
are designed for self-organised Freirean study circles, meeting on a
regular and presumably weekly basis without an outside lecturer. So,
there is a main text for each week. This week, our main text has been “Worker
Solidarity and Unions” from MIA, combined
with Procedure of Meetings, based on Wal Hannington’s “Mr
Chairman”. An introduction to
these texts was sent out for yesterday, under the heading “Vanguard”.
As well as a main text
each week, there is usually one or more than one supporting text, which
may be regarded as supplementary, alternative, or additional reading.
This week the supporting text to this discussion of the workers’ mass
organisations and their necessary counterpart, the revolutionary Party,
is made up of extracts from Lenin’s “What
is to be Done?”
Workerism
In this book Lenin was
concerned to oppose what he called “economism”, which is also called
“syndicalism” and in South Africa in the past and still up to now,
“workerism”.
Lenin was concerned to
show (following the publication of Eduard Bernstein’s gradualist
“Evolutionary Socialism” and Rosa Luxemburg’s “Reform or Revolution?”)
that a revolutionary transformation of society was not possible without
a revolutionary political party of the working class. Trade union
organisation of the working class was never going to be sufficient.
In the process Lenin
was moved to denounce demagogy in the severest terms (see the quote
above, which is taken from the text that we are using today. One reason
that Lenin denounced demagogues so emphatically is because they
misrepresent themselves as being “left” or revolutionary, when in fact
they are “right”, and in particular gradualist, reformist and
class-collaborationist.
Worker’s Control?
Sometimes syndicalism
arrives at a point where it proposes, demagogically, “worker’s control”
under capitalism. Marx and Lenin both denounced such tomfoolery – see,
for example, Marx’s “Critique
of the Gotha Programme”
Lenin showed that the
worker’s political party, the communist party, remains a “must-have”.
To achieve its goals the working class must combine in a "vast
association of the whole nation" and so rise above the peasant and
petty-bourgeois condition of being a "sack of potatoes".
Whereas the
syndicalism of individual factories or isolated mines is nothing more
than a reversion to petty-bourgeois consciousness, in conditions where
such petty-bourgeois behaviour is hopelessly subordinated to a
bourgeois market that it cannot possibly control.
How will they sell
their products, unless on the terms of the Imperialists? This is why we
say that demagogy is nothing but the class enemy’s message, dressed up
and re-sold in fake-revolutionary clothes. Demagogues will even be
found denouncing the real revolutionaries as fakes.
When in doubt about
such things, it helps to study. Lenin is a good person to study,
because he was good at telling the difference between genuine things,
and fakes. Especially, Lenin opposed syndicalism, workerism, gradualism
reformism and economism, all of which still exist today.
Downloads:
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