leadership role that in times of political and so- ployment and contingent labour. And for 30 32 Marxism Is Leninism dead? ary organisation in State and Revolution— cial crisis can attract much greater numbers. which lan praises as Lenin's most important That means revolutionary organisations have to theoretical contribution-this is surely one of play two related roles. One is participating in— the implications of his analysis of the class char- and whenever possible initiating-struggles, acter of the state and its role in maintaining the both large and small. The second is the role of capitalist system and the rule of the capitalist educating and training more socialists, while class. developing socialist theory to understand and
explain a rapidly changing world ike clockwork, capitalism provokes acts of Socialists have to spend years patiently engagresistance, large and small. But without co- ing in smaller struggles, both to learn how to ordination and leadership, the resistance can't lead as individuals in their own workplaces and defeat the whole system. In Trotsky's memora- communities, and to build a party with the cable metaphor: "Without a guiding organisation, pacity to lead a successful revolution in the futhe energy of the masses would dissipate like ture. steam not enclosed in a piston-box." That's the Leninist project. The second reason why a revolutionary party is It's important to emphasise that this is a project. necessary is because of the highly uneven devel- We don't have a revolutionary party consisting opment of class-consciousness in the working of the most advanced elements of the working class. Revolutionary organisation is needed to class in Britain or the United States, and we're combat ruling class ideology and to overcome unlikely to have one in the near future. divisions between workers. The main reason for this is that our side has sufAs we're all too well aware, for most of the time fered over 30 years of defeats. Moreover, the revolutionary socialists are a small minority in structure of capitalism and the composition of capitalist society. But if the most class con- the working class have been transformed during scious, militant and politically advanced ele- that time. Whole industries have been wiped ments of the working class can be united in a out or totally restructured—union jobs have revolutionary organisation, they can play a been replaced by low-wage service sector emhttp://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/3rd-congress/party-theses.htm Is Leninism dead? years there has been a right-wing ideological offensive that has disoriented and weakened most The Leninist project involves bringing together the ideas of revolutionary socialism with the most advanced sections of the working class. When the socialist movement and the larger working class movement are both weak, that's One of the biggest mistakes that relatively small groups of revolutionaries can make is to believe that they already constitute a revolutionary party, or that they will inevitably grow to become such a party. In his 1971 essay "Towards a Revolutionary Socialist Party'," Duncan Hallas, with his customary insight, put it this way: "The relevance of a party is, firstly, that it can give ... the more advanced and conscious minority of workers and not the sects or self-proclaimed leaders, the confidence and the cohesion necessary to carry the mass with them. It follows that there can be no talk of a party that does not include this minority as one of its major components." If you imagine that you have already created such a party, or that your political clarity and understanding means that you are preordained to become the leadership of the international working class in the future, it can rapidly lead to delusions of grandeur that may undermine the democratic culture that is an essential part of living revolutionary organisation. Hallas again: "unless, in its internal life, vigorous controversy is the rule and various tendencies and shades of opinion are represented, a socialist party cannot rise above the level of a sect. Internal democracy is not an optional extra. It is fundamental to the relationship between party members and those amongst whom they work." Here, Hallas is echoing ideas that Lenin articulated' at the beginning of the twentieth century:
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33 "there must be wide and free discussion of Party questions, free comradely criticism and assessment of events in Party life." To that end the Bolsheviks explicitly defended the right of a minority "to advocate its views and to carry on an ideological struggle, so long as the disputes and differences do not lead to disorganisation."
Marxism But while it is a serious error for any group of revolutionaries simply to declare themselves the leadership of the working class, the opposite mistake is to put off the task of building a revolutionary party into the indefinite future. Education is vital, but revolutionary socialists need to create more than just study groups. Activism is equally vital, but movements by themselves are not enough. So how does a group of a few hundred people attempt to build a revolutionary party that will eventually need hundreds of thousands of members? It's unlikely that we are going to grow ourselves there by recruiting a few members at a time. Most likely, the path will involve merging with other forces that are part of the working-class movement and the left, broadly conceived, but the specifics will vary greatly depending on the concrete situation that exists in different places and countries. Ian Birchall is right that socialists today still have much to learn from Lenin's writings. But to change the world, we also need to remain committed to the Leninist project of building a revolutionary party. In that sense we should say yes both to Lenin and to Leninism Phil Gasper is on the editorial board of the International Socialist Review and is editor of The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Political Document (Haymarket Books, 2005). This article is reproduced by courtesy of Revolutionary Socialist in the 21st Century (http://rs21.org.uk/).
Endnotes http://rs21.org.uk/2014/08/02/leninism/ http://isreview.org/issue/88/rediscovering-lenin
http://www.marxists.org/archive/hallas/works/1971/xx/party.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/hallas/works/1971/xx/party.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/may/27.htm