The theory of the Revolutionary Party
This is an old article, possibly incomplete, I have been asked to repost by Korean comrades.
The most important of the many
contributions to Marxist theory after Marx is, in my opinion, the theory of the
revolutionary party developed by Lenin. What makes this theory so important is,
first, that history has shown that without such a party the socialist
revolution cannot be victorious and, second, that this theory affects and
transforms every aspect of socialist activity in the here and now.
Before setting out the positive features of
the Leninist theory of the party, it is perhaps necessary to say what the
theory is not. It is not simply the idea that to struggle effectively the
working class needs to be organized into a political party. This was well
understood by Marx and by most Marxists and socialists long before Lenin and
has continued to be an article of faith of most reformists and non – Leninist
socialists subsequent to Lenin.
Nor is it some special organizational
formula, such as ‘democratic centralism’. The principle that a socialist party
should be internally democratic in discussing and forming policy but united in
action in implementing that policy was indeed adopted by the Bolshevik Party
and other Leninist organizations but it was not invented by Lenin, not a fixed
organizational structure or regime, and
certainly not the key distinguishing or defining characteristic of the Leninist
party.
What was distinctively Leninist was
a new conception of the relationship between the party and the class. This
conception was not arrived at by Lenin in a single moment of theoretical
inspiration, nor is it systematically set out in any single Lenin text. Rather
it was developed in practice, by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, before it was
expounded theoretically. With hindsight we can say that this conception rested
on the combination of two key principles:
1.
The independent organization of
a party consisting wholly of
revolutionary
socialists
2.
The establishment and
maintenance of the closest possible links between the
independent revolutionary and the mass of the working class.
Prior to Karl Marx there existed two models of socialist activity.
The first, drawn from the French Revolution and based on the Jacobins, was of a
secret club or conspiracy which would seize power in a coup d’etat on behalf of
the masses. The second, as with the ‘Utopian Socialists’, was of passive propaganda which would preach the virtues of socialism
to the general public and, especially, to the ruling class. Marx transcended
both these models with the understanding that the emancipation of the working
class is the act of the working class itself, and the idea of a workers’ party
combining active engagement in workers’ day to day struggles with socialist
political propaganda.
Following Marx the predominant form of socialist organization was
the large national workers party, including in its ranks all or most of the
strands of socialism in a given country. A typical example was the German
Social Democratic Party (SPD) which had an openly reformist right wing led by
Eduard Bernstein, a revolutionary left led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl
Liebknecht, and a majority ‘centre’ led by Bebel and Kautsky, which talked
revolution while practicing reformism. Similar parties, with similar trends
existed in most European countries before the First World War, and together
they made up the Second, or Socialist International.
What Leninism brought to this was the idea that the revolutionary
left should separate from the reformist right and the vacillating center, and organize
independently. What was really at stake here was the role of the reformist
leaders. Marx and Engels and the young Luxemburg and young Trotsky were all
revolutionaries, not reformists, but they tended to assume that once revolution
broke out the reformist and centrist leaders would either be swept along with
the movement or swept aside by it.
