It is difficult to do a proper summation of political-organizational weaknesses as much of the information is lacking. Up to most recently, we do not know who gets the newspaper, how much and what they read, what they think about it, or what its political impact is. We do know how it is produced, the methods of distribution, and the state of the balance sheet.
Why do we not know these essential facts for a political newspaper? Debate on content and imagined impact of articles is often quite lively, but is in fact not rooted in very much real knowledge. Of course, individual writers often find out through their ’networks’ what the subjects of articles think about what’s been, said, but that is not a measure of political impact. The only measure is whether the articles resulted in an advance in the level of struggle or organization. As Marx said, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”
The first point, of course, is that the mere fact that we do not have a continuing practice of assessing impact and building political organization that goes beyond “contacts” is in itself an indication of the barrenness of our current political line. If we start from the assumption that the WV begins with advancing “specific struggles” and ends with increasing mass struggles, it is not hard to see that only an alchemist could describe the specific impact that fortnightly publication of the WESTERN VOICE has on the undeniable widening of the spontaneous struggle.
For the WESTERN VOICE, the basic organizational ideololgy can best be described as “productionism”. The principal task, week after week, month after month, year after year, has been to get the paper out. During the entire period of its existence, the paper has at best managed to maintain its staff at an even level. Taken overall, the number of official collective members has declined from 26 in February 1973 to 16 in October 1975 (3 of whom are out of town). Why is it that the newspaper has not only been unable to build political organization, achieve the goal of working class recruitment it once set itself, or even hold on to its own staff?
When it was suggested that the “networks” be expanded on a more political basis, on the admittedly unstated and vague promise that a pool of militants exists which is more interested in political unity than organizational unity, X/Y responded with a set of “rhetorical” questions: “Who specifically are these other communists? how many are they? why have we not been working with them and why have they not been working with us before now?”
Implied in these “rhetorical” questions is an attitude that, if these people are such committed, dedicated communists, why aren’t they working with the Western Voice? As we all know, this attitude suggests, working on the WV is a sign of true dedication to the revolution – if people are not prepared to make this sacrifice, their politics are by definition suspect.
We have clearly advanced beyond this attitude by now. But the politics that are behind it are more deeply rooted. Last spring, for example, a proposal to include the emerging Marxist-Leninist movement in the debates of the paper was rejected on the basis of mistrust.
In fact, the only sensible, realistic and progressive way to recruit staff or support for the WV, is on the basis of class line. If the paper adopts a proletarian line and clearly expresses support for revolution, seeking to put forward a program which will lead to proletarian dictatorship, support will be forthcoming from the growing numbers of people who identify with this position. No one who supports this line can any longer be expected to align with the ideological confusion represented by the VOICE. If the collective chooses to reject these people and their emerging political line, it should do so decisively and make clear what its position really is.
Another problem is distribution. The constants which are the routes and subs. Then the “mass” distributions which have been done in specific areas, and finally the targeted distributions to smaller groups affected by articles in the paper. But despite the fact that WV defines itself as a mass paper, we have yet to see the masses buying it. In specific plants, locals, etc. there has been some success in sustaining bulk orders, but taken overall, the reality does not match the assumption. Furthermore, perhaps the only places where the bulk sales have worked is in locals or plants of CCU unions – which is no doubt more a reflection of our support for that particular movement than of the wide-spread acceptance of communism among these particular groups. X/Y say they “intend the paper to be a mass paper”, “our main current task is to convince agitators of the need and usefulness of the WV to advance their own specific struggles and to keep informed, with the work of other agitators.”
But why has distribution essentially stagnated for more than 2 years? Why is it, that when we do a mass distribution of 200-500 papers, no more than half a dozen subscription forms ever come back? The WESTERN VOICE, let’s face it, is not now a mass newspaper, nor has it ever been (the Grape may have fulfilled that definition for a while). But the illusion remains. We write complex, relatively advanced stories – failing to draw conclusions – and we expect the masses to read it despite the fact that it leads them nowhere. As several advanced workers have told us, “If we want to read about strikes, we can read the Sun. If I’m going to read the Voice, I want some analysis.”
The network committees are another example of the disastrous results of failure to adopt a political line that leads somewhere. The ups and downs of these committees might be of some interest to describe. But the fundamental reality of these committees is that despite numerous resolutions to engage in theoretical study they routinely degenerated into story-writing groups which shared their “contacts” and discussed little more than how specific stories should be written. They failed to build real organization with or among the “contacts”, and rarely (if ever) succeeded in bringing the “contacts” into working on the paper. Attempts to do theoretical work in committees (with the possible exception of most recently) never got off the ground because there was no overall political framework within the collective as a whole for such work.
Another related area of failure is the total inability of the WESTERN VOICE to participate as a collective or as a newspaper in the emerging Marxist-Leninist movement. We can neither unite with nor debate with study groups or Canadian Revolution. The Vietnam event was organized by the Western Voice alone, although other groups participated, they did so within the terms defined by the WV rather than on the basis of a well understood and debated set of political objectives. Study groups and progressive unions as such were not approchaed, as we had no clearly-defined method for achieving temporary unity with such organizations. The result was a successful fund-raiser, but no lasting political benefit.
Production itself is one area that functions efficiently. It is beyond a doubt the area of our work where we know our objective and how to achieve it. The skills, expertise and organization required to produce a biweekly 16-20 page newspaper by the collective are demonstrably highly developed. There have been times when this ability was not so certain. Commitment to the tasks involved has flagged, many “friends” failed to stick around, and there has been resentment towards those people who failed to do the tasks that others expected of them. Over time the forces of production have declined. These drains are clearly related to lack of political leadership.
Most significantly, the sheer emphasis on the “responsibility” of producing the newspaper has outweighed all else. It has stood in the way of political debate, caused a delay in the preparation of this text, forced us to take positions on matters that we did not really understand, and taken time away from any possible glimmer of organizing work that might have been possible. It has, in fact, become an end in itself. This is the institutionalisation of petty-bourgeois amateurism.
Lenin describes amateurism in What Is To Be Done? (Peking, p. 108) “Lack of practical training, lack of ability to carry on organizational work is certainly common to us all, including those who from the very outset unswervingly stood for revolutionary Marxism. And, of course, were it only lack of practical training, no one could blame the practical workers. But the term ’amateurishness’ embraces something else: it denotes a narrow scope of revolutionary work generally, failure to understand that a good organization of revolutionaries cannot be built up on the basis of such narrow activity, and lastly – and most important – it denotes attempts to justify this narrowness and to elevate it into a special ’theory’, i. e., bowing in worship to spontaneity on this question too. Once such attempts were observed, it became certain that amateurishness is connected with Economism and that we shall never eliminate this narrowness until we eliminate Economism generally...And these attempts were revealed in a twofold direction. Some began to say: the mass of workers themselves have not yet advanced the broad and militant political tasks that the revolutionaries are attempting to ’impose upon them’. They must continue for the time being to continue to fight for immediate political demands, to conduct ’the economic struggle against the employers and the government’... Others, far removed from any kind of ’gradualness’, began to say: it is possible and necessary to ’bring about a political revolution’, but that does not require building a strong organization of revolutionaries to train the proletariat in the steadfast and stubborn struggle...neither [trend] understands our primary and most imperative practical task, namely, to establish an organization of revolutionaries capable of maintaining the energy, stability and continuity of the political struggle.” The narrow task defined for itself by WV – producing a newspaper which “promotes” mass struggle for immediate political and economic demands – is the framework for the domination of the ideology which says that production comes first. This is amateurism because it fails to deal with the need to build a revolutionary organization which will not only be capable of explaining the struggle, but also of leading it. It is petit-bourgeois because it substitutes “reporting” and “contacts” for political relationships and leadership. This substitution means that we “serve” mass struggles in much the same way as the doctor “serves” his patients in the struggle against disease. In both cases, the petit-bourgeois “learns” from the victim and “promotes” methods for dealing with the discomfort in the short term. He does not implicate himself in the consequences of his “lessons”, but continues dispassionately to proceed from one case to the next. If we wish not only to “cure the disease” but also to “save the patient”, we must undertake to eliminate the cause of the malady.