It’s 1990.
119 years after the Paris Commune.
73 years after the Russian Revolution
41 years after the Chinese Revolution
11 years after the Nicaraguan Revolution.
Four generations of revolutionary struggle under the banner of scientific socialism. Perhaps a great deal of time, and perhaps very little.
The report of the majority of the Secretariat I believe effectively addresses reality in 1990. We must allow ourselves to evolve into a contemporary organization of struggle. To do this, we need to shed some of the skins we have worn, not because they were not the skins we needed to advance the people’s struggles in the last 25 years, but because the world has changed, and new skins are needed.
The wisdom of Marx and Lenin came from the concrete experience in struggle within rapidly changing societies. Their wisdom was amplified by the tumultuous change they found themselves in, from the monumental scale of brutality of international industrial capitalism coming into full swing, the first global war, and a new scientific spirit that was profoundly altering humankind’s understanding of itself, its society and the natural world around it. The value of these experiences is undeniable, but it is not a rule book for change. Even if Lenin spoke clearly on each and every possible situation ofthe class struggle of his day, we live in a world of television, of home computers.iof faxes, of the ability to have an idea from any part of the world on your answering machine in a split second.
Ours is a different world, one that can change in weeks and days instead of years.
As the majority paper said, we too have experienced the process of social change. We have our own direct experiences.. Perhaps we haven’t lived in the most revolutionary society, one that demanded of us the level’s of sacrifice and political and intellectual rigor of the parties of Marx, Lenin or Mao(or Amilcar Cabral, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, ANC or the Sandinistas). Their lessons are invaluable. But our experience is more valuable. We have the consistent, collectively summed up experience of a generation of making revolutionary social change in the U.S. through a common organization. That, I’ll argue, informs our work more than all the Marxist classics we have read.
The decision of the founding comrades to become “Marxists,” was based less on the universal truth of Marxism, than on its usefulness in the real struggle people found themselves in. We became Marxists because it was a useful tool. It was more effective, honest and empowering than cultural nationalism, liberalism, social democracy, middle class radicalism, etc as it was being practiced in the U.S.. As such I believe the League survived precisely because it viewed the use of marxism as something to be adapted to our fundamental desire to empower people to fight against all the injustice and exploitation they face in this country. We did not do this because we read a book, or because we were told to, but because that is what we wanted to do. Put another way, if there had been some other general body of theory, we would have used it.
Other large parts of the left in the US moved to their Marxism as much as a way to ally themselves with international trends of revolution that would offer them prestige and exposure way beyond their actual influence, as to actually improve their practice in organizing people. As a result, when those trends changed, so did they. On the other hand, we have sought to step by step, inch by inch, proceed to use our Marxism to build a base, to advance this or that struggle, and consistently grow. Where aspects of the traditional language and stance of Marxism (as it had been applied in this or other countries) has not served this struggle, I believe myself and the vast majority of cadre in the League simply stepped using it. We have developed our own language, our own theories, and while we credit people who had to struggle through the difficult process of revolution, of social change before us, we have known the most critical piece of the theory of scientific socialism is that no two situations are alike, and that each society has to chart their own course.
So rather than view our changes as an abandoning of this or that “Leninist” principle, as the majority paper correctly points out, we should view this as our own historical progression. Our principle world view is the same. As long as the working class and oppressed are struggling in this country or in solidarity with those who are oppressed in other countries, we have a role to consolidate and advance that struggle by uniting the best and most consistent fighters into an effective, politically conscious organization.
My friend Alan Bolt from Nicaragua once said to me, “I am not a marxist, I use marxism, I am not a leninist, I use leninism, I am not a communist, I strive for a more just world, because I am a human being, I cannot be described by a single word, and the best I can do is to help others become more human.”
I share some of the concerns of the final minority paper that we have been so reliant on general principles of democratic centralism and the vanguard party, that replacing them within the context of a club/open structure may cause organizational entropy to kick in. We may become too loose.
My feeling is that we have to re-establish, in a public context, why an organization such as what we see becoming is necessary in the nineties. We have to create a momentum around the new organization that we haven’t had in the League for the last several years. From that momentum, I think, as in physics, we can create enough inertia to draw our energies together.
Why do people join our organization? We feel it makes a difference in the day to day struggles that concern us, and that it has a revolutionary vision for our entire society. But staying with a revolutionary organization outside of a revolutionary situation is very difficult. The discipline implied in our understanding of democratic centralism has been a critical part of maintaining people’s clarity in staying with the organization.
In our new organization, we have to become more sophisticated in organization building. To keep the broad array of people, from workers, to professionals,, community based activists to elected officials, in our organization for the long haul, we need to more thoroughly analyze how people behave in organizations in general. Our functioning will still be most directly inspired by the success of our political line in the struggles we are involved in. But we also need to work on our “organizational culture.” Most of us want a context-for our activities, a kind of mixture of conscious and not so conscious awareness of what we get out of the experience of being in an organization. For some, we will serve the role of the community church, a place to recharge and inspire, develop social ties, friendships, and partnerships, but it isn’t necessarily a guide to all aspects of their lives. For others, it will be the essential source of their day to day action, a place to give them constant re-inforcement, discipline, and direction, almost like a military organization.
For me, I have stayed part of the League for many reasons, at different times. I have felt that I was a part of the best and most genuinely committed political activists this country has to offer. It could translate my desire for social justice into an overall plan. It trained me in organizing, gave me self-confidence and a method of work that is part of everything I do. And frankly, the League was where the action was, in the Jackson Campaign, the l-Hotel, in the trade union movement, in Watsonville, in the student movements, etc. It was flat out exciting to be around. We have to keep all of these components, arid the many others that have inspired people.
The new organization should build off of our historic strengths, off our honesty, off our humility, off our uncompromizing confrontation with the sickness of self-centered ego tripping that is so much at the heart of this culture.
To create the momentum around our “organizational culture,” I think we have to turn these strengths into public statements, into a broad campaign to popularize the sentiments of empowerment, of hopefulness, of possibility that was what so moved us in the Jackson campaign. We have to give a face to the this new organization, to celebrate who its members are, and what kind of models they provide for their communities and the rest of society. This will create a sense of pride and initiative in the new organization.
We have to show how people can use this organization to create resources for their own struggles. In working for revolutionary change, we want to promote the methods of work we have found to be successful. We want the broader and broader numbers of the working and oppressed people to join our organization in order to empower themselves. We want this organization to become an open organizing and educational center in revolutionary social organization so that people have the ability to take control of their lives.
I think we can turn our Understanding of all these aspects of the new organization into a language that people will relate to. Through the expansion of the role of Unity, we can begin this process. But I think we should use every means at our disposal; public relation campaigns, printed brochures, the media, even advertising to promote people joining us.
There are a few comments I want to make regarding the “closed” vs. “open” question.
As we have found out, the fact of our closed nature, added with the fact of our uncompromising revolutionary stance, made us increasingly vulnerable to redbaiting. One of our responses has been if there weren’t anti-communist red-baiters, we would be able to continue along. Not every criticism of closed organization is red-baiting. I think the situation in eastern europe showed us that more than a sense of disliking “communist” ideals, people disliked a “closed” system – a system that objectively lacked public accountability.
We needed to be closed when our security was threatened and we were protecting the masses. That was rarely the case. Mostly we “used” our closed nature as a convenience. It was more efficient, created a close knit comradery, and gave us the ability to operate without having to put up with all the bullshit you would find in the general mass movement. There was ,a kind of complacency and safety in that, which we will no longer have.
The new organization will be accountable, not only to the people we trust and like, but to those who we may feel are dishonest and opportunistic. And while we can say that lots of groups and individuals are unaccountable to the masses, I think we have to realize that our credibility in the future has to be based completely on an open system, one that allows for flaws and mistakes to be given the airing they deserve. If we find that the state attacks us, and we have to close down, having stood on a principle of openness will give us the support we will need to face these attacks. This is not naivete, it is the concrete reality we find ourselves in.
Finally though, we have to root out our insecurities. What we may find is that the “bad apples” that Mao talked about may get into our new group. But the possibility of a few bad apples are not a reason to seal the box. If people are going to join us, they are going to have to feel the organization is completely open to inspection. Their legitimate fears about cults, about being misinformed, about being used, must be addressed publicly and consistently. We must discuss our history openly, about why we were who we were, and in that way allow everyone to feel that the door is open to them.
To our future success.