Comment on the Chicago Revolutionary
Network's
Spontaneity
& Organization
The contribution from the Chicago Revolutionary Network refers to
a pamphlet published by Red Black Notes in 1998. It contained a short
essay bearing the title of the pamphlet, an essay from Living Marxism
entitled "The Impotence of the Revolutionary Party," a short article
by Pannekoek and the Echanges presentation pamphlet.
Aside from a simplistic and schematic analysis of the events in
Russia in 1917, the comrades of Chirevnet seem to have a mechanical
understanding of spontaneity and organization, suggesting that a
future revolution will begin as a spontaneous upsurge then going over
to an organizational framework. Spontaneity and organization are
conceptions that primarily relate of the "old labour movement." We
would argue that spontaneity in a pure form does not exist.
Spontaneity is the label put on an eruption of the class struggle the
leftist parties or the bourgeoisie had not foreseen. In reality, such
outbursts have an all too real organizational structure and
prehistory, just not on the surface. At the risk of over-simplifying,
class struggle is at times like the proverbial iceberg. In addition,
it is the working class and not the political organizations, which
tend to create the necessary political structures. While reliance on
the Russian model is dangerous, it is useful to recall the Russian
soviets were not created by any party, but by the working class as a
means to facilitate its goals. Likewise the factory committees.
Because of their view of spontaneity, Chirvenet's analysis of the
Bolsheviks tends toward the sinister and conspiratorial. Our analysis
of the Bolsheviks has been of the state-capitalist Marxism of the
German Social Democracy transported to Russian soil with populist
overtones. The Bolsheviks maintained an internationalist position
during the First World War, and in many ways were the most left wing
organization in the Russian Revolution. However, Lenin never
completely broke with his political past, and so his conception of
the revolution and the party-state was always influenced by the SPD
and not Marx. Rather than the Machiavellian politics Chirvenet
projects, it's unclear whether Lenin ever wrote that the party must
rule over the working class. The real problem was that Lenin
identified interests of the party with the interests of the class:
thus, there is no contradiction between Lenin's advocacy of working
class rule and his advocacy of one-man management. Lenin's conception
of socialism can be seen in his solutions to the rising bureaucracy
he saw within the party at the end of his life: Another committee.
The Bolsheviks were not evil, but the political program they were
carried out was the development of capitalism in Russia.
State capitalism in Russia was a product of Russia's backwardness.
The guarantee against the development of a new tyranny in the event
of a counter-revolution is the degree of consciousness of those
workers who make the revolution.
R&BN/October 2003
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