Post A Follow Up Discussion Page
Posted by T.Evans on 26th November 2000
In regard to Leninism Trotskyism Stalinism Anarchism etc Red Action conducted sterling research in the late-80's early 1990's. Though the writings of Marx and Engels were used as a touchstone, the research was conducted objectively without fear or favour, Red Action then or now, having no attachment to any particular idelogy per se.
The results of the extensive research were quite stunning, and because of that regarded with horror within the conservative Left.
Moves are now underfoot to publish the record of the public debates with the Left that resulted. Also due for an airing is a pamphlet on what precisely happened during the Russian Revolution. Never previously published, it promises to challenge the casual assumptions that have grown up around the nature of the leading role of the Bolsheviks and subsequently the central role allotted 'the vanguard party' that have sustained the extra-parliamentary Left for generations.
The object of the excercise it not so much for Red Action to be able to put one over on our learned colleagues within the Trotskyite Left, but to draw attention to where and when the methods favoured by Marx were fatefully abandoned, and why it is therefore necesary to politically retrace our steps to point where the road forked - and start again.
What is not proposed is some long theoritical and fractious haul to be conducted as an alternative to working on the ground in communities. It promises to be on the contrary the very necessary return to basics, the perfect theoritical compliment to practical work on the ground. Of course with the return to basics will be be the deliberate stripping away of all the false and phoney theories that have encrusted 'real' Marxist methods for practically all of the 20th century.
For far too long the worship of false gods and the subsequent poring over dusty texts like Talmudic scholars have been passed off as theory.
In reality what the Left has really suffered from is an absence of theory, strategy and thus tactics. What I mean is - theory grounded in objective reality. An objective reality which more often that not the Left across Europe instinctivly reject rather than embrace. In doing so they very succesfully hide from themselves, the real function of working class militants (and their limits) within the class struggle itself.
The Socialist Alliances, in pulling much of the left together and in mounting an electoral challenge to Labour is a beginning. But it is just a beginning. For these two positive steps forward we see now plentiful evidence of untheorised components within the SA's attempting to impose the same structures, (democratic centralism) idelogies (Leninism) and programmes on the new formation that have demonstrably failed everywhere else. It is indeed the inability of the sects to hang separately that have caused them to hang together. But there is scant recognition that it is the failure of the sects, now jostling for influence within the LSA that have forced them to come together in the first place. As much as reality is forcing changes on the practice of the LSA, changes that are untheorised are inevitably opportunistic. Thus dogma and it's flip side opportunism are the defining characteristics of the SA nationaly at present. If this is to change (and it is by no means certain that it will ) then RA can play a crucial role in the transformation of an organisation that currently meets the needs of the left, into one that will in future fulfill the needs of the class.
Part of the transforming job is to clear the decks of the the theoretical debris of over half a century of revolutionary misapplication.
*It is intended the new publication(s) which will kick start the task will appear early in the New Year.