The
"Struggle for Organizational Hegemony" on the Left—
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It is hard for anyone to avoid noting the fragmented condition of the revolutionary left: multiple small groups each competing with all others for influence and recruits. There are many and complex reasons for this state of affairs. To some extent it does represent genuine and important political disagreements on questions such as how to orient toward contemporary struggles, what strategic path to follow to promote revolution, what forces constitute the revolutionary subject in contemporary society, who are the primary allies, what ideologies should be promoted and which ones combated, plus many similar issues. But there is one
factor which has generated considerable fragmentation and which, in my
view, ought to be theoretically discarded: The idea that there can be
one, and only one, organization that has a truly revolutionary outlook,
that this organization with the correct revolutionary outlook is the
one I belong to, and that the most essential goal, therefore, is to
battle for the organizational hegemony of my group. All other
organizations on the left represent the enemy, either actively or by
default.
This theme runs
through more than one historical tradition—including the
Trotskyist movement, the "Marxist-Leninist" current that looked
to Maozedong thought, and even those Communist Parties that looked to
Moscow for leadership. The "struggle for organizational hegemony" was
one of the driving elements in the internal life of the groups to which
so many of us belonged. Where did this idea come from? Why did it run
so deep in our political consciousness? Why is it so tenacious, still
shaping the actions of so many who imagine themselves to be charting a
revolutionary course today?
Revolutionary
ideas and revolutionary organizations
First let me state
that there is a struggle which we ought to consider essential: a
struggle for the hegemony of revolutionary ideas. This I
still firmly believe in.
Second, note that a
valid element exists even in the thought that we may need to promote
the hegemony of a single revolutionary organization: There are times
when this does, in fact, become a decisive factor in the class
struggle, decisive in our battle for the hegemony of revolutionary
ideas. One such historical moment occurred in Russia in 1917. And
because an understanding of what happened in Russia in 1917 constituted
such an important element in the development of all three of the
historical trends mentioned above, the idea of organizational
hegemony which proved decisive in that specific case
transformed itself into a theoretical over - generalization which has
maintained its hold down to the present day.
It would be a
mistake to suggest that in the Spring of 1917 in Russia only the
Bolsheviks conceived the idea of "All Power to the Soviets." But the
Bolsheviks were the largest and most influential force to adopt this as
part of their program (in April of that year), and the only political
party to do so. The entire struggle in Russia from April to the time of
the insurrection in October can reasonably be boiled down to a struggle
for the hegemony of this idea: "All Power to the Soviets." And since
the Bolsheviks were the biggest and most consistent force engaged in
that struggle, there was a strong tendency for others (left Social
Revolutionaries, left Mensheviks, Trotskyists) who agreed with this
slogan to gravitate toward and join the Bolshevik party. The struggle
for the hegemony of the revolutionary idea ("All Power to the Soviets")
soon began to take the form of a struggle for the hegemony of
the Bolshevik Party, as an organization, within the Soviets themselves.
In the years
immediately following the October insurrection, when the battle became
one for the maintenance of Soviet power against the counterrevolution,
it was once again only the Bolsheviks who stood firm in defense of this
revolutionary task (idea). Throughout this period, then, (1917 through
the early 1920s) the struggle for the hegemony of revolutionary ideas
in Russia/the USSR did, in fact, coincide, at least for the most part,
with the reality of hegemony for a single organization.
And so, what was
true in Russia during this period of time began to be envisioned by
subsequent theorists not as a particular historical moment or specific
case study of revolutionary events, but as an absolute iron law of
history: There will and can be only one revolutionary party with the
correct set of revolutionary ideas (and not only in the most
revolutionary of times, as in Russia in 1917, but at all times and in
all places—see more below). The struggle for hegemony of our
organization became one of the guiding principles of every
organization—whether it considered itself Trotskyst, or Maoist,
or part of the Communist movement that looked to Moscow for guidance.
Each group felt pretty much the same way about itself. This lead to a
struggle for organizational hegemony not only between these
three broad currents but within them as well. Both the Trotskyists and
the Maoists (but especially the Trotskyists) split into smaller and
smaller factions as new political questions, and therefore different
political assessments, emerged —each claiming to be the
organization with the correct set of
revolutionary ideas whose task was to struggle with all
others (most importantly those who were closest to themselves
ideologically) for hegemony. The only reason this did not also happen
among those who looked to Moscow was that the Kremlin always
hand-picked one specific national grouping, anointing it as Moscow's
official representative, thus cutting short the development of a
struggle between different currents.
We should note
another nuance which seems important here, already referenced above.
What happened in Russia during 1917, with all of the revolutionary
forces gravitating toward a single organization, may well be a
universal law of historical development in the context of
genuinely revolutionary events. Though our base sample of
experience is too small to make this a definitive theoretical
generalization, it does have a certain logical appeal. It would make
sense that in the heat of a proletarian revolutionary struggle those
who begin thinking along similar strategic lines are likely to want to
work together in a single political party. But even if this does turn
out to be a universal development during the most
revolutionary moments , it hardly implies the iron
necessity for a single hegemonic party at other times, when the tasks
are less clear-cut and a greater diversity of revolutionary thought is
even more essential.
In its worst forms,
the battle for organizational hegemony, post 1917, turned into
murderous violence against others on the left. Stalin was the one who
initiated this kind of "political struggle," against the Left
Opposition—in Russia and in exile. The assassination of Trotsky
in Mexico is one example, but only one. Many Maoist groups, and a few
that came out of the Trotskyist tradition, also engaged in violent
assaults, up to and including political assassinations, against other
organizations with whom they were contending for hegemony.
Today there is a
general (though still not universal) understanding that violence within
the left is not the way to address our political disagreements. But
other forms taken by the struggle for organizational hegemony, pursued
as a necessity (as an iron law of history), have not yet been
decisively overcome. It is an approach that still runs very deep, is
still embraced by most formations that think of themselves as
revolutionary.
There are a few
exceptions to this, such as the socialist organization Solidarity to
which I belong. Also, on an international level, the Fourth
International (that wing of it that Ernest Mandel was the leader of
until his death) has also abandoned this self-conception. There are
others which have emerged, especially in the last decade. So it seems
important to note, once again the other side of our dialectic: I would
argue that there is a certain tendency for groups and currents which
give up the struggle for organizational hegemony to simultaneously give
up the struggle for the hegemony of revolutionary ideas, as if these
two distinct elements were one and the same. We should insist, however,
that it is essential to continue the struggle to understand and define
revolutionary ideas, to disseminate them to a mass audience as well as
on the left, and to attempt to win a substantial layer of activists to
them—without, simultaneously, falling into the trap of believing
that every other group, who may have a somewhat different take on what
it will take to make a revolution, thereby becomes our enemy.
Some
questions to consider in this context
1) Marxism is part
of a Western tradition of rationalism and positivism. Less
sophisticated versions of this general philosophy will often act as if,
and sometimes even actively affirm that, there is one, and only one,
"scientific truth." Most, or at least the best of, Western science does
not actually restrict itself based on such a narrow premise. But it
remains the way many kinds of inquiries are structured, the way survey
classes are generally taught at universities, the way popularizations
are most often presented, etc. It therefore has a prevailing influence
in society, including on left groups. Other approaches to truth in the
bourgeois tradition, such as monotheistic religion, also assert a
"one-ness" or singularity of that which is real, correct, truthful
(thus all of the competing Christian sects, for example).
For Marxists, an
appreciation of the dialectic is, or at least ought to be, an adequate
antidote to this mistaken insistence on one, and only one, truth. But a
genuine appreciation and practice of the dialectical method is,
unfortunately, extremely rare. And so the prevailing modes of discourse
which exist in society at large have a profoundly detrimental effect on
the revolutionary left, contributing to the sense that there is some
manifest destiny embodied in the ideas of my
organization, which has discovered the one and only genuine truth.
Further, the more
schematic notions (please note emphasis) that see Marxism
as striving for "scientific truth" also often fail to understand that
when we are dealing with human society and social struggle "truth" is
far more complex than it is in an experimental science. Often it is not
a matter of which approach is right and which is wrong. More than one
road might, for example, get us to the same goal, but with each also
extracting a certain cost, a certain level of sacrifice (that is,
entailing a certain level of contradiction). It is then a matter of
deciding what price we are willing to pay, exactly what sacrifices we
are, and are not, willing to make, etc.
2) It is,
nevertheless, possible and necessary to talk about correct and
incorrect ideas. These categories do exist. Further, correct ideas
often emerge from the struggle against incorrect ideas. We cannot
become relativists who believe that all ideas are valid from some point
of view, that it is therefore wrong to try to judge whether a
particular approach is correct at all. We have already begun to
consider this aspect of the question above, when we affirmed the
struggle for the hegemony of revolutionary
ideas.
But there is another
element that must be added in order to make this thought truly useful.
The test of whether a particular idea, which presents itself to us as a
"revolutionary" idea, is correct or not isn't how brilliantly the
polemic in favor of it was written. Nor is it who might win a majority
of the vote in a specific organization at a particular moment. Even
less can this be measured by who is more physically powerful and
therefore able to impose their will in a violent confrontation. The
test of whether a revolutionary idea is correct or not comes only from
trying it out in the actual world of the class struggle and seeing what
the result turns out to be.
If the revolutionary
left, as a collective, understood this and undertook a project of
honestly testing all ideas, their own and those promoted by other
organizations, seeing what happens when these ideas are applied in some
way to real events, then considering again after the results can be (at
least partially) measured—rather than applying the test of whose
polemic is most brilliantly written, who wins a vote, or who can impose
their will in a physical contest—the worst aspects of the
struggle for organizational hegemony would disappear almost instantly.
Who has a majority only decides what specific ideas will be tried out
first (or most vigorously) to see if they work, or how well they work.
It determines nothing else.
3) Carried to the
extreme (when applied with the fervor of Christian evangelicism or a
crusade, for example, as it sometimes is), a struggle over ideas
becomes so profoundly intolerant of difference that it turns into a
malignancy—spawning groups like the Spartacist League, to cite a
worst case. Such political currents consider others on the left to be
not only mistaken, but an enemy worthy of being destroyed.
Organizations of this type represent something more than mere
"sectarianism" (little sects fighting with each other). They becomes a
metastatic malignancy that will spread, if not actively combated
(through a struggle against their ideas and ideology), and physically
destroy the body within which they are growing.
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