The culture that develops inside organizations with the we-have-the-correct-program view, as mentioned, never really allows differences although in the formal statutes it always claims to accept the right to minority views.
The SWP never had a culture permitting differences. Every group that ever raised any questions regarding any of its policies was eventually driven out.
In this sense it had no resemblance to the party Lenin led, which was continuously alive with debate and differences. Lenin's party had various newspapers that would debate each other publicly. In fact, in the 1908 period when Lenin was arguing against one grouping in his organization he accused them of hiding their minority views and not publishing them in their public organ.
I do not think most DSP members would think it Leninist for a minority to start up its own public organ and publish its differences with the majority. Well, that was the reality of Lenin's party. In that specific case Lenin even argued that the minority should not use the excuse that the party was not in a pre-convention discussion period to not publicly publish their minority views.
Lenin wrote letters to friends all the time expressing his personal views. He thought it quite normal for there to be private discussions and correspondence between members of his organization. He saw that as a right. In fact, in one letter he began by saying that if anyone read this letter when it wasn't addressed to them, that person was violating his right to private correspondence.
Cannon tried to set up norms of functioning. Some are undoubtedly of great value, while others are completely opposed to the reality of Lenin's Party, but they were always presented as "Leninism".
Cannon introduced the idea that members of a Leninist party are violating norms if they express their differences within the organization to anyone outside the organization or engage in private correspondence, even within the organization.
At the time I joined the SWP in the late 1950s there was a lose grouping in the SWP that the Dobbs leadership referred to as "petty bourgeois" and that was eventually driven out, called the Weissites (named after Murry Wiess a leader of the SWP). One of their horrendous crimes was that they had circulated letters to each other about the internal situation in the SWP.
In saying all of this my point is not to say that responsible people should not think out how they act and the consequences of their actions in terms of how best to carry on a discussion within an organization. Nor do I mean that we should not have rules and norms and try to function in an organized manner.
I am trying to get people to think through these issues and to realize that the norms the US SWP taught the Australian DSP were a misrepresentation of what Lenin's movement had been like, and not necessarily at all a "proven" organizational method. My point is the norms Cannon developed had little to do with the reality of Lenin's party.
The underlying difference has its roots in the fact that Lenin's party was directly leading the masses in a powerful radicalization and the SWP was an isolated ideological propaganda grouping. Even if the SWP had really reflected Lenin's organizational forms they might very well not be at all applicable to its specific circumstances. The idea of a generalized organizational method is about as correct as the idea of an abstract "correct political program".
It is for the above reasons that in my opinion the DSP is not, and should not refer to itself as, a Leninist party. The new preamble of the DSP's program, in my opinion, is an attempt to codify some of these incorrect concepts of organization.
Its language is that of an organization that is not dealing with the reality of mass struggles. When an organization is isolated it can talk in tough terms about "overthrow" and "revolutionary action" and so on. Organizations that actually lead the masses, like the FPL in El Salvador or the Alliance in New Zealand, would pay an immense negative price for that kind of needless and easily misunderstood language.
What that language does is give those wanting to block our movement a weapon to attack us and help isolate us. It is posturing that serves no purpose and miseducates the membership on how to handle themselves. Deep down it reflects a method that lacks seriousness. It is ultraleft in that sense.
Such language is completely unnecessary to maintain our principles. It is revealing when people believe that they have to use language easily misunderstood in order to maintain their principles. It shows a great fear of selling out.
It is true the DSP lives today in a world that has seen so much betrayal of our ideals for a democratic and just world that it fears the same shift away from socialist ideals could affect it. While this is definitely part of our reality, the use of such terms and acting tough and passing tough-sounding phrases is no real protection.
On the contrary it reveals a developing leftist error. The preamble also makes a prediction of total demise unless the kind of structure referred to as Leninist (incorrectly) is adopted and followed. The preamble says the DSP would degenerate and no longer be a coherent organization.
We should give this some careful thought. Causa R in Venezuela does not follow any of this. They act precisely in the manner criticized by the DSP. Yet Causa R has not degenerated or collapsed. Instead they have gone from 20 members to tens of thousands directly in the leadership of major industrial unions, have the support of millions, precisely among the poorest Venezuelans and its industrial working class.
Does that mean Causa R, and what it advocates is right for Australia, or even Venezuela? That is not necessarily the case. Will they be able to go beyond their present gains with the organizational methods they have used up to now? That's a difficult questions to answer, but my point is we should drop this arrogance about the "proven Leninist principles of organization", meaning the structure that Cannon developed in the United States.
We need to maintain an open mind, to learn from not only the Russian experience but from that of others who have succeeded in winning the masses to break with bourgeois politics and for the independence of the class.
The Causa R example is an extreme one, but nevertheless useful. The original group of 20 members led by Alfredo Maniero decided on this course some 23 years ago. Maniero was driven by the need to root the organisaiton once again among the masses. To now look at Causa R and not recognize its success and potential would be blindness.
It is wrong to make statements like: "Any attempt to start with a politically heterogeneous, loosely organized group, to try and win a mass base, and then try to turn it into a tight Bolshevik-type party, would end in disaster. It wouldn't have revolutionary politics." Or, "But there's never been a case of a loose organization without trained cadres ever being able to lead a socialist revolution."
First of all, Lenin's party did begin with a politically heterogeneous, loosely organized group, which did win the masses, the Second International. And then Lenin did succeed in building within such an organization a more cohesive formation.
Yet John Percy's report, quoted above, refers to exactly what Lenin did as something that would end "in disaster", something that's impossible. The point John Percy is defending is the concept that one starts with a small but hardened cadre formation with a fully developed "revolutionary socialist" program and then you win the masses and become a big cadre formation.
Any other vision is dead wrong. History says John is wrong. What we have never seen yet, but we probably will see some day is what John advocates. Everything is possible over time and in rapidly changing circumstances.
Secondly, the FSLN is a perfect example of an organization that was completely heterogeneous politically, and deliberately so. Yet it did succeed in winning the masses and carrying out armed struggle to bring down the Somoza dictatorship.
So was the July 26 Movement in Cuba. Statements about the "only" way that things will happen or could "never" happen are generally wrong. Causa R continuing to evolve in its class struggle orientation cannot be ruled out in the manner that John Percy does in his report to the DSP. In the recent military uprisings against the government in Venezuela the masses poured into the streets to support the soldiers trying to end the Mafia-like, corrupt rule of the bourgeois political parties.
The media immediately started a campaign against Causa R, accusing it of intrigue with the rebel military officers and of hiding arms, etc. In the recent elections the military threatened a coup if Causa R won. What will happen in the next period is unclear. This is a living struggle.
There is no question Causa R is standing up for the working class and promoting its interests. It does not fit the schema of the DSP, so undoubtedly the DSP will expect it to "end in disaster", focusing its attention on the limitations of Causa R's stated platform.
If the DSP leadership believes views like those put forward by Steve Robson at the 19?? DSP national conference will mean disaster, one can only imagine what they think of Causa R. After all, what Causa R advocates and practices would make Steve Robson look like a raving centralist.
Causa R, like the Greens, tries not to vote at meetings. Anyone can join or leave, they are publicly against democratic centralism and so on. They didn't fall apart, they did not lose their effectiveness, if by that we mean leading the class struggle, fighting for the rights of workers, winning masses to a class break with the parties of the bourgeoisie, etc.
In criticizing Robson the DSP leadership used a method that has been characteristic of all sectarian Trotskyist groups. Once anyone challenges the leadership you make a class characterization of that person. Barnes did that to Jim Percy. Jim was great as long as he agreed. Once he differed it was discovered he had been a "petty bourgeois" type all along. He was a student hippy type with a beard who owned a house. Ipso facto petty bourgeois, wrong politically.
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