Rеclаіm Lеnіn frоm "Lеnіnіsts" аnd "Lеnіnіsm"

Tony Cliff is a critic of these two concepts (in the latter case most importantly in his book The Labour Party, A Marxist History), but there are a number of others. A.J. Polan, an anti-Leninist, libertarian critic of Leninism, in his book, Lenin and the End of Politics, offers a coherent critique of Lenin's theory of imperialism, and the notes contain a brief summary of the literature on the arguments about Lenin's theory of imperialism and the associated question of the “labour aristocracy”. (I don't agree with many of Polan's other criticisms of Lenin, but the section on the theory of imperialism is very useful.)

Also of interest is a DSP document from the early 1980s, The Struggle for Socialism in the Imperialist Epoch, which in passing makes some observations on the “labour aristocracy” question that reflect a different standpoint from that now advanced by the DSP leadership. Peter Boyle of the DSP and myself have been conducting a protracted argument on these broad questions for a year or so now, and pointers to my contributions in this debate are on Ozleft.

This argument is important because, in my view totally instrumentally, the DSP leadership has seized upon Lenin's theory of imperialism and views on “labour aristocracies”, including their problematic aspects, out of all reasonable proportion, as another shibboleth to justify a sectarian approach to the labour movement. In the course of doing that, they've turned these two theories of Lenin into a kind of supra-historical big-L Leninism, which the heretic and sinner shouldn't dare to question. Big-L Leninism is, ideologically speaking, a thoroughgoing menace to serious Marxist analysis.

It is worth noting that, despite Lenin using these theories as part of the ideological background to Left-Wing Communism, the actual tactics he proposed for the working-class movement included serious communist fraction work in all the organisations of the working class. In practice, in particular, this was true in the organisations dominated by the “labour aristocracy”, and was buttressed by a united-front approach directed at mass Social Democratic organisations, including implicitly, fraction work.

The “aristocracy of labour” thesis and the “Leninist” theory of imperialism weren't the central strategic axis of the tactics adopted by the Comintern in its Leninist-Trotskyist phase - the united front was. Boyle's idea that the “aristocracy of labour” thesis was the primary axis of the tactics adopted by the Bolsheviks in the early 1920s is a delusion. The “aristocracy of labour” thesis had more the character of a certain rhetorical flourish, a bit overstated by Lenin, to help persuade the ultralefts to adopt realistic tactics in the workers' movement.

The “labour aristocracy” theory did not emerge as the central strategic category until later, when Stalin and Bukharin were turning the face of the Comintern to a frontal assault on what they came to term “social-fascism”, ie reformism. Overstating the importance of the idea of the “aristocracy of labour” and developing it into the notion of “social fascism” was one of the primary aspects of the Stalinist degeneration of the Comintern. See Brian Pearce's important article on the British Communist Party and the Labor Left.

Lorimer's article is based almost entirely on Cannon's and Zinoviev's narrative

Lorimer's version places a heavy emphasis on the alleged need to keep strategic and political conflicts internal to the party, and by implication, even to the leadership. Lorimer, and those like him in the leadership of sub-Leninist groups, relies heavily on the peculiar Cannonist tradition of the US SWP, which refines the Zinoviev notion even further.

Drawing out inferences from Cannon's The Struggle for a Proletarian Party, and his egocentric History of American Trotskyism, a notion -- a cult really -- of “team leadership” is developed. The rules, conventions and traditions of the Australian DSP embody several intrinsic features. The primary feature is elaborate constraints on political discussion inside the party, even in normal times.

The convention, rigidly enforced, is that every serious political difference has to be kept private, unless those with differences go through a fairly elaborate process of forming a faction within the organisation. The DSP, in the tradition of the American SWP, is extremely explicit about this, but in practice, all sub-Leninist formations are pretty much the same in this respect, even, in Australia, the somewhat healthier ones such as Socialist Alternative.

Public expressions of political differences are subject to extreme moral pressure in the organisation, which usually takes the form of the conventional tripwire: if you disagree with the leadership, form a faction, and of course, forming a faction is “war in the party”, in the words of Cannon. In the history of the Australian DSP, the formation of a faction has almost always led to a split, or the expulsion of the minority from the DSP, on some organisational pretext. The practice of the Bolsheviks as they groped their way towards the socialist revolution was quite different to this. The net effect of these traditions and conventions (and in the case of the Cannonists, such as the US SWP and the Australian DSP, the rules), is to make it effectively impossible for a serious change in political direction or political culture to come from the rank-and-file of the organisation.

The effect that this set-up has had on the selection of leaderships is poisonous. Rather than leaderships being elected for a combination of theoretical and ideological development, ability, agitational capacity, and incorporating elements of conflict and contradiction, leaderships are selected by nominating commissions, according to conformity to the existing leadership, and the, usually eclectic, full program of the group.

This tends to breed out the skills required for mass agitation and leadership, as well as political innovation and alternative strategic views. In practice, additions to leaderships in sub-Leninist groups are selected for their existing or potential conformity to the existing leaderships, rather than for their agitational or theoretical qualities.

James P. Cannon's role in the development of authoritariam organisational practices in the socialist movement

James P. Cannon was a courageous and pivotal figure in the development of the world revolutionary movement. He was a workers' leader with a very wide experience, many political skills and deep commitment to the socialist revolution. Over a long life he never reconciled himself to the ruling class. All his writings, even his most curious and triumphalist work, the History of American Trotskyism, are useful parts of the education of any serious scientific socialist.

His most reflective book, The First Ten Years of American Communism, is the most useful of his books. Pretty well all Cannon's works are in print, between Pathfinder Press and the Spartacist League's Prometheus Research Library, which has done some important publishing work, reprinting early Cannon works.

The redoubtable Canadian Marxist historian, Bryan Palmer, is said to be writing a major political biography of Cannon, and the sooner that appears the better. In the interim, the best thing written about Cannon is the section on Cannon in Tim Wohlforth's book, The Struggle for Marxism in the United States.

Cannon's organizational conceptions were taken over largely from the Zinoviev period of the Comintern. They were rather authoritarian and had fairly drastic consequences on occasion.

In the 1940 dispute in the US-SWP Trotsky was extremely cautious about the summary way in which Cannon brought the dispute to a sharp organisational solution (a split, which gave birth to the Workers Party). It is clear that Trotsky would have preferred a continuation of the discussion, and the avoidance of a premature split.

That split turned out to not be the world-historic political division that it is treated as in Cannonist mythology. The Workers Party turned out to be a rather effective revolutionary organisation during the Second World War and played a powerful role in unions and industry from a principled, internationalist standpoint. Many of the young middle-class supporters of the Shachtman faction developed into very serious revolutionary trade unionists during the war.

As late as 1947 unsuccessful reunification negotiations took place between the Workers Party and the SWP. The Workers Party only began to shift to the right dramatically about 1949. Two useful sources on the Workers Party, are Peter Drucker's book on Shachtman and Harvey Swados's interesting novel, Standing Fast.

One of the rather painful ironies of Marxist political experience is that towards the end of his life, Cannon became alarmed at the organisational degeneration of the US-SWP, the form of which was an even more ruthless limitation of factional rights by the Hansen-Barnes leadership in the 1960s. Cannon even wrote a document Don't Strangle the Party, which is in the collection of Cannon's writings published by the DSP in Australia, and the DSP leadership would do well to study that small document carefully.

If you take, in Australia, the IS, the Socialist Alternative, the Militant Group (now the Socialist Party), the DSP, the Communist Party, the Spartacist League and some other of the small groups, they all share this emphasis in their internal regimes on the special role of the leadership. Usually, there is constant pressure to homogenise the rank-and-file around the political line and the whole eclectic political culture of the particular group, even in the smallest details.

Bukharin, in a speech to Moscow Party members in 1923, mentioned on page 159 of Tony Cliff's Lenin Vol 4, made an observation that is still relevant to the internal situation in most modern Marxist semi-sects, such as the DSP.

“As a rule the voting takes place according to a definite pattern. They come into the meeting and ask: 'Is anyone opposed?' And since everyone is more or less afraid to voice dissent, the individual who was appointed becomes secretary of the cell bureau … in the majority of cases the elections in our party organizations have in fact been transformed into a mockery of elections, because the voting takes place not only without preliminary discussion, but, again, according to the formula, 'Is anyone opposed?' And since it is considered bad form for anyone to speak against the 'leadership', the matter is automatically settled. This is what elections are like in the local cells.

“Let us now speak of our party meetings. How are they conducted? I myself have taken the floor at numerous meetings in Moscow and I know how the so-called discussion takes place in our party organisations. Take for example the election of the meeting's presiding committee. One of the members of the district committee presents a slate and asks: 'Is anyone opposed?' Nobody is opposed, and the matter is considered settled. The presiding committee is elected and the same comrade then announces that the presiding committee was elected unanimously.