The validity and Current Relevance of the October Revolution of 1917 for the 21st century
Brussels, 4-6 May 2007
www.icsbrussels.org , ics[at]icsbrussels.org
For a socialist future, with a principled and flexible workers' Party
Peter Mertens
Parti du Travail de Belgique
Contradictions are widening continuously in this imperialist system, which is based on the private ownership of the major means of production. Between labour and capital; between the imperialist powers; between the imperialist powers and the peoples of the Third World; between imperialism and the socialist countries.
The question is now how the communist movement is preparing these impending confrontations. It is the question how they organise themselves in order to be able to lead effectively and together with the working class and the broad working people the new struggles that will bring about a socialist revolution and put a final stop to the exploitation of man by man.
The WPB's VIIIth Congress will deal with these questions later this year. "Socialist future; Principled Party; Worker's Party; Flexible Party," is the Congress' theme.
First and foremost, within the context of our concrete situation, in our specific circumstances in Belgium, we deemed it important to reaffirm some communist principles of the WPB. The WPB as a communist Party, a principled Party. That is the framework of the discussion. Within its context we want to tackle two challenges to enable the Party to ready itself for the important struggles of this era. The first challenge is the Party's further proletarianisation. The WPB as a workers' Party. In a country like Belgium a communist Party should be able to organise the vanguard of the working class and to have a lasting influence on the industrial workers as well as on the broad strata of the working population.
Today that is not yet the case. Hence our quest for solutions to improve the Party towards this direction. A second challenge consists of the Party's adaptation to the requirements of today's struggles. In our opinion, a communist Party also has to obtain concrete victories, have a varied approach and master the art of flexible tactics. We want to be a flexible Party in this particular sense, devoid of dogmatism or metaphysics. That's why we want to do away with certain radicalist, ultra-leftist and sectarian positions in the Party.
In order to realize both challenges, we want to capitalize on our members as much as possible. We have adapted the Congress' concept in this sense in order to maximize the wealth that is existing in our Party, also that of the new members that joined during and after the strike movement of late 2005.
Principled Party
To draw up the framework of the discussion within the WPB, we reaffirm first the Party's identity as a Communist Party.
We are communists because we strive for a society where the exploitation of man by man shall be abolished; because we want to abolish the private ownership of the principle means of production; because we want a society wherein the workers can enjoy genuine freedom and self-improvement; because we want a State that makes this possible, that will protect the freedom of the majority against exploitation and repression by a minority. Socialism is a first step towards a classless society wherein everyone will receive according to his needs and contribute according to his capacities. That is communism, or genuine equality.
Secondly, we also bring to the fore the necessity of the debate about society. Almost twenty years after the imperialist figureheads declared the 'end of ideologies' we see that also in our own country more and more people are searching for a fundamental debate about society. They have different motivations. To name just three: the economy (restructuring, lay-offs, massive unemployment, etc. vs. super profits), politics (the desire for real participation vs. ever more repressive measures and a more rightist state apparatus), as well as ethics (socialist values like collectivism, solidarity, service to the people, internationalism vs. bourgeois individualism and increasing obscurantism.). We are of the opinion that it is the time to advance socialism assertively again as an alternative for this rotten capitalism.
Thirdly the WPB wants to reaffirm the theory of scientific socialism. We believe there are two dangers for socialist theory. The first danger is the underestimation of study or the importance of theory. "Without a revolutionary theory, there is no revolutionary movement," Lenin rightly said. More than ever, the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism are relevant today. Dialectical materialism, historical materialism, political economy and the theory and experience of socialism are the basis for contemporary Marxist theory.
This shouldn't make us blind for the second danger. We believe that this exists in the confusion between a scientific attitude with dogmatism (as if it were a cookbook). Scientific socialism is not a matter of memorizing a couple of formulas.
Moreover, we want to reaffirm the communist organizational principles as they have been laid down in our Party's statutes, including democratic centralism.
Finally, we also want to reaffirm the communist Party's vanguard role. In other words, our Party has a vanguard character. This is characterized in three aspects:
(a) organising the most advanced and class conscience part of the working class and the best representatives of other social strata;
(b) the world outlook of scientific socialism, and the political line of the Party;
(c) the capacity to translate the desires of the working class effectively in the struggle, organisation and consciousness.
Workers' Party
In order to play this vanguard role, we have to organise the most conscious layers of the working class in our Party. If not, we will be stuck on the sidelines and in powerlessness because we lose grip on the events. We have to be self-critical and have to admit that our foothold in big companies is still below par compared to the efforts we have been exerting already for thirty years.
What kind of Party concept is needed in order to attract the broad vanguard and to organise them? What has to change in our Party's style of work (style of leadership, meetings, the number of leading organs,...). What has to change so that the militants and members in these enterprises and in the trade unions can take on more responsibilities?
Today, our Party has 2,500 members divided among three different levels of membership. The first is a militant core (1/5th - national cadres, middle cadres and militants), secondly, there are the ordinary (basis) members (1/5th) and thirdly the consultative members (3/5th). It is important to acknowledge that our Party's composition is not uniform and to start from this fact in everything we do. We have to make a distinction between these levels in our functioning and in our demands. The evolution should be towards a broad core of cadres, middle cadres and militants (with a Marxist schooling). They have to attend to, guide, lead and form a very broad basis of 'basis cells' and consultative members.
We are at the beginning of a process of transformation. We want to give more room for experiments in the enterprises and municipalities and centralize the best practices so that everyone can benefit from these experiences. The Party leadership has to spend more time centralizing these experiences. We also hope to build on the wisdom and experience of other communist Parties in their construction among the working class.
Proletarianisation of the Party also means: taking to task our implantation and our work in the trade unions; develop a career plan and a profile for all our members-trade union activists and do this together with them. It also means we have to consult our people in the trade unions (trade union functionaries and shop stewards) more. They can help us to develop our profile.
Several measures to proletarianise our roster of cadres have been proposed. And we also want to proletarianise the Party's style of work. Since the Party renewal took off in 2004 we have paid much attention to the development of democracy in the Party. The most important campaigns are developed together with the members, including the slogans and the assessments after every campaign or struggle. We hold quarterly seminars for those who are responsible for cells in workers' units. And we now have an organizational bulletin to systematize our most important experiences.
We also have more attention for simple and concrete campaigns with materials, tools and actions at the level of our members so that every member can participate concretely.
Flexible Party
Apart from a strategy - for Belgian communist: work towards a socialist revolution on the European continent - the Party also needs to apply tactics. Tactics lead the way to work efficiently towards the strategy of the socialist revolution on a certain moment in time in certain concrete circumstances. That means that tactics has to be appropriate and can and should change continuously. The Party has to employ all means of struggle, has to prepare for periods of repression and counter-revolution. The Party has to adapt flexibly and develop the most advantageous methods in order to accumulate points on the road to the strategic objective. Therefore, the Party will have to find appropriate ways to:
- raise the people's awareness (arouse);
- organise the people in the Party and in the mass organizations;
- mobilise the people for the struggle.
Tactics is an integral part of Marxism and yet there exists a certain intransigence vis-…-vis the criticism of ultra-leftism and sectarianism. As if appropriate political demands, favourable compromises, variable forms of struggle, flexible organisational forms, united front work and mass work do not make part of Marxism.
Ultra-leftism can grow out of routine when one is blind for new developments and just wants to continue 'like before', 'as usual', 'just like in the high tide of the revolutionary movement.' Lenin wrote about this in a letter: "'Our theory is not a dogma, but a guide to action,' Marx and Engels always said, rightly ridiculing the mere memorising and repetition of 'formulas', that at best are capable only of marking out general tasks, which are necessarily modifiable by the concrete economic and political conditions of each particular period of the historical process. (...) To ignore or overlook this fact would mean taking after those 'old Bolsheviks' who more than once already have played so regrettable a role in the history of our Party by reiterating formulas senselessly learned by rote instead of studying the specific features of the new and living reality.'1
In order to equip the party against intransigence, dogmatism and sectarianism we are submitting twenty theses to the Party Congress:
1. The struggle for a flexible Party is a struggle for the Party. Some comrades mistakenly think that it is good tactics to 'hide' or 'conceal' the Party. To the contrary. Tactics is necessary to bring the Party to the forefront favourably and correctly.
2. The struggle for a flexible Party is a political struggle. The idea is deep-rooted that the struggle against sectarianism is a matter of 'less politics' and yet it is the other way around. Often, the stereotype, the sloganesque, the routine, and the dogmatic originate from the lack of political skills. One feels powerless to convince people or to organize them concretely. The more one can intervene in concrete, variable and pertinent ways, the better one can combat sectarianism.
3. We distinguish internal from external. Within the Party there should be enough room and attention for Marxist analysis, for the general strategy and tactical questions. Towards the outside world we cannot always bring the whole communist analysis. Besides, we don't have to divulge everything, just like the state apparatus and the bourgeois parties don't tend to air their dirty linen to the public.
4. It starts from an objective and sober analysis of the balance of power. That was our strength during the strike movement of late 2005. Lenin wrote: "Tactics must be based on a sober and strictly objective appraisal of all the class forces in a particular state as well as of the experience of revolutionary movements."2 That does not mean that we just have to accept a certain balance of power or just sigh that there's nothing we can do. We do want to change the balance of power but that is only possible if we analyse and understand it first soberly and objectively.
5. We distinguish between the vanguard, the big bulk and the rear guard. That will prevent us from confounding the ideas of the vanguard with those of the majority (voluntarism). It also prevents us from adjusting ourselves to the rear (tailism).
6. We think and act in function of the majority. The vanguard can only be a vanguard when it is followed by broad masses of the people. That's why we have to think in function of the majority. Our slogans have to take the real level of consciousness of the broad masses into account.
7. We have to look for the broadest possible alliances. We take advantage of the contradictions among our enemies. Lenin: "The more powerful enemy can be vanquished only by exerting the utmost effort, and by the most thorough, careful, attentive, skilful and obligatory use of any, even the smallest, rift between the enemies, any conflict of interests among the bourgeoisie of the various countries and among the various groups or types of bourgeoisie within the various countries, and also by taking advantage of any, even the smallest, opportunity of winning a mass ally, even though this ally is temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional. Those who do not understand this reveal a failure to understand even the smallest grain of Marxism."3
8. We understand the necessity to manoeuvre and to make compromises. Lenin: "From all this follows the necessity, the absolute necessity, for the Communist Party, the vanguard of the proletariat, its class-conscious section, to resort to changes of tack, to conciliation and compromises with the various groups of proletarians, with the various parties of the workers and small masters. It is entirely a matter of knowing how to apply these tactics in order to raise-not lower-the general level of proletarian class-consciousness, revolutionary spirit, and ability to fight and win."4
9. We have to set our own agenda. We shouldn't respond to all provocations by the bourgeoisie. Instead of trying to strike in all directions, we have to stick to our core message. It is possible that we have to avoid talking about certain issues because they are not to the point, because they are provocative, or because they cannot be understood.
That doesn't mean that we have to avoid all controversial issues. It only means that we have to set the agenda ourselves and don't have to respond to everything 'as a matter of principle'.
10. We have to wage struggles in a favourable way. The point is not to be right; we want the people to understand that we are right. That is true in all fields: social progress, democracy (e.g. anti-racism, refugees, the anti-terrorist law,...), peace (e.g. anti-imperialism, resistance against the American occupation) and international solidarity. Defending one's point of view in a favourable way doesn't mean that we have to keep quiet about more complicated issues. It means that we have to find the most favourable approaches.
11. We support everything that is positive. The desires of the workers are never 'pure'; there's always some 'noise'. They are like rough diamonds. We shouldn't be afraid of the dust and the noise; we have to see the diamond below. Therefore, we want to discover all positive trends and defend the enthusiasm of the working class. Ultra-leftism is only focusing on the 'negative'. Marxists never complain about the negative. They support and develop the positive and use that to isolate and refute the negative.
12. We use the power of the good example like France's wealth tax, public transport in Sweden or the drug policy in New Zealand.
13. There's no room for never-ending dogmas in the organizational field. We always have to find the organizational forms that correspond to the given circumstances of the ebb and flood of the movement.
14. Mass organizations are of crucial importance for people to gain experience, both in the struggle for socialism as under socialism (e.g. the CDRs in Cuba). Apart from the work in existing mass organizations, the party can also take initiative for new mass organizations.
15. The trade unions are the most important mass organizations of the working class.
16. We are concerned about the people's concrete problems. Revolutionaries are the most ardent fighters for reforms. What sets us apart from reformists is that we have a socialist vision for society and therefore a firm backbone to exact concrete reforms.
17. We realize concrete things. We work for (small) victories. We are not just 'talkers'; we are 'doers'. That is how we should be known. The Party that is able to realize things and that is able to give perspectives, bring about enthusiasm, and gain effectiveness through those important (small) victories. The clinics of Doctors for the People are still the best experience of concrete realizations. We have to gather all proposals and ambitions to replicate this example creatively in other fields, in the first place in the enterprises and trade unions.
18. Interviews and contacts outside the Party are helping us to determine our tactical calls. Both in the struggle for the reinstatement of a shop steward as in the campaign for cheaper medicines; in the campaigns in the context of a trade union struggle as well as in the municipal elections this was the key issue. That is also true under socialism.
19. Inner Party democracy is essential for politics and tactics.
20. We bring recognizable spokespeople to the forefront. We are a Party of 'living people' and not an anonymous Party or a Party without a face.
1 W.I. Lenin, Letters on Tactics [April 1917], http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/x01.htm
2 W.I. Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch07.htm
3 W.I. Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch08.htm
4 W.I. Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch08.htm