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NEWS & LETTERS, June 2002
Toward a new concept of organization
Editor's Note Raya Dunayevskaya travelled to West Europe in 1959,
seeking new international relationships with groups that rejected both poles of
state-capitalism, the U.S. and Russia. In preparation for the trip and an
international conference in Milan, Italy, she penned a draft resolution in June
1958, titled "World Outlook." In it she discussed the philosophic
grounding needed for working out an alternative to the concept of the vanguard
party. Details of the trip can be found in The Raya Dunayevskaya Collection and
in 25 Years of Marxist-Humanism in the U.S. The resolution, excerpted here, is
in the collection, beginning at page 2625. The headline, notes, and bracket
material were added by the editors. There can be no genuine unification of theory and
practice in the tradition of Marxism unless we face boldly 1) the utter
bankruptcy of thought of the existing vanguard parties, 2) the spontaneity and
maturity of the revolutionary movement from practice toward not only theory, but
a new society, and realize 3) that neither the constant repetition of the need
of a vanguard party nor the in toto rejection of that concept will answer the
need of our epoch, which is nothing short of a new unity of theory and practice
based on the movement from practice. An indispensable prerequisite of that is
the theoreticians' acceptance of their responsibilities. A constantly changing concept of vanguard, based on the
relationship of the masses to the party, and the party to where the masses
stood, is the essence of Leninism. The 1905 Revolution changed Lenin's 1902-3
concept of vanguard. Again on the eve of October 1917, he threatened to go to
the sailors and resign from the [Bolshevik] Political Committee because the
masses were more revolutionary than the party. Once again in the last years of
his life he pointed to the need of "the non-party masses checking the
party." The repetition of the "need of a vanguard" did
not turn the Fourth International into a mass movement that led the revolutions
following World War II. On the contrary, they have ended as a tail-end to
Stalinism. But neither did the rejection of "the party to lead" become
a theoretical focal point for revolutionary regroupment or even do away with the
total isolation of these groupings from the mass movement. It is time to draw a
balance sheet on the basis of the actual world situation.... Responsibilities of Theoretical Groupings Any analysis of the objective situation, even one as
cursory as ours, cannot fail to meet the challenge to re-examine its own
foundations, principles and perspectives in the light of the objective
situation. There is nothing new in the betrayal of the Communists and the
Socialists, nor in the inadequacies and tailendism of the Trotskyists. We must
finally come to a confrontation between the demands of the objective situation
and the realities of small groupings like ourselves who have broken with all
those who go under the banner of Marxism — not alone Communism but also
Trotskyism — but have nevertheless failed to become a focal point for
revolutionary regroupment. This may be our first attempt for international contact
and may be limited to information and distribution of each other's views. Yet we
cannot begin any sort of new collaboration, no matter how limited, without
facing the reality of the past ten years, or at least the seven years since the
final break with Trotskyism1. The impelling motive for such a re-examination is
precisely the objective situation: 1) the coming of De Gaulle to power [in
France in 1958] shows the barbarous offensive which the bourgeoisie feels free
to embark [upon] when it sees the impotence of the established workers' parties;
2) the Marxist opposition to these established parties cannot constantly limit
itself to criticizing others; it must answer why the state capitalist tendency
the world over2 has itself not become a greater force either theoretically or in
the class struggle. As with all Marxist analysis, we must begin with
production and the specific stage of workers' revolt. The new stage,
technologically, began with Automation and the 1949-50 [U.S. coal] miners'
strike. Since the workers themselves had moved the question of labor
productivity from the question of fruits of labor — wages — to the kind of
labor, this demanded a re-examination of our philosophic foundation. Three years later the tocsin sounded for the beginning
of the end of Russian totalitarianism. The East German Revolution [of 1953]
which was followed by a revolt in the slave labor camps of Vorkuta within Russia
itself shook the whole theory of the alleged invincibility of state capitalism
to its foundations. Yet Correspondence3, which began on the basis of state
capitalism and workers' revolt and considered its very manner of writing,
editing and publishing this workers' organ a blow to bureaucracy "as
such," fell apart when the war clouds over Formosa [Taiwan] led the
American bourgeoisie in its McCarthy-induced hysteria to make its listing.4 Even before then, the truth is that with the break of
Yugoslavia from Moscow [1948] and the emergence of Mao's China [1949], the state
capitalist theory had come to a standstill, limiting itself merely to
summarizing and repeating what had been said. The only thing new that we added
was that philosophy should become integral. How could it achieve this
transformation if the grand result of all the "oughts" was that
philosophy cannot any longer answer these philosophical problems — only the
proletariat can? This is one of those truths that has always been used by
theoreticians to avoid and evade their specific responsibilities. Of course only
the class struggle will give the final answer; the point is what is your
responsibility as a grouping that functions and supposedly has a raison d'etre
whether the class struggle is out in the open or is quiescent. Lenin has left the indispensable measuring rod for the
Marxist theoretician in the method by which he met the challenge of the collapse
of the Second International. The re-examination of the philosophic foundations
meant that from then on dialectics was not "philosophy" but the
essence of politics. Still 1915 allowed him to keep his Philosophic Notebooks to
himself. We can no longer do so. Where, in 1915, the core of the dialectics was
the unity of opposites, to us, in 1958, the core of the dialectic is nothing
short of a materialist reading of the Absolute Idea, or the unity of theory and
practice based on the movement from practice. The responsibility of the
theoreticians must begin precisely here, and must be stated openly. The idealist features of the Absolute Idea are quite
secondary to the logic which historically impelled Hegel to return from nature,
or practice, to mind, or theory. Whether or not this is also evident in Hegel's
own works which, though restricted to thought, have as their constant points of
reference the development of humanity itself as a development of stages of
freedom from Greek society to the French Revolution, is not the issue. The
crucial point is that it is our contemporary world, our own age of absolutes,
where revolution and counter-revolution are so interlocked, that has compelled
the Absolute Idea to emerge out of its abstract context and come into head-on
collision with the concept of the vanguard party. The concept of "the party to lead" has become
a pillow for intellectual sloth, the actual stumbling block to a unification of
theory and practice on new foundations. At the same time the opposite side of
the same coin is the concept of those who reject the concept of the vanguard
party in toto for it [that rejection] then has become an evasion of their tasks,
their role, their responsibilities, their relationship to the mass movement.
Where the impotence of Trotskyism is not alone in the lack of a mass following
but in their concept "to lead," to plan "for" the workers,
to substitute themselves for the capitalist class and rule in a state capitalist
manner, the isolation of the opponents of vanguardism from the mass movement has
contributed to the apparent apathy of the French masses. The appeal for Workers
Councils can be as "sloganized" as any minimum program when it appears
suddenly out of thin air, with no theoretical preparation. It is an evasion of responsibility and perspective to
think that the mass movement alone must give all the answers. A new epoch opened
with World War II and the failure of fascism's attempt to centralize the
European economy in preparation for world conquest. The new protagonists —
U.S. and Russia — for world power have now "advanced" to the point
where civilization itself is within the orbit of an ICBM. Our age must therefore
answer with as challenging a theoretical unfoldment of perspectives as was the
case with Marx in 1843, 1864 and 1871 and with Lenin in 1914 and 1917.(5) But it
must be for our age. The maturity of our age demands the totality of the Marxist
Humanist approach and forbids leaving the philosophy as the province of the
theoretician. A materialist reading of Hegel's Absolute Knowledge took
one form in Marx's time — the general absolute law of capitalist development
in the unemployed army, and its opposite, the new passions and forces for a new
society. That is to say, the dialectic of bourgeois society was concrete, while
the elements of the new society present in the old were, of necessity, general. The dialectic took another form in Lenin's time where
the objective world connections and transformation into opposite were the
predominant features of the world of World War I. The new transformation into
opposite of the workers' state itself had barely begun, much less been
consummated by January 1924 when Lenin died. Hence, the outstanding feature
seemed to be "merely" the emergence of a new rude personality called
Stalin who had a passion for bossing and who should be removed from power. Because Trotskyism went no further than that when state
capitalism had already developed, it has inevitably degenerated where it is
nothing but a left cover for Communism (Stalinism first and Khrushchevism now).5 A new point of departure is in the ever deeper strata of
the proletariat from America that has raised the alienation of labor in a more
concrete form than ever could have been in Marx's time. A new point of departure
is the Hungarian Revolution [in 1956] where the freedom fighters did not
separate politics from economics. A new point of departure in theory cannot fall
short of this challenge from actuality. We in America think that Marxism and Freedom is such an
attempt, the first comprehensive attempt since the death of Lenin to restate
Marxism neither as dogma nor as ready-made answers to the problems neither Marx
nor Lenin faced. This study, from the vantage point of the new problems of state
capitalism, is done on the basis of the movement from practice, not only to
theory, but to a new society. It is not, and does not pretend or wish to be , a
programmatic document. Marxism and Freedom is, and claims to present, a
theoretical basis for the clarification of minds which is the first prerequisite
for Marxist groups, for both serious analysis and actual activity in the class
struggle. The masses will do what they will do. We cannot substitute for them.
But we must know where we are bound in more comprehensive terms than has been
the case for the past seven years. We feel that there can be no vision for a new society
without the total reorganization of thought, and the complementary experience of
a workers' newspaper such as News & Letters as both weapon in the class
struggle and the ground for continuous deepening of theory... NOTES
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