The Bourgeois Electoral Model vs. Leading the Masses to Remake the World --RW/OR ONLINE
From "Democracy: More Than Ever We Can and Must Do Better Than
That"
The Bourgeois Electoral Model vs. Leading the Masses to Remake the
World
by Bob Avakian
Revolutionary Worker #1249, August 15, 2004, posted at http://rwor.org
The
RW/OR presents an important series, based
on a major 1991 article by Bob Avakian, "Democracy: More Than Ever
We Can and Must Do Better Than That."
RCP Chairman Avakian's polemical essay takes head on key arguments and
questions that have been raised in opposition to the overall historical
experience of socialist states in the world. He defends the crucial essence of
that historic experience from attack, and, in doing so, brings new insights into
learning from the achievements of the proletariat in power, as well as the
mistakes, to carry forward with communist revolution in today's world.
In various excerpts in this series, he examines the experience of the
dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin and
China under Mao and draws out lessons for the future. He discusses why the
proletariat needs a vanguard party and a specific kind of state, the
dictatorship of the proletariat, in order to carry out this rule and carry
forward the all-around transformation of society and the world. He examines how
the masses rule, and the complexities and contradictions involved in that--all
of which has origins in underlying economic and social factors in socialist
societies and in the world as a whole, which only the continuing proletarian
revolution can uproot and transform. He also explains how the proletarian
concept of freedom is different from bourgeois notions of electoral
democracy.
Chairman Avakian's article originally appeared in the international journal
A World To Win in 1992. It is a critique of the document "On Proletarian
Democracy" by the CRC--a Marxist-Leninist formation in India whose main
leader, K. Venu, launched an attack in 1990-91 on Leninism, Maoism, and the
dictatorship of the proletariat and later abandoned revolution. What is at stake
in this argument over the dictatorship of the proletariat is nothing less than
the right of the proletariat to rise up in revolution and establish their own
rule, and carry through the long revolutionary transformation of society until
the abolition of classes, communism, is achieved. Without the hope of that
path--and the leadership to take it--the masses would be left, as Bob Avakian
wrote in his article "under the domination of an economic system of capitalist
exploitation and a corresponding political system where, as Marx put it, they
have the opportunity to choose, every so many years, which set of exploiters
will rule over and oppress them."
The entire article by Bob Avakian is on line at rwor.org.
In the two excerpts featured in this issue1, ( RW #1249) Avakian continues on the
theme of the vanguard communist party--contrasting how elections in bourgeois
society trap the masses in a dead end exercise that atomizes the individual in a
process to perpetuate the status-quo vs. the liberating role of a genuine
communist vanguard in leading the masses to remake the world; and he discusses
democratic centralism and the crucial role of two-line struggle in keeping the
party on the revolutionary road.
The party must not rely on its position of authority, it must rely on the
masses; but that does not mean it should degenerate into acting like any old
social-democratic party, tailing the masses and reducing its role to the
framework and confines of bourgeois-democratic politicking for votes, abdicating
its responsibility to act as a vanguard and actually lead the masses in
revolution.
That the CRC document's vision of the functioning of the "proletarian
democratic system" is in reality not qualitatively different from a classical
bourgeois-democratic system should be clear by now. Its "model", where the
communist party's "right to govern" is "strictly based on the electoral support
gained by its platform just like any other platform", would, at best, translate
into a situation where rival power centres, coalesced around different
platforms, would compete for the votes of the masses. The result of this (again,
at best) would be some sort of "coalition" government, in which "socialists" and
"communists" of various kinds would be involved together with representatives of
various other, more openly bourgeois and petit-bourgeois, "democratic" trends,
and in which the fundamental interests of the masses would be "compromised away"
and no radical transformation of society would be carried out (and any attempt
at this would be quickly and ruthlessly suppressed by this "coalition"
government). Hasn't there been enough--indeed far too much!--experience, all
over the world, to graphically illustrate this?2
The notion that somehow this kind of electoral process will result in the
expression of the "political will" of the masses can only elicit a cynical snort
of laughter from anyone who is at all familiar with this kind of electoral
process and who is not suffering from "political amnesia"; it is a notion that
could be believed only by people who take bourgeois democracy more seriously
than the bourgeoisie itself does--who have not learned, or have "unlearned",
that such democracy, with its electoral process, is an instrument that serves
the exercise of dictatorship by the bourgeoisie over the masses. This does not
mean that there is no legitimate role for elections in socialist society, but
such a role must be based on the recognition that the formal process of
elections cannot represent the highest or most essential expression of the
"political will" of the masses; that elections can only be a subordinate part of
the overall process through which that "political will" is expressed; that
elections, like everything else in class society, will be conditioned and shaped
by the fundamental class relations; and that in socialist society elections must
reflect and serve the exercise of political power by the proletariat, with the
leading role of its party.
In contrast to this, the following characterization of the role of elections
in bourgeois society applies as well to the (bourgeois) democratic electoral
process the CRC document envisions for its version of "socialist" society and
its "proletarian democratic system":
"This very electoral process itself tends to cover over the basic class
relations--and class antagonisms--in society, and serves to give formal,
institutionalized expression to the political participation of atomized
individuals in the perpetuation of the status quo. This process not only reduces
people to isolated individuals but at the same time reduces them to a passive
position politically and defines the essence of politics as such atomized
passivity--as each person, individually, in isolation from everyone else, giving
his/her approval to this or that option, all of which options have been
formulated and presented by an active power standing above these atomized masses
of `citizens'." (Avakian, Democracy,p. 70, emphasis in original)
Throughout the CRC document we find many references to the "political will"
of the people or of the proletariat. But nowhere in this document is there the
understanding--in fact this understanding has been repudiated--that there is no
way of realizing, and more than that no way of even determining, the "political
will" of the proletariat and the masses except through the leading role
of the party--through its practice of the mass line and its application of a
communist ideological and political line overall.
In fact, as we have seen, the CRC document consistently poses the vanguard
role of the party against the conscious activism of the masses. This is
unmistakably clear in its claim that, once the standing army has been abolished
and replaced by the arming of the whole people, and once the party and its
"vanguard role" have been reduced to a matter of the party competing for
electoral votes on the basis of its platform ("just like any other platform"),
then "unlike in the hitherto practised forms of the dictatorship of the
proletariat, in the new political structure, the people wielding the real
power in their own hands, also with the arms in their hands, will be playing a
very active role in the whole political life of the society, thereby being the
best guarantee against restoration and also ensuring the best conditions for
seizing back power if restoration takes place". (par. 10.9, emphasis added)
This is a most amazing statement! How, for example, could people familiar
with the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution argue that the masses in China
were not "playing a very active role in the whole political life of the
society"--both in general and specifically in combating revisionism and
capitalist restoration? If we contrast the Cultural Revolution with the recent
(bourgeois) "democratic upsurges" in China, we can say, without the slightest
hesitation, that the conscious activism, the class-conscious revolutionary
initiative, of the masses of Chinese people was expressed "a million times more"
in the Cultural Revolution. And this has everything to do with the fact that in
the Cultural Revolution the masses had the leadership of a communist vanguard,
while the recent struggle has not had that leadership.3 In this recent struggle there were positive factors
and progressive, even revolutionary, forces taking part--there were open
expressions of respect for Mao and support for Mao's line, there were contrasts
explicitly drawn between Mao and his revolutionary followers on the one hand and
the corrupt revisionist rulers of today on the other hand. But, with all that,
in an overall sense, the forces and lines that occupied the leading position
within the mass upsurge represented the interests of the bourgeoisie.
Here it is worth repeating the following on the role of the Leninist party
and its relation to the masses, which applies after the seizure of power and
throughout the socialist transition period as much as it does to the struggle
for the seizure of power:
"Lenin forged and applied these principles by leaping beyond what had
previously been worked out by Marx or Engels and further by rupturing with
conventional wisdom and practice in the Marxist movement, but he did so from the
foundation of basic Marxist principle, by adhering to its basic methodology and
entirely consistent with its revolutionary, critical spirit. To raise in
opposition to these principles the experience of the Paris Commune, which was
defeated--in part, if only secondarily, because of the lack of a Leninist-type
party--or the Second International, which degenerated into an outright
instrument of imperialism, is thinking turned inside-out and facing backwards,
to put it mildly. To argue that the degeneration of the Russian Revolution can
be traced to the very nature and role of the Leninist party itself is first of
all contrary to the facts and an evasion of the fundamental problems besides.
Lenin's argument in What Is To Be Done?--that the more highly organized
and centralized the party was, the more it was a real vanguard organization of
revolutionaries, the greater would be the role and initiative of the masses in
revolutionary struggle--was powerfully demonstrated in the Russian Revolution
itself and has been in all proletarian revolutions. Nowhere has such a
revolution been made without such a party and nowhere has the lack of such a
party contributed to unleashing the initiative of masses of the oppressed in
conscious revolutionary struggle.And,...to argue that a vanguard,
Leninist party may degenerate, may turn into an oppressive apparatus over the
masses, and therefore it is better not to have such a party, only amounts to
arguing that there should be no revolution in the first place; this will not
eliminate the contradictions that make such a party necessary, the material and
ideological conditions that must be transformed, with the leadership of such a
party, in order to abolish class distinctions and therewith, finally, the need
for a vanguard party." (Avakian, For a Harvest of Dragons,Chicago: RCP
Publications, 1983, p. 84, emphasis in original)
Democratic Centralism, Two-Line Struggle and Keeping the Vanguard on the
Revolutionary Road
The CRC document proceeds with its discussion of the party, taking up "the
principle of democratic centralism, evolved and implemented by Lenin" as the
organizational principle for communist parties. (see par. 11.2) The CRC document
upholds democratic centralism, in theory, on the one hand, but, on the other
hand, proceeds to argue that its implementation in practice eventually was
turned into an orientation of overemphasizing centralism, virtually to the
exclusion of democracy (this was the case, according to the document, especially
after factions were outlawed in the Bolshevik Party and then this was made into
a principle that has been generally adhered to by communist parties). Not only
was this given theoretical expression in the "the whole concept of the
monolithic communist Party, propounded by Stalin and solidified during the whole
Comintern period and afterwards" (par. 11.4); but even "Mao's attempts to
develop the two-line struggle within the party" as a "step to re-establish the
style of functioning of democratic centralism practised by Lenin, in a more
systematic manner" did not really bring any fundamental improvement, because Mao
would not break with the orientation set, first, with the outlawing of factions
and then with the whole experience of Stalin's leadership in the Soviet Union
and the Comintern. Thus, "in effect the two- line struggle etc. were only some
minor steps at rectification within the overall framework established earlier".
(see par. 11.5) In opposition to this, the CRC document argues, what is needed
is, "A thorough re-examination of the concept and role of the communist party in
the historical process of building socialism and communism." (par. 11.7)
We have seen to a considerable extent already what this CRC document's basic
notion is of the concept and role of the communist party, but it is worth
examining how, under the title "Demystification of the Communist Party", the
document lays out a relativist and pragmatic line on this question. This begins
with the statement that, "The Communist Party's role of being the vanguard of
the proletariat is to be tested and proved in the course of the historical
process" and that only when a communist party "realizes that it is always
subject to the test of historical reality, can it come down to the complexities
of reality. Then only can it realize that no authority has been bestowed upon it
either by the working class and the people or by history." (par. 12.1) The
document then goes on to discuss "the qualitative distinction between the party
leading a revolution to seize power and the party with monopoly in power": in
the former case "the party is compelled by the very context to be self-critical
and continuously correct and develop its line and practice in order to mobilise
the masses for revolution"; while "in the second case, the pressure of
circumstances operate in the opposite direction". (par. 12.1)
The CRC document has touched on some real and profound questions here, and it
might seem to be handling them in a correct, dialectical way. But,
unfortunately, once again this is not the case. First of all, it must be pointed
out that, while a party that is not in power does face the necessity to be self-
critical and to apply the mass line and thereby constantly develop its line and
its ability "to mobilise the masses for revolution", this will exert itself as a
compulsion on the party only so long as it remains a revolutionary party,
only so long as it maintains an orientation of leading the masses to overthrow
the old order and carry forward the revolutionary struggle toward the goal of
communism.In other words, at any point, the party, rather than engaging in
self-criticism and critically summing up and developing its line and practice in
a more revolutionary direction, can do just the opposite--it can abandon the
revolutionary road and thereby eliminate the need to be self-critical and to
continually correct and develop its line and practice in order to mobilize the
masses for revolution.
This is hardly a frivolous or minor point. The CRC document has overlooked
here the very real and powerful pulls that are exerted on parties faced with the
task of leading the struggle for the overthrow of the old order--pulls to give
up on that struggle and to degenerate into revisionist, reformist parties.
Historical experience indicates that resisting these pulls and remaining on the
revolutionary road is extremely difficult and requires arduous struggle.
On the other hand, for parties in power, while it is true that there is a
real pull in the direction the CRC document indicates--in the direction of not
systematically applying the mass line and critically summing up their line and
practice--it is not the case that such parties are almost bound to degenerate
once they come to power (and especially if they have a "monopoly in power", as
the CRC documents puts it). In the one case, as in the other, what the CRC
document leaves out of the equation- -or, at a minimum, fails to focus on as
decisive--is precisely the ideological struggle within the party over the
cardinal questions of line, including most fundamentally the question of what is
the final goal for which the party is aiming--and indeed which must define its
very purposes as a party-- and how do the more immediate objectives and
policies of the party link up with and serve that final goal?
It is hardly coincidental that the CRC document downgrades the importance of
two-line struggle within the party, declaring Mao's major contribution on this
to be a limited and flawed contribution. In fact, in insisting on the decisive
importance of the struggle within the party between the two lines of Marxism and
revisionism--and the two roads of socialism and capitalism--Mao indicated a key
means for combating the tendency of the party--in particular a party in
power--to degenerate into a revisionist party. And an important part of the
basis on which Mao made this contribution was precisely his criticism of the
undialectical notion of a "monolithic party" (see, for example, Mao's comment
that, "To talk all the time about monolithic unity, and not to talk about
struggle, is not Marxist-Leninist"--in Mao's "Talks at Chengtu", Mao Tse-tung
Unrehearsed: Talks and Letters: 1956-71,edited by Stuart Schram, London:
Penguin Books, p. 107).
Mao recognized that, objectively, there would be different tendencies within
the party--reflecting different forces, ultimately different class
interests--within society as a whole, and that the unity of the party could only
be relative and not absolute, would not be static but dynamic, developing
through a process of unity-struggle-unity. But what is essential to grasp--and
what shows the essential difference between Mao's line and that of the CRC
document--is that Mao did not pose the necessity for struggle within the party
against the need for the party to be firmly united around one line
and on that basis play the--institutionalized--leading role in
socialist society, until the achievement of communism.4
Mao did not approach the question of struggle within the party from the
standpoint of bourgeois factionalism or petit-bourgeois anarchism. Mao
recognized that, in a society marked by class contradiction and class struggle,
organized factions within the party would inevitably mean bourgeois
factionalism. Such factions would disrupt not only the unity of action of the
party but also its unity of will; they would not only undermine the party's
ability to lead the masses but also--and what is basic in being able to lead
them--to learn from them. Factions disrupt not only the chain of command
of the party; they also, and even more fundamentally, disrupt its chain of
knowledge --the flow of ideas from the masses, through the basic levels
of the party, to the party leadership. In short, they disrupt the ability of the
party to play its role as the vanguard of the proletariat in its revolutionary
struggle, before and after the seizure of power.
All this is why Mao, while emphasizing the need for and decisive importance
of two-line struggle within the party, also insisted on the three principles:
practise Marxism, not revisionism; unite, don't split; be open and aboveboard,
don't intrigue and conspire. And this is why Mao insisted that, while the
Communist Party itself must be continually revolutionized, at the same time the
Party must exercise leadership in everything.
Mao's line is aimed at keeping the party on the revolutionary road and
strengthening its role as the revolutionary vanguard. In opposition to this, the
CRC document's line would reduce the party to a reformist party, a party mired
in relativism, tailing the masses and tailoring its line to adapt principle to
immediate circumstances. This is revealed in the CRC document's statement that,
"The proletarian class interest itself, under a given condition, is very much
relative, changing according to the changing reality, though the ultimate
interest of the working class, of building communism remains as a long term
goal." (par. 12.1) This is fundamentally wrong: the proletarian class
interest does not change in the way the CRC document argues; particular
tactics, or even strategies, particular policies, even programs, may change in
this way, but the class interest of the proletariat does not.
The difference here might seem merely semantic--since the CRC document does
say that "communism remains as a long term goal"--but in separating this
long-term goal from the "proletarian class interest itself, under a given
condition" and declaring the latter to be "very much relative", the CRC document
opens the door to allowing that anything--any particular policy, etc.--can be in
the interests of the proletariat, so long as it is accompanied by some general
statement about the final aim of communism. The CRC document's formulation on
class interest is a "two-into-one" formulation: it eclectically combines the
class interest of the proletariat with particular policies, etc., at any
given time. The correct, dialectical understanding is that the class interest of
the proletariat does not change, but at any given time it can be expressed in
specific policies, etc., which can and do change.
The point, once again, is that, in any given situation and at all times,
everything--all policies, programs, strategies, tactics--must proceed with the
final aim of communism as the guiding principle and must serve--not only in word
but in deed--as a part of the bridge leading from the present to the communist
future. There is a fundamental identity between the interests of the
proletariat at any given point and its overall interests in achieving communism,
and this identity must be reflected in the unity between the policies of the
party at any given time and the basic line of carrying forward the revolutionary
struggle to achieve communism.It is this unity the CRC document would break
with its eclectics, its relativism and pragmatism.
Given its overall viewpoint, it is not surprising that the CRC document does
not see the need for a communist party whose principles of organization are
consistent with and are an expression of the revolutionary aims and ideology of
the proletariat and which enable the party to play its vanguard role throughout
the long and unprecedented struggle against a powerful and desperate class
enemy--an enemy whose desperation and determination to defeat the proletarian
revolution become all the greater when it has been overthrown and can recognize
the threat of its historical extinction. The party envisioned in the CRC
document is not so much "demystified" as it is "de- revolutionized". And this is
consistent with the non-revolutionary, social-democratic notion of "socialism
and communism" that, unfortunately, characterizes this CRC document from
beginning to end.
FOOTNOTES:
1This series began with several segments on
the Paris Commune of 1871. Marx hailed the Commune as the first historical
experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In these excerpts ( RW
# 1241, 1242, & 1243) Bob Avakian takes
on the argument of the CRC--which essentially upholds only the Commune as a
legitimate exercise of the dictatorship of the proletariat and pits the
Commune's experience--which was very important, but brief and initial--against
the entire historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat in
socialist society beginning with the October 1917 Soviet Revolution.
RW # 1244 featured an excerpt "On the Events of the 1980s
and 1990s in the Former Soviet Bloc and China."
RW #1245 began a series of excerpts from a section on assessing the
historical experience of the proletariat in power. In the first selection "Centralization,
Decentralization and the Withering Away of the State," in opposition to the
idea that centralization is bad and decentralization is good, Chairman Avakian
discusses how the withering away of the state involves drawing the broad masses
(and ultimately the people as a whole) into the administration of society--on
both the central and local levels--as part of the whole struggle to
overcome the division between mental and manual labour and all oppressive
divisions of labour and related inequalities in society overall.
In RW #1247 "If the
Vanguard Doesn't Lead, Who Will?" discusses the necessity of the vanguard
party playing a leading role in socialist society and what kind of party the
vanguard needs to be.
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2 Among the debacles suffered by socialist
and communist parties that have fallen into bourgeois parliamentarism and/or
focused their efforts on involvement in governments of "coalition" with various
bourgeois forces, perhaps the most dramatic and tragic is the experience of the
Indonesian Communist Party in the mid-1960s. This involved the massacre of
hundreds of thousands of communists (and other Indonesian people), the
decimation of a powerful communist party, at the hands of the reactionaries.
Leading up to this, the Indonesian Party had increasingly made the focus of its
work parliamentary and other forms of legal struggle; it had increasingly relied
on its parliamentary successes and its positions in a coalition government
(headed by the bourgeois nationalist Sukarno); and it was consequently
unprepared for the counter- revolutionary coup d'etat carried out by the
Indonesian military (led by Suharto) with not only the backing and back-stage
direction but also the active participation of the U.S. CIA. (see "Historical
Document: Self-Criticism by the Indonesian Communist Party, 1966", in
Revolution,No. 55, Winter/Spring 1987)
Although the Sukarno government did not, of course, represent the
dictatorship of the proletariat, still there is an analogy between the situation
of the Indonesian Communist Party in that "nationalist" government and the
position that a communist party would be in if it tried to implement the line
advocated by the CRC document on how a party should operate under the
dictatorship of the proletariat. As noted, such a party would in effect find
itself in a "coalition" government in which the party would not be able to
exercise sole leadership--in fact, it would not really be able to exercise
leadership at all. The party, and the revolutionary masses generally, would be
extremely vulnerable to a reactionary coup d'etat (and massacres that would
accompany it). Here, once more, it is crucial to recognize that, even leaving
out the overthrown ruling class, the "whole people", under the conditions of
socialist society, means many different classes--including newborn bourgeois
forces--and "the arming of the whole people" would in reality mean the
development of many different armed camps among the people, including armed
forces effectively under the command of bourgeois counterrevolutionary
leadership.
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3 Further, it should be noted that the great
unleashing of the masses in the GPCR was possible, too, because it took place
under the dictatorship of the proletariat, while the 1989 events were suppressed
by a bourgeois state, a bourgeois dictatorship.
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4 In a talk, "On Democratic Centralism", in
1962, Mao says that "secret factions" must be prohibited, but, "We are not
afraid of open opposition groups, we are only afraid of secret opposition
groups." ( Mao Tse-tung Unrehearsed,p. 183) In reading the whole passage
in which these statements appear and taking the whole spirit of Mao's remarks,
it seems clear that he is stressing a certain basic orientation of welcoming
ideological struggle, if it is conducted in an open and aboveboard way; and when
he talks about not fearing opposition groups that are not secret, he means
something different from organized factions, with their own internal unity and
discipline, operating within the Communist Party in opposition to the line and
discipline of the Party. Rather, it seems he is talking about groups of people
who will coalesce, less formally, to put forward a position on particular
questions. Mao stresses that, "All leading members within the Party must promote
democracy and let people speak out". (ibid) At the same time, he stresses that
this must be on the basis that Party members "observe Party discipline, the
minority must obey the majority, and the whole Party should obey the Centre".
(ibid) In other words, discipline must be observed and unity must be
preserved--the discipline and unity of the Party, not of factions--this is what
people must uphold, even when they may be dissenting from the prevailing Party
line or a particular Party policy. Thus, Mao says: "as long as they do not break
discipline, as long as they are not carrying on any secret factional activities,
we should always allow them to speak and even if they should say the wrong
things we should not punish them. If people say the wrong things they can be
criticized, but we should use reason to convince them."(ibid)
All this is related to another crucial principle that Mao emphasizes: "Very
often the ideas of the minority will prove to be correct. History abounds with
such instances. In the beginning truth is not in the hands of the majority of
people, but in the hands of a minority." (ibid) But, again, the grasping of the
truth and winning people to the truth will not be served--it will be
undermined--by the existence of factions within the Party. And for this reason,
the practice of the Chinese Communist Party, under Mao's leadership, was to
strive for a situation in which there was lively, vigorous debate and
ideological struggle throughout the Party (and in society generally) but not to
allow organized factions within the Party (at least not in any full-blown,
institutionalized and "permanent" way).
The basic fact is that organized factions will lead to factionalism--they
will lead to a situation where those adhering to these factions put the line and
"unity" of their faction above those of the party. In certain exceptional cases,
when the leadership of the party has been captured by opportunist elements who
impose a counterrevolutionary line but it is not correct to simply and
immediately abandon the party to such leadership and attempt to form a new
party, it may then be necessary to organize a revolutionary faction in
order to carry out the fight to defeat the opportunist line and leadership and
re-establish the party on a revolutionary basis. But after a certain period of
time, this struggle must be resolved one way or the other--either in the triumph
of the revolutionary line and the re-establishment of the party on a
revolutionary basis or in the complete triumph of the opportunist leadership and
line--and in the latter case it is then necessary to break with such a party and
to build a new party on the basis of revolutionary principles, of an MLM line,
ideologically, politically, and organizationally.
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