The role of an organization of revolutionaries and the class struggle

No process can be fully understood in isolation from its environment. Not only is there an extremely tight relationship between a process and its environment, the environment conditions the development of the process.

The qualitative essence of an organization of revolutionaries is its role in the political education of the leaders of the struggle. This is the uniqueness which sets it apart from all other organizations. Although most organizations involved in the fight for social change have an educational aspect, this is not usually the qualitative, defining aspect of its existence.

The environment within which an organization of revolutionaries functions is the class struggle. Every class struggle is a political struggle for power. Marx stated in the Communist Manifesto: "The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties. ... The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat."

The birth of the Labor Party, and its potential to mature into a genuine political expression of the movement against the oppressive conditions of the final stage of capitalism, allows the organization of revolutionaries to begin to further develop and define its role. Marx again from the Manifesto: "The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property." Thus we see that under the proper conditions the role of revolutionaries becomes to explain that the only solution to the crisis of capitalism is the cooperative, collective ownership of the wealth of society.

One of the problems revolutionaries have had in understanding certain projections in the Communist Manifesto has been that these projections make sense only when the productive forces have developed to the point that labor as we know it can be eliminated, that the potential for abundance exists and that therefore class society can be done away with. With the advent of electronics and the forcing of increasing numbers of people outside the productive process, an objective movement for communism has begun to develop. Under a system of production without workers, any movement for the basis necessities of life necessarily, sooner or later, is forced to faced the need to reorganize society - their immediate demands are objectively communist! Once the connection between work, wages and buying goods is broken, people are open to the necessity of not only a new system to distribute the goods produced, but the need for the entire reorganization of society around the new forces of production.

The mass movement not only puts forward demands which cannot be met under this stage of capitalism, but it also creates its own political party to fight for the power to achieve these demands. It is important to understand how this is different than the period of the transition from agriculture to industry and the development of the Leninist party as the political expression of the industrial working class. During that period there were two revolutionary classes which could lead the introduction of industrialization, the bourgeoisie and the industrial working class. It was these conditions which shaped and determined the form of organization of the revolutionaries. Lenin correctly developed the Communist Party as a unity of the practical leaders, the vanguard, and the theory of socialism. That party had to be an ideologically monolithic organization which directed every stage of the class struggle to guarantee that the bourgeoisie would not gain control of the struggle to revolutionize that agriculturally based society into one based on industry.

Today the environment is qualitatively different than Lenin's time. We are in an epoch of social revolution from a society based on industrial production to one based on production rooted in electronics. The organization of revolutionaries today have the sole role of developing the understanding of the combatants. This organization has no need to be a vanguard organization in the sense of containing the leading practical fighters of the struggle. Today, the main, qualitative aspect of the organization of revolutionaries and its members involves political education. However, we must be clear that this cannot be an ivory tower educational society. The organization of revolutionaries must be inseparably connected to the spontaneous movement. This is the only way it can carry out its role of politically educating the combatants.

To clarify the immediate task of revolutionaries today let's again turn to Marx. "The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement." When Marx states that "Communists are the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties" he is referring to the need for revolutionaries to guarantee the development of each stage, and even each phase, of the class struggle. Without the development of our environment, the class struggle, the organization of revolutionaries cannot develop and carry out its role.

What is the environment within which revolutionaries operate in the United States today? The birth of the Labor Party is an expression of the shift from scattered, defensive struggles of the most destitute section of the population, to the beginnings of a period characterized by organized political struggle. The Labor Party was formed by a section of the trade union movement which clearly saw that the stably employed worker was becoming a thing of the past, and that this section of society was headed in the direction of the 70 million Americans who are already living in poverty. While the Labor Party has proved that it is very open to involving the more poverty-stricken section of society, it has little connection to this section. Thus, the particulars of the development in the U.S. demand that the League, which correctly based itself in the scattered struggles for survival, play a role in guaranteeing the broadening out of the Labor Party by bring the organizations of the "survival movement" into a relationship with the Labor Party.

We can see that the areas of the League like Philadelphia and Michigan, which were built on what was rising and developing in the recent stage, are now in the best position to guarantee the development of the current stage of the class struggle. The only way for the organization of revolutionaries to develop the correct relationship to the class struggle is for the League to throw everything into guaranteeing the development of the Labor Party into the kind of Party history demands. Thus we see in the early period of this new stage the League must organize itself to focus on the struggle to build the Labor Party, while at the same time preparing the foundation for the League to withdraw from playing a direct role in organizing the class struggle.

In the immediate period, all the work of League members in the spontaneous movement must revolve around fighting to bring the various mass organizations into a relationship with the Labor Party. This should include homeless and welfare groups, youth and student groups, minority and women's organizations and all forms of cultural work, etc. The more that this develops the more that League members are able to get into a position to develop their role as political educators of the combatants. Historically this is a new relationship. In the Leninist Party the leaders of the struggle were in the Party and could be educated there. We are moving toward developing an organization of revolutionaries made up of propagandists. We must figure out how to educate from within the spontaneous movement and from within its party, the Labor Party. The organization of revolutionaries must be inseparably connected to the movement or it will become a plaything of our enemies.

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