Recently, correspondent “Wormbin†(an interesting nom de guerre) raised an important point regarding the continued and
powerful influence of the “old school†veterans of the 60s’ and the overwhelmingly dominant approach that reduces organizing to around the terms of redistribution of our society’s wealth—more jobs, more benefits, better working conditions and cedes to capital the major decisions and initiative in organizing the power of the market and deciding on what to produce, how to produce it, management, technology, the terms of finance, etc.
Much of the left and activist movement is finally only comfortable with the mechanisms of the state as the defender of public and economic interests. Not that all the aspects of redistribution aren’t important—they must remain a key foundation of our efforts. They are required but insufficient as I argue in my earlier
article on markets.
A number of us did become leaders of mass organizations and not-for-profits that engage in community organizing, the environment, social justice, and peace; as well as becoming leaders in various solidarity organizations and the labor movement. Into these positions too many of us carried the narrow redistributionist vision we inherited from the CPUSA and Alinsky, and influenced the next generation of leaders to maintain old traditions.
Still, in the economic and social conditions of the 60s, this approach—albeit narrow—was an adequate foundation for building a mass movement. But under the current circumstances—wwhere the major trend in capital is the Low Road, totally short-term, predatory, and cannibalistic,destroying productive capacity for high profit in the short term—a redistributionist approach can’t sustain a mass movement, doesn’t build our organizations, and misses the opportunities that capital handsus on a daily basis to advance a comprehensively different way to develop and manage the economy utilizing the market, the state, and civil society.
But this wasn’t the only weakness that festered in the 60s, never to be adequately challenged, and passed on to the next generation. It’s time to take up a more serious and complete critique of the 60/70s left in distinguishing what was negative as well as positive. Here are a few of the issues that we should re-visit in a systematic and in-depth way—knowing that if you don’t really understand the past, you are condemned to repeat it—as Wormbin has noted.
A Brief History
But before I step into a critique, let me give a brief and inevitably simplistic history of the emergence of the revolutionary New Left of the 1960s. By the early 1960s, the “old left,†particularly the Communist Party USA, had been completely neutralized by the McCarthy period—a period that accelerated the shift of the party from being revolutionary to reformist. Their flaccid approach to revolutionary theory and practice took hold in the 40’s and took full form in the early 1960s. In the economy, they ceded all decisions regarding management, finance, and production to capital and never advanced a compelling or viable alternative—supremely confident that the structure of the Soviet Union could simply be imported. In the 1960s, they were totally focused on influencing the mainstream—rejecting organizations like SNCC and even seeing Malcolm X as a police agent.
In the early 1960s, the Civil Rights movement exploded, particularly with the foundation of patient and persistent grass roots organizing by the Student Non-Violent Organizing Committee (SNCC) in the South. SNCC became synonymous with a deep commitment to radical democracy and patient, persistent work among working and poor people, extraordinary courage in the face of an armed right wing, a willingness to take direct action, and a life-time dedication to the struggle. SNCC also advanced the slogan and program for Black Power—a position that explicitly suggested revolutionary self-determination and popular control challenging the social movement to go beyond redistribution of wealth and not reduce the struggle to eking out concessions from the elite in our society. This position dovetailed with a similar—if less dramatic—policy advanced by SDS on participatory democracy as a foundation for society. This again broke with the reformist traditions that dominated the social movement at that point. These views were not fully developed and almost instinctual, but, nonetheless, were to become a signature component of the US revolutionary tradition that is carried on today including on the
SolidarityEconomy.net website.
Stimulated by the emergence of SNCC, as well as the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and other civil rights organizations activist organizations emerged in the student community as well as other national minorities giving rise to organizations like SDS. These organizations reflected the birth of a New Left—a network of emerging leaders from the dramatically expanding social movement against racist discrimination, against the war in Vietnam, in support of the growing movement for liberation in the developing world, and the demand for radical democracy in all institutions. They were “New Left†because they were completely alienated from the old communist and pro-soviet “old left†in every respect including, in large part, complete ignorance of the revolutionary history of America—with the exception of the youngsters of the old left that found their identity in the New Left.
By the mid 1960s, the leaders of these organizations were engaged in a very steep learning curve and deeply influenced by the movements of the Third World, particularly Vietnam and China. The explosive character of the spontaneous movement birthed new organizations including the Black Panther Party and revolutionary organizations in communities of color, worker organizations such as the League of Revolutionary Workers in Detroit, and others. Within SNCC, SDS and other organizations, activists turned to revolutionary theory and traditions as the foundation for organizational strategy and tactics.
Within and among the growing number of organizations differences emerged around key issues that were also being debated in the international Left: the role and character of the working class; the role of violence and self-defense; organizational and personal discipline; issues of race, nationality, and gender; waging war or the long march to gain majority influence; elections; reform vs. revolution; and siding with one side or another in the international debate particularly, between China and the Soviet Union. By the mid 60s, an increasingly influential factor was the role of the police and intelligence agencies that deliberately and easily infiltrated organizations at all levels—a phenomena of the early stage of any vibrant movement for fundamental change.
In the mid 1960s in SDS—the largest and most influential organization of the white left—a serious discussion began to deepen our theoretical and practical understanding of participatory and popular democracy and control. Some were reading Andre Gorz’s Strategy for Labor that distinguishes between reformist reform and revolutionary reform. Some were studying the earliest writings of Marx and trying to understand the features of a “new†working class and what a “post-scarcity†society would look like. Then all were overwhelmed by the explosive revolt in the Black community and the intensifying character of the war in Vietnam, and the thoughtful, theoretical inquiry was short-circuited. In SDS, a fundamental rupture took place between two positions on the direction of the Revolutionary Youth Movement. One faction—the Weathermen—acted out of a highly romantic and fundamentally flawed vision of the international movement—and joined the armed struggle. They split SDS with the characteristic arrogance of their upper middle-class/upper class backgrounds and focused on going underground and committing acts of sabotage—confident that this would weaken the enemy by creating chaos and a 5th column in the “mother country.†The masses of working people, much less other classes, were viewed with disdain as they attacked one bathroom after another.
The other and larger faction—known as RYM 2—focused attention on the need for a student movement to integrate particularly with working people in their communities and places of work and patiently build a true working class base for a movement for system change. Many of these activists did become integrated into the working class and working communities and became leaders over time and/or joined the emerging environmental and other activist movements.
SDS imploded because of the split—and in 1969-1971 many of the now older activists reorganized into revolutionary formations reflecting the various positions within the political movement, with the handful of Weathermen disappearing into the “underground.†This happened in the organizations of color as well. These organizations included the October League, the Revolutionary Union, the League of Revolutionary Struggle, the Black Workers Congress, the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization, the Proletarian Unity League, I Wor Kuen and others. There was a proverbial fork in the road for the movement: these various tendencies, representing a large and important fraction of the revolutionary movements of the 60s, could forge a common organization—or the fragmentation could continue. And it did.
With the same zeal and self-righteousness of the Weathermen, small organizations each declared themselves the new Party—the vanguard of the revolutionary movement. On a foundation of superficiality and some nuanced position on the international communist movement, there was the launch of the Revolutionary Communist Party, the Communist Party (ML), the Marxist Leninist Communist Party, the Communist League, and Progressive Labor Party. Some of these efforts reflected the combined efforts of several organizations with mergers, and others were self-declarations but all reflected the class arrogance of the principally white radical intelligentsia. This evolution further weakened the movement, and led many to leave the effort altogether—now confident that the revolutionary project itself was suspect, and certainly Leninism and other revolutionary traditions were fundamentally flawed.
The New Left also had a reformist as well as revolutionary wing. The split in SDS led to the emergence of a social democratic tendency in the New American Movement that later merged with the Democratic Socialists of America. Another absolutely distinctive and highly influential current in the activist movement was that promoted by Saul Alinsky and his followers. They developed a model for organizing in poor black and white communities in Chicago and around the country. These activists became rooted in community-based housing organizations, the welfare rights struggle, the Farmworkers, Citizen Action and the Midwest Academy, ACORN, and others. They avoided the international issues and avoided any identity with the revolutionary world—with some embracing anti-communism for negative as well as positive reasons. Despite their weaknesses, many of these leaders and organizations did effective organizing work among poor and working people, and have had considerable influence in the labor and electoral arena.
The Ongoing Negative Influence of the 1960s Left
The following is a brief and superficial listing of some of the issues and conflicting trends. In future articles, we’ll dig more deeply into the details of these and other examples.
The revolutionary left of the 60s had enormous courage, passion, creativity, fighting spirit, and determination (for a while). It struggled to give leadership to a huge and dramatic spontaneous movement. It had a deeply principled position in solidarity with the African American and the Latino movements as well as the international movement for liberation. It legitimately treated the tired and passive policies of the liberal community and traditional communist movement with disdain. On the other hand, it finally fragmented into a thousand pieces due to its own amateurishness, sectarianism, and inability to understand—much less deal with—the disruptive and effective efforts of the police that infiltrated and deeply influenced organizations. Some of the key failings that contributed to the historic demise and marginalization of the revolutionary left as well as the Alinsky current of the 1960s:
1.) Ceding the market to capital went hand-in-hand with ceding issues of management—whether in a business or a not-for-profit organization—to capitalist traditions of directive non-participatory management. These tendencies, rather than the creation of an effective democratic and participatory culture within the workplace, dominate the movement world.. The labor movement—even under progressive leadership—is notorious for its’ top-down autocratic approach as are major community organizations such as ACORN that come directly out of the Alinsky tradition. There is very little emphasis—mmuch less opportunity—for genuine professional and strategic development for staff let alone the mass constituencies they seek to serve.
2.) Despite the earlier intellectual instincts in SNCC, SDS and other organizations that embraced radical and participatory democracy and revolutionary reforms, the intensified movement of the late 60s became totally convinced that social change would happen because of an insurrection coinciding with an international crisis. Any genuine effort by the revolutionary left to win over masses of people and their institutions faded.
3.) They belittled theory and in-depth study of the revolutionary classics. The revolutionary left typically had mastered the 3-4 paragraph or the 2-4 chapter version of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and the rest—rarely digging into the details of such important experience. They then slammed their opponents with those tid-bits developing a tradition for destructive sectarianism. There was this ironic image of sectarian book worshippers who would find a new quote in Lenin, Stalin, Mao, or an Albanian article on the labor movement and use it to change direction of their cadre or to attack another organization. There was the appearance of some (if misplaced to say the least) intellectual rigor, when, in fact, this was the reemergence of a deep and on-going anti-intellectualism within the U.S. left. Left theory was reduced to a series of slogans and one-liners—that, in fact, defined a practice that put the movement into a fatal tailspin. The tradition of Marxism as a guiding force in the social movement lost enormous prestige, and was
almost fatally wounded with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
4.) This strengthened an “intellectual relativism†that views strong leadership in a collective framework as suspect. The notion of a “vanguard†is always viewed pejoratively. Every strong democracy, much less revolutionary movement, requires strong leadership (as well as equally strong democracy and consultation) and values a vanguard that is confident that mistakes will be understood and corrected by the collective process. Now the sentiment—strong even among veterans—is one of backing away from responsibility to lead. Rather than focus on the substance of leadership and strengthening the essential organizational checks and balances for poor leadership—as well as corruption—the responsibility to lead is abdicated.
5.) They treated contemporary economic, social, and political environments as superficially as they did revolutionary history and theory. The classic “progressive†or “left†policy agenda is a pretty tired reiteration of the New Deal platform at best. Typically there will be standard critique of capitalism and neo-liberalism covering 90% of the book or article then a vacuous, painfully general last chapter or concluding paragraph.
6.) Finally, their struggle to influence key institutions such as a labor union or large association was reduced to being the “opposition†caucus or advancing a “pink†politically correct platform that satisfied neither serious revolutionary-minded leaders nor serious leaders of any persuasion that were key to our success in winning this “war of positionâ€. For each arena we need a complex inside/outside tactical approach guided by a well thought-out and developed strategy that links the two.
It’s about time we break out of the simplistic and easy romanticization of the 1960s and begin a serious effort to understand the strengths and weaknesses of that era as they impact the movement today—a necessity raised by Wormbin.
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Congratulations on a much needed attempt to sum up some of the failings of the ’60s (and ’70s, really) left. And congratulations on the creation of solidarityeconomy.net, which looks to be a useful forum, despite its rather awkward name.
I’ll say upfront that I don’t agree with all of Elston Gunn’s points, but welcome the chance to think some of these things through. What struck me in reading your article was those things that *weren’t* mentioned.
For instance, in discussing the “implosion” of SDS, you attribute it to the “split” between Weatherman and RYMII, but my reading of the implosion is that it was occasioned by the Progressive Labor Party’s effort, as a disciplined sectarian entity, to influence SDS to follow PL’s program. The split was fundamentally between PL, on the one hand, and the national SDS leadership (including both leaders of Weatherman and RYMII), on the other hand, with the majority of on-campus SDS members left out in the cold. [That Weatherman and RYMII then went their own ways is almost a footnote, in that SDS was already, by then, kaput.]
It strikes me as important to include PL in the picture, as the phenomenon of sectarian parties trying to steer the direction of larger inclusive organizations through manipulative or covert means is still present today in the anti-war movement and beyond.
Elsewhere, you complain: “Ceding the market to capital went hand-in-hand with ceding issues of management—whether in a business or a not-for-profit organization—to capitalist traditions of directive non-participatory management. These tendencies, rather than the creation of an effective democratic and participatory culture within the workplace, dominate the movement world.”
Yet this ignores efforts, particularly in the mid-’70s, of creating collectively-run alternative institutions such as the food co-ops and produce distributors, particularly in the Bay Area and Minnesota. We have yet to see any summing up of how that noble effort went astray. Why? Because the apparent cause of its unraveling is entertwined with the still embarrassing relationship between the left of that era and the prison movement, which resulted in supposedly radical ex-cons getting a toehold within the fledgling institutions and importing prison gang conflicts into that vulnerable environment.
This deserves discussion.
Your article also fails to mention another major factor in the disintegration of the old “New Left”: the rise of radical feminism, particularly in response to sexism in the New Left itself. Similarly, there is no mention of the rise of the gay liberation movement, which occurred around this same time. Both of these movements on the left redefined oppressor/oppressed relationships away from the economic and political emphasis of the New Left (and its successor M-L party formations) to analyses which saw fundamental conflicts in the areas of gender and sexual orientation. For better or worse, this multiplicity of new self-defined minorities shifted the left’s emphasis from one of a large single umbrella (i.e., Us (students, workers, 3rd world) versus the ruling class) to a coalition of smaller umbrellas (people of color, women, gays, etc.) each with differently defined enemies.
I’m not saying that this never should have happened. I’m simply pointing out that it was part of changes in the left landscape, and needs to be addressed in any analysis of what went wrong.
Further, while you speak of “the reemergence of a deep and on-going anti-intellectualism within the U.S. left,” (in reference to much of the sloganeering and superficial polemicizing that went on), you fail to mention the fate of most of the actual serious intellectuals on the left: their disappearance into the Academy, embrace of postmodernist and cultural “theory”, and descent into irrelevance. Russell Jacoby’s _The Last Intellectuals_ is relevant here.
Finally, while you seem to wish to rescue “the vanguard” and “strong leadership” from the disrepute into which they fell, you seem to feel that that disrepute was undeserved or unjust. However, I’d suggest that they fell out of favor because the various self-appointed vanguards (each of whom felt that there should be only one vanguard of the working class and that *they* should be that vanguard) couldn’t lead their way out of a paper sack, and presumed to offer a solution (mind-numbing Marxist-Leninist rhetoric and goals) that almost no one wanted.
Let me close by saying that I welcome the effort to formulate a vision of market socialism and to further sharpen the critique of Capitalism. I do think, however, that the attempt to analyze the failures of the ’60s and ’70s left needs to address all the aspects of its decline.
‘Reboot’ is on target in positioning the fight with PLP as prior to the WU-RYM2 split. But I don’t think it’s fair to say that the rank-and-file was uninvolved.
In the year before, for instance, I traveled to dozens of campuses where Black students taking militant action, demanding open admissions for minorities and Black Students, had split many of the chapters at the base, especially where PL was involved. PL and their WSA grouping in SDS opposed many of these Black demands as ‘nationalist’ and ‘reactionary.’ I was at one situation at Brooklyn college when the PL grouping in the chapter threatened to cross the Black student picket lines, and the rest of us lined up and said, ‘You’ll have to go through us first.’
In this way, a good part of the split had already taken place at the base, and when the Convention rolled around, it was putting icing on the cake, so to speak.
But, yes, ‘the national collective,’ united around the original ‘Toward a Revolutionary Youth Movement’ paper by Mike Klonsky and others, was the organized force fighting PL’s line. The differences within it, between the nascent Weatherman and RYM2, were submerged. Once the split with PL took place, those differences erupted around two ensuing papers that gave each group its name.
I think the first split had to happen. But the second? To this day, I don’t know for sure. Had we been wiser, more patient or more experienced, perhaps not. But the issues here, too, were clear enough, and RYM2 and others offered a good critique of the WU on the spot, as opposed to others who commented years or decades later.
But when all is said and done, we all had our weaknesses, many of which Gunn points out above.
One thing I’ve done, however, is to revisit some of the intellectual work we started in the New Left, particularly our ‘Praxis Axis’ project. I’ve looked back over the ‘Port Authority Statement’, my own ‘Multiversity’ new working class analysis, and other stuff we had started on the impact of technology, cybernation and the market. Not to mention our original core value of participatory democracy.
It’s fascinating how much of this holds up even today, and how cutting edge it was, in its way, at the time. We weren’t mature enough to persist, especially when a hundred US cities were in revolt or flames, and the blood of a million Vietnamese was being spilled, and shifted our focus to the third world for leadership, with both good and bad results.
In any case, I’ve come full circle, after a long detour, back to some of our original theoretical concerns–a good bunch of us avoiding the POMO cul-de-sac–and are looking to the future. In fact, this site is one part of the project.
Welcome aboard…
Reboot—Good points…let me address a few of them…
On the various efforts at worker ownership and coops: As you point out, there has been a variety of efforts to create collectively-run businesses. I’m actually not familiar at all with the link with the prison movement—perhaps you could expand on that particular aspect. Those businesses and collective-run businesses that trace their lineage to the student movement of the 60s are generally very small marginal operations (of course there are some exceptions like probably the Berkeley Food Coop) that have benefited their immediate members, but had very little impact politically or otherwise on the larger political discussion. In my home town, we have a pretty sophisticated worker coop that has direct roots back to the late 60s—but the leaders are very much part of the romantic and superficial culture that we are critiquing—finding it easy to work in a traditional (but I’m sure moral) way during the day, and then having different politics at night. There’s still a discomfort with scale, and often an ultra egalitarianism that limits the social and economic impact. In Northern Italy, the revolutionary movement—the Italian Communist Party—promoted the development of coops on a large scale that now profoundly influence the regional economy in positive ways. A section of the left in the Basque region in Spain gave rise to the Mondragon cooperative network that now employs some 65,000 people and is the cutting edge of the Spanish industrial economy as well as a dominant force in the retail economy that has blocked the entry of Wal-Mart.
Others not from the revolutionary left in the US have been active in promoting worker ownership, ESOPs, and cooperatives over the years and there still are some efforts underway that have some promise including the Cooperative Home Healthcare business in NYC that employs some 500+ people (women of color—principally) and is modeled after the Mondragon experience in Spain. There’s the Industrial Cooperative Association in Cambridge, MA that still promotes employee ownership. There’s the Ohio Employee Ownership Center in Kent, Ohio that has a big network of employee owned companies. And there are others. These initiatives are mixed in their political/professional commitments. Some of these organizations and individuals began focused on the pure cooperative model driven in the first instinct by utopian values—if it’s pristine, everyone will embrace it. When this didn’t happen, they became slightly cynical about the picture and the potential to transform society, and focused on their own personal life style supported by consulting fees. On the other hand, other of these organizations and individuals are still committed to a bigger vision and project; are making a significant contribution to the practice, analysis, and theories of transforming at least the economy; and would definitely be interested in a bigger socialist project based on economic democracy. The revolutionary left should definitely learn more about these networks and organizations and get to know their leaders and their work.
I think this whole area of work needs to be understood as a major part of a comprehensive strategy going forward. The practical and theoretical significance of workers owning and managing the means of production in particular companies as a major part of the transition to, and an essential part of a socialist society should be owned by today’s revolutionary left and not ceded to the utopians (the alternative cooperatives) or the ESOPers. Schwiekart has made quite a contribution in this regard. We should be looking again at Soviet history and understand more fully the quality and implication of Bukharin’s work and not allowing the Third International to represent the only revolutionary trend of the Soviet era. It’s worth looking again at Yugoslavia and, more interestingly, the evolution and impact of the Italian Communist Party. And, of course, we should be digging into the complex Chinese domestic experience as well as their efforts in the global market place.
Feminism, the gay liberation movement, etc.: Another good point. They represented a dramatic extension of the democratic movement in ways that were critically important for society and the left internally as well as externally. But I think the analytical, theoretical, and practical flabbiness of the 60s left leadership defensively dismissed the challenges as well as opportunities that these trends offered and further narrowed their own focus as they (the left) became smaller and more marginal. Meanwhile those movements became focused only on their democratic rights creating the core of “identity†politics that further fragmented the social movement and abandoned any effort to seek and a fundamental transformation of society economically as well as socially.
We still need to build a vanguard: Finally, you are also right about the lack of true leadership qualities of the 60s left. I was a little liberal—not wanting to be too harsh. But because of the damage the 60s left did to the reputation and prestige of Marxist leadership among the American people, it is essential to defend the notion of a true vanguard that earns recognition because of its demonstrated capacity not its hollow proclamations.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments!
Carl and Elston,
Thanks for your responses. Elston’s was sufficiently delayed that I missed it until now. So let me, at least briefly, respond to both without futher delay.
Carl’s point that the splits within SDS were already percolating at a local level – and thus weren’t simply a result of leadership conflicts – sounds reasonable to me. I was only a distant observer, so I blow to his concrete knowledge of what went down.
I also agree that there was some significant analytical work done in SDS that got sidelined by Third Worldism and the temper of the times. On the other hand, we are now living with the ironic situation where the “L” word is taboo, due in part to the discrediting of Liberalism by New Left critics, since it was the liberal establishment of the JFK and LBJ administrations that got us into the Viet Nam embroiglio. [I wouldn't blame the plight of Liberalism entirely on the New Left's opposition to it, but I do get nostalgic for the days when a Liberal establishment was the worst that we had to deal with.]
As for Elston’s invitation for me to expand on the prison movement’s place in, and impact upon, the 70′s left and collective business efforts, I am, alas, not the best person to fill in the blanks. As a Bay Area resident who shopped at the local co-ops, read the UG press, and was sufficiently plugged-in to have some inkling of what was going down (e.g., Popeye Jackson, Tribal Thumb, etc.), I was marginally aware of the problems. But there are many others who were in the thick of it, who have never come forward to tell their tales. Your guess as to why this may be is as good as mine. Fear of retribution? Chagrin over shattered dreams? Not wanting to give further information to enemies of the Left? It could be any of these reasons or all of them.
All I know is that there is a significant hole in our understanding of one route the Left took in trying to forge alternative institutions. From my subjective perspective, the implosion of the food co-ops and distributors was the final blow to countercultural dreams.
You list a good number of other cooperative business efforts with which I am unfamiliar, but it sounds like study of them would certainly be worthwhile.
As for the need to build a vanguard, it will take a considerable amount of persuading to convince me that a vanguard is the answer. My own reaction to the M-L vanguardist sectarian frenzy of the 70′s was to consider both anarchism and democratic socialism as less authoritarian alternatives. Both of those approaches have problems that could be discussed at another time, but neither of them has failed on as collosal a scale as M-L vanguardism (and here I am thinking of the whole totalitarian spin-out of Stalin and the Eastern Bloc, et al, not to mention Mao and China.)
Errata…
“I blow to his concrete knowledge of what went down.” should, of course, be “I *bow* to his concrete knowledge…etc.”
Too bad this blog doesn’t offer the option to re-read your message before it is posted.
Reply to ‘Reboot’
We’re working on the glitches, like being able to preview and edit your posts, and other things. Thanks for the suggestion.
Yes, in the 1960s, corporate liberalism had hegemony, conservatives were a minority, and the ‘new right’ was a minority within a minority. Now the conservatives are in charge, the hard right is rising, and liberalism–globalist, humanist and in between–and on the defensive.
Quite a shift in the political landscape, and by no means do I blame in all on the new left. Goodness, the ‘Vietnam syndrome’ we created is the main reason why Rumsfeld can’t double or triple the troops in Iraq, even if he wanted to.
But here’s my take on ‘vanguards,’ which both you and Gunn raise.
I think those opposed to “vanguardism” often have their own definitions of the term that are too narrow.
For instance, at any given time, I find it useful to try to figure out the proportions of advanced, middle and backward among the general population in regards to politics. The backward are those who like and defend the existing order of oppression, the middle don’t want to be bothered with politics because it doesn’t make sense in their lives and they are focused on themselves and family, and the advanced are those who see the present order as oppressive and would like to do something to change it.
This “sectoring” is fluid; any given individual can move from one to another from time to time as conditions vary. But at any given time, the advanced are a minority, although they may be a relatively large minority.
Within the advanced, moreover, there are those who are presently active and those who are waiting to do something, those who are in organizations and those who haven’t joined anything yet, and those who think just a few major reforms will do and those who think the whole system has to go.
This narrows things down a bit. If you look at the advanced who are active, in an organization and who think the whole order needs to be replaced, you have what I would call the revolutionary vanguard. Notice that I didn’t say they had to be in ONE organization, or have ONE program, or leader. At some point they might, although it’s unlikely and certainly doesn’t happen by declaration or fiat or self-assertion.
In any case, this grouping is what I would call the “natural vanguard” that shrinks or swells with the ebb and flow of class struggle and social crisis.
Now there are many organizations in the “natural vanguard.”
Does any one or any one cluster of them ever get to be “the vanguard party?”
Only if certain conditions are met, including one very practical but often ignored factor: your group gets to be a LEADER if it has FOLLOWERS.
This seems clear as day to me, but we still have dozens of groups running around claiming to be the leader, but they don’t have any followers or supporters to speak of. They have the mistaken notion that a ‘correct line’ or ‘scientific program’ is sufficient, even granting that there is such a thing.
Myself, I’ve come to the conclusion that I want to work in groups that deal in ‘working hypotheses’ rather than ‘correct lines.’
I would say that to be the vanguard party, a group has to earn that designation by, first, winning over the vast majority of the advanced sector to chose it as their own organization and second, by then in turn winning over large numbers of the middle forces to respect and follow its course of action, at least a good part of the time.
Becoming a vanguard party in this sense is something that is done practically over time. The best examples I can think of were Vietnam and China. It simply means that masses of people recognize your group’s leadership ability, that they will want to defend and protect you against the enemy, and finally, will want to join your ranks and shape the group’s politics and future themselves.
All the other disputes about the “genuine” vanguard status being achieved by assembling varying sets of principles or ideological coda is more in tune with medieval theological disputation, rather than the kind of thinking we need today.
So there’s two kinds of opposition to vanguards. One is really aimed at dogmatism and ‘left’ sectarianism, and makes some good points. We certainly made our share of mistakes and deviations here in the past.
But there’s another kind of anti-vanguardism that does hold us back, that disparages the need of organization and, yes, leadership, (and by that I don’t mean things like ‘The Cult of Bob.) This is what Gunn is getting at, I think, and he’s right. There’s no future there. But our task certainly is to nurture and grow the ‘natural vanguard’ I describe above.