A Far Cry from the Bolsheviks
By George Breitman
When the SWP preconvention discussion opened in May, after a year’s delay, it provided the first opportunity for rank-and-file members to comment on the new political line of the central leadership team headed by Jack Barnes, and the actions of that team in expelling all known or suspected oppositionists from the party. One member, Eileen G. [Gersh] of Philadelphia, submitted an article which appears in the first issue of the SWP Discussion Bulletin. It is entitled “For ‘A Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing’,” and true to its title it raises strong political objections to the programmatic revisions of the central leadership team and the organizational reprisals which it has taken against its opponents in the party.
At the end of her article, Comrade G. makes the following three proposals: (1) to readmit the expelled comrades to “make sure that we have the fullest possible theoretical debate,” (2) to open a written discussion on democratic norms in the SWP and revolutionary parties in general, and (3) to form a tendency to fight for the positions put forward in her document.
Upon receiving this article for publication, the central leadership team sprang into action. At a meeting of the Political Committee Jack Barnes was assigned to draft a reply, which was sent to Comrade G. as a letter, dated May 21, 1984. The letter was then made available to the entire party as part of an “Information Bulletin.” This bulletin appeared in the branches simultaneously with the document containing Comrade G.’s original article.
Such an expeditious reply would ordinarily be commendable. It is only correct and proper, after all, for a serious revolutionary leadership to respond to questions and objections about their political course raised by rank-and-file members of the party. There is one problem, however. The PC’s response to Comrade G. did not discuss any of the political questions she raised. Instead, the Barnes letter is an attack on her for proposing the formation of a tendency during the preconvention period–supposedly in an incorrect manner.
In order to accomplish this, Barnes presents and defends a narrow, schematic, and factional notion of what a tendency is in a revolutionary party, excluding any other possible uses of the term than the one he presents. His polemic against Comrade G. on this question has broad implications for the future functioning of the SWP, since it represents a further step on the path of transforming the party into a monolithic organization, where any serious challenge to the present leadership and its policies will be impossible. Let’s look at what he has to say:
A tendency in the preconvention discussion period is a current of thought shared by comrades who agree, or tend to agree, on a specific document or platform in the Discussion Bulletin on line questions to be decided by the convention, as against other and conflicting documents or platforms before the party.
Barnes goes on to explain that similar tendencies defending specific points of view exist at all times during the life of a revolutionary party, and do not arise only during preconvention discussion.
The only thing that changes during a preconvention discussion period is that such trends of thought from time to time become evident around counterposed political lines that are registered in resolutions before the party as a whole in the Discussion Bulletin …
Barnes then draws the following conclusions about the organization of tendencies:
A tendency in the party preconvention discussion has no structure. There is nothing adherents of a tendency need do aside from arguing their individual point of view in the branch preconvention sessions and in the Discussion Bulletin. No organization is needed for that.
A faction, according to Barnes, is different from a tendency in that it does have a structure.
A faction’s structure is derived from its purpose. A faction is justified only if its initiators believe that the party’s current elected leadership has demonstrated that it is incapable of learning from the test of experience in the class struggle and correcting mistakes, or that the leadership functions in such a way as to make impossible, in the party’s elected leadership committees, a democratic discussion and resolution of disputed points by majority vote … A faction seeks to convince the membership that a new leadership is required.
The conclusion Barnes draws from this exposition is that only in the event of the formation of a faction, dedicated to a change of leadership for the party, can rank-and-file members of the party collaborate with each other in thinking through and preparing political positions to present to the party. Members of a common tendency may not do so. This is the key idea which the Political Committee is attempting to impose through its letter to Eileen G.:
Any platform [of a tendency] is “worked out” before the party as a whole, in the Discussion Bulletin. Supporters of an ideological tendency in the preconvention discussion communicate with each other in the same fashion and through the same mechanism as they communicate to every other member: by submitting articles to the Discussion Bulletin and taking the floor in the branch discussion …
This is worth stressing, so that no one gets the mistaken idea that you are inviting comrades from around the country who read and are inclined to agree with your contribution to get in touch with you, to begin meeting among themselves, or to start circulating drafts of an as-yet-undecided platform outside the Discussion Bulletin now open for all party members to present their views and proposals.
The conclusion in these last paragraphs is a further attempt to restrict the elementary right of members of the revolutionary party to discuss politics with one another, and to think collectively in working out a correct political line. This is a right which has always been taken for granted in our movement, but is now under a severe attack from the central leadership team. The attempts by that team to restrict individual members from collaborating and discussing political ideas are completely at odds with the past practice in the SWP, with Bolshevik tradition, and with the basic Leninist conception of an independent and self-reliant membership as the essential backbone of the revolutionary party.
Some of what Barnes says about the functioning of tendencies in this letter is correct if we limit ourselves to a simple ideological tendency. This does not require any structure. Even here, however, there is no reason why those with similar ideas cannot collaborate in order to present them to the party in as clear and precise a fashion as possible. Such collaboration, far from being in contradiction to Leninist functioning, is in the best interests of the party as a whole–since it increases the political clarity of the overall debate. Anyone who has been in the party for previous discussions is aware of articles in the bulletin by more than one comrade (even occasionally from different cities) who have obviously engaged in just such a process of consultation among themselves before sharing their ideas with the party as a whole. For some reason the SWP has functioned and prospered for many years in violation of this basic norm now discovered by the central leadership team.
The most serious problem with Barnes’s exposition, however, is its rigid definition of the term “tendency” to refer only to such an unstructured ideological tendency, and his sharp distinction between this and an organized faction with the goal of replacing the leadership. In fact, internal groupings in a revolutionary party can be many and varied in form. Why can’t a group of comrades who do not believe a change of leadership is required to correct a false line, also think simultaneously that an organized fight is required? In such situations it is perfectly proper to form a structured ideological tendency, which could meet to consider the best way to present its viewpoint and intervene in the discussion. Many examples of such structured tendencies from recent party discussions could be cited. Yet again, for some unexplained reason, the PC has never in the past seen the need to object to the procedures followed by comrades in forming them.
The words “faction” and “tendency” have never had rigid meanings for us in the past. For Lenin, Trotsky, and other revolutionary Marxists they have been pretty much interchangeable. In recent years the SWP tradition has made a distinction between formations that call for a change of leadership (faction) and those that call simply for a change of line (tendency). At times in the past these terms have distinguished between organized and unorganized groupings. But in trying to fuse these two quite different distinctions into a single definition Barnes develops a rigid schema which is hostile to our real traditions. A truly Bolshevik organizational practice, in contrast, is characterized not by rigid rules and definitions, but by the flexible and creative application of organizational procedures to specific political circumstances and needs.
The central leadership team’s latest notions are also in contradiction with the practices of the Russian Bolshevik party before its degeneration. Although many examples could be cited, this fact should be obvious from a single event which everyone who has the slightest familiarity with Bolshevik history knows about: the banning of tendencies and factions in the party as a temporary emergency measure in 1921, after the Kronstadt uprising. How could the Bolsheviks have banned tendencies if these were nothing more than unorganized groupings of members who took the same position on a given question? The Bolsheviks were well aware that thought processes could not be outlawed. Clearly what the Bolsheviks banned was any organized internal grouping in the party, and this could be either a tendency or a faction.
The consequences of following Barnes’s proscriptions would be the further stifling of internal life for rank-and-file members of the party. The burden imposed on an individual of having to work out the details of a coherent counter-political perspective in the event of major disagreements–without even being able to consult other party members–will certainly inhibit any but the most audacious people. And apparently, this would also be necessary if somebody wants to call for a faction, since until the faction was actually formed and its membership established, if we follow Barnes’s logic, members could only communicate with one another through the discussion bulletin. Therefore, it is clear, a rank-and-file member wishing to initiate a faction must work out the entire initial program on his or her own. There isn’t a single member of the PC or NC who would consent to work out a political line for the party under similar circumstances.
Of course, the loser in all this is the party itself, which will be denied the real benefits of a preconvention discussion–the working out of its political line through a process that really taps the collective experience and understanding of the entire membership. Such a process requires the widest discussion of all political questions by every member of the party. Such discussions will inevitably give rise to temporary internal groupings of all sorts, and these should be welcomed and encouraged by a revolutionary leadership, instead of having organizational obstacles erected against them at every turn. Such internal groupings are a sign of vitality in a healthy party.
There is also an unstated implication in Barnes’s letter that a tendency in the party must have a broad alternative platform to that of the leadership. But it should be obvious that tendencies can form, and have often done so, around a single question, or an otherwise limited program. In that connection, Barnes’s assertion that Eileen G.’s article did not provide adequate basis for a tendency call is clearly false, since her proposal for a democratic discussion including all of those who have been expelled is a more than adequate basis for a tendency in the party.
Those who are familiar with the present crisis of the SWP will know that there is good reason for the central leadership team’s choosing the present moment to “clarify” its new norms regarding tendencies in the preconvention discussion. In addition to being one more step in the process of strangling internal democracy in the party–developing a set of rules and regulations which are designed to make it impossible for rank-and-file members to discuss political questions with each other or raise disagreements with the leadership–it is a continuation of the leadership’s effort to avoid the political questions by citing another so-called threat to our norms.
It is a sorry performance. A rank-and-file member raises a series of vital political issues in a contribution to the preconvention bulletin. The leadership responds once again not with a political discussion, but with a letter on the “organization question.” The central leadership team finds sufficient time to complain at length that Eileen G. calls for a tendency without presenting a positive political program; but the central leadership team (whose draft political resolution has not been printed for members at the halfway point of the preconvention discussion) obviously has a lot of trouble finding the time to present a positive political program of its own–though they have far more resources and a greater political responsibility to do so than Eileen G. It is a sad irony indeed that all of this is done in the name of defending Bolshevik organizational norms.