‘Revolutionary Collective: Comrades, Critics and Dynamics in the Struggle For Socialism’ by Paul Le Blanc reviewed by Fabian Van Onzen

Reviewed by Fabian Van Onzen

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Fabian van Onzen received his PhD from the European Graduate School and is author of the …

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In Revolutionary Collective, Paul Le Blanc explores debates about worker activism, class consciousness, party-building and socialist strategy. Through an engagement with writers such as Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, and Lukács, Le Blanc examines their contributions to the theory of revolutionary organization.

Revolutionary Collective combines the insights of Marxist theorists with Le Blanc’s own socialist political experience as a member of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), which went through a major political crisis until it liquidated itself in 2019. Besides allegations of sexual abuse that were poorly handled by its leadership, one of the recurring issues in the ISO was a doctrinaire attitude to Marxist theory and a lack of party democracy. In Revolutionary Collective, Le Blanc returns to the primary theorists of Leninist organizing in order to help socialist activists build organisations that avoid these errors. One weakness of the book is that it does not envision non-Leninist approaches to revolutionary politics through an engagement with writers like Paul Mattick or Anton Pannenkoek. Also, despite its title, the book does not offer significant analysis of what constitutes the nature of a collective and what it means to act collectively.

The first three chapters explore how Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks conceptualised the building of a revolutionary collective. In Lenin’s understanding of the Bolshevik party, the key element was the figure of a cadre who possesses ‘political experience, theoretical knowledge, revolutionary commitments, and organizational skills’ and ‘is essential for the organization of any social movement’ (20). While cadres worked within a centralised political organization, leadership tended to be exercised democratically by local party committees that had a high-degree of autonomy. Instead of telling the masses what to think, they sought to ‘listen to and learn from others in order to be able to communicate revolutionary perspectives in a way that makes sense’ (47). In the chapter on Lukács, Le Blanc notes that the cadre is motivated by a revolutionary ethics in which they act as if their ‘action or inaction depended on changing of the world’s destiny’ (78), which is assisted or hindered through their chosen tactics. Lukács perceives that when incorrect tactics are used, they can transform a situation in such a way that future opportunities are less likely. He placed a high value on criticism and open debate, which he thought would enable cadres to make fewer mistakes and arrive at the appropriate tactics needed to achieve its goals.

Le Blanc points out that through its historical articulation, Bolshevism was a form of revolutionary collectivism whose internal development was shaped by thousands of activists that carried out its policies and contributed to their theoretical elaboration. The Bolsheviks respect for the local autonomy of party organizations within a centralized structure enabled a high degree of flexibility, democracy and trust between comrades. Although he makes a strong case for a democratic Leninist party that gains its strength from passionate individuals, Le Blanc does not provide a significant critique of the Leninist party-model. While he does engage with Toni Negri’s autonomist reading of Lenin, Le Blanc does not integrate autonomist arguments into his analysis.

Le Blanc argues that the democratic space that made Bolshevism a dynamic organizational form was undermined by Stalinism, which developed a ‘bureaucratic-authoritarian apparatus that would eventually destroy the revolutionary collective that had been Bolshevism’ (34). The bureaucratic faction aligned with Stalin argued that socialism ‘could be created in the Soviet Union itself within a capitalist-dominated world’ (42). Le Blanc notes that the revolutionary spirit of Bolshevism was repressed, for Comintern-aligned Communist Parties were told to make alliances with ‘progressive capitalists’ in order to win allies for the Soviet bureaucracy. As a result, they were commanded to postpone calls for socialist revolution and instead agitate only for democratic and social reforms. Instead of being a movement that enabled each individual cadre to serve revolutionary goals, it was transformed into one where individuals acted as advocates for an authoritarian bureaucracy. This significantly paralysed the communist movement and prevented its most committed militants from winning people over and leading revolutions in the advanced capitalist countries. Le Blanc’s analysis does not raise significant questions about Leninism and is therefore not able to draw any links between Lenin and Stalin. While it is true that Lenin’s Bolshevik Party was significantly more democratic, writers such as Paul Mattick and Guy Debord have shown that there were already elements of bureaucratisation in the Leninist party-form. By uncritically rehashing Trotskyist arguments about Stalinism, Le Blanc is unable to engage into a critical discussion with Leninism and accepts that the problems of Bolshevism are largely attributable to Stalinism.

One of the militants who championed Bolshevism during the Stalinist purges and defended revolutionary collectivism was Leon Trotsky. Le Blanc, although himself a Trotskyist, argues that there is nothing particularly original about Trotsky’s contributions, which was just Leninism during the period in which it was under attack by Stalinism. Trotsky argued that the full completion of the democratic tasks of a revolution – universal free elections, global peace, women’s equality, etc. – requires the socialist transformation of society. For Trotsky, revolutionaries should not only fight for socialism in Russia but use its resources to finance revolutions abroad in order to end capitalism everywhere. Some writers, such as Charles Bettelheim and Tony Cliff have shown that the Soviet bureaucracy became a new capitalist class, which built from Trotsky’s analysis while also breaking with it. The implication of this is that the key to solving the problems of the USSR is not ‘political revolution’, as Trotsky thought, but a socialist revolution that abolishes capitalism. Because Le Blanc somewhat uncritically defends Trotsky against Stalin, he is unable to think through other significant causes of the bureaucratic deformation of Soviet socialism. To be fair, Le Blanc has produced other works, such as his magisterial three volume US Trotskyism series, which provide some of the finest source material on debates in the Trotskyist movement.

The most interesting part of the book is the twelfth chapter, in which Le Blanc sums up the main mistakes of the communist movement and reflects on how to reinvigorate revolutionary collectivism within the existing socialist Left. First, he points out that elitism has appeared in many revolutionary organizations, which has ‘generated confusions and disillusionments that are obstacles to engaging with the tasks we face’ (188-89). Le Blanc argues that this attitude, which can appear in the form of apologetics or bureaucratic manipulation, is the product of deifying one’s organization. This kind of organizational fetishism transforms it into ‘an affinity group that validates one’s own goodness or superiority’ (191), rather than a revolutionary organization that can meaningfully intervene in society to transform it. The result of this is that it becomes hard to criticize the politics of the party leadership, and those who do are treated like heretics. Le Blanc notes that organizational deification causes the members to engage in a kind of magical thinking, in which an organization with a few members perceives itself capable of saving all of humanity from the evils of capitalism. Such behavior is detrimental to the party and encourages the worst forms of dogmatism, sectarianism and abuse. Working class people who are looking for answers are likely to be put off by such a leftist organization, for this is no different from what one might find in a sect or cult. The best way to avoid these problems is to build an organization that is involved in the lives of working people so that its theories are based on real people rather than theoretical abstractions. They must form a collective that pools ‘their energies, their ideas, their resources, their insights, their commitments’ (197) and forms a broad left-wing network dedicated to overthrowing capitalism.

While Le Blanc offers a sober and honest assessment of the problems that face many communist organizations, he does not engage with the work of Maoist writers like J Moufawad-Paul, who argue that these contradictions are the product of a strictly Leninist approach to party-building. In Continuity and Rupture, Moufawad-Paul shows that Leninists and Trotskyists must examine the experience of recent revolutionary movements, such as the Shining Path in Peru and the Naxalites in India, for they provide entirely new models of party-building. While these movements often suffer from the same dogmatism identified by Le Blanc, it would have been interesting if he had engaged with Maoist critiques.

Although it has been greatly abused by many on the Left, Le Blanc thinks the concept of democratic centralism remains a helpful organizational tool. A democratic centralist organization creates a space where an open, free discussion can take place in order to arrive at a decision, which is then carried out by the entire membership. Its purpose is to create trust and comradeship between members of the organization, while enabling it to put its ideas in practice and collectively evaluate whether its approach was correct. Le Blanc points out that the ‘insights, experiences, and energies of all members are needed by the organizational collective’ (199), which is made possible by democratic centralism, for it allows collective decision making combined with the discipline to carry out these decisions. Thus, if an organization remains modest about what it can do, organizes discussion on all matters and creates a space where people trust one another, it will shield itself against organizational deification and bureaucratic centralism.

Despite its strong defence of Leninism, what emerges from Le Blanc’s thoughtful analysis is an optimistic, though critical evaluation of the possibilities for future socialist activism. Although capitalism may appear very strong today, revolutionary collectivism remains a powerful tool to empower working class people to create socialist future. Revolutionary Collective is essential reading for activists and a great introduction to debates about revolutionary organization.

21 November 2022

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