Jas,

Loren Goldner published a text entitled 'Communism is the Material Human Community: Amadeo Bordiga Today':

libcom.org

Which is a good place to start concerning Bordiga's contribution to understanidng the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, since Bordiga's relevant writings on this are not available to us Anglos. The text is divided into two parts - in the first part Goldner essentially introduces Bordiga and outlines his contribution to Marxist theory focusing on his analysis of the USSR as a capitalist society due to the operation of the market in the agrarian sector and the identification of capitalism with the agrarian revolution. While the second part focuses on the contribution of the 'neo-Bordigist' current that requires very careful reading, it took me a few reads to get what was being argued.

I should add that Goldner's text is not universally worshipped. For instance, comrades in the ICT are quite critical of it from what I gather, see link below, which is the only critical review I am aware of online, it is by an ICTer in the US:

oocities.org (scroll down on that page to see it)

Also, I'd recommend the Antagonism text 'Bordiga versus Pannekoek' - libcom.org - which I think is a really useful presentation of both Bordiga and Pannekoek ideas.

Don't want this post to be long, so I might come back later with my own thoughts.

Hopefully others will contribute so the discussion will develop.

Cleishbotham - Zanthorus has not posted on this thread unless I have missed something.

Jas

I don't agree with Steve that the quote is ambiguous and agree with your rejection of it but you have opened up a big question here. You quote from Thesis 13 which neither we, nor the ICC nor the ICP (Programma) have as part of the Theses on Parliamentarism as we all have a maximum of 12 (I think the ICC only has 11). You are quoting from marxists.org who are using a 1978 English version of Communist Program and which includes a much longer document with even more sections. This now becomes a historical puzzle. Are these all the same theses? Have Programma added other documents, perhaps elaborated by Bordiga later? As it means delving into the Italian archive (which I don't have time for now) it will be a while before we solve this but thanks for raising it.

My little contribution: Bordiga was a giant and therefore his political mistakes ( above all after WW2) were gigantic...often developed by his followers inside Programma and further in the other 4-5 parties claiming his own political inheritance... I think too the absurd and awful concept of Party's Dictatorship against and instead of Prolet. Dictatorship (as just in Russia ?? if just not, take a look at our statement titled "1921 - The Beginning of Counterrevolution?"), his anti-party mood, his judgment on Russia either as a "mystery which we can discuss very little and with circumspection" or it was state industrialism(?) against which Damen's definition of "state capitalism"was "dismissive" of both. cheers

Steve

There are two articles mentioned in this thread. Which are you talking about?

Party and Class is a classic of it time. We don't have to agree with all of it today and Damen seems to have thought that Bordiga posed the question of class and party correctly even if he disagreed on Bordiga's final conclusion that the party rules. I think jas has worked this out well.

"Giving a lead" does not mean support for the "party as a ruling organ". This was one of the things that separated Damen and Bordiga in 1952.

Steve

Damen has been dead for 32 years and has said nothing about Bordiga since he died! Two years before we called round in August 1977 to ask him a few questions but "the old fossil", as he was irreverently called, was at the dentist. Unfortunately we never met him. His book is therefore all we have to go on and we have not yet finished translating it into English. I doubt you will get the answer you want since we are dealing with historical documents written at different times (Bordiga in 1921 , Damen's observations in 1951-2). We don't need to sanitise them or excuse them even if some of the formulae may now appear antiquated. What we do know is that as a result of the 1951 split between the Bordigists and the internationalists Damen drafted the 1952 Platform of the PCInt in which he concluded that the proletariat cannot delegate to anyone its class rule not even its revolutionary party. That seems clear enough. The party or perhaps you would prefer to call it "revolutioanry organisation" since the ignoramuses on libcom think (judging from their replies to you) that the word "party" means a body which intends to win power (usually by electoral means). We can call it what you like (pink elephant does not sound too offensive) but the fact is that as part of the process of coming to consciousness the working class will have to produce a revolutionary minority (even if some prefer not to recognise it as such) which will give the lead in the move to destroy the capitalist state and its exploitative system. Under the terms of capitalist ideological and material domination it is a given. But the pink elephant is a fighting not a ruling organisation. It promotes world revolution and leaves the task of transforming social relations in each area to the local working class (who may choose to elect pink elephant supporters to the class wide bodies but they take up their role as delegates of the people who elected them). The world pink elephant meanwhile devotes itself to the task of widening the world revolution (and their will be many tensions between the members in each location and the bigger task but then no one said that world revolution was "Come Dancing").

What Damen and Bordiga debated a lifetime ago is part of the process of how we got here but we don't have to justify every dot and comma. As our Italian comrades frequently say "this is archaeology". And in Party and Class Bordiga did give the best description of the dialectic in the entire history of Marxism (but then Engels died shortly after the first movie picture was being shot). I think that the correct relationship between party and class is broadly stated as Damen has it despite your quite correct concerns.

There are no ICT statutes as such. There are CWO and BC statutes (and, for all I know, statutes for other affiliates). The BC and CWO statutes are almost identical (the differences are really in the organisation of a larger organisation as against a smaller one. We don't put statutes on line (although there is nothing "secret" in them). I sent copies round to everyone before the last meeting in August (as we had new members who had just been asked if they agreed with them) but as we for some reason cannot communicate directly by email you probably did not receive them. I will get someone to send them again.

On "Party and Class" there are some good bits and some terrible bits. "Theory is grey my friend" (Faust [Goethe] quoted often by Lenin) not black and white.

Very interesting and important discussion. A lot of what is being talked about here is coinciding with some thoughts and ideas I've been having myself about the relationship between party and class.

I have recently been trying to avoid the word "lead" or "leadership" to describe the role of the revolutionary minority to the rest of the class. Not that these words are not accurate (when understood correctly), but when used by Trotskyists refer to a relationship that is completely alien to the real dialectical role between party and class. Tthe reason why communism hasn't materialized is due to a "crisis of leadership" is Trotskyism in a nutshell. What Trotskyists and the left consider "leadership" is something I believe is unmarxist.

When the left talks about "leadership" or "leading the class" it is usually a regression back to Kautskyism that the revolutionary minority has to bring the story of communism to the workers and that the "defeats" of the class is due to a lack of "leadership." "Leadership" meaning converts bringing the good word of st. marx to the lost sheep. This is something I believe gets the whole relationship between the party and the class way off and something (as I see it) something that the ICT understands.

To use an inventive analogy, the left considers the party to be the conductor of the class struggle. The true role of the party is to be a revolutionary GPS. The former conception of the relationship between the party and the class is in some dire need of some dialectical reasoning. Almost as important, though hardly talked about if ever, is the influence and the "leadership" of the rest of the class upon the revolutionary minority. As Marx put it: "who will educate the educators?"

A good example of this is how Trotskyists/leftists talk about "defeats" of the working class, such as a failed strike. A strike is a failure because of the union had a poor leadership blah blah blah. Entirely alien is the idea that a "failure" can in fact play a greater role in unveiling and revealing the gears of capital and the necessity of a unified class struggle against capital amongst the workers.

I have to go right now. Maybe others can critique this? I feel I have much more to delve into.

Jas

I don't think you are wrong. The Italian Left always took their starting point the situation of the international working class and were less concerned about what happened in the RFSFR (remembering too that until the mid-1920s there were a number of social experiments going on still there and the idea that you could talk of socialism when only one country had had a revolution would have seemed premature. On the other hand the early judgement of Ruhle etc that Russia was "state capitalist" border on the infantile. It allowed Lenin to retort that it was not even that good and state capitalism would have been an advance! One reason the early CWO identified with the German Left was because of its early critique of the USSR but we later came to see that this was not the only issue to distinquish the CL.

Bordiga in 1926 in the CI did criticise what was going on inside Russia politically (it is somewhere on our site) but he never had a critique of the economic bases of the USSR. Bilan always referred to the Russia of Stalin as a political entity which was "centrist". I have not yet read any article by them which tackled the economic nature of the USSR although some of the ICL must have been thinking about it as Damen pronounced that the USSR was state capitalist and imperialist in 1943. Bordiga never had a coherent position on the nature of the USSR as the publication of the letters between him and Damen show (translation of which are still under way - should be ready soon).

I think the ICC is right to talk in terms of a problem from the outset almost.

QUOTE

From 1918 on the political power of the working class was being restricted and stifled by the state apparatus at whose head stood the Bolshevik party. Since the seizure of power the Bolshevik Party had entered into conflict with the unitary organs of the proletariat and presented itself as a party of government. This substitution of the councils’ power by that of the party was justified theoretically (along with the militarisation of labour) in Trotsky’s work Terrorism and Communismwritten at the beginning of the Twenties — a tragic work which already contained the theoretical justification for acts like the Kronstadt massacre.

“We have more than once been accused of having substituted for the dictatorship of the soviets the dictatorship of our party. Yet it can be said with complete justice that the dictatorship of the soviets became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the party. It is thanks to the clarity of its theoretical vision and its strong revolutionary organisation that the party has afforded to the soviets the possibility of becoming transformed from shapeless parliaments of labour into the apparatus of the supremacy of labour. In this ‘substitution’ of the power of the party for the power of the working class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at all. The communists express the fundamental interests of the working class. It is quite natural that in the period in which history brings up those interests in all their magnitude on to the order of the day that the communists have become the recognised representation of the working class as a whole.” (Trotsky. Terrorism or Communism.)

....................

NB As regards Kronstadt I am not saying the class cannot violently surpress opposition.

A remark from Steve. "I agree that on their own the vast bulk cannot get beyond trade union consciousness.". I dislike both the sentiment, and the way it's expressed. Sorry about that.

Jas

The Platform of the Committee of Intesa 1925 was drafted by Damen (it is signed also by his wife, Francesca ("Cecca") Grossi and others, including Bordiga (who was the first to accept the demand by the new PCd'I leadership that it should be withdrawn). We have run out of these but a new run is currently at the printers (£3 plus postage) and will be out on Friday next.

There is a confusion about what Bordiga wrote and what not since Programma have a policy of not signing articles (presumably in the interests of "organic centralism") so I appreciate your dilemma. I have to go now but will return to this later...

There is room for clarification here, but I think there is a salient point that the consciousness generated though struggle, in the absence of the revolutionary party, wll fall short of that required to make a revolution.

A high point in this regard was represented by the Spanish Civil War where despite the revolutionary rhetoric, the absence of a truly revolutionary party which would not have advocated class collaboration in the name anti-fascism meant workers were defeated in the service of the ruling class.

No party, no revolution, if anything, i think that was Lenin's, Bordiga's and is our position

from BC

A great contribution to this relation was elaborated in the writings of Lenin and the experience of Bolsheviks intervention.

“The history of all countries bears witness to the fact that the working class by its own effort alone is able to arrive only at a purely trade-unionist consciousness, that is, the conviction of the need to unite in unions, to lead the fight against the bosses, to claim this or _that law required by the workers from the government etc.” .

_

................................

Given the material conditions that the proletariat faces in its life under capitalism, in the materialist view of the genesis of consciousness and the weight of the dominant ideology, the class - at best - is pushed into a "simple" fight for demands. The organised vanguard of the class (the Party) is formed, rather, by those who, beyond the historical period and the level of class struggle, are developing revolutionary consciousness. The Party is actively involved in the struggles, but does not adapt to the spontaneity of the moment, but must take action by making itself the Communist political reference point, pushing the proletariat to take on board revolutionary consciousness. The task of communists is not, to paraphrase Lenin, to ask passively in the service of the labour movement, but to represent the interests of the movement as a whole, to show the movement's ultimate goal, the overcoming of capitalism.

leftcom.org

Workers are incredibly resilient (and doesn’t capitalism love them for it) but at certain points daily exploitation becomes too much and (usually in conjunction with some political crisis) the dam breaks and the struggle becomes unstoppable. At these points in time revolutionaries need to be prepared and organised. In the meantime we try to reach as many workers as possible to have an international network ready to respond and to fight within the class for a communist programme.

Great description of the role of revolutionary organization! Sometimes discussions about that can last for weeks with everyone writing essay length arguments but sometimes you can sum it all up succinctly without even knowing it.

Sometimes I get very confused by what the two Steves say. Now Stevein writes:"The Party is actively involved in the struggles, but does not adapt to the spontaneity of the moment, but must take action by making itself the Communist political reference point, pushing the proletariat to take on board revolutionary consciousness."

With regard to class spontaneity, did not the Bosheviks respond to it well when they declared "all power to the soviets"? And as to pushing the proletariat "to take on board revolutionary consciousness" - take on board sounds like they have to swallow it whole and uncritically. This can't be right! Surely the class doesn't create soviets unless it has quite a sum of consciousness already. The job of the party must be to develop it further and to criticize failings and false ideas? When the Steves are elected to workers councils, they'll have to be a bit more careful about what they say else we'll all be in the shit! ,

The 'steves' are all me, if I log in on a certain computer I cannot sign in as stevein7.

.............

''Surely the class doesn’t create soviets unless it has quite a sum of consciousness already.''

That sounds quite likely, but I would say that the process of acquiring a higher grade of consciousness on a sufficiently mass scale is not advanced enough until the soviets are won over by the revolutionary party. Exact details will be revealed when it happens but the point is that the formation of soviets is not synonomous with the generation of revolutionary consciousness on the scale that instigating a successful revolution requires.

Going back to Bordiga and Lenin, there is some problem with the idea of party rule, but nonethelesss, the party is supremely important and unless its revolutionary perspective is adopted by the soviets, capitalist order will be restored.