I think you (understandably) conflated this article with a trend that is mostly unrelated to it. Not only does this article not “abandon” the Leninist principle of the correct line (instead pointing out how it has been misinterpreted greatly), but the only suggestion it gives that is even remotely close to “organizing with the Green Party or with disparate localist groups” is for organizing in the DSA, which has a significant Marxist sect in it which has been steadily growing, and is anyways much better than having a purist, religious perspective of Marxism.
The PSL obviously isn’t making the specific errors in general action that the article suggests, but the general analysis of this article isn’t really damaged by that. The PSL is more effective than a lot of other parties, but it has the same fundamental issue of hyper-specificity. When I read over the program, my perspective is the opposite of the author of the original article- The PSL is detailing way too much in advance. Not only do they have the rough way the economy would work in their theoretical socialist state, they also have extensive detailed plans for the rights and ideals that this new government would be formed under. I absolutely love all of these ideas in their program, but this is putting the cart way ahead of the horse.
I do not specify this to attack the PSL specifically, in fact, I think the program sounds extremely effective, but I highlight it to demonstrate the main flaw of the Western left- it’s complete and total fear of flexibility and adaptation.
This is why the article put so much time and effort into attacking our current conceptions of a party line, democratic centralism, and Great Thinkers. What we are observing is a fundamental failure of western Marxists to account for the way revolutionaries actually organize themselves and make decisions. Our flawed conception of democratic centralism has led to the exact issue it was meant to solve. Instead of allowing for a significant variety of ideas channeled into one, powerful revolutionary force, we have vulgarized the party line and democratic centralism into an excuse for this mindset of ideological purity and idealism.
We have tricked ourselves into the exact same problematic mindset that we criticize anarchists for, of Utopianism and idealist organizing, but have been telling ourselves that it is correct because, instead of actually learning from previous Marxists, we have instead taking vague interpretations of their writings as an indomitable, unchallengeable truth.
I can observe this, even in your own comment (though I mean no hostility, because this mistake is everpresent, even in the things I say). Why phrase it as “Leninist principles”? We aren’t philosophers, trying to develop an ethical system. We are doing science, and materialist science at that. Nothing we observe or plan makes sense without context, including what Lenin observed and planned. They are still useful, but they aren’t “principles”. They are observations and actions taken in a specific material situation and context.
What we need isn’t to conform to liberalism or entryism, or to join small local organizations that commit the same mistake of a devotion to complete ideological purity. No, what we need is a willingness to actually work with the parts of the Left we disagree with, and to adapt the actual definition of the party line - Internal disagreement, but unity of action.
Look at the deeply reactionary elements of this country. Many of them completely disagree with each other. But despite having supposedly contradictory ideas, they still manage to accomplish things that all of them want to get done. We can blame this on them only having to defend things instead of work for something they want, but the much more depressing truth is that the conservatives and liberals and neo-Nazis have been using the principle of the party line closer to what Lenin intended than our own explicitly Marxist organizations. This is embarrassing. Anyone defending this absurd sectarianism isn’t a “revisionist”, hell, I’ve already arguably committed the greatest revisionism by saying that Lenin’s ideas must all be taken in context rather than universally applied. But rather, anyone who thinks the current, sect-based state of the western left is somehow necessary needs to take a good long look at themselves and ask how such a perspective is any different from an Anarchist saying it’s necessary to destroy actually existing socialism to preserve freedom (it isn’t, they’re the same thing: ideological puritanism)
Indeed, saying I or anyone else is telling people to not join the PSL is missing the point. I’d rather every member of the radical Left join the PSL if I could make it so, but unfortunately, I can’t just wave my hand to make everyone agree with me and, even if I could, criticism inside the party is necessary for ideological growth and the development of theory, and making everyone agree with me would cause the complete stagnation of the left.
We need to let ourselves disagree with each other. The average family has arguments just as frequently as Marxists do but still manages to keep a united front. We should not be worse at organizing than random families! We are communists, not random hobbyist groups.
I will respond to the rest of this later when I have time, but what really jumped out at me is the claim the the word “principles” indicated a religious or moral attitude? This is ridiculous. Have you never heard the term “scientific principles” or “mathematical principles”. All it means is theories that have been repeatedly tested.
As far as the rest goes I don’t necessarily disagree with you but, and this goes back to the reason I wrote my original clarification, the article claims to be breaking down these parties and analyzing them but only makes the most surface level of analysis before lumping on assumptions without evidence. Even what you said about the PSL being “too specific”. You didn’t cite anything specific. Thid isnt how you analyze things. The book Socialist Reconstruction I mentioned is as specific and detailed it could be and the book acknowledges and explains this up front.
Not sure what you mean by claiming the article didn’t endorse a network of loose groups. It does so in the section about the Marxist Center groups.
I was afraid of this, I was going to have another paragraph but I thought it was too confusing, so what I said is a simplification.
The problem is that they aren’t theories that are tested, at least not to the extent that a principle would be. Lenin was in a specific situation when he wrote what he did, and we don’t have enough examples or data to be sure it’s anywhere near a principle. Maybe a good hypothesis, but it would take truckloads more data and scrutiny for it to come even close to a principle. More importantly, It is not near-universally applicable in the way principles of multiplication are, for instance.
It’s true that scientific principle exist, and I apologize for using a simplified explanation, I shouldn’t have done so.
Also, when I said the PSL was too specific, I was citing their program on their website. I suppose it was implicit, so I understand the confusion. But I was not making a vague gesture at nothing, I was reading through the PSL’s program at the exact time I was writing that comment.
And at no point did I say the article didn’t advocate a network of loose groups, I was saying they didn’t advocate a network of disconnected loose groups. A coalition of loose groups is legitimately a good idea right now, and is likely to accomplish more than a hyper-sectarian Maoist death cult or whatever. To be fair, I thought the DSA mention was the only example until you mentioned the Marxist Center being advocated for, but given that it is a unified collection of groups and not just a random assortment, it seems reasonable. Is there any particular reason a loose collection of groups with unified action and contact with each other wouldn’t work?
I’ve seen how useful national resources and contacts are within the PSL. From helping smaller branches get off the ground to organizing training to mobilizing comrades from across the country for major events in DC. Earlier this year we had the March for peace in DC and now just a few months later were mobilizing carpools again for an event in DC on the 25th. There’s also a massive amount of centralized administrative expertise so that branches can focus on local organizing with the masses. None of that would be possible with a loose confederation of groups.
I feel like it doesn’t really dismiss the main point of the article, but the article really gives me a “we had a good idea but made a bunch of extrapolations from it without proof” vibe I don’t like.
Their criticism of the US left is correct, their solution is not. It seems silly to suggest that any one group of people could come up with a solution so easily, anyways.
True, there is a problem obviously. Otherwise the revolution would have happened. But yeah definitely agree that they are right about the problem in broad strokes, not so much about the direction suggested.
My current hypothesis is that we need some kind of centralized organization that focuses on extremely short-term goals for building worker power, as a kind of transitory organization until the extremely sectarian nature of the US left either subsides or boils over. This organization would exist in tandem with other organizations, not requiring or enforcing specific political memberships besides what directly interferes with specific, short term goals decided by organization leadership to build the power of the proletariat (or long term goals which are specific, effective, and do not demand any kind of ideological purity besides a general commitment to building worker power). These goals would have to be decided by committed socialists.
A kind of meta-organization, which would share resources and important information about achieving it’s specific short-term goals, and would let the US left live on “life support” while we figure out exactly what’s going on.
I think you (understandably) conflated this article with a trend that is mostly unrelated to it. Not only does this article not “abandon” the Leninist principle of the correct line (instead pointing out how it has been misinterpreted greatly), but the only suggestion it gives that is even remotely close to “organizing with the Green Party or with disparate localist groups” is for organizing in the DSA, which has a significant Marxist sect in it which has been steadily growing, and is anyways much better than having a purist, religious perspective of Marxism.
The PSL obviously isn’t making the specific errors in general action that the article suggests, but the general analysis of this article isn’t really damaged by that. The PSL is more effective than a lot of other parties, but it has the same fundamental issue of hyper-specificity. When I read over the program, my perspective is the opposite of the author of the original article- The PSL is detailing way too much in advance. Not only do they have the rough way the economy would work in their theoretical socialist state, they also have extensive detailed plans for the rights and ideals that this new government would be formed under. I absolutely love all of these ideas in their program, but this is putting the cart way ahead of the horse.
I do not specify this to attack the PSL specifically, in fact, I think the program sounds extremely effective, but I highlight it to demonstrate the main flaw of the Western left- it’s complete and total fear of flexibility and adaptation.
This is why the article put so much time and effort into attacking our current conceptions of a party line, democratic centralism, and Great Thinkers. What we are observing is a fundamental failure of western Marxists to account for the way revolutionaries actually organize themselves and make decisions. Our flawed conception of democratic centralism has led to the exact issue it was meant to solve. Instead of allowing for a significant variety of ideas channeled into one, powerful revolutionary force, we have vulgarized the party line and democratic centralism into an excuse for this mindset of ideological purity and idealism.
We have tricked ourselves into the exact same problematic mindset that we criticize anarchists for, of Utopianism and idealist organizing, but have been telling ourselves that it is correct because, instead of actually learning from previous Marxists, we have instead taking vague interpretations of their writings as an indomitable, unchallengeable truth.
I can observe this, even in your own comment (though I mean no hostility, because this mistake is everpresent, even in the things I say). Why phrase it as “Leninist principles”? We aren’t philosophers, trying to develop an ethical system. We are doing science, and materialist science at that. Nothing we observe or plan makes sense without context, including what Lenin observed and planned. They are still useful, but they aren’t “principles”. They are observations and actions taken in a specific material situation and context.
What we need isn’t to conform to liberalism or entryism, or to join small local organizations that commit the same mistake of a devotion to complete ideological purity. No, what we need is a willingness to actually work with the parts of the Left we disagree with, and to adapt the actual definition of the party line - Internal disagreement, but unity of action.
Look at the deeply reactionary elements of this country. Many of them completely disagree with each other. But despite having supposedly contradictory ideas, they still manage to accomplish things that all of them want to get done. We can blame this on them only having to defend things instead of work for something they want, but the much more depressing truth is that the conservatives and liberals and neo-Nazis have been using the principle of the party line closer to what Lenin intended than our own explicitly Marxist organizations. This is embarrassing. Anyone defending this absurd sectarianism isn’t a “revisionist”, hell, I’ve already arguably committed the greatest revisionism by saying that Lenin’s ideas must all be taken in context rather than universally applied. But rather, anyone who thinks the current, sect-based state of the western left is somehow necessary needs to take a good long look at themselves and ask how such a perspective is any different from an Anarchist saying it’s necessary to destroy actually existing socialism to preserve freedom (it isn’t, they’re the same thing: ideological puritanism)
Indeed, saying I or anyone else is telling people to not join the PSL is missing the point. I’d rather every member of the radical Left join the PSL if I could make it so, but unfortunately, I can’t just wave my hand to make everyone agree with me and, even if I could, criticism inside the party is necessary for ideological growth and the development of theory, and making everyone agree with me would cause the complete stagnation of the left.
We need to let ourselves disagree with each other. The average family has arguments just as frequently as Marxists do but still manages to keep a united front. We should not be worse at organizing than random families! We are communists, not random hobbyist groups.
I will respond to the rest of this later when I have time, but what really jumped out at me is the claim the the word “principles” indicated a religious or moral attitude? This is ridiculous. Have you never heard the term “scientific principles” or “mathematical principles”. All it means is theories that have been repeatedly tested.
As far as the rest goes I don’t necessarily disagree with you but, and this goes back to the reason I wrote my original clarification, the article claims to be breaking down these parties and analyzing them but only makes the most surface level of analysis before lumping on assumptions without evidence. Even what you said about the PSL being “too specific”. You didn’t cite anything specific. Thid isnt how you analyze things. The book Socialist Reconstruction I mentioned is as specific and detailed it could be and the book acknowledges and explains this up front.
Not sure what you mean by claiming the article didn’t endorse a network of loose groups. It does so in the section about the Marxist Center groups.
I was afraid of this, I was going to have another paragraph but I thought it was too confusing, so what I said is a simplification.
The problem is that they aren’t theories that are tested, at least not to the extent that a principle would be. Lenin was in a specific situation when he wrote what he did, and we don’t have enough examples or data to be sure it’s anywhere near a principle. Maybe a good hypothesis, but it would take truckloads more data and scrutiny for it to come even close to a principle. More importantly, It is not near-universally applicable in the way principles of multiplication are, for instance.
It’s true that scientific principle exist, and I apologize for using a simplified explanation, I shouldn’t have done so.
Also, when I said the PSL was too specific, I was citing their program on their website. I suppose it was implicit, so I understand the confusion. But I was not making a vague gesture at nothing, I was reading through the PSL’s program at the exact time I was writing that comment.
And at no point did I say the article didn’t advocate a network of loose groups, I was saying they didn’t advocate a network of disconnected loose groups. A coalition of loose groups is legitimately a good idea right now, and is likely to accomplish more than a hyper-sectarian Maoist death cult or whatever. To be fair, I thought the DSA mention was the only example until you mentioned the Marxist Center being advocated for, but given that it is a unified collection of groups and not just a random assortment, it seems reasonable. Is there any particular reason a loose collection of groups with unified action and contact with each other wouldn’t work?
I’ve seen how useful national resources and contacts are within the PSL. From helping smaller branches get off the ground to organizing training to mobilizing comrades from across the country for major events in DC. Earlier this year we had the March for peace in DC and now just a few months later were mobilizing carpools again for an event in DC on the 25th. There’s also a massive amount of centralized administrative expertise so that branches can focus on local organizing with the masses. None of that would be possible with a loose confederation of groups.
Makes sense to me.
I feel like it doesn’t really dismiss the main point of the article, but the article really gives me a “we had a good idea but made a bunch of extrapolations from it without proof” vibe I don’t like.
Their criticism of the US left is correct, their solution is not. It seems silly to suggest that any one group of people could come up with a solution so easily, anyways.
True, there is a problem obviously. Otherwise the revolution would have happened. But yeah definitely agree that they are right about the problem in broad strokes, not so much about the direction suggested.
My current hypothesis is that we need some kind of centralized organization that focuses on extremely short-term goals for building worker power, as a kind of transitory organization until the extremely sectarian nature of the US left either subsides or boils over. This organization would exist in tandem with other organizations, not requiring or enforcing specific political memberships besides what directly interferes with specific, short term goals decided by organization leadership to build the power of the proletariat (or long term goals which are specific, effective, and do not demand any kind of ideological purity besides a general commitment to building worker power). These goals would have to be decided by committed socialists.
A kind of meta-organization, which would share resources and important information about achieving it’s specific short-term goals, and would let the US left live on “life support” while we figure out exactly what’s going on.