DO THE WORKERS NEED A PARTY?

by Abraham Ziegler

Pannekoek, Mattick and Maitland, despite their polar differences, all proceed from the same erroneous premise of traditional Marxism, i.e., the inevitability of Socialism. However, while Maitland continues to follow the "orthodox" application of the theory of inevitability, Pannekoek and Mattick have diverged. Maitland espouses the Marx-Engels thesis that the inevitable victory of Socialism is not an automatic product of the class struggle, but demands the intervention of a party with the will to power. Specifically, Maitland defends the Leninist "leadership" whose function it is to stimulate the movement of the workers along the revolutionary path and guide them to victory. Pannekoek-Mattick, on the other hand, conceive of Socialist consciousness arising out of the class struggle itself. For them revolutionary consciousness is not merely inevitable, it is spontaneous, and comes into being when the social temperature reaches 212 degrees - like water turning into steam.

Starting from this premise, Pannekoek and Mattick reject the party as a necessary element for proletarian victory. Mattick holds that parties PA&E 76 can only play a bourgeois role and are essentially anti-working class in character. To Pannekoek, the existence of parties and the workers' belief in them is the main reason for working class impotence. Indeed, Pannekoek's concession of a certain useful function to "ideological groupings" serves only to undermine his confusion on this score.

We find ourselves in basic disagreement with both the "orthodox" position of Maitland and the Pannekoek-Mattick deviation. It is true that parties have played a not inconsiderable role in reducing the proletariat to its present sorry plight. But Pannekoek confuses cause and effect when he attributes to the party per se the primary responsibility for the debacle of the proletariat. Belief in, or reliance upon, parties is an effect of the acceptance of capitalist ideology by the working class. As Pannekoek himself points out, "they (the workers) cannot yet comprehend the course of the struggle and the unity of class interests," which is but another way of saying that the workers lack an independent class ideology. Under such circumstances it follows that today, parties with any sort of following will necessarily reflect the confusion of the working class. However it is not the parties that are responsible for the confusion; quite the contrary, only a party, based upon correct principles, is capable of providing the light necessary for dispelling confusion. Pannekoek glimpses this truth when he demonstrates that the party need not be a power vanguard organisation, that it can also function as a non-power, non-leadership, ideological grouping in the interests of working class enlightenment. His failure to grasp the vital role to be played by such a party stems from his erroneous concept of the nature of Socialist consciousness.

Basically, Mattick and Pannekoek confuse trade-union consciousness with Socialist consciousness. Trade-union consciousness is to the proletariat what class consciousness was to the bourgeoisie. Just as it was clear to the rising bourgeoisie that they were being "unjustly" hemmed in by feudal restrictions, and that they ought to have political representation commensurate with their growing economic power, so it is equally apparent to the working class that they need unions to defend themselves against ruthless capitalist exploitation. But there they stop; unlike the revolutionary bourgeoisie of old, the workers regard the system which enslaves them as the best of all possible systems, the system of "free" enterprise, individual liberty and democracy. In short, the working class has not developed an independent class ideology but continues, in that sphere, an appendage of the bourgeoisie. As Lenin has pointed out in his What Is To Be Done? - "The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e. it may itself realise the necessity for combining in unions, to fight against the employer and to strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.

Before Lenin, Kautsky made the same distinction:

Before Lenin, Kautsky made the same distinction:

"In this connection Socialist consciousness is represented as a necessary and direct result of the proletarian class struggle.But this is absolutely untrue. Of course, Socialism, as a theory, has its roots in a modern economic relationship in the same way as the latter emerges from the struggle against the capitalist-created poverty and misery of the masses. But Socialism arises side by side with the class struggle and not out of the other; each arises out of different premises. Modern Socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of a profound scientific knowledge. Indeed modern economic science is as much a condition of production as, say, modern technology and the proletariat can create neither the one nor the other, no matter how much it may desire to do so; both arise out of the modern social process. The vehicles of science are not the proletariat but the bourgeois intelligentsia. It was out of the heads of the members of this stratum that Modern Socialism originated, and it was they who communicated it to the more intellectually developed proletarians who in their turn introduce it to the proletarian class struggle from without and not something that arises from within it spontaneously."

The limitations of trade union consciousness and the inability of Pannekoek's "conditions" and Mattick's "real and direct propaganda of events" to spontaneously transform the class instinct of the proletariat into Socialist understanding and consciousness is underlined by the failure of the "revolutionary situations" which have developed from time to time, to materialise. We need only mention the 1920 seizure of the factories in Northern Italy, the 1926 British General Strike, the 1936 French "Lock Out" movement, etc. Here we had spontaneously developed social crises which overnight transformed the placid social-economic atmosphere into one charged with revolutionary dynamite. The social barometer rose to an alarming degree. The very foundations of capitalist society heretofore considered impregnable, were threatened. But the storm blew over. "Order" and social calm were restored. Wherein lay the reason for the overwhelming defeats suffered by the workers on these historic occasions? We are told that the proletariat was betrayed by the treachery of the Labour Leaders acting in conjunction with the party. True, the Labour Leaders and the party played a Judas role.

BUT IT WAS ONLY BECAUSE THE WORKING CLASS LACKED AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE BOURGEOIS CHARACTER OF THE PARTY AND THE LABOUR LEADERS THAT IT WAS POSSIBLE, IN THE FIRST PLACE, TO BETRAY IT.

This is not to deprecate the importance of the role of "conditions" and of the social pressure, which the "real and direct propaganda of events" generate. These forces play an important part in developing Socialist consciousness in that they help to bring forth the latent class instinct of the proletariat. But class instinct is purely a negative factor, it cannot of itself (sans education and organisation) develop into Socialist consciousness by means of the warmth and pressure of the increasing temperature. To borrow an analogy from the field of electricity'- To complete the revolutionary circuit it is necessary to link up the negative pole of class instinct with the positive pole of Socialist understanding and consciousness.

In opposing the Pannekoek-Mattick thesis, we by no means accept Maitland's defence of the traditional "power-vanguard" party. However, Maitland is on solid ground in taking issue with Pannekoek and insisting that the class struggle by itself will not educate and organise the workers: that the "conscious minority must bring consciousness to the class struggle. But Maitland's consciousness consists of blind faith and obedience to a sacrosanct Party. He conceives the masses as incapable of independent action and bluntly denies that they can be educated this side of the revolution and even after the revolution "is well under way." Hence, according to Maitland, there is the need for the party to act as the "protector" of millions of workers "who are unable to think clearly, degraded and stupefied by capitalist exploitation."

Paradoxically, Maitland and Mattick have a common bond. Both reject education - as distinct from experience obtained in the course of the class struggle - as a primary factor in the development of Socialist consciousness. Maitland considers the proletariat incapable of education, while Mattick dismisses education as of little or no importance. He reasons that the experience of the class struggle will supply the proletariat with what "little philosophy, sociology, economics and political science" they lack.Maitland and Mattick constitute the obverse and converse of the same medal. The former stresses the "ideological" character of the party, obscuring the real nature of his Leninist ideal in a cloud of democratic phraseology. Mattick, on the other hand, pictures the party as exclusively an anti-working class, power instrumentality. He, for his part, obscures and ignores the role of the party as an ideological grouping.

In contrast to the Pannekoek-Mattick concept of "automatic' Socialist consciousness, and Maitland's power vanguard party, we submit the DeLeonist concept of the role of the party.

DeLeon conceived the party as a teacher, not as a leader over the working class. Long before the bankruptcy of the traditional party, at a time when it was in the heyday of its popularity, DeLeon as a Socialist pathfinder discarded the power-vanguard concept. To DeLeon the party was an educational-propaganda organisation for the distilling of Socialist ideology. He violently disputed the Maitland-Leninist concept that the working class was incapable of carrying out its own revolution, and its corollary, that the workers were in need of a power party to "guide" and "protect" them. DeLeon never tired of pointing out that the revolution must be the conscious act of the workers themselves, functioning through their own economic organs. "No bunch of office holders can emancipate the workers", was one of his favourite texts. To DeLeon, the party was transitory in nature, its role limited to the period prior to the revolution. After the revolution it was the Industrial Union composed of the entire working class, which was to function as the government. He never tired of repeating that any attempt upon the part of the party to perpetuate itself after the revolution would constitute a usurpation.

Mattick states an inescapable truth when he points out that the proletariat's organisational opportunities are rapidly contracting. The party-intoxicated Maitland speaks of the party of the future being the product of decades of struggle. This is the sheerest nonsense; the working class hasn't got decades at its disposal to perfect its organisation. Mattick scores a telling point in pointing this out, but the shortness of time available does not defeat our contention that the class struggle of itself does not create Socialist consciousness. If anything the short time remaining in which the working class may act decisively, is only added reason for Mattick, Pannekoek et al., to abandon the traditional Marxist inevitability complex - the basic premise for all the bankrupt tactics which have led the working class from one defeat to another, until today we face the absolute victory of Fascism and the burial of the proletarian revolution for this historical period.

(February-April l942)