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Hal Draper: Anatomy of the Micro-Sect (1973)

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Hal Draper sect on 2009-05-09
- The approach pointed by Marx was different: without giving up or concealing one’s own programmatic politics in the slightest degree, the real Marxist looks to the lines of struggle calculated to move decisive sectors of the class into action – into movement against the established powers of the system (state and bourgeoisie and their agents, including their labor lieutenants inside the workers’ movement). And for Marx, it is this reality of social (class) collision which will work to elevate the class’s consciousness to the level of the socialist movement’s program.
- Very few so-called or self-styled Marxists have understood the heart of Marx’s approach to proletarian socialism: The basic strategy for building a socialist movement lies in fusing two movements – the class movement for this-or-that step which gets a decisive sector of the class into collision with the established powers of state and bourgeoisie, a collision on whatever scale possible; and the work of permeating this class movement with educational propaganda for social revolution, which integrates the two.
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- - Even among those New Left elements – the better ones – who oriented toward going to work in factories or plants (“going to the people”), the dominant conception was that trade unions as such had to be replaced with more “radical” formations of shop organization which would somehow be outside the trade-union structure without being a dual trade union. These conceptions either remained in the realm of fantasy while making it impossible for their holders to integrate themselves into the real movement as trade-union militants, or (worse) were acted out destructively in certain places, bringing harm to the workers and discreditment to the radicals. Nowhere did the New Left impulse into the factories eventuate in a more or less well-rooted movement of militants inside the trade-union movement that could really offer opposition to the established bureaucracy: this is its indictment.
  - But finally, here and there pockets of antiwar opposition in the trade-union movement did start developing. Eventually a number of the more socially conscious and progressive labor leaders did screw up courage and founded the Labor Assembly for Peace in the teeth of violent denunciations by the Meany bureaucracy.
  - The fact that this development represented the first steps of a responsible sector of the trade unions moving into collision with the established powers – this fact meant nothing to the sectists. The only consideration they understood was their soul-saving shibboleth, which they counterposed to the real initiation of class motion.
  - Incompatible political programs can be held together, at least for a historical period, within the framework of a party/movement; for the cement which holds such a formation together is its role in the class struggle itself, the fact that it is the class-in-movement; what holds the antagonistic political tendencies in place is the pressure of the class enemies outside. As long as this is not the real situation of the movement, nothing else can take its place, including exhortations against “sectarianism”.
  - n practice, therefore, the program must be reformist.
  - New American Movement
  - Given a mass base in the social struggle, the party does not necessarily have to suppress the internal play of political conflict, since the centrifugal force of political disagreements is counterbalanced by the centripetal pressure of the class struggle.
  - The political center itself educated for full revolutionary Marxism. At the same time, the party/movement it called for was an all-inclusive socialist party in which the revolutionary Marxist center would constitute one tendency, hopefully eventually dominant.
  - There has never been a single case of a sect which developed into, or gave rise to, a genuine socialist movement – by the only process that sects know, the process of accretion. The sect mentality typically sees the road ahead as one in which the sect (one’s own sect) will grow and grow, because it has the Correct Political Program, until it becomes a large sect, then a still larger sect, eventually a small mass party, then larger, etc., until it becomes large and massy enough to impose itself as the party of the working class in fact. But in two hundred years of socialist history, this has never actually happened, in spite of innumerable attempts.
  - One of the views spread by this political center was that the party/movement to be built should be a broad one.
  - they have merely internalized what they have been told of the nature of “Leninism” by the anti-Bolshevik industry of the American establishment.
  - His unique course was to be serious and uncompromising about maintaining a revolutionary Marxist political center as the instrument of permeating the whole movement with its ideas, and insisting that majorities so gained be recognized by the whole movement. It was the right wing that split.
  - “Before we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we must first of all firmly and definitely draw the lines of demarcation between the various groups [tendencies],” wrote Lenin on launching Iskra. But the lines of demarcation were not to be drawn along sect lines, with organizational walls bounding them: this was the sect course which he did not follow.
  - (1) Your basic contribution to the eventual formation of a socialist movement is what you do to develop a socialist circle around you where you are now. We are thinking in the first place of your role in the work-place (factory, office, school, or whatever).
  - In Marxist terms, this is adequately defined as a wing which advocates class-struggle unionism as against business unionism,
  - This opposition movement must be a loyal opposition.
  - with a sect’s commando raids to rip off a plant situation by a display of “militancy” even if the workers’ interests are harmed, or the union work is wrecked, as long as a couple of members are recruited to the sect.
  - The sectists who operate in unions and plants to subordinate the workers’ interests to their sect-advertising adventures and sorties are enemies of the working class and of socialism,
  - they are wreckers who cannot always be distinguished from police provocateurs.
  - What the future socialist movement needs is a network of informal socialist circles – or formal ones if you will
  - What is true is that membership in a sect has often been the stimulus to undertaking this role, through group pressure and guidance, and that the sect performs the service of providing reading and study materials, etc., for the circle activity. This does point to the positive side of sect work, which we cannot deny. What this means is that socialist efforts along these lines need the assistance of a political center of some sort, to which one can look for literature, advice and help. Moreover, there soon arises the need for separate individual and circle efforts to be linked up.
    
    (2) But the role of a political center need not be carried by a sect.
Hal Draper: The Myth of Lenin's "Concept of The Party" (1990)

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Hal Draper Party Democracy Lenin on 2009-05-08
- current in a class movement
- mass parties
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- - In the form that Marx brought about, it sought to organize the entire working-class movement in all its forms. This much of its character was continued by the Second International, except that trade unions were not affiliated.
  - Lenin’s response to this situation was not to organize the revolutionary wing as a left-wing sect outside the general movement. In fact, if we consider the whole period before 1914, Lenin never organized, or sought to organize, a “Leninist” sect. (The theory of “revolutionary” sectification arose out of the degeneration of the Comintern to become a “principle of Leninism”; before 1917 it had been kept alive on the fringes of the Second International and in the anarchist movement.)
  - The course which the young Lenin took was then the normal one in the International: he sought to organize the revolutionary current as a political center of some sort inside the mass party
  - term “Bolsheviks” and “Mensheviks” meant a political center inside the mass party, the RSDLP, not a membership sect.
  - There were those who believed in split at any cost, that is, the revolutionary wing in a reformist party must split away at the most opportune moment, and organize its own sect. This is the characteristic theory of sectism.
    There were those, and they were legion, who believed in unity at any cost. The unity of the mass social-democratic party must never be breached; a break was the ultimate disaster. This was the mirror image of the first approach: the fetishism of unity.
  - Plekhanov, under pressure, swung around and demanded that the majority of the Iskra editorial board be handed back to the Mensheviks, for the sake of “unity.”
  - the right wing could work to win out at the next congress if it could, but it would not do to demand political concessions as a reward for not splitting.
  - after extreme right-wing elements had walked out for their own right-wing political reasons
  - It was devised for (a) an underground movement functioning in secrecy under conditions of autocracy, and (b) a movement which had not yet succeeded even in forming a national organizing center in its own country, as had most social-democratic parties in Europe.
  - a share in the formation of an ideology
  - To conclude. We all know that the “Economists” have gone to one extreme. To straighten matters out somebody had to pull in the other direction, and that is what I have done.
  - Now, under the new conditions of legality, Lenin boasted as follows:
    
    Despite the split, the Social-Democratic Party earlier than any of the other parties was able to take advantage of the temporary spell of freedom to build a legal organization with an ideal democratic structure, an electoral system, and representation at congresses according to the number of organized members. You will not find this, even today, either in the Socialist-Revolutionary or the Cadet parties ... [35]
  - pointing with pride: the organizational successes of the party were due to the inherent organizational capacities of the working class.
  - “only the broadening of the Party by enlisting proletarian elements can help to eradicate the “circle spirit.”
  - “And the transition to a democratically organized workers’ party, proclaimed by the Bolsheviks ... in November 1905, i.e., as soon as the conditions appeared for legal activity