Comment by Red & Black Notes
The meeting to which Internationalism's
letter refers took place in Toronto on February 26, 2005. It was
the second such discussion between Red & Black Notes and the
Internationalist Workers' Group. Last year, two meetings were held in
Montreal and Toronto on the role of the trade unions. Public meetings
and discussions between revolutionaries are to be encouraged as they
provide a valuable place for the exchange and debate of ideas. In
addition to the speakers, the meeting in Toronto drew participants
from Autonomy and Solidarity, the International Communist Current,
the Socialist Project, the North-Eastern Federation of
Anarcho-Communists, the International Bolshevik Tendency and the New
Democratic Party, as well as several unaffiliated individuals.
Space considerations prevent answering all of the points
Internationalism raises; however, some clarification is necessary
here, particularly on the relationship between organization and
class. Red & Black Notes has never used the term councilist as a
form of self-identification, even though that label has often been
applied by it, and it has printed materials by groups considered to
be councilist.
As I mentioned in my speech, my primary political education was as
a Trotskyist, and as a member of the International Bolshevik Tendency
from 1988 to 1995. I began publishing Red & Black Notes in 1997
as an attempt to reconsider some of my previous politics, and also to
make contact with others with similar politics. Reading Red &
Black Notes from its inception to the current issue, readers will
note a definite evolution.
When I left the IBT, my belief was that Trotskyism made sense, but
that it somehow didn't work in the "real world." In the course of
re-examining my political theory, I came to reject that
interpretation, and also the Trotskyists' obsession with, in their
words, "the crisis of leadership of the proletariat. As a result,
where the Trotskyists put a plus on the leadership question, I put a
minus. A comrade from the Communist Workers Organisation referred to
Red & Black Notes at this point as a kind of "libertarian
Trotskyism." In a sense this was true, since I had not entirely
broken with the methodology of Leninism.
So what is 'councilism?' The term councilist has always sounded
like a pejorative to my ears. I don't know anyone who uses the term
except its opponents (unlike say, left communist, or council
communist which many embrace). I have never seen those organizations
which are labeled as councilist, such as Echanges et Mouvement or
Daad en Gedachte use this term. Organizations which use the
expression, such as the International Communist Current, often argue
it is a product of the degeneration of the Dutch-German communist
left tradition. The degeneration is seen in the view of these
organizations analysis of the Soviet Union, and also on the need for
organization.
As I tried to explain in my presentation, I tend to view
organization as intimately linked to the question of class
consciousness. How an organization views the development of class
consciousness usually indicates the kind of organization its members
see as necessary. For the Leninists, workers can never achieve more
than trade union consciousness on their own, and therefore an
organization is necessary to lead them. I reject such a view as it
contradicts the essence of Marxism - the revolutionary capability of
the working class. For the organization such as Echanges et
Mouvement, class consciousness develops out of the experiences of the
working class, but they believe the only task for the organization is
to circulate information and develop program.
While the circulation of information and the promotion of workers
ideas are very important, an organization of revolutionaries can do
more... While workers will make their own history, they are not
entirely free to make it as they choose, but neither do they make it
from scratch. It's a romanticization to suggest that the every member
of the class remembers the heroic traditions of class struggle, but
neither do they disappear with every new generation. It is not always
necessary to reinvent the wheel.
As Gilles Dauvé noted in his critique of the ultra-left
(reprinted in the new edition of Spontaneity and Organization), the
task is neither to seek to be leaders of the class, but neither to
shy away from it. It is the experience of the class which creates
class consciousness, and ultimately the class which will create the
mass organizations necessary to overthrow capitalism. But the
revolutionary grouping can assist in that process, by being the
memory, by developing theory and aiding in the clarification of the
struggle.
Fischer.
May 17, 2005
Toronto
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