The first part of this text
(see IP #4) was devoted to defining the nature of the class consciousness
of the proletariat on the basis of a materialist analysis of history. It showed
the essential difference between the ideology of class societies and
proletarian class consciousness and criticized the ideological deformations
contained in the conceptions of a large part of the revolutionary milieu.
Understanding the theoretical nature of class consciousness is the cornerstone
of revolutionaries’ ability to contribute positively to the struggle of their
class. But it is not enough. The way class consciousness concretely develops
has to be grasped; the way the workers come to this consciousness in a
society which constantly tends to destroy it, has to be understood if
revolutionaries are to assume their role with a coherent revolutionary
intervention.
The material conditions that
determine the nature of class consciousness, the fact that it is the complete
opposite of ideology, also determine the way it grows. Because it is not an
ideology the class consciousness of the proletariat is not a predetermined
thing, a mystical totality waiting to be revealed. It is a process created by
the activity of people. As a class exploited by capital, the proletariat is
constantly subjected to two contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, there
are the internal contradictions of the capitalist system whose conditions of
exploitation push the proletariat to assert itself as an autonomous, conscious
class; on the other hand, these very conditions produce and reproduce
bourgeois ideology whose effect is to destroy class consciousness. This
contradiction does not give rise to any fixed, static situation where the two
tendencies neutralize each other. On the contrary, it produces sudden advances
and retreats of class struggle where one or the other of these tendencies takes
the lead. The factors deciding which of the two comes out on top are neither
the simple objective conditions of the economic relations of production as
councilism claims, nor the intervention of the party “from outside the class
struggle” as Leninism maintains. It is determined by the dynamic of the balance
of forces between the classes. This begins in economic determinations, but also
depends on the past, the experiences accumulated by the classes, the forces
they possess and the consciousness they have developed which becomes a factor
in its own future. Class consciousness is not predestined, not an automatic
result of the existence of the working class. It is created and grows during
the course of class struggle with the affirmation of the proletariat as an
autonomous class against capital. Because of this, it is an uneven process both
in time and in space. Historically, periods of rising class struggle and
revolutionary explosions, when class consciousness tends to grow, alternate
with periods of retreat and counter-revolution, when this consciousness tends
to regress. Geographically, parts of the proletariat engaged in open battle
with capital coexist with other parts that are still subservient to capital.
The proletariat can overcome these differences only through the world
historical unification of its struggle; it can eliminate them only by
eliminating capitalism and all its divisions, only by putting an end to its own
conditions of existence.
It is this unevenness in the process of developing class consciousness that always produces an avant-garde in the proletariat. In almost every workers’ struggle, at least at the beginning, there are more determined sectors which pull others into the struggle. Geographically the phenomenon is rather fluid and can change or disappear rapidly with new sectors joining the struggle. But historically the problem is more complex because it is impossible for capitalism to be gradually changed into socialism and therefore it is impossible to have a continuous, gradual class struggle. This means that there can be no gradual, continuous development of class consciousness. Thus the avant-garde that before the rest of the working class reaches a theoretical consciousness of the historical perspectives of the class struggle, over and above its temporary ups and downs, has a permanent function to fulfill in the development of class struggle. To understand the nature of this function, we must further explore the characteristics of the process of the development of class consciousness, particularly the relation between theory and practice in proletarian struggle.
In the first part of this
text, we showed that the proletariat bears within itself the abolition of the
division of labour and the separation of theory and practice; and that
this abolition takes place in and through its passage to consciousness. That is
why all conceptions which institutionalize a separation between theory and
practice in the relation between party and class, like Leninism and before it
all the conceptions that predominated in Social Democracy, are in fact
obstacles to the development of the struggle and of class consciousness. Of
course this does not mean that revolutionaries can now proclaim that theory and
practice are now one – any more than all the other separations produced by
class society (between the economic and the political, between the unitary
organs of class and its avant-garde, etc.) can be immediately overcome. Such
empty proclamations are the stock in trade of currents like anarchism,
councilism or apparently the Groupe Communiste Internationaliste (GCI) who take
the diametrical opposite of the S-D error, turning their backs on the real
forces by which this abolition concretely must take place; and thereby
also being unable to contribute to it. Although the proletariat in its struggle
sweeps aside all rigid separations, false oppositions, specializations and
hierarchies produced by the division of labour in class society, it has to
gather its forces in a society still deeply scarred by this very division of
labour. Its effects cannot be completely eliminated from one day to the next.
The separation between theory and practice in particular (two modes of the same
activity separated by the division between mental and manual labour), continues
to weigh heavily on the proletariat because of its very conditions of
existence. The origin of class struggle lies in the economic contradictions
between capital and the working class. In the first instance it is the objective
constraints of the economic relations that forces the proletariat to assert its
own class interests. It is only gradually that the practice of struggle
develops its own theorization and that the working class develops its
consciousness to the point where theory and practice become one. But this
progression is constantly being interrupted by the inevitable retreats in class
struggle, so that the need for theorization is also felt outside of any
immediate practice of open struggle – just as in the beginning, this struggle
appeared without the prerequisite of theory. The abolition of the separation
between theory and practice is not yet a reality in the proletariat but it is
the historical tendency; and these two moments of its activity no longer
appear as rigid oppositions.
It is not our intention to go into detail here about the role of parties and revolutionary organizations in class struggle, about the historical transformations parties have undergone or the mistaken notions that the revolutionary milieu today continues to defend. This is a crucial subject, but one which requires a more detailed treatment. We will certainly be returning to this subject in the future. But because the party’s reason for being lies in this process of developing consciousness and because it is such a vital factor in this process, we must at least define the party’s place in this very process.
To define the function of
the party, it is totally inadequate to simply say that “communists are the most
determined fraction of the proletariat” [from the Communist Manifesto],
as the ICC does more and more today. This correct formulation by Marx only
announces the avant-garde nature of communists, but it does not specify the
aspect concerning us here: the function of this avant-garde and why it
forms a permanent, distinct organization. There is no doubt that in all the
struggles they participate in, communists distinguish themselves as the most
determined elements, always trying to push the struggle ahead. But as we have
seen, the emergence of an avant-garde is a spontaneous phenomenon in almost all
workers’ struggles. It does not always take on an organized form and when it
does it often takes an ephemeral form disappearing into the general organization
of the class. It should also be pointed out that many of the most active and
influential elements in struggles today are often those who get lost in
immediate illusions and the trap of base unionism. The fact that the ICC today
[1987] insists so unilaterally on this aspect is more an expression of its own
activism than of any clear desire to give an effective revolutionary meaning to
its role as “the most determined faction of the proletariat”. To understand the
function of the party, we have to go beyond the simple fact that communist
militants participate fully in the struggles of the class. This assertion can
seem laughable today when communists still suffer from such isolation from the
concrete aspects of the life of their class, but it will take on all its
meaning in a revolutionary period when the influence of communists will be
immediate and their intervention decisive.
It is impossible for the
proletariat to instantly unite theory and practice, to develop its
consciousness in a gradual, continuous way. That is why avant-garde minorities
which historically emerge from class struggle have to organize themselves in
separate, permanent groups, fractions or parties. The theorization of its own
experience is a permanent effort of the working class as a whole in order to
further its struggles. But this effort is being constantly opposed, pushed
back, even destroyed by the material conditions of capitalist society and by
the active forces of the managers and ideologues of capital, whose efforts take
on gigantic proportions in our period of decadent state capitalism. Outside of
a revolutionary period, for the great majority of the working class, this leads
only to a partial understanding of its experiences. Only in limited minorities
does this effort reach and go beyond a global and historical understanding of
society and class struggle to crystallize into a theoretical body of ideas and
a coherent program: in and through the organization of these minorities.
Such a “crystallization” can, in its turn, act as a powerful catalyst in the
whole process. The appearance of a coherent revolutionary theory offers a
theoretical frame of reference to which all of the elements of partial
understanding in the class can refer so that when the process of coming to consciousness
is sufficiently advanced (particularly in a pre-revolutionary period), it can
considerably accelerate this process.
History gives us a clear
example of this phenomenon with the emergence of Marxism as a theoretical
expression of the proletarian struggle. When Marxism appeared in the 19th
century, it became a powerful stimulant to class struggle. There is also the
example of the role played by the Bolshevik Party in the Russian revolution
after April 1917. By defending a program of proletarian revolution (and despite
its many errors), the Bolsheviks were a key factor in the seizure of power by
the proletariat in Russia. The product of the uneven development of class
consciousness, revolutionary parties and organizations are instruments created by
the proletariat to overcome this heterogeneity and achieve the conscious
overthrow of existing social relations. The function of parties and
revolutionary organizations is to catalyze the process of development of class
consciousness by working out and defending a coherent revolutionary theory and
program in the class struggle.
There are many who think
that such a conception of the function of revolutionary organizations reduces
them to mere “theoretical discussion circles” and reintroduces the separation
between theory and practice that it claims to oppose. The ICC itself, led by
the logic of its theoretical and practical regressions, reproached us with this
when we were still a Tendency in that organization:
“What is suggested here is that there is an opposition
between the political positions of the proletariat on the one hand and the
‘activity of the mobilized masses’ on the other …. The former are supposedly
not ‘practical’ but something like ‘pure theory’, something contemplative, an
ideology. The latter is supposedly absolutely practical and above all does
not have any influence on the former (political positions).Thus, the
victims of the Paris Commune, the proletarians massacred in January 1919 in
Berlin did something for the ‘practical aspect’ of proletarian consciousness,
but their struggle supposedly served no purpose in enriching the program. Here
again we see the idea of the party ‘responsible for theory’ and the class that
‘takes care of the rest’ …. Not so far off are the classic councilist conceptions
that see the grouping of the most conscious minorities of the proletariat as
mere ‘work groups’, ‘theoretical discussion circles’ but absolutely not as
militant political organizations. (Internationalisme [ICC publication in
Belgium] #101, p.6)
The ICC, like many other organizations, shows here its inability to understand the real dialectic of class struggle and its role in that struggle. You would have to be deaf, dumb and blind to everything we have ever said to accuse us of saying that the theory of the proletariat is not ‘practical’ or of claiming that the workers of the Paris Commune or those massacred in Berlin in January 1919 contributed nothing to the enrichment of the proletarian program. It is surely not by trying to blur the distinction between theory and practice – while always acknowledging the relation between them – that revolutionaries contribute to the elimination of their separation. This separation, as we’ve seen, is a reality imposed by class society, but one which historically tends to be eliminated in the proletariat. Revolutionary organizations contribute to this elimination by working out and defending a coherent theory of the practice of the class until it becomes revolutionary practice, practice fully conscious of itself – a practice incorporating theory. That is why, in the proletariat, theory is no longer mechanistically separate, opposed to practice, but shows its true nature as a moment of practice. That is why revolutionary organizations, in fulfilling their function, are not outside the struggle of their class, are not engaged in contemplative activity, do not consider themselves as “theoreticians”, do not reproduce the mechanisms of ideology. The theory they defend is a theory resolutely turned towards practice. As members of their class, revolutionaries are naturally led to participate in the whole of the practical life of their class in the course of the development of its struggle. Similarly, workers are led, by the very needs of their struggle, to see the propagation of their experiences and their positions in terms of the overall meaning of their struggle as an integral part of their practical tasks, as a component of the generalization of their struggle.
Revolutionaries risk being
transformed into ideologues not by clearly laying claim to this function, but
on the contrary, by losing sight of it. By their function and their mode of
existence, revolutionaries are exposed to relative isolation in periods of
reflux in class struggle and to the danger of demoralization because their
theoretical positions encounter little immediate political impact. If they give
in to this danger by forgetting the long-term historical meaning of their work,
they get sucked into either theoretical work that becomes increasingly
abstracted from class struggle (towards a contemplative theory, towards
academicism), or towards a frantic search for some gimmick to bridge the
gap between themselves and the class (towards a theory that wants immediate
practical results at any cost, towards activism). These two errors are really
the two faces of the ideologue: the first being that of the “philosophe”, the
“man of science”, passive, trying only to describe the existing world; the
second being that of the “politician”, active, always trying to see “which way
the masses are going”. In fact, these two aspects often exist simultaneously in
degenerating proletarian organizations just as the philosophe and the
politician have complementary roles in ideology. In Social Democracy as in
Leninism, the idea of a theoretical “consciousness” developed outside of class
struggle has always coexisted with the idea of “going to the masses”. It is not
surprising to see the ICC drifting towards an abstract, ideological conception
of class consciousness, and – at the same time – towards a confusion between
theory and practice that allows it to transpose its abstract “consciousness”
into the domain of practice and to make it an “active” factor in class
struggle.
From what we’ve seen so far, a number of questions posed by the ICC in its recent “debates” as well as questions posed by other organizations are, in fact, false questions that can only receive false answers. For example, the ICC asked itself whether the party or the workers councils are “the highest expression of class consciousness”. It concluded, along with Leninists of all shades, that the answer is … the party. The question itself, however, presupposes that the revolutionary conception of class consciousness as totality, as the unity of theory and practice, has been abandoned in favour of an ideological vision of “consciousness” reduced to “theory”, to the program. The answer is already contained in the question. It is obviously absurd to think that either one of these two complementary forms of class organization (unitary organs of the class and the organization of the avant-garde), expressing the same process of development of class consciousness, can, by itself, express the totality. If the party is the most advanced theoretical expression of class consciousness, it can never claim to represent the totality of that consciousness. It cannot englobe all the practical activity of the revolutionary transformation of the proletariat and, therefore, it necessarily has a partial vision of reality – even if this part centres on something as crucial as the historic foundation and perspective of class struggle. Whatever the vital importance of theory and the revolutionary program of the proletariat synthesized in the party, it is never more than one moment of class consciousness which can only have its essential realization in the practical activity of the entire class. Any other vision is just a derivative of ideology, of philosophy, as we’ve seen in the first part of the article. It is the illusion typical of philosophy to imagine that it can represent the essence and totality of the world without any practical activity of transformation. It’s for this reason that the party’s function is not to take and assume power in the name of the proletariat, nor to bring about the revolutionary transformation of society in its place: that task belongs to the unitary organs of the class, the workers councils, with the party acting within them.
Up to now we have tried to deal with the general characteristics of the development of class consciousness. But class consciousness does not follow a linear progression in history. Class struggle is made up of a succession of advances and retreats, often violent, and thus necessarily has an impact on class consciousness. How then, despite its uneven development, does class consciousness grow until it produces a revolution?
For Leninism and councilism
in their classic forms, this question – theoretically – poses no problem. For
Leninism, class consciousness does not develop in the class as a whole but only
by the class recognizing a consciousness outside of itself, in the party. The
question is resolved almost “physically” by the party’s ability to establish a
“leadership” relation with the class. For councilism, class consciousness is
virtually nothing more than a passive reflection of action. The question is
resolved simply through the development of action under the effect of the
economic conditions imposed by capitalism. With both Leninism and councilism,
class consciousness has no meaning outside of open struggle because its bases
lie in purely external conditions (the party or economic conditions). We have
already seen the profoundly mistaken, ideological nature of both Leninist and
councilist conceptions, and it’s fairly obvious that they provide only the most
impoverished solution to the problem posed. The Leninist conception does not
explain how the class manages to “recognize” its party or even how the party
itself grows; if consciousness does not develop in the class, there is no
reason why the class should “have confidence” in this party anymore than in a
party of the bourgeoisie. The councilist conception has a great deal of
difficulty convincing anyone of the possibility of revolution because there are
no specific economic conditions in and of themselves that produce revolution.
Revolution is first of all a political act – the destruction of the bourgeois
state. This supposes that the class has developed a consciousness strong enough
to stand up against all the political and ideological manoeuvres of the
bourgeoisie barricaded behind the state bastion.
In reality, the development
of proletarian consciousness is not an eternal pendulum swinging back and forth
from point zero under the effect of external conditions. To the extent that it
represents the proletariat’s ability to transform the world and itself, class
consciousness is also a factor in its own future. It is a movement that cannot
be completely grasped through any of its visible external manifestations
(demands, program, party, general assemblies, councils, etc.). Outside of
periods of open struggle, during which consciousness can blossom in the
collective thought and action of the workers and can make often spectacular
advances, class consciousness does not completely cease to exist even if its
overt expressions do. It can undergo a process of subterranean maturation whose
overt effects will only be identifiable in the next wave of struggle. Under the
surface of the atomization of the class into competing individuals, is – in
Marx’s words – the slow work of the old mole. During this time, there is the
accumulation of the elements needed for the re-emergence of consciousness in a
more developed form in the open struggle.
The understanding of this
subterranean maturation is all the more important in our epoch of capitalist
decadence because the totalitarian stranglehold of the state on society
produces profound phases of retreat in class struggle followed by sudden explosions
of struggle. (This can make people think there is just an incoherent and
unceasing succession of meaningless struggles.) Revolutionaries like Rosa
Luxemburg and Trotsky had already identified this process in the revolutionary
movements of the beginning of the [20th] century. In the present
phase of a long and difficult process of rising class struggle, there are many
examples of this. The maturation shown by the workers in Poland between their
experiences of successive struggles of 1970, 1976 and 1980 is just one example
of what is happening on a world scale. Recently, the ICC explicitly reaffirmed
the existence of this phenomenon while the rest of the revolutionary milieu
continues to deny its existence – under the influence of either Leninist or councilist
ideas. Unfortunately, this correct affirmation did not lead to a positive
development of the ICC’s understanding of class consciousness and of
intervention in the class struggle. On the contrary, it was a decisive moment
in the regressive evolution of that organization. It is, therefore,
particularly important to be clear on this point today. A merely formal
recognition of a “subterranean maturation of consciousness outside of open
struggle”, like any purely formal recognition of an aspect of reality, can go
hand in hand with a completely mistaken idea of its content. Formalism devoid
of content is of no use in revolutionary intervention!
To explain the contradictory
phenomenon of class consciousness which – though it regresses in periods of
downturn in struggle – nevertheless develops in a subterranean process, the
ICC, instead of working out a dialectical approach, took refuge in mechanistic
analysis superimposing two separate movements in supposedly different
dimensions: a continually progressing movement in the “dimension” of
“deepening” of consciousness and a movement of constant changes according to
circumstances in the “dimension” of “breadth” or “spreading”. Although these
two “dimensions” were proclaimed a part of a “unity”, this purely formal
reminiscence of the dialectic could not erase the ICC’s mechanistic dissection
of consciousness. Consciousness was separated into an inconsistent “dimension”
at the mercy of circumstances and, therefore, purely formal on the one hand,
and on the other a constantly growing “dimension” which was, by contrast, the
essential one. This separation between form and content was virtually
explicitly formulated in the internal text which introduced this whole
conception into the ICC. The two dimensions were defined as “class
consciousness and the consciousness of the class, in other words, the thing
(the content) and the spread of the thing.” Aside from the grotesque
incoherence of these innovations (the two dimensions of consciousness being …
consciousness and … consciousness!), they marked a return to the Leninist
duality of consciousness. The only aspect of class consciousness that – to some
extent – constantly progresses is the theory worked out by revolutionary
organizations. In the ICC, this theory was de facto identified with the
content, with the essence, with class consciousness itself, while the practice
of the class was reduced to the external form of this content, to a question of
“how far theory has been assimilated by the workers”. The logic presiding over
this return to ideology is crystal clear, even if the ICC cannot bring itself
to accept all the consequences of it.(1) With the ideological swamp into which
the ICC has fallen, there is more clarity to be found among the revolutionaries
of the past on the dynamic of class consciousness amidst the advances and
retreats of the class struggle. Paraphrasing Rosa Luxemburg, Georg Lukacs
wrote:
“But the class consciousness of the proletariat, the truth of the process ‘as subject’ is still far from stable and constant; it does not advance according to mechanical laws. It is the consciousness of the dialectical process itself: it is likewise a dialectical concept. For the active and practical side of class consciousness, its true essence can only become visible in its authentic form when the historical process imperiously requires it to come into force, i.e., when an acute crisis in the economy drives it into action. At other times, it remains theoretical and latent, corresponding to the latent and permanent crisis of capitalism: it confronts the individual questions and conflicts of the day and its demands, but as an ‘ideal sum’, in Rosa Luxemburg’s phrase.” (History and Class Consciousness, p.40)
That Lukacs, by one of those “dialectical” sleight of hand operations so many revolutionaries (then and now) fall into, then saw the party as “the bearer of class consciousness”, does not diminish the truth of the above quote. It shows that the fogs of the “depth” and “spread” dissipate in the dialectic of theory and practice in class consciousness. The moments of open and massive struggle are moments when class consciousness is fully expressed and developed, practically as well as theoretically, while moments of downturn in struggle are moments when consciousness regresses and is reduced to a more or less limited theoretical aspect, of which the only outward expression is generally the organized activity of revolutionary minorities.
Because this activity is devoted to the gradual elaboration of a coherent body of theoretical work, it can give the illusion of being independent of the ups and downs of the general consciousness of the class. From this comes the illusion of the separate movements of two “dimensions of consciousness” in the ICC or consciousness that is outside the struggles of the class in Leninism. In reality, because theory and practice are two moments of the same consciousness, theory can only be nourished from the new questions raised in class struggle. In addition, the theoretical effort that goes on after these practical experiences die down does not have an unlimited life span. It will necessarily gradually fade out if there is no new proletarian élan in practice. This process of progressive tapering off is seen even on an organizational level. After great historic moments of class struggle, proletarian political parties disappear or – as in the present epoch – betray the working class and are integrated into the bourgeois state. Even the authentic proletarian fractions that survive the reflux end up by falling apart if the counter-revolution persists. This is what happened to all the fractions of the communist left after the second world war.
After the almost total disappearance of the Italian fraction during the war and the fact that its members joined a mythical party (the Internationalist Communist Party) at the end of the war, the Gauche Communiste de France was voluntarily dissolved by its members in 1952. The German and Dutch lefts were reduced to a few sclerotic groups. As a result, practically no continuous theoretical work was done in the proletariat during the 1950s and 1960s. The result was that when class consciousness resurfaced in the reawakening of class struggle at the end of the 1960s, the emerging revolutionary minorities faced all the work of reappropriating the lessons of the past as well as the need to deal with a reality which had evolved and was raising new questions. Faced with these many tasks, the new revolutionary minorities fell into so many mistakes of the past that today they find themselves in crisis, facing all the difficult problems of class struggle. It’s easy to see how wrong this idea of a mechanical, uninterrupted linear progression of revolutionary theory really is. It’s true that there are the historic acquisitions of the proletariat, the lessons forever inscribed in its historic experience; but the way the way these acquisitions live in the proletariat is entirely dependent on the dynamic of its consciousness.
What is valid for revolutionary minorities is even more valid for the proletariat as a whole. There is no guarantee that a reflux in class struggle will spark the progress of consciousness on a theoretical level. On the contrary, the conditions of capitalist society tend to block this. Only the general dynamic of class struggle (not on a purely immediate scale but on a historic scale) can bring a kind of maturing of consciousness between moments of open struggle. Because the class doesn’t have at all times an active and collective life, this subterranean maturation of consciousness in the class as a whole cannot be a continuous and positive progression of coherent theory. It is basically negative in that it the destruction of certain illusions that workers have kept and which they have to confront in their practice. It is this wearing away of mystifications more than a constructive building up of a positive vision, that characterizes the subterranean maturation of consciousness. It is only in a new phase of struggle when the class itself rediscovers a kind of positive existence in collective action that the elements of negative understanding accumulated during the phase of retreat can be translated into a positive consciousness, practical as well as theoretical. There is mysterious mechanism at work behind the subterranean maturation of consciousness as some appear to want to think. It simply expresses the fact that in human activity up till now, consciousness generally lags behind unconscious practice, and so when workers confront a new obstacle in their struggle, they don’t do it in a fully conscious way; that the defeat of the struggle precedes the elements for understanding this defeat, which only become clear later on. Thus, the series of defeats the proletariat undergoes in its immediate struggles can, in the long run, lead to a victory of the revolution the moment when consciousness develops to the point where it begins to coincide with a practice of revolutionary transformation.
In this subterranean maturation even more than in any other form of developing class consciousness, there is nothing automatic. Consciousness takes on the form of subterranean maturation because it is actively suppressed in its outward expression by the strength of bourgeois ideology that weighs with all its might on isolated workers. Even when workers manage to resist an ideological barrage in any deep-seated sense (as they are doing today), bourgeois ideology constantly undermines a part of their efforts towards consciousness. That’s why workers have to go back over experiences of struggle again and again before a lesson is really learned and understood. In the long run, if class struggle isn’t renewed, the destructive effect of bourgeois ideology will be so strong that any form of subterranean maturation will be eliminated. For this maturation to follow through, the proletariat must begin to fight again so that its consciousness can breathe the free air of open struggle. That’s why even though revolutionaries should recognize the existence of subterranean maturation, they cannot idealize it, any more than they would boast about the therapeutic virtues of defeats because defeats are necessary! The aim of revolutionaries is to do everything they can to make the class struggle progress towards a revolutionary outcome. Revolutionaries have the task of helping to transform the elements that mature negatively in the class into clear lessons opening the perspective for the further development of the struggle.
M. LAZARE
(1) The most extraordinary
result of all this theoretical mishmash is that, having identified the
maturation of consciousness that develops deep within the class, in a
subterranean way, with some sort of “depth dimension” of consciousness, the ICC
decided to proclaim that any rejection of the notion of subterranean maturation
of consciousness is councilist (even though, as we’ve seen, it is as much
Leninist). They then accused organizations that are self-professedly Leninist,
like the CWO and the IBRP, with being “councilist”!
[from Internationalist Perspective #6, spring 1987]