THE NEW LABOUR MOVEMENT (2)
 Party or "Work Group" We now have to answer the question whether these propaganda or work groups must also be looked upon as new parties. For these groups have, just as do the parties, a political program; they are groups with more or less fixed opinions, and with distinctive directives for their own activity as well as for the class struggle in general. So it might appear then that they, like the hitherto known parties, stand aloof from the mass, elevate themselves over it and finally after all once more strive for dominance over the mass. But anyone who judges in this way fail to see that the conceptions advocated by the new work groups regarding the path which the working class must take for its emancipation are directed to the overcoming of all forms of dominance. The content of their propaganda does not convert the groups into organs of domination, but into organs through which the class itself derives the necessary knowledge and thus is in a position to shake off all dominance. Otherwise with the hitherto known political parties. These want first to win the state power, and then, by way of decrees, ordinances, laws and government measures, put through their political program. This is the usual way in bourgeois class society. But such a policy simply has as its presupposition the class oppositions in society, and is at the same time bound up with them. It can have as its content merely a view to softening the oppositions of "bridging them over" or "compensating" them. But the opposition between master and slave may be "compensated" as much as one likes, master and slave nonetheless still remain. This opposition, on which the whole structure of present-day society is built, and hence also its government, can not be compensated, not even through the policy of a government which calls itself communist. It can only be done away with, in that the workers, through their councils, directly seize the power, themselves carry out all political (social) measures, and in collective union obtain the disposal over the preconditions for the production of their own living. That, however, can not be accomplished through the policy of a government, but takes place only in the course of a revolutionary process in which the working masses themselves come to maturity and rise to be the social power. In view of the specific character of dominance which is bound up with the concept "party", whereas the new work groups direct their propaganda precisely against such a character, and also, in so far as they have a political program, are in complete opposition to the known party conceptions; these groups have practically nothing in common with what is understood by "party". They differ from parties essentially, and can therefore not be looked upon as such. For the present we call them "work groups"; as to what name they may finally receive, we must leave that to the further development. |