In preparing documents for the October conference, the drafting committee and the national board were faced with precisely stating Line of March’s ideological outlook. In the past, this always seemed to be an easy task. We simply stated that Line of March based itself on Marxism-Leninism and thought this made our basic principles completely clear to everyone. But this time around it became apparent that being exact about our ideological basis isn’t really such an easy task after all.
The purpose of this background paper is to discuss some of the reasons this is the case. This isn’t a “position paper” proposing to resolve our difficulty by adopting a particular set of formulations stating “Line of March’s view of revolutionary ideology today.” Rather, it’s an attempt to put squarely before the organization some knotty questions that will face us for a long time; to collectivize with the membership the key issues raised when the board grappled with the question of ideology; and to help make our discussions and debates more informed and productive.
* * *
The difficulty in precisely formulating our ideological outlook isn’t because some section of the leadership has decided that Marxism-Leninism is wrong and has launched a struggle to replace it with some other worldview as the ideological cornerstone of the organization. Actually, the dominant sentiment on the board is to regard the current upheavals among those who identify with Marxism-Leninism as fundamentally a positive process of self-criticism and renewal, one that holds out the promise of revitalizing Marxist-Leninist theory and communist practice. The problem lies on a different level: bottom line, it’s that today it isn’t nearly as clear as it used to be what exactly anyone means when they say Marxism-Leninism. The fact is, Marxism-Leninism is in a period of profound re-evaluation and change – many would say a crisis – and even propositions once held to be among its “basic principles” have become topics of widespread discussion and heated debate within the communist movement itself.
The roots of this situation lie in the tremendous changes that have taken place since Lenin’s time and in the communists’ efforts to come to grips with dramatically altered conditions and problems. Responding to these changes, and to the fact that views long held to be basic tenets of Marxism-Leninism don’t adequately explain current realities, a rethinking of key theoretical questions has been proceeding in a number of communist parties for several decades. But in the last two or three years this process has been accelerated and thrust center-stage by the re-examination going on in the Soviet Communist Party under the banners of perestroika and the “new way of thinking.”
Our organization has only begun to familiarize itself with the main points of perestroika and new thinking, and is only just beginning to be aware of the real degree of ideological diversity among the world’s communist parties (many of whom have conducted extensive re-evaluations of various Marxist-Leninist propositions independently of and/or well before the Soviet Party). But even so, we can already see that more than a few minor adjustments in secondary points are being made. Rather, points long accepted as “fundamental” to Marxism-Leninism are being challenged, and changes that seem as sweeping as the transition from “Marxism” to “Marxism-Leninism” 70 years ago are being put on the agenda. Making matters even more complex, this isn’t taking place as a neat clash of two fully formulated doctrines – just take your pick of which is right. On the contrary, what’s happening is a very wide-ranging and complicated discussion, with a lot of groping and many shades of opinion. And we’re still at an early stage in this process, and it would be wise to recognize that Marxism-Leninism is likely to be in flux for many years to come.
To be a more concrete, here is a sampling (not by any means exhaustive) of some of the re-evaluations and debates underway:
1) Regarding socialism and working class ride: Marxism-Leninism has long been identified with one-party states, where the communist party’s leading role in socialist society is ordained in a country’s constitution. Key elements of this approach are under criticism (and being changed in practice) in many socialist countries. A number of ruling parties (though certainly not all) are arguing that this type of system has failed to provide for real democracy, and a new emphasis is being placed on socialist pluralism, individual rights and the importance of the rule of law. Steps to disengage communist parties from the actual operations of the state are being taken, and ideas of removing the communist party’s legal guarantee of power and initiating multi-party systems are being debated in a number of countries. The prospect of a communist party sharing political power, or even turning it over to another social/political force, is coming up, especially in Poland. The very notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat – long regarded as a cornerstone of Marxism-Leninism – has been put up for review by many parties. The Romanian Communist Party, for example – hardly known as a strong advocate of perestroika-type reform – specifically rejected the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat several years ago; its leader terms the concept “inappropriate” and states ”we must not for a moment identify the dictatorship of the proletariat with the power of workers and peasants, the power of the people.”
2) Regarding the role of the communist party and its method of organization, democratic centralism: An extensive critique of “vanguardism” on the part of communist parties is a major aspect of much current Soviet writing. There is new theoretical and political debate on the whole vanguard concept, including exploration of ideas about broader left formations – not exclusively communist ones – playing a vanguard role. The nature of the demarcation with the social democratic trend is up for re-evaluation, and communists in many countries are trying to forge new relations with social democrats, not on the basis of a genuine representative of the proletariat allying for a period with an inherently opportunist trend, but on the basis of equality as two different legitimate trends, both genuinely advocating socialism but having differences about how to get there. There is a searing critique of the way democratic centralism has been understood and practiced in the communist movement. Many communist parties now function publicly as multi-tendency formations, with different groupings in the party being explicit about their differences of opinion outside the party. And between parties, there is a new emphasis on “unity in diversity” and the necessity for each communist party to base itself on its own assessment of the conditions in its own country. These changes have unleashed a lot of new energy and are viewed as very positive by those who see what is taking place in communism as essentially a process of renewal and creative growth. But it can hardly be denied that they simultaneously challenge many approaches and practices long considered sacrosanct aspects of Marxism-Leninism.
3) Regarding the nature of this historical era: Marxism-Leninism has traditionally been defined as Marxism “in the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution”. In “Foundations of Leninism,” which we used to clarify our view of Leninism, Stalin wrote that Leninism was Marxism “when the proletarian revolution had become an immediate practical question, when the old period of preparation of the working class for revolution had arrived at and passed into a new period, that of direct assault on capitalism.” But central to the whole range of current assessments of the CPSU is the idea that capitalism has proven far more resilient that communists previously thought, that it has not fully exhausted all its growth potential, and that this is not a period when actual revolutionary struggles are on the agenda in the main capitalist centers. Adopting this changed assessment has big implications for every aspect of communist political strategy and tactics. And if it is correct, what does it mean about being able to use “Marxism-Leninism” to define communist ideology in this period? Does it imply Marxism-Leninism needs another level of development to be relevant to this new stage, just as Marxism needed to become Marxism-Leninism when capitalism went from its competitive to its monopoly stage? Does it mean we are entering a new “post-Leninist” period where some elements of Marxism-Leninism will be carried over, some dropped, and some new concepts and practices added, to make a new ideological construct and guide to action? These questions are coming up for debate in the international communist movement. (For comrades reference, we attach as an example the article “Marxism, Leninism, and Marxism-Leninism” by Roy Medvedev [Not included here – EROL]. Medvedev is the author of “Let History Judge” – an analysis and critique of Stalin and Stalinism; he was once expelled from the CPSU, has since been readmitted and is now in the Congress of People’s Deputies. The article was written “pre-perestroika” in the early 1980s; it is a chapter in Medvedev’s book “Leninism and Western Socialism,” published by Verso Press, London, in 1981. It is included not because the drafting committee endorses its conclusions – we have no collective opinion on the matter – but because it has some useful information about the ideological self-identification of many communist parties today; because it’s an example of the kind of questions being discussed among communists, even before Gorbachev; and because it is an example of a forthright and businesslike approach to the debates underway. For comrades wanting to explore those debates further, a good place to start is with almost any recent issue of “World Marxist Review.”)
4) Regarding the continuity of the communist movement: One of the things that served to give Marxism-Leninism some of its coherent meaning was the idea that the theory and practice of at least the central parties of the communist movement over the last 70 years embodied and represented it. Even if this theory and practice had some errors, one could point to a continuity of practice, and say “this represents, of course with some flaws, what Marxism-Leninism means in the concrete.” But now, with the degree of criticism of the Stalin period emanating from central figures in the Soviet Party, the whole notion of a basic continuity in the CPSU and the international communist movement based on Leninism is being challenged. Soviet de-Stalinization is now going well beyond the idea that Stalin committed serious errors, even crimes. There’s a critique that the policies pursued under his leadership represented not a flawed continuation of Marxism-Leninism, but a fundamental departure from it. That has put on the agenda a whole new sorting out process as to what Leninism is or was.
5) Finally, on the level of philosophy: Even some seemingly basic questions of historical materialist philosophy seem to be on the agenda for debate. This is most clear in the case of the proponents of “new thinking” advancing the idea that new conditions have laid a material foundation for “universal human values” to appear; even further, for it to be argued that these take precedence over distinct class values. This is a very complicated issue with many theoretical nuances, but it seems that something along these lines is the leading position in the CPSU today. Does this mean the CPSU holds that, at least since the beginning of the nuclear age, or at least in the last decade, class struggle is no longer the motor force of history? What implications does this have for the Marxist-Leninist world outlook?
Such questions as these are not going to be settled anytime soon – in the Line of March or outside of it. On the contrary, the likelihood is that they will become topics of increasing discussion and debate. From our point of view, that debate isn’t over whether or not activists need a scientific, materialist, and working class-partisan world view if we are going to understand the conditions under which we live and work effectively to change them. At least for the drafting committee and the national board, it’s over the contemporary content of that world view – over what elements are retained from previous Marxist-Leninist theory and practice and which are altered or rejected.
What this means for an organization trying to write down its basic points of unity, though, is that no completely satisfying statement of our ideological foundation is possible. There is simply no way to formulate a brief summation of our ideological principles that would be able to unite the organization and/or be clear to people outside of it. Attempts to do so (and the drafting committee made many in the course of working on the conference documents) tended to have problems in one of two directions: (1) either they got endlessly long and murky in the attempt to formulate compromise positions in defining Marxism-Leninism today, which naturally ended up satisfying nobody; or (2) they took on a hollow, “pledge of allegiance”-type quality, repeating phrases of adherence to Marxism-Leninism without being able to offer any clarity on what that meant beyond a statement of faith.
This matter received extensive discussion at the July board meeting, and there seemed to be a fairly clear majority sentiment from which the drafting committee took guidance. That sentiment was to register that:
• Line of March developed within and takes shape today as a product of the Marxist-Leninist tradition;
• we continue to think that tradition offers valuable guidance in approaching the issues and struggles of today’s world;
• we recognize that Marxism-Leninism today is in a period of flux and change, and that a break with many dogmatic ideas and practices is necessary to understand today’s realities and work effectively to change them;
• we believe that Marxism-Leninism is capable of such renewal, and – while recognizing that there are no guarantees – think that what will emerge when things sort themselves out will build on the Marxist-Leninist tradition rather than negate it;
• we will make no effort to struggle for an organizational position on the theoretical/ideological issues being debated at this point in the communist movement; instead, the organization’s unity will rest principally on our political assessment of the tasks facing the left today; by proceeding this way we recognize that there will be a diversity of opinions in the organization about what constitutes Marxism-Leninism – or even whether this concept or terminology is appropriate/relevant to today’s conditions.
The documents submitted to the membership for the October conference were written attempting to follow that point of view. This brief “background paper” is intended to help advance the discussion and debate over those documents, to assist comrades in clarifying their thinking and formulating their agreements, disagreements and amendments. Even more important, though, we want to generally open up a more active discussion in the organization of the actual state of Marxist-Leninist ideology today. The tremendous flux in Marxism-Leninism is having an immense impact on communists and other political forces around the world. A vital aspect of our continuing effort to break out of our previous narrow-mindedness and dogmatism – the “more orthodox than anyone else” mentality – is getting up to date on the very fundamental debates underway and struggling to interact with them.