These days I have been reading The Leninist Theory of Organization by
Ernest Mandel, a small pamphlet from the early 1970s. The author was ahistoric Trotskyist leader of the Fourth International promoted by
Trotsky, an organization created once all hope of the recovery of the
Soviet revolutionary process under Stalin's leadership had ceased.
Trotskyists define themselves as Marxists because they embrace the
contributions of Engels and Marx and as Leninists because they assume
most of their strategic postulates, including the organizational
proposal in a vanguard revolutionary party. To all this, we would add
Trotsky's ideas such as the permanent revolution, the transitional
program and the definition of Stalinism as a bureaucratic "degeneration"
of a proletarian revolution.
The text, which worked like Proust's madeleine, has brought me back to
the experience of the encampments at the Complutense University of
Madrid in support of the Palestinian people, which sought to pressure
the rector's office and the government to cut all ties with the Zionist
and genocidal state of Israel. In addition, the general strike, as a day
of struggle, called by the CGT and Solidaridad Obrera for 27S has
revived student interest and movement. Both situations have come
together at a more than appropriate time, which lead me to draw
conclusions about the political practice and strategy of the
organizations that intervene among students and, of course, to think
about the involvement of the libertarian movement and our organizations.
In The Leninist Theory of Organization , Mandel develops a defense of
the Bolshevik Party's proposal, especially against those who see in its
theoretical formulation and practical experience the germ of the
authoritarian "degeneration" of Stalinism. Read the text and draw your
own conclusions, I'll get to the point. Let's go to the paragraph that
brings us here:
"Again we come to a similar conclusion: the Leninist concept of
organization, built on the basis of a concrete revolutionary strategy
(that is, on an objective and correct evaluation of the historical
process), is only the collective coordinator of the activity of the
masses, the collective memory and the digested experience of the masses,
instead of a constant repetition and discontinuity that expands in time,
space and consciousness.
History has also shown us in this connection that there is a substantial
difference between a party that calls itself revolutionary and one that
is actually revolutionary. When a group of functionaries not only
opposes the initiative and activity of the masses, but also seeks to
frustrate them in every way, including military force, when such a group
not only fails to find a common language with the Soviet system that
arises spontaneously from the mass struggle, but strangles and destroys
this system under the pretext of defending "the leadership role of the
party," then we are not talking about a revolutionary party of the
proletariat but about an apparatus that represents the special interests
of a privileged stratum that is deeply hostile to the independent
activity of the masses: the bureaucracy.
For those who want to look for the original reference I quote, we are
talking about Ediciones Era, the collection is "Serie popular", my copy
is from 1974 and the page is 48. I do not think it is necessary to
explain Mandel's reflections, it is crystal clear. I will try, rather,
to explain what is the basis of the link that my brain made between this
paragraph on the revolutionary or counterrevolutionary activity of a
party and the encampments for Palestine at the Complutense University in
Madrid.
Well, my memory led me directly to the role played by two organizations:
the first, the Socialist Movement, which defines itself as a
revolutionary Marxist-Bolshevik vanguard party, and the second,
AbrirBrecha, which is the student and youth front of Anticapitalistas,
in theory Trotskyists of the Mandelian line. As the author rightly says,
it is one thing to call yourself a revolutionary, another to be one. In
this article we will try to assess the activity of these two political
groups, but also that of other organizations (including the one I belong
to) and the evolution of the process that took place at the university.
It is about using a real, historical process to conclude lessons to
apply to our future struggles.
There will be those who say that what happened in front of the
Complutense rectorate cannot be classified as a mass process, much less
a revolutionary one, and they are not wrong. But it is worth reminding
them that, after the general dismantling and demobilisation of students
in recent years, the international movement of support for the
Palestinian people on the campuses of more than one hundred and fifty
camps is not only a green shoot that we must care for and nurture, but
given the level of social activity it must be understood as one of the
first tests for those organisations that claim to want to intervene in
social reality with revolutionary ends.
The Bloc, a blockade against the democratic participation of students.
The first thing that caught our attention when we arrived at the
assemblies convened at the student camp was that they did not take the
form of an open and participatory plenary where students, professors,
university workers and other members of social or political movements
could openly propose different initiatives to be debated and voted on.
It was more like an informational assembly where a self-proclaimed
"Bloc" communicated its decisions, reported on the progress of
negotiations with the rector's office and responded to the questions and
demands that those gathered there asked them, not always very willingly.
A few, armed with a megaphone and sheltered under an awning, gave and
took away the floor, opened or closed the debates, concluded which
contributions would be taken into account and which would be ignored.
Obviously, no one had voted for this Bloc. In fact, it was not even
known for certain who comprised it. It was a completely hidden
leadership assembly of the movement that justified its opacity and its
closed and secret formation by a supposed greater capacity for political
and strategic analysis and for security reasons, to avoid infiltration
by the repressive forces. However, it did not take long to discover that
this closed assembly that usurped the democracy of the broad movement
that had gathered around the camp was mainly made up of militants from
the Socialist Movement, the student youth front of Anticapitalistas
(AbrirBrecha) and the Student Front (which is the student front of the
Stalinist-leaning PCTE). It may seem contradictory, and it is, to affirm
that a project that aims to generate class consciousness, strategic
capacity and involvement in social struggles, at the same time, plays a
role that makes the participation of broad sectors impossible because
they lack the capacity to carry out this task. There is a conflict
between what one claims to be and what one really is.
These information meetings were quite tense, since it was obvious, and
not only to organised activists, that these meetings did not respond to
the needs and demands of a student movement that had risen up against
the policies of its rectorate. However, many of us were not surprised
that the Socialist Movement acted like an authoritarian bureaucracy,
trying to limit any broad participation in democratic processes and
struggle, and trying to broaden its bases and capitalise on
communications by presenting itself as the most radical and
revolutionary option of all. This is not surprising, because, although
they define themselves as a Marxist-Leninist party, by not rejecting the
entire Stalinist tradition of the same, they are incapable of accessing
an understanding of the revolutionary vanguard party as that proposed by
Mandel.
It is more difficult to understand the position of AbrirBrecha. That a
group of Trotskyist nature, even more so of the Mandelian current,
participates in this type of activity of co-optation of a political
movement and, to do so, joins with a party with a clearly Stalinist
tendency, will never cease to surprise us. Honestly, it is impossible
for me to understand what calculations are behind this strange alliance,
but since it is not up to us to answer, we simply hope that it does not
happen again in the future. If Mandel is right that saying that one is a
revolutionary does not make one a revolutionary, we assume that the same
thing happens with someone who defines themselves as a Trotskyist. Time
will tell.
They may say that what I am saying is a lie, that it does not respond to
a realistic analysis, that it is the prejudiced conclusion of a
sectarian anarchist, a strategist of spontaneity, a Moscow cuckoo's egg
or any other shallow idea of the sort; but what we could see there was
that the main activity of both groups was to monopolize the microphone,
to make difficult or prevent the participation of any militant who
criticized the situation, to lead without delegated permission a
negotiation with the representatives of the university, etc. In short,
to prevent the process of struggle from developing by broadening their
demands; helping to activate even greater processes of self-organization
and promoting alliances with sectors of workers.
On the one hand, I am very lazy to have to respond to the party
arguments, which some Twitter users reply to, where they defend that
there is nothing negative or contradictory in an organization trying to
hegemonize its strategic proposals. We do not criticize the defense of a
political position but the imposition of it by blocking any alternative.
On the other hand, obviously, every organization intends that its
political activity puts it in contact with new militants who get
involved in its project. The question is whether this objective, that of
growing, takes precedence over that of developing the processes of
struggle. What is criticized is not that they defend their positions,
but that they do so by instrumentalizing the struggles and taking
strategic positions to control the movements. Wanting to grow is logical
for an organization, doing so at the cost of slowing down the processes
of struggle is low-down.
Finally, it should be noted, because I have seen that part of the
arguments ran along these lines, that the criticisms we make are not
attributable to errors, confusion or lack of experience. In one case, we
are pointing out a conclusion consistent with a political line, in the
other, a drift that is difficult to assimilate.
Beyond the Block.
The work of bureaucracies is not easy. Stopping, undermining and
capitalizing on the social force that is activated in moments of
struggle is a task that requires constant attention and frenetic
activity to plug any crack that opens in the wall of control that they
have built around the working class, in this case, the student class. It
must be recognized that some are trying their best to achieve this goal.
The comrades of the Bloc looked exhausted, it is true that they spent
day and night there, because they had to be on the lookout for any
journalist who wanted to get information and be constantly alert to any
initiative that could exceed the limits they wanted to impose. It is a
pity that so much energy was thrown into stopping just struggles.
But sometimes social reality cannot be contained, no matter how much
dedication and commitment bureaucrats put into it. If the Bloc looked
tired and had dark circles under its eyes, the displeasure of large
sectors of the student movement camped in front of the rectorate was
also evident. Those who were not organized in any political group or
organization were also able to understand that what was happening did
not respond to any logical reason that was not partisan in the worst
sense. People wanted to propose, people wanted to decide, people wanted
to debate and people were beginning to get tired of having their
initiatives stopped again and again.
Overcoming the blockage
As we have pointed out on other occasions, the fact that some comrades
try to avoid or deny the participation of organisations and collectives
in mass movements is as impossible as it is, in our opinion, negative.
No self-respecting political organisation, and even less so if it is
understood as revolutionary, is going to give in and surrender its space
to other organisations with which it does not share a strategic line.
The plurality of positions in broad spaces open to debate is what can
favour the masses building their own line that is capable of favouring
the development of the process of struggle. The political activity that
ensures this political development of social struggles does not involve
the individual participation of the movements and the refusal to allow
organised groups to intervene, but rather a determined struggle against
all those groups that want to co-opt the movements and thus limit their
autonomous development.
The encampment in front of the rectorate of the Complutense University
of Madrid was no exception in this regard. Political organisations of
different tendencies and strategic lines came together there, among
which the participation of CRT (Corriente Revolucionaria de los
Trabajadores) and its youth front Contracorriente should be highlighted.
This political organisation, which also defines itself as Trotskyist but
which distances itself from the Mandelian proposal, carried out an
activity of denunciation and criticism and tried to ensure that the
process of struggle that was taking place developed with proposals that
sought to overcome the isolation that so favours the bureaucrats of the
movements.
What was the activity of the Libertarian Movement?
Except for small groups that define themselves as anarchists and many
students who consider themselves libertarians but do not participate in
any organizational project, the Libertarian Movement currently lacks any
representative organization at the Complutense University of Madrid.
We were able to see how comrades closer to the insurrectionalist
postulates criticized the authoritarian drift that the Bloc had taken
and the usurpation of the assembly by that group that proclaimed itself
as the leadership. The problem was that their participation was erratic
and lacked coordination that would allow them to have a greater impact.
For the "guardians of the microphone" it was relatively easy to make
them lose patience and papers or simply ignore their criticisms.
Anarcho-syndicalism did not play a prominent role, or at least not in a
visible way. As far as I remember, it limited itself to support through
statements and offering to handle logistical issues. I find it difficult
to understand why anarcho-syndicalism accepts this unstrategic line of
separating students from workers. It would be interesting if some
comrade more involved in combative unions would make some public
reflection on this issue. The doors of our newspaper are open to you.
What did Liza do?
The little we could do, given our political moment, our size and our
presence in the university. We went to the camps, participated in the
assemblies, denounced the activities of the Bloc and raised strategic
issues such as the fact that the demands to the rectorship should not be
a simple request to break with the Zionists.
We argued that a body should be created, led by democratically elected
student representatives and supported by the teaching staff, also
elected by its members, to investigate such collaborations, point them
out and ensure compliance with the break. At the same time, we proposed
that this body could have the future task of doing the same work with
any public-private "collaboration", which is nothing other than the
extraction of public money by private companies.
If we had been able to, what role should we have played? The strategic
objective of a libertarian revolutionary organisation like Liza is to
develop the processes of struggle so that they acquire the highest
possible degree of combativeness and awareness. This involves defending
the processes of organisation and autonomy of the struggles by promoting
alliances within the working class and the expansion of our own demands
with those made by the rest of the most disadvantaged sectors.
Where was the PCE? The comic counterpoint of this affair.
Given the historical trajectory of the Communist Party of Spain as a
counter-revolutionary agent first and then as a mere reformist crutch of
the bourgeois system and its elites, the best example of an Expanded
State that I know of could be expected to be found in the Bloc, giving
everything, which for them is taking everything away from the working
class. But they were not there. Why? Because their split (to the left?)
towards the MS had left them without part of their seasoned bases.
Imagine how lost the poor were outside their natural environment, the
bureaucracy. Still equipped with their front associations, they
pretended, at times, to join those who were trying to weaken the closure
of the Bloc, although with the secret objective of being able to be part
of it. The PCE, when it stays outside the bureaucracies, is very similar
to that movie character who hides having been bitten by a zombie in
order to transform into a brain-eater at the worst moment for the group
of survivors.
Fortunately for their bureaucratic interests, they had more strength in
the teachers' assembly. There they operated in the same way as the MS
did in the student assembly: blocking any attempt to unite the forces of
students and teachers, containing any appeal to the working class as a
whole, moderating any claim to the government or the rectorate... I
wonder why there was a split that replicated the same political line.
Miguel Brea, Liza activist.
https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2024/09/12/contra-todo-bloque-un-balance-de-las-acampadas-contra-el-genocidio-de-palestina-en-la-universidad-complutense-de-madrid/
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