Post by celticfire84 on Mar 23, 2006 1:57:22 GMT -5
Communist parties, in order to operate succesfully towards the objective goal of communism, must dually maintain firm and centralized formal procedures and codes of conduct, while at the same time allow for bottom-up democracy, debate and freely airing out of view points. It is a difficult balance to maintain, and overemphasizing one aspect over the other is an easy mistake. But if there is to be a revolutionary organization, with firm revolutionary principles and strong tested leadership, there must also be dissent and ferment within. This is examplified in the recent case of of two former Central Committee members Rabindra Shrestha and Anukul of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). Shrestha and Anukul had differences with the leadership, specifically with Chairman Pushpa Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai, and instead of following Party guidelines for debating disputes at a Party congress, Shrestha and Anukul instead chose the path of factionalism and set up a "New Cultural Revolutionary Group" opposed to the Prachanda/Bhattarai leadership, the group proceeded to report their disagreements with the bourgeois press. These actions, undoubtedly served the reactionaries during a time of crucial struggle in the People's War is a serious issue. It reaffirms why Party discipline is important, but also, why inner-Party democracy is so important.
While studying the revisionism of the last cenutry, we find a common thread between the historic reivisonists. Revisionism, while gowned in the red flag, advocated democracy in the abstract, from Khruschev's "Party of all People" to Deng's "Black Cat, White Cat" comments, democracy is presented as a thing removed and detached from class. This was clearly a move to throw the proletarian revolutionaries off and to confuse the masses. Lenin smashed to atoms the notions of classless democracy in a class divided society. But the leason was not easilly learned, and still not learned by modern revisionists and social-democrats that populate the Western countries. But while fighting off revisionism and bourgeois liberalism, some communists have committed the opposite error, leaning towards stale dogmas and developing a rigid attitude towards differences of opinons, and contradictions among the people. Those who make mistakes of this kind will not only find themselves isolated, but defeated.
What is the difference between state ownership and socialism?
This seems to be the crux of socialism and revisionism. Between proletarian or bourgeois dictatorship. The principle contradiction under capitalism is that of labor and capital. Socialism then is not a redirection of this contradiction, it is the systematic elimination of that contradiction, it is the progressive dissolvement of class destinctions that charecterizes the socialist epoch. But this development does not occur in a straight line, it is marred with contraidctions and struggle.
"Hence the revolutionaries should be freed of the hypocritical illusion of absolute democracy or ‘democracy for all’ as spread by the bourgeois. The bourgeois democracy, or formal democracy, is a concept born out of the struggle against absolute monarchy. Though it has a progressive character and role in a particular historical context, in another historical context it becomes retrograde and it is imperative for proletarian democracy to replace bourgeois democracy; and proletarian democracy itself will be negated in yet another historical condition. "
From: The Question of Building a New Type of State, Baburam Bhattarai, Worker #9
So then arises the question of proletarian democracy.
While studying the revisionism of the last cenutry, we find a common thread between the historic reivisonists. Revisionism, while gowned in the red flag, advocated democracy in the abstract, from Khruschev's "Party of all People" to Deng's "Black Cat, White Cat" comments, democracy is presented as a thing removed and detached from class. This was clearly a move to throw the proletarian revolutionaries off and to confuse the masses. Lenin smashed to atoms the notions of classless democracy in a class divided society. But the leason was not easilly learned, and still not learned by modern revisionists and social-democrats that populate the Western countries. But while fighting off revisionism and bourgeois liberalism, some communists have committed the opposite error, leaning towards stale dogmas and developing a rigid attitude towards differences of opinons, and contradictions among the people. Those who make mistakes of this kind will not only find themselves isolated, but defeated.
What is the difference between state ownership and socialism?
This seems to be the crux of socialism and revisionism. Between proletarian or bourgeois dictatorship. The principle contradiction under capitalism is that of labor and capital. Socialism then is not a redirection of this contradiction, it is the systematic elimination of that contradiction, it is the progressive dissolvement of class destinctions that charecterizes the socialist epoch. But this development does not occur in a straight line, it is marred with contraidctions and struggle.
"Hence the revolutionaries should be freed of the hypocritical illusion of absolute democracy or ‘democracy for all’ as spread by the bourgeois. The bourgeois democracy, or formal democracy, is a concept born out of the struggle against absolute monarchy. Though it has a progressive character and role in a particular historical context, in another historical context it becomes retrograde and it is imperative for proletarian democracy to replace bourgeois democracy; and proletarian democracy itself will be negated in yet another historical condition. "
From: The Question of Building a New Type of State, Baburam Bhattarai, Worker #9
So then arises the question of proletarian democracy.
