{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","title":"Crowds and Party","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781781686942","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","id":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","uuid":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","title":"Crowds and Party","normalized_title":"crowdsandparty","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781781686942","isbns":["9781781686942","9781781686720","9781781687666"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":183,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Crowds%20and%20Party","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/search"},"page":{"printed_page":105,"pdf_page":104,"physical_index":104,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"e517159ff4aa5afc46dd19a5152eb70346ce859251877a354213d3ecedaad130"},"chapter":"CROWDS AND PARTY","content":"The Few Dominate the Many\n\nSome current rejections of the party say its time has passed.<sup>10</sup> Maybe at one time such a political form made sense for radical politics, some concede, but now is not that time. This rejection errs when it proceeds as if the critique of the party were something new, a response to objective changes in the mode and relations of production. The mistake is one of omission: left criticism of the party form is in fact coextensive with the emergence of working-class political movement. From the beginning, socialists worried about their organizations becoming centralized and authoritarian, and hence alienated from actual proletarian struggle.\n\nThe First International, the International Workingmen’s Association, which lasted from 1864 to 1876, split between the followers of Marx and the followers of Bakunin. Bakunin rejected the inclusion of a political plank in the platform of the IWA, specifically the assertion that “the conquest of political power is the first task of the proletariat.” Contra Marx, Bakunin emphasized the subordination of politics to the struggle for economic emancipation. Solidarity with respect to economic demands had to come first, the federations and sections of the International left free to decide the political question autonomously. On the one hand, Bakunin’s argument is pragmatic: because workers were coming together in struggle against capitalism, the insertion of political questions could make unity harder to achieve. On the other, the argument is rooted in a more fundamental rejection of statism. Bakunin rejects Marx’s political plank because he associates it with a strong state. In Bakunin’s words: “Marx’s program is a complete network of political and economic institutions rigidly centralized and highly authoritarian, sanctioned, no doubt, like all despotic institutions in modern society, by universal suffrage, but nevertheless subordinate to a very strong government to quote Engels, Marx’s alter ego, the autocrat’s confidant.”<sup>11</sup> Bakunin views the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat as no different from any other statism under which the few would dominate the many.<sup>12</sup> For him, the political struggle, and its organizational form, is at best subordinate and at worst antithetical to the economic struggle of the working class.\n\nRosa Luxemburg transfers to Lenin the criticisms of centralism and authoritarianism that Bakunin levels at Marx.<sup>13</sup> For Luxemburg, the problem is not with the party or the political struggle. Although she is celebrated for the mass strike and although she well understood the ways workers’ spontaneous initiatives could surge past their party’s capacity for action, Luxemburg always presumes that the energy of the masses needs to be directed. The energy of the masses can swell and grow, but they can only avail themselves of their power through leaders, “the executive organs of their will.”<sup>14</sup> Even when critical of the party for failing to keep up with the masses, Luxemburg remains committed to the party as the form for concentrating and organizing political power. Moreover, Luxemburg assumes the necessity of the division of labor in “every socialist concern” for technical reasons of efficiency, discipline, and order. “Technical managers who know exactly what they are doing and give directions so that everything runs smoothly” are indispensible to the socialist economy.<sup>15</sup> So Luxemburg rejects neither leaders nor the party. She rejects what she saw as Lenin’s particular version of the party.\n\n105","previous_page":104,"next_page":106}