The revolutionary party
Posted by Bill, June 28th, 2009 - under Left Focus, Reformism, Revolution, Revolutionary Party, Socialism, Socialist Alternative, Socialist democracy, Working class.
Tags: Democracy
John has published a piece on the revolutionary party on Left Focus. His basic argument is that the building of a revolutionary party with its roots in the working class and as part of the class is an historic necessity. The democratic socialist revolution can only be successful with such a party.
This is not about building a conspiratorial group of ‘professional’ revolutionaries,as Lenin in What is to be done is often misrepresented as wanting.
It is about building a democratic organisation committed to the overthrow of the capitalist system, of wage slavery. To do that the working class must win the battle for democracy and can only do that through its own political expression – the revolutionary party – and its own democratic organs – workers’ councils.
John also argues that one hundred years of sellouts from Labor show the essential bankruptcy of reformism and of the parliamentary road to socialism, a road that leads not to liberation but to the rescue of capitalism. Labor’s failure is systemic.