From : [email address removed] Reply-To : [email address removed] Sent : Sunday, January 16, 2005 1:29 PM To : [email address removed] Subject : reply from League for the Revolutionary Party (LRP-COFI)
January 15, 2005
Dear Comrades,
We apologize for the lengthy delay in our reply to your last correspondence this summer on the question of propaganda and agitation. With this letter we hope to re-start the discussion.
Your letter raised many interesting points, and certainly we are in agreement with a number of the points you made. We appreciate your citing of Lenin's comments about agitation and its aims and results -- they deserve further attention. But for now, we want to focus on a more fundamental question that your letter raises.
You write that you "attempted to make a turn toward propaganda, but as an organization, we were unable to do so." You further point out, "Before an organization can generate 'theoretically advanced propaganda' it needs to become 'theoretically advanced'." You did accept the importance of our warning about the dangers of opportunism involved in focusing on agitational work over propaganda work. But there is a deeper issue here than just the question of emphasizing one or the other kind of work.
The point is this: we do not believe a group can really be a Bolshevik organization if it is unable to produce propaganda. The examples of Bolshevik groups turning toward agitation, such as Lenin's Iskra group at the beginning of the 20th century or the American Trotskyists in 1933, all involve organizations which had already developed a painstakingly worked-out, theoretically advanced program of socialist revolution. They had extensive experience doing propaganda work based on this program. Their theoretical program and propaganda was in turn the basis from which they developed their agitation. Lenin, Trotsky or Cannon would never have even considered the thought of attempting to do mass agitational work as a revolutionary organization without having a well-elaborated program and propaganda to base it on.
We have made the argument that we as an organization are a propaganda group, and that for example Lenin's Bolsheviks at the time of "What Is To Be Done" were at a qualitatively more advanced stage of development, the revolutionary party, having cohered the vanguard of the Russian proletariat around it on the basis of propaganda work and a theoretically advanced program signified by achievements such as Lenin's "The Development of Capitalism in Russia". We do feel that we in the LRP-COFI have a theoretically advanced program and propaganda, yet since the task of winning the vanguard of our class to our banner lies well in front of us, we see our primary task in the present period as propaganda work. We have argued strongly against a primary focus on agitational mass work as putting the cart before the horse. But to attempt to do agitational mass work without having the program and propaganda in place at all is a step beyond this -- it is pushing the cart without even having the horse.
We would say an organization or group of individuals committed to Bolshevism and socialist revolution but without a theoretically advanced program is at the stage of a study group, such as the one Lenin organized in Petersburg in the mid-1890s. We would argue such a group should focus its energies on intensive discussion dedicated to developing and clarifying its understanding of the revolutionary socialist program and how to fight for it. At such a stage, "public work" such as issuing leaflets in the name of the group at mass events would not even be on the table. Of course like any dedicated militant working-class activists, members of such a group would actively participate in mass events, which would inform their own understanding of the Bolshevik program. And it is certainly fine for revolutionary-minded individuals or groupings to join in temporary action blocs, that are based only on the agreement on the actions at hand.
We believe that such a group of socialists, seeking to come to its own understanding of the Bolshevik program, would come to find the program of the LRP-COFI worthy of its full support. But such an understanding can only be arrived at through dedicated work on both sides, by revolutionary socialists who see that developing the Bolshevik program is the essential first step in building the revolutionary party based on a clear program as the essential ingredient capable of leading the working class in getting rid of capitalism.
In Solidarity,
Jeff C
for the LRP-COFI