{"id":12792,"date":"2024-04-09T00:42:12","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T04:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=12792"},"modified":"2024-04-21T00:36:40","modified_gmt":"2024-04-21T04:36:40","slug":"how-should-socialists-think-about-political-tradition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2024\/04\/how-should-socialists-think-about-political-tradition\/","title":{"rendered":"How should socialists think about political tradition?"},"content":{"rendered":"

O<\/span>ne way we can think about tradition is who inspires us. Traditions of struggle against exploitation and oppression go back thousands of years. Think of peasant revolts around the world; the resistance of Indigenous people on Turtle Island (a term for North America mainly used by some Indigenous nations) that\u2019s been going on since Europeans arrived; the resistance of enslaved Africans and their descendants; anti-slavery fighters like John Brown; the Industrial Workers of the World early in the twentieth century (a high point in the history of the working-class movement in the U.S.); and so many more down to the present. Which of these inspires us most or resonates most strongly with us depends on our experiences, our ideas about who we are, and our politics. When, in I Hope We Choose Love<\/em><\/a>, Kai Cheng Thom urges people on the Left to take the idea of honour seriously, she writes \u201cHonour means acting in a way that your ancestors would be proud of, even if it requires personal sacrifices to do so.\u201d Who we consider to be our ancestors can include people from these various traditions.<\/p>\n

Another way of thinking about tradition is more specific: Where do we get our politics<\/em> from? Where do we get our ideas about our goals<\/em>, our strategy<\/em>, and our tactics<\/em>? That\u2019s what this article is about.<\/p>\n

However, before tackling that question I want to make two initial points. First, for revolutionary victory, socialists need a developed and coherent strategy for how this can be achieved: in other words, a program. Second, it\u2019s impossible for socialists to develop a genuine program unless we can synthesize the experiences of many socialist workplace and community organizers from across the range of sectors of the working class and oppressed people in our society and fuse them with the lessons of history distilled as theory. No socialist organization on Turtle Island is large and rooted enough to be able to make such a synthesis. For that reason, none of the organizations as they exist today can develop anything worth calling a program. Tempest doesn\u2019t have a program; all we have is some ideas about goals, strategy, and tactics. This is true of all far-left groups in this part of the world, no matter what some of them claim.<\/p>\n

We need ideas about goals, strategy, and tactics to help us answer the political questions we face. Our answers are provisional because they can change as the world changes and as we learn\u2014they\u2019re not set in stone. We should have an attitude of revolutionary humility about our ideas. There are<\/em> some things we can and should be certain about, since the lessons of some past victories, defeats, and other experiences are so clear. One of these is that to start a transition to a classless and stateless society of freedom, what’s needed are social revolutions made by the working class that establish its democratic rule. But the history of the socialist left tells us that we\u2019re no doubt wrong about some things about which we feel certain today.\u00a0Today, our outlook about what to do next in our society is limited by how we\u2019re mainly drawing on the experiences of a very small number of people in a time when social struggle is for the most part at a low level. (There are important exceptions, above all at present the Palestine solidarity movement.)<\/p>\n

What questions do we face? Let\u2019s start with three big ones. First, what kind of society are we ultimately aiming for? In other words, what\u2019s our political horizon? Second, what would it take to break with capitalism and start a transition to that kind of society? And third, what kind of broad organizations of workers and oppressed people and what kind of socialist political organizations would be needed to make that happen?<\/p>\n

Aren\u2019t those questions about far-off, long-term matters? Yes, but they\u2019re still important<\/em>. Our answers serve as a compass that points toward where we want the working class to ultimately arrive, though we certainly don\u2019t claim to have a path mapped out. Our ideas about what it would take to break with capitalism and start a transition based on democratic planning towards socialism\/communism have direct implications for the here and now (Marx used the terms socialism and communism interchangeably, and never thought of socialism as a stage before communism. That idea comes mainly from Stalinism. On this, see Peter Hudis, Marx\u2019s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism<\/em><\/a>.)<\/p>\n

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Karl Marx. Image source: Picryl<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That\u2019s because our ideas about these long-term issues should inform how we answer more immediate questions. For example, is it important to build democratic member-run membership organizations of the Palestine solidarity movement? (Yes!) To change unions, should socialists prioritize getting elected into executive positions and hired into staff jobs? (No<\/a>!) Is there a wing of the capitalist class we should seek to include in alliances against the far right? (No<\/a>!)<\/p>\n

So where should we go for our political ideas? In the twentieth century, three major political traditions that considered themselves anti-capitalist dominated the Left. They all still have influence today, though less than they used to. One is parliamentary socialism. This is the dominant politics of the Democratic Socialists of America<\/a>. The second is Marxism-Leninism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is the state ideology that took shape in the USSR in the 1920s and was spread globally through the Communist movement and by the rulers of China and other states modelled on the USSR. The last tradition is Third World nationalist socialism, of which the United Socialist Party of Venezuela<\/a> founded under the leadership of Hugo Chavez is one example. All three of these traditions treat state ownership of the economy as the basis of socialism. All three act as if socialism could be achieved by a minority (a party or armed forces) acting on behalf<\/em> of the masses, as a substitute<\/em><\/a> for them (substitutionism), either with or without some kind of revolution. (To be clear, mass socialist political organizations are necessary for revolution, as are new institutions of radically democratic popular power in workplaces and communities. The role of socialist political organizations is to provide direction in the struggle for the working class as a whole to take control of society through such new institutions.) These are three versions of socialism from above<\/a>.<\/p>\n