The older I get, the more receptive to Anarchist ideas I become and less and less enamoured of any notion of the Leninist vanguard party. This was one of the shibboleths of my youth. A sacred cow that turned into a white elephant.
Aside from the fact that the "vanguard parties" of the left seem to consist of two men (rarely are women involved) and their dog, there are other similarities. Common to them all is an absolute disregard of doing anything that actually defends the working class or promotes its interests.
The job of the vanguardists seems to be to build the party. Sod the interests of the working class. Let's build the party.
Typically this consists of selling the paper and infiltrating the Trades Union movement. Even the most far out of Trots seem to have given up on infiltrating or entering the Labour Party.
The "Scottish" Labour Party must be the most undemocratic institution in the world. At one time every single person I knew in the Labour Party was an enterist, in there to change it. They changed it all right. It changed by lurching to the right and becoming more and more divorced form the struggles of the class which it claimed to represent.
With all this "enterism" and infiltration it STILL lurched to the right. Unbelievable, were one unaware of the organisational skills of most self-professed "revolutionaries".
Even the ostensibly successful entry of the Scottish Socialist Party into electoral politics in Scotland was short-lived and ended in the farce of "comrades" queuing up to get into the witness box to dob in their former "leader".
It all ended in a welter of recriminations and accusations. Sad but foreseeable. Why would this party break the mould?
So, what actually do these "parties" do? For most of them their activity seems to consist of selling their newspapers. The notion of actually encouraging people to defend their interests and try to win something never seems to enter their heads.
The invariably "broad-based" campaigns these grouplets enter into and attempt to control, for their own interests are simply posited on failure. There is never any notion that any of these campaigns on particular issues will ever be successful and wrench some concessions from the ruling class or put the wind up them. No, the intent is the primary one of "building the Party".
Yet, getting one's fingers dirty actually defending the working class is the only way to build confidence in workers that they have anything to gain from a social revolution. Selling a paper is one thing, physically preventing Sheriff's Officers from carrying out a poinding is another.
The ruling class will take heed of the latter and laugh at the former. What can these "revolutionaries" actually do to serve the interests of the working class? If you asked most of them they would look at you blankly.
In Spain or in Greece there is no revulsion at the notion of "direct action". There is an understanding that in fact as well as in notion the interests of the working class are entirely at odds with the ruling class and that the law needs to be broken.
The law is the law of the ruling class to keep the poor in order. That is not some abstract notion but a bitter hard fact. The polis are not your pals. They are the State.
If you lie down it will probably be the velvet glove. If you don''t lie down it will be the iron fist. The batons, the torture, the cavalry charges, the water cannons, the Tasers and the tear gas. Let's not forget the real firearms as well. Jean Charles Menezes found out all about that.
Death must have been instant for Mr Menezes, with so many bullets in his head. The other side of state violence is slower. The incarceration of the poor and the mad. We don't imprison the bad. We lock up the mad and the sad.
The bankers who screwed up and expect the rest of us to bail them out are the ones who should be in jail. The war criminals like Blair, Bush and Reid are the ones who in a well-ordered society would be in jail.
The laws that attack and maginalise the interests of the working class are the laws that need to be broken and disposed of. It is amazing how much can be wrung from the ruling class by steadfast resistance. The law will soon be changed.
I can remember a time when Glasgow City Council as it was then, used to routinely warrant sale tenants in rent arrears.
It took precisely three instances of Sheriff Officers being deforced (in one memorable instance involving the burning of their car) for the City council to back down and change their policy.
All this is "illegal" of course. As my old Grandad was fond of saying "It's their Law to keep us in order".
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