Seeing the conversations around this topic in the post Most Western Parties Are Ossified and Failures I thought some folks might find value in this organizing guide created by USU. It draws from numerous articles they’ve written about organizing ML orgs from the ground up.
But most Western parties aren’t ossified and failures
I don’t get why you’re being downvoted for this. To say they are failures is a relative view with a very specific definition of failure, as far as I can tell. The implication it’s now getting simplified into in this thread seems to be that because they haven’t tried or succeeded at a revolution, they are failures. If that’s someone’s standard, that’s their standard, but there are other metrics to measure, like what kind of influence they’ve had on the political landscape of the given country as a whole; whether they have made a difference as opposition or not (or another way to look at it: would the given country be more reactionary/fascistic/etc. without them in the picture?). I don’t think the Black Panther Party in the US ever got to the stage of attempting revolution, but they still made strides toward their goals and no doubt had an impact on things. Just comes across as reductionist to me.
The goal of a communist party is to bring about communism.
If they exist for 75 or 100 years without even trying to bring it about, then they’re a failure. It’s not reductionist to recognize that these parties are more interested in collecting dues and funneling their members into doing electoralism. It’s something the parties need to sort out; whether they will or even can is a different thing.
All I can say is, I’m not trying to imply the opposite, that they have no fundamental problems. What I take issue with is sweeping proclamations. I know some things are broad some of the time, but I’d argue for something as serious as an assessment of a broad spectrum of parties across up to a century and numerous countries needs far more nuance and investigation than a couple of sentences worth of a vaguely applied principle. I made a specific point to emphasize “in this thread” because I don’t think your original thread was being reductionist; I think it was digging into detail more so, and I don’t expect academic paper length stuff on Lemmygrad just to have a discussion about these things. My criticism here was specifically about reducing it to the principle of “they haven’t tried or succeeded at a revolution.” I also think it’s worth nothing here, the meaning of “tried” may need clarity. If a party has never “tried” in the sense that it never even did anything in the direction of revolutionary work, I’d agree it’s a clear failure. But if “tried” only means “made a direct attempt on the state with force”, that’s a different meaning.
I know this kind of linguistics stuff can be annoying to some, so I get kind of self conscious at times about even calling attention to it, but nevertheless, I think it matters for something as weighty as an assessment of so many parties over such a long period of time. For example, some people can read “failure” and extrapolate from that as “throw the whole thing out, it has no value in it”, which is a different takeaway from “it’s intractable as a vehicle for forming a dictatorship of the proletariat, but might be useful in other ways.” Still others might read it as a moral thing, like “failure” is something to be taken personally or dismissively, as ignoring what else happened with it that could be considered beneficial in some regards but fell short of revolution, and that last one seems to be the cause of some contention in this thread.
Neither was the IWW a “failure.”
Or the CPUSA during its heyday.
Or the anti-war peace movement for Vietnam.
Or NAARPR and NAIMSAL
Yeah, the BPP wasn’t a failure.
In addition, most Western parties are still around despite fierce repression and propaganda. The org I was apart of lasted 105 years so far despite it all.
never succeeded therefore don’t try
But they have succeeded!
Okay, what have they achieved?
The New Deal, the presence of labor unions, and Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, including the civil rights revolution of the 1960s/70s.
Firstly you are conflating union action with Socialist parties, and much of these things you’ve mentioned only came to pass because during the cold war, the Capitalists felt the need to hand out concessions regardless because of the presence of the Eastern Bloc as an alternative economic model. As soon as the Soviet union fell, almost every single thing you’ve mentioned has been gutted in the west. Goes to show how effective the socialists were in the west when all their success could have been rolled back the moment the external competition was eliminated. Compare this to AES, like Cuba, China etc. and you can see what the difference is between actual success in a socialist movement, and what’s been done in 100 years in the west.
Name one successful socialist revolution in the West.
Or just one attempt at revolution by these western parties. Paris commune doesn’t count if it predates PCF.
edit- although, even past successes aren’t indicative of present situation and shouldn’t be used as a crutch by this leadership to deflect criticism.
What do you mean by revolution? Do you simply mean a “popular uprising”?
Then technically, most parties have done that to one degree or another.
I mean a socialist revolution. What else would I mean? Why would a communist party exist if not to bring about communism.
A Communist Party exists to bring about a democratic revolution and then a socialist revolution.
1917 general strike in America almost resulted in a revolution.
1917 general strike was organized by IWW who, while surviving today, is not a party but a trade union.
William Z. Foster joined the CPUSA. The two fledgling parties also played a role.
May 1968
French government was toppled
The government wasn’t toppled, they just did a snap election. That’s like saying the UK government was toppled when Theresa May called one back when she couldn’t Brexit.
Also, on that same election the communists lost chairs. This is nowhere close to a successful revolution.
I may have been too harsh and knee-jerky on you on my first reply, but it’s seriously very important to acknowledge our past failures and self-crit in order to find the correct path to revolution. In Brazil the Communist Party split specifically because the party was ossified and the faction that left/was expelled wanted to seek better paths. There’s no shame in admitting that what has been tried did not work.
They were toppled. They literally couldn’t continue their careers after that. That’s a victory. The Fifth Republic has existed since then.
That was a successful revolution.
The Fifth Republic predates the 1968 strikes by 10 years. Maybe you’re mistaking that for May 1958 in which De Gaulle led a coup that actually toppled the Fourth Republic to “prevent communists” after crises caused by the Algerian War of Independence led by the FLN. That one was a successful counter revolution, though I’m open to the idea that it was a close one if evidence of that is presented. Besides all that, there’s nothing to celebrate about the Fifth Republic still existing as a “victory”.
But on the 1968 strikes and election, Pompidou went from Prime Minister to president, and was from the same party as Dr Gaulle, as was the new Prime Minister de Murville. The conservative UDR also gained seats. I may not be very knowledgeable about cold war French history, but you’re really not helping your arguments with such easily debunked claims.
A victory for a communist party is when you continue capitalism?
We’re not continuing capitalism; the capitalists are.