How To Be A Good Communist

“Whoever does not care to return to Moses, Christ or Mohammed; whoever is not satisfied with eclectic hodge-podges must acknowledge that morality is a product of social development; that there is nothing invariable about it; that it serves social interests; that these interests are contradictory; that morality more than any other form of ideology has a class character.”~ Leon Trotsky, “Their Morals And Ours”

Introduction

The title of this work is taken from a book by the Chinese revolutionary Liu Shaoqi on the need for communists to undertake a project of ideological and personal cultivation in order to become effective fighters for the proletariat. As Liu Shaoqi argues, “On the one hand, we must understand that communism is the greatest cause in human history, which will eliminate exploitation and classes once and for all, emancipate mankind and bring humanity into a world of happiness, radiating with beauty, such as it has never known before. But on the other hand, we must also understand that the cause of communism is the most arduous undertaking in all history; that only through protracted, bitter and torturous struggle will we be able to defeat all the exploiting classes.” The task before us is nothing less than the common liberation of all the oppressed and exploited people of the world and communists must develop ourselves into the kind of revolutionaries that can carry it out.

It is important to emphasize that this is a process of development. Revolutionaries are not born, we are made. We make ourselves and do so in the conditions of capitalist society. As Marx wrote in the The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” For proletarian revolutionaries this manifests as a dual problem: First we must confront the fact that the moral ‘common sense’ we are educated into is bourgeois morality and is fundamentally antithetical to our class interests. Secondly we must recognize that, having rejected bourgeois moral norms, the alternative moral conclusions we arrive at will also have a class character and are particular products of the material circumstances we find ourselves in. This second consideration in particular should lead to a high degree of tolerance for and understanding of other communists that reach different conclusions than ourselves. The author of these lines, for instance, is a college educated trans logistics worker who has experienced high degrees of housing instability and lack of access to medical care, and who is a survivor of transphobic violence and sexual assault. These experiences and identities necessarily inform my moral judgments and will lead me to differing conclusions than those of a fellow worker with somewhat different experiences. It is also the case that it is impossible to fully dispose of all remnants of bourgeois morality and create a new communist morality on the plane of ideas before we have materially disposed of bourgeois society and built a new communist society in its place. So long as capitalism still exists, capitalist class morality will impact the proletarian party. It must be struggled against and overcome.

Comradeship Without Condescension

The question of communist morality and conduct is a vitally important one because we need comrades. A comrade is someone who is on our side in the class war, someone who will organize with us and fight beside us when the chips are down. This model of comradeship is not dependent on personal relationships. Comrades and friends are not, and should not be, the same thing. In the course of fighting for working class power, it is absolutely necessary to work with people that you have little in common with beyond a common class interest and don’t particularly enjoy interacting with. Nevertheless, it is far easier to organize with someone if you know something about what’s going on in their lives and care about them as an individual. Developing friendships, and other interpersonal connections, with your comrades is unequivocally a good thing, provided proper care is taken to separate personal from political relationships.

It must also be understood that comradeship and common struggle imply collectively. The predominance of strong people or big names in the socialist movement is a sign of weakness, not of strength. The higher the political level of the average socialist, the deeper the roots of the movement extend into the working class, and the sharper the class consciousness of the average proletarian the less important individual leaders become and the more socialist organizations become expressions of collective class politics.

Nobody is born a socialist or a communist. People in capitalist society are indoctrinated into bourgeois ideology and modes of behavior literally from birth, and overcoming that is something that requires a process of both education and practical experience in the class struggle. The material position of oppressed and exploited people under capitalism leads us to question and sometimes to break with bourgeois “common sense” (people who make this break are what Gramsci calls organic intellectuals), but that process isn’t something that’s ever completed. Constant struggle, constant study, constant war against bourgeois ideas and patterns of behavior- that must be the watchword of the proletarian revolutionist. And it’s not something that can be done in isolation. It’s a collective process of building up a revolutionary politics in discussion and struggle with one’s comrades.

This indoctrination into bourgeois ideology means that people bring oppressive ideas with them when they enter communist organizations and that the organizations themselves are vulnerable to hostile class pressures. As James Cannon outlines in The Struggle For A Proletarian Party, whole wings of the organization can succumb to the pressures of capitalist society and the ideas they inject into the movement must be beaten back lest they disorient the communist party and drive away working class members. Members from marginalized backgrounds are particularly vulnerable to being driven away or harassed out by the replication of systems of oppression in socialist organizations. This corruption of socialist organizations by ruling class ideas and practices is fatal to organizing. It drives away talented comrades and divides the working class. As Alyson Escalante writes “Reproducing social marginalization which the capitalist class uses to divide the workers and structure reserve armies of labor is counterproductive to such unity. It must be denounced as a reactionary attempt to quell communist organizing. Our liberation is tied together in ways that cannot be overlooked.” Communists must prioritize fighting for the liberation of people specifically oppressed and marginalized by class society both as part of our outward political program and within our organizations.

Prioritizing the liberation of all oppressed people, however, does not and cannot mean merely deferring to politics of people who have experienced different types of oppression. Rather it must be recognized that experiencing a form of oppression doesn’t automatically make you knowledgeable about why it exists or how to defeat it, and identity groups are not homogenous political blocs. One useful analogy is to understand oppression as a kind of chronic illness. Oppressed people experience the disease and know the symptoms we experience but that doesn’t equate to having general knowledge of all the symptoms of a disease, it’s history, or how to treat it. People with chronic illnesses have a strong incentive to investigate those diseases, their history, and their methods of diagnosis and treatment, and such patients often end up knowing more than the doctors they go to seek treatment about their particular conditions. But that knowledge is not something that came automatically from having a chronic illness, rather the illness is the material condition that provided the incentive to undertake a process of learning and study. Likewise oppressed people understand what it feels like to be oppressed and the particular ways they experience that oppression, but that doesn’t automatically translate into general historical knowledge or a particular political program. Indeed, there are strong theoretical and strategic disagreements between people of the same or similar identities (MLK vs Malcom X vs Kwame Ture vs Fred Hampton etc) and it is the responsibility of all revolutionaries to seriously investigate and engage with these traditions, apply our own knowledge and experiences, draw meaningful conclusions, and take ownership of those conclusions and the political program they imply. It is racist for white people to pick a person of color to hide their ideas behind, transphobic for cis people to engage in deference epistemology rather than consider the real debates around trans liberation, and a violation of revolutionary morality for residents of the imperial core to refuse to develop a serious position on anti-imperialism.

Furthermore, deference epistemology in practice tends to privilege the wealthiest and most well connected representatives of oppressed identities as spokespeople for their entire identity group. This means that the ruling class members of any given identity group are in the position to set the political agenda for the group as a whole. As Olúfémi O. Táíwò writes in an article about epistemological deference, “Individuals who make it past the various social selection pressures that filter out those social identities associated with these negative outcomes are most likely to be in the room. That is, they are most likely to be in the room precisely because of ways in which they are systematically different from (and thus potentially unrepresentative of) the very people they are then asked to represent in the room.” Returning to the analogy of oppression as a kind of chronic illness, this means that comrades from relatively privileged backgrounds must form their own political positions on how to best combat oppression, they must study Marxism just as a doctor studies medical science and must do so as part of a shared political project with their more marginalized comrades.

Studying Marxism and developing shared politics with someone means treating them seriously as a comrade and an organizer. It means honestly telling them your ideas and honestly listening to theirs, and having a discussion about agreements, disagreements, and how to move forward. Too many people on the left today are afraid of that process and the inherent political conflicts it suggests. Communists must reject that fear as a form of liberalism. Mao’s Combat Liberalism develops this point, and the related one that comrades must learn to subordinate their individual egos to the movement and reject the passive-aggressive rumor mill method of doing politics, in a rather elegant way “To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism. To indulge in irresponsible criticism in private instead of actively putting forward one’s suggestions to the organization. To say nothing to people to their faces but to gossip behind their backs, or to say nothing at a meeting but to gossip afterwards. To show no regard at all for the principles of collective life but to follow one’s own inclination.”

Communists must also abandon our fear of “fucking up” and saying something offensive or simply incorrect about our comrades. Rather we should expect it to happen, and more than once, and make sure to learn from it when it does. In capitalist society oppressive ideas pervade everything, like a poison in the very air we breathe and water we drink. All white people engage in racist behaviors at one time or another, all cis people pratice transphobia, all men are at least a bit misogynistic, and all straight people manage to offend their queer comrades. This must be accepted as a fact of life and when a comrade makes an error that must be met with political education and restorative justice process, not condemnation. Further, the organization must ask what it could have done to ensure comrades do not fall prey to the oppressive ideas in question. In the meantime, relatively privileged comrades need to move beyond liberal guilt and fragility to really engage with liberatory political traditions. Putting someone on a pedestal and refusing to dialogue with them even when you disagree or throwing them into a prominent role because of their identity alone without any kind of programmatic agreement is just reproducing the systems of oppression we seek to combat. Serious communists aren’t interested in being token figureheads for entire identities and will reject any organization that seeks to thrust them into that role. Comradeship without condescension means engaging seriously with your comrades ideas, considering them in context, and taking responsibility for your own conclusions.

It is not enough, of course, to merely develop political ideas. They must be put into practice. As Fred Hampton said, “I don’t care how much theory you got, if it don’t have any practice applied to it, then that theory happens to be irrelevant. Right? Any theory you get, practice it. And when you practice it you make some mistakes. When you make a mistake, you correct that theory, and then it will be corrected theory that will be able to be applied and used in any situation. That’s what we’ve got to be able to do.” That means that communist political theory has to be constantly in the process of development and self-correction. It means that, as Rosa Luxemburg argued, Marxism’s “living force is best preserved in the intellectual clash of self-criticism and the rough and tumble of history.” It is necessary to draw a sharp distinction between a comrade offering a reasonable disagreement or who happens to still be learning about something or has made a mistake and a irreconcilable class enemy. Comrades must have no hesitation about expressing their disagreements with each other or about pushing for their particular position to be accepted on controversial questions- and should in fact feel some obligation to do so if they feel that their position could inform the collective politics of the organization- but that must not translate into trying to run people out of the socialist movement for not automatically sharing a particular perspective. Open and democratic debate within communist organizations is an absolute necessity if we are to draw out the lessons of our revolutionary practice and constantly refine our approach, and nothing is more antithetical to that than the purging or cancellation of comrades that hold minority points of view on controversial questions.

This need for open debate speaks to the need for communist organizations to adopt majoritarian democratic decision making structures, for comrades to train ourselves in accepting the discipline of democracy, and for space to be made for the formation of particular caucuses representing various lines of thinking within broader revolutionary organizations. Caucuses may be defined as groups of comrades in the same wider organization agreeing to coordinate their votes on various issues that arise within the organization and are typically formed around either agreement on a specific program or underlying philosophical alignment. Caucuses may also function as cliques, formations where personal relationships are foregrounded and determine political alignment, but cliquism is incompatible with communist organizing and must be combated every time it appears. Rather caucuses should function as factions, where the political program is primary, and should be clearly subordinate to the interests of the organization they function within. It is inevitable, of course, that personal and political relationships should become intertwined to some degree. The committed communist will naturally tend to develop friendships with their comrades, particularly those comrades they work the most closely with and find themself in agreement with most often. Likewise a dedicated organizer will likely feel some level of dislike for a comrade who’s ideas or practice they view as being harmful to the movement. The question, however, is what is playing the determining role. A communist who strongly disagrees with their close friend is obligated to say so and any successful mass organization will be built on the recognition that it is possible to dislike someone and yet work closely with them where principled political agreement exists.

For democratic political conflict in socialist organizations not to devolve into cliquism and personal conflicts several things are necessary. First there must be a culture of recognition that conflict within the communist movement proceeds on the basis of shared struggle and aims but different analysis and strategy. This means accepting that even comrades one strongly disagrees with are acting in good faith to advance a collective political project. Secondly, it means recognizing that democracy is premised on some minimal level of discipline. A common paraphrase of Lenin’s thoughts on internal party organization is “freedom of discussion, unity of action” and this conception is central to democratic organizing. The majority must be able to expect to carry out its program and the minority (or minorities) to uphold the results democratic decision making in a disciplined way- at least insofar as doing so is compatible with upholding communist principles. It must also be accepted that kind of splits in or expulsions from the organization are an absolute last resort. They must be employed only after every measure has been taken to resolve the conflicts that led to them using methods of political education, restorative justice, and democratic discipline. Finally, caucuses and factions must not be permitted to exist for their own sake and must be dissolved when they have become outdated. The first loyalty of any communist must not be to any narrow caucus formation but to the revolutionary proletariat and to the party as a necessary tool for the proletarian assumption of power. The party cannot be led by a permanent caucus, but rather must have a collective leadership of cadre developed over a period of time. As Cannon wrote, contrasting the rule of an exclusive faction to a true collective leadership, “leading cadre is an inclusive and not an exclusive selection. It does not have a fixed membership, but deliberately keeps the door open all the time for the inclusion of new people, for the assimilation and development of others, so that the leading cadre is flexibly broadening in numbers and in influence all the time.”

Thus far the conception of communist organization and the need for it have been taken for granted as underlying conceptions. Communists must shape our behaviors around an understanding that the party is a precious thing and that it must be protected and strengthened. As Ted Grant argued, “Without organisation – the trade unions and the party – the working class is only raw material for exploitation. This was already pointed out by Marx long ago. True, the proletariat possesses enormous power. Not a wheel turns, not a light bulb shines, without its permission. But without organisation, this power remains as just potential. In the same way, steam is a colossal force, but without a piston box, it will be harmlessly dissipated in the air. In order that the strength of the working class should cease to be a mere potential and become a reality, it must be organised and concentrated in a single point.” The victory of the communist revolution is contingent on building a powerful party organization and this must play a role in communist ethics.

The Leninist Party

“Freedom of discussion, unity of action remains the shorthand definition of Lenin’s understanding of democratic centralism. The creation of an inclusive, diverse, yet cohesive democratic collectivity of activists is something precious and necessary that serious revolutionaries must continue to reach for. It is not clear the world can be changed without that.” ~Paul Le Blanc, Unfinished Leninism

Mass movements don’t begin with picture perfect demands, a clearly worked out analysis of world politics, or even an agreed upon theory of power and social transformation. They begin with exploited and oppressed people saying “enough is enough” and expressing our rejection of the status quo. The task of revolutionaries then, is to build an organization that can effectively respond to this ‘spontaneous’ outrage. The revolutionary party is the school, historical memory, and political instrument of the working class. Separate from the class, it is nothing, and its members are distinguished from the rest of the working class only by that fact that they have arrived at an understanding of the struggle to come and represent the interests of the international movement taken as a whole in each specific struggle. As Marx writes in The Communist Manifesto, “The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.”

The immediate task before us is the building of a Bolshevik organization capable of providing leadership in the struggle. We are, at present, faced with the task of organizing the most advanced elements and educating those drawn to radical ideas in order to form a reliable cadres, the backbone of the revolution. We must build a revolutionary proletarian organization, clearly based on Marxist theory and independent of all bourgeois parties and politics, committed to an implacable struggle against all forms of oppression and exploitation and for socialism. As the History of The Russian Revolution makes clear, the building of such a party is inseparable from the success of the revolution. Without a revolutionary party that can act as the military headquarters of the proletariat in the class struggle and unify our class, the workers will not be able to take power. Further, the party will not arise spontaneously but must be consciously and deliberately built.

In the course of building the mass Bolshevik party it must be recognized that none of the organizations presently existing on the US left can claim to be the party or to have sole claim to the possibility of becoming it. The left is seriously disorganized and even where coherent groups of communist cadres exist we are scattered across a multitude of different organizations. This means that communists must pay serious attention to the political developments in each others’ organizations, engage in united front activity where the possibility for such exists, and be open to the prospect of organizational unification where there is demonstrated principled and strategic agreement. Unity merely for the sake of unity without prior political agreement and common work will only succeed in ‘unifying’ two organizations into four, but where political cohesion exists and once that cohesion has been demonstrated by a period of collaboration and joint activity, unification should be pursued with a maximum of vigor. In defining the roles of existing organizations it may be helpful to understand them as future caucuses or local branches of a future communist party. This historical appreciation of the existing network of left organizations can serve to help define the scope of our present tasks and recognize the need for a reorganization and unification of the revolutionary left wing into a communist vanguard capable of offering leadership to the proletariat in the class war.

The second task before us is to tap into the seething mass discontent bubbling below the US political scene and to tear the existing protest movement away from the bourgeois parties, the Republicans and Democrats. The role of the revolutionary, Bolshevik, party is to provide both leadership and education to the masses. It serves as the school and the collective memory of the oppressed, generalizing their experiences and bringing them into contact with political theory. It is the vehicle of the proletariat for the seizure of power, the ‘subjective’ factor in ensuring the revolutionary victory. Once we have built this revolutionary vanguard, we must place it at the service of the masses. It must learn to express all the strivings of the people for a better world and to provide guidance in the struggle for socialism

One of the major reasons Lenin gave for emphasizing the importance of revolutionary theory when he wrote What Is To Be Done? was that “our Party is only in the process of formation, its features are only just becoming defined, and it has as yet far from settled accounts with the other trends of revolutionary thought.” This is very much the case for the revolutionary socialist movement in the US today, which is rapidly growing and does not yet possess any uniform character. As Lenin suggested, “the fate of [US communism] may for very many years to come depend on the strengthening of one or the other ‘shade'” of opinion in this period of growth and development. It is precisely at this moment when mass interest and participation in leftist politics begins to develop that it becomes crucially important that revolutionary organizations stand at a high theoretical level and even seemingly small errors in theory risk becoming transferred into disastrous errors in practice. The movement is vulnerable to both ultraleftist and opportunist distortions, to becoming cut off from the masses and to tailending liberal politics in search of popularity.

The ultraleftist danger consists in rejecting the struggle for reforms as somehow ‘impure’ and becoming alienated from the everyday experiences of working class people struggling to survive under capitalism. As Rosa Luxemburg writes in Reform Or Revolution, “The daily struggle for reforms, for the amelioration of the condition of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and for democratic institutions, offers to the Social-Democracy the only means of engaging in the proletarian class war and working in the direction of the final goal – the conquest of political power and the suppression of wage labour. Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the Social Democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.” The communist who stands aside from the daily struggle of the working class for survival both renounces the final goal of and forgoes any possibility of winning the confidence of a substantial section of the class. Only in the struggle for reforms under capitalism can we build the power to overthrow capitalism.

Yet care must be taken to prevent the struggle for reforms from becoming an end in itself rather than a means to achieve a larger goal. Often this transformation is not the product of a deliberate or democratic political choice made by the membership of a revolutionary organization, rather it is a result of the pressures of existence under capitalism, the search for a shortcut to popularity and power, and the desire of individual leaders to re-enforce their own personal power base and be regarded as important or influential social figures. The impact existing within a capitalist society and the way it can cause sections of revolutionary organizations to adopt ruling class politics has already been discussed, so it is sufficient here to note simply that such class pressures can also influence the explicit program of the organization as well as the attitudes and behaviors of its members. One of the most dangerous causes of organizational shifts to the right and to reformism is the attempt to participate in the mass movement and overcome the isolation of the left by sacrificing or watering down communist principles. This tendency is particularly pernicious because it is easily justified by referring to the need to meet workers where they are and it can appear to deliver certain results in terms of membership growth and/or legislative victories. Yet as Rosa Luxemburg reminds us, “Opportunism, incidentally, is a political game which can be lost in two ways: not only basic principles but also practical success may be forfeited. The assumption that one can achieve the greatest number of successes by making concessions rests on a complete error…. …In our no, in our intransigent attitude, lies our whole strength. It is this attitude that earns us the fear and respect of the enemy and the trust and support of the people. Precisely because we do not yield one inch from our position, we force the government and the bourgeois parties to concede to us the few immediate successes that can be gained. But if we begin to chase after what is ‘possible’ according to the principles of opportunism, unconcerned with our own principles, and by means of statesmanlike barter, then we will soon find ourselves in the same situation as the hunter who has not only failed to stay the deer but has also lost his gun in the process.” The abandonment of revolutionary principles in practice will inevitably lead to the collapse of the revolutionary organization, which may survive only as a broken shell of its former self or as a name captured completely by the ruling class. 

Perhaps the most nefarious tendency towards reformism, because it is so little recognized, is the tendency among some people on the left to view themselves as crucial to the revolutionary movement and to associate the future of the communist movement with their own personal fate. This tendency is not generally  recognized as a reformist one. After all, shouldn’t the individual pursuit of power or prestige lead to organizational politics that reflect the politics of the individual that sets themself up as the leader? This is not the case. Since revolutionary politics are a minority in the society at large, someone seeking to enhance their personal prestige will tend to shift to the right. Furthermore, a genuine communist politics can only emerge from the collective of democratic activity of the working class. Individuals working in isolation cut themselves off from the reality of the revolutionary movement, and those who aspire to dictate to the proletariat will never establish the proletarian dictatorship. The tendency to identify the fate of the individual leader with the fate of the revolution is a tendency to renounce the revolution. This must be combatted at all costs.

While revolutionaries should have confidence in our ideas and be willing to assume leadership roles when called upon, egoism and individualism have to be subordinated to collective politics. As Plekhanov highlights in On the Role of the Individual in History, the role of ‘great leaders’ is not fundamental to the development of the historical process. Every revolutionary might aspire to be a Lenin but that must come with the acknowledgement that the revolution was not made by Lenin but the working class, and while Lenin’s organizing and insights undoubtedly contributed to the development of the Bolshevik party he could not bring it to power before the historical conditions were ripe and ‘Bolshevism’ would still have existed as a revolutionary force in some form or another even if Lenin had formed a compromise with Martov in 1903. Each revolutionary, however prominent or important a position they may come to occupy, is but a single individual within a larger collective. It is nothing but rank egoism to identify the fate of the collective with any individual leader and leaders who associate the success of the movement with their own individual positions in it serve only to destroy what they seek to build.

Revolutionary communists must struggle to overcome any trace of individualism within ourselves. We must subordinate our personal preferences to the democratic will of our organizations and prioritize the wellbeing of the movement over the advancement of our ‘careers’ within it. Our ideas and proposals should be constantly subject to the democratic check of our comrades and we must never anticipate or subvert the decisions of the collectives to which we belong. Of course, the subordinate of the individual ego to the wellbeing of the movement does not simply mean automatic adherence to the majority. Rather it can often mean taking an unpopular stand on principle even if that means sacrificing some social cachet or having difficulty getting elected to a position of leadership. This immediately raises the question of how to distinguish undisciplined individualism from the taking of a principled if unpopular stand.

This task can be a difficult one and in undertaking it one must remember that each individual will seek to justify their own positions and will likely believe that their positions are justified. Believing something does not make it true, but the recognition that everyone seeks to justify their positions on the basis of their fundamental values and political positions serves to highlight the need for the assumption of good faith among comrades. Assuming good faith in one’s comrades means operating with the basic assumption that comrades genuinely believe the positions they put forward, are telling the truth as they understand it, and are drawing from a self-consistent view of the world rather than making things up as they go along. This assumption may be disapproved in the course of struggle, but it is a necessary starting assumption to have any possibility of productive dialogue and reconciliation of conflicting points of view. The assumption of good faith suggests that one should always try to understand comrades as taking stands on principle rather than acting in careerist or self-serving ways. In evaluating whether this assumption holds up over the course of a discussion, it is necessary to understand the essence of communist discipline as subordinating one’s own desires and ambitions to the wellbeing of the collective. Discipline comes easy when one’s ambitions are in accordance with the party’s program, but is put to the test when the opportunity to advance oneself appears. Comrades that willingly sacrifice positions in leadership, that seek every opportunity for discussion and reconciliation of differences, that take a stand not on their own behalf but on another’s or on a clear political line justify the assumption of good faith. Contrariwise those who leverage themselves into leadership positions through interpersonal conflicts, advance grievances on their own behalf only, and pursue petty vendettas or push private breaks into the public sphere show they are acting in bad faith and sacrifice any trust that may have been placed in them as comrades or working class leaders.

Building good faith among comrades is not something that can happen automatically but is the task of the revolutionary party. It is something that must be reinforced in the structure and daily practice of the communist party. This means that the party’s organizational structure must be clearly majoritarian and must never rely on formal or informal consensus. Consensus decision making precludes sustained and meaningful dissent, while good faith requires that dissent and disagreement be a normal and accepted part of democratic practice. The normalization and legitimization of disagreement and debate inside the party can be facilitated by introducing the practice of exchanging ideas in writing at the first opportunity. The written exchange of ideas between comrades and caucus formations serves to help combat cliquism, clarify the real content of disagreements, and ensure debate revolves around political lines, not individual personalities. It is also important to ensure that the political line of the party is developed and adopted collectively, not within small subgroups. This is a major caution against adopting a party structure dominated by autonomous committees and a strong reason for centralization. If the development of the line is left to small committees, different parts of the program will come to be viewed as the ‘property’ of those committees and their individual chairs. This will lead to the personalization of political conflicts where disagreements with the program are viewed as slights toward the individual comrades leading specific areas of work. Finally good faith must be cultivated by adherence to party discipline in outward facing work. Nothing builds solidarity faster than the minority accepting that it is a minority and taking on a constructive role in carrying out the program adopted by the majority.

Outward facing party work is itself a major factor in the construction of comradely relations. If the party is not engaged in outward facing work for a sustained period, internal conflicts will tend to take on an oversized role. In the process of constant outward facing work communist workers will come to identify their shared enemy, the capitalist class, and view each other as comrades in struggle. If you’re collaborating with a comrade on a unionization campaign, sitting next to them at a table, marching shoulder to shoulder at a protest, and depending on them to show up to canvassing you have to take their ideas seriously and treat them with respect – if only because you have a material incentive to do so as a way to maximize the chances of victory in the campaign. Conflict with the class enemy, in other words, serves to put conflict with comrades into proportion as subordinate to the needs of the party as a whole.

Principles Of Abolition

“Socialism, if it is worthy of the name, means human relations without greed, friendship without envy and intrigue, love without base calculation.” ~Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed

In the process of organizing for a revolutionary communist party all kinds of interpersonal conflicts are certain to arise. Some of these conflicts will be simple misunderstandings that can be handled by a good faith conversation between comrades, and whenever a conflict arises comrades should feel an obligation to make an effort to speak to (in person if possible) those on the other side of the conflict and make sure they’re familiar with all points of view and have provided opportunities for comrades to become familiar with theirs. More serious conflicts arise when comrades run into situations where someone has committed or is accused of committing serious harm to another member of the organization or of the working class at large. The conflict inherent in these situations is intensified when there is no agreement on the facts of the matter at hand and there is no way of establishing such agreement. In the majority of cases, the communist organization will have to settle such conflicts without holding state power, and therefore without access to such means as fingerprint analysis, DNA evidence, video records, or other means to establish the facts of any particular case beyond reasonable doubt. This means that who one trusts, what principles and preconceptions one brings to the table, and what one’s relationships are will impact the conclusions drawn in important ways. Nevertheless a few core principles must be encoded in any organizational effort to resolve interpersonal conflicts and all comrades must remember that we are abolitionists and communists not merely when it is convenient but most of all when it is difficult and when the consequences of our positions directly impact our lives.

One principle that must arise from the limitations inherent in comrades’ inability to know all the facts of any given conflict is derived from Mao’s Oppose Book Worship, “Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn’t that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful.” It is unprincipled for comrades who are not familiar with the details of an accusation or a conflict and who have not investigated the various sides of it to take a hard position. A necessary consequence of this, and of abolitionist politics more generally, is that someone accused of committing harm must be provided with the details of the accusation and allowed the opportunity to offer a defense. As communists we recognize that the limitations of the bourgeois legal system lie in that it tends to lock innocent people away for crimes they did not commit and that it criminalizes everyday behaviors as a way to deprive oppressed people of our political rights and acquire a cheap labor source. Grievance processes in communist organizations must allow for meaningful investigation and hold up firm standards of evidence for those facts we can acquire.

It is also important that grievance processes not be played out in public and turned into spectacles. Elected leadership bodies and grievance officers should actively try to resolve cases in private wherever possible and prevent them from becoming publicized. This is necessary for the protection of all involved, accused and accuser alike, and for the health of the organization. It is all too easy to imagine public accusations of harm being weaponized for political gain with incredibly destructive effects. Further, dramatizing interpersonal conflicts on social media serves to prevent rather than encourage reconciliation and healing. Such platforms tend to escalate matters, eliminate room for nuance, and turn an intensely private and emotionally draining process into a circus for public consumption. Responsible communists will seek any possibility to prevent grievance issues from becoming material for public political fights even if this means accepting unjust terms (e.g. resigning from elected leadership under threat), but this must have its limitations. It has become clear that bad faith actors have often taken to weaponizing conduct issues for their own gain and communists must take a stand against this.

Another important abolitionist principle and one that can do much to prevent the weaponization of grievance issues is survivor centered process. This means that the person to initiate a formal grievance process must be the person alleging harm. Grievances initiated by other than the (alleged) survivors of the harm being investigated should be dismissed out of hand and it is unprincipled and irresponsible for communist organizations to launch an investigation into them. In fact, someone bringing forward a grievance complaint in relation to harm that happened to another person has committed a gross violation of communist discipline and should be the subject of political education efforts to highlight the importance of survivor centered process. Just as communists, particularly in the student movement, fight against mandatory reporting laws as serving primarily to silence survivors and deprive us of our agency, so too must we ensure that grievance processes within our own organizations prioritize the agency and well-being of survivors by allowing us to determine what and when to report. Survivor centered process also means taking accusations of harm seriously and evaluating them within the context of capitalism.

The Me Too movement began as a movement of workers highlighting the abuse we suffered at the hands of our bosses. In this context the slogan of “believe survivors” was brought to the fore. Believe survivors does not simply mean believe accusations of harm as some liberals would have it, but examine accusations of harm in the context of social relations and when perfect information is not available fill in the gaps by taking the side of the oppressed and exploited against the oppressors and exploiters. Believe workers when we come forward about our bosses, believe tenants when we come forward about our landlords, believe people of color and trans people when we talk about abuse enabled by our marginalization under capitalism- and do not believe uncritically but examine the available evidence, the relationships involved, the remedies that are being asked for, and the context the harm is alleged to have occurred in before coming to a conclusion on what is most likely to have occurred and what should be done about it. It must again be emphasized that in the absence of perfect information, different interpretations of events will arise. This space for political- and it is political, nothing is more toxic to grievance processes than people making political judgements and cloaking them as morally necessary ones- difference on how to fill in evidentiary gaps and determine what is most likely is a critical reason for formal organizational grievance procedures to be ultimately adjudicated by democratically elected leadership teams and for the investigation to be carried out be separate grievance officers who lack decision-making power in their own right. It also highlights the necessity of accepting that comrades examining a particular grievance will bring different things to the table in terms of their personal experiences and philosophical commitments. Someone whose experience is informed by seeing authority figures escape consequences for sexual assault will tend to interperate things a different way then someone who’s experiences have led them to be deeply concerned about the false charges of assault commonly brought against Black and trans people in the US. These differences are inevitable and the proper way to reconcile them is not through struggle, but through good faith conversation. When comrades disagree in this way they should be placed in a situation where they can spend time talking to each other and explaining their points of view. It is crucial to distinguish between conflict and abuse and (as Full Abolition- The Highest Stage of Socialism reminds us) between interpersonal harm and class violence. Even when they have committed serious errors and caused harm, our comrades are not our enemies and must never be treated as such.

Once the facts of a particular case have been established, at least as well as they can be it is the task of communists to promote restorative justice and healing and to avoid the replication of oppressive cacerial models of ‘justice’ within working class organizations. Again the principle of survivor centered process comes into play. Once harm has been established, the victim(s) of that harm must have a meaningful way to propose a resolution to it. Resolutions to grievance issues must also adhere to the principles of restorative justice. That is to say that they must repair the harm that has been caused or, at minimum, work to prevent its repetition in the future. A comrade who uses a slur against a marginalized group, for example, should be given political materials to study and required to work on projects that specifically address the oppression that group faces. Expulsion from the collective should only ever be a last resort and should only be employed when someone has demonstrably caused harm, is continuing to cause harm, and has refused to submit to discipline within the context of the organization. 

In the course of all this it is necessary to recognize that people can change and develop. Abolitionist politics are contingent on the idea that given sufficient opportunity and resources to do so, even people who have committed serious harms can improve themselves and move on. Further, communists should recognize that the existence of capitalist society means that many working class people have tattered pasts. To put make the point in its most direct form, virtually everyone on the left would agree that prisoners represent an important section of working class people and that they should be organized- yet as many as two-thirds of inmates in the US may have committed the crime they are being in imprisoned for and a non-trivial percentage of those crimes are in fact things that involve doing harm to another working class person. At what point is it reasonable for communists to say that someone has changed and moved on? For the historical communist movement a clear transition point exists where quantity is transformed into quality, namely when a person rejects their previous ideas and joins a communist organization. There is nothing special in the act of joining an organization itself, of course, and anyone who does so merely to escape accountability for harm should be cast out, but the accepted of a revolutionary communist point of view and the rejection of the existing social order represents a complete transition in someone’s way of thinking and a break with the person they were prior to that point. As a general rule, therefore, communist organizations should not engage in investigations of members’ lives before they joined unless some compelling reason presents itself. Interesting historical examples of this principle in action include the cases of Che Guevara and William Z Foster. Before his conversion to the communist movement Guevara’s politics and social attitudes were reflective of his wealthy upbringing and a glance at his Motorcycle Diaries reveals a number of unequivocally racist comments, yet no-one would seriously contend that his later evolution as a revolutionary leader and anti-racist icon is somehow compromised by that. Likewise, while William Z Foster was a well-respected working class leader, labor organizer, and syndicalist icon before WW1, he compromised his syndicalist views to sell war bonds. At first, this compromise with US imperialism rightfully devastated his reputation in radical circles and early communists took to referring to him as “E.Z. Foster”- implying that his allegiance had been bought by the AFL officialdom. Yet Foster was able to overcome this mark on his reputation and become a central figure of the later Communist Party. This was only possible because even his staunchest critics recognized that his joining the Communist Party and conversion to revolutionary Marxist politics marked a qualitative break in Foster’s thinking. 

Once a determination as to the facts of a conduct issue has been made and a course of action settled upon, that is not the end of the story. Members expelled from the party, such as Yokinen (the expelled Communist Party member who’s story is recounted in We Need Comrades) should be given a chance to reintegrate, invited to public events, and put in contact with members of leadership able to create a process for their return provided they demonstrate accountability for their actions or are able to introduce new evidence as to the facts of the matter. Members who have faced less serious reprimands should also be checked in with and effort must be made to ensure they have completed the tasks assigned to them in a disciplined manner. Members of the organization must always be alert to who disappears and drops off the map in the aftermath of grievance cases. Comrades are not disposable and should not be treated as such (what this means in practice is variable, but a good guide is included under the heading “resisting disposability” in Hot Allostatic Load). Showing concern for comrades regardless of circumstance and seeking ways to ensure that they are in a healthy space is always a good thing and should be encouraged.

In the course of formal grievance processes, the importance of a revolutionary communist leadership cannot be overestimated. It is the responsibility of comrades elected to leadership positions to ensure the formal rules of the grievance process are followed to the letter and set the example in both centering survivors of harm and resisting the tendency to dispose of the accused without a fair hearing or an attempt at restorative justice. The following of formal rules must be singled out as something that’s absolutely crucial for grievance issues to resolve in ways that allow for reconciliation and maintain confidence in the grievance process. Members must feel certain that the organization’s leadership will uphold the preexisting rules when disputes over conduct arise or a situation will emerge where comrades believe that political alliances and social relationships will dominate grievance outcomes. This need for members to feel confident in the grievance process is also why which comrades are charged with taking lead on conduct issues should be changed regularly and why the election of grievance officers should require a supermajority of votes. If a nontrivial number of comrades view the grievance officers as partisan, there can be no confidence in or meditation through the grievance process. In such a situation, the elected party leadership has an obligation to take an active role in encouraging new comrades, members of the party recruited after the conclusion of past conflicts or who took no active role in them, to step forward as conduct officers.

The role of leadership is crucial in developing and maintaining confidence in the grievance process, as it is in the party generally. In the present period the question of the proletarian communist leadership has become a- perhaps the- critical question of history. As Trotsky writes,  “All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet “ripened” for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only “ripened”; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind. The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.” Revolutionaries must constantly strive to become the kind of fighters for communism that the present era requires, and it is to the question of inspiring and developing the individual revolutionary that we now turn.

Love And Fury

“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality. Perhaps it is one of the great dramas of the leader that he or she must combine a passionate spirit with a cold intelligence and make painful decisions without flinching. Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize this love of the people, of the most sacred causes, and make it one and indivisible.” ~ Che Guevara, Socialism And Man In Cuba

There is often a discussion between communists over whether revolutionary commitment is best motivated by hatred for the existing capitalist society or by love for the new world that we are organizing to build. In truth the answer is both. It is impossible for the Marxist revolutionary, having examined the capitalist world to feel anything but hatred for it. The educated Marxist will be able to see the exploitation and oppression underlying every interaction and embedded in every commodity under capitalism. It is impossible to get so much as a simple cup of coffee without thinking about the labor that went into producing it, the international systems of trade required to bring it into being, and the workers being exploited so the coffee shop owner can make a profit. Having seen the man behind the curtain, it is impossible to go back to believing in the ‘great and powerful’ wizard. Marxism means seeing the world as it truly is, and given the nature of capitalist society that can inspire nothing but revolutionary hatred and moral revulsion. That hatred however, emerges from a place of love. Love for all the exploited and oppressed people of the earth, love for the working class as a class and unconditional love for every member of that class. It is that love that stands at the heart of the socialist project, that enables us to carry on in the fight for communist revolution.

In addition to generalized class love for the workers and hatred for the bosses, the committed revolutionary is animated by a feeling of solidaristic love for their comrades in struggle and a loathing for all those who would harm them. Without commenting on the strategic usefulness of mutual aid as an organizational practice in any given political context, it is essential to reinforce that the ethical practices of communists must be driven by a strong sense of solidarity for one’s comrades. When communists see a comrade in distress, they intervene. A housing insecure comrade is given shelter, a comrade needing food aid is provided it, and in general money and other resources are put to use assisting the development of each member of the collective insofar as that is realistically possible. Of course, each comrade can only do so much and even the combined total resources of every member of the working class are totally insufficient to meet our needs- that is what exploitation is all about after all- but each is prepared to do whatever they are able. Likewise any comrade that needs assistance must be unafraid to ask for it and must understand that they have an obligation to make their needs clear so they can continue to be active in the communist movement. Moving beyond individual practices, the revolutionary organization must strive “to educate and encourage every member of the working class to be capable of responding to the distress and needs of other members of the class, of a sensitive understanding of others and a penetrating consciousness of the individual’s relationship to the collective. All these “warm emotions” – sensitivity, compassion, sympathy and responsiveness – derive from one source: they are aspects of love, not in the narrow, sexual sense but in the broad meaning of the word. Love is an emotion that unites and is consequently of an organizing character.” (Make Way For Winged Eros) When the working class is united by love and solidarity, it will also be inflamed by unquenchable class hatred against the bosses and landlords and will crush the capitalist system into dust.

Marxists will, at this point, generally interject that communism is not primarily a project of feeling but one of reason. Indeed, the division between the scientific socialism of the modern era and the utopian socialism of the past is the division between a socialism born out of an analysis of class society and a socialism informed by moral sentiments. From Marx to Luxemburg, scientific socialists have always sought to emphasize that socialism is a historical necessity and the socialist program is developed not from abstract conventions but the concrete class struggle of the proletariat. This seeming tension between socialist activity motivated by political reason and activity motivated by a revolutionary hatred of the existing society is mediated through the structure of the communist party. The actions of a socialist organization must be driven by carefully considered strategy resulting from a Marxist examination of the particular material conditions the organization exists in, while the actions of individual socialists can be driven by revolutionary convention. Furthermore, the socialist who examines the existing society and is unmoved by it will not remain a socialist for long. In the often difficult practice of organizing for revolution, intellectual conviction alone is insufficient. To avoid becoming demoralized by defeats and to resist the temptations presented by opportunism in its various forms, communists must feel the revolution in our bones and give ourselves to its realization.

The tension between individual motivation and the strategy of the party is resolved by party discipline and the knowledge of revolutionaries that the party structure is necessary for the achievement of our aims. If we understand the party as necessary for the revolution we will come to love and cherish it as an expression of the working class. As Cannon writes in The Revolutionary Party And Its Role In The Struggle For Socialism, “Marxism teaches that the revolution against capitalism and the socialist reconstruction of the old world can be accomplished only through conscious, collective action by the workers themselves. The vanguard party is the highest expression and irreplaceable instrument of that class consciousness at all stages of the world revolutionary process. In the prerevolutionary period the vanguard assembles and welds together the cadres who march ahead of the main army but seek at all points to maintain correct relations with it. The vanguard grows in numbers and influence and comes to the fore in the course of the mass struggle for supremacy which it aspires to bring to a successful conclusion. After the overthrow of the old ruling powers, the vanguard leads the people in the tasks of defending and constructing the new society. A political organization capable of handling such colossal tasks cannot arise spontaneously or haphazardly; it has to be continuously, consistently and consciously built.” A lack of attention to the need for building a revolutionary party or a lackadaisical attitude towards its problems, then, are extreme violations of communist morality. The party is the military headquarters of the proletarian class war, the focal point of our struggle for liberation, and if we understand our morality as historically conditioned then we must accept building it as our moral and strategic task. Communist morality in the sense is the class war on the ideological front, it is the making of moral and ethical problems into strategic problems for the working class to collectively resolve in the liberation struggle. The constant need for individual political development, the refinement of collective strategy, the discipline of the individual to the democratic will of the communist collective, all these are not merely optional extras but are the heart and soul of the revolutionary movement.

Conclusion

“the Socialists, as the champions of the class interests of the proletariat, constitute a revolutionary party, because it is impossible to raise this class to a satisfactory existence within capitalist society; and because the liberation of the working class is only possible through the overthrow of private property in the means of production and rulership, and the substitution of social production for production for profit. The proletariat can attain the satisfaction of its wants only in a society whose institutions shall differ fundamentally from the present one.” ~ Karl Kautsky, The Road To Power

The communist party is a revolutionary party, but it is not a revolution making one. Revolution is not something that can be made to order but something that emerges from the struggle of the oppressed and exploited for our liberation. It will happen whether we desire it or not, whether we are prepared for it or not, whether it is in time or not. The task is one of building the party that can give the revolution leadership, that can unite the working class in struggle, that can transform the revolution from mass demonstrations into the assumption of power. This is a task to which communists must dedicate our lives. We are Leninists and Trotskyists because Leninism is that tendency in communism that recognizes the centrality of building the party and constructing the revolutionary leadership. Of course neither the party as a whole nor the leading section of the party will drop ready made from the heavens. They are historically contingent and must be built from the material ready to hand. As Liu Shaoqi writes, “Every member of the Communist party has come from this society, is living in it today and is constantly exposed to its seamy side. It is not surprising then that Communists, whether they are of proletarian or non-proletarian origin and whether they are old or new members of the Party, should carry with them to a greater or lesser the thinking and habits of the old society. In order to preserve our purity as vanguard fighters of the proletariat and to enhance our revolutionary quality and working ability that is essential for every Communist to work hard to temper and cultivate himself in every respect.” No revolutionary will always and at all times be a good communist, but must constantly strive to learn and develop, to recognize mistakes when they occur and learn from them, and to become integrated into a cadre that transcends the limitations of any given individual. The communist cadres are the backbone of the revolution, and each one is incredibly precious. Comrades are not disposable and must not be treated as such, rather the dedicated communist must freely place themself at the disposal of the proletariat and its party. The struggle will be a long and sometimes painful one, but it is worth it. In spite of all the difficulties and the hardships we are confident that “We shall survive everyone. When the bones of the present princes of the earth, their servants and their servants’ servants, have turned to dust, when no one is able to find the graves in which many of today’s parties and their activities are buried, then the cause we serve will rule the world, then our party, today struggling for breath underground, will become absorbed without trace in a humanity which, for the first time in history, will be master of its own fate. The whole of history is an enormous machine in the service of our ideals. It works with barbarous slowness, with insensitive cruelty, but it works. We are sure of it. But when its omnivorous mechanism swallows up our life’s blood for fuel, we feel like calling out to it with all the strength we still possess: “Faster! Do it faster!”” (1905) Communism represents the transition from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom, and in that sense its triumph will mark the beginning of real human history. For that we are prepared to fight to the very end.