A friend of mine likes to characterise Lenin as a pirate sporting a parrot on one shoulder. “Build the revolutionary party! Arrk!” Trotsky The Parrot squawks. But how many of us actuall take a step back from this false ideology of mass?
Its almost self-explainatory when you think about how a violent overthrow of the state and social order should be achieved: first you get the guns, then you get the power, then you get the women (or in lenist-speak: fist you get the marxist theory, then you get the mass party, then you get to be Lenin). It’s so obvious, that I’d never thought about it being wrong before today.
What point is there in mass? A mass objectifies its participants, it makes them into faceless “things” - spectators of their own lives. A mass is defined by its number of participants. If it becomes massive enough, it develops a gravity of its own - like the Communist Party of Australia did for a while (people knew it was fucked, but it was the best way for them to struggle). The real problem of a mass isn’t that its large and globular, but that it nurtures hierarchy. Mass makes hierarchy necessary to shape and control itself, to present a front to the outside world (and create that gravitational effect that draws in other participants). Those on top of the hierarchy become disconnected from (while speaking for) those in the mass. They’re visible and responsible. In taking responsibility, they take agency away from those in the mass. The mass might grow, but as less is required from those in the mass (directed from on high) it grows sluggish and unresponsive. Those in the mass expect those leading it to protect them because the’ve given their agency and ownership over to be controlled.
How can an organisation like this claim to be revolutionary? It can’t challenge society because it apes society in its very structure.
The revolution will happen only when a large number of people truly feel able to own their own lives, and their own actions and decide to use their actions to create a better world for all. It sounds like idealism, but its not. Everyone must truly feel a part (or that they are open to become a part) of the lives of others in a more meaningful way than is now possible. And they’ve got to know (that is, come to their own understanding of) how its gotta be achieved. Otherwise they’re just a mass, disconnected from their ‘leaders’, and prone to be sold out on the first wave of treachery.
I don’t think that building this kind of universal working-class consciousness is going to be possible by turning up to rallies, forcing pamphlets out of every orifice, and shouting at people.
