PARTISAN!

Brunhilda Olding, Melbourne

Recently I’ve been reading a lot of the theory put out by Red Ant as part of my job on the Communist Unity Committee, and there’s a lot of reflections on their particular interpretation of the Russian Revolution and banging on about Lenin’s two stage theory of revolution. In fact there’s plenty of articles reflecting on whichever big success in the third world helps prove the point of their editorial line that first world socialists primary focus must be on defending and aiding the revolution in the third world.

I was looking over these articles, and I kept on running into one fundamental thought.

What’s the fucking point of the two-stage revolution theory in Australia today? What is the point of theorising over the role of Communists to complete the bourgeois-democratic revolution in one of the most advanced capitalist powers on the planet?

But this is broader than just one political line I disagree immensely with. Nearly every communist groupuscule in the world will have at least three articles elucidating their particularly perfect insight into the Russian revolution and what we can learn from it today. Now most groups will then have another icon they hold up and bang on about. Maoists will talk to empty lecture halls on the need for a protracted people’s war in Sydney, and Third Worldists will explain the importance of Vietnam.

Now this isn’t a purely Marxist phenomena; Anarchists will spend days nitpicking over where exactly the CNT-FAI went wrong in Spain, or how if the Bolsheviks hadn’t stabbed them in the back, they would have liberated all of Ukraine.

Ironically of all groups the Spartacist League seem to have the best approach to this at least in theory. I was listening to their debate with the League for the Fourth International and somebody I don’t know or care who made a point that the most important reflections we can possibly make are the ones about how we as organisations have failed in the past.

I’d much rather read a hundred articles on the tactics and culture of organising say Landforces, or on the lessons learnt through the Victorian Socialists campaign then yet another bloody article on how the Bolsheviks did nothing wrong, long live Lenin and whichever big head the author thinks goes after him.

Now this isn’t to say we shouldn’t remember our victories, just that we need to move beyond simply looking at the same old victories and defeats and just twiddling our thumbs.