LETTER: In defence of being pretentious

Revmira, Melbourne

There are a lot of criticisms that the Revolutionary Communist Organisation (RCO) receives, some of them are worth engaging with, some not. But one of the more fascinating ones dragged out by our opponents, and critics is that we are “too pretentious”.

This usually takes two forms. The first attacks the way we write and style our articles, and public presentation. The second attacks the fundamental substance of our political demands and strategy and hides behind a sub-reformist logic of “meeting people where they’re at” and must be fundamentally engaged with.

I am happy to concede on the first point, although on a purely personal level I find this critique to be a degeneration into rather quite boring nitpicking. While of course on the left there is a broader need to reevaluate the way we communicate and to drop the oftentimes slightly archaic ‘Marxist standard English’ or as MacNair calls it Trot-speak, it is hardly an earth-defining critique. In general, the Marxist left needs to understand the basics of scientific communication so we can bridge the gap between the (incredibly insightful and severely under looked) realms of theorisation and study ongoing in Marxism and the concrete agitation and struggles being waged today, this is hardly something unique to the RCO.

The second however is something we must fundamentally oppose. As communists we do not have mild or modest aims of changing the situation, we’re not here to try and tinker with the allegorical “torment nexus” to borrow a phrase, we organise, agitate, and educate with the fundamental aim of changing the entire world, and we not only should but must be open about that.

As Communists, and even more as organised communists we explicitly set ourselves the goal of constructing the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in our relevant country as part of the universal struggle for the transition to Communism. Hiding our views, downplaying our positions all of these go against the fundamental strategy of Marxism.

When Lenin spoke of the need to “patiently convince” people a core part of that was a consistent agitation of the communist program. We in the RCO uphold that tradition just as we fight against the cultural dominance of irony and fight for genuine sincerity, honesty, and bluntness¹. So perhaps it’s pretentious to outline the need for a mass workers militia at a rally on police violence, but we are in the business of politics not of Sunday schools. We have our views and so we organise around them to convince the majority of the proletariat, which has an objective historical mission, and interest in the construct of communism.

Those who hide their views or bend or waver with every turn of the polling breeze reflect a fundamentally unserious political perspective. Indeed, I would argue it reflects a fundamentally non-communist approach. Communism rests on the creative power, spirit, wisdom, and intelligence, of the proletariat. To be a communist requires seeing that every human, every worker, everyone under the jackboot of capital has the power, spirit, and wisdom to change the world.

If a Marxist considers their program or line something to be changed at the drop of a hat for the potential of greater support, there are only two conclusions that can be drawn. The first is that you lack confidence in yourself, and your politics, that you do not think it possible to argue for an unpopular view or that you can convince people of your ideas. The second is that you believe the working class is stupid and can simply be won over with a few nice sounding phrases, while the real thinking is done behind closed doors. The RCO quite firmly believes neither of these.

Perhaps that makes us pretentious tools. If that is the cost of being principled, so be it.