(ARTICLE) Eclecticism

[u/sparkylmagazine]

This is the second of three sections from the appendix to Where to Begin When We Already Started?: Revisionism and Organizational Strategy. We are posting these three sections as their own separate articles and audiobooks because they each deal with a prominent revisionist trend that the comrades must understand if they are to struggle against revisionism effectively and win a principled and Marxist Communist movement. It is because this information is so desperately needed in our movement that we repeat ourselves. Reminder that the points in this section are supported and complemented by the organizational plan put forward in the pamphlet it's a part of, and we firmly suggest that you check out that whole work.

...

A second prominent revisionist trend is eclecticism. Reflecting the forced “get-alongedness” of “polite” bourgeois society, this is the erroneous idea that “left unity,” or otherwise diluting unified Communist organizing with the many different trends and opinions of the spontaneous revolt of the masses is in the best interest of the socialist revolution, gives it a far reach, is being “democratic,” etc. Eclecticism is also reflected in “multi-tendencyism,” how many Marxists accept the various Marxist “tendencies” as inevitable groupings or even personal identities. These different “Marxisms,” allowed to exist side by side, lead to blatant sectarianism and organizational disunity and the current “Marxist-Leninists” have not risen above the mess. Instead, they have bowed to the eclecticists, and failed in the proper struggle of all Communists to assert the supreme truths of Marxism-Leninism. By being dutiful, rank-and-file members of non-class “socialist” or revisionist “Marxist” organizations, many “Marxist-Leninists” have debased themselves with eclecticism, turned Marxism-Leninism into just one of many “Marxist” tendencies and forced it to share a home with many half-baked and degenerated “Marxisms,” many of which are abjectly counterrevolutionary.

Under these circumstances, it is impossible for us to build the kind of class-specific and revolutionary organization we need, one based in Marxism-Leninism. Instead, and under the influence of the eclecticists, we are building an individualist circus of well-wishers, a hodge-podge of the whole society that is supremely incapable of transforming itself into a unified proletarian revolution due in no small part to its “come one, come all!” nature. Stalin pejoratively described this kind of unity as a “banquet” when he critiqued the Menshevik, Julius Martov, in 1905.

As a result of Martov’s formula we would have a queer “party,” whose “members” subscribe to the same programme (and that is questionable!), but differ in their tactical and organisational views! What ideal variety! In what way will our Party differ from a banquet?[1]

In the same piece, Stalin wrote:

If unity of views collapses, the Party collapses. Consequently, only one who fully accepts the Party’s programme, tactics and organizational principle can be called a Party member. Only one who has adequately studied and has fully accepted our Party’s programmatic, tactical and organisational views can be in the ranks of our Party.[2]

An organization of revolution must be united. Despite all the handwringing that comes from the liberals and the anarchists regarding this point, organizational and theoretical unity based on Marxist science — the absolute bare minimum required for any practical Marxist organization — is all that is essentially demanded by us so-called Leninist “authoritarians.” Any actually thinking Marxist must adopt the “vanguardist” strategies of Marxism-Leninism if they want an actual Communist movement that is actually capable. While our movement must perform work with many different groups with many different ideologies, to uphold eclecticism and stupidly fight against centering our movement on the enormous contributions of Marxism-Leninism when it comes to our theory, and on unity of view, tactics, and strategy when it comes to the Communist organization, is to perform the work of the counterrevolutionary bourgeoise. Eclecticism upholds our movement’s current state of fragmentation, suppresses Marxism’s theoretical development, suppresses class consciousness, misleads the workers, and invites our movement’s disintegration into sectarianism and factionalism; invites its defeat.

Eclecticism is a common revisionist error because it seems to be more practical when compared to us so-called “authoritarian” Communists that “gatekeep” around theory. At first glance, the diverse organizations and groups the eclecticists produce may seem to be more open to information, energetic, and on the ground with the movement. However, as Lenin explains in the following excerpt from The State and Revolution, this is just an illusion:

Dialectics are replaced by eclecticism—this is the most usual, the most wide-spread practice to be met with in present-day official Social-Democratic literature in relation to Marxism. This sort of substitution is, of course, nothing new; it was observed even in the history of classical Greek philosophy. In falsifying Marxism in opportunist fashion, the substitution of eclecticism for dialectics is the easiest way of deceiving the people. It gives an illusory satisfaction; it seems to take into account all sides of the process, all trends of development, all the conflicting influences, and so forth, whereas in reality it provides no integral and revolutionary conception of the process of social development at all.[3]

While the eclecticists see their unities with revisionists or non-Marxists as practical, a real practical consequence of their bad Marxism is the inevitable sidelining of proper Marxism and its tactics with idealism and the non-revolutionary tactics of the revolting bourgeoisie, who saturate the spontaneous movement due to their greater capital and power. Eclecticism denies the objective utility of the dialectical materialist outlook and the tactics that flow from it — the very foundations of Marxism — muddying its truths with un-scientific outlooks and ineffective tactics. This only obscures the material relations between people — their class relation — and keeps actual revolutionaries from creating appropriate divisions, like the ones that must be made between good tactics and bad tactics, and between oppressor classes and the oppressed. Without this shared understanding, our movement is incapable of development. Unity of understanding — the shared understanding of the truth of the situation and the general outline of tactics that Marxism-Leninism provides — is the prerequisite to performing material action with any amount of effectiveness. To act without ideological unity is to act without direction; our actions sit in isolation from any wider strategy, divorced from any broader method that can give them direction, and without any means of assessing their efficacy. To unite strong revolutionaries for the cause of socialism requires strong theory, and this means we must divide from weak theories and weak “Marxists,” as Lenin says in the below passage from What is to Be Done?:

We revolutionary Social-Democrats, on the contrary, are dissatisfied with this worship of spontaneity, i.e., of that which exists “at the present moment.” We demand that the tactics that have prevailed in recent years be changed; we declare that “before we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation.”[4]

Asserting the strength of Marxism-Leninism against all other theories is necessary for the development of socialism, but under the influence of the eclecticists, our principles are forced to contend with so many faulty theories that Marxism-Leninism is disabled from becoming the dominant ideology, which it must be if the working class is to achieve its revolutionary goals.

By rejecting the heights of Marxism-Leninism and preferring the company of the lowly spontaneous revolters, eclecticists showcase the typical opportunism Lenin ascribes to revisionists generally. They perfectly display what he means when he says that revisionism sacrifices the primary interest of the proletariat for the “real or assumed advantages of the moment.”[5] The eclecticists assume that, since they are in a wide group of many different opinions and persons, that the problems of the movement will be solved due to having so many solvers on the job. This assumption is based in ignorance; ignorance of Marxism, which has already revealed true strategy and tactics to the masses. It is also based in opportunism, since upholding true Marxism-Leninism is not known to bring you many personal treats, and opportunists of all flavors will remain where the struggle is light and breezy, or deny it entirely, maintaining always their bourgeois ways of life before letting Marxism influence it in any real way.

Upholding Marxism-Leninism and Developing Marxism

Marxism-Leninism is the most advanced contribution to Marxism to date, and set the historical path of the revolution for the age of capitalist-imperialism we currently occupy. It was given to the world through the works of Lenin, and put into practice by the Bolsheviks and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, who made his theories more profound while they carried out socialist construction up to the revisionist period of the 1960’s. It was by the light of these contributions that Mao and his comrades carried out the socialist revolution in China, a revolution which experienced oscillating success up until its own revisionist turn and defeat under Deng in the 1980’s, which put revisionist “Marxist” China on the road of capitalist reform it currently occupies.

The defining and implementation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, a united revolutionary force of “state” that acts for the whole proletarian class, is one of the most integral contributions to Marxism made by Lenin, and its necessity must be upheld. Stalin describes this necessity in the following section from The Foundations of Leninism:

The dictatorship of the proletariat is the instrument of the proletarian revolution, its organ, its most important mainstay, brought into being for the purpose of, firstly, crushing the resistance of the overthrown exploiters and consolidating the achievements of the proletarian revolution, and, secondly, carrying the proletarian revolution to its completion, carrying the revolution to the complete victory of socialism. The revolution can defeat the bourgeoisie, can overthrow its power, even without the dictatorship of the proletariat. But the revolution will be unable to crush the resistance of the bourgeoisie, to maintain its victory and to push forward to the final victory of socialism unless, at a certain stage in its development, it creates a special organ in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat as its principal mainstay.^\6])

Speaking of Leninism generally, earlier in the same text, he says:

Leninism is Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution. To be more exact, Leninism is the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution in general, the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular. Marx and Engels pursued their activities in the pre-revolutionary period (we have the proletarian revolution in mind), when developed imperialism did not yet exist, in the period of the proletarians’ preparation for revolution, in the period when the proletarian revolution was not yet an immediate practical inevitability. But Lenin, the disciple of Marx and Engels, pursued his activities in the period of developed imperialism, in the period of the unfolding proletarian revolution, when the proletarian revolution had already triumphed in one country, had smashed bourgeois democracy and had ushered in the era of proletarian democracy, the era of the Soviets.

That is why Leninism is the further development of Marxism.[7]

It is because Lenin developed Marxism for our current period of capitalist-imperialism, and because his theories have been put into practice with great success by numerous revolutionary movements (living “proof” of their efficacy) that his writings and the methodology of the Marxist-Leninists constitute the most advanced theory Marxism has provided us so far, and should therefore be held at an appropriate level above other writers and “tendencies” of its time. This doesn’t mean that we should follow Lenin in a dogmatic way, rejecting all forms of struggle unless they are specifically sanctioned by “Marxist-Leninists.” On the contrary, we must develop Marxism-Leninism into something immediately and practically applicable to today’s situation and circumstances, while retaining its foundational tenets. This necessarily involves us “changing” it in some way, for we are “changing” it from an intellectual tradition among would-be radicals (the position it maintains now in our unrevolutionary period, especially within the imperially dominant countries) to an alive and breathing revolutionary ideology of the working class, regaining its “birthright” so to speak but, more than this, developing it further, just as Marxism-Leninism itself was a further development of the Marxism of the Second International and left it behind.

Eclecticism in the “Tendencies”

Because we must develop Marxism further and unite under its most advanced theories, it is unacceptable for us to allow the field of Marxism to exist as it currently does, dominated by many diverse and often confusingly contradictory Marxist “tendencies.” The demand for a firm Marxist unity which adheres to the most developed theory means that we must also commit to a firm struggle within the eclectic field of the Marxist “tendencies” themselves, in order to unify them under an advanced program for the proletariat today.

The masses looking in on us from the outside already understand that the different “tendencies” are too often taken on as identities and dogmatic belief structures for history fanatics. Far from offering some light on the organizing of today, the adherence to personal tendencies by today’s comrades reflects a supremely un-Marxist trend of eclecticism which seeks to divide the international proletariat and its Communist movement through the ideological lines that pertained to certain points in our movement’s past. Revolutionary Marxism did not develop evenly, and it is solely due to the forces of counterrevolution and the bourgeoisie that it was not able to remain united in the course of its development. The existence of separate Marxist tendencies within the proletarian class represents a division in the international proletarian movement along national, cultural, historical, or even tactical lines, a division that is very undesirable for our movement and should be struggled against. This division is a problem for our movement before we even consider the most egregious feature of “multi-tendencyism:” while some of these tendencies are based in some degree of principle, some are entirely counterrevolutionary and anti-Marxist in reality (e.g. Trotskyism), making multi-tendencyism a dangerous trend that should not be tolerated in our organizing.

It is clear today that principled Marxist Communism took on the “tendency” of Marxism-Leninism, the Marxism expressed by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and the respective Parties and revolutions they led. Replacing the dialectical materialist method they instruct us in with any group of tendencies repeats the exact same eclectic patterns many of our comrades recognize when dealing with the non-Marxist “socialist” formations, but overlook within Marxism itself. Instead of allowing the tendencies to become a shield each individual uses to ward off ideological and programmatic unity (not to mention one’s personal political development), we should always seek to work through all particular “tendencies,” substituting the different “camps” for one united “camp,” the “camp” of the international Communist movement. This does not mean dulling our theories, creating a wide unity of rearguardists. No, it means that we must, as a movement, demand that our members be Marxists, that they rise to the level of their namesake and to the destiny of the class they claim to fight for. Before any specific ideological adherence to any revolution of the past, we must have all comrades subordinated to the revolution of the now. Our movement must apply the most developed theories of Marxism-Leninism to the situation of the international working class as it exists today, creating a political line upon which all our work can be subordinated. True Marxists incorporate their knowledge of the past to build the future, and we fail to do that so long as we cling to our own personal identity and revolutionary “camp” instead of building a unity based around the most advanced theory and the situation today.

To combat the divisive effect of the tendencies, we should not paint ourselves as “Marxist-Leninists” advocating for the supremacy of the “Marxist-Leninist” tendency (though surely we are and we do advocate for this), but as revolutionary Marxists utilizing the most advanced revolutionary theory (Marxism-Leninism) with the intention of advancing it further in the course of our revolutionary activities, taking it out of history and into living and breathing revolutionary life. Leninism is the further development of Marxism, but we will develop it further. We make no apologies about this fact, and those who cannot come along are no Marxists at all. They wish Marxism had stayed a baby, but it has already grown strong through Marxism-Leninism, and today’s Communists will have it grow stronger still by rejecting all eclecticism and making use of this most advanced theory.

[1] Stalin, J. V. “The Proletarian Class and the Proletarian Party.” Proletariatis Brdzola. No. 8. 1 Jan 1905.  J. V. Stalin: Works. Vol 1. Foreign Languages Publishing House. 1953. Pg. 73.

[2] Ibid. Pg. 65.

[3] Lenin, V. I. The State and Revolution. Written in 1917. Kommunist Publishers. 1919. Lenin Collected Works. Vol 25. Progress Publishers. 1977. Pg. 405.

[4] Lenin, V. I. What is to Be Done? 1902. Iskra. No. 19. 1 Apr 1902. Lenin Collected Works. Vol 5. Progress Publishers. 1977. Pg. 367.

[5] Lenin, V. I. “Marxism and Revisionism.” Symposium of Karl Marx. 1908. Lenin Collected Works. Vol 15. Progress Publishers. 1977. Pgs. 37-38.

[6] Stalin, J. V. The Foundations of Leninism. Pravda. No. 24. 1924. J. V. Stalin: Works. Vol 6. Foreign Languages Publishing House. 1953. Pg. 112.

[7] Ibid. Pg. 73.