Introduction

The organizations created by the working class for its liberation have become cogs in the system of exploitation. This is the brutal conclusion forced upon anyone who is prepared to face up to reality. One consequence is that today many are perplexed by an apparent dilemma. Can one become involved without organization? And if one cannot, how can one organize without following the path that has made traditional organizations the fiercest enemies of the aims they originally set out to achieve?

Some believe the question can be approached in a purely negative way. “Experience shows,” they say, “that all working-class organizations have degenerated; therefore, any organization is bound to degenerate.” This is basing too much on experience — or too little. Up to now all revolutions either have been crushed or have degenerated. Are we to deduce from this that all revolutionary struggle should be abandoned? The defeat of revolutions and the degeneration of organizations are different expressions of the same phenomenon, namely, that established society is, at least provisionally, emerging victorious from its struggles with the proletariat. If one concluded that things will always be like this, one ought to be logical and give up the fight. Concern with the problem of organization has meaning only for people convinced that they can and must struggle together (hence, by organizing) and who do not, from the very beginning, assume their own defeat is inevitable.

For such people the questions posed by the degeneration of working-class organizations have a real, positive meaning and demand real answers. Why have these organizations degenerated? What does this degeneration mean? What has been the role of these organizations in the temporary setback of the labor movement? Why has the proletariat supported them? And, perhaps more significantly, why has it not moved beyond them? What are the conclusions from all this for future organization and action?

There is no simple answer to these questions, for they concern every aspect and task of the labor movement today. Nor is there a purely theoretical answer. The problem of revolutionary organization will only be resolved as such an organization is actually built. This in turn will depend on the development of working-class action.

Nevertheless, the beginnings of a solution should be attempted right now. Revolutionaries cannot totally abstain from action and wait for working-class struggles to develop. The development of such struggles will not solve the problem of how revolutionaries should organize: They will merely bring it up at a higher level. And in the development of these struggles, organization has a role to play. No real organization will be built without the development of struggles, and there will be no lasting development of these struggles without organization building. If you do not accept this postulate, if you think that what you do or do not do is of no importance, if you are acting purely so as to be at peace with your own conscience, there is no need to read further.

The beginnings of a solution cannot be empirical or just a set of negative prescriptions. A revolutionary group can only adopt positive rules for its action and work, and these rules must spring from its principles. However insignificant the organization, its work, its activity, and its way of going about its daily business must be the visible and verifiable embodiment of the aims it advocates.

Responding to the problem of building a revolutionary organization demands, therefore, that we start from the whole experience of the revolutionary movement and from an analysis of the conditions in which the movement finds itself in the second half of the twentieth century. In order to do this we must make what may seem like a detour, return to first principles and reconsider revolutionary objectives and the history of the labor movement.