questions about platformism

[camarada]

i've been reading about Platformism, and i have a few questions about the ideas of theoretical and tactical unity. while i certainly understand an organization having broad unity on questions of theories and tactics, the idea starts to seem a little, well, non-anarchistic when applied to more specific issues and even more so when applied on a federal level. according to one person i asked, the theoretical and tactical unity would simply be agreeing that the group emphasizes class struggle and believes union organizing is a good tactic and that violence should be used sparingly--something like that. however what i thought from reading NEFAC's introduction to platformism was that the theoretical and tactical unity was much more specific. if a group within the federation or the federation itself decided, after debate, on a theoretical position or a tactical strategy, everyone within the group or the federation would be obliged to argue for that position publically or follow through with that tactic, even if they personally disagreed. in responding to common objections to platformism, NEFAC said that the dissenting individuals or factions could make their objections known as long as they distanced themselves from the official view. <br> <br>the latter interpretation feels borderline centralistic and a bit suffocating. if this is a correct interpretation, maybe someone could give an example of a situation where this sort of dissent occured and how it was dealt with. what sounds ominous on paper may work fine in practice. <br> <br>when the federation becomes more than a simple network and actually makes decisions that affect member organizations, it starts to feel a little too "democratically centralist." i suppose these decisions wuold be made by means of a kind of congress? if there is dissent within a local organization, how would their delegates vote at the congress? what kind of decisions would be made on a federal level? the idea of a congress as a place for networking, coordination and debate is one thing--congress as a means of reaching decisions can become quite another. <br> <br>i'd love for someone to clear this up, particularly with spefic examples. thanks!

[Guest]

As far as i can tell, these guys are communists! <br> <br>They seem very confused.

[Guest]

Seriously, i have read about this and they are advocating democratic centralism! <br> <br>Whats up with that?Are there anyone who can explain this to me?

[andrewflood]

Yeah - you don't understand democratic CENTRALISM <br> <br>The core idea of democratic CENTRALISM is that while you get to democratically make policies the CENTRE (which are representives not delegates) can overrule these when it sees fit. <br> <br>There are two reasons for joining an organisation. The first is to meet like minded people and in the end tends to result in a small organisation that consists of a circle of friends (and feuding partners). The second is because you believe that the organisation is trying to achieve what you are trying to achieve, that the parts of it you can't see (because of geographical separation or just complexity) will act in a similar way to how you will act, that in the event of a crisis you will then be part of a large number of people acting in a common way on the basis of prior agreement. All these require tactical and theoretical unity. <br> <br>The main misunderstanding which arises from discussion of the need for theoretical and tactical unity is that an organisation which has such agreement will consider itself to hold the 'true' ideas of anarchism and all others as heretics. It's not hard to see where this idea emerges from, again from the culture of the left and the 57 feuding brands of Leninism. But for anarchists such an attitude has to be impermissible. It is also obviously incompatible with the role of the organisation I argued for earlier - that of being a nucleus of ideas and activists within the struggles of the working class rather than something which seeks to become the formal leadership of the class. <br> <br>A final area of controversy around this idea is the surrender of individual sovereignty it entails. The original 'Platformists' talked about this as a "Collective responsibility" the organisation shared for the action of its activists. Alongside this is the responsibility of activists to implement the decisions of the organisation even where they clashed with their own views on this matter. Some anarchists see this as being akin to the organisational discipline required by many Leninists where party members are required to give the party a "monopoly of their political activity" and follow "democratic centralism". <br> <br>Of course there are similarities but there are also similarities with respecting a picket line even if you voted against the strike. In fact every day in our lives we voluntarily adhere to a "collective responsibility", when we share cooking or holiday arrangements with others, or even settle on going to a pub we are not all that keen on because that's where our friends want to drink! Doing things that are not your first preference are pretty much part of all social interactions, the only way to avoid this in any society would be to live the life of a hermit. <br>Follow the Party? <br> <br>What makes these decisions different and acceptable to us is in fact what separates "collective responsibility" from "party discipline". The first and most important of these is that we have an equal say in how these decisions are reached. In the anarchist organisation all have an equal say and vote in defining the organisation's position through conference discussions or mandated delegates. In the Leninist organisation the closest you get to this is getting some sort of vote on which party leader tells you what to do [21]. Secondly, in the anarchist organisation the nature of this discipline is voluntary in the sense that members should be free to leave organisations they disagree with and join ones they agree with without being regarded as "class traitors" (readers will be aware of how Leninist groups relate to each other) [22]. A third difference is that members would be free to carry on whatever activity they were interested in providing it did not contradict the agreed policy of their organisation, rather than having their political activity monopolised by the party leadership. <br> <br>This is mostly from an article I wrote a few years back on anarchism and organisation. You can read the full text at http://struggle.ws/rbr/rbr3_organise.html <br> <br>More on the platform at http://struggle.ws/platform.html

[camarada]

You're right, I don't understand democratic centralism, lol. It's exactly the purposeful attitude of platform-inspired organisations such as NEFAC that made me interested in platformism. Although friendly networking between anarchists and anarchist groups can be useful, I like the more coherent organizational structure groups like NEFAC seem to offer. <br> <br>I'm grateful for your explanation, but I'm still having trouble seeing how it would work in practice. For example, who does comprise the centre? How exactly is that set up? (i understand it would vary) When you say that theoretical and tactical unity provides a common base of understanding, that sounds like the broader interpretation I mentioned. Does this just mean that member organizations in the federation would do their own thing within a basic set of guidelines, or does it apply to more specific issues? <br> <br>Is collective responsibility another way of saying that we must compromise and maintain solidarity in the face of sometimes imperfect compromise? <br> <br>I'd really, really appreciate an example of a time when this kind of compromise had to be made. Although I understand the principle of the examples you used, I'm sure more substantial issues come up in the life of the federation than which pub to drink at, lol. <br> <br>Basically, I'm really hungry for some examples so I can see how all this theory plays out. I hope you can help

[andrewflood]

Well I'm a member of the Workers Solidarity Movement, http://struggle.ws/wsm.html so I can't answer for NEFAC. <br> <br>"who does comprise the centre" - The original platform had an 'executive committee' but most if not all modern platformists reject this concept. In our case 'the centre' is represented by the written agreements the organisation has reached at conference on the one hand and the occasional national meeting on the other (Ireland being quite small means that having a national meeting is no big deal). <br> <br>Concrete compromises might be quite broad ('do we put resources into a magazine, a paper or both'?) or very specific ('do we argue for lobbies of refuse depos or blockades of bin lorries' see http://struggle.ws/wsm/bins.html ) <br> <br>Such compromises because they are internal are not all that visible to the outside world as publications generally represent the agreed organisational platform. We also publish some debate articles so clues may be contained there but you would really need to be going to our meetings in order to follow the process of decision making.