By Senad
Yesterday, with a single mouse-click in order to send an e-mail to both boards, I concluded my membership at the socialist organisations ROOD (youth-organisation) and Socialisten (the main political party). To be quite honest, I cannot say that it did not hurt. After a while of inertia and inactivity, and a time in which I realised that my enthusiasm for the organisation and the movement just was not the same anymore, it felt like the right thing to do.
However, since I do not want to become politically idle either, it is appropriate to ask myself: what’s next? Do I leave marxism behind in order to become an opportunistic social-democrat, earning lots of money in the municipality and enjoying a powerful network? Do I become an eco-activist at XR, chaining myself to bridges and adopting the worst possible haircut and hair-dye-combination? Do I become a guerrilla and join the armed struggle in the Philippines, shedding pointless blood but at least dying for my ideals?
In the end, I ended up making a very intuitive choice: I joined the NCPN and its youth-wing, the CJB. What a surprise, since I have been fantasising about and considering it even while I was a member at ROOD.In order for the reader to understand what I mean, since they might be not as immersed in the rabbit-hole that is marxist politics, I shall briefly explain the core political platforms of ROOD (my former organisation) and the CJB (which I just signed up for) and how they differ broadly speaking. Let us start with the organisation which I just left and which, in a sense, is all that I have ever known, which is ROOD.
ROOD is a marxist youth organisation which adheres to a principle of orthodox marxism and freedom of factions (being allowed to form your own sub-groups in the organisation). The organisation does not enforce certain disciplines (like avoiding certain public expression on social media or adhering to a certain ideology) and therefore is a home to many sorts of leftist youth, amongst which are communists (in the broadest sense), anarchists, orthodox marxists and even some reform-minded social-democrats. Despite the difference in opinions and factions, the organisation has the ideal of revolution and realising a socialist society engraved in its collective programme.
The organisation is known to value discussion in every sense of the word: during long congresses and gatherings, even the most minute questions seem to be politically scrutinised and analysed, aiming for the best-possible ideological justification for ideas and actions. While democratic discussion is very valued within ROOD, this approach is criticised by some: democratic discussion is preferable, but when it reaches a state in which the discussion is the goal rather than the solution that is possibly pursued, the organisation might be considered more of a talking-club rather than a revolutionary organisation that believes in deeds rather than words.
On the other hand, we have the CJB. The CJB has a classic marxist-leninist party-structure and promotes democratic centralism as the main strategy of organising. Democratic centralism entails that decisions (for instance regarding strategies) are made on a central level (such as a congress) and that every member of the organisation, even those who voted against the strategy, have to stick to the strategy and not sabotage it in any way. The CJB can therefore be considered to be quite disciplined in its approach: members must be active for the organisation at least twice a month and follow the central board’s decisions, which are based on what had been approved democratically earlier. If the board or another elected member on a local level happens to be dysfunctional, they can be voted out (something that, to be fair, ROOD also facilitates). For instance, this kind of discipline resulted in a huge presence of the CJB at the Labour Day march in Amsterdam, since every member was asked to travel to Amsterdam.
However, just as ROOD does, CJB also faces issues: due to the strict party-discipline, you cannot politically simply do whatever you please, and certainly not in the name of the party. You may not criticise the party in public for instance. Forming factions is also forbidden: initiatives by members first need to run past the local or the national board so that they can be examined according to the central decisions of congress.
While both organisations have factors that speak for and against them, I chose to become a member of CJB instead. This probably begs a few questions from the perspective of the reader: Why would I leave a fully democratic organisation and choose a “lesser” democratic one? Why would I choose an organisation that does not allow the amount of criticism that my previous organisation allowed?While there are no simple answers to these questions, I shall do my best to explain as clearly as possible why one would do such a thing in the 21st century.
First of all, “democracy” is quite a broad term and it would be up for debate what it actually means to be an internally democratic party. Does it mean to allow an infinite space of discussion? Does it mean being allowed to publicly criticise one’s own party? Does it mean being allowed to refuse an accepted proposal, even though the majority voted for it?
Of course – allowing lots of discussion and criticism regarding every subject matter imaginable seems perfectly democratic on the surface. However, if the democratic mechanism is not very well-oiled or ends up being at odds with the stability of the organisation, the democratic process might end up devouring itself and tearing itself to shreds because the democracy serves no goal but a very vaguely moral one which is making sure that everyone feels absolutely represented in every single way and can identify a hundred percent with every single decision. In other words: if to you democracy means as little restrictions as possible and infinite individual freedom, you might end up hurting and weakening the collective-party-effort.
If one chooses theoretical discussion and endless bouts of criticism above consequent action or pragmatism, one might find that there will be no progress whatsoever in actually improving the conditions of the working class that a socialist organisation professes to represent. Organisations that care about being democratic to the tiniest fraction of their bones are facing the risk of focussing mostly on their internal struggles rather than convincing the outside world (and especially the working class) of their ideas.
Take for instance what I personally consider to be the worst form of “tyranny of democracy”, which is consensus-democracy. This form of democratic decision-making is most often used by anarchist organisations such as Vrije Bond (Free Union) and entails that a decision can only be passed if it is accepted unanimously. So if 49 people approve of a certain idea and one person votes against, they frustrate the entire process and the discussion needs to be restarted.
Also, look at organisations like Socialisten, the party that was born as a split of the Socialist Party due to its internal conflict with revolutionary marxists. In their efforts to house as many different socialist ideologies as possible and get them all to agree with each other on the most minute issues, they sometimes spend 10 hours a day discussing documents and articles together. All the while, the ills of capitalism seem to continually worsen and the working class continually lose more hope in politics.
I also believe that while criticism is important, there must be a time and a place for it. One might feel it’s absolutely morally correct and transparent to criticise one’s own organisation publicly, but as morally pure as that is, it comes with severe consequences in the “real world”. One then promotes the idea of disunity on the outside and lets the (mostly liberal and capitalist) public partake in the organisation-building-choices, whereas one could have just used the internal spaces in the organisation to do that in a more structured manner (such as congresses).
This form of unbridled, unstructured and “too principled” democracy might therefore stand in the way of many things because the ideal expression of democracy might conflict with the complications that are inherent to the real world, where sometimes a consequent leadership is necessary.
Therefore, I ended up joining the CJB instead (whereas I do have to admit, they are still busy reviewing my application). I believe I was growing tired of all the perpetual ideological circlejerking and intellectualism. Don’t get me wrong: it is important to have an ideological analysis and have intellectual foundations for one’s political plans, but if having an ideological discussion becomes the main-goal, then alienation from the very group of people that we once swore to help becomes inevitable: the working-class, the proletariat. A full representation of every single individual in a universal political programme is not possible, and if it is attempted for an extended period of time, the pragmatic and activist energy of the group is basically annihilated. That is why I ended up choosing an organisation/party that does not only put its foot down regarding certain issues and simply puts its members to work, but also one where there is more unity.
That being said: being a CJB-member might also end up disappointing me. Maybe I will find that the amount of unity and discipline is not how I expected it to be. However, I can only verify that through practice, and practice in another organisation has already taught me what I do not want. In short: I ended up leaving ROOD because I want to put marxism into practice again, not into yet another essay.