May 30, 2006: Organizational conservatism
Lenin wrote of the organizational conservatism of Socialist groups which consider themselves to be in the Bolshevik tradition. The famous example is Lenin's great struggle of 1917 to turn the party.
It occurs to me that I lived through an example of that organizational conservatism without realizing at the time what it was. In 1990 it was clear that there would be the first Gulf War, yet much or indeed nearly all of the TI-inspired org I belonged to at the time was vehemently opposed to changing course. There were individuals who fought tooth and nail against the organizational decision to re-invest resources in the antiwar movement.
At the time I felt that the people were inept, or unserious. Now I look back differently, seeing the experience as symptomatic of deeper problems. That this form of organization has a built-in inertia, a conservativism made all the more ironic by the verbal posturing of the r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-revolutionaries who fought the turn hardest, betraying in practice the deep-rooted Bernsteinism of their day-to-day politics. Despite the word "revolution".
Comments
It's not enough to simply point to experiences like this and say, "Look!" There needs to be an analysis of how the phenomenon works.
Is there something about "organizations" which makes them "conservative"? Something about particular organizational forms? Are certain types of organization more or less prone to conservativism? Does this change in different kinds of circumstances? Are TI-influenced cadre groups particularly at risk?
Posted by: Mark Phillips | July 2, 2006 10:55 AM