Reply #75: Generally agree [View All]

What we see from most of the current "revolutionary left" organizations bears little resemblance to what Marx and Engels (or even Lenin and Trotsky) said or believed. It's interesting you bring up both "vanguardism" and "democratic centralism". If there have been two concepts so utterly warped and abused by our contemporary "left", these are it.

I have come to really understand what Debs meant when he said he'd rather "rise with the masses, not above them". That, to me, is the "leadership" role that revolutionary democratic socialists can play: the hard, patient work of making available the tools necessary for working people to develop themselves as leaders. That is, the role of people like me is to be able to provide what is necessary for workers to eduacte and develop themselves.

This idea of trying to substitute the membership of a small sect for the working class as a whole is completely alien, and a sickly import from capitalist ideology.

Danny, you might be interested in looking at the SP a little more -- especially the Debs Tendency, which is a leftwing current within the Party. Their website address is www.debstendency.org.

Martin