Re: <nettime> The Revolutionary Role of a Transnational Counterparty

[Snafu <snafu@thething.it>]

I agree with Keith here. Dmytri, you are positing that this external
party structure rooted in various national contexts would be a merely
tactical layer that does not exercise power within the party where a
completely different democratic model would be developed. But when
you elect a class of professional politicians, it is unlikely that
they will abdicate their power to other bodies as their legitimation
(and income) derives from the bourgeois institutional structures
the Transnational Counterparty is meant to deny. Historically, the
revolutionary potential of several CPs has been neutralized through
institutional integration.

Conversely, when social movements have organized in revolutionary
committees, these bodies have invariably formed the core of the
society-to-come. Hence, the notion that an organized revolutionary
body will dissolve itself is as delusional as the transitional notion
of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Every time you create an
institutional structure--whether legitimated by an electoral process,
a revolutionary formation, or a hybrid such as the one you are
proposing--this structure bears upon the movement that created it.
It cannot deny itself simply because too many people have invested
their lives in it and believe in the symbolic-material power that
emanates from it. And if there are multiple layers in it that respond
to different constituencies (the external electoral body, the internal
militants) most likely these components will enter an extenuating war
of attrition with each other.

The OWS is building its own institutions from below. The question
for me is how to strengthen these institutions and help them think
strategically rather than superimposing a new layer from above.

On 10/31/11 2:59 AM, Keith Sanborn wrote:
> Party specialization for those seen as incapable of representing
> themselves may seem quite pragmatic but it's the beginning of
> hierarchy. It wd clearly give rise to internal party hierarchy,
> whether acknowledged or unacknowledged and you're stuck with party
> cadres with specialized expert self-interest. A mass party has to
> be non-hierarchical from the beginning, which precludes the use of
> previous models of party relations with a mass they "represent."
> there can be different kinds of participation perhaps but social
> structures themselves must be altered or you're back with the same old
> illusions of 20th century democracies whether capitalist or "people's"
> democracies. The slippage into representation vs participation is
> critical and fatal.





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