“The Marxist organization has developed certain characteristics which are peculiar to it and are still deeply embedded in it. When, after years of work, it recognizes that its hopes have failed, it does not dissolve. It turns further inward, depending on an ever-decreasing and hardening core. It continues to carry out its tasks on a routine level. What it is doing has become a way of life. There are in many countries such organizations which are doing what they have been doing for thirty years and will continue to do it until the end of time without ever expecting to get any further than they are. They follow a pattern.
a) They become preoccupied with problems of organization, relationships inside the organization, the human and material resources they control.
b) They develop the most profound historical reasons for their existence, which they combine with the most subjective analyses of their own personal needs and interests. Thus they attempt to justify their useless existence to themselves and their circle of contacts.
c) They tend to seek association with former bitter political enemies of the same political type as they are, whose ideas and methods of thought and action are similar and familiar to them. They pull out of old drawers cherished political distinctions, polish them up and, claiming that these hold and have always held the key to the future, trot them out on all conceivable occasions to keep their political pots boiling. Their mode of existence has its basis in some petty publication which they know is going nowhere but which they keep alive to give the impression that they are still actively engaged in revolutionary work. On this basis they are always ready for what they call a discussion.
This is not mere history. There are, in every European country in particular but not only in Europe, hundreds and even thousands of such people. An investigator for the London Times recently reported on a long list and he merely touched the borders. Some of them have ensconced themselves in the mass Labor parties where they live peacefully, still preaching Marxism. They are not only ruins. They corrupt and ruin the potentialities of hundreds of young people every year, and the spectacle of this futility keeps many others from Marxism.”
From Facing Reality (1958)
by C. L. R. James, Grace Lee, and Pierre Chaulieu (Cornelius Castoradis) pp. 132-133.
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3 comments:
We're tempted to steal this one too, and put it on Drink-Soaked Popinjays - but it would only attract reams of comments from precisely the types James et al. are on about, and deleting comments is a drag.
Hate to disagree with Nollo about anything, but this could have been better put: "The Marxist organization has developed certain characteristics which are peculiar to it and are still deeply embedded in it." If only. In fact their characteristics are all too similar to those of Christian and other religious groupuscules down the centuries - they're not called "sects" for nothing. But, like Jesus in relation to Ian Paisley, or the Serbian Orthodox Church, poor old Karl deserves better than to have such followers.
I know people who've actually switched from one type to the other, probably because of the comfort of certainty that both provide.
What struck me as more poignant was the fact that this book was written 47 years ago. And even then he's referring organizations that had been doing the same thing for 30 years.
Let's be honest about it. These organizations fill a psychological need for a particular social stratum. And, notwithstanding the genuine damage they do to popular enthusiasm for the left, if they kept people off the streets we wouldn't hear about them at all.
Oh God, yes - we too know people who’ve switched from Leader-worship to Jesus-worship, and one of them did it as long ago as 1945, while managing (a la the Red Dean of Canterbury) to reinterpret Uncle Joe as a humble man carrying on the Lord’s work.
Depressing, isn’t it? Almost enough to make you want to give up on politics and turn to religion.
Oh, hang on a minute ...
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