Class Struggle; Requires a Revolutionary Party

The discussion of the revolutionary party of the working class is one of the important theoretical and practical subjects in communist struggles. The debate surrounding the party encompasses crucial issues such as the relationship between the party and the class, the organization of political struggle, revolution, and political power. Over time, with the growth of the working class's class struggles, this theoretical discussion has continuously gained more richness. The faintness of the party discussion among the left and socialists of Afghanistan is a sign of the incapability and stagnation of our socialist current. The fragmented, weak, and follower left, which can only assert its existence through democratic identity and demands, cannot necessarily find the discussion of the class's revolutionary party appealing. However, those who consider themselves communists and defenders of the class and class struggle of workers have either, with a deterministic approach, lacked a specific plan for party building and reduced it to an unattainable demand, or, with a superficial approach and instrumental use, have diminished it to a group of leftist elements.

Alongside these two deviant tendencies, a new tendency with an anarchist approach rejects the very existence of the party and considers it harmful to class struggle. Given the assessment that our socialist struggle is on the verge of a new round of revolutionary struggles, we are compelled to address this issue so that, while emphasizing its necessity and importance, we can briefly discuss how to achieve it.

The Party and its Role:

Without consciousness and organization, the working class is a "class in itself," and it only elevates to a "class for itself" when it becomes aware of its interests and mission and engages in a united revolutionary struggle. The party of the working class is nothing but the fusion of organization and class consciousness of the workers. By achieving its party, the working class transforms from a class for itself into a revolutionary subject, a revolutionary subject that is objectively rooted in the capitalist relations of production and the internal contradictions of this system. Although the revolutionary subject of the proletariat is rooted in the contradictory nature of the capitalist system, the metamorphosis of the class into a revolutionary subject is not a spontaneous or automatic process but a conscious act, an act in which the organized and conscious vanguard of the class, or the party, plays an essential role. Intellectual hegemony and reification are main characteristics of the capitalist system. Reification means the transformation of human social relations into relations between things, and intellectual hegemony means limiting workers' struggles to only economic and reformist demands.

The completion of the reification process in the capitalist system is impossible because its completion would stop living labor from creating value, and this contradicts the nature and function of capitalism. This inherent incapability of capitalism prevents it from suppressing the potential revolutionary subject within itself. And this issue turns the entirety of capitalism into a contradictory and inorganic totality. To eliminate capitalist reification, which is rooted in the contradiction between wage labor and capital, mere propaganda and enlightenment are not enough; rather, this goal is achieved through revolutionary practice. Revolutionary practice is achieved only and only through the intertwining of consciousness with the united class action of the workers. The party, in reality, is the product of the amalgamation of class consciousness and revolutionary action.

According to Lenin, the party is nothing but "the fusion of scientific socialism with the working class movement," or the victory of working-class consciousness over bourgeois intellectual hegemony among the working class. This consciousness arises from reification and the generalization of revolutionary and radical class politics among the ranks of workers. The political party of the working class creates a bridge between the spontaneous consciousness that the working class gains from its experience and social position, and the socialist and radical consciousness that is made available to the class from outside. The existence of the party expresses radical class politics and consciousness at a time when class radicalism has not yet become socialized among the workers. With the massification of radical politics and demands, the party also engulfs the class, revolutionary atmosphere dominates society, and revolution occurs. With the emergence of a revolutionary crisis in society, the existence of the party can guarantee the revolution because revolutionary crises cannot be resolved without a conscious and active collective subject.

Lenin considers the action of a revolutionary party as the essential and determining element in revolutionary conditions, and Lukács also writes on this matter: "Therefore, the 'natural laws' of capitalist development can only lead society to the final crisis; but they are incapable of showing the way out of the crisis." From a dialectical perspective, the party is a necessity and requirement of a phase of struggle that emerges from the heart of class struggle and a historical stage, or in a word, the party is a logical and historical existence. The party is a necessity of a stage of struggle where quantitative changes have transformed into qualitative change, and scattered and circle-based activities are replaced by united and revolutionary action.

This dialectical understanding of the party distinguishes itself from non-dialectical approaches, such as viewing the party as a goal or trans-historical entity, or dealing with it only pragmatically. "The ontologically independent view ultimately finds the party as a trans-historical being. In this view, the party is sanctified, becomes the final cause of everything,... the party becomes a fetish" (Marxism and the Party, Malinoks). The pragmatic approach forgets its logical and historical necessity and judges it based on its useful or harmful practice; it is a purely instrumental view of the party. In this case, the party's existence is not seen as a stage of the existence of struggle and movement, where, as Lukács said, the revolution is the actuality of history and the actuality of the class as subject. From the connection and fusion of party and class, the dawn of freedom and social revolution appears on the horizon.

The Party and the Class:

The relationship between the party and the class, and its nature, is one of the most important topics discussed within the communist movement. Unlike anarchists, who see the party as the embodiment of power and an obstacle to healthy class struggle, Marxists believe in the role of the party as the conscious, vanguard, and organized part of the class to save workers from the domination and exploitation of the capitalist system, because the spontaneous struggle of workers can only lead to trade union consciousness and organization that does not go beyond reformist demands within the framework of capitalism. Regarding the nature of the relationship between the party and the class in the revolutionary communist movement, two main approaches have existed so far.

These two approaches, formed in the early 20th century after the emergence of revolutionary conditions in Europe, were represented by two prominent revolutionaries and thinkers, "Lenin" and "Rosa Luxemburg." Lenin proposed the idea of the party as an organization of professional and conscious revolutionaries who bring socialist consciousness from outside into the working class. Lenin's main argument was that workers can only achieve trade union consciousness from their spontaneous movement, not socialist consciousness. And that workers need a political party of conscious elements to gain socialist consciousness and fight against bourgeois intellectual hegemony. "The ruling ideology is the ideology of the ruling class" (Marx); because the ruling class, by exploiting power and material and spiritual resources, shapes the dominant mentality in society. Rosa Luxemburg, while sharing some common points regarding the party, unlike Lenin, believed that the spontaneous movement of workers is the fusion of subjectivity and objectivity in history. Class consciousness arises from struggle and the reality of class life, and the party of the working class is also composed of workers. In other words, from Rosa's perspective, workers themselves can transform from a "class in itself" to a "class for itself." That is, the economic and objective unity of the working class is spontaneously capable of elevating to political unity.

In Rosa Luxemburg's perspective, there were truths that Lenin, after the 1905 revolution, realized the importance and initiative of the working class movement that led to workers' councils, and he made modifications to his view on the relationship between party and class. The positive points in Rosa Luxemburg's view are: 1) The most important advances in tactics and methods of struggle occur on the real battlefield by the workers themselves, and the party is never the source of all consciousness and revolutionary guidelines for the working class. 2) In the stage of the progress and transcendence of struggle, the distinction between economic struggle and political struggle fades, and it becomes impossible to separate them. 3) Rosa warned against the conservatism of socialist party leaders because this tendency occurs as a result of these leaders' separation from the dynamic forces of the class. Overall, Rosa's view, unlike Lenin's, tended towards spontaneism regarding organization, and in this regard, she shared Marx's view. "It is not enough that thought should strive to realize itself; reality must also strive towards thought" (On the Jewish Question: Marx). It should not be forgotten that political conditions also influenced the differences in their views. Russia, with its tyrannical Tsarist regime where, unlike Germany, any socialist activity was banned, affected the nature of the party-class relationship, forcing Russian communists to organize secretly, composed of professional and disciplined revolutionaries. "In a despotic country, the more we can limit membership in such an organization to those who are professionally engaged in revolutionary activities and professionally trained in the art of fighting the political police, the more difficult it will be to uncover the organization" (What is to be Done? Lenin). Furthermore, Lenin was in a society with a different class composition than Rosa. Germany was an advanced industrial country at the time, and its working class was far stronger quantitatively and qualitatively than Russia's, while Lenin and the Bolsheviks dealt simultaneously with workers' and peasants' class struggles.

Lenin was fully aware of the importance of broad and organic relations between the party and the class and the principle of electing party bodies, and he knew that with the flourishing of revolutionary conditions, this relationship would undergo a serious transformation. "Under conditions of political freedom, our party will be built entirely on the principle of election; but under despotic conditions, this is impossible for the thousands of workers who make up the party." (Lenin's Collected Works, Volume 8). Lenin also understood democratic centralism, unity of action, and freedom of discussion and criticism. The events of the Russian Revolution proved the validity of Lenin's theory of the party in practice. The revolution correctly demonstrated that with the emergence of revolutionary conditions, a small organization can grow rapidly and gain the support of the broad masses of the working class. In January 1917, the Bolshevik Party had 23,600 members. At the end of April of the same year, this number reached 79,204, and in August, it reached 200,000. (Marxism and the Party, Malinoks).

The experience of the rapid growth of the Bolsheviks within the ranks of workers in revolutionary conditions helped thinkers like Lukács to provide a synthesis of Lenin's and Rosa's organizational theories. He explained Lenin's organizational theory within the framework of Marx's theory of reflective subjectivity, and his interpretation of this issue is, in reality, a fusion of Rosa's and Lenin's theories. He does this by introducing the factor of historical conditions and studies the basic ideas according to the different stages of a revolutionary process. He divides this process mainly into two stages: the spontaneous stage or process that occurs under economic compulsion, where the party's tasks are mainly limited to propaganda and raising workers' consciousness; but the second stage includes the phase of the "realm of human freedom," which begins with the crisis of capitalism and the revolutionary process, culminating in the socialist revolution. The active role of the party in formulating revolutionary strategy becomes prominent in this period. It was the determinist interpretations of Marxism that persistently delayed the understanding of the active role of the party in class struggle. Lenin's understanding of the theory of the party must be accepted as his most important achievement in breaking with the determinist understanding of the Second International.

In Lenin's organizational theory, determinism was not critically examined from a philosophical perspective. Lenin and others, by introducing the factor of time, sufficed with two issues. It seems that Lenin, in the long term, considered the unity of the proletariat and the victory of socialism as inevitable, and the main issue was how to accelerate this process, while the issue of determinism itself was not fundamentally criticized. It was Antonio Gramsci who addressed this issue from a philosophical perspective and, by introducing the philosophy of praxis and historicism, left no ambiguity in economic determinism. Gramsci's philosophy of praxis, by emphasizing the conscious human agent in history and rejecting any rigid and mechanical determinism, directly led to the question of the revolutionary party and equipped him best to deal with the issue of the party. But Gramsci's success in providing a deep analysis of the party did not stem only from his philosophical precision; rather, his deep engagement in the political practice of the working class movement and its specific analysis was an important prerequisite for his progress in this field. "The determining element in every situation is the permanently organized force that has long been prepared and can enter the field when conditions are assessed as favorable. Therefore, the task is to systematically and patiently ensure that this force is formed, develops, and becomes increasingly homogeneous, compact, and self-conscious." (Gramsci)

In summary, a revolutionary workers' party is the vanguard of the class, and the need for the party arises from the uneven development of the working class. The party does not encompass the entire class but is its vanguard part. The party leads the class and does not follow it; its leadership is an intra-class leadership. The revolutionary party secures the unity of the class, its hegemony, and its global solidarity. For a revolutionary party to be a combat organization of the class, it must operate on the principle of democratic centralism. The intertwining of centralism and democracy is important because, firstly, the party develops its organic connection with the class through democracy and becomes an instrument of the class's self-emancipation, and with centralized activity, it can confront the highly centralized enemy, i.e., the bourgeois state. In light of such a general discussion on the necessity of the party, the relationship between party and class, and the characteristics of a revolutionary party, it is necessary to pursue the discussion briefly at a more specific level.

The Struggle for Party Formation:

The left in Afghanistan, after the Saur coup and its devastating consequences, has not yet had the opportunity to do significant work on the necessity and method of forming a party of the working class. Intellectual fragmentation and organizational dispersion are its clear characteristics. Among the numerous circles, only a few exist that operate with a leftist and socialist identity. What makes the struggle for the party difficult are theoretical backwardness, negative experiences of failed parties and organizations, and the difficulties of the political and social situation.

The theoretical backwardness of the left in Afghanistan needs no discussion; just look at their publications to see that their thoughts are still in the Cold War era. The majority of the remnants of the traditional left have a negative experience of parties and organizational activity, and this negative experience can be summarized in two approaches: the pragmatic approach to the party and the party becoming an end in itself. In the pragmatic approach, the party is reduced to a useful or harmful tool. The campist left viewed the party merely as a means and instrument to achieve power, and any logical and historical necessity of the party and its organic link with the working class was completely absent in this approach. The campist left justified all its disregard for the principles and theories of party and revolution by the existence of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, believing that after the emergence of the socialist camp, the world situation had changed and there was no longer a need for previous theory and working methods. With the existence of the socialist camp, they considered the party merely a tool for seizing power. The opposition left, mainly influenced by Mao's theories and the Chinese revolution, considered the party as one of the three instruments of revolution, meaning that the party, along with the People's Army and the United National Front, could lead a national-democratic revolution to victory. The path drawn in this view for creating the party, in reality, leads to a peasant party rather than a workers' party. In this approach, while we see a pragmatic treatment of the party, achieving the party also seems nearly impossible. Thus, the party and organization become a trans-historical, unattainable end in themselves. That is why organizations belonging to this tendency have rarely had any concern for party-building, and the minority that have attempted to form a party have only achieved the party's nameplate in practice. The incorrect and unprincipled approach to the party issue has so far brought no result other than failure and disillusionment with the party and struggle. There are those who have not yet given up the struggle but, for various reasons including the unsuitability of the political and social situation, consider the struggle for the party a futile effort and a premature task.

The current political and social situation can simultaneously be a challenge and an opportunity in the process of party formation in the country. The Taliban regime is a fascist and highly anti-democratic regime. Struggle and organization in such an oppressive situation require extreme secrecy. Underground work and the lack of legal conditions impose many limitations on the scope of influence among the class. Although the economic and political crisis and poverty on one hand set the stage for political and class struggle, on the other hand, they also reduce the level of workers' expectations. When escaping extreme poverty and unemployment becomes a primary demand, demands like improving working conditions and increasing wages become practically meaningless. When the unemployment rate exceeds fifty percent and society is in the grip of a fanatical and irresponsible group, the difficulty of class struggle is understandable. It should not be forgotten that the absence of collective and organized struggle can impose a far heavier cost on society in the long run. The self-immolation of Engineer Shams, a 27-year-old young man, recently in protest against unemployment, humiliation, and poverty, or the increase in armed robberies, are evidence of an impending great human tragedy. The revolutionary party of the workers, emerging in connection with economic and political demands, must be the true raiser of the slogan "Bread, Work, and Freedom," a slogan that the women's movement of Afghanistan also considers its main slogan. The workers' party must be the party of all social strata that sympathize and align with this slogan.

The fragmentation of the leftist current in Afghanistan has so far been mainly ideological. The previous generation, scattered inside and outside the country, despite failures and abundant experiences, lacking a critical assessment and conclusion, remain in their past beliefs and ideologies, their minds still trapped in the ideological schools of the 20th century. Therefore, the way out of the existing fragmentation is not the intensification of ideological struggle, something that has so far not yielded positive results, but rather the unity of revolutionary action. Practical unity that is organized in light of a relatively general and fundamental program of struggle. Such a program can be a good starting point for a common revolutionary practice. A common struggle practice that, like a riverbed, can channel many streams into a common path.

Creating socialist nuclei inside the country and developing them among the younger generation is one of the main tasks of communist organizations. Nuclei that can resonate with the demands and protests of the masses, especially workers. Securing communication and rapid information dissemination in the current digital age has increased unprecedentedly, a possibility unimaginable for militants decades ago. The internet and social media have brought about a great revolution in securing relations and information dissemination, and today almost every individual has their own media. Although the popularization of media has generally reduced the credibility and quality of information, its effective use has opened vast possibilities for society as a whole and for vanguard and revolutionary forces. Such a major transformation cannot but have a significant impact on organization and on the creation and development of party activities. We have witnessed the impact of social media on the emergence of social movements based on networks organizationally, at the level of a country, region, and the world. The role of social media in the Arab Spring, the revolutionary uprisings in Iran, and the #MeToo movement are clear examples. Reactionary and anti-freedom forces and regimes in the world are afraid of social media. The Islamic Republic regime, in confronting the revolutionary movement of the people, shut down the internet for months, something previously done by the Taliban regime but did not last.

Although network organization existed before the internet and social media, in the current situation, this type of organization has become more common and feasible than ever. Network organization is a new form of relations where, instead of organizing relations from top to bottom and in a hierarchical form, horizontal and local relations are organized, possessing a high degree of cooperation and flexibility with unstable situations and environments. Networks are nothing but the social circles that exist around us; but every network organizes naturally. Each person has a specific position in the network, and their power lies in the network around them, and likewise, the power of networks depends on the active role of the individual. The necessity of network organization is more pronounced in authoritarian regimes because it remains in constant connection with society and its tense pulse, a privilege that many political parties lack. Authority is not absent in this type of organization; rather, due to its horizontal structure, it advances problems based on horizontal-local mechanisms. In a network structure, authority does not have a structural meaning but acquires a discursive character and a balance of forces.

A discourse gains the upper hand if it reflects the realities of struggle. The integration of network organization with party organization corresponds to the linking of the party with the social and class movement. The party that is a workers' movement-based party will be the one that can lead society beyond the rule of capital.

Conclusion:

The discussion of the party in the class struggle of workers and the oppressed of a society is an important subject and polemic. The party elevates the workers from a "class in itself" to a "class for itself" and into a revolutionary subject. The transformation of workers into a revolutionary subject originates from the contradictory reality and inorganic totality of capitalism, a process that is not a spontaneous trend but the product and result of the activity of the organized vanguard elements of the class or the party of the class. A role that is constantly changing with the development of the class's level of consciousness. With the expansion of class consciousness, the consciousness-raising role of the party diminishes, as the party becomes increasingly accessible to the class. With the outbreak of revolution, the party, consciousness, and the class converge, and the process of the working class's liberation is realized.

The dynamic of the party-class relationship is achieved through a synthesis of the perspectives of Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. Marxist theorists like Lukács and Gramsci have played an important role in this regard. Lukács, with the category of reflective subjectivity, and Gramsci, with the philosophy of praxis, made valuable theoretical advances in the theory of the party and the party-class relationship. The theory of the party is evolving and gaining richness with changes in the situation and position of the working class.

The experience and understanding of leftist militants in Afghanistan regarding party and organization have so far been negative due to the unfortunate events of the past few decades. Turning the party into a tool for a group of individuals to gain power, or an end in itself, had completely emptied this logical historical phenomenon of its content. Raising the issue of the party in Afghanistan is a theoretical problem accompanied by a difficult and complex reality. A difficult reality manifested in the poverty and unemployment of workers, their religious and ethnic tendencies, the ruling religious fascism, and the dispersion of socialist activists. Despite all these obstacles, class contradiction is the most important contradiction afflicting society. A contradiction that manifests itself mainly in widespread poverty and unemployment. Just as consciousness tends towards the material base, material reality also tends towards consciousness. The meeting of the two is the creation of the party, a party organized in accordance with social and technical developments. The party is an essential necessity of class struggle.

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