Reply To: Dorking – No War But the Class War
It’s not a matter of whether cops can be class conscious (or have socialist consciousness which is quite another thing altogether). Clearly they can. It’s what the role of the police is. This “radical transformation” of yours is a magicwand: “But in our not-semi-state, the police will be totally different.”
How, pray, is it a “magic wand” to suggest that, by the time the socialist movement consists of millions upon millions of workers, that the entire social environment will have been radically transformed – assuming that support for socialism takes off in that way. In fact , the suggestion that such a transformation would not have taken place in those circumstances strikes me as being nothing short of incredible.
There are plenty of precedents for thinking that when the writing is on the wall for capitalism there is precious little that the police would be able to do to stop the tide of events from culminating in socialism- not withstanding their current “role” which you speak of. You seem to agree that even coppers are capable of becoming class consciousness but at the same time seem to dogmatically think that they must be ahistorically hidebound by this role for all eternity. What’s to say they can’t change that role as they see it?
You clearly have not understood the idea of substitutionism. This has nothing to do with the class composition of the party, but concerns the existence of the party itself. Trotsky himself, naturally, never drew this conclusion. However, it is inherent in the ‘Party Idea’ – that the working class can be organised into a party.
Actually I think I do roughly understand the idea of “substitutionism” which was classically spelt out by Trotsky. It is a state of affairs in which “the organisation of the party substitutes itself for the party as a whole; then the Central Committee substitutes itself for the organisation; and finally the ‘dictator’ substitutes himself for the Central Committee”. (N. Trotsky, Nashi Politicheskye Zadachi Geneva, 1904, p.54.)
What you have overlooked is that the “Party” Trotsky was talking about was the Vanguard Party -the idea of a small disciplined party of revolutionaries taking power on behalf of a non socialist majority. You should by now know enough about the SPGB to realise that this concept of the Party is totally at variance with the way the SPGB sees its role. I think you are just taking the piss to be honest, Keith
