What is a Party Cadre in a Revolutionary Party
23.09.2022
Lindsey Collen, who coordinated this session, said their group had five lively preparatory sessions before the Congress, bringing together the six party members who had chosen to help lead the question of “what a party cadre is”. All, except one, who was not well, then gave a different part of the group’s report, as a presentation before the Congress, to guide the plenary session on the issue, on 4 September, the last day of the LALIT 6-Day Congress. A seventh member volunteered an additional contribution, as a transition to the plenary debate – on the importance of the LALIT website, which acts like an Archive as well as a website, especially for new members, as it is for him.
This article summarizes these reports, and also incorporates some of the salient points that came up during plenary debate and in preparatory meetings.
We all, as revolutionary socialists, have many demands made of us, demands of different kinds. And these demands upon us, over time, end up giving us all kinds of skills, talents, abilities that we would otherwise never have had.
And it is these skills, talents and abilities that we discussed in this session. These are what make us party cadres, and hopefully good party members.
So, when we see the title “What is a revolutionary socialist party cadre?” we must not make the mistake of thinking we are referring to some kind of model, or to an ideal party cadre. No. We are, instead, talking about skills we learn because of our commitment over time, skills that are helpful in the struggle for socialism, and that we need to appreciate in ourselves and nurture in each other and in new members. Our skills are very different from those demanded of a more traditional, electoralist bourgeois party that wants its members to work as electoral agents, who bring out people to vote once every five or so years, denounce adversaries, and fill buses to make up a crowd for the leader’s speech at rallies. Our skills are also very different from the threadbare skills demanded of someone employed in, or volunteering for, some NGO on a single-issue, NGOs often bank-rolled by the bosses, the state, organized religion, or even imperialist Embassies. Nor do we encourage the passivity of a so-called “civil society” that constitutes people, who are inactive until they flock to the streets, “desann dan lari”, at the call of a populist leader so as to aim at nothing further than kicking the government out.
So, in these times, when there is very strong “anti-political-party” propaganda in both academia and mainstream media outlets – often at a subliminal level – it is important to store value in our participation in a revolutionary political organization, and in the very special role that each member has, because without good political organizations and cadres, there is no way that we are going to bring about socialism, or even, for that matter save the planet from ruin by capitalist pillage, pollution and war. When it comes to defending even bourgeois democracy against inroads by a repressive State like the Jugnauth one and also against attacks from the populist and fascist-leaning right-wing, who even ran Trump-like attacks on the last general elections, it is often revolutionary socialists who end up doing it.
What is a party cadre? A good party member?
So, one whole session of our 6-day Congress was thus devoted to the issue of what a good party member, a good party cadre, is. And to how together the cadres can also be referred to as “the party cadre”, meaning the totality of members who are confident enough about knowing the party program to be able to recruit new members on the basis of it. The cadre also shares an understanding of “where the people are”, what they are thinking about, and can judge whether the epoch is one of easy mass mobilization for socialism, or not so easy.
During our preparatory work for the Congress, we ended up dividing the report into 6 headings as well as the introduction, above, and the conclusion, below. Discussion was so lively after the talks that, when time was up, there were still a forest of hands up to add something.
We number the talks, for easy reading:
1. A Party Member Builds the party
C.A. said that being a LALIT cadre meant helping to build the party: or what used to be called “konstriksyon”, as if it were something physical, which in a way it is.
This means re-inforcing neighbourhood party branches, as well as other party structures like the four regionals, and the general assembly. It also means consolidating the central committee, elected by the general assembly. She showed an organigram to indicate that our party is not a hierarchy but a democracy, a series of concentric circles. Ideas move from branches to the Central Committee and back again. You can see the diagram in two versions in LALIT’s 5-Year Report of 2010 and Revi LALIT No 149: Program LALIT on the website.
Each member, she said, gives time and thought to his or her branch. This includes basic things like making party membership monthly contributions, or helping with taking minutes (which are part of our collective memory) and encouraging everyone to prepare for weekly or fortnightly meetings. And, in LALIT, it means each member distributing the bi-monthly Revi LALIT, as our main tool for recruitment – on the basis of our ideas – and for developing an on-going common understanding of our program, a living organism. This involves thinking about who would be interested in reading which particular article, and who might write, with a bit of encouragement, on what aspect of a struggle they are already involved in. This is the backbone of our political work, she said.
Branches analyse current political events, and also take on theoretical issues for discussion. Branches put into practice our decisions taken together – on actions, from distributing leaflets to doing poster campaigns, from petitions to demonstrations. Branches continually develop knowledge and understanding of the neighbourhood – what work people in it do, what employment there is in the area, and so on even down to where a new bicycle lane could be organized most usefully.
2. All day, every day a party member
G.C. added that being a LALIT cadre is not the same, in his view, as being a member of any other party. Everyone you know, and lots of people you do not even know, expect you to be a party member constantly, all day, every day. He said he would not use the term 24/7 as it was associated with the bosses’ attack against organized workers, but instead use the phrase “all day, every day”. Whether you are at work, in your neighbourhood or just standing in a queue, or visiting a nephew in a prison, you end up, in reality, defending LALIT’s basic positions – on everything. This means you constantly rehearse your own ideas. It is, he said, even in what seem small things: being asked for an ID when this is an intrusion, for example. He said he had taken some five years as a branch member “to begin to understand” what LALIT’s program is, and how different it is as a party from other parties he had, previously supported. Being in LALIT means not just changing what party is in government, but aiming to change society itself, he said. And it means this holistic life, where you defend your ideas constantly, and live that change. This way, our methods of struggle are part of our aim. We do not think the means justifies the end, instead our means or our methods are already part of our “end” or our “aim”.
3. A Party Cadre Knows how to build a party campaign at the grassroots
A.S. presented the talk prepared by L.R. (who had a tooth abscess and was not able to be present) on how LALIT cadres have to learn how to speak to people they do not know, and to do so with courage and respect, in their village or town, and at work, in order to interest them in LALIT’s ongoing campaigns. Members need to learn who to talk to on what subject, and in what circumstances a conversation is appropriate. It is a real skill. A LALIT branch member has to learn how to somehow know which neighbour or person in the village may be interested to sign a petition, to attend a meeting, to participate in a demonstration – and on what issue. This means understanding both the LALIT campaign as well as the society the member lives in or the site they work on, which involves ongoing conversations – at bus stops, in the dispensary, at the post office, in the Parent-Teachers’-Association, in the co-op shop. People learn to trust a LALIT members’ judgment because of the thought that goes into their making it. Branches are what help party members at the grass-roots – whether in a remote village or a city centre – to see the broader picture, and thus to gain the respect of their work-mates, on the one hand, and their neighbours, on the other.
4. A Party Member on the Shop-Floor and at the trade union grassroots
A.J. then said that in her experience, a LALIT member also has to know how to be pro-active as a LALIT member amongst colleagues on the work-site, as well as at the grassroots of the union you’re in, and how also to relate to other organization’s representatives, in common fronts, say.
At work, she said, she as a colleague, puts her foot down, for example, when another colleague begins selling goods on the work site to other workers, like Yves Rocher or other products: this creates debtor-and-creditor relations that potentially divide workers, she said. It can also lead to being a bad work-colleague, in that others have to cover for them while they sell their products. Learning how to make this point, in a positive way for the future, is a real art, she said. In the same vein, you need to learn to give good advice, she said, on “being a good worker for your own colleagues”, as opposed to “for the boss” and on his or her instructions. If you are a builder, you need to get the building built in co-operation, and in safety, on the work-site with your work-mates. If you are a teacher, you need to help the children develop a love of learning and even a love of life, itself, whatever your employers’ aims might be (e.g. to make the children pass exams, become obedient and conformist, or to submit to authority, or whatever). If you are a nurse, you need to care for patients in the best possible way, and this is what guides the kind of work relations you nurture. So, a nurse arrives at work at a hospital or dispensary on time, not to please any bureaucracy or superior officer, but to care better for patients and to show respect for work colleagues. If you are a labourer, you do not just do your piece-rates, but help cover for those who are weaker than you with theirs. One member in open session paid homage, on this point, to a woman who, on her 100th birthday, when asked by the MBC what were her happy souvenirs, she replied, “At work in the fields, when my colleagues who finished their piece rates quicker, would turn around into my sugar-cane row and help me with mine. And I would do the same, when I could.”
And then, as a union member, we as LALIT members are called upon to put the important issues on the agenda for the union leadership. If the union leaders ask for an overtime bonus, we might, she said, call on them to get the employer to recruit more staff as well or instead, say. LALIT members have to be vigilant when there is an important international petition to sign, to call on union leaders to sign it. For this work, she said, she has a WhatsApp group of work colleagues, in the same sector all over Mauritius, and they co-ordinate these efforts in relation to the union leaders.
5. Party Members Constantly Defend themselves from detractors
A.S. then spoke of the personal reinforcement one needs, and one learns in practice. Bourgeois ideology is not just in formal institutions, she said, but within the family. She said we must remember, when we first joined LALIT, how some family members and even friends and colleagues were often disparaging, and made off-hand remarks. She said we can share these experiences with new members and narrate how we dealt with them. From telling you that “you are wasting your time” when they may have a past-time like gambling (which is arguable a waste of more than time), to suggesting you concentrate on your Judo or music or whatever they can think of to flatter you out of political commitment. So, the first problem she said, is your own family, and other close people who take it upon themselves to defend you against your own commitment!
Then there is the wider circle – of people in the same community or religion – or further away relatives, who may be better off than your family and who suddenly seem to want to protect you from the supposed dangers of being a LALIT member! They pretend to be doing it for your own good. And, of course, there is the bread-and-butter work of the security police at neighbourhood level, who are good at spreading rumours, and suggesting to some family member that your being in LALIT is supposedly preventing some cousin from getting some job somewhere! She said some members have had a religious dignitary take a sudden interest in them. Others out-of-the-blue get offered jobs in para-statals. There are silly remarks against LALIT members – either that they are millionaires, or penniless wearers of flip-flops, or both; either that they are so clever they will out-wit you and hood-wink you, or that they are so stupid as to think they can change society – or both.
So, one needs to know that these are realities that exist and we all learn to spot them, and deal with them – mostly ignoring them, and when necessary choosing a good place for a show-down. However much experience we have, she said, we still get tricked or taunted by people in our family circles sometimes!
6. D.H. said that the LALIT archives and its web-site are a source of enormous riches in terms of understanding the struggle, and he said that this empowers new members to very quickly progress in sharing past thinking. He also drew attention to the reading list pre-Congress, and its uses, like on WhatsApp. Many members read the whole of Ernest Mandel’s Pu Enn Sosyete San Klas book on WhatsApp.
7. Each cadre according to ability, interest and experience
L.C. then spoke on the way it is important for everyone to be as good a member as they can. New members’ understanding of the program will grow as they gain experience, for example. Some members will be good at some kinds of cadres’ work like explaining complicated issues in simple language, while others are good at recruiting work-mates by bringing them along to open meetings. Others are excellent at knocking on doors and relating to the person who appears on the lintel. Others read some interesting Marxist book, and suggest it to other members. It was a branch member in Bambous. who had the flair to suggest that two women branch members pay a visit to neighbouring village of Beau Songes to see Widow Topize, after the death in custody of Kaya, and this has led to her involvement in the women’s movement and the JUSTICE movement. We all do what we can as best we can. And interwoven with all our work is a respect for the whole of the working class, whose members we have to remember are often struggling just to make ends meet, while we are on the look-out for those people who want to commit themselves, in addition to this daily struggle, to a struggle with more long-term aims, in particular for a classless society. And we also weave in the constant internationalizing of the working peoples’ struggle. Victory will need to be both in each country and in all countries to bring about the change we need – to save the planet, and its human civilizations.
