The revolution needs a party to act as a catalyst by reminding the people of the revolutionary beliefs they held in more revolutionary historical periods. A nano-bureaucracy that strangles democracy within the party acts as a catalyst for counter-revolution. The same methods employed by the party nano-bureaucracy to suppress the organization of the membership will return in a massive form to suppress the spontaneous upheavals that arise from the class conflict. For that reason, the workers as a class must come into direct conflict with the party bureaucracy to restore the right to factional organization, which requires the publication and distribution of a Party Constitution, a monthly financial report to members and donors, and the fair apportionment of funds and distribution rights to organized factions with official recognition from the party.

In the form of policy, this catalyst for counter-revolution takes the form of hypocracy, the contradiction between bureaucratic theory and action. Bill Van Auken wrote in his pamphlet on Castroism, in contradiction to Trotsky, that guerilla tactics led to the destruction of an advanced layer of revolutionary intellectuals. Apart from ignoring the role of fascism in destroying the intellectual culture of the region, Auken introduced the idea that the intellectuals duped by movement leaders suffered a tragic fate at the hands of the their leaders.

Comrade Schaefer, a leader within the party, found herself forced out of the party for defending this same theory. In defending movements such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, she sought to differentiate the defenders of democratic and workers’ rights against police brutality and predatory management practices from the middle class representatives of identity politics who sought to divide the workers along racial and gender lines. This approach to the problem of spontaneous social movements does not differ from Van Auken’s unchallenged defense of the Castroites duped by Castroism.

In order to understand the weakness of this theory, one must turn to Lenin’s discussion of tactics-as-plan versus tactics-as-process in his articles Two Tactics from 1905 and The “Unity” Conference of R.S.D.L.P. Organisations Abroad from 1901. In Two Tactics, he wrote of the opportunist wing of the party:

“It strikingly reflected the point of view, or rather the absence of any independent point of view, of the intellectualist wing of the Party, which was carried away both by the current catchwords of Bernsteinism and by the forms and immediate results of the pure-and-simple labour movement. This infatuation led to wholesale treachery on the part of the legal Marxists, who went over to liberalism, and to the creation by Social-Democrats of the famous “tactics-as-process” theory, which firmly attached to our opportunists the label of “tail-enders”. They trailed helplessly behind events, plunged from one extreme to another, and in all cases reduced the scope of activity of the revolutionary proletariat and its faith in its own strength, all of which was usually done on the pretext of raising the independent activity of the proletariat. Strange, but true.”

The tactics-as-process theory inevitably brings opportunism into conflict with revolution. The tactics-as-plan approach, Lenin’s favored approach, emphasized free discussion about tactics for political agitation. This led to written resolutions on practical plans which the party could distribute in order to guide political activity. The opportunists sought to counterpose practical tactics to the revolutionary process, meaning that the revolutionary tactics would follow or trail events, leading to extreme variations and the reduction in general of revolutionary activity and reduction of faith in the strength of the revolutionary proletariat. A direct approach to the discussion of tactics, preferred by Lenin, met a direct challenge from the opportunist wing of Social Democracy. This forced Lenin to take a step back and review the history of the movement and its resolutions.

In contradiction to the opinion the SEP, there is something for revolutionaries to do. The fight against police brutality, especially the murder by state agents of unarmed men, along with predatory management practices at work, including sexual assault, stalking, and other acts which do not quite amount to rape of the workers- these tasks belong to the revolution because liberalism has long failed to address these problems in anything but word. Open appeals to the revolutionary proletariat by public figures such as Brandon Frasier and Rose McGowan only add weight to Lenin’s argument while contradicting the SEP. Lenin earlier wrote about an article that attempted to establish a false distinction between liberal-democratic and revolutionary tasks:

“The author says that tactics-as-plan is in contradiction to the fundamental principle of revolutionary Marxism, and he thinks that one may speak of tactics-as-“process”, taken to mean the growth of the Party’s tasks, which increase as the Party grows. In my opinion this is simply unwillingness to discuss. We have expended so much time and effort on the formulation of definite political tasks, and at the Geneva Conference so much was said about them; and now we are suddenly being talked to about “tactics-as-plan” and “tactics-as-process”. To me this represents a return to the specific, narrow Bernsteinian product of Rabochaya Mysl which asserted that only that struggle should be conducted which is possible, and that the possible struggle is that which is going on. We on our part maintain that only the distortion of Marxism is growing. The Geneva resolution says that no stages are necessary for the transition to political agitation, and then an article suddenly appears in which “the literature of exposure” is contraposed to the “proletarian struggle”. Martynov writes about students and liberals, holding that they can worry about democratic demands themselves. We, however, think that the entire peculiarity of Russian Social-Democracy consists in the fact that the liberal democracy has not taken the initiative in the political struggle. If the liberals know better what they have to do and can do it themselves, there is nothing for us to do.“

Lenin spoke of the Geneva Conference, elaborating definite tactics for revolutionary activity, as a major step forward for the party. Martynov seemed to undermine this great achievement and at the same time pull the party out of its own activities. His attitude matches exactly the approach of the SEP. Black Lives Matters and #MeToo belongs to the liberals, who are tasked with democratic reforms. In effect, “there is nothing for us to do,” they argue. This growing “distortion of Marxism” has definite practical implications. The “unwillingness to discuss” leads to a major reduction in the scope of revolutionary activity. The revolutionary movement cannot bear forever the idleness imposed upon them by the bureaucratic leadership. Faith in the strength of the revolutionary proletariat means faith that they will confront the bureaucrats with demands for a return to revolutionary activity for the party.