56. Finale! Revolutionary Strategy pt.3│ Mike Macnair

Its the final instalment of the Revolutionary Strategy reading series! Jack and Dan finish the book and use Mike Macnair’s 14 point outline of his strategic outlook as a frame for their discussion. Drawing on the contents of the book as a whole, and particularly the final three chapters, the lads outline the contents of the Kautskyism Plus strategy presented by Macnair. Macnair is broadly in alignment with Kautsky when it comes to his advocacy of a strategy of patience. Building a workers party and a broader workers movement is a process that cannot be rushed and that requires gradual and progressive work by committed activists. Where Macnair diverges from the ‘pope’ of Marxism is over two questions: those of the state and internationalism. For Macnair, second international Marxism was a project far to committed to work within the bourgeois state rather than opposing it. Likewise it was far to centred on the national rather than the international fight for working class power. Marxism should be substantially internationalist. It was these two failings that lead to the catastrophe of 1914. The aim of Marxist strategy is to set the conditions necessary for the working class to challenge for state power. The workers party must be a party of opposition. Not a loyal opposition but a disloyal one. A party prepared not to take over the running of the state but to smash it and build anew in its own image.