As we discussed in the last section, anarchists argue that the way revolutionaries organise today is important. However, according to some of Lenin's followers, the fact that the "revolutionary" party is organised in a non-revolutionary manner does not matter. In the words of Chris Harman, leading member of the British Socialist Workers' Party, "[e]xisting under capitalism, the revolutionary organisation [i.e. the vanguard party] will of necessity have a quite different structure to that of the workers' state that will arise in the process of overthrowing capitalism." [Party and Class, p. 34]
However, in practice this distinction is impossible to make. If the party is organised in specific ways then it is so because this is conceived to be "efficient," "practical" and so on. Hence we find Lenin arguing against "backwardness in organisation" and that the "point at issue is whether our ideological struggle is to have forms of a higher type to clothe it, forms of Party organisation binding on all." [contained in Robert V. Daniels, A Documentary History of Communism, vol. 1, p. 23] Why would the "workers' state" be based on "backward" or "lower" kinds of organisational forms? If, as Lenin remarked, "the organisational principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy" was "to proceed from the top downward," why would the party, once in power, reject its "organisational principle" in favour of one it thinks is "opportunist," "primitive" and so on?
Therefore, as the vanguard the party represents the level to which the working class is supposed to reach then its organisational principles must, similarly, be those which the class must reach. As such, Harman's comments are incredulous. How we organise today is hardly irrelevant, particularly if the revolutionary organisation in question seeks (to use Lenin's words) to "take over full state power alone." [Selected Works, vol. 2, p. 352] These prejudices (and the political and organisational habits they generate) will influence the shaping of the "workers' state" by the party once it has taken power. This decisive influence of the party and its ideological as well as organisational assumptions can be seen when Trotsky argued in 1923 that "the party created the state apparatus and can rebuild it anew . . . from the party you get the state, but not the party from the state." [Leon Trotsky Speaks, p. 161] This is to be expected, after all the aim of the party is to take, hold and execute power. Given that the vanguard party is organised as it is to ensure effectiveness and efficiency, why should we assume that the ruling party will not seek to recreate these organisational principles once in power? As the Russian Revolution proves, this is the case:
"On 30 October, Sovnarkom [The Council of People's Commissars] unilaterally arrogated to itself legislative power simply by promulgating a decree to this effect. This was, effectively, a Bolshevik coup d'etat that made clear the government's (and party's) pre-eminence over the soviets and their executive organ. Increasingly, the Bolsheviks relied upon the appointment from above of commissars with plenipotentiary powers, and they split up and reconstituted fractious Soviets and intimidated political opponents." [Neil Harding, Leninism, p. 253]
As such, to claim how we organise under capitalism is not important to a revolutionary movement is simply not true. The way revolutionaries organise have an impact both on themselves and how they will view the revolution developing. An ideological prejudice for centralisation and "top-down" organisation will not disappear once the revolution starts. Rather, it will influence the way the party acts within it and, if it aims to seize power, how it will exercise that power once it has.
For these reasons anarchists stress the importance of building the new world in the shell of the old. All organisations exert pressures on their membership and create social relationships which shape them. As the members of these parties will be part of the revolutionary process, they will influence how that revolution will develop and any "transitional" institutions which are created. As the aim of such organisations is to facilitate the creation of socialism, the obvious implication is that the revolutionary organisation must, itself, reflect the society it is trying to create. Clearly, then, the idea that how we organise as revolutionaries today can be considered somehow independent of the revolutionary process and the nature of post-capitalist society and its institutions cannot be maintained (particularly is the aim of the "revolutionary" organisation is to seize power on behalf of the working class).
As we argue elsewhere (see section H.2.10 and J.3) anarchists argue for revolutionary groups based on self-management, federalism and decision making from below. In other words, we apply within our organisations the same principles as those which the working class has evolved in the course of its own struggles. Autonomy is combined with federalism, so ensuring co-ordination of decisions and activities is achieved from below upwards by means of mandated and recallable delegates. Effective co-operation is achieved as it is informed by and reflects the needs on the ground. Simply put, working class organisation and discipline — as exemplified by the workers' council or strike committee — represents a completely different thing from capitalist organisation and discipline, of which Leninists are constantly asking for more (albeit draped with the Red Flag and labelled "revolutionary"). And as we discuss in the next section, the Leninist model of top-down centralised parties is marked more by its failures than its successes, suggesting that not only is the vanguard model undesirable, it is also unnecessary.