Excerpted from Dan Gallin:

“I believe you are also right in saying that there is a critical mass out there for a militant union and left-socialist movement, very inchoate at this time, but when I mentioned critical mass in my last e-mail I meant something else, I meant the critical mass it would take to create the spark. Many of us come from a tradition which encourages one to think that one can provide the spark all by oneself, if one has the correct policy (which is the brownish residue left at the bottom of the pan after many splits have boiled the water away) and if one works hard enough. After an at this point long militant life I have finally come to the conclusion that this is nonsense.

The spark we want cannot come from any one of us, it can only come from a combination/interaction of many of us.(In other words, forget the vanguard party, the network is the vanguard).

If I am right, what we have to do is to build the network. This can happen in different ways: adding existing networks, developing new ones, by any one of us or by several of us acting in concert, etc.

…

I think I should explain a little more about what I meant with “the network is the vanguard”. In the first place: I now reject the Leninist concept of the vanguard party, which has been interpreted in a terrorist way by the Stalinist Comintern and its successors (including Maoism, etc.), and which has crippled the Trotskyist movement through endless splits. I entirely subscribe to Rosa Luxemburg’s concept that “the masses are in reality their own leaders”. We need to advance on a broad front, with an inclusive movement, and with a program of radical democracy. That is what I mean by “network”. The revolutionary potential today is actually more widespread and potent than it has ever been, but spread out and fragmented, with a diversity that makes it impossible to assemble it all under one exclusive “brand”. It is not, however, (I believe) impossible to get it to move in the same direction: there are not many directions to chose from.”