Self-activity: A Contested Concept in the History of Democratic Socialism

A core idea of democratic socialism is “self-activity”, and related concepts such as “self-emancipation”, “self-organization” and “self-determination.” This paper argues that the concept of self-activity remains pivotal to the core premises of democratic socialism. Moreover, it argues that there is a hidden genealogy of the concept of self-activity, and suggests that uncovering this genealogy may help us to reimagine key moments from history, specifically from the Russian revolutionary era. Such a re-imagining of the past has implications for theory and practice today and in the future.
The argument proceeds in four parts. First, the paper traces an autoethnographic genealogy of our encounter of the concept of self-activity in the 1970s, through a close reading of the text titled Party and Class (Cliff et al. 1973). Here, we outline the particular manner in which self-activity as a concept emerged in our political practice in the late 20th century. The concept was central as a defence against the Stalinism and bureaucratism so prevalent in the Left of our generation. However, an artificial and misleading rendering of the concept and its origin was grafted onto frameworks that were quite incompatible with self-activity. Specifically, the concept of self-activity was claimed as the theory and practice of Vladimir Lenin, a claim which is historically and politically inaccurate. In fact, it was Pavel Aksel’rod – in explicit polemic against Lenin – who initiated discussions of self-activity in the 20th century. Aksel’rod’s original contributions – as well as those of his co-thinker Iulii Martov – have been largely epistemically erased from left history, and this process of erasure is the focus of the second portion of the paper. In the paper’s third section, we turn to consider the implications of the concept of self-activity regarding debates about the roots of bureaucratization and what came to be known as Soviet “state capitalism.” The fourth section contrasts the “decontextualized critique” which has dominated much of the literature on self-activity, with the approach of Aksel’rod and Martov, who focussed on the needs of the social movements. We conclude with a brief consideration of the concept of self-activity in the tradition of democratic socialism.