To the topic of the OP:
HoniSoit wrote:
"The fact that revolutionary socialist parties are weapons of struggle rather than prefigurative forms entails that their internal structure is of secondary importance to their ability to act effectively."
This statement reflects correct theory -- in the means-to-ends trajectory the portion that's of most significance is the *results*, or 'ends'.
This position doesn't automatically mean that revolutionary-internal processes will inevitably *tend* to base actions, or paths-of-least-resistance, ('morally' / 'ethically'), because there's a built-in *countervailing* dynamic of 'political reputation', or 'political capital' -- the more Machiavellian / expedient the revolutionary process, the less palatable and genuinely-revolutionary it will appear to the public conscience, and the less mass support it will win, due to its overreliance on elitist-like substitutionism.
The revolutionary camp has the advantage, over the bourgeois establishment, of not having to *maintain* an empire and dominant culture (groupthink-based social cohesion) -- proletarian expediency and a results-orientation can be validly preferred *because* of the status quo reality of exploitation and oppression, which is daily establishment *violence* against all those concerned, making the calculus one of 'What actions are appropriate to *respond* to this bourgeois-hegemony social norm?', which gives *wide* latitude for the space of strategies and tactics *against* such imposed hegemony.
We also have to consider that this is a political *competition* -- I'm not an anarchist because I don't think that a massively-*lateral* configuration of pan-localist class struggle (and purported eventual pan-collective control) would be *sufficient* to overthrow elitist rule, or for a desired post-capitalist political economy. The hierarchies of capitalist-imperialist management have to be *matched* and *surpassed* by the organizations and politics of *proletarian* organization, in providing for people's needs, and in determining all aspects of social production.
In other words we can't forget that there has to be a *transition* from capitalism to communism, and that this *transition* is called 'the workers state' (a workers' *government*), a configuration which *can* utilize organizational hierarchy, for the sake of centralization and presenting a real challenge to the powers-that-be.
I'll reproduce an excerpt from a past thread at the now-frozen RevLeft discussion board, that's relevant here:
Originally Posted by Fellow_Human
For a start, TomLeftist's question was whether "revolution from above" was possible, not whether it was desirable, however it's defined.
You can't have a government by and for the working people when the working people altogether refuse to accept and cooperate with the new government. The result is either counterrevolution or descent into tyranny, as the new government attempts to survive and resorts to widespread, permanent repressions.
(As for the "so say they" quotation, it was neither an argument nor a proposal, but simply the summary of an opposing ideological position. I saw no reason to address it.)
This is a good contextualization -- a corollary of a stepped-up, hurried revolution (that's considerably substitutionist, per the thread topic) is that such a revolution would most-likely have to act like a rival nation-state since it's not entirely grounded in mass participation.
Perhaps 'government' is the right word for this in-between, interim kind of social order, absent the more-preferred mass worldwide upheaval that would *immediately* displace bourgeois rule, leaving minds reeling at the 'overnight' pace of change.
By virtue of this revolutionary organization / party being a 'government' it would be relatively-more-ambiguous as to whether this government was *competing* as a *rival nation-state*, or was going-through-with the proletarian revolution for a full paradigm-shift to socialism, towards communism.
(In other words, the 'material pyramid' applies here, where a more-focused, vanguard-party-type approach makes for a *taller* pyramid, reaching new heights, but is also necessarily *thinner* in shape, indicating less-robustness and relative-top-heaviness. A *broader base* material pyramid would be an option, for more stability, but it would confer much less height from ground to tip.)
https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/19 ... ost2882563
So, finally, I mean to indicate that ultimately the revolutionary camp needs 'bigger pyramids', equating to a greater *mass scale* of revolutionary political participation, rather than relying on fewer bureaucratic-type specialized administrative 'personnel' (Stalinism), *or* a too-thinly-spread-out configuration that fails to reach commanding heights (anarchism).