| Theory |
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The Curse of Lenin's Mummy April 3, 2006 by RedStar2000 |
Yes, we still have cases of political necrophilia turn up from time to time at the RevLeft board...and it becomes necessary to carve up Lenin's mummy "just one more time".
Set the ventilation on "high" and cover your nose up as best you can.
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It was really unfortunate that Marx chose to use the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" to describe the post-capitalist "state"...even though he was only using it in contrast to bourgeois "democracy" -- a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
Little did he anticipate how the Leninists would seize on the word "dictatorship" to justify a despotism of the Vanguard Party.
The "classical" Leninist paradigm does indeed posit that their despotism will "gradually be reformed into communism"...but, of course, that never happened.
In fact, they've reformed themselves into modern capitalism! *laughs*
Leninists often claim that they've "learned from" what happened in the 20th century and now promise that their despotisms will be "more democratic".
But one need only examine how their parties actually work to see that their "promises" are not worth the electrons it takes to display them on a monitor. The parties themselves are despotisms in which the party leadership decides everything of substance and the party members do what they're told! Not all of them have an explicitly designated "Great Leader"...but I think that's the direction they naturally go in.
The consequence of proletarian revolution may well result in the emergence of a "Paris Commune state"...we simply don't know at this point.
But such a "state" is about as far from what the Leninists want as outright anarchism itself.
The Leninists want the "full monte"...a state apparatus just like the one we have now except with them running it instead of the overthrown bourgeoisie.
They especially insist on a professional army and a professional police force...they want forces they can count on in case the proletariat "becomes too demanding" or threatens to "get out of hand".
In the "west", this is all academic, to be sure. The modern working class is no more likely to "follow them" than it is to convert to Islam. We are far past the urge to "seek a Moses" to "lead us out of bondage".
Much less a whole party of Moses wannabes. *laughs*
In addition to which is the fact that modern Leninism in the "west" is almost entirely social democratic...with no more interest in proletarian revolution than in renaissance folk music. They dream of "getting into parliament" and "doing nice things"...like the social democrats of seven or eight decades ago.
The only real problem with Leninism "in decay" is that it still has the power to mislead young people with an interest in Marxism and proletarian revolution. They conjure up romantic "visions" of Petrograd or Shanghai...and, let's face it, the young are often susceptible to "visions of rebellion". They have no idea that joining a Leninist party is just like getting a McJob with zero pay...that all they'll ever really be called upon to do is hustle newspapers and show up for ritual demonstrations. Their minds will never be challenged; their possible capabilities never realized.
When they finally get disgusted and quit, they'll often conclude that "revolutionary politics" is just another scam.
And that really is a tragedy.
Some "ultra-leftists" and "anarchists" do whatever they can to discredit the Leninist paradigm on boards like this...because we want to remove this obstacle to the development of young revolutionaries.
It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.
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First posted at RevLeft on March 20, 2006
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Historical context is everything when discussing "questions" like this.
The only thing that "unifies" anarchists, as far as I can tell, is opposition to a centralized state apparatus.
What "unifies" Leninists is the "leading role of the party".
What "unifies" Marxists is historical materialism.
You can, if you like, "trace a line" from portions of the Communist Manifesto to German Social Democracy to Lenin and his followers.
And "centralization" would be an important component of that line. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was widely believed that centralization = progress.
It was thought, for example, that the growth of large industrial trusts was a "stage" that was "on the way" to a nationalized monopoly. Common also was the opinion that the construction of larger and larger factories as time passed would make the "centralization of production" a de facto reality even before proletarian revolution.
There was nothing "sinister" in this view; it was based on the simple observation of what was happening then.
That such an outlook "seeped" into theory regarding the "communist party" was a "natural" occurrence.
Another factor (usually unacknowledged) that shaped Lenin's view of the party was the stunning success of the German General Staff in defeating France in 1870; the accomplishments of a military leadership trained to lead stunned all of Europe at the time and afterwards.
It's pretty clear that this is what Lenin thought was needed to "win the class struggle"...a cadre that would function as the "general staff" of the proletariat, guiding it along the "line of march" to "final victory".
Lenin's perspective departs sharply from Marx's conception of how the class struggle would be resolved. To Marx, it was the masses that made history. Communists, at best, could be but midwives, "easing the birth pangs" of the new society...not having the baby!
In other words, communism was not something to be imposed on history but rather something that came about as a natural consequence of history.
Marx and Engels wrote very little about how post-capitalist society "would operate"...from the sensible standpoint that until one knows the material conditions of that period, it's almost impossible to make realistic hypotheses about what's possible and what is not.
They knew what they wanted -- "from each according to their ability to each according to their need" -- but never attempted to "design" a method for making that "work". They assumed that useful methods would emerge at the appropriate time.
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Leninism adds the theory of imperialism where instead of advanced capitalism driving its working class to the point of revolution at home, they will subsidize their own workers while expanding their economies overseas, so that the most exploited and therefore most revolutionary working class will in fact be in the colonies rather than the capital cities. So, while Marx would predict that revolutions would break out in the most advanced capitalist countries, Lenin would predict that revolutions would be most successful in the least advanced capitalist countries.
Aside from "the leading role of the party", I agree with you here that this is a major departure from Marx by Lenin and his subsequent followers.
Is it a "valid" departure? It "looked valid" throughout the 20th century, no question about that.
But what we have actually seen is that none of the "socialist revolutions" in backward countries actually put the working class "in command" and all of them have retreated to capitalism. The working class in those countries was too small, too weak, and too backward to have more than a passing influence on events there...if that. The Leninist countries all became variations on the despotism of Napoleon III...rapid economic development followed by modern capitalism.
You can, if you wish, consider them "benevolent" despotisms because of their extensive social welfare programs; certainly a vast improvement on the regimes that preceded them. Centralized economic planning "works better" (faster and more egalitarian) to develop a country than ordinary capitalism does.
But behind all the rhetoric and red flags looms material reality. A backward country ruled by a small elite (however well-intentioned) cannot "step over" the centuries required to develop the material basis for communism.
And worse, it's now pretty clear that setting up what the Leninists called "socialist states" in the last century leads inexorably to the corruption of the party itself!
When your social role is that of a boss, then you or your kids or your grandkids become bosses...that is, openly capitalist.
Each Leninist party says "they won't do that"...when in fact there's no possible way they could keep from doing that. It's not a matter of perfidy; it's a normal response to the situation in which they find themselves. This or that "revolutionary saint" may "resist temptation"...but in general, they must succumb.
"Virtue" is powerless in the face of material incentive.
Meanwhile, of course, we still await genuine proletarian revolutions in the countries where Marx and Engels thought they would happen first -- England, France, Germany, and the United States.
If Lenin has been refuted, Marx has yet to be confirmed.
Recent events in France are sort of encouraging...but I frankly don't expect to see "the real thing" before 2050 or so.
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First posted at RevLeft on March 23, 2006
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It seems to be a requirement to have a redstaresque life in order to have enough time to carry on a debate here. I have been busy for several days organising a leading Venezuelan trade unionist's tour in North America, and I come back to find any topics with debates I had been taking part in long over.
Reformism is time-consuming...so don't blame me or the board because you lack the time to repeat Trotskyist banalities.
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What unifies Marxists is far more then historical materialism, but also dialectical materialism, Marxist economics, the conception of the communists as "the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others", and countless other traditions.
"Dialectics" is bullshit. Marxist economics is part of historical materialism. And Marx's 1847 description of the role of conscious communists specifically excludes a separate party...much less one organized according to Lenin.
As it happens, I'm in favor of a conscious organized communist movement...but opposed to your obsolete "Vanguard Party".
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There is no question that the party is necessary to organise and build that most advanced section, and to push forward all others.
Yes there is...and it's a huge question. All the variants of Leninism in the "west" haven't amounted to a puddle of warm spit.
Either what you're trying to do can't be done or you are one and all hopeless fuckups.
You choose. *laughs*
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That is Lenin's conception of the party, which is exactly what Marx's was.
You imagine that if you assert that nonsense often enough that people will believe it.
No, they won't.
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But, as revolution became more and more a clear possibility, and it became obvious that the social-democratic parties would act as a brake to the process (the tripping point for Lenin came in their support for WW1), Lenin had no choice but to create an independent Marxist party, free of opportunism and nationalism.
Just as the apologists for superstition here rarely have a competent knowledge of their own religion, the same is usually true of modern Leninists as well. It was in 1912 that the Bolsheviks made their final split with the Menshevik social democrats (not 1914).
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Marxists work within the traditional organisations of class struggle, where the masses of the working-class movement exist.
Trotskyist "Marxists" love "tradition" the way a hog loves slop. In fact, one wonders why they don't frame their appeals in terms of traditional Leninist values. *laughs*
Truth is, most modern Leninists are probably to the right of German social democracy c.1891.
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However, it is also entirely possible (according to both Marx and Lenin) that these revolutionary uprisings will ultimately fail, and the eventual result will be the destruction of the contending classes.
If so, then they must in the due course of time re-emerge, right?
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In the view of both Marx and Lenin, it is the subjective factor which ultimately decides.
Rubbish! Conflates Lenin's idealism with Marx's materialism.
Haven't you heard? You can't get away with that political "spoon-bending" anymore!
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It is only logical that these revolutions of today and of the near future will provoke that revolution in the developed world which you pessimistically refer to as being 50 years off.
What "revolutions of today" are you talking about? There is no proletariat in the world that has state power or anything even close to that!
I know...you see all those red flags in Caracas and "assume the best" -- not being a "pessimist" like me. *laughs*
Your naked adulation of Chavez's very mild version of social democracy shows just how far behind you are of German social democracy in 1891.
Contemporary Trotskyists are "living fossils"...even more than the few remaining Maoists.
Oh...my estimate of 50 years for western Europe is optimistic. It may be that I should phrase that 50-100 years. Certainly 100 years looks a great deal more plausible for North America.
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No, what unifies Marxists is both Marx's historical materialism and his political ideology as described in the Communist Manifesto and elsewhere. The term for someone who supports Marx's sociological and economic theory but not his political positions is Marxian rather than Marxist, distinguishing academic followers of Marx from political followers of Marx.
Well, that's an interesting distinction...and there's certainly some truth to it.
The difficulty is teasing out Marx's "political positions" from the era in which he lived. A "political position" that Marx might have held in 1870 or Engels in 1891 may be, by now, completely irrelevant.
Marxists are "for" communism in a sense that academics usually aren't...but the question of what it means to politically fight for communist revolution now is obviously far different than in Marx's time.
Or Lenin's, or Trotsky's, or Mao's. *laughs*
What, for example, is the "communist role" in the current struggles in France? Obviously it should be "more" than just an endorsement of the popular demand for the government to back down on its new labor law.
But what would be a "communist demand" in those circumstances?
What does "communism" mean to the French working class at this point in history? Is it credible to speak of the "communist option" to them?
Or to the most intransigent of the young?
I'm not there and can't answer those questions. All I'm really sure of is that ancient Trotskyist banalities will naturally be ignored as irrelevant.
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First posted at RevLeft on March 23, 2006
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Damn it redstar, will you ever get your head out of your ass for even a second??? I don't even know where to start...
Start with some personal abuse. It's a "Leninist traditional value".
Oh, you did. *laughs*
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Dialectics is the root of all marxist analysis. If you don't agree with it, you aren't in any way shape or form a Marxist, which I could have told you just from your other points.
No surprise to see that your devotion to Hegelian superstition far exceeds your interest in historical materialism.
How many "dialecticians" does it take to change a lightbulb?
None...lightbulbs, like everything else, change themselves. *laughs*
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A united and organised movement is the idea, doesn't fucking matter what you call it.
"United" how? "Organized" how? Leninists have specific answers to those questions.
Their answers are wrong.
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You fucking ass, you sit at your keyboard doing shit all and waiting your 50 years and you call those who are struggling "hopeless fuckups".
I gave you a choice: the other option is whatever you are trying to do can't be done.
I'm rather inclined to that option myself...the idea of a small group of "professional revolutionaries" actually managing to "run a revolution" strikes me as exceedingly implausible, to put it charitably.
Would you like what I have to say better if I stood up at the keyboard? *laughs*
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Either way, the fact that they try to do something makes them 1000 times more respectable then you, waiting your 50 years, and accomplishing nothing.
I am not trying to be "respectable", of course. I leave that to the Trotskyists.
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I don't know what you hope to imagine with all your BS. Is it to cram your head even farther up your ass? Or is it to do the same with somebody else's head? You are rendering yourself and anyone else who decides to follow you completely useless.
We know what you mean by "useless", don't we? Meaning they won't be foot soldiers in your latest reformist "struggle".
Horrors! *laughs*
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If you term "Leninist" as someone who follows and continues the thread of Lenin's ideas, you are even more full of shit than usual on this point.
What else is a reasonable definition?
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Yes, we cannot control in any way when a revolution occurs, but every person within a revolutionary period helps decide the success or failure of that revolution.
A bit of truth slips into the discussion. Now if we can get you to admit that any particular individual helps or hurts in an amount too small to measure, then maybe we'll get somewhere.
But I suspect that's asking too much.
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I hold critical support for the process there, and complete support for the comrades of the CMI who are working, with some success, to push the process towards worker's control and a complete smashing and rebuilding of the state with a participatory democracy stemming from that worker's control.
You're drunk on Trotskyist rhetoric, that's all. When you sober up, maybe then we'll have something to talk about.
Meanwhile...
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You're doing a very good job of making absolutely sure you don't have to get off your lazy ass to accomplish anything, aren't you?
Social democracy in Venezuela is unworthy of my assistance.
On the other hand, yours... *laughs*
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First posted at RevLeft on March 23, 2006
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We have helped the earthquake victims of Pakistan...
Aren't you sweet. Reformism is, at the bottom, reduced to charity.
Or are you telling people that earthquakes will be "abolished" under the rule of the Vanguard Party? *laughs*
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We are growing in influence.
Cue Theme: The future belongs to us.
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The Left has a good deal of enemies within it, of which must be consistently and mercilessly exposed by a party with an iron Bolshevik discipline.
Ooooohhhh...kinky! *laughs*
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Such a waste makes me angry.
And do you imagine that I am not angry to see kids who might someday make a contribution to proletarian revolution sidetracked into impotent reformism and ultimately turned into total cynics and even reactionaries?
What happens to those kids when Venezuela turns out not to be the "promised land" after all?
Given the material conditions in Venezuela, the most that you can hope for is "another Cuba"...less poor but otherwise about the same.
And ten years from now we'll have a bunch of threads here on "what will happen when Chavez dies?". Probably around the time the Pope pays a visit to Caracas. *laughs*
Same old song and dance.
But you pump people up with all sorts of illusions about the Venezuelan "revolution"...and don't give a shit when they become cynical and disillusioned afterwards.
You got some work out of them...and that's all that really counts.
Ideological intransigence, democratic centralism and cultism: a case study from the political left
quote (Marx):
The chief defect of all previous materialism (that of Feuerbach included) is that things [Gegenstand], reality, sensuousness are conceived only in the form of the object, or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was set forth abstractly by idealism--which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from conceptual objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. In Das Wesen des Christenthums, he therefore regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and defined only in its dirty-Jewish form of appearance. Hence he does not grasp the significance of "revolutionary", of "practical-critical", activity.
I have no problem with Marx's critique of Feuerbach in this passage.
Unless you interpret it in such a way as to elevate the subjective over the objective...which is exactly what I accuse the Leninist paradigm of doing.
We all act to "change the world"...but, if we are sensible, then we do so in accordance with the direction the world is predisposed to change with a minimum of effort.
One could labor strenuously to "restore feudalism"...but there are no remaining practical ways to do that.
If we labor to establish communism, then we have the objective "forces" of history "on our side"...in the long run.
It is those forces (which include our practical efforts) that determine the outcome.
Is it reasonable, for example, to anticipate a proletarian revolution in Venezuela -- a newly emerging capitalist country...no matter what conscious communists attempt to do.
What could their "best" efforts result in but a Leninist despotism that would clear away all the remnants of feudalism and imperialism and permit Venezuela to "take its place" as a modern capitalist country.
Do you imagine that "subjective will" can forcefully drag Venezuela into the 22nd or 23rd century?
That is, a period of time when communism will be objectively practical in Venezuela.
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I fight for revolution, not reform...
No, you imagine that you "fight for revolution, not reform".
In objective reality, you simply assist the social-democratic modernization of Venezuelan capitalism.
That's "progressive", to be sure...it's what needs to happen in that country.
But the rhetoric of "socialism", "workers' control", etc., is not only completely without objective justification but is historically impossible (except for brief moments) at this time.
You may as well ask the Venezuelans to build a functional interstellar spacecraft!
To be sure, they could probably build a mock-up of one...and that's what Venezuelan "socialism" would be: red flags, plywood stands, an impressive-looking "stage setting" for "socialist rhetoric".
A generation or two later, you'd end up with modern capitalism anyway.
I do not deny the appeal of Leninism to the "impatient"...it takes Marx's critique of Feuerbach and says, in effect, we don't have to wait for the objective conditions for communism to mature; we'll just take over and make it happen!
At gunpoint. *laughs*
That was attempted all through the last century.
Didn't work, did it?
Why should it work?
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First posted at RevLeft on March 24, 2006
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I don't see myself learning much if I'm not sure who to believe.
Don't "believe" either one of us.
Inform yourself as best you can about Leninist practice in the 20th century. Read as much of Marx and Engels as you can.
And constantly ask yourself: does this make sense?
In the last century, the "mantra" of the left went something like this:
If Lenin said it, it must be true!
Or Stalin or Trotsky or Mao or Tito or Ho or Hoxha or the leadership of my Party.
The catastrophic consequences of that course have become obvious to all but the hopelessly superstitious.
To be a revolutionary in the communist sense of that word does not mean memorizing a set of formulas and maxims; there's no "12-step-plan" to breaking capitalist "addiction".
The naive sometimes think of a revolutionary as "some guy in the hills with a gun"...or, more realistically, some guy in the street carrying a sign or peddling a small tabloid. *laughs*
Or some guy who's read some books and can stand up in the front of the room and talk about what he's read.
But it's really a lot more than that!
It's the habit of thinking critically about both ideas and events. So that when you go "into the hills" or "into the streets", you know what the fuck you're doing!
Leninists want to recruit "cadre" -- soldiers who will "carry out their orders" with "iron Bolshevik discipline". That's their "vision" of "how to win" the class struggle.
"Thinking" is "the Leadership's job".
Do you want to be a cog in their machine?
Or do you wish to be a real revolutionary who can rationally evaluate your class interests and act to promote them?
And unite with other revolutionaries as equals?
Choose carefully.
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First posted at RevLeft on March 24, 2006
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Do Lenin and Marx, for instance, disagree on how to do it, or on what will be done?
Both, I think.
It's pretty clear that Marx imagined a more or less spontaneous mass uprising..."like" the Paris Commune.
Lenin thought a revolution should be "led" by a tested group of experienced "leaders".
After victory, Marx was in favor of the "Paris Commune state"...hyper-democratic without a professional military or bureaucracy. He did think that the Paris Commune should have been somewhat more centralized than it actually was...and is likewise on record as deploring the time spent holding elections.
Lenin clearly favored a despotism of the "Vanguard Party" and repeatedly argued in favor of that conception after 1918. At no time did he ever suggest that any substantive power be "devolved" back to the working class. The Leninist rhetoric about "proletarian democracy" was utter bollocks.
Leninist apologists "explain" this by conditions arising during the civil war and the foreign invasions. But the historical fact of the matter is that Lenin became more authoritarian after the civil war was won and the invasions defeated. In this he was joined, of course, by both Stalin and Trotsky.
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Consider the "cadre" as a means and not an end. No?
Even skimming the posts of someone like the Trotskyist reveals the problem with such "means"...the big head! Being trained in the conviction that "iron Bolshevik discipline" will not only be victorious but, in fact, will put them in positions of power leads to irreversible swelling of the ego.
They imagine themselves indispensable "architects of history" and woe to anyone who "gets in their way".
It's laughable when they don't have any power to enforce deference to their pretense...but terrifying when they do!
By and large, it was not ordinary working people who were "targeted" by Stalin or Mao; it was party members who never knew in the morning where they'd be by evening. (!)
And, of course, those methods "trickled down" all through the party. Someone who "wanted your perks" could easily drop a few hints to the police about your "anti-party attitude".
You can readily imagine the nightmarish atmosphere of intrigue that prevailed...about as "proletarian" as the renaissance papacy.
In fact, revolutionary politics is impossible in such a climate...yet another explanation of why both Russia and China more or less steadily moved to the right as time passed.
What we have to avoid at all costs is the despotism of a "Vanguard Party".
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First posted at RevLeft on March 25, 2006
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I don't see a bunch of workers overthrowing the government with shovels and rakes in the twenty-first century.
Historically speaking, that is "what happens".
The best example was that of Petrograd in February 1917. There was no "vanguard party", no "established leaders", no "iron Bolshevik discipline", and certainly no "armed struggle" to speak of.
It was simply millions of people who had "had enough" of Czarism...and the walls came a-tumbling down! *laughs* The military units stationed in Petrograd joined the revolution!
The Leninists do indeed have a "vision" based on their October 1917 coup...but that's not what real proletarian revolutions are "like".
A capitalist system that is no longer able to function and a proletariat armed with communist ideas will be sufficient...the "shovels and rakes" will be a bonus.
The bourgeois state apparatus -- that looks so "powerful" and "terrifying" -- will, in fact, mostly melt away. Its material base is gone and it will have lost its credibility.
It won't be "a walk in the park"...but it won't be very far short of that either.
Whenever the masses decide to move in their own interests, they sweep away all obstacles...in days!
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First posted at RevLeft on March 26, 2006
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First and foremost, being a Leninist doesn’t mean repeating Lenin’s, Trotsky’s, Mao’s, Stalin’s, et.al., mistakes.
It sort of does seem to mean that, actually. When modern Leninists depart from the paths of their ancestors, it usually means a move to the right...something even worse than what their prophets did.
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The very nature of a revolution demands organization. The spontaneous riot dialectically becomes the revolution through organization. During a struggle for life or death, proletarian dictatorship or barbarism, there must be surety in decisions made.
Hegelian babble.
I can't imagine how it was that any of that nonsense was ever taken seriously.
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No, Lenin said that the party was the most advanced section of the proletariat, and that the proletariat as a whole wanted the party to rule in their own interest...
In what way could such claims be objectively verified?
How do we measure "most advanced"? How do we determine the will of "the proletariat as a whole"?
Leninists measure "most advanced" by definition: it means "joins our party or at least supports it".
They measure the will of "the proletariat as a whole" by a similar definition: it means "doesn't spontaneously rise up and successfully overthrow our sorry asses".
Such self-serving "definitions" can be and have been used by any political tendency...even the most reactionary.
They don't, objectively speaking, mean jack shit!
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The vanguard party theory was theorized not by Lenin but by Blanqui, he was the first 'vanguardist'.
Quite true. As I recall, Marx had a less than flattering view of Comrade Blanqui's "contribution" to revolutionary theory. *laughs*
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Today there are no real Leninist parties in existence...
Why not? If Lenin's ideas were "valid", how is it that no one has been able to use them?
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Prove that the Bolshevik party was not composed of the most advanced section of the proletariat, using the tools of Marxism of course.
An empty challenge...unless you can (1) offer an objective definition of "most advanced" and (2) suggest practical ways to determine that for the Russian proletariat c.1917.
Just saying "advanced proletariat = supported Lenin" is not an argument; it's an incantation...a ritualized repetition of a sacred formula intended to halt discussion.
It used to be pretty effective...but not any more.
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First posted at RevLeft on March 26, 2006
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...and the fact that people on this forum seem to think that Anarchy and libertarian 'communism' are relevant just shows how politically isolated they are in their Anglo-American middle class social groups.
Well, this is primarily an "Anglo-American" board...just look at that google graphic and see where almost everyone is posting from or visiting from. Only a very small number of people here come from non-English-speaking countries...which is hardly surprising since English is the language most used in discussions.
I wish we had more input from, especially, France, Italy, and Germany. I think those countries are going to be very significant in the development of modern revolutionary theory and practice in the coming decades...and there will be much to learn from them.
Do you imagine that people there dick around with Leninist or Trotskyist or Maoist or reformist banalities? That they spend their time pissing and moaning about "who was right" in 1914 or 1928 or 1934, blah, blah, blah.
My impression, for what it's worth, is that it is in the U.K. where a lot of lefties are still "deeply concerned" about the rectitude of Trotsky or Stalin...and it's only in the U.S. where there are any remaining westerners who give a rat's ass about Mao.
The principle obstacle to the development of revolutionary theory in the "Anglo-American" world is reformism...in all its forms. That's what pretty much all of the Leninist parties have become...and the few that haven't are sectarian wackos.
So yes, I assert that we are at day one of developing a coherent revolutionary theory that will work in this century.
I don't care who the museum curators "identify with" nor am I worried that they might consider me "arrogant", "dogmatic", or whatever. As far as I'm concerned, they are no different from those people who gather to "re-fight" civil war battles. They are "playing at war" as all the remaining western Leninists "play at politics".
The only time a modern western Leninist group is really serious is when they leap into some reformist "struggle" to advance their party's "influence".
To no avail. *laughs*
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Believe it or not Redstar, but they do not have to justify themselves to you, just cause you blindly accept western propaganda about them.
Here, you would seem to be talking about "third world Leninism". No, they don't have to "justify" themselves to me; I am not part of their constituency.
I'm quite happy to let them go right ahead and make their bourgeois revolutions...and I hope they are as radical as they can be.
I do wish they would cease their empty rhetoric about "socialism" and "communism"...those words have no connection to what they are actually going to do.
In the west, we may have to invent some new terminology to avoid being identified with despotisms.
Well, if we have to do that then we will do that.
It's happened before. *laughs*
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First posted at RevLeft on March 28, 2006
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quote:
I've said earlier in this thread that I support a government like the Zapatistas use, but apparently you weren't listening. In that type of government, these Nazi and Fascists will not have influence but they still have the right to equal representation.
I do not think it yet reasonable to call whatever it is the Zapatistas use "a government". They may have mechanisms in place which perform some "government-like" functions...but they remain subject to the overwhelming power of the Mexican Army which, I have heard, periodically terrorizes people in that part of Mexico.
I cannot see why one would speak at all of "representation for Nazis" or other known reactionaries. The purpose of any post-revolutionary "state" -- such as it might be -- is to repress the reactionaries out of existence.
That's not Lenin; that's Marx!
The Leninist "spin" on this requires a professional army and police force -- that is, people who are willing to kill on demand. If they're ordered to shoot reactionaries, they'll do it! If they're ordered to kill workers, they'll do it! If they're ordered to do nothing, they'll do that too!
Against such a trained and disciplined force, "civilian" power amounts to "words on paper"...utterly helpless unless there is a massive insurrection of the outraged populace.
To speak of workers' power at all necessarily requires the absence of a professional military or police force.
quote:
Leninists always use fear to control their people...
This is, I think, a reasonably accurate historical observation. People are told that if the Leninist despots are not granted "extraordinary powers" that "the counter-revolution will win".
That's definitely something to "watch out for" after the revolution. Anyone (or any group) who says, in effect, "make us dictator or all is lost" is, in fact, up to no damn good!
quote:
The vanguard is the most advanced section of the proletariat!!! If a party is made up of a proletarian vanguard then it's proletarian. Is that so hard for you to understand? The vanguard are those that know what they are doing.
The assertion of these metaphysical "equivalents" is not the same as their actual existence.
Parties claim to "be proletarian". Parties claim to "be a vanguard". Parties claim to "know what they're doing".
And they claim that "we must all follow them" or revolution is "impossible".
What's missing is not only credible historical evidence but even a coherent argument for why any of that stuff "is" or "should be" true.
What the Leninist hypothesis really boils down to is the proposition that the working class is "too fucked up" to overthrow capitalism and set up working organs of class self-government on its own; it "needs" a "guiding hand" to do those things and without that "leadership", all its efforts "must" end in failure.
This is something that Marx and Engels never even considered as a historical "possibility".
That's how Lenin "developed" Marxism...by adding a hypothesis that never occurred to Marx and Engels.
With the "winner effect" of the USSR and People's China, people just assumed that Lenin "must be right" and acted accordingly.
Now the "loser effect" prevails...people see no need to go through all that shit again when it didn't work! That's why all the Leninist parties in the west have dwindled into insignificant sects or parasites inside reformist formations. That's "the best they can do" now.
Of course, they live on their nostalgic dreams...the "glory years" of their movement. Back when a quote from Lenin or Stalin or Trotsky or Mao was sufficient to stun dissenters into silence. *laughs*
Now, their outrage is never far beneath the surface...no one gives them any "respect" anymore. It's funny to see sometimes. The RCP will post some rambling effusion from Chairman Bob on the Indymedia sites...and the responses will be along the lines of "fuck you, Chairman Asshole!".
That would never have happened back in Stalin's day...or Trotsky's. *laughs*
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First posted at RevLeft on April 1, 2006
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