Rob Schaap:
>Lotsa good stuff up to this bit, natch, but never do I see that bit of
>argument which convinces that the highest party law might be the law of the
>working class! Marx was ever quiet on the matter. And Lenin wrote his last
>word on the matter quite a while back now, when stuff was not as it is now.
>The proposition with which Lenin legitimised the substitution of party for
>proletariat was that a spontaneous mass movement must inevitably be
>bourgeois in character - that it needs a kernel of professional
>revolutionaries to guide it if it is to attain its socialist potential.
This was not what Lenin was talking about. "Professional revolutionaries"
were simply that section of the party that consituted a bulwark against
Czarist repression. Under conditions of clandestinity, such steps were
necessary. In other respects, Lenin's notion of the party was identical to
the German Social Democracy which he pointed to as an example in "What is
to be done".
>As
>Kolakowski noted, Lenin's party would be Marxist because it would be led by
>petit bourgeois intellectuals in possession of the right line, rather than
>proletarians, who couldn't hope to escape their fetters long enough to study
>the canon. To add clout to this notion, the idea of 'scientific socialism'
>was deployed to render 'unscientific', 'bourgeois' and
>'counter-revolutionary' any dissent from the party view.
This is a gross distortion. Lenin's party was far more inclusive than any
so-called "Marxist-Leninist" party of today. Debates were carried out in
public and nobody was ever expelled, other than Bogdanov. Even after
Zinoviev, Kamenev and other central committee members broke discipline by
speaking out publicly against the October 1917 assault on the provisional
government, no trials were held .
>And when Martov
>suggested anyone with a track record of sympathy and activism might be
>allowed to join the party, Lenin rejected the notion on said grounds.
>Centralist discipline was all.
Baloney. Martov and the Mensheviks voted in favor of Lenin's organizational
proposals shortly after the famous split.
>
>Bugger that.
You need to familiarize yourself with the history of the Bolshevik party.
Buggering won't help with that.
>
>There was a promising tide of mass revolt afoot when Lenin made his move in
>'17, and I remain to be convinced the Constituent Assembly, if supported by
>Lenin's bolsheviks (sterling contributors up to then it must always be
>remembered), might not have contributed to more sustainable and
>democratic-socialist a political culture than the one bolshevism ushered in.
Aren't you aware that Kerensky plotted with Kornilov to unleash mass murder
against the revolutionary left in the summer of 1917? All under the legal
cover of the Constituent Assembly.
> If the moment in which we live proves to be a foetal international mass
>revolt, Leninist theory might, for better or worse, have a chance in those
>parts of the world with weak governments, little international significance
>and large proportions of struggling peasants, but none at all in the core
>political economies of 2001. People just ain't what they used to be in
>these parts, and one thing I doubt we're looking for today is yet another
>bunch of vanguard elitists feeding us their gospels from on high. And even
>if Leninism did succeed in taking the moment, Kronstadt would look like a
>lover's tiff compared to what would follow. Revolution is but a means to an
>end, after all, signifying nothing in itself but what hold the manner of its
>execution has over what ensues.
There is no such thing as "Leninist theory". Lenin said that "What is to be
Done" was obsolete not five years after it was written. Within 2 years of
the victory of the 1917 revolution, he was beginning to rethink the
schematic proposals originally adopted by the Comintern as an expression of
"Leninism".
>I'm menshevik enough to suggest that we have to rely a little more on (a) a
>more socialist belief in the capacity of working people collectively to act,
>reflect, learn and decide for themselves, and (b) where the forces of
>production have taken us (no longer necessarily enslaved by dawn-to-dusk
>necessity but closer than ever to irreversible environmental species
>murder/suicide).
You are menshevik enough. In fact you are more than enough.
>
>And perhaps Leninist enough to believe Lenin would write and do things very
>differently if he were around today.
>
>Cheers,
>Rob.
>
Bugger that. It is up to people like us, not those who would light candles
at his altar.
Louis Proyect
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