G'day Jim, Lou and all,
>Lenin, Plekhanov, Kautsky, and the other Social Democrats were
>arguably simply reiterating Marx's own position on the development
>of socialist consciousness. Didn't Marx in the Communist
>Manifesto emphasize the importance of defections of sections
>of the intellectuals from the bourgeoisie to the side of
>the proletariat as being an important factor in the development
>of proletarian class consciousness? As I recall this was one
>issue that set him apart from anarchists like Bakunin who
>preferred to emphasize spontaneity to the exclusion of almost
>everything else.
Well, whilst I do profess a certain guilty soft spot for Bakunin, I was not
suggesting there be no place for intellectuals (and why are they necessarily
bourgeois?) or party organisations, just suggesting we reappraise the role,
status and composition of such a party, its stance towards other parties,
and stuff like scope for differences on such criteria across
space/culture/political economies (especially given that we might be
discussing a transnational entity). I also don't really know what stuff
like "Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound
scientific knowledge" might be construed to mean in practice (personally,
I'm not sure I know what it means in theory). It certainly has the
potential to ignore constituencies, narrow debate, antagonise friends,
marginalise issues, criminalise dissentors, and, oh, mebbe dry up into a
static one-sided bureaucratic terror ...
I'm not saying that was or would be anyone's intention. Just that it was
and will always be a problem of sufficient magnitude to warrant cool and
comradely disussion in a convocation as diverse and potentially fruitful as
this.
Cheers,
Rob.
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