>is what a bunch of losers they look.
Oh, I'll admit I'm a loser, Mark.
>The lesson is that
> failed revolutions do not give rise to social-democratic social peace, they
> open the door to black reaction.
Sadly, the erstwhile Soviet Union is now one of the examples with which to
support this proposition.
>Social-democracy, of the kind Rob seems to preach, is a phenomenon of >core
countries, ie of big imperial states who need
> to strike a deal, or make a 'historic compromise', with "their" >working
>classes.
I am under no illusions on this. That is what social democracy has proven
itself to be in the time and place it had its chance. And now the need for
that compromise is evidently not felt by capital - or they felt it could not
be afforded. Whatever the case, you're demonstrably right.
>Thus, social-democracy at home and imperial plunder overseas always
> went together, and still do go together.
Yep. It seems tenable that the compromises which define social democratic
core political economies are possible only where and while values can be
extracted from from the 'periphery'.
> Of course, history is a baleful dialectic of what-ifs: for instance, if in
> 1917 (at the height of the First World War, with bloody stalemate in the
> trenches), there had been no Bolshevik revolution to scare the pants off the
> vengeance-seeking British and French, they would have never agreed to
> Armistice with the Kaiser's Germany: they would have fought on until
> unconditional surrender, as they did in 1945. But in the conditions of 1918,
> it is at least likely that such a cataclysmic continuation of the war would
> have plunged Germany into the abyss, and what was the failed revolution of
> Karl Leibknecht/Rosa Luxemburg might have become a *successful* revolution:
> the epicentre of class struggle then would have moved west, from Petrograd to
> Berlin, with incalculable consequences.
Incalculable, of course. But I'm menshevik enough to believe Germany was the
big chance for the world left.
> A successful *German* revolution on the back of a failed *Russian* revolution,
> reversing the actual course of events, is a what-if scenario few have toyed
> with; but such an outcome might have been much more of a death-blow to world
> capitalism than was the actual course of events.
I agree again.
>Thus it can by hypothesized
> that Lenin's successful rising in October 1917, far from triggering >World
>Revolution as he hoped, had the exact opposite effect, because >it forced the
>warring imperialist powers to call a truce, and once the >Armistice was declared and
>the carnage in the trenches, and hunger in >the great German cities, was stopped,
>the moment for revolution in >western Europe swiftly passed.
I often dwell on this, too. Still, each actor has to go with what's
available, eh?
>Nonetheless, I am sure Lenin was right to do as he did and make the
> October Revolution, (still the greatest single event in history), because none
> of us are seers and no-one, even Lenin, has the right to second-guess history.
> Lenin was right to lead the (at times unwilling, leaden-footed) Bolsheviks
> into battle. He was not in Germany, he was in Russia, and that was where his
> work as a practical revolutionary, and his duty in fact, both lay.
Yeah, but as Lenin had to act as he did then and there, so must we act where
and when we find ourselves. Bolshevism is hopeless in the core at the moment,
and has demonstrably been so for a long time.
> The Mensheviks on the other hand are condemned by their own cowardice, bytheir
> fatal inability to rise to the occasion, their hopeless lack of
> responsibility. They abdicated their leading role, in practice by July 1917
> and long before that, in theory. They could not *lead*. This is really what
> Lydia Dan *herself* admits to: a very damning admission before the bar of
> history.
Well a leader needs courage and responsibility. S/he needs something to lead,
too. You don't have that, and you don't have a strategy by which you might
get it.
> >The first comment she makes, by the way, seems to imply the
> > opposite, i.e. , Lenin sees a role for types of people that she
> > seems to disdain in an elitist way.
Well, in the core today, I believe only a truly democratic spirit can hope to
prevail. We have to take as our point of departure the liberal formalisms
most of us have thoroughly internalised. That's easy for me, because I'm all
for them. Lend substance to what we take to be our definitive rights - that's
how I see our catch-cry.
> Exactly so: on the one hand, the Mensheviks disbarred the workers from
> *politics*, arguing "the time is not right"; and on the other, they (the
> Mensheviks) sat around wringing their hands whenever a *political* crisis
> happened, saying in effect "we intellectuals have no right to give orders".
Well, then I'm more liberal than the mensheviks, coz I don't think we'll ever
get anywhere without workers seeing politics (in its broadest sense) as their
right and responsibility from the off.
>As I understand , this is exactly the point which Slavoj
> Zizek has grasped; but unfortunately for him, revolutionary parties >are not
>seminars, and revolutions are not tea-parties.
Nope, revolutions are traumatising things. But a kernel of 'professional
revolutionaries', working out the correct line within its own firewalls, only
works in worlds like ours when you've the resources the last team to have
tried it (the social-democracy-destroying US bourgeoisie in the early 1970s)
had available to it (status, media, money, thinktanks, pet pollies, and
marines). The left is obliged to look for its tools and strategies elsewhere.
I don't ignore history, Mark and Chas, but I do seem to take very different
lessons from it.
Best to all,
Rob.
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