>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/07/01 09:14AM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
> CB: You buy this based on the statement of the wife of his mortal
> enemy ?
I think you're missing the point a little here.
((((((((
CB: Good. I know we probably agree on something like this. I'll focus in....
Mark: "What's interesting about Haimson's book, which is supposed to be a
sympathetic account of Menshevik lives, is what a bunch of losers they are..."
CB:look.I see ....clip down to...
Mark: 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.
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. 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.
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CB: This is a plausible historical counterfactual. What is "interesting" or scary to
me is that Engels and Marx's "rigid" notion that the rev must take place in "advanced"
capitalist countries is SORT OF affirmed by history. The bourgeoisie were able to
finesse the "premature" Russian rev into a significant defeat of the worldwide rev in
the long run ( but not permanently).
Do we learn something from this for the next 7 League Boots step of the working class
? Seriously, isn't our "job" on this to learn from the trial and error ? At this
point, I only draw the conclusion that the bourgeoisie are even more treacherous than
even Lenin prepared us for. They forced the SU and Leninist parties into
self-defensive militarism to the point that miltarism undermined the minimum democracy
that socialism needs to survive. The bourgeoisie used the fact that socialism must
have more democracy than capitalism, is more democracy-sensitive than capitalism to
drag socialism down to a low level of democracy such that socialism "suffocated" from
lack of democracy. So, I only come up with, as a lesson, that we must synthesize the
contradiction of "democratic centralism" at an even sharper level of contradiction -
democratic militarism ! more democracy , yet more militarism. Perhaps Chavezism.
The leaders will have to be professional military officers, yet dedicated to mass
plebisites as may be happening in Venezuela. ( This is my thinking out loud, you
understand).
Anyway, I think staightup, the bourgeoisie won the first round by war and terror. The
internal errors were derivative and secondary.
((((((((((((
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.
(((((((((((
CB: Agree. Russian Revolution did trigger the enormous National Liberation of the Old
Colonial System, world historic. Anyway it is not certain that there would have been a
rev in Germany , if there had not been one in Russia ( and I know you know that , even
as you posed the historical counterfactual).
((((((((((
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.
((((((((
CB: I still don't want to let the Mensheviks get away with claiming to be more
democratic than the Bolsheviks. The Menesheviks didn't even have the cleaverness to
get out of the name "Minorityists" and let their opponents get the name
"Majorityists". That is evidence of lack of democratic consciousness, since majority
rule is the vulgar democratic principle. I can just imagine Lenin putting that move on
them.
((((((((((
>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.
Indeed, you are right, and everything she says in her weaselly way, has to be
read like mirror-writing.
> Secondly, a central issue in
> _What is to be done ?_ is Lenin arguing that workers should be
> involved in politics and the Mensheviks (Economists , anyway)
> arguing that they shouldn't, but should be represented by the
> intellectuals in politics.
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".
Thus is the Judas-song of petit-bourgeois treason, which is always sung to the
music of sanctimonious self-justification and toe-curling hypocrisy, salted
with a resolute refusal to carry words into deeds and to *take
responsibility*. 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.
Mark
BTW In an earlier posting, I called Jo, June, in error. Sorry.>
((((((((((
CB: Onward, Comrade.
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