> >is what a bunch of losers they look.
>
> Oh, I'll admit I'm a loser, Mark.
Well, I wasn't referring to you. I'm quite sure if you were there you'd not
have entertained them.
>
> 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.
'Bolshevism' was surely *always* hopeless in the cores, and more than that,
Bolshevism in its classic form only appeared in 1917 and was arguably
destroyed by the War of Intervention, ie, by 1921, and then promptly
re-invented by Stalin and Trotsky when they organised the 'Lenin Enrolment' of
1924, which brought huge new masses of people into the Party who had no
experience of pre-revolutionary clandestinity + exile, ie, the things which
formed Lenin and his party co-workers. The party they entered was not a
revolutionary party but an emergent state bureaucracy struggling to
consolidate and entrench, and prey to massive forces of conservatism and even
reaction. The movement they served had rededictaed the new state to the
creation of an industrial economy which meant above all the creation of a
division of intellectual and manual labour faithfully modelled upong 'best
American practice' as Stalin put it in a famous speech: ie, on the ideas of
Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henry Ford. As Lenin said before his death, we
have recreated capitalism in the absence of a capitalist state (paraphrasing
slightly). In the circumstances, and given the enormous wave of international
reaction which birthed Nazism and fascism, it is hardly surprising that the
Bolshevik project for World Revolution was still-born. BUT I still do not see,
in fact completely fail to see, why that means that Lenin's organisational
methods *before* 1917 have no validity *today*. his method, as I understand
it, was to help to energise and create huge mass movements, a huge wave of new
mass consciousness. And at the same time, to give direction and leadership to
this new force as it shouldered its way into history, and to so so by using
methods of clandestinity which were essential in the circumstances; this meant
asking Party members to participate wholly in the life of the Party, ie, to be
professional revolutionaries. All of these *general principles* seem to retain
their general validity today, but clearly have to be modified to take account
of quite drastically changed circumstances. It is not the case that we don't
have "something to lead,[..] and [..] a strategy by which you might > get
it." On the contrary, as you yoruself keep saying, there is an emergent
movement, and we do have a strategy. We have to implement it.
You tend to disregard both the degree to which Lenin was deeply and personally
committed to " a truly democratic spirit ", as you put it, and also the extent
to which Lenin and the Bolsheviks, like indeed all of exile Russian
social-democracy including the Mensheviks, was marginalised in their day even
more than we are today. And you also, IMHO, ignore the fact of historical
periodicity, of punctuation-points, quantum changes, whatever you want to call
it. Of course, if there is REALLY no problem about climate change, fossil
depletion etc, then there is no profound and emergent impasse of world
capitalism, and we shall continue to exponentially grow forever. But most of
us thisnk THAT is the self-deluding chimera which grips the modern ruling
classes, and that these issues actually embody/represent insoluble
contradictions which are certain to explode the world system and which present
unassailable obstacles to capital accumulation. No-one has yet persuaded me at
least, otherwise. George Monbiot for instance represents a strand of
eco-politics and a critique of corporate capitalism which we share many things
with, but he also believes that there are no really insoluble problems and
that things lijke climate change are actually great business opportunities for
people like windmill manufacturers. But I don't think even the most panglossia
n techno-optimists like Jesse Ausubel or the Natural Capital folks that Jo*
mentioned, can win the *technical* arguments. More growth only means that we
shall run into the greenhouse/fossil/ecocide buffers sooner rather than later.
Therefore step-changes are inevitable. Therefore revolutionary upheavals which
will consummate the destruction of world-capitalism, a transient stage in
human history, are also inevitable. Start from that, and work back.
Mark
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