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On 7/2/18 9:31 AM, Jason wrote:
The revisionist strategy was that they left "electors free to vote for
any liberal candidate they liked" versus the left strategy of 1) having
conditions [such as that the liberals were for universal suffrage] and
2) it being a party decision and a question of discipline.
As that passage says: "The left, like the left in other parties, did not
refuse, during the course of the elections, to support liberal
candidates who took a stand in favour of universal suffrage against
property-based electoral rights." Rosa Luxemburg supported this
explicitly (see The Letters Of Rosa Luxemburg, pages 185-7).
So, 113 years ago, the left-wing of the Dutch social democracy said it
was acceptable to vote for liberal candidates but only on the basis that
they were for universal suffrage. When universal suffrage in the USA is
abolished and we return to voting based on property rights, I too will
vote for any liberal who supports a return to universal suffrage.
So the left strategy was that socialists were *under discipline* to vote
for *certain* liberals. The revisionist strategy was that socialists
were "free" to vote for any liberal, some of whom did not support
universal suffrage.
And on your other email about the British Labor Party: again, feel free
to engage with Lenin's argument here:
https://www.communist-party.org.uk/76-m-l-education/1933-lenin-on-labour-speech-on-affiliation-to-the-british-labour-party.html.
It is generally a mistake to quote Lenin chapter and verse, especially
when you can find statements that are contradictory. In 1922, just two
years after the one you refer to above that characterizes Labour as
"bourgeois", you can read the Communist recommendation of the workers
government that was a departure from the ultraleft past. Keep in mind
that the Comintern was deeply involved with the disastrous March Action
in Germany that literally acted on the premise that Social Democratic
workers were counter-revolutionary. It was the blow to German Communism
that compelled a different road, incorporated in the United Front that
Paul Levi fought for, and the workers government that was an extension
of the United Front.
All you need to do is read Theses on Comintern Tactics from 1922
(https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/4th-congress/tactics.htm)
to a different take on the Second International and Labour:
"In place of a bourgeois/social-democratic coalition, whether open or
disguised, Communists propose a united front involving all workers, and
a coalition of all workers’ parties around economic and political
issues, which will fight and finally overthrow bourgeois power.
Following a united struggle of all workers against the bourgeoisie, the
entire state apparatus must pass into the hands of a workers’
government, so strengthening the position of power held by the working
class."
also:
"The first two types of workers’ governments (the workers’ and peasants’
and the social-democratic/Communist governments) fall short of
representing the dictatorship of the proletariat, but are still an
important starting-point for the winning of this dictatorship."
Get it? Workers parties? That meant the Communists AND those parties
that the idiotic ultraleftists operating under Bela Kun's putschist
conceptions considered "bourgeois" just two years earlier.
So funny that someone so bent on proving Lenin was in favor of Menshevik
electoral strategy would cite something he wrote in 1920 that reflected
ultraleft thinking in the Kremlin. Maybe, not so funny.
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