Most of the other active contributors on the list are convinced Leninists, Gojko, the majority sympathetic to Trotskyism but also some, as we know, great admirers of Stalin. You might say I’ve become what I used to disparage as a “vacillating centrist”. I’ve been having this debate in my head about Leninism since the reinterpretation or rejection of the orthodox Marxist view about the Bolsheviks by Lars Lih and younger activists around Jacobin and New Socialist who have rehabilitated the “renegade Kautsky” and his criticisms of the 1917 seizure of power.
I posted the Rooksby article because it’s another strong summary of their position, and I'm now eager to see whether and how one or more of the more outspoken Leninists from either tendency takes on the notion that the Bolsheviks never led a “workers state” and that it was an historically premature mistake to have installed a “proletarian dictatorship” in a backward society where the material conditions for socialism weren’t “ripe”. The collapse of the USSR and Soviet bloc in the early 90’s is what has made many revisit the issue. FWIW, my own view remains that the Bolsheviks reasonably expected that their actions would trigger a world revolution which would come to their aid, even though in hindsight we can see how they disasterously underestimated the capacity of capitalism to not only steady itself through multiple crises but to further expand its domination of the world economy. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29542): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29542 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/104961025/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
