Mark, the *reason* why the Communist Party became not only the sole party in the USSR (beginning in the summer of 1918 around the start of the Civil War) but that it became part of the program had to do with the experiences of the Soviet government and the Party during that Civil War. What I had noticed increasingly is Trotsky's reliance more and more on the Bolshevik Party/CP as the war progressed and the Soviet government failing time and again to raise the human and material resources to prosecute the defense of the Soviet government as time wore on. The it was the Civil War and not any predilection toward party dictatorship that the now totally CP dominated government as the main material cause of the rise of bureaucratic rule by the Party. Trotsky would write over and over again to the soviets to provide these resources. The was a slow drift for him to appeal to the Party for mobilizing members and workers to join the Red army...and not the institution of workers rule that increasingly failed to provide what was needed.
I believe, at least on Trotsky's part, that the increasing reliance on the faster acting Party cadre...faster than the soviets where the Communists dominated (though never completely into the mid-1920s)...that developed this "only the party" perspective we saw. I believe this developing within the Communist Party that only the Party can successfully defend the state (in all layers of Soviet society) and this is the origin of the single-party state we saw develop. This resulted, IMO, from the terrible situation that developed during the Civil War where the most of the peasant dominated nationalities did NOT side with the Reds during the Civil War. And that is one of the main these developed, correctly IMO, by Eric Blanc in his writings on the national question in Russia before the Revolution. and that, too, is another question. The issue of the U.S. SWP has to do with Zinovievist perspective of the world Communist movement that the SWP was begat from. It has to do with the fact that ever single self-described "Leninist" party, Stalinist or Trotskyist developed from, was based on the organizational forms of the Russian Communist Party during the situation I described above AFTER 1917. Not a single one models themselves on the Bolshevik Party that lead the first workers revolution to victory, which was quite a different party. David -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#34564): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/34564 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/109913252/21656 -=-=- 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/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
