> On Jan 20, 2026, at 14:05, gojko rakic via groups.io > <[email protected]> wrote: >
> Lenin did not build his party in highly organised, democratic, mass-party > Europe. > He built it in Tsarist Russia — an autocratic state marked by political > illegality, repression, absence of parliamentary democracy, weak civil > society, and a small, unevenly developed proletariat. > The conditions under which Lenin theorised and organised were therefore > Russian, not Western European. Uneven and combined development works at the level of culture and includes political theory and practice. The RSDLP had absorbed the ideas of the most developed socialist politics in Europe, and Russian leaders were recognized internationally well before the revolution such as Georgi Plekhanov in the 19th century. > Marx and Engels, by contrast, expected that in advanced capitalist societies > the working class would develop: > mass workers’ parties, > growing democratic participation, > increasing political self-activity. > For them, the starting point was always the principle that the emancipation > of the working class must be the act of the working class itself. > Organisationally, this meant that the party was the political expression of a > real mass movement, not a substitute for it. That's not the case with the RSLDP. The Bolsheviks led the mass movement. They couldn't do that and at the same time substitute themselves for it. > Communists were the most conscious part of that movement, not a separate > elite, and socialist consciousness was expected to develop through struggle > itself, within unions, political organisation, and democratic debate. People learn from their experiences, and we most importantly learn from other people. But socialist consciousness does not just arise from any struggle, such as a union struggle. I have seen in practice that trade unionism produces trade union consciousness and not class consciousness. This is a 19th century observation that originated with Plekhanov. Lenin subsequently labeled the false notion that union struggle leads to class consciousness as "economism" in What is to be Done. As regard the vanguard, Marx and Engels certainly thought that layer of the "most advanced" and "most resolute" of the working class did not all necessarily belong to the same political society or party. But Leninism of the post revolutionary period did. In addition to What is to be Done, State and Revolution is also important because it is the thesis that Lenin and the Bolsheviks abandoned when they merged the party with the state, one with an autocratic tradition, and then made the state the vehicle for carrying out the revolution. https://files.libcom.org/files/[Simon_Pirani]_The_Russian_Revolution_in_Retreat,_(b-ok.org).pdf <https://files.libcom.org/files/%5BSimon_Pirani%5D_The_Russian_Revolution_in_Retreat,_(b-ok.org).pdf> documents how Bolsheviks were removed from the shop floor and into the state bureaucracy and were backfilled by Cheka agents. Pirani studied their copious notes. The question I have is: How do we square what Lenin said they were going to do, or should do, with what they actually did. > They explicitly rejected conspiratorial models and never argued that workers > could not rise beyond trade-union consciousness. > Lenin’s theory of a party of professional revolutionaries, especially in What > Is to Be Done?, > represents a qualitative shift: socialist consciousness is introduced from > outside the spontaneous movement, There's no spontaneous consciousness that stumbles on effective class-struggle strategy and tactics. If there were, we wouldn't have been losing so many battles in 21st century US against globalism, Iraq, Afghanistan, Wall Street, police brutality, Palestinian genocide, ICE raids, aggression against Venezuela and Cuba, etc. If all we needed was struggle then we would know something, but we don't know how to build an anti-Trump strategy to win. I think we in the US are repeating the mistakes of the recent past rather than reevaluating past losses, and rather than studying the victories of 50 and 60+ years ago for guidance today. We lost our traditional organizations of struggle and have lost the consciousness part of "spontaneous consciousness." To get to "socialist consciousness," as you call it, we need to develop class consciousness, which will require both struggle and study. From the start, Marx and Engels saw their roles as educators and expected workers' political organizations to educate workers in political practice as well as in history and theory. I think Hari has a valid argument that Lenin continued a tradition started by Marx and Engels, and now I know why he was arguing that. Maybe it was for you, Gojko. > and a tightly organised, centralised vanguard is required to lead the class. The "vanguard" is not a working-class elite any more than literate workers often get placed in better positions with more responsibility, or a worker with organizational skills might lead a crew. Lenin's vanguard are from working-class families with working-class concerns. But they are not the people who poured into the Soviet Union Communist Party in the 1920s, which is where I think was as big a factor in the degeneration of the Russian Revolution as Trotsky, Deutscher, Pirani, and others have written. > > So while Lenin’s model may have been historically intelligible in Russia, it > cannot be treated as a universal Marxist norm. In societies with legal > political activity, mass unions, and some democratic space, Marx’s emphasis > on mass, democratic workers’ self-organisation becomes more relevant, not > less. To recognise this is not to reject Lenin historically, but to refuse > turning Russian exceptionalism into Marxist orthodoxy. I think that train has left the station. thanks for your thoughts. Mark > _._,_._,_ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40300): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40300 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/117257520/21656 -=-=- 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]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
