Charles writes: >On the other hand, statues or icons of Lenin in the Soviet Union were the opposite of harmless for the bourgeosie when the Red Army defeated Nazis and the Viet Namese defeated the US imperialists or the Cuban revolution, etc, etc.< I thought it was the Soviet workers and peasants (and Vietnamese & Cubans of similar classes) who did the defeating. But it is true that > The role of the statues in the Soviet Union generally depends on how one evaluates the history of the SU in the world revolutionary struggle, but I'm not sure that's a discussion for now.< >An interesting case is that Lenin "himself" is sitting up there in Red Square still. One might say he's harmless since he's dead, but I like to think it means that capitalism can't really, fully have come to Russia. If the bourgeoisie were really, firmly in control, wouldn't they bury the body ? I guess you could say it is used to placate the masses. Anyway, going with your argument, Lenin's general statement would be true about himself too,no ?< I think that capitalism will have been restored to Russia (or has already been restored) when capitalist wage labor has become general, with the vast majority of the working population dependent for their survival on a small minority of the population that owns the means of production as private property. It's true that Lenin as a symbol can mobilize the opposition to capitalism's extension and consolidation (an opposition that will always be there) -- but symbols have often been used for other purposes than hoped for, as when the Sparts use the hammer and sickle. The same source as the "pigeons" quote said that Lenin wanted to buried like anyone else. Barkley writes: >State and Revolution_ was very approved in the old USSR and probably Lenin's most widely read and cited work there, easily exceeding anything by Marx who had more forbidden works than did Lenin. Actually, among political economists in those days it was pretty hard to get anything published if you failed to quote dear old Vladimir somewhere and somehow, however irrelevantly. No such requirement existed for quotations by Marx.< I guess you're right about S & R, since you're more informed about the old USSR than I am. Perhaps my informant (who is a Russia expert, a political scientist named Don Van Atta) said one could get into trouble by quoting Marx and I misremember it. He also said that almost every academic work would start with a (usually irrelevant) quote from Lenin and then proceeded to talk about whatever the work purported to discuss. Ken Hanley writes: >Are you sure about the significance of the pigeon remark? As I recall, Lenin was not being anti pigeon-rights but pro pigeon-rights. He thought statues were the natural and proper receptacle for pigeon droppings. No?< I think it's time to struggle to develop the correct proletarian position on these flying rats. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html "Society gets the criminals it deserves." -- Emma Goldman.
