Radicals in a Box Goodbye Lenin by LOUIS PROYECT I hope that CounterPunch readers will forgive me for taking valuable time away from my film reviews of neglected treasures while I answer one of my critics from the “Leninist” left. As it happens, Paul Le Blanc, the International Socialist Organization’s avuncular scholar of Bolshevik history, devoted pretty much of a whole chapter to me in his latest book “Unfinished Leninism” (the chapter has the same title) and I would like the opportunity to use CounterPunch for my reply.
I am not accustomed to answering points made in a book but since many of the arguments about what Lenin stood for and whether he has any relevance for today’s left take place in books and in Historical Materialism, a high-toned print journal behind a paywall, I really have no choice. As a strong believer in the Internet, I would prefer to debate there since I see it as the modern counterpart of the Gutenberg press, the primary means of communication of our rebel forerunners. My guess is that if the quarrelsome Lenin were alive today, he would be conducting his debates on the Internet as well. As a history professor, Le Blanc is obviously much more comfortable holding forth from a lectern or the printed page. That’s true for the rest of the ISO as well that sees the Internet as a necessary evil. As a handy tool to distribute an electronic version of their print publications, it would be much better if it weren’t a breeding ground for bilious critics and those who circulate their top-secret internal bulletins. In the introduction, Le Blanc recollects what his trade union organizing father once told him: “Lenin was tough, and he was for the workers.” That certainly captures the image cultivated by the veteran Trotskyists I met as a young recruit in 1967, particularly Farrell Dobbs, the former teamsters organizer. His prize pupil Jimmy Hoffa once said: “The Trots taught me everything I know about union organizing.” That became a powerful mystique working on a 22-year-old philosophy student like me. A decade later it was the same Farrell Dobbs who helped turn the Socialist Workers Party into a workerist sect. The same flinty disposition that helped him to organize the teamsters came in handy when bulldozing almost two thousand young socialists into a foolish “colonizing” expedition targeting American factories and mines. full: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/13/goodbye-lenin/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
