Re: [Marxism] Goodbye to Leninism
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. * Isn't this really one of those terms that has been so severely misrepresented and abused--by its advocates as well as critics--that the most honest solution would be to set it aside in the interest of clarity? All political vocabulary drifts and smudges itself in the press of events. Time just exaggerates the process. And it's all particularly true of terms that aren't defined in the concrete practices and policies of institutions with power behind them. So, what do the defenders of Leninism and advocates of the Leninist party mean whey they use those terms? The same as Bob Avakian? Jack Barnes? Lenin? ML _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Goodbye to Leninism
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. * Isn't this really one of those terms that has been so severely misrepresented and abused--by its advocates as well as critics--that the most honest solution would be to set it aside in the interest of clarity? All political vocabulary drifts and smudges itself in the press of events. Time just exaggerates the process. And it's all particularly true of terms that aren't defined in the concrete practices and policies of institutions with power behind them. So, what do the defenders of Leninism and advocates of the Leninist party mean whey they use those terms? The same as Bob Avakian? Jack Barnes? Lenin? ML Why not say the same of Marxism? Is it what Kautsky said it was? Lenin and Trotsky? Kim Il-Sung? The fact is that, from 1903 to 1917 and after, in Russia and abroad, Lenin waged a fight for a certain kind of politics and party. We may legitimately debate the relevance of his fight to contemporary conditions. But there are nevertheless a number of political positions and practices which were distinctively his, and quite justly associated with his name. Would not dropping the term Leninism be a step toward depriving Lenin of his rightful historical place? Jim Creegan _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Goodbye to Leninism
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. * I'm not sure that the position Karl Kautsky took on this a century ago is relevant, but, for the record, he claimed to be a Marxist. In fact, most people in the world at that time who called themselves Marxists would have read, known of, and agreed with Kautsky rather than Lenin on most of the questions you see as important. So what? I think it's absurd to think that that tells us something about who may have been right or not on those questions. It's perfectly possible for people to develop sound class politics without having to had your new members classes and using the terminology with which we'd be comfortable . . . which is ultimately came from the experience of a very distinct and narrow section of the international working class . . . . Didn't Victor Serge approach these those questions without following the line of apostolic succession? As far as that goes, didn't Malcolm X? Geronimo? Victoria Woodhull? John Brown? What concerns us shouldn't be securing anybody's rightful historical place--and this is coming from a historian. Historical questions are ultimately not determinants. To paraphrase Marx, this point is not how we understand history but how we can make it. ML _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Goodbye to Leninism
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. * On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 5:53 PM, Charlie via Marxism marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu wrote: . . . Cuba survived independent of imperialism and took the socialist road because the Castro group and the Communists merged fairly soon after liberation. . . . You could argue that the July 26th movement's 'merger' with the USSR-connected Popular Socialist Party two-and-a-half years after the revolution was responsible for revolutionary Cuba's survival in the sense that this diplomatic bow to the Soviet Union was helpful in assuring continuing international aid and support from the Soviet bloc. But the July 26th movement leadership made sure to keep the PSP in a subordinate domestic political role through many years of rough relationships in a process of integration (as manifest in the Escalante case to which Louis refers) that eventuated in officially founding the Communist Party of Cuba in October 1965. I think that it wasn't until after the first congress of the Communist Party of Cuba met in 1975 that the CCP, with the former PSP successfully integrated, functioned as the ruling government party. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Goodbye to Leninism
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. * Whatever the particulars of how it happened in Cuba, a revolution must get a Leninist party as soon as possible if it is to survive the inevitable counterrevolutionary assault. Building a party that is socialist in goal yet suffers illusions of relying on spontaneity (a pluralistic and transparent mass party) complicates the inevitable task of changeover at best, suffers the fate of Allende at worst. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Goodbye to Leninism
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. * On 11/15/14 5:57 PM, James Creegan via Marxism wrote: Lenin was attempting to build a revolutionary socialist party. I did not say that Lenin was trying to build something like Syriza in Russia. There was no Syriza at the time. Alex Tsipras had not yet been born, as far as I know. Lenin was trying to build something like Kautsky's party: Why is there not a single political event in Germany that does not add to the authority and prestige of the Social-Democracy? Because Social-Democracy is always found to be in advance of all the others in furnishing the most revolutionary appraisal of every given event and in championing every protest against tyranny...It intervenes in every sphere and in every question of social and political life; in the matter of Wilhelm's refusal to endorse a bourgeois progressive as city mayor (our Economists have not managed to educate the Germans to the understanding that such an act is, in fact, a compromise with liberalism!); in the matter of the law against 'obscene' publications and pictures; in the matter of governmental influence on the election of professors, etc., etc. --What is to be Done _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Goodbye to Leninism
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. * On 11/15/14 7:53 PM, Charlie via Marxism wrote: Cuba survived independent of imperialism and took the socialist road because the Castro group and the Communists merged fairly soon after liberation. During the 1930s the Popular Socialist Party, the official Stalinist group, supported Fulgencio Batista about whom secretary-general Blas Roca said “When Batista found the path to democracy, the party helped him.” Batista returned the favor and enjoyed a close relationship to the party. Two PSP'ers became part of Batista’s cabinet in 1942. This was all part of the Popular Front strategy that in the USA was implemented as tail-ending FDR, including support for putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Batista left office in 1944 but returned as a dictator in 1952. While opposing the takeover, the PSP continued to operate as a reform-oriented housebroken opposition party. It reserved most of its zeal to be used against the youthful guerrillas led by Fidel Castro who were described as “putschists” after the 1953 attack on the Moncada. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Goodbye to Leninism
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. * Some perspective on Louis' canned judgments of Cuban history: Blas Roca, Cuban Communist And Party Theoretician, Dies NY Times, April 27, 1987 Blas Roca, a leading theoretician of the Cuban Revolution who led Cuba's prerevolutionary Communist Party, died Saturday in Havana. The Cuban Government declared three days of official mourning, Reuters reported from Havana. More than 100,000 mourners stood waiting overnight to view the body of Mr. Roca. The Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, was among those who came to pay his respects. Mr. Roca, who was born Francisco Calderio in the eastern Cuban city of Manzanillo, left school at the age of 11 and began shining shoes to help support his poor family. Mr. Roca was imprisoned three times in the 1930's for his anti-Government activities and later served 12 years in the Cuban legislature. Although Mr. Roca and the Communist Party supported Gen. Fulgencio Batista when he was elected in 1940 to a four-year term as President, they later broke with him and opposed a military coup in which he returned to power in 1952. Mr. Roca led Cuba's clandestine Communist movement during the dictatorship under which General Batista ruled from 1952 to 1958. The Communists differed initially with Mr. Castro's efforts to bring General Batista down through guerrilla war, but reconciled with Mr. Castro. Mr. Roca served from 1976 through 1981 as president of the National Assembly of Popular Power. Excerpted from: http://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/27/obituaries/blas-roca-cuban-communist-and-party-theoretician-dies.html _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Goodbye to Leninism
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. * On 11/16/14 11:42 AM, Charlie via Marxism wrote: Although Mr. Roca and the Communist Party supported Gen. Fulgencio Batista when he was elected in 1940 to a four-year term as President, they later broke with him and opposed a military coup in which he returned to power in 1952. Mr. Roca led Cuba's clandestine Communist movement during the dictatorship under which General Batista ruled from 1952 to 1958. The Communists differed initially with Mr. Castro's efforts to bring General Batista down through guerrilla war, but reconciled with Mr. Castro. This is exactly the point I made. Communists had no business supporting Batista, nor did they have any business denouncing the guerrillas as putschists. Furthermore, the reconciliation wasn't long-lasting. In the early days of the revolution, the Cubans had to deal with an out of control Stalinist faction led by Anibal Escalante, Blas Roca's comrade. Here is Castro on Escalante: http://www.walterlippmann.com/fc-03-26-1962.html We reached the conclusion, we were all convinced, that compañero Anibal Escalante, abusing the faith placed in him, in his post as Secretary in Charge of Organization, followed a non-Marxist policy, followed a policy which departed from Leninist norms regarding the organization of a workers' vanguard party, and that he tried to organize an apparatus to pursue personal ends. We believe that compañero Anibal Escalante has had a lot to do with the conversion of sectarianism into a system, with the conversion of sectarianism into a virus, into a veritable sickness during this process. Compañero Anibal Escalante is the one responsible for having promoted the sectarian spirit to its highest possible level, of having promoted that sectarian spirit for personal reasons, with the purpose of establishing an organization which he controlled. He is the one responsible for introducing, in addition, a series of methods within that organization which were leading to the creation, not of a party — as we were saying — but rather of a tyranny, a straitjacket. (clip) _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
