| Theory |
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Leninism: A Radical Middle Class Ideology January 1, 2006 by RedStar2000 |
Here is a long collection of many (though not all) of my recent posts against Leninism.
I make something explicit here that I've been "going towards" for a long time...without entirely grasping my destination along the way.
In the Marxist paradigm, the petty-bourgeoisie (middle class) is a class that is always "in decay"...a few "move up", many "move down", and the remainder spend a good deal of time hoping for the former and worrying over the latter.
Such a class generates a small number of "radicals" just in the process of existing in such an uncertain environment. Most of them drift to the right of the political spectrum...but some of them move to the left.
It's my contention in these posts that this is the class basis for the paradigm that we call Leninism.
A really thorough class analysis of the leaderships of all the Leninist parties in the last century is, of course, beyond my capabilities. I'm working primarily from direct observation in the U.S. and some of the histories of prominent Leninist parties that I've read over the years.
But I think I'm "onto something" here...and I think future research will support my contentions to the hilt.
See what you think.
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It looks to me like any young and aspiring revolutionary reading this thread would end up even more confused than when they started.
We see here a series of competing visions of what forms a post-capitalist society might assume in the immediate post-revolutionary period.
Boiling away all the rhetoric, it seems to me that there are "two camps" in this controversy.
1. The working class "needs" an elite (or vanguard) to "rule them" for "their own good"...until such time as they become "capable" of self-government.
2. The working class is "fit" to "rule itself" from the very beginning and must do that.
The phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" has been appropriated by all the various Leninists to describe the first option.
But, in my view, Marx and Engels supported the second option...and that's what they really meant by that phrase.
But even here, keep in mind that we are not "obligated" to take anyone's word for this stuff.
The shape of post-capitalist society will be determined by those who actually participate in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.
If they want a new society actually run by the working class, then that's what they'll try to establish.
If they want a society that's like what we have now -- only the vanguard party replaces the capitalist class -- then they'll try to establish that.
If the working class as a whole wants to "run things", then they'll do it!
If all they want is a more "benevolent" despotism, then they'll elevate someone (and his party) to that position and sink back into passive servility.
So what it really boils down to is what do you want?
What kind of society would you like to see replace the existing despotism of capital?
What is "worth" devoting your time and energy to struggle for...maybe for your whole life?
The Leninists of all varieties successfully convinced an entire century's worth of young revolutionaries that "communism is impossible" and "therefore" they must "be satisfied" with a "well-meaning" party despotism.
Well, are you "satisfied" with that?
Or will you be "down for the real thing"?
You have plenty of time to consider the matter; proletarian revolution is still many decades in the future...obviously!
What your decision does affect is what you tell other people right now.
If you tell them that communism is possible, then you contribute to the spread of communist ideas throughout the population (even if your contribution is "too small to measure").
If you tell them that "the party must rule", then you delay the spread of communist ideas...even if that delay is also "too small to measure".
What each of us chooses is, historically speaking, "too small to measure". But what actually happens in history is a product of hundreds of millions of such individual choices.
So think it over as carefully as you can.
The future depends on it.
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First posted at RevLeft on November 30, 2005
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quote:
The revolutionary party is not an 'elite', to call it so means you either don't understand the dynamic between party and class or you don't know what the word means.
Does the phrase "the leading role of the party" ring a bell?
Leninism (all versions) insists on that! It's their core value.
From Lenin himself...
quote:
But the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class.
The Trade Unions, The Present Situation and Trotsky's Mistakes 12/30/1920
The word "elite" may offend you...but I think most readers will find it eminently suitable.
quote:
Why did they [Marx and Engels] spend their whole political lives getting involved in parties with identifiable political structures, then? For kicks?
History is not, I take it, one of your strengths.
Marx and Engels were "involved" with German Social Democracy only in the sense of writing articles for the social democratic press and offering "advice" to some of the actual leaders of that party. They were never "party bureaucrats" themselves.
The First International was not "a vanguard party" in any sense of the word. It was a federation of small political groups and some very young proto-unions...and it wasn't even "Marxist" -- though Marx himself wrote many important works on its behalf.
The "Communist League" may or may not have had a "real existence"...was it entirely a "paper organization" or did it actually function like a working political group, at least in a few places? The evidence is, I think, "mixed" and highly uncertain.
A Russian Leninist back in the 1920s suggested that the "Communist League" was Marx's "early version" of a Leninist vanguard party.
If so, it is distinctly odd that neither Marx nor Engels ever publicly recommended this "form of organization" to the proletariat. They had many opportunities to "speak out" about this...in the controversies with Bakunin, for example.
But they remained silent.
Marx and Engels are on record as dismissing the efforts of "small groups" who imagine that they "can do for the proletariat" what the proletariat must do for itself.
quote:
I suppose I'm supposed to fit into the first of Red's two 'camps'...
Yes. As a self-identified Leninist-Trotskyist, you must be assumed to believe that the Party must rule.
There's no "getting out of that" except verbally...that is, a lot of "dialectical" rhetoric purporting to "explain" why party despotism is "really" proletarian rule. *laughs*
Just as Hegel "dialectically proved" that the "highest form of democracy" was the Prussian despotism.
As time passes, I think you'll discover that your "market share" is shrinking. You're still selling kerosene lamps in the age of electricity.
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First posted at RevLeft on November 30, 2005
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quote (Engels):
The organization itself was thoroughly democratic, with elective and always removable boards. This alone barred all hankering after conspiracy, which requires dictatorship, and the League was converted -- for ordinary peace times at least -- into a pure propaganda society.
Did you actually read what you posted or did you just "copy & paste"?
Where's the vanguard party in this?
A "pure propaganda society"? Without "experienced leadership" and "disciplined membership"?
My goodness!
quote:
You're one of those who continually upsets the organisation of the proletariat into a class and a party by your consistent denial of the necessity of an organisation or a party that would advance the proletarian revolution.
Wrong again. *laughs*
A New Type of Communist Organization
There is one sense in which I am guilty of what you charge me with.
I do try as hard as I can to "divide the working class" from you.
Not in a personal sense, of course. I mean by that a total rejection of the entire Leninist paradigm.
To put it crudely, you "had your chance" in the last century to "show what you could do".
No one who was not completely wacko would want to re-create the dreary despotisms of that era.
Much less actually "live" in one.
Not even you would choose such a fate.
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First posted at RevLeft on December 1, 2005
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quote (A user response to a Leninist):
Stop quoting others and write what YOU think.
Some of the Leninists here are capable of thinking through the implications of their ideology and actually applying it to real world controversies.
But others can only repeat the formulas they've learned...and "copy & paste" really is the "best they can do".
As you probably know, in Leninist practice theory is a matter that "the leaders take care of"; the ordinary Leninist foot-soldier is supposed to be content with formulas and slogans.
So when we try to actually discuss matters of controversy with them, it often has all the fascination of dropping a coin in a vending machine and receiving a predictable commodity as a result.
What I've noticed about Leninism in decay is that they've largely run out of ideas.
Particularly ideas about the future.
Some of them are still occasionally capable of a sharp critical analysis of some contemporary capitalist outrage.
But when it comes to a "vision of the future", all they can promise is a "kinder and gentler" despotism derived from Russian and Chinese sources.
And they find it "astonishing" that almost no one wants that!
My prediction is that all the remaining Leninist parties in the "west" will dwindle into tiny cults and then just disappear...possibly as soon as 2020 or so.
What will "replace" them will be an entirely new revolutionary movement that will be explicitly proletarian...with a theory derived from the most fruitful contributions of both Marx and the "anarchist tradition".
I think this is something in its earliest formative stages at this point.
But we'll see.
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First posted at RevLeft on December 2, 2005
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quote:
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is a consolidated theory of the revolutionary practices and struggles of the proletariat. It provides a clear path towards the attainment of communism.
You copied that from somebody, didn't you?
Perhaps something published by the RCP.
It has that musty odor...like a 19th century papal proclamation.
The semantic content of such assertions approaches zero...and it is so far removed from empirical reality as to be simply ludicrous.
But that's "western Maoism" for you...more and more a theology.
quote:
How about you? You can't even give one clear picture of how to attain communism.
Guilty!!!
I am not a prophet and have no interest in degrading myself to that level.
I don't know what "a clear picture of how to attain communism" is...and no one else does either.
What I do know is that anyone who claims that they "know how to attain communism" has immediately identified themselves as charlatans.
No one knows that at this point and it will likely be many decades before anyone does.
Just copying Lenin or Mao would be an act of genuinely outstanding stupidity...no significant number of modern workers would ever be so dumb.
One curious note: there do seem to still be a few people "on the left" who search for "ultimate answers" and "final truths". Maoism does provide this dubious consolation to the problems of living in an uncertain world.
But it's nevertheless sad to see people fall into that crap...even someone like you. Even you might have someday made a real contribution to proletarian revolution. Even you might have learned to actually think...instead of just regurgitating the archaic formulas of peasant revolutionaries.
Well, that's how it goes...particularly in periods of reaction like this one.
quote:
History is on our side.
What will you do, I wonder, when you find out it isn't? Will you put your tail between your legs and go crawling back to the ruling class, begging forgiveness for the "sins of your youth"?
That's what a whole lot of people who worshiped at your church did.
Or will you finally begin to use your brain and think critically about social reality?
Like Marx did.
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First posted at RevLeft on December 2, 2005
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quote:
Redstar, could you reply to this please?
Well, if Engels had "other ideas" about what the Communist League "should do" in a revolutionary period, one can only speculate about what they might have been.
To simply assume that the League "would" have metamorphosized into a "vanguard party" seeking to establish a despotism "in the name of the proletariat" may "sound logical" to a Leninist.
But there's no evidence for such an assumption.
Marx and Engels were pretty blunt about what they thought should be done...on many occasions. If they had any ideas pointing in the direction of a "vanguard party", they would have expressed them plainly.
Their complete silence about this suggests to me that they simply never thought of such a thing.
A great deal of the correspondence between Marx and Engels has been preserved and published. If they had ever even "toyed" with such a concept, how is it that nothing is found in their correspondence on the subject?
Wiggle and squirm as they might. the Leninists cannot avoid the historical fact that the "necessity of a vanguard party" was invented by their hero.
It has nothing at all to do with Marx and Engels...who, in my opinion, would have opposed the whole concept if someone had proposed it in their own lifetimes.
After all, one of the fundamental axioms of historical materialism is that history is made by the masses...not by a small group of "great men".
Leninists don't like this idea at all...since it contradicts their own evaluation of themselves.
I strongly suspect that inside every active Leninist is a "great man" trying to "emerge" to "change the world into his own image".
In the last century, this often resulted in tragedy.
Now, it's just farce. *laughs*
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First posted at RevLeft on December 2, 2005
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Hear the words of the prophet and hearken to them!
1. The capitalist system is on its final stage and on the eve of destruction.
Lenin said the same thing back in 1914. And a whole bunch of people said that back in the early 1930s...it really looked plausible then.
Now? I don't think so.
Just because we want something to happen soon does not mean that it really is going to happen soon.
2. That there is no other way now but to stage socialist revolutions everywhere and anywhere capitalist relations and productions exist.
There is no measurable support at the present time for your "socialist revolutions" in any of the advanced capitalist countries.
In the "third world", your "socialist revolutions" will inevitably be "socialist" in words and capitalist in deeds.
It's 1789 in those places.
3. That Marxism-Leninism-Maoism has consolidated all these principles and theories based on the actual struggles and confrontations of the proletariat with the bourgeois worldwide. And that it has provided the necessary experience for the proletariat to face the bourgeoisie in all battles.
I don't see that "MLM" has "consolidated" so much as a cup of coffee...so far. Your claims stand thus far refuted by ugly reality.
4. That the proletarian revolution had began.
I think you mean "has begun"...though chronological clarity has never been a strong point for those in the prophesy racket.
In any event, if you are speaking of our own era, you are just seeing visions.
At the usual risk of being called "gloomy" and "pessimistic", I frankly expect that the young readers of this board will be as old as I am now before massive proletarian revolutions take place, first in western Europe.
That's something I would very much like to be wrong about...but I don't think I am.
5. That the proletarian struggle now is not just a waiting game.
It never has been...even back in the time of Marx and Engels. There's always been "something useful" to do to advance the struggle.
Where your apocalyptic vision goes wrong is the suggestion that it's already happening.
No, it obviously isn't "happening" and it's not going to for many decades into the future.
The tone of your post could have been directly borrowed from The Book of Revelations...it demands that the reader respond at once!
Accept your vision or be eternally damned!
It's a superstitious view of reality expressed in secular terminology. Things "exist" because you say they exist.
Ok, here's my "revelation". I predict that within the next ten years, all the threads discussing Leninism-Maoism will be moved to the Religion subforum.
By that time, people will have concluded that such is their appropriate location.
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First posted at RevLeft on December 4, 2005
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quote:
When advanced sections of the working class seek to organise in order to provide leadership for the rest of the working class, is this not a positive and vital step in the revolutionary process?
We don't know since it's never happened.
The leadership in the 20th century Leninist parties nearly all came from the middle and even upper classes. There might be a "token worker" here and there...but that was about it!
Then you have the problem of what it means to organize in order "to provide leadership".
How does it promote or develop proletarian initiative to say, in effect, follow me and I'll set you free!?
That's what all the vanguard parties say; the masses "must follow the party's leadership" or successful revolution "is impossible".
The problem with "leadership" is that it generates "followership"...in other words, servility.
Even if successful, what can such a relationship create but a new form of despotism?
I have to constantly repeat Marx's "dictum" -- you are what you do!
If you're a "leader", you come to think that "nothing worthwhile" can happen unless you personally oversee it. If you're a "follower", then you come to think that "it's better to wait and see what the leader wants me to do" rather than take any initiative yourself.
This whole "mode" of behavior is a fundamental characteristic of class society.
And bourgeois pseudo-science -- like "evolutionary biology" -- even argues that this behavior is "in our genes"...that we humans are "pack animals" (like wolves or baboons) and literally "cannot" do anything on an egalitarian basis. We "have" to have "leaders"...otherwise we are "paralyzed" and "cannot act".
Ok, do you think that's true?
Most Leninists do think that it's true...or at least assume that it's true without bothering to think about it.
One Leninist -- Bob Avakian -- actually did think about it. According to the RCP's "living Marx", this leadership/followership relationship is "not genetic" but rather a product of existing class society. But he quickly goes on to add that it will take "generations of party leadership" to "train the masses" to "stop behaving like servile followers".
He does not address the contradiction inherent in such an approach. How do you "train people not to be servile" when your first lesson is follow the party's leadership?
Perhaps it's a "dialectical mystery". *laughs*
quote:
Today, we live in a period where the working class is depoliticised and disorganised - perhaps to a previously unprecedented level. Working class politics plays a very diminished role in society. At the same time, there is a consensus in society that there is no alternative to capitalism. Capitalist ideas reign supreme and are now undisputed. How will we confront this?
This is a "period of reaction"...no question about it!
But I think your picture is a little "too grim".
For one thing, the "capitalist consensus" is a bit ragged "around the edges". "Globalization" does not have a lot of "fans" these days. Imperialist wars and occupations are somewhat less popular than they used to be. Bourgeois politics are increasingly regarded as a cesspool of corruption. Class "mobility" is declining.
And one could go on.
I think a new revolutionary movement will emerge in this century. Politically, I expect it will involve a new synthesis of the best Marxist and anarchist ideas.
Most importantly, it will be overtly egalitarian as a matter of principle!
We, the workers of all the advanced capitalist countries, will simply no longer tolerate any pretense of despotism...not even from those who claim to be "enlightened" and "well-meaning".
Indeed, that conviction is an absolute prerequisite for a revolution that leads to communism.
Nothing less will do.
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First posted at RevLeft on December 15, 2005
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quote:
But how about the Black Panther Party? They didn't begin as a vanguardist group -- they began by feeding children free breakfasts. But through this bottom-up growth, from experience, they became the closest thing to an efficient and authentically Marxist vanguard group that the US has seen. The leadership there wasn't self-assigned, it was earned.
I cannot, of course, comment on the proposition that the "road to the vanguard" is social work.
But the leadership of the Black Panther Party was always self-assigned...the BPP never held even one convention of its membership.
Instead, it operated like a "franchise". The national leadership would send someone to a locality to organize a chapter. Orders came down from the top and were carried out locally. If controversies arose among the leadership, they were resolved by expulsion.
The ordinary BPP member was a "soldier"...that's all. It was neither expected nor desired that he (and it was almost always "he") should learn to think politically.
This is indeed typical of "vanguard parties"...but I think, if anything, even worse than the average "track record" of such groups.
I once actually attempted to have a political conversation with two local BPP "soldiers"...and not only were they "not interested" but actually became hostile.
To this day, I don't know if it was simply because I was a white guy...who was "just supposed to shut up and be supportive". Or if it reflected the general tone of "political" life in the BPP -- everyone is supposed to shut up and follow the leadership!
In any event, I think your evaluation of the BPP is far more favorable than their actual practices justify.
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First posted at RevLeft on December 15, 2005
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quote:
As I've said before, this is a natural and inevitable outcome resulting from the division of labour and the necessity of politics.
Bob Avakian says the same thing.
So do, in effect, all Leninists.
It "just so happens" that the "division of labor" supposedly "requires" that the self-anointed "leaders" of the working class are not workers themselves.
How convenient for those in the middle and upper classes perceptive enough to see "the writing on the wall" and "switch sides" before the flames of revolution devour their class.
They may not get to acquire as much wealth as they would have under capitalism, but at least they get to retain and even enhance their social status.
If they rise to the very highest ranks in the Vanguard Party, they even get to see their own pictures plastered on the walls.
It "beats the hell" out of actually working at a real job! *laughs*
quote:
[Avakian] is not even a Leninist, he's a Maoist - which anyone who's serious knows is a different thing altogether.
Yes, in your "private universe", the only "real" Leninists are Trotskyists...and not even all of them. *laughs*
In the real world, Maoists are just as much Leninists as all the other versions, including all the versions of Trotskyism.
As noted above, you and Avakian both agree on the "necessity" of non-workers "leading workers".
And you both have the same excuse: the "division of labor requires it".
Both of you should wear Adam Smith t-shirts when you go out in public. *laughs*
quote:
What we need is a whole generation all of leaders.
This would be regarded as a "utopian expectation" by all of the variants of Leninism.
It was, however, something of a "spontaneous" idea in the old Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)...when the media first began asking to speak with "our leaders", the response was "we're all leaders here".
I don't mean to imply that SDS was "perfectly egalitarian" or anything like that. But equality among people in the movement was a "core value" and even an integral part of our "core message".
We were not really sophisticated enough to develop this insight into a well-rounded revolutionary theory back then. The best we had were rather fuzzy notions of "participatory democracy" and a slogan: "Let the People Decide!"
Well, that happens. We were "ahead of our time" by a wide margin.
But I think that in this century, things will be different.
One reason is that the Leninists have lost their main strength. They used to be able to boast: "our way really works!" Now such a claim is met with scornful laughter.
How we will organize ourselves as a revolutionary proletariat still remains to be determined...there are a lot of complex variables that must be considered in order to "get it right".
But those who come to this board with faded xerox copies of old Leninist formulas are simply "farting in the wind".
No different, really, than if someone came here and suggested a revolutionary organization based on the principles of a "renaissance faire". *laughs*
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First posted at RevLeft on December 15, 2005
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quote:
It is true that being determines consciousness. But, it is always probable and possible to make changes.
It would be more accurate to say that consciousness changes as a consequence of the changes that take place in "being".
The "being" of the working class changes as capitalism becomes more and more a "high tech" society that actually depends more and more on proletarian initiative to remain functional.
The worker as "mindless robot" is no longer "enough" to make a "high-tech" society work.
Accordingly, the working class will come to realize that it is they who "make things run"...and will come to perceive the capitalist class as an obstacle to further economic development.
Or, as Marx put it, the "relations of production" have become "fetters" on the further development of the "means of production".
This is all terra incognito to Leninists, of course. To them, consciousness is something that you can "manufacture" according to your own "specifications".
I will tell people that they should behave like "new socialist people" and they'll do that...because I'm "the red sun in their hearts". *laughs*
quote:
Now, as the law of uneven development dictates, there is always a section of the proletariat that will arise as more advanced, more class-consciouss and more determined.
No doubt. But it beats me why you think that's going to help you.
Leninists always measure "advancement" as "willingness to join our party or at least follow it".
The lot of the "western" Maoist is "not a happy one"...and there's worse in store.
quote:
C'mon redstar. You are not refuting any argument. You are just an arrogant, name-dropping, character assassinating, idealist, retrogressive man. You are not making any progressive comment.
Since I was unfortunately not granted the genius of Marx, I do at least have one thing in common with that mighty thinker: the abuse of ignoramuses. *laughs*
That's not so bad.
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First posted at RevLeft on December 16, 2005
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quote:
Any political movement, whether it be bourgeois, Leninist, capitulationist or whatever, requires full time members....
These 'professional revolutionaries' will therefore not be workers - because they are not involved in the process of capitalist production....
Now, someone who has been raised working class may take these positions, sure. It is more likely, however, that workers will not - they have to contend with things like paying the bills and providing food. It is therefore likely, not for certain, that these positions will be filled by a certain class of people - the intelligentsia. I believe that in the case of this strata, subjective factors (ideology) can 'balance out' objective factors (class).
This is a succinct and, I think, accurate summary of the Leninist "case" for a Party despotism.
I think every Leninist would agree with this.
You see, proletarian revolution is a matter for experts...only people who've spent their lives as part of a political apparatus really "know what to do".
Having a "regular job" would just "interfere" with the acquisition of this "expertise"...so they must be paid a salary to devote all their energies to "building the Party".
"When the Party wins power", it is these "full-timers" who will move into all the traditional seats of government -- which will all be preserved in form if not necessarily in name.
It all sounds so "reasonable", doesn't it? Just a simple extension of what we already have now.
The working class works and the middle and upper class professionals manage.
And note carefully the crucial idealist assumption at the heart of Leninism: consciousness must determine being for these professional "managers" of revolution and post-revolutionary society.
Otherwise, everything turns to shit.
Leninists, if challenged on this, will retort that "if Marx and Engels could do it, why can't our whole Party do it?".
That is, they take two unique individuals and "predict" that a successful Leninist Party -- which may have millions of members -- can replicate that on a massive scale.
Just as contemporary bourgeois ideologues solemnly assure us that anybody could be the next "Bill Gates" or "Sam Walton"...if they just tried hard enough!.
If Marx was right, then the Leninist scenario is flatly impossible.
The Leninists, whose "legitimacy" is based on Marx's borrowed reputation, must make it clear that Marx was "wrong" without actually saying so.
But a careful reading of Lenin and all his heirs makes it clear that they do think Marx was wrong.
Well, was he? Can consciousness really "determine" being? On a measurable scale in the course of history?
Obviously "being" does not operate with "100% efficiency" in determining "consciousness". There are lots of "micro-causes" in the histories of any given individual that affect, to one extent or another, their "overall" outlook on life.
Individual genius, for example, can be one of those "micro-causes"...allowing some rare individuals to see somewhat "beyond" their own class/national/ethnic/cultural horizons.
The perceptible decay of their own class can be another such "micro-cause". A few of the French aristocrats of the "enlightenment" period were aware that "things could not go on like this"...and began to formulate a "proto-bourgeois" ideology without any idea that that was what they were actually doing.
In our era, only fascist ideology has openly proclaimed the idea that "consciousness determines being" on a grand scale. Given sufficient will, anything may be accomplished!
But this is a "thread" that runs through all forms of bourgeois ideology...including Leninism.
Leninism itself was a product of the "Russian enlightenment"...the cultural ferment among dissident members of the Russian aristocracy during the last half of the 19th century. The "westernizers" fought a fierce "war of ideas" against the "asiatics" -- reactionary defenders of Czarist despotism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Lenin himself "grew up" in this atmosphere and his older brother was actually hanged by the Czar.
Lenin read from this dissident literature as a youth...literature that emphasized the power of the revolutionary will. The "revolutionary virtues" were self-sacrifice, dedication, single-mindedness, absolute discipline, secrecy, etc.
Lenin turned towards revolutionary politics as a direct consequence of the murder of his brother by the old regime. What more natural than the fact that he brought with him all that he had already learned?
In time he learned to "westernize" his language -- from law school (a "hotbed" of "westernizers") and then from a few of the earliest Russian Marxists and their German "mentors".
But beneath the "language of Marxism" was always a proto-bourgeois "mind-set" that envisioned future society as an "enlightened despotism" by a small group of "wise men".
Being did determine consciousness, in Lenin's case as well as that of nearly all of his heirs.
So where does that leave us? Is it possible that ordinary working people with ordinary jobs and all the cares and stresses of ordinary life can nevertheless develop revolutionary consciousness and nevertheless effectively organize themselves and nevertheless overthrow the capitalist class and nevertheless proceed immediately to the construction of a working communist society?
All the "Wisdom of the Ages" says no. All the "Great Philosophers" say no. All the bourgeois "social scientists" say no.
And all the Leninists -- the "Revolutionary Experts" -- join in the chorus: NO!
The voice of Marx is nearly drowned out in all the thunderous denials. He was the very first to suggest that a different answer to this question was not only "possible" but historically inevitable.
And "maybe" he was wrong...perhaps despotism and servility really are "in our genes".
But I don't think so. I think Marx was right...and history will vindicate him before this century is over.
We'll see what happens.
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First posted at RevLeft on December 16, 2005
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quote:
Then, when would that consciousness be finally realized by the proletariat?
Alas, we do not know.
And that's hard for people to "accept"...no question about it.
The transition from slavery/despotism to feudalism took centuries. The transition from feudalism to capitalism took centuries.
Why should it take markedly less time to make the transition from capitalism to communism?
It's true that capitalism itself operates at a "faster pace" than those older forms of class society.
But the human brain doesn't operate any faster; it "plods along" at the same rate that it did 25,000 years ago.
The development of revolutionary consciousness is painfully slow.
Until, of course, capitalism encounters a serious crisis...and people are compelled to critically re-examine their basic assumptions about social reality.
The last such crisis was that of the "great depression" of the 1930s...which saw an explosive growth in revolutionary consciousness in all of the capitalist countries.
The capitalist ideologues now assure us that "it can't happen ever again" and, if they've had a few drinks, that "we're all going to get richer and richer forever". *laughs*
Marx, as you know, had a different opinion.
So, in a sense, the matter reduces itself to a simple question: was Marx right about the inevitability of a terminal capitalist crisis OR can the bourgeois "experts" keep capitalism "working" no matter what?
Right now, capitalism in the advanced capitalist countries is working for the working class as a whole...and has been working for the last six decades or so. Most people presently alive in the advanced capitalist countries cannot imagine a "great depression"...much less a total collapse of capitalism.
Of course, capitalism does not work "perfectly"...especially over the last two or three decades. There have been some "losers"...and some rather sharp complaints.
We may be approaching some "interesting times".
Meanwhile, of course, the middle classes -- in decay as Marx predicted -- continue to generate a small number of people who try, in their limited ways, to construct "revolutionary perspectives".
They try to "speak" for those who "have no voice". In the "west", they mostly speak "for" the "third world" peasantry.
Thus our period of "infatuation" with "third world revolutions".
And, since some of those revolutions freely used the rhetoric and even some of the practices of Leninism, it was not surprising that Leninism itself enjoyed a "last hurrah" among those mostly middle-class "western" youth.
That is pretty much "all over with" now. None of those celebrated "third world" revolutions ever "built socialism" (much less communism) and the middle-class "left" is now mostly reformist and vaguely "anti-capitalist".
Leninist parties have declined to the level of "cargo cults" -- repeating their favorite formulas as "incantations" in the hopes that their "glory years" can be restored by just using "the right words". Only when they openly embrace reformism do they amount to anything at all...and even that is very little as reformism itself has become largely discredited among the "western" proletariat.
To imagine how the "western" proletariat will "become revolutionary" (much less when) is beyond my abilities at this time. From history, I think it will begin with outbreaks of spontaneous resistance..."riots", "wildcat" strikes and workplace occupations, protests that "turn violent", and so on. I anticipate the emergence of small groups of working class radicals...with at least some tenuous acquaintance with the ideas of Marx and perhaps of the anarchist tradition as well. They will "add pepper to the stew".
And then...
Well, I won't live long enough to see, but you might.
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I say, now is the time for the proletariat to act.
You may say whatever you wish.
Until the proletariat is ready to listen, your words are "dust in the wind".
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It is the duty of the vanguard section of the proletariat to arouse that proletarian consciousness.
They're not "proletarian" and revolutionary class consciousness is not a "spirit" to be "conjured up" by "correct ritual".
Something that you will learn in time, I think.
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On the contrary, [Lenin's] belief in the necessity of the vanguard was based precisely on the fact that working class consciousness is, in capitalist society, heavily influenced by capitalist conditions. He recognised that in capitalist society the working class necessarily acts with false consciousness.
You raise an interesting point here. Although the hypothesis of "false consciousness" enjoys wide-spread acceptance among lefties, I wonder if, strictly speaking, such a thing can exist within the constraints of the Marxist paradigm.
If the life experience of a worker "convinces her" that her own class interests are "identical with" the class interests of her ruling class, is it "false" that she "thinks that"?
After all, we cannot think of class consciousness as something that exists "up in the air" somewhere, completely independent of what people actually think, can we?
Isn't it real life experience that shows us what is really in our interests and what isn't?
For example, in my own youth it was clearly contrary to my own interests to risk getting my ass killed in Vietnam...or anyplace else that the American army might invade. So I acted in my own interest and successfully avoided conscription.
What of those who allowed themselves to be drafted or even voluntarily enlisted? For many, it was perceived as "a road out" of the ghetto, the rural south and midwest, or even perhaps a personal life that was simply "going nowhere".
And, when one is young, it's very difficult to imagine one's own death in a serious way.
Thus their being "determined" their consciousness...and for most, things probably "worked out ok" (they didn't get killed or crippled or psychologically traumatized).
When things "work out ok" in your life, is it truly "false consciousness" to prefer "things as they are"?
Contrary to Lenin, Marx hypothesized that things would not "work out ok" for the whole working class as capitalism stumbled from crisis to crisis towards the end of its viability.
And, "necessarily", a revolutionary class consciousness would spontaneously emerge.
Not because communists simply told workers that capitalism was "against their class interests" but because the life experiences of the workers had taught them that lesson first-hand.
Being would, again, determine consciousness.
To be sure, if the Leninists had ever simply confined themselves to "spreading revolutionary class consciousness", few would find much to criticize them for.
But you are well aware that such was never the case. Lenin saw political power in a bourgeois sense -- a political party forms a government which runs a state apparatus.
Thus the conceit that the Party runs things in the "real" class interests of the proletariat...a Platonic concept that has no connection with what any particular worker or group of workers might perceive as their actual class interests.
The "proles" can never be "trusted" to "get it right". They must be watched over, like "small children", and carefully "guided" for "their own good".
Should you disagree with the Party, it's because you suffer from "false consciousness". You just "don't know what's good for you!" *laughs*
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If the consciousness of the working class is mechanistically determined by their being as a class, then the working class would be automatically revolutionary, especially in times of capitalist economic crises.
Well, if we look back, we can see a marked correlation between economic crisis and increased revolutionary consciousness.
And, occasionally, even increases during periods in which there was no major crisis.
Your "mechanical" link between being and consciousness is one you made yourself. As I noted above, reality is fluid...and consciousness changes to fit real life experiences.
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German Communism was, after 1923, led by Stalinist reactionaries. Right-wing reaction spread under such conditions. Capitalist decay, which should have given way to workers' revolution, gave way to petit-bourgeois reaction in the form of the Nazis.
This illustrates the idealist character of Leninism that I have emphasized throughout this thread.
You imagine, for example, that if the "Trotskyists" had "taken over" the KPD, that they would have made a proletarian revolution (in 1933?) and "prevented" the victory of Nazism.
And if space aliens from a powerful interstellar civilization had landed in Berlin in 1936, they would have rounded up all the Nazis, cooked and eaten them. *laughs*
Like all idealists, you regard objective reality as infinitely malleable...like a soft metal that must simple be properly pounded to assume whatever shape you desire.
Ideas -- which you label "subjective forces" in order to obscure your meaning -- "determine" the outcome of history.
If you have the "correct ideas", then you can "make" history do "whatever you please".
This is a conceit shared by Stalinists, Trotskyists, Maoists...all Leninists.
They all imagine themselves standing "outside" and "above" history, cleverly pulling here and pounding there to "make" things "come out" according to "plan".
However plausible that conceit looked during the last century, it is now as credible as a dummyvision weight-loss commercial.
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The intelligentsia should not be seen as forming a separate social 'class'.
What is their relationship to the means of production? That, in the Marxist paradigm, determines their class (no quotation marks required).
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But the important thing for us is not the class to which an intellectual belongs to; the most important thing is for which class the intellectual expresses ideas in defense of.
Note again: the primacy of ideas is what is really important to Leninism (that's the "us" that is being referred to in the above quote).
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This can also be said of revolutionary party leaders. We should judge such leaders by their political policies, not by their class backgrounds. If their policies express bourgeois interests, then they are not revolutionaries and we must struggle against them. But if a leader is supporting policies that are expressions of working class interests, then that leader has aligned him or herself with the working class. That's the important thing.
Maoists use slightly different terminology to express the same idea. To them, a "personality cult" may be "good" or "bad"...depending on the ideas expressed by the "personality".
The empirically observed reality that so-called "revolutionary leaders" over time come to express ideas that represent their own "class" interests completely escapes the Leninist...usually.
True, Trotsky did observe that Stalin represented the "class interests" of a "bureaucratic caste" in the old USSR. But he carefully neglected his own role in creating that "caste" as well as maintaining the fiction that the USSR was "still" a "workers' state".
The idea was "more decisive" than the material reality.
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Due to their position in capitalist society, they are unable to see beyond capitalist society spontaneously.
Yeah. Those dummies better hurry up and follow the Party's leadership or they're really going to get fucked. *laughs*
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Without high forms of political organisation, the working class is nothing.
Well, there you have it...the real Leninist view of the working class in blunt and unmistakable language.
Without the Leninists, we "are nothing."
You know, capitalists say the same thing about us. They also claim that "without a boss, the workers are nothing".
Coincidence?
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First posted at RevLeft on December 17, 2005
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That's what I have been waiting for you to say. That you do not know when to act.
And you do?
Or at least imagine that you do?
In your subsequent paragraphs, you compare yourself, by implication, to both an architect and an experimental scientist.
I've even seen Maoists compare themselves to a team of brain surgeons. *laughs*
There are few limits to self-flattery...and sometimes none at all. Naturally those most vulnerable to this vice are idealists.
Neither their pictures of the world nor of themselves can be relied upon.
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But being against something is not necessarily the same as being for something else.
A truism.
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From historical experience, spontaneous working class demands have, on the whole, been based around reforming capitalist society.
Quite so...because they took place in a period when reform was a credible option.
Is that still true? Are there any reasons to think that it might be true again?
In my opinion, the era of "reform" is over. In fact, I expect most of last century's "great reforms" to be dismantled in capitalism's "old age".
They have become "too expensive".
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Human perceptions of objective reality, of real life, have often been wrong.
To be sure. But eventually we correct our errors, do we not?
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Where does Marx ever argue that revolutionary class conscious emerges spontaneously?
I think this view is consistent with Marx's historical materialism.
Indeed, I could easily offer a "counter-challenge"? "Where does Marx ever argue" that the working class is "only capable" of "trade union consciousness"...as Lenin proposed?
Marx made a point of saying explicitly that "the emancipation of the workers must be the work of the workers themselves."
He didn't say "the most advanced workers" or "a vanguard of professional revolutionaries" or "a great leader"...much less that it "must" be the work of "people with correct ideas".
It "makes sense" to me that revolutionary class consciousness must ultimately arise from objective conditions...like every other form of consciousness.
Discourse (or argument) simply reflects those objective conditions...and has no "independent" role.
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With the failure of the German revolution, conservative currents developed within the Soviet Union. In such conditions Stalinist ideas were given scope to triumph. And such reactionary ideas were exported to working class parties abroad - including Germany. In this sense, yes: Stalinism played a very significant role in the Nazis coming to power.
Note again: the primacy of ideas...in this case "reactionary" ideas but still ideas.
This kind of "explanation" of history comes up over and over again in the Leninist paradigm.
If only people "would listen" to "our correct ideas", then things would "be completely different".
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Objective circumstances are created and affected by human beings.
True, but they are not "created" ex nihilo. What we "create" depends on what we have already created.
You cannot make anything out of nothing.
Except ideas.
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First posted at RevLeft on December 18, 2005
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All of us who've worked for a living for any period of time have seen it.
Two guys who work for different companies...and each guy is trying to explain why "his company" (*laughs*) is a "better place to work" than the other guy's.
In "my" company, we get this...and your outfit doesn't do that!
Oh yeah? Well, at my company, we get this...and your company's never even heard of the idea.
Thus the disputes between supporters of Cuba, Inc. and the old People's China, Inc.
That bourgeois "leftists" in the U.S. indulge themselves in "Cuba-bashing" is hardly any surprise either. They also "China-bashed" while Mao was still alive and even continue the practice now.
They had and have no interest in what Cuba "is really like" or what China "was really like".
Their message is and has always been the same: It's better to reform the Empire than to overthrow it.
I do not imagine that any people on this board who are at all serious about left politics take any of their crap seriously.
Instead, what many of us think is that neither Castro's Cuba nor Mao's China are "useful models" for what we want.
Hence it is difficult to take questions like "is Cuba a socialist country or was it ever one?" very seriously.
The almost forgotten ancient meaning of the word "socialism" was an ultra-democratic state apparatus that was actually controlled directly by the working class. As Marx and Engels both pointed out explicitly, the Paris Commune was the first such state to ever exist.
No one seriously argues that such a state existed more than briefly in Russia (at best) or ever existed at all in either Cuba or China.
So the disputes really boil down to things like...
1. Which despotism was/is more "benevolent"?
2. Which despotism was/is "better" at economic development?
3. Which country was most "held back" by U.S. imperialism?
Castro's Cuba clearly "wins the prize" for "benevolence".
Mao's China clearly "wins the prize" for "well-rounded economic development".
And Cuba has suffered far more from the U.S. economic embargo than China did under Mao.
I think what is really at stake here is the unspoken assumption that we must "choose" between these or similar despotic options.
How is it that "socialism" has been degraded to the point where "all it means" is a "choice" among despotisms?
And how is that there are still people who proclaim their opposition to the despotism of capital entirely in terms of alternative despotisms?
If that's really "all there is", why bother?
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First posted at RevLeft on December 19, 2005
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The working class is unable to have correct consciousness of objective reality (i.e., revolutionary class consciousness) spontaneously.
Then the "communist project" is an exercise in futility. We will eternally be subject to the whims of despots.
All the promises of Leninism reduce to the promise to be "more benevolent emperors" than all previous emperors.
Is that worth fighting for?
Why???
Save for those who aspire to "be at court", a new emperor provokes little more than a large yawn.
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You yourself agree that spontaneous working class consciousness has never, on the whole, amounted to anything more than reformism. But you imply that this will change in the future, the working class will 'eventually correct its errors' and rid itself of false consciousness spontaneously. On what basis?
On the basis that humans learn from experience, of course.
Workers today do not believe the same things that workers of 50 years ago believed. They, in turn, did not believe the same things that workers 100 years ago believed.
And so on.
It seems to me that the working class is "losing interest" in reformism...as there is no point in fighting for the impossible. The ruling class in our era has made it clear that "reform" is "off the table", period.
Reforms are "too expensive". *laughs*
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And what is a political movement after all? It is a process through which we win people over to certain ideas - to a certain worldview.
Well, no...not really. A political movement is a reflection of ideas that material reality has already generated. It does not "win" people to its ideas but rather gathers those who already have those ideas into a unified political force.
I know that subjectively it doesn't "feel like that"...but that is nevertheless what is really happening.
For example, someone who is "doing ok" is deaf to the appeals of revolutionary ideologies. Why "fix" what "ain't broke"?
The middle classes in the "west" are classes in decay...as Marx predicted. To some of them, a "big change" is not without appeal...provided that this change would preserve their status and privileges or, better still, even increase them.
We are all aware of the appeal of Nazism to such elements back in the 1920s and 30s.
But Leninism has also successfully recruited from this "pool" in the "west". To the workers, Leninism promises a "benevolent despotism"...which has pretty much lost its appeal. But to the middle class elements of the population, Leninism promises a special role as leaders of everything.
Thus their privileges are preserved and their status is enhanced. Since the old bourgeoisie is gone, the middle classes are now indisputably "top dogs".
And the "new society"? It will be a radically reformed version of what exists now!
In fact, what I've often implied in many of my past writings should now be stated explicitly.
Leninism, properly understood, is a radical petty-bourgeois ideology.
It's real goal is the preservation of the capitalist system without big capitalists.
From a historical materialist standpoint, such a goal is quite impossible, of course. A modern class society "without big capitalists" will generate them over time...just in the normal course of its functioning.
And Leninist "consciousness" will change to "justify that" as "really progressive". *laughs*
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But surely this should make you doubt whether the SWP [U.K.] is a vanguard party at all.
When confronted with particularly reprehensible behavior on the part of a particular Leninist sect, other Leninists unanimously chorus: Oh, they're not real Leninists.
Leninist parties in the "west" spend a lot of time doing this...the bitterness of their organizational rivalries are legendary. *laughs*
It is very reminiscent of early Christianity...which featured the most venomous "faction fights" that frequently included physical violence and occasionally murder. The "battle" for "Leninist orthodoxy" has, on occasion, become a battle without the quotation marks.
Perhaps this is a further reflection of the insecurities of the petty-bourgeoisie. The "victories" of a rival sect can only be perceived as a "distinct threat" to the future opportunities of those on "the losing side".
Solidarity has never been a "strength" of the petty-bourgeoisie. *laughs*
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First posted at RevLeft on December 20, 2005
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quote:
My question then, is the conditions today, i.e., modern industry already produces superabundance of commodities. Is it not the necessary condition to wage the socialist revolution?
Redstar, you haven't answered this question yet.
Your question is based on a profound misunderstanding of what revolutions are.
They are not "campaigns" to be "waged".
They are mass spontaneous uprisings that happen because millions of people are fed up with the old order.
The absence of such uprisings at the present time demonstrates that the objective material conditions have not yet matured for anti-capitalist revolutions to take place where they are supposed to take place...in the most advanced capitalist countries.
Recent events in France suggest that there is discontent...and there are small pockets of such discontent in every capitalist country.
But that's not the same as a revolutionary situation.
In the "third world" it is, in one sense or another, 1789...and the ruling classes in those countries are well aware that they live on the slopes of restless volcanoes.
You imagine that those revolutions will be "socialist" because they employ bits and pieces of "Marxist" rhetoric.
But they will be, in fact, bourgeois revolutions -- anti-imperialist and anti-feudal.
That's something that as a Maoist you simply "cannot accept". You imagine that Maoist ideas can "overcome" material reality.
Unfortunately for you, they cannot do that...and I can only imagine how much you will find that a "crushing blow" when reality finally shatters your illusions in this regard.
I hope that you won't end up like the Maoists of the late 70s...crawling back into bourgeois academia and mucking about in bourgeois reformism.
What a wretched fate!
When the time comes, I hope you will remember that giving up illusions about revolution does not mean that you must give up revolution.
As Marx pointed out, it is when we abandon illusions about the world that it becomes possible for us to change it.
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First posted at RevLeft on December 20, 2005
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quote:
You have completely ignored the content of the article.
Which you "repay" by completely ignoring the content of my post.
Are we "even"? *laughs*
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Not only that - you have a one line answer to every existing, or struggling Socialist country that has ever existed. You are so infantile, and dogmatic that I almost rather listen to George Bush Cuba bash.
Well, your president gets a lot more "air time" than I do...so you are free to enjoy your preference.
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Your non-scientific, unfalsifiable, and "pure socialist" text book position completely ignores objective historical conditions, which lead the world’s greatest revolutionaries into the same place over and over.
The "same place"? You mean despotism?
Why don't you try thinking about this stuff instead of just mindless ranting?
There does seem to be a high correlation between eras of early capitalism and despotism...possibly due to the demands of primitive capital accumulation.
Do you understand what that means? In order to industrialize, a ruling class must acquire a surplus to invest. There are various potential sources of that surplus.
In bourgeois "democracies", much of that surplus originated in imperialist exploitation of weaker parts of the world.
Another source is foreign direct investment...but that has its drawbacks.
Often, the only realistic option is especially rigorous exploitation of the country's own working class and peasantry.
Thus a despotic regime is "required" in order to keep the masses working instead of consuming.
The "socialisms" that you uphold do not differ in any significant way from early capitalism.
Which is just what would be expected if those revolutions were in fact bourgeois revolutions.
To be sure, all of your "socialisms" had and still have superior social services...in some cases approaching the standards of advanced capitalist countries.
But those services have greatly deteriorated since the emergence of modern capitalism in those countries...as, in fact, they are deteriorating in all the advanced capitalist countries.
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Objectively, there is more that unites us than divides us...
Oh? You could have fooled me. *laughs*
Your childish devotion to "revolutionary celebrities" is something I outgrew in my late 20s.
I hope you'll do it faster than I did.
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Back up the dogmatic one-line arguments with some facts.
The "facts" are not in dispute. What upsets you is the historical materialist interpretation of the facts.
You think that rhetoric is reality. As if history was a "costume drama".
It ain't.
Should you ever decide to study the Marxist outlook in a serious way, you will discover that the first "command" is look beneath appearances!
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I guess you know more than all revolutionary leaders---past and present--- who were able to inspire, organize, educate, and lead millions of people on a path to a new world.
Their "new world" turned out to be modern capitalism.
They didn't know that that was what they were doing.
But I know...so yes, with the benefit of hindsight, I do know "more" than all those guys.
Moreover, I do not "reproach" them for their ignorance. None of them really understood what Marx was saying and all of them were fundamentally idealist rather than materialist.
But people with your views have no excuse!
Your view of a revolutionary left is as some kind of fan club...as shown by your quotations from Nelson Mandela.
Never mind what has happened or what is going to happen. What's really important is the size of the audience and how much they applaud the show!
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You make absolutistic statements about the role of the state, without understanding why this imperfect instrument must exist.
I know why some people think the state "must exist" -- so that they can have a good job.
It would be refreshing if they'd admit that...but I ain't holding my breath.
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And history will go on to prove you wrong over and over again.
And your track-record? *laughs*
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And yet the two (reformist left and ultraleft opposition to the Cuban revolution) are very hard to distinguish in practice.
Only for you. *laughs*
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It's much simpler: fake revolutionaries find it easier to be for revolution in the abstract while opposing all concrete, real-world revolutions.
Well, that takes me off the hook.
I completely support all the anti-imperialist bourgeois revolutions in the "third world".
I just don't take their "Marxist rhetoric" seriously anymore. The 20th century proved that the rhetoric did not and can not correspond to material reality.
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Cuba's just a special case of this general phenomenon...and a particularly acute one, because in Cuba the political regime does defend the social gains.
Yes, those social gains.
But then there's this...
Castro Pays Homage to a Dead Pope
A little different from what Bush and the Miami mafia have to say, eh? *laughs*
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First posted at RevLeft on December 20, 2005
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quote:
I actually made arguments, if you noticed my critique is longer than one sentence long sound bites of dogma.
No, the bulk of your post is just a rant directed against me...with the implication that any criticism of any self-proclaimed "great socialist leader" is the equivalent of "lining up with the bourgeoisie".
Would you like me to specify where you can shove that idiotic "argument"?
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How is Capitalist primitive accumulation analogous with the state's role in Socialism - protecting the country from invasion, creating an army, coordination of municipalities and industry and the redistribution of private property?
The first three things on your list are identical. And even the last is "about the same".
The 19th century bourgeois revolutionaries took property from the old aristocratic ruling class for themselves.
Leninist revolutionaries took property from the old aristocracy and the imperialist bourgeoisie and concentrated it in the hands of a state apparatus owned and operated by the Leninist Party.
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You keep ranting about despotism...
Drives you up the wall, does it?
Why is that? *laughs*
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You insult the Cuba people, and past revolutions, and their leaders.
Gee, maybe they should challenge me to a duel! *laughs*
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You are so blinded by your hatred of Marxists, that you can't see straight.
Your posts thus far suggest that you wouldn't know Marxism from rheumatism.
What really gripes your ass is that I've "insulted" your "socialist heroes" by demonstrating the abyss that lies between their "Marxist" rhetoric and their radical bourgeois practice.
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Is there a revolution in the world that you support, or have ever supported?
I answered this is my first reply to you...but since when do Leninists have to actually read stuff, right?
quote (redstar2000):
I completely support all the anti-imperialist bourgeois revolutions in the "third world".
I just don't take their "Marxist rhetoric" seriously anymore. The 20th century proved that the rhetoric did not and can not correspond to material reality.
But, of course, that's not "good enough" for your "groupie of the year" award, is it?
In your eyes, a "revolutionary" is one capable only of prostrate worship of "great socialist leaders".
Bob Avakian Wants You! *laughs*
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...but you see yourself as an independent revolutionary thinker, who has somehow reinvented the Socialist wheel of history, and Marxist theory.
Well yes, that is what I'm trying to do.
What Marx and Engels really thought about things has been buried under a century's accumulation of toxic Leninist waste.
All of which must be entirely removed!
It is to this necessary task that I have chosen to devote the remaining years of my life.
We will begin to make real progress when we finally understand that Leninism is a radical bourgeois ideology...totally irrelevant to the self-emancipation of the working class from wage-slavery.
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Keep standing on your own two feet, and maybe one day you will get a following, but to be honest - I don't think that day will ever come.
I certainly hope not. Unlike all your "socialist celebrities", I have no desire for "ticker-tape" parades or seeing my picture plastered all over the place.
What I attempt is to win people to a simple idea: look at social reality critically!
That means never "hero worship". It means don't accept words in place of reality. It means try to figure out what really happened and what is really happening now.
Someone like yourself probably finds this message incomprehensible. Your measure of "revolutionary dedication" is just how fast your knees hit the floor when a "great socialist leader" enters the room.
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I am sorry I started this conversation.
No doubt.
I wish you a speedy recovery from the traumatic shock you have experienced on your first encounter with communist ideas.
Just go and light a few candles under the ikon of your favorite "great socialist leader" and you'll feel better in a few weeks. *laughs*
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First posted at RevLeft on December 20, 2005
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quote:
I've taken a look at your site, and it's not so brilliant or original.
Well, I can't please everyone...but then that was never my goal anyway. *laughs*
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Leninism is not a bourgeois theory - simply because Leninism abolishes private property, and safe guards the dictatorship of the Proletariat against an invasion, as they did in 1918 when over a dozen nations ---including the U.S. invaded Russia and nearly toppled the revolution.
And after the invasions were defeated, what did Lenin's party do?
Come on now, you must have at least vaguely heard of the "New Economic Policy" (NEP), right?
Known to us Marxists as the restoration of private property in the means of production.
But, "since Lenin did it", then it "must be ok", right?
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...but Lenin skipped Marx's theory...
Glad to see that you admit it.
Now, who was right?
Marx or Lenin?
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You continue to make these claims that Revolutionary leaders devote their life to the cause of Socialism because "they want a good job" (How stupid is that? Seriously listen to yourself) - Castro, Lenin, Che and others were already doctors, and lawyers, and if they wanted to be opportunistic scum bags wouldn't they just sell out to the bourgeoisie (AND I DEMAND YOU ANSWER THIS QUESTION OR I WON'T REPLY TO YOUR NEXT POST)
Some middle class people are more ambitious than others. Some even sincerely desire to be "benevolent" despots and "go down in history" as "Men of the People".
On the other hand, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that some of the people who defend Leninism on this board have careerist motivations.
Class mobility is decreasing and elements of the petty-bourgeoisie do not find "the road to the top" as open as it once was.
Why should anyone be shocked that some of them would seek "a different path"?
What remains of modern Leninism in the "west" is almost entirely reformist...an "alternative road to the top" that looks more "passable" than "revolution".
I think they are doomed to disappointment.
But we'll see.
quote:
Do you feel that if Cuba opened its papers, and had a free "democratic" society by your standards that everything would be fine?
Beats me.
Everything would be very different...that's for sure.
Just imagine if the Cuban press was open to ordinary Cuban workers (and not to the Miami mafia). How would workers change the shape of Cuban "socialism" if they had the power to do so?
Leninists, like all members of the petty-bourgeoisie, think that working people are always "too ignorant and backward" to be allowed to actually run things.
Perhaps that's "true" at the present time in the "third world".
And even in the "first world"...though not for much longer, in my opinion.
Most if not nearly all of the "western" working class has rejected the whole idea of "great socialist leaders".
Or "great leaders" of any kind.
Progress has been made.
And there's more to come.
quote:
...you seem like a loose cannon firing at anything that isn't this utopian workers' paradise...
Yeah...I decide myself where to point my cannon -- while ignoring all "orders" from "Party headquarters".
Shame on me! *laughs*
quote:
What benefits did Lenin and the apparatchiks enjoy? Yes they had larger apartments and a limo service... List some truly outrageous discrepancies in economic life, which would be significant, and irrefutable proof that the leaders of the Soviet Union enjoyed an economic democracy far greater than that of the average worker.
The "apparatchiks" got to make the decisions!
They stood in a different relationship to the means of production than ordinary Russian workers.
It's possible that you may have heard: that's how Marxists define a "class".
Or were you out of the room while that was discussed?
quote:
Leninism is Marxism in praxis.
*laughs until sides hurt*
quote:
If Marx were alive, I don't think he would agree with you.
Well, there's no way to put that to the test, is there?
It's my view that you would find Marx's opinion of Leninism completely incomprehensible...unless, of course, you are fluent in 19th century German profanity. *laughs*
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First posted at RevLeft on December 20, 2005
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quote:
Personally, I think one of the greatest problems of the left is our ultra-utopian ideals.
As one of the "confirmed sinners" in this regard here, let's talk about "ultra-utopian ideals".
Revolution is neither "easy" nor "safe". When anyone asks us to choose a "revolutionary alternative" to existing society, is it not sensible to ask what are we being asked to choose?
Are you willing to literally "bet your life" on a roll of the historical dice?
Most people aren't.
Here is where the Leninists get very tricky. They all dazzle us about the "marvels of communism" in order to win our support.
But if and when they "come to power", what we actually get is rather less than "marvelous"...and sometimes pretty damn awful.
And pretty much the entire corpus of Leninist theoretical works written after 1917 consists of "Marxist" "explanations" of why we "can't have" what they promised us.
I think the Leninists all sincerely believe in their own mythologies...but why should we?
Why is it "ultra-utopian" on our part to actually demand what we really want?
And to flatly refuse anything less?
Are we to "go on forever" as pawns of this or that existing or aspiring elite -- tossed about by policies over which we have no control?
Is submission to despotism "in our genes"?
Or do we really want "a new world" that is really free of all the old shit?
In my opinion, this will be the question of the left in this century. And maybe the next as well.
Will we insist on communism...or will we submit to a fresh crop of "revolutionary" despots?
What do you choose?
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First posted at RevLeft on December 20, 2005
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quote:
By different are you trying to say “State Capitalism”?
The precise term is state monopoly capitalism...something I'm surprised you've even heard of.
quote:
Lenin said the workers don’t advance past trade unionist consciousness without Socialist theory, meaning they never think to seize the means of production.
He said a few other things as well. This is one of my favorites...
quote (Lenin):
The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organization embracing the whole of the class, because in all capitalist countries...the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts...that an organization taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard.
The Trade Unions, The Present Situation and Trotsky's Mistakes, December 30, 1920.
This frank apology for despotism is something that the contemporary remnants of Leninism in the "west" would prefer to overlook.
It's "too blunt".
quote:
A fish cannot reflect on the nature of water, he cannot imagine its absence therefore he can never consider its presence.
A charming metaphor...but it overlooks the fact that humans are not fish.
Non-human animals do not, as far as we can tell, "reflect on the nature" of anything.
Only human animals can do that.
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There is no revolution without the masses, but unfortunately, if you were from the working class---which I can tell you are not---then you would realize we are usually too exhausted from work to go off and read esoteric economics, nor are our schools very good at that.
Yes, you are "so exhausted from work" that you clearly "need" a petty-bourgeois ideologue to decide what's "good for you".
All you have to do is find one that "you can really trust".
I bet you wear a t-shirt that says SUCKER across the front. *laughs*
quote:
I actually learned Marxism from a petty bourgeois, and I am not ashamed to admit it.
It's not you who should be ashamed, it's him!
What he taught you was not "Marxism" but a petty-bourgeois ideology that borrows "Marxist" terminology to "rationalize" despotism.
quote:
I am 25, and he is 64, and no doubt he could run circles around you.
No doubt he could; I am an "old" 63. But until he shows up on this board and posts his own defense of Leninism, we can only speculate on his intellectual "strengths".
quote:
Why are [you] so preoccupied with this social pyramid?
It's a Marxist "thing". *laughs*
quote:
You can’t see into the hearts of men; our social being determines consciousness, but we do not act purely out of self interest – there is no law that states just because you grew up in Capitalism that you are going to be inherently narcissistic in your behavior.
I rather think we do act in terms of our perceived material "self-interest"...with the understanding that cooperation and altruism are sometimes in our self-interest, both perceived and objective.
What I do not believe in are "socialist saints" who "selflessly serve the people". Indeed, I regard with deep suspicion any such claims...whether made for oneself or on behalf of another.
Experience has taught me that such claims are used to conceal an agenda...one that can generally not stand public examination.
Whenever someone makes a point of telling you how they "really just want to help you", BEWARE!
quote:
I would never accuse you of being an anarchist because you want a bigger slice of the pie that you couldn’t get unless you disposed of the rich bourgeoisie.
Well, actually I'm not "an anarchist"...though I'm not above borrowing from them when I think they have something interesting to say.
My Problems With Anarchism
In Defense (kinda) of Anarchism
The Convergence of Marxism and Anarchism?
quote:
But of course Castro shapes everything, and like Lenin, Stalin and Mao everything is his fault, because he calls all the plays… Give me a break.
Cheerfully.
It is not nor has it ever been my position that these particular individuals have "determined" the course of history in their respective countries.
You probably attribute this view to your critics because you hold the position that there "are" such entities as "great socialist leaders" -- comic book heroes with superhuman powers to alter objective reality without regard to material constraints.
Both views are just variants of 19th century bourgeois historiography -- "great man" or "great villain" theories of history.
These days, curiously enough, it is only Leninists who still implicitly rely on such obsolete "explanations". It was Stalin's fault! It was Trotsky's fault! It was Khrushchev's fault! It was Mao's fault! It was Deng's fault! Blah, blah, blah.
In the midst of this senseless babble, it is as if Karl Marx had never lived.
quote:
The social relations to the means of production are public, although the state plays a large role in administration, they cannot pass any benefit they may have enjoyed onto their children.
There are those who claim to find "innocence" to be "charming"...they'd really like you.
Do you imagine that social status is an item that can only be passed on in "a last will and testament"???
The sons and daughters of the Party elites in all of the "socialist countries" were not only raised in privilege but taught that most vital lesson in childhood: you were born to rule!
Just like rich kids are always taught that lesson in capitalist countries.
quote:
I am curious, if you had a say, what would you do differently in Cuba?
To begin with, I'd try to familiarize myself in detail with what is being done now...something impossible to do for anyone not living there.
You see the problem? We are allowed to "choose" between the lies of the Miami mafia and the "official press releases" of the Cuban government...neither of which can be relied on.
Only the people who live there have an interest in telling the truth about "how things really work"...and not even all of them can be trusted.
In addition to which, of course, would be the inherent difficulties for any North American to tell the Cubans "what they should do".
We are not in any position to tell the Cubans "how" they "should" run their country. It's their country, not ours.
Our obligation is to speak plainly about what we think about the "Cuban model"...and let it go at that.
I've noted in the past that Leninism may well have a "progressive role" yet to play in the "third world"...particularly Maoism. The Maoists seem to be "good at making revolutions" -- though, of course, these are, of material necessity, bourgeois revolutions and not "socialist" in anything but terminology.
It is "western Leninism" that genuinely arouses my disgust...a petty-bourgeois idealist "socialism" capable only of mindless cheerleading, sectarian squabbling, and reformist ass-kissing!
Not even to mention how the "western" Leninist parties have treated whole generations of their own members!
quote:
You are a pure Socialist, your nose must hurt from being pressed down so hard to a text book, it’s a shame it doesn’t hurt from taking a look outside your window at reality.
You may be working class, but you are a curiously "old-fashioned" worker. Most young working people I know do not manifest such broad hostility to the idea of knowledge as such.
Knowing stuff is preferred to not knowing stuff.
Pressing your nose into a text is sometimes "the right thing to do"...although these days it's more likely to be a computer terminal. There are more young working people "on line" than you imagine...and the numbers are growing as the costs come down.
Indeed, I cannot help but wonder if the internet will play the same role in the rise of the working class as printing did in the rise of the bourgeoisie.
You evidently agree with Mao when he advised the Chinese people "not to read too many books".
Your fears are justified. *laughs*
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First posted at RevLeft on December 21, 2005
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quote:
Capitalism overthrown, then a sharp change to and advocacy of communism is ultra-utopian.
Why would large numbers of people want to overthrow capitalism in the first place?
Just to end an unsuccessful imperialist war? Or just because of a major economic crisis?
You don't need a revolution to "solve" those "problems"...a simple change of government usually works out fine.
In Marx's view, proletarian revolution would take place only when the proletariat became convinced that it was "fit to rule"...and that its old capitalist rulers were no longer "fit to rule".
A working class that has such convictions is already communist...it sees at once the need to establish new popular organs to "govern" society.
The idea of appointing (or acquiescing to) a middle class elite to despotically govern "in the interests of the working class" would literally make no sense.
In the "third world", the option of "revolutionary despotism" does make sense...neither the working class nor the peasantry feel that they are "fit to rule". What they actually want is a "benevolent despotism".
And what they ultimately get is the despotism of modern capital...which is a big improvement over the despotism of landed aristocrats and imperialist quislings.
"Western" Leninist parties unanimously share the conceit that they will rule the "western" proletariat "as if" we were all "third world" peasants or "backward" workers.
That ain't gonna happen!
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First posted at RevLeft on December 21, 2004
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quote:
For example. Marx never anticipated the tremendous technological advances in military mobility, and in doing so didn't realize a revolution could be smothered in a matter of hours instead of it taking weeks, and months to mobilize imperialist military forces.
Lenin would be proud of you. The whole idea of a "vanguard party" was really modeled on the Prussian General Staff -- which enjoyed enormous prestige after its victory over Napoleon III.
To Leninists, class struggle ever since has been "understood" as if it were a "war" between two "nation-states".
And the Leninist response to criticism of their despotic -- military-like -- proclivities has always been: do it our way or the imperialists will crush you like an insect!
The details of your formulation are not so good. Despite much fuss about "Rapid Reaction Forces", imperialist armed response to any challenge is actually quite slow. As we have seen most recently in Iraq, the imperialist forces took months to mobilize and deploy "in place", took several weeks to occupy an essentially defenseless country, and have thus far proven totally impotent in "restoring order" -- crushing the resistance.
Further, it is clear that the future of imperialist armies is essentially that of mercenaries...and how reliable such forces are remains to be determined. During the European renaissance, mercenaries were very reliable...unless the enemy offered them more money to "switch sides".
A mercenary does not "fight for his country"; he fights for financial gain. I think that means he is less likely to persist in a "losing war".
But we'll see.
Meanwhile, is the Leninist "military model" of class struggle and revolution correct?
I do not think it is. The Russian military played no significant role in the great Petrograd uprising of February 1917...except for those units that defected to the side of the revolution.
I think this is because a genuine proletarian revolution is so massive and overwhelming that even elements of the military that "remain loyal" to the old regime are helpless. Sure, they could go massacre a crowd in a city square...but they know that such an act will make no difference and may even cost them heavily when a new order is established.
What about the imperialist armies in countries that have not yet experienced the general proletarian uprising? Could they not invade and crush the revolution?
Obviously, there are a lot of factors that would go into their decision-making. What would be the domestic reaction to such a new war? What would be the costs in casualties and material? How many troops would be needed to conquer and successfully occupy a proletarian France or Germany?
And, most importantly, how do you defeat a resistance that has no Leninist "central command"?
I am not a "military expert" by any stretch, but I've actually seen some guys who are (or think they are) attribute the on-going success of the Iraqi resistance to the fact that they have no "central command". There's no "head to cut off"...and thus the resistance continues no matter who the imperialists capture, imprison, torture, or kill.
It looks to me very much as if this might well be a successful model for proletarian resistance to imperialist aggression. Small well-armed units operating independently, attacking the enemy at its weakest points, keeping up the pressure, destroying its "willingness to fight".
One of the best features of this "model" makes its appearance after the imperialists are defeated and withdraw in humiliation.
There will be no "Napoleon effect"...no one who can strut around in public claiming "I led the resistance" -- with the implication that "you should make me the Great Leader". The working class will be well aware of the fact that millions of their own class "led the resistance".
And no "Great Leader" was required...then or now.
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First posted at RevLeft on December 23, 2005
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quote:
To have no centralized government after the revolution, and to organize this complex society, in which the bourgeois still man the posts. (Engineers, agribusiness, healthcare industry etc)
Modern "high-tech" societies are complex...no question about it.
And I am not "in love" with either "centralization" or "decentralization" as abstract concepts.
There are some kinds of production that probably must be centralized -- electric power distribution, for example. (At least until we develop and install technology that would allow dispersed electric power generation.)
There are others that could easily be decentralized...garment production, for example.
The "heart" of the matter is whether or not a new "political center of gravity" should be created after the revolution...a centralized state apparatus with all the institutional attributes that exist now: a professional army and police force, a prison complex, a central department of economic planning that decides everything of consequence and sends down "orders", other swollen bureaucracies that will concern themselves with regulating every aspect of our personal lives, and so on.
Bourgeois sociologists maintain that a modern society simply "cannot function" without massive "professional" bureaucracies...indeed, that modern societies are bureaucratic despotisms of necessity.
I disagree.
I do not quarrel with the demonstrated need for expertise. I quarrel with the option to grant anyone with expertise the power of command.
We all have a natural inclination to defer to the advice of someone who "knows more than we do" about some proposed task. And there's nothing "wrong" about that in and of itself.
But expertise is not some "Pure Virtue" that hangs up in the sky somewhere.
It's just as "earthly" as any other human characteristic...and thus subject to human error.
We have all seen in the course of our lives that "experts" have been guilty of spectacular blunders.
Thus the present wide-spread attitude that "when the expert speaks" we should all flop on our bellies is one I expect to largely "wither away" as the "western" proletariat prepares itself for revolution.
Now, your idea that there will be "lots of bourgeois experts" remaining in "positions of authority" after a proletarian revolution is clearly drawn from Lenin's own experience.
In his time, bourgeois experts were, to all intents and purposes, the only ones that existed. Advanced education was a class privilege.
Today, that is no longer the case...and, in the "age of the internet", will be even less the case as time passes. I've had the good luck to meet a number of working class people who demonstrated an astounding breadth and depth of technical knowledge...and I think that even now there are a lot more of them "out there" than anyone realizes.
I expect their numbers to continually increase.
Thus we will probably never face the problem that Lenin or Stalin or Mao faced with having to rely on the expertise of people who were predisposed to oppose the revolution.
We will have an abundance of proletarians who are both "red" and "expert".
Finally, there is a point that the attentive reader should not overlook.
There is a reason that the Leninists emphasize the "importance" of "expertise".
They see themselves as "experts at revolution"...and sincerely believe that the rest of us should follow their orders "just like we follow a doctor's orders".
Believe that? *laughs*
Yeah, they really do think that...inspite of all the "western" evidence of the last century to the contrary.
I think the proletariat will conclude otherwise. Revolution is far too important to be left in the hands of self-appointed "experts".
Especially "doctors" whose patients all died. *laughs*
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First posted at RevLeft on December 23, 2005
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quote:
redstar2000 seems to forget that "Leninists" are not "classless", they are proletarians themselves...
The class composition of the membership of Leninist parties has varied widely in the "west". But with regard to the leadership, historically, it's clear that nearly all of it was petty-bourgeois.
Only a very occasional worker ever rises "towards the top" of a Leninist party.
And this is crucial because, in a Leninist party, everything of substance is decided at the top. Their power over the party is absolute...or as close to that as makes no difference.
Thus the party's "line" changes over time to reflect the class interests of the radical petty bourgeoisie...usually some version of "left" reformism.
A Leninist party may "start out" sincerely "revolutionary"...but it doesn't take all that long for the rot to set in.
Before you can say "V.I. Lenin", they're "running for office" on a left-reformist platform. And then you'll find them campaigning for "left" bourgeois politicians.
End of story.
quote:
So, then, my question to you is, since Leninists can't achieve anything without proletarian or mass support, why are you so scared of them?
Because of their demonstrated capacity to really fuck up potential revolutionaries.
Young people who join Leninist parties are so repulsed and disgusted by their experiences that they usually come out completely soured on the whole idea of proletarian revolution.
They conclude that because Leninism is "a racket" that "everything" is a "racket" and that there is "no hope" for anything better than the shit we live in now.
Even worse, some of them actually "switch sides" and become outright reactionaries.
At least the pay is better.
So yeah...I want to put Leninism "out of business" in the "west" -- so that young potential revolutionaries can find their way to revolutionary activity with their dignity and integrity intact.
Instead of ending up crawling back to the ruling class with their tails between their legs begging forgiveness for their "youthful follies".
Clear?
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First posted at RevLeft on December 23, 2005
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quote:
How do they "fuck up" potential revolutionaries? Where is your documentation of this?
Well, I've seen it with my own eyes.
But there are many books by former members of the American Communist Party and there are even books by ex-Maoists as well.
And some of the most infamous contemporary neo-conservatives were involved with Leninist parties in their youth.
It's the numbers that tell the real story. I read once that between 1936 and 1956, over one million people "passed through" the CPUSA.
What happened to all those people?
What happened to the thousands of young Maoists and Trotskyists from the 60s and 70s?
We know they didn't go on to start "new" and "better" Leninist parties. They didn't "start" anything.
I think the only plausible conclusion is that they simply dropped out of radical politics altogether...because they found the whole experience repulsive.
quote:
You are petty bourgeois yourself...
Bad guess! *laughs*
I view myself as part of a very old but historically very small tradition: that of the worker who educates himself "far above his station" in life.
I brought my own class outlook to my study of history, politics, etc. And instead of being seduced by the pleasant mythologies of bourgeois academics, I became more hostile to the prevailing order as time passed.
Now, I am very "dogmatic"...as you (and others!) have pointed out on numerous occasions. My opposition to anything that stinks of class society has become intransigent.
Not least are those comfortable folks who propose to "tell me what to do" for my own "good".
quote:
It doesn't matter where you come from but rather where you're at.
The problem here is that anyone may say anything. It is in what they do that their real class orientation becomes clear.
Why shouldn't a kid that grows up in a family of petty-bourgeois managers think that he can "manage" a revolution? He was taught -- in a thousand subtle ways -- that he was "born to rule".
I don't know about you, but I could almost "smell that" when I used to run into a petty-bourgeois Leninist leader. Just the way they stood in front of a room projected that "inner confidence" that he was standing "where he belonged".
They were "the star of the show"...and I wished I'd brought some rotten fruit to throw! *laughs*
quote:
The petty bourgeois lawyers such as Castro fought on the side of the workers.
As it happens, I was never a client of Mr. Castro. But I was represented by some "movement lawyers" back in the 60s...and they sucked!
In fact, were I to find myself charged with anything now, I would act as my own attorney. At least I would have my mind on my case...instead of an afternoon golf date!
quote:
If a working class man becomes a civil rights lawyer and then fights for the workers, is he no longer working class?
As he moves about in "lawyerly circles", he will indeed lose his "working class" orientation. The change will be gradual...but I imagine that sometime in his 30s or 40s he will "reevaluate" his own material interests and act accordingly.
I actually know of one such person who was a civil rights lawyer in the 60s...and last I heard of the bastard, he was an assistant district attorney persecuting prostitutes.
What a shithead!
quote:
...if you understood anything about the working class you would realize we hardly have our own leadership.
Is that because we are "inherently incapable" or because we've been told that we're "incapable" so much that most of us have come to accept that idea?
Do you really imagine that some puffed-up petty-bourgeois "radical" understands your own class interests "better" than you do?
That it's "a law of nature" or something?
quote:
What we have here instead is the very worst of the marxist tradition, infantile 'ultra-leftism' walking hand-in-hand with the other "great" trend- economism (also known as menshevism, otzovism, etc, according to the period and it's proponents)
Rolling out the heavy artillery, eh?
Well, I am an ultra-leftist and I do think that Martov (a Menshevik writer) was right about the impossibility of socialism in the Russia of 1917.
Now go make the most of it! *laughs*
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First posted at RevLeft on December 23, 2004
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When one is a young revolutionary drawn into Leninist circles, one is always given two books to read: What Is To Be Done? and State and Revolution.
The first of these works argues the fundamental Leninist thesis: the working class "cannot" make a successful proletarian revolution "unless" it is led by a small group of "professional revolutionaries" -- the "officer corps" of the "proletarian army".
The second is mostly a "copy & paste" book. Lenin tracked down every reference he could find to post-revolutionary society in the published works of Marx and Engels and quoted them at length.
Interestingly enough, the "vanguard party" hardly gets a mention in State and Revolution...since Marx and Engels thought that post-revolutionary societies would actually be governed by the entire working class.
Thus, State and Revolution is the most "Marxist" book that Lenin ever "wrote". The "vision of communism" in that book is enormously appealing.
Indeed, it actually approaches anarchism. I ran across one anarchist once who said that the whole reason Lenin compiled State and Revolution was "because" some of the large factories in Petrograd contained a lot of workers with "strong anarchist sympathies" and who were "deeply suspicious of the Bolsheviks".
The historical "consensus" seems to be that Lenin really did think that things would "go this easy"...because a revolution in Germany and France would "quickly follow" and advanced technology would flow into Russia as a consequence.
Not to mention the fact that he observed, upon his arrival in Petrograd, that the masses really were "more revolutionary than the party"...perhaps giving rise to some doubts about his own thesis on the "role of the vanguard".
In any event, this "all changed" after October. I believe there's one document where Lenin actually complains that "no one told us what to do after the revolution".
To see the drastic "shift" in Lenin's position once he realized that he and his party were about to be "in command", I recommend this...
Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?
This was written and published only a couple of weeks before the Bolshevik coup.
It's worth a very careful reading.
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First posted at RevLeft on December 23, 2005
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quote:
...the most recent example being Bolivia where the leadership of the Bolivian Workers Union (COB) issued this statement in relation to the October 2003 movement there: “If the workers did not take power it was because of the lack of a revolutionary party”.
In other words, the leadership of this union said, in effect, "hey, don't look at us!"
Most amusing. *laughs*
quote:
The idea is that the more advanced layers of the working class gets political education in Marxism, so it is capable of leading revolutionary moments with success.
No, the Leninist party is actually led by radical petty-bourgeois elements...especially in the "third world" where advanced education is a class privilege.
Ordinary party members, many of whom may be working class, are not taught more than a few scraps of Marxism. Their real task is to carry out the line of the Party as instructed by their petty-bourgeois leadership.
You know the story of Khrushchev -- a working class Russian kid who was not even literate until he learned to read and write in a "Party school" after he joined the Bolsheviks in 1918.
I think that is typical in "third world" Leninist parties.
The only sense in which the working class membership of a "third world" Leninist party is "advanced" is in their willingness to do whatever the Party leadership tells them to do.
quote (Alan Woods):
Unfortunately, the leaders of the workers’ organisations, even the most radicalised of them, had no clear idea of what to do next. By their inaction they allowed the ruling class to replace Goni with Mesa and re-establish bourgeois legality.
Perhaps true. But the implied alternative -- a Leninist party that would have staged a successful coup -- would not have "brought the workers to power". We already know that it would have been the petty-bourgeois leadership of that hypothetical party that would have "come to power".
It would have established a "socialist" despotism, introduced a wide-ranging set of social welfare policies, possibly launched a campaign to develop the Bolivian economy in a more well-rounded way, and taken such other measures required to bring Bolivia into the modern capitalist world.
The petty-bourgeois leadership would eventually become a new and vigorous bourgeoisie...far less subservient to international capital than the old ruling classes that it overthrew.
Something along these lines may well be in Bolivia's future. Mr. Woods may "get his party" in that hapless country.
But it will have nothing to do with "workers coming to power".
IF Marx was right, that can only happen in the most advanced capitalist countries.
Precisely the countries where Leninism is "withering away" for lack of proletarian interest.
A petty-bourgeois despotism has gone "out of style" here.
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First posted at RevLeft on December 23, 2005
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quote:
Marx and Engels themselves were not working class by descent. And Lenin, and Mao and Ho Chi Minh, and other communist leaders and thinkers. Even Anarchist thinkers were not proletariat by class origin. So, what's your point?
A radical petty-bourgeois thinker can hypothetically express the class interests of the proletariat. It's a very rare event but does happen "once in a while".
A petty-bourgeois in a position of authority cannot avoid having his own class interests "come out" in his actual behavior.
Had Marx or Bakunin ever been in a position to "give orders", we might well be less than pleased with the results.
My point is that class background is important...you can't just pretend that "it doesn't matter" or that it can be overcome by "act of will".
When you are taught from birth that you are "inherently superior" to the vast majority of the human species, that "class conditioning" shapes your future behavior.
Now it's true that petty bourgeois elements are constantly being "proletarianized" in the course of the normal functioning of capitalist society. Such people do begin to acquire a proletarian "outlook" as a consequence of their new class position.
And a few working class people do "rise" into the petty bourgeoisie or even higher...and begin to acquire the appropriate class outlook.
The situation is always fluid or at least potentially so.
But class outlook is not a "bad habit" that can be modified by some sort of "revolutionary self-improvement" scheme. It has a real history and reflects a real material situation.
Thus it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense to describe Marxism or anarchism as "real proletarian theories". To the extent that they reflect real proletarian class interests and have been taken up by real proletarians, they begin to be adapted by the proletariat for its own use.
I think there will be proletarian Marxist and anarchist theoreticians in the future and they will make some important changes in those ideas.
I cannot predict what those changes will be, of course...but it would be very strange if that did not happen. Theories do not exist "up in the sky" -- they are grounded in material reality and reflect the class interests (almost always!) of those who embrace them.
It's quite possible that in a few decades or so, people will speak of "proletarian Marxism" or "proletarian anarchism" and everybody will know what that means.
quote:
What are you arguing against? Bolshevism or "hypothetical Bolshevism"?
Oh dear...another Trotskyist who believes that Trotskyists are "the only real Bolsheviks" while Stalinists and Maoists and all the rest are just "no good deviationist bastards".
Down here on earth, it has historically been the case that the Maoists are responsible for such limited successful practice that the Leninist paradigm has been able to produce since the days of Lenin himself.
In addition, Trotskyism in the "west" was even less successful than "Stalinism".
So when I speak of Leninism, I am speaking of its actual history. I do agree that Trotskyism is just as legitimately Leninist as any of the other varieties...but it has been historically marginal.
In addition, of course, there are plenty of ex-Trotskyists around who have their own "horror stories" to tell about life inside those parties.
You imagine that there is some "drastic difference" in the practice of Trotskyism as opposed to "Stalinism" or Maoism.
There isn't.
quote:
What is a fact, is that the Bolshevik party was marked by extreme internal democracy...
I think it may be fairly said that Lenin's real party was "far short" of what he outlined in What Is To Be Done?. Quarrels were frequent, disputes common, polemics routine and often very sharp.
It was almost more of a "movement" than a party.
Much more revealing of Lenin's real attitude were his speeches and resolutions at the 10th Party Congress (March 1921). This was Lenin's chance to get the kind of party he really wanted...which he successfully accomplished with the support of both Stalin and Trotsky.
Not to mention imposing this kind of structure on all the parties that became part of the 3rd International.
This is the "Leninist Party" that has come down to us.
The leadership decides everything. The membership carries out its orders. The whole process is no more "democratic" than any other despotism.
Trotskyists like to make the point that things didn't "get really bad" until after Lenin died and Stalin took over and "Stalinized" all the parties of the 3rd International.
And there's some truth to that. Some of the 3rd International parties began with a strong proletarian element in their leaderships and a good deal of internal ideological struggle. Some even had "ultra-leftists" and in no small numbers.
But the "ice age" really set in during the 1930s...after that nothing really interesting happened.
So Trotskyists "blame Stalin"...for doing exactly what he thought Lenin wanted him to do.
Go figure. *laughs*
quote:
How do we know such things?
Because it's inherent in the way that "third world" Leninist parties are structured...beginning with the Bolsheviks themselves. Education is a class privilege in the "third world" -- and thus a Leninist party's leadership must come from petty-bourgeois elements (or even higher!).
quote:
So now it becomes apparent that you are criticising the Stalinist theory of stages? You know, that for socialism to be established a bourgeois democracy must be established first to develop the productive forces... Lenin always firmly rejected this theory, which was first brought into the light of day by the economists in pre-revolutionary Russia.
This is rather incoherent.
What I think is that every country must pass through an epoch of bourgeois production...and whether it is formally "democratic" or openly despotic is essentially trivial. As Lenin himself recognized, bourgeois "democracy" is the despotism of capital.
(An insight, by the way, that's been completely forgotten by modern Leninists...who have almost all become parliamentary cretins in the "west".)
What the old Russian "economists" didn't grasp (I think) is that you could have an epoch of bourgeois production "wrapped in red flags".
We know better now...or should!
quote:
In the days of old Marx, constructing socialism in a backward country with minimal or no industry would be seen as an act of lunacy, but this is not the case with the third world today. Large portions of industry and jobs is transfered to these countries because there exists a large supply of cheap labour, effectively giving rise to a proletariat there. Why should not this proletariat come to power in the third world, even when revolutionary moments occur?
This is a rather complicated question. Among the factors that must be taken into consideration are...
1. Imperialism does "develop" an industrial proletariat in the neo-colony -- but only in that part of the economy that is profitable to them. The vast bulk of the economy is left to rot. Most people there still "live" in quasi-feudal rural squalor and urban shanty-towns.
2. Even most of the neo-colony's modern proletariat remains illiterate, heavily burdened with all sorts of superstitious bullshit, patriarchal traditions, brutality towards children, etc.
3. This kind of primitive proletariat is unfit to rule...indeed, they can only imagine "liberation" in terms of a "benevolent" despotism.
4. Only the urban petty-bourgeoisie are actually exposed to modern ideas. A few of them begin to grasp the notion that their country will always be a shit-hole...unless the shackles of imperialism are broken. And when they look around to see how that might be done...they discover the Leninist paradigm -- especially Maoism.
The imperialists can be defeated and thrown out on their ass!
Sure, they also pick up a lot of academic rhetoric about "socialism" and "communism"...and they use that rhetoric without any understanding of its real meaning.
If they come to power, they do exactly what I said they would do. Expel the imperialists and all their local lackeys. Establish modern social welfare systems. Clear away all (or nearly all) of the old feudal crap. Build a modern infrastructure. Teach the whole population how to read and write. And, if they are really perceptive, develop their own economy in a well-rounded way.
At the same time, of course, these radical petty-bourgeois "revolutionaries" are evolving into a modern capitalist class...readying both themselves and their economy to re-enter the "world marketplace" as a "real player" instead of a pathetic neo-colonial dependency.
This is how "1789" worked in the last century...and may well work in this century as well.
OR it may be the "Venezuelan model" that spreads. A "Napoleon-like" figure uses his personal popularity to mobilize the population to do all those things I mentioned above.
In which case, Mr. Woods will not get his "revolutionary party" in Bolivia because it won't be required.
quote:
I think what marks your thoughts is first world chauvinism.
Yeah, I hear that sometimes...but I don't pay much attention to it.
It usually comes from people for whom historical materialism is "a closed book".
Thus they are simply unable to tell the difference between rhetoric and reality.
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First posted at RevLeft on December 24, 2005
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quote:
I would love for you to provide evidence of Cuba's "tyranny" or its lack of democracy and worker power.
I've responded to this before, but perhaps you did not notice.
Where is the controversy?
Humans are a contentious species. We argue with each other constantly about both what exists now and what should exist in the future.
But there is no evidence of this in the Cuban media.
Is there a RevLeft on the Cuban intra-net where Cuban communists argue about the future of Cuban society?
I've never heard of this...and I've read lots of books written by people who visited Cuba.
A society without public controversy cannot be anything but a despotism.
Do you really want to argue that the entire Cuban population "agrees with Fidel 100%"...except for a small group of political mercenaries on the American payroll.
I am not, as you know, in favor of "free speech for reactionaries". But do you imagine that there are no "ultra-leftists" in Cuba who would favor polices considerably more radical than those presently in force?
Where is their voice?
quote:
I don't agree with Lenin on everything, as I am more of a Marxist than a Marxist-Leninist, but I do believe that consolidated state-socialism is a much better system for people to live under than the harsh conditions of capitalism. Whether or not these systems devolve back into capitalism, the living standards of these countries will be raised, and people will be at least temporarily freed of their chains.
I don't necessarily disagree with this position at all.
The difficulty arises when the remaining "western" Leninists point to such improvements as "proof" that "they know what they're doing" and "we should follow them".
In the "west", the Leninists have conclusively proved that they don't know what they're doing.
The criticism of "third world" Leninist failures derives directly from "western" Leninist claims of success.
quote:
So far, I have heard nobody even so much as speak of developing new theories.
I am very much in favor of "new ideas" being developed...and have said so many times.
It may be, for example, that the "Venezuelan model" will replace Leninism in the "third world".
That is, a "Napoleon-like" figure wins a popular election and uses his victory as a mandate to do all the things that a Leninist party would do.
This is certainly a possibility...we have to wait and see how it "works out".
But watch out for those who advocate such a "plan" for the "west"!
It will be just one more radical petty-bourgeois scheme to fasten upon us an "improved" despotism.
That's unacceptable.
quote:
Being tolerant of change is a much more important skill to have than knowledge of theory.
In my opinion, radical skepticism is actually more important than anything else.
I think that's at the heart of a scientific world view.
It's "so easy" for us to accept rhetoric "at face value"...and it seems to me that that's how we "go wrong" more often than any other way.
quote:
Maoists are Leninists as much as you claim Leninists are Marxists.
Strange comment. On what grounds do you challenge their "pedigree"?
If anything, the 20th century Maoists were the most successful Leninists. And they seem to be doing "rather well" in a few places even now.
Indeed, there were (and still are) a lot of obvious parallels between Castro's Cuba and Mao's China -- to the point where I think it would be perfectly ok to call Cuba a kind of "soft Maoism".
quote:
I have yet to see you offer any constructive alternatives.
No, you've just chosen to ignore them...for reasons best known to yourself.
But your objection fails for another reason that's entirely independent of your "criticism".
If someone puts forward a theory, it is perfectly legitimate to criticize the short-comings of that theory even if one doesn't have an alternative theory at all.
We are not "required" to possess "absolute truth" before we are "allowed" to reject self-evident bullshit.
Had someone said in ancient times THERE ARE NO GODS!...that would have been a true statement entirely regardless of the fact that this early atheist knew, of necessity, almost nothing about objective reality at all.
My criticisms of the Leninist paradigm stand or fall on their own merits...even if I never said a word about any "alternatives".
quote:
You might be content to sit around and shoot the shit about communism all day every day until you die, but theory is nothing without action.
And action is nothing without theory.
At this moment, your action is the same as mine..."shooting the shit about communism".
This is a message board...where people "shoot the shit about communism".
Is that a useful activity? Is it important that we have some kind of coherent conception of what the fuck we're trying to do?
Or do you think it's all "intellectual bullshit" and we should really just all go out and throw rocks at cops?
Well, I'm not "stopping you". If you want to "do something", go do it! And if you write something here about what you've done, I may praise it or criticize it...but you're still free to keep doing it if that's what you want to do.
quote:
What's your excuse? Old age?
You got it. I simply don't have the physical stamina required to effectively participate in practical political activity anymore...and haven't had it since the mid-1990s.
Rejoice in your youth...it will be over a lot sooner than you now believe.
quote:
Redstar, when was the last time your theories changed?
In a significant way? Around 1971 or so when I realized that Leninism in the "west" just didn't make sense.
In "minor" ways? Well, it was only a few days ago that I realized something that I'd been "moving towards" for a long time.
Leninism, properly considered, is an ideology of the radical petty-bourgeoisie. I know that's "implicit" in a whole lot of things I've written over the last three years...but I suddenly realized what I was really getting at without knowing it at the time.
And there have been some "intermediate changes" in my views over the last three years.
But the usual consequence of "sharp" political discussion is a development of one's own theories -- making them more coherent, more subtle, more nuanced, etc. Theories that are sharply criticized -- like mine have been -- may be refuted or may become even stronger.
I think mine have become stronger.
quote:
Do you think your theories are right?
Yes.
quote:
Do you think they are completely and 100% correct? If not, then what do you think is wrong with them?
The largest "gap" in the Marxist paradigm is one I have noted before. Neither I nor any other Marxist can say why great proletarian uprisings happen here and not there or at this time and not some other time.
In this context, historical materialism is still "intuitive" instead of scientific.
I don't like this at all...but I'm not smart enough to figure out what to do about it. I have suggested to some young comrades who are a lot smarter than I am to look at the possibilities of developing "mathematical models" of late capitalist society and see if it's possible to anticipate proletarian revolutions.
So maybe something will be really learned in a decade or two.
quote:
I would love to imitate Socrates on this one and hear you admit that you know nothing before we continue, but of course, I don't see this happening any time soon.
If you wish to imitate the infamous Spartan collaborator (and teacher of the Athenian aristocracy), be my guest.
But I will continue to insist that I know a great deal more than "nothing".
Much to your dismay, no doubt.
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First posted at RevLeft on December 24, 2005
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There has often been a kind of conceit among lefties (all versions) that there "must be" some kind of "magic bullet" that, once fired, will transform anyone into a "fire-breathing communist".
I don't think that's "how things work".
I think that working people develop revolutionary class consciousness when they perceive that it is in their own material interests to do that.
Further, I think this class consciousness arises primarily as a result of each person's life experiences.
No one reads a "revolutionary leaflet" and decides to become a revolutionary...unless the ideas in that leaflet "resonate" with their own life experiences.
The practical dilemma that revolutionaries face in a non-revolutionary period is always framed in terms of "how can we get other people to become revolutionaries?"
And the various versions of "leftism" are often defined by how that question is specifically answered.
Many answers are childish and superficial. Some of the answers are subtle and complex. None of them have been shown to actually work.
In science, when you ask a question that keeps generating answers that don't work, it's sometimes because the question itself makes no sense.
It may well be that there's nothing that we can do that will "make" people revolutionary.
Does that mean that we "have no purpose"?
Well, some people do draw that conclusion.
Others, I among them, think that what we can and should do in the present period is encourage resistance to the despotism of capital in whatever ways are practical for us.
I also think that we should struggle among ourselves over what it means to "be revolutionary".
Let's face it. There are quite a lot of self-designated "revolutionaries" who, in fact, want nothing more than a "nicer" version of what exists now.
Their goal is -- in practice -- to bring the discontented "back into the system".
And it's not easy to "fight them"...because they invariably costume themselves as "great humanitarians" who "just want to help people". When we attack their duplicity, we are always accused of "not really caring about people".
We who consider ourselves genuine revolutionaries are in a tough situation. Our numbers are few and scattered. There's nothing that could reasonably be called a revolutionary movement yet. We are still severely handicapped by the Leninist paradigm...even though nearly all of us have rejected it, the shadows still linger.
What it is always possible for us to do is tell people the truth as best we understand it. That won't "make" people revolutionary...in fact, they're almost certain at this point to think we are "crazy".
That's something that can't be helped. There's no way to "sugar-coat" our message so that it just "slides down people's throats".
Revolution is hard. And it's dangerous. No one chooses that option without a lot of thought and experience.
But they won't choose it at all if they never hear of it.
So tell them...and wait.
Time will do its work. Periods of reaction are not "eternal".
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First posted at RevLeft on December 24, 2005
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quote:
I'm also not sure how a country could go to communism directly, bypassing socialism, redstar maybe you could elaborate, please.
Well, you begin by saying that's what you're going to do!
In other words, the Leninist paradigm asserts that "it's impossible", so the question of "how to do it" never arises.
From Marx's account of the Paris Commune, we gather that he thought two considerations were important in this first workers' state -- it was hyper-democratic and it was visibly shrinking.
What we would want to do after a proletarian revolution is specifically avoid creating a political "center of gravity" where "everything gets decided".
Naturally, we'd completely dismantle the old bourgeois state apparatus and disperse its personnel.
So who would decide things? Clearly there would be multiple "public bodies" that would indeed be "hyper-democratic" and that, in my opinion, would manage the useful functions that a "high-tech" society requires.
I imagine that things would be pretty "ragged" in the first couple of decades...it will take some time to find out "what works" and what "doesn't work".
But as communists, we would "rule out" certain things "no matter what".
No professional armies or police; no prisons; no large-scale private property; no "market" in basic necessities; and so on.
And then we'll see how we do.
The Leninists have, of course, a much clearer perspective on this stuff. They just "lop off" the big capitalists and replace them with the Party leadership while everything else stays the same.
This is, in their view, "reasonable" and "practical".
Of course it doesn't "lead to communism" and, in fact, cannot lead to communism ever.
The net effect is simply to replace an old ruling class with a new ruling class.
Now it's true that in the case of backward countries that communism really is impossible and the Leninist option makes a considerable degree of sense as a less harsh "road to modern capitalism" than the way it happened in the first capitalist countries.
It's a shame that Leninists in the "third world" make a bunch of "socialist" promises that will never be kept...but then the early revolutionary bourgeoisie made our great-great-great grandfathers a lot of promises that were never kept either.
Don't see much "liberty, equality, fraternity" around these days, do you?!
It is in the advanced capitalist countries where Leninism really "crashes and burns". They seek to replicate their "third world" successes under completely different historical conditions...as if modern-day London or Paris or Berlin "will someday be like" Petrograd or Hunan Province or the hills of Oriente.
It's so crazy that one wonders how they ever got away with it!
Well, it's the "prestige of a winner" effect, I guess. It sounded plausible that Leninism was "the way to go" because the USSR and China "looked successful".
Now that we can see the real outcome, the "winner effect" has become the loser effect. Leninist socialism has become infamous as the "transitional period" between feudalism and capitalism.
So Cuba is "all that's left".
If Cuba "openly goes capitalist", then the Leninists have no further cards to play. Even if they win in Nepal or the Philippines, the "spell" has been broken.
No sensible person in the "west" will tolerate the idea of a Party despotism.
So anti-capitalist revolutionaries must figure out everything all over again...this time from a communist perspective.
A "big job"...but there's no one who's going to do it for us.
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First posted at RevLeft on December 26, 2005
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I quite agree that "petty-bourgeois" is often used as a "swear word" among lefties...something that one person can call another when they run short of rational arguments.
I've lost count of how many times I've seen the phrase "petty-bourgeois anarchism" without even a token effort to do an actual class analysis of anarchism in theory or practice.
Instead, what's offered is a kind of "reasoning" like this...
1. The petty-bourgeoisie are "individualist" entrepreneurs who reject collective discipline.
2. Anarchist theory rejects authority and discipline as a matter of principle.
3. "Therefore", anarchism "is" a petty-bourgeois ideology.
All this inspite of the historical evidence that the petty bourgeoisie have been among the most enthusiastic supporters of the "Party of Order"...up to and including the Nazis!
The petty-bourgeoisie love discipline...when it is imposed on the working class!
In my opinion, the Leninist infatuation with discipline is far more indicative of its petty-bourgeois origins than anything that might be associated with anarchism or "ultra-left" communism.
I've actually seen Leninists on this board raise the "terrifying specter" of "mob rule"...meaning a working class that has no Leninist party to "keep things under control".
It seems to me that the evidence points in a very clear way towards the conclusion that Leninism is a radical petty-bourgeois ideology. If we are to take them at their word, they want a society in which they replace the old capitalist class...but everything else stays pretty much the same.
We'd still have professional armies and police, a massive prison complex, a central economic authority that would do what corporate managers do now, a market where workers would purchase their necessities out of their wages, and so on.
Of course, they also promise us all sorts of "welfare goodies"...free education, free health care, lower rents, blah, blah, blah.
But it's pretty clear that there's no way to hold them to their promises...any more than we can hold a contemporary bourgeois politician to his promises. The Leninists propose a Party despotism in which ordinary working people would have no more political power than they have now.
And even the Party itself is a despotism; only the "leading circles" have any significant influence on public policy.
Obviously such a society in the "west" (if it were even possible) would rapidly degenerate into a new capitalist society...as the petty-bourgeois "revolutionary leaders" devolved into a new ruling class.
Fortunately, it's not possible...even remotely. No sensible worker wants to "take a chance" on a Leninist party despotism.
What is still "bad" about the remnants of "western" Leninism is that it fucks people up!
A middle-class kid who gets involved in a Leninist party just has his own convictions of "inherent superiority" confirmed. If he stays in radical politics, he becomes a "Bob Avakian" or tries to. Most likely, he will perceive that Leninism "is going nowhere" and just switch to some sort of right-wing ideology...always a "happy home" for the petty-bourgeoisie.
What's far worse is what happens to a working class kid who gets involved with Leninism. S/he finds herself/himself in the same situation as s/he experienced in all of the other institutions in class society: being told what to do by her/his "superiors".
So what does s/he conclude? That "radical politics" is just another racket. That there is "no hope" of really getting out of the shit! And, sadly, that the "best thing to do" is "start your own business".
Individual escape from wage-slavery is "all there is".
I don't think that "ultra-leftists" can "abolish" Leninism by act of will...or polemic. But what some of us can do is try to get to the kids before Leninism has a chance to fuck them up!
Even a middle class kid with a temporary romantic interest in revolution has a right not to be dicked around by these petty-bourgeois posers.
And young working class kids with an interest in revolution are precious...they really are "the hope of the future".
It's imperative that we do whatever we can to get our message across to them: Leninism has nothing to do with proletarian revolution.
Tough job!
But really important!
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First posted at RevLeft on December 26, 2005
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