Leninism is flawed b/c humans are flawed.

[Comrade Anarchist]

Isn't leninism flawed because humans are flawed. We strive for power and 99% of the time we dont like giving it up so the vanguard party the bolshevicks called for is ultimately wrong because for one it puts people above everyone else and it gives the power to the few and these few never want to give it up which undermines communism and probally led to the eventual totalitorian state it became under Stalin.

[Woland]

No.

[Hyacinth]

I think Leninist vanguardist ideas are indeed wrong—at least when the vanguard is conceived of as something more than just the most advanced/progressive element of the proletariat, i.e. when the vanguard is conceived of as taking on a leadership role—but I think it mistaken to characterize this flaw as resulting from faults in human nature. Marxism, socialism, communism, etc. are all political movements that deal with *real* people, not some idealized perfect beings; in trying to bring about communism we are not trying to create a "new Soviet man" or anything of the sort, but to bring about a system that will function with humans as they acutally are. Anything else is idealism.

[BobKKKindle$]

Why do you and almost every other anarchist on the board keep insisting on this simplistic and utterly false narrative of the Russian Revolution? If you knew anything about the political conditions in Russia before the revolution took place you would be aware of the fact that the Bolsheviks had the mass support of the working class and were able to gain majorities in all of the major urban Soviets, because they were the only party which refused to support the imperialist war, and the only party brave enough to call on the working class to seize power, whereas the other parties sided with the Kerensky government, thereby making themselves complicit in the slaughter of the Russian proletariat, and argued that Russia needed to undergo an extended period of capitalist development under the control of a bourgeois-democratic regime before it would become ready for a socialist revolution. In this context, and because the Bolsheviks eventually transformed themselves into a mass movement, subject to popular pressure, it would have been impossible for the leaders of the party to impose their will on a radicalized and armed proletariat without encountering serious resistance from the base. This is how radical and popular movements operate. The bureaucratization of both the state and the party apparatus only took place when the proletariat had been smashed and fragmented as a result of the Civil War - and when confronted with this situation, once the Civil War had come to an end, Trotsky did everything he could to maintain internal democracy and prevent the gains of the revolution from being lost, by campaigning within the party, and calling for international revolution, as the only way to ensure the survival of a proletarian state apparatus based on Soviet democracy and mass participation. The lessons you draw from the experience of the Russian Revolution also show that you have failed to understand the concept of the vanguard party. This concept does not involve a small elite imposing its will on the rest of the population or carrying out the revolution in the name of an oppressed group - both Marx and Lenin always argued that socialism can only come into being through the struggles and efforts of the working class itself, and Lenin, such was his understanding of how the revolution would play out in Russia, and the requirements of proletarian democracy, went to so far as to predict that, unless the revolution spread, it would inevitably degenerate and create new power structures and a new system of exploitation. For Lenin, the vanguard party is nothing but the most class conscious and militant section of the working class organized in the form of a party, and he never intended this party or any component of it to replace the mass proletariat as the primary revolutionary force. If you want to understand Russia, and draw the right conclusions, stop repeating these superficial and childish anarchist myths.

[Dave B]

whereas the other parties ………… argued that Russia needed to undergo an extended period of capitalist development under the control of a bourgeois-democratic regime before it would become ready for a socialist revolution...................................
This concept does not involve a small elite imposing its will on the rest of the population or carrying out the revolution in the name of an oppressed group


.


Well actually on the first point that was the Bolsheviks own position in 1905

V. I. (http://www.revleft.com/1905/apr/30c.htm) Lenin (http://www.revleft.com/1905/may/18.htm), The Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/index.htm#13)

April 12 (25)-April 27 (May 10), 1905





If we promised the Russian proletariat now that we could secure its complete domination immediately, we would fall into the error of the Socialists-Revolutionaries. It is this mistake of the Socialists-Revolutionaries that we Social-Democrats have always ridiculed—their claim that the revolution will be "democratic and not bourgeois". We have constantly said that the revolution would strengthen the bourgeoisie, not weaken it, but that it would create for the proletariat the necessary conditions for waging a successful struggle for socialism.




http://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/lenin/works//1905/3rdcong/13.htm#bkV08E121 (http://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/lenin/works//1905/3rdcong/13.htm)

And;

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (http://www.revleft.com/vb/index.htm#ch06)

6.
From what Direction is the Proletariat Threatened with the Danger of Having its Hands Tied in the Struggle Against the Inconsistent Bourgeoisie?





But it is entirely absurd to think that a bourgeois revolution does not express the interests of the proletariat at all. This absurd idea boils down either to the hoary Narodnik theory that a bourgeois revolution runs counter to the interests of the proletariat, and that therefore we do not need bourgeois political liberty; or to anarchism, which rejects all participation of the proletariat in bourgeois politics, in a bourgeois revolution and in bourgeois parliamentarism.

From the standpoint of theory, this idea disregards the elementary propositions of Marxism concerning the inevitability of capitalist development where commodity production exists. Marxism teaches that a society which is based on commodity production, and which has commercial intercourse with civilised capitalist nations, at a certain stage of its development, itself, inevitably takes the road of capitalism.

Marxism has irrevocably broken with the ravings of the Narodniks and the anarchists to the effect that Russia, for instance, can avoid capitalist development, jump out of capitalism, or skip over it and proceed along some path other than the path of the class struggle on the basis and within the framework of this same capitalism.



http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/ch06.htm (http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/ch06.htm)





And on the second point of workers control;


V. I. Lenin

The Trade Unions, The Present Situation

And Trotsky’s Mistakes

Speech Delivered At A Joint Meeting Of Communist Delegates To The Eighth Congress Of Soviets, Communist Members Of The All-Russia Central Council Of Trade Unions And Communist Members Of The Moscow City Council Of Trade Unions December 30, 1920






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 whole is like an arrangement of cogwheels. Such is the basic mechanism of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and of the essentials of transition from capitalism to communism. From this alone it is evident that there is something fundamentally wrong in principle when Comrade Trotsky points, in his first thesis, to "ideological confusion", and speaks of a crisis as existing specifically and particularly in the trade unions.

If we are to speak of a crisis, we can do so only after analysing the political situation. It is Trotsky who is in "ideological confusion", because in this key question of the trade unions’ role, from the standpoint of transition from capitalism to communism, he has lost sight of the fact that we have here a complex arrangement of cogwheels which cannot be a simple one; for the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised by a mass proletarian organisation.

It cannot work without a number of "transmission belts" running from the vanguard to the mass of the advanced class, and from the latter to the mass of the working people. In Russia, this mass is a peasant one. There is no such mass anywhere else, but even in the most advanced countries there is a non-proletarian, or a not entirely proletarian, mass.



http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm (http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm)


I think what Bobkindles is saying sounds to me more like syndicalism than Leninism;


V. I. Lenin, The Party Crisis





Why have a Party, if industrial management is to be appointed ("mandatory nomination") by the trade unions nine-tenths of whose members are non-Party workers? Bukharin has talked himself into a logical, theoretical and practical implication of a split in the Party, or, rather, a breakaway of the syndicalists from the Party.



http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jan/19.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jan/19.htm)

[Tower of Bebel]

Bolshevism is not flawed. Bolshevism out of context is flawed. You could argue that Bolshevism is 2nd International marxism in a Russian context.

[Post-Something]

Isn't leninism flawed because humans are flawed. We strive for power and 99% of the time we dont like giving it up so the vanguard party the bolshevicks called for is ultimately wrong because for one it puts people above everyone else and it gives the power to the few and these few never want to give it up which undermines communism and probally led to the eventual totalitorian state it became under Stalin.

No, this is a rubbish analysis. Read some history.

[BobKKKindle$]

Well actually on the first point that was the Bolsheviks own position in 1905

Yes, and positions changed, partly as a result of the experience of the 1905 uprising, when the proletariat created embryonic organs of political power in the form of factory Soviets, and the bourgeoisie failed to carry the democratic revolution to its ultimate conclusion because it was too closely tied to the Tsarist regime and afraid of giving the radicalized proletariat too much power - this is what led Trotsky to write 'Results and Prospects' in 1906, and it was this, combined with subsequent events such as the February Revolution, that compelled Lenin to change his own views and side with Trotsky shortly before the October Revolution. Your post added absolutely nothing of value to the discussion and is completely irrelevant. In relation to your second "argument", at no point does my post support syndicalism, as it does not suggest that the party should abdicate its leading political role once a social revolution has occurred, especially in a country with conditions similar to those in Russia, or that trade unions should take complete control of the economy and/or state. Also, please fix your font, and learn how to format your posts.

[rebel warrior]

I agree with the OP. I also think that is time that Leninists and Stalinists began to see that what happened was a failure. A complete and utter failure.

The sooner we recognize that vanguard parties and hierachical leadership are contrary to the goals of a workers movement, the sooner we can succeed.

In essence, the Bolsheviks stole power from the soviets, the organs of workers power. Yeah, they were voted in, but so were the Democrats.

[BobKKKindle$]

In essence, the Bolsheviks stole power from the soviets, the organs of workers power. Yeah, they were voted in, but so were the Democrats.The fact that you can perceive no meaningful differences between Soviet democracy and the American political system, and between the Bolsheviks and the Democrats just shows how flawed your argument is. The United States is a class-based society in which the state lacks control of the means of production and is beyond the direct control of the working class, and, due to the unequal distribution of wealth, and the political power that can be obtained through wealth, as well as the fact that the state is always forced to operate in the context of a capitalist society, the bourgeoisie uses the state as a means to maintain its own class rule, and control dissent, either through the the amelioration of capitalism's worst excesses, or violence. The Democrats are part of this apparatus and also reflect the class interests of the bourgeoisie, as a party comprised of individuals from a bourgeois social background, and as a party dependent on donations from bourgeois interests. The Soviet state, by contrast, eliminated the distinction between political and economic activity as a state rooted in workplace Soviets, and its delegates were always in direct contact with the electorate and could be recalled at any point in time if they failed to carry out the instructions they had been given. In addition, these delegates were denied the right to receive more than the wage of the average skilled worker. The Bolsheviks were, once again, rooted in the working class, and overwhelmingly comprised of workers, as historical research and the documentation of Soviet election results have consistently shown. They were not, as you allege, an evil band of conspirators, isolated from the proletariat, with no susceptibility to pressure from below. You are apparently unable to acknowledge these basic facts, or understand the material roots of bureaucratic degeneration in Russia, because you, like so many anarchists, prefer a simplistic moral account of Russian history, and view the state not as a force rooted in class society, as Marxists argue, but as an independent and totally autonomous form of oppression.

[PRC-UTE]

Isn't leninism flawed because humans are flawed. We strive for power and 99% of the time we dont like giving it up so the vanguard party the bolshevicks called for is ultimately wrong because for one it puts people above everyone else and it gives the power to the few and these few never want to give it up which undermines communism and probally led to the eventual totalitorian state it became under Stalin.

the Lenin-led-to-Stalin line is shaky and not even all bourgeois academics agree with this interpretation.

what is to be done by Lenin is most often cited as why Lenin = Stalinism, but WITBD really only makes sense in a certain context. namely Lenin attempting to pull revolutionaries away from economism and push it towards revolution.

really, too much is made of Lenin's conception of the party. it was the model all working class parties of the day followed (and anyway, it's debatable how much it was really implemented). bottom line is, Lenin didn't order the party to carry out the revolution, or the kronstadt sailors, or the petrograd soviet, or the working class- he convinced them.

besides, any revolutionary class would probably follow basically the same path. sorry, but in practice there has not been a truly anarchist/anti-authoritarian/federalist workers revolution anywhere. those struggles require some degree of centralisation. even the anarchists in Spain did not abandon bureaucracy or hierarchy.

[Dave B]

So Leninism didn’t lead to Stalinism

V. I. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/../../1922/feb/04c.htm) Lenin (http://www.revleft.com/vb/../../1922/feb/21c.htm), ON THE TASKS OF THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT FOR JUSTICE UNDER THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY





Special request</EM>: Please, do not duplicate; let read and sign; prevent divulging; prevent blabbing out to enemies.

February 20, 1922

Comrade Kursky,

The activity of the People’s Commissariat for Justice is apparently not yet at all adapted to the New Economic Policy.

Previously, the militant organs of the Soviet power were chiefly the People’s Commissariat for the Army and the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission. An especially militant role now falls to the People’s Commissariat for Justice (P.C.J.); unfortunately, there is no evidence of any understanding of this on the part of the leadership and the senior members of the P.C.J.

Intensification of reprisals against the political enemies of the Soviet power and the agents of the bourgeoisie ( specifically the Mensheviks and S.R.s); mounting of these reprisals by revolutionary tribunals and people’s courts in the swiftest, most revolutionary and expedient manner; compulsory staging of a number of model (as regards speed and force of repression, and explanation of their significance to the masses of people through the courts and the press) trials in Moscow, Petrograd, Kharkov and several other key centres;

influence on the people’s judges and members of revolutionary tribunals through the Party in the sense of improving the activity of the courts and intensifying the reprisals—all of this must be conducted systematically, persistently, with doggedness and mandatory reports (in the most concise, telegraphic style but business-like and exact, with obligatory statistics of how the P.C.J. chastises and learns to chastise the "communist" scoundrels who predominate among us and who know how to chatter and put on airs, but not how to work).

The fighting role of the P.C.J. is equally important in the sphere of NEP, and here the P.C.J.’s weakness and apathy is even more outrageous. There is no evidence of any understanding of the fact that we recognise and will continue to recognise only state capitalism, and it is we— we conscious workers, we Communists—who are the state.



http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1922/feb/20c.htm (http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1922/feb/20c.htm)

[BobKKKindle$]

So Leninism didn’t lead to StalinismNo, and the extract you posted does nothing to prove your assertion. Lenin is referring to the need to use force against the enemies of the proletariat in order to defend the gains of the social revolution and prevent capitalism being restored by the remnants of the bourgeoisie and other hostile class elements. It is clear why he would be eager to do this in 1922, because by this point it was clear that Russia would not be able to depend on revolutions breaking out in other capitalist countries, exposing Russia to imperialist intervention, and the implementation of the NEP as a means of restoring economic prosperity and improving relations of the peasantry led to an increase in urban commerce and other forms of petty-bourgeois activity, which, if left unchecked, could have grown into an embryonic bourgeoisie, capable of seizing state power and enforcing its class interests through violence. These tasks form the most important purpose of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the fact that you cite this extract as evidence of continuity suggests that you do not see a need to resist the restoration of capitalism in a post-revolutionary society, and expect that the bourgeoisie will not make any attempts to reclaim what has been taken from them by the revolutionary proletariat. This is what we should expect from a utopian sect such as the SPGB. By contrast, Stalinism is associated with the destruction of workers democracy and the use of violence against the working class in order to support the political supremacy and material privileges of the bureaucracy, which comprised a new ruling class once the revolution had been defeated in the late 1920s. This is a simple yet crucial difference, yet apparently something you cannot grasp.

Once again, please learn to format properly. Yours posts are bad enough to read without having small font.

[Pogue]

No, and the extract you posted does nothing to prove your assertion. Lenin is referring to the need to use force against the enemies of the proletariat in order to defend the gains of the social revolution and prevent capitalism being restored by the remnants of the bourgeoisie and other hostile class elements. It is clear why he would be eager to do this in 1922, because by this point it was clear that Russia would not be able to depend on revolutions breaking out in other capitalist countries, exposing Russia to imperialist intervention, and the implementation of the NEP as a means of restoring economic prosperity and improving relations of the peasantry led to an increase in urban commerce and other forms of petty-bourgeois activity, which, if left unchecked, could have grown into an embryonic bourgeoisie, capable of seizing state power and enforcing its class interests through violence. These tasks form the most important purpose of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the fact that you cite this extract as evidence of continuity suggests that you do not see a need to resist the restoration of capitalism in a post-revolutionary society, and expect that the bourgeoisie will not make any attempts to reclaim what has been taken from them by the revolutionary proletariat. This is what we should expect from a utopian sect such as the SPGB. By contrast, Stalinism is associated with the destruction of workers democracy and the use of violence against the working class in order to support the political supremacy and material privileges of the bureaucracy, which comprised a new ruling class once the revolution had been defeated in the late 1920s. This is a simple yet crucial difference, yet apparently something you cannot grasp.

Once again, please learn to format properly. Yours posts are bad enough to read without having small font.

That is very ironic considering your wall of text which never ever has a gap in it.

In my opinion, Bolshevism is flawed, thats why it has never created a true worker run society.

[Dave B]

So given British intelligence reports that were filtering back from Lenin’s Russia, like;


From R.H. Lockhart, 10th November 1918, document No,10 in ‘Bolshevism In Russia’



"the worst crimes of the Bolsheviks have been against their socialist opponents. Of the countless executions which the Bolsheviks have carried out , a large percentage has fallen on the heads of Socialists."


And from the same collection in their ‘scrap book’;
Protest of the (Russian) Social Democratic Labour Party and of the Jewish Socialist Party sent to the executive Committees of all Socialist Parties of Europe and America, August 1918



`The imaginary dictatorship of the proletariat has definitely turned into the dictatorship of the Bolshevik party, which attracted all sorts of adventurers and suspicious characters and is supported only by the naked force of hired bayonets. Their sham socialism…………….'



` In the continuing struggle against the Bolshevik tyranny which dishonours the Russian revolution, social democracy pursues the following aims.

1) To make it impossible for the working class to have to shed its blood for the sake of maintaining the sham dictatorship of the toiling masses or of the sham socialistic order, both of which are bound to perish and are meanwhile killing the soul and body of the proletariat.

2) To organise the working class into a force which, in union with other democratic forces of the country will be able to throw off the yoke of the Bolshevik regime, to defend the democratic conquests of the revolution…….'


One can only wonder at how M16 assessed this kind of intelligence;



"So what do you think Sir George, perhaps these Bolsheviks might be some of our kind of people."

[redguard2009]

Actually, yes. Western intelligence services -- as absolutely pathetic as they were in 1917 -- has essentially written up reports of Bolshevik "atrocities" long before they were supposedly committed. The history of propaganda and disinformation is an extensive one -- during the Second World War there were plenty of obvious lies written about both sides, from the Kaiser being a sexual devient, bathing in the blood of virgin sacrifices, the rapacious hun hell-bent on conquering the world. But despite this, you seem to think that there's some sort of exception here, that governments and intelligence agencies and diplomats and politicians who had the most counter-socialist agendas had some reason to all of a sudden be truthful, and believe that once something is written down in a book it is suddenly god's honest truth.

Of course British intelligence penetrated the Soviet Union days after the Bolshevik revolution, managing to somehow dodge bullets as millions of the Bolshevik's enemies were slaughtered like cattle, and somehow, by parcel mail and morse code, transmit the most detailed accounts of each and every crime halfway around the world to be printed in newspapers and magazines. The stories of the Bolshevik's bloodlust hit news stands in New York City before the bodies even hit the ground.

[Dave B]

Well no not really, they were being compiled for internal assessment of what was going on. They included interviews as well from British subjects that were coming back. A lot of them were from ‘business’ people I suppose as well as from well paid workers like engineers installing British machinery as well as just school teachers and nurses etc.

They all told a pretty consistent tale;

However from somebody else with perhaps better working class and communist credentials;

Agnes Smedley, letter to Florence Lennon, (December 1921)




'Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only. And no person is safe from intrigues and the danger of prison. The prisons are jammed with anarchists and syndicalists who fought in the
revolution. Emma Goldman and Berkman are out only because of their international reputations. And they are under house arrest; they expect to go to prison any day, and may be there now for all I know.

Any Communist who excuses such things is a scoundrel and a blaggard.

Yet they do excuse it - and defend it. If I'm not expelled or locked up or something, I'll raise a small-sized hell. Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.'



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Smedley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Smedley)

[BobKKKindle$]

What exactly are you trying to prove here? British agents drew attention to the fact that the Bolsheviks were carrying out political persecution against people who saw themselves as socialists - and this was the right thing to do, given that Lenin was almost killed as a result of an assassination attempt conducted by a member of the SRs, Fanny Kaplan, and the SRs also seized power in Georgia and directly assisted the British in their invasion of the areas controlled by the Soviets, such was their desire to restore capitalism and destroy the dictatorship of the proletariat. In these circumstances, it would have been absurd for the Bolsheviks not to organize repressive measures and this would led to the revolution being defeated at an even earlier date, and not due to bureaucratic degeneration under Stalin, but through armed force and the violence restoration of capitalism by the imperialists. But, as a member of the SPGB, and therefore someone who doesn't understand such trivial matters as how revolutions play out in the real world, you think that suppressing even one reactionary newspaper signifies the complete betrayal of socialism.