The Vanguard... [Archive]

KlÃ©ber

17th January 2010, 21:46

I see how the public school system and the simplification of labor and even more so false consciousness has left the working class unable to fully articulate what they've been feeling for quite some time, but is a group on intellectuals really needed to show them the way?The state of public education was relatively poor or non-existent back when big "vanguard" parties existed. But political independence did more for working class consciousness than any bourgeois education. A party represents the combination of working-class forces for class combat, which is political combat, against the bourgeoisie. The West has great public education now compared to the days of the big revolutionary parties, but has that helped the proletariat consciously fight for its rights more than an independent working-class party could have? The dominance of liberalism has led the working class into constant sell-outs and defeats for decades, even as our education supposedly improved. There have been some spontaneous outbursts, but what good are they? The trend has been defeat. Spontaneous outbursts do not require a vanguard party, but turning those outbursts into something revolutionary ... turning those 50 Peronist women into a 50-strong communist militia among an army of thousands capable of actually defeating the bourgeoisie, that requires an organization and a military hierarchy - a vanguard. Lenin was adamant about keeping that organization accountable and democratic. And the self-described Communist Parties failed the working class precisely because they deviated from Leninism in favor of "Popular Fronts" with the national or liberal bourgeoisie.

The "vanguard" does not have this elitist notion that anti-Leninist critics (who haven't even tried to read What Is To Be Done? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/)) attach to it. If some Peronists, or anarchists, or completely apolitical workers take over a factory and try to run it independently, they are a vanguard too! Just a small localized disorganized vanguard that is sure to fail if it doesn't join its efforts with the rest of the working class. Lenin was writing from the perspective of a fractured Russian workers' movement that was plagued by adventurism, economism (plain and simple trade unionism), and sectarianism. He believed that, far from being undemocratic and elitist, a centralized coordination of efforts where the working class could join its forces in a party, was a more democratic way to carry out revolutionary work.

The Russian Revolution did not fail because of Lenin's theories, but because of its prematurity and isolation, and the subjective factor of - that is to say, betrayal by - the Social-Democratic parties of Western Europe, in which the right wings, maybe because of imperialist super-profits and the subsequent better-off condition of the Western working class, were so strong as to muffle their own "lefts" and keep them from elaborating an independent platform as happened in Russia.

Russia was still mainly a feudal country in 1917 and the October Revolution was meant to be the opening shot in a European revolution, which never got off the ground. In order to preserve themselves against White and interventionist armies, the Bolsheviks instituted a regime of terror to force the peasants to fight alongside the workers. There was simply no other way to get food for the cities and troops for the army. Having come to power prematurely, the vanguard of the working class was, in order to preserve itself, forced to behave like the vanguard of the revolutionary bourgeoisie, and repeat the tragedy of the French Revolution in modern costume. It is this crisis, faced once the proletariat had come to power, not Lenin's theories on how to get there, which doomed the soviets. The waited-for European revolution never came and the bureaucracy which had been set up to mitigate the exploitation of war communism found itself in a position where its material interests deviated from those of the workers. Lenin honestly said that any industrial economy where managers get paid ten times as much as workers is "state capitalism," but he became seriously ill shortly after the Civil War and thus did not lend his name to any side in the subsequent debates, although all of them claimed him. The bureaucrats' political power grew as Stalin's centrist faction, whose defense of the status quo attracted the most comfortable elements, pandered to conservatism and defeated the internationalist Left Opposition and the pro-peasant Right Opposition. The bureaucracy's hold on power was not complete, though, until Stalin declared that socialism existed (1936, IIRC). There was no increase in political freedom, or equalization of wages (big bureaucrats were still making more than 10 times as much as workers) to go along with this new "socialism." Soon after this victory for the bureaucrats, almost the entire vanguard of Lenin, his colleagues and co-thinkers were shot or assassinated by the revisionist Stalin clique. Once Stalin was gone, the clique shed him like a snake sheds its scales, but the official lie that there was "socialism" continued until the privatization of industry in 1991.

Thankfully the world looks different today. The industry (and thus the revolutionary potential) is not located in the same countries where the superprofits are, but rather, most of the industry is in the oppressed countries. Lenin's theory of imperialism is thus outdated, but those who bash his defense of the revolutionary party while thinking they have a better idea, would do well to at least read WITBD (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/).

Clarksist

18th January 2010, 03:54

What is it's essential purpose and why did Lenin feel that it was needed?

The working class isn't necessarily good at carrying out revolution. They are not necessarily willing to put in the effort and dedication required to run a large effective communist party. Many members of the working class have families, jobs, obligations that can get in the way of party participation. Also, the working class is not atypically intelligent, or interested in philosophical discussion.

For these reasons, it becomes apparent that there is nothing that makes the working class good at revolution, except for the fact that they outnumber the other classes, and predominantly make up the existing military.

A vanguard provides a service that some comrades can offer. Certain bright, dedicated, passionate, or otherwise specially qualified comrades can help do the work they are good at and are willing to do, in the name of the greater struggle.

I mean, I can sympathize, I see how the public school system and the simplification of labor and even more so false consciousness has left the working class unable to fully articulate what they've been feeling for quite some time, but is a group on intellectuals really needed to show them the way?

I tend to think of the vanguard in a functionalist perspective. It isn't that the working class "needs" intellectuals to "show them the way", but that certain comrades will have skills better suited to "way showing". Some comrades may be better fit drawing pictures for propaganda, others may be able to provide food, or gathering spaces. It isn't that the vanguard is a closed door group, but that it is a functional aspect of party organization.

When your tooth aches, you visit a dentist. When your car is broken, you visit a mechanic.

I remember watching the documentary The Take, about the co-ops in Argentina and I remembered how effective and practical the workers ran their factories without the owners. Many of them weren't even leftists! The textile factory was run by 50 or so elderly ladies, many of whom were Peronists. I mean to what extent was an intellectual needed to show them how to do something that Marx deemed as inevitable in the course of history?

Anecdotal evidence is often inspiring, and can be a source of great pleasure in a life aimed at political struggle and change. It can even be essential in convincing certain types of people who find facts too cold to be swayed by. Even in more or less rigidly logical arguments, they can be used to vary the text and bring life to what can sometimes be meticulous discussions. That being said, they are generally shaky ground when trying to come up with solid and applicable theory.

In other words, what worked in that textile factory is not necessarily a repeatable set of conditions. There are many unknown, and by now perhaps unknowable, conditions which facilitated such a productive capacity.

While they may not of needed an intellectual to show them how to run the factory, that is not evidence that we should not appreciate the special role and talents that intellectuals can bring to the movement. If we wanted to make this specific incident a central point of discussion (which may be unwanted if we wish to center the topic on theory, as this thread is in the theory forum), I could continue on this point.

On a final note, about Marx saying that communism is an inevitable movement of history, this may be true. Though, my disagreement with this statement is twofold. One, inevitability or no, communist revolutions have failed, and we have learned the hard way that revolutions must be cultivated with care and caution, and intellectuals should apply there skills in doing that cultivation. Two, Marx saying communism is "inevitable" is not an infallible sign that it is.

Stephen Colbert

18th January 2010, 06:31

They're not intellectuals, they're workers. Conscious workers organized in a party to improve their work.

The biggest thing would be that they are selfless and reform the gov't structure just because they are obligated to the bourgeoise, but after that they dissolve. So if there was ever to be a vanguard, I'd volunteer :P hence the name

Tablo

18th January 2010, 07:31

The idea of a Vanguard Party is elitist in my opinion. The best stance I have ever heard of is from the PLP who want the organization of a mass Vanguard party compromising the entire working class, which isn't exactly what most Marxist-Leninists want.

Jimmie Higgins

18th January 2010, 08:44

Like Kleber said, the vanguard in the working class movement exists regardless if they are organized together into a party or not. The idea of a party bringing together the various revolutionaries (the "vanguard") from all walks of the struggle was created in opposition to the mass socialist-democratic parties where there would be a small leadership at top who would be the most involved and then all the rank and file who would then carry out propaganda and vote for the party in a very passive way. The Bolsheviks saw this as an less democratic way to organize since not everyone in the party was equally involved in deciding the direction and politics of the party.

The problem with many so-called "vanguard parties" right now comes when parties unilaterally declare that they represent the vanguard of the working class movement - well the movement is so weak right now, I don't think a real vanguard could be organized and have any real influence in working class communities and workplaces.

When the movement picks up and there is a lot more independent self-action of workers and labor struggles and so on then a vanguard will organically begin to develop - local leaders of the various struggles. As working class consciousness becomes more radically oriented, then the question of forming a real vanguard party will more naturally become a real political question about how to move things forward in the struggle.

Kayser_Soso

18th January 2010, 09:47

No need at all for a vanguard party as far as I'm concerned.
No need for leaders of any description.
No need for any Lenins, Trotskys, Browns, Obamas or Chavezs.
None.

How's that been working out so far?

Kayser_Soso

18th January 2010, 09:50

The key to having a vanguard party that really represents the working class is to implement checks and balances that weren't implemented in 1918. Albania helped alleviate one of the major problems by keeping wage differentials extremely low and also requiring party members to do productive work of some sort. In 1917, thanks in part to the conditions of the time, workers didn't have much political knowledge or understanding. Today, a worker can in theory have far more access to political knowledge, and there are far more mediums to take advantage of.

But lastly, the most important argument in favor of a "vanguard" of some sort, is that the capitalists have their "vanguard" style organizations- and not having our own organizations(which makes transnational communication a hell of a lot easier), is like going up against their army without one of our own.

JimN

18th January 2010, 13:28

The key to having a vanguard party that really represents the working class is to implement checks and balances that weren't implemented in 1918. Albania helped alleviate one of the major problems by keeping wage differentials extremely low and also requiring party members to do productive work of some sort. In 1917, thanks in part to the conditions of the time, workers didn't have much political knowledge or understanding. Today, a worker can in theory have far more access to political knowledge, and there are far more mediums to take advantage of.

I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands. Eugene Debbs

Jim
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Omi

18th January 2010, 17:02

How's that been working out so far?

Yeah and how did the idea of a vanguard work out so far? Nothing but failed revolutions ending in the repression of workers power, and ultimately a totalitarian dictatorship. Nice.

The point with a vanguard, is that it is ultimately counter revolutionary. It poses itself as the replacement of an entire class, the working classes don't have to participate in the revolution other than just be ''the masses'', and all other revolutionary activity is deemed counter revolutionary, just because it does not adhere to the strict line of the vanguard. Anyone foolish enough to participate in activity running ahead of the vanguard is held back at best, or killed at worst. The notion that somehow the working classes are to stupid (because that is what some people here are actually saying) to be revolutionary and should be ''led'' (read: forced) by some party intellectuals is disgusting, elitist, harmful to our movement and has destroyed large segments of the workers movement and the left in general. It is an idea that should have been buried in history long ago, and the fact that people still spew this elitist bs is totally out of contact with the everyday experiences of nearly every worker in the modern western world of today. No self proclaimed vanguard party that I know of in my geographical region consists of ''class concious workers'', but of self proclaimed revolutionary, middle class, elitist white students who never have been in conflict with the state, or capital, and do everything they can to avoid it.

Many a popular movement has been kidnapped by these vanguards, and I don't intend to let any kidnap a movement we are yet to build.

red cat

18th January 2010, 17:14

Yeah and how did the idea of a vanguard work out so far? Nothing but failed revolutions ending in the repression of workers power, and ultimately a totalitarian dictatorship. Nice.

The point with a vanguard, is that it is ultimately counter revolutionary. It poses itself as the replacement of an entire class, the working classes don't have to participate in the revolution other than just be ''the masses'', and all other revolutionary activity is deemed counter revolutionary, just because it does not adhere to the strict line of the vanguard. Anyone foolish enough to participate in activity running ahead of the vanguard is held back at best, or killed at worst. The notion that somehow the working classes are to stupid (because that is what some people here are actually saying) to be revolutionary and should be ''led'' (read: forced) by some party intellectuals is disgusting, elitist, harmful to our movement and has destroyed large segments of the workers movement and the left in general. It is an idea that should have been buried in history long ago, and the fact that people still spew this elitist bs is totally out of contact with the everyday experiences of nearly every worker in the modern western world of today. No self proclaimed vanguard party that I know of in my geographical region consists of ''class concious workers'', but of self proclaimed revolutionary, middle class, elitist white students who never have been in conflict with the state, or capital, and do everything they can to avoid it.

Many a popular movement has been kidnapped by these vanguards, and I don't intend to let any kidnap a movement we are yet to build.

But how do you plan to win the revolutionary war? How will the masses fight back an organized military operation coordinated at, say, a city-level?

KlÃ©ber

18th January 2010, 17:23

Blanqui, the renowned French anarchist, called for a centralized military hierarchy in response to the defeat of the Paris Commune, where the state forces, after entering the city, easily surrounded uncoordinated militia units and destroyed them one by one.

So can you explain how Marxist groups are "vanguards" but anarchist groups are not? In the Spanish Civil War the CNT-FAI had a hierarchical party and military structure, isn't that a vanguard? There were many examples of anarchists executing people, even fellow anarchists, over political disputes. Is that OK as long as they don't call themselves a vanguard?

syndicat

18th January 2010, 19:07

I tend to think of the vanguard in a functionalist perspective. It isn't that the working class "needs" intellectuals to "show them the way", but that certain comrades will have skills better suited to "way showing". Some comrades may be better fit drawing pictures for propaganda, others may be able to provide food, or gathering spaces. It isn't that the vanguard is a closed door group, but that it is a functional aspect of party organization.

Actually there are worker intellectuals. An "intellectual" is merely anyone who is particularly interested in ideas. Work involves thought to some extent and some kinds of jobs more so than others.

But what I thnk you don't understand is that your own conception prefigures a new bureaucratic ruling class, dominating the workers. If the workers themselves do not build and control the mass movements that are the basis of the revolution and control what happens, then this means that some minority group with various forms of expertise will use that to end up on top, and creating the basis for a new bureaucratic ruling class.

Within capitalism there is a "functional" group that tends to concentrate much expertise, because capitalism needs an administrative layer separate from control by workers, which exercizes control over them...managers, lawyers, professors, engineers.

Your approch would simply ensure that a class like this dominates the working class.

So can you explain how Marxist groups are "vanguards" but anarchist groups are not? In the Spanish Civil War the CNT-FAI had a hierarchical party and military structure, isn't that a vanguard? There were many examples of anarchists executing people, even fellow anarchists, over political disputes. Is that OK as long as they don't call themselves a vanguard?

The FAI was not a hierarchical party but a horizontal federation of groups. Nor was it made up of professional revolutionaries or intellectuals outside the working class, for the most part. It was mainly made up of working class auto-didacts. And it was rooted in the mass unions of the CNT.

Moreover, their position was that it was not the "vanguard", the FAI, that was to come to power, but the CNT, the mass movement.

In the actual fight against the army in Barcelona in July 1936, it was the CNT's workers committee that coordinated the actions of their neighborhood defense groups. Thus it was a mass worker organization, not a "party" that coordinated and directed the struggle. After defeating the army and seizing its arms, they then build a massive, but democratically structured, worker militia, controlled by the CNT labor federation, not a "vanguard party."

Kayser_Soso

18th January 2010, 19:24

KlÃ©ber

18th January 2010, 19:31

Thus it was a mass worker organization, not a "party"A party is an organization.

Moreover, their position was that it was not the "vanguard", the FAI, that was to come to power, but the CNT, the mass movement.The Bolshevik Party led the soviets, the mass workers' organizations, to power. Wasn't the FAI founded to lead the CNT on a revolutionary course?

After defeating the army and seizing its arms, they then build a massive, but democratically structured, worker militia, controlled by the CNT labor federation, not a "vanguard party."Actually, the anarchist militias were not independent for long, the "anarchist" leaders joined the bourgeois Republican government and subordinated their organization to the Popular Front. So I will grant you that there was nothing vanguardist (or anarchist for that matter) about that.

Nolan

18th January 2010, 19:35

Yeah and how did the idea of a vanguard work out so far? Nothing but failed revolutions ending in the repression of workers power, and ultimately a totalitarian dictatorship. Nice.

You pulled the words out of my high school history book. Nice.

The point with a vanguard, is that it is ultimately counter revolutionary. It poses itself as the replacement of an entire class, the working classes don't have to participate in the revolution other than just be ''the masses'', and all other revolutionary activity is deemed counter revolutionary, just because it does not adhere to the strict line of the vanguard. Anyone foolish enough to participate in activity running ahead of the vanguard is held back at best, or killed at worst. The notion that somehow the working classes are to stupid (because that is what some people here are actually saying) to be revolutionary and should be ''led'' (read: forced) by some party intellectuals is disgusting, elitist, harmful to our movement and has destroyed large segments of the workers movement and the left in general. It is an idea that should have been buried in history long ago, and the fact that people still spew this elitist bs is totally out of contact with the everyday experiences of nearly every worker in the modern western world of today. No self proclaimed vanguard party that I know of in my geographical region consists of ''class concious workers'', but of self proclaimed revolutionary, middle class, elitist white students who never have been in conflict with the state, or capital, and do everything they can to avoid it.

Many a popular movement has been kidnapped by these vanguards, and I don't intend to let any kidnap a movement we are yet to build.

Awesome strawman dude!

Kayser_Soso

18th January 2010, 19:40

I honestly don't know how much teenage angst it takes to identify the concept of leadership with the implication that anyone who is not a leader must be an idiot.

robbo203

18th January 2010, 19:51

The "vanguard" does not have this elitist notion that anti-Leninist critics (who haven't even tried to read What Is To Be Done? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/)) attach to it. .

There are two distinct senses in which we can use the term "vanguard" - one is elitist and the other is not,

The non-elitist version essentially recognises as an empirical fact that some workers are class conscious and others are not. Class conscious workers can be construed as being on the cutting edge of social development so to speak. A vanguard of communist thought. The Communist Manifesto, for example, talked of communists in this way. However, the Communist Manifesto was adamant that "The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority" (Chapter 1. "Bourgeois and Proletarians"). In other words, come a revolution when the majority are communist minded, it no longer possible to talk about there being a vanguard in this sense. The vanguard "disappears" because of the growth of the communist movement itself into a majoritarian movement.

The elitist version takes a quite different view. When we talk of vanguardism we really mean this elitist view of the role of the vanguard. Keith Graham defines vanguardism as being the docrine "that a given group's emancipation depends cruciallly on some other, much smaller group's leadership, guidance or domination in some stronger form" (The Battle of Democracy: Conflict, Consensus and the Individual, Keith Graham, Wheatsheaf Books, Brighton, 1986, p.207)

Lenin most certainly subscribed to this second elitist definition of the vanguard while also making use of the term vanguard in its non elitist sense. Lenin's elitism is quite clearly shown in statements like this
from his Theses on Fundamental Tasks of The Second Congress Of The Communist International published in 1920
On the other hand, the idea, common among the old parties and the old leaders of the Second International, that the majority of the exploited toilers can achieve complete clarity of socialist consciousness and firm socialist convictions and character under capitalist slavery, under the yoke of the bourgeoisie (which assumes an infinite variety of forms that become more subtle and at the same time more brutal and ruthless the higher the cultural level in a given capitalist country) is also idealisation of capitalism and of bourgeois democracy, as well as deception of the workers. In fact, it is only after the vanguard of the proletariat, supported by the whole or the majority of this, the only revolutionary class, overthrows the exploiters, suppresses them, emancipates the exploited from their state of slavery and-immediately improves their conditions of life at the expense of the expropriated capitalists—it is only after this, and only in the actual process of an acute class strugg]e, that the masses of the toilers and exploited can be educated, trained and organised around the proletariat under whose influence and guidance, they can get rid of the selfishness, disunity, vices and weaknesses engendered by private property; only then will they be converted into a free union of free workers.
(http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1920/jul/04.htm)

Lenin made it absolutely clear that that vanguard should not be restrained from seizing power becuase of the lack of socialist consciousness. In a speech to the Congress of Peasants’ Soviets on 27 November, 1917 he contended:
"If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years...The Socialist political party - this is the vanguard of the working class; it must not allow itself to be halted by the lack of education of the mass average, but it must lead the masses, using the Soviets as organs of revolutionary initiative…" (Quoted in John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World , Modern Library edition, 1960, p.15).

More to the point once the vanguard had seized power it was the vanguard alone which would govern, not the wider working clas in whose name it had seized power:
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.(http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1920/jul/04.htm)

If this is not elitism then what is?

Clarksist

18th January 2010, 19:52

From Omi:

The point with a vanguard, is that it is ultimately counter revolutionary. It poses itself as the replacement of an entire class, the working classes don't have to participate in the revolution other than just be ''the masses'', and all other revolutionary activity is deemed counter revolutionary, just because it does not adhere to the strict line of the vanguard. Anyone foolish enough to participate in activity running ahead of the vanguard is held back at best, or killed at worst.

This is making assumptions based on historical situations which, though unfortunate, do not represent the entire gamut of vanguard theory.

The notion that somehow the working classes are to stupid (because that is what some people here are actually saying) to be revolutionary and should be ''led'' (read: forced) by some party intellectuals is disgusting, elitist, harmful to our movement and has destroyed large segments of the workers movement and the left in general.

It is not that the working class is "too stupid", but that workers are not atypically good at these skills by virtue of being a worker. However, some workers may have skills better fit for running a party.

No self proclaimed vanguard party that I know of in my geographical region consists of ''class concious workers'', but of self proclaimed revolutionary, middle class, elitist white students who never have been in conflict with the state, or capital, and do everything they can to avoid it.

This may be true, but this, again, is anecdotal evidence which attempts to color the conversation with emotions that aren't attempting to add a deeper understanding of the issues at hand, only an emotional reaction.

From Syndicat:

Actually there are worker intellectuals.

This is true, the terms are not mutually exclusive. There is no reason to consider them so, though there are also non-proletarian intellectuals. Because of this, it seems beneficial to a greater understanding of the special role of intellectuals if we clip them off specifically and place them in their own group.

But what I thnk you don't understand is that your own conception prefigures a new bureaucratic ruling class, dominating the workers.

Yes, perhaps. However, this new group of intellectuals and revolutionaries are special because of their particular skills in being strategic and visionary leaders, traits which should be used, instead of flattening decision making to brute "democracy".

The large group of potential voters do not have the time or resources to understand all the issues and make critical and calm reflection. What is the benefit to having what is popular among the general population, that isn't necessarily atypically good at strategic or visionary thinking, have absolute rule? Where as representative institutions can ensure a certain level of checks and balances, to say democracy is somehow a valuable goal in itself is making a leap which requires further defense.

It seems irrationally populist to say that "elitism" is somehow a negative thing, if by "elitism" one means utilizing people's individual skills. Intellectuals should not slave over manual labor if they can better serve the group elsewhere, and if they do not wish to perform manual labor.

If the workers themselves do not build and control the mass movements that are the basis of the revolution and control what happens, then this means that some minority group with various forms of expertise will use that to end up on top, and creating the basis for a new bureaucratic ruling class.

Cooperation involves utilization of an individual's skills for the betterment of the group. This is an inherent characteristic of any system which wishes to effectively and efficiently perform tasks. To treat everyone as if they are not specifically abled is to deny a fundamental trait of human groups. Not only a fundamental trait, a very useful trait.

Within capitalism there is a "functional" group that tends to concentrate much expertise, because capitalism needs an administrative layer separate from control by workers, which exercizes control over them...managers, lawyers, professors, engineers.

Yes, but in capitalism this group has powers given to them by the class which own the means of production. Under socialism, the theory goes that everyone owns the means of production in common, and so they would have no special power, merely helping the process of production along.

While you do not say it outright, by mentioning you are against this system of an intellectual "elite", and mentioning engineers, lawyers, and professors as part of this "elite, one can make an intuitive connection that you do not support these positions in a post-revolutionary society. However, I will wait for your confirmation on this point before I potentially derail the conversation due to a misunderstanding on my part.

Nolan

18th January 2010, 19:55

If this is not elitism then what is?

Practicality. Anyways, Russia was not exactly the perfect candidate for Socialism.

robbo, stop trying to slander Lenin. It just makes you look pathetic.

Kayser_Soso

18th January 2010, 20:03

Throughout the history of capitalism, the ruling class has used a myriad of methods to confuse workers about politics, create cynicism, and even depoliticize them altogether. Thankfully the means exist today whereby a worker can, assuming they put the time and effort into it, study and understand politics. A large part of this is due to widespread literacy, technical advances, public education, and the previous gains of the workers' struggle in many countries which give workers more free time compared to those who must still work 17 hour shifts and whatnot. Of course the capitalists have not let this go by unnoticed, which is why every medium is used to deliver non-stop propaganda aimed at dividing and/or pulling the proletariat to the right.

robbo203

18th January 2010, 20:09

Practicality. Anyways, Russia was not exactly the perfect candidate for Socialism.

robbo, stop trying to slander Lenin. It just makes you look pathetic.

Amusing as always. I just posted a long passage from Lenin which demonstrates clearly his elitist perspective which you dont deny but justify on grounds of "practicality". So you agree basically that he was an elitist and then criticise me for simply pointing this out! :rolleyes:

I take it as a compliment that I should be summarily be dismissed as looking "pathetic" by the likes of you. It would be rather worrying, knowing your batty worldview, if instead I was praised

syndicat

18th January 2010, 20:12

me:

Thus it was a mass worker organization, not a "party"

Kleber:
A party is an organization.

You're being obfuscatory. A mass organization is open to anyone who wants to fight in a particular area of social struggle, such as the workplace. A party is an organization put together on the basis of relatively narrow programmatic or ideological agreement.

me:
Moreover, their position was that it was not the "vanguard", the FAI, that was to come to power, but the CNT, the mass movement.

Kleber:

The Bolshevik Party led the soviets, the mass workers' organizations, to power. Wasn't the FAI founded to lead the CNT on a revolutionary course?

The soviets did not take power, the party did. That's what the Council of People's Commissars was all about. Moreover, most of the soviets had been constructed as top-down organizations controlled by the executive which was run by the party intelligentsia. This was the way the Mensheviks set them up and the Bolsheviks followed this pattern. Neither Mensheviks nor Bolsheviks had any particular conception of the importance of actual participation of workers in the decisions that affect them. Calling the regime set up in Oct 1917 a "workers rule" is a misnomer and workers weren't in control.

me:
After defeating the army and seizing its arms, they then build a massive, but democratically structured, worker militia, controlled by the CNT labor federation, not a "vanguard party."

kleber:

Actually, the anarchist militias were not independent for long, the "anarchist" leaders joined the bourgeois Republican government and subordinated their organization to the Popular Front. So I will grant you that there was nothing vanguardist (or anarchist for that matter) about that.

The Popular Front government was a multi-class government, but not a "bourgeois" one because the capitalists had by then been expropriated. It would be more accurate to say that the alliance was between working class organizations and organizations of the small employer and bureaucratic middle classes.

Every Marxist and Leninist party in Spain was beating the drum for joining that "bourgeois" government. The anarcho-syndicalists held out the longest. So your criticisms here is implicitly a criticism of Marxism since it was the emphasis on a party running a state that led all the Marxist and Leninist parties to join the Popular Front government.

Moreover, the CNT at least did propose a different path, the formation of a new workers government to replace the state, based on worker congresses and an elected revolutionary defense council, to run a unified militia. It was because the Marxist parties veto'd this that it didn't happen.

Nolan

18th January 2010, 20:17

Amusing as always. I just posted a long passage from Lenin which demonstrates clearly his elitist perspective which you dont deny but justify on grounds of "practicality". So you agree basically that he was an elitist and then criticise me for simply pointing this out! :rolleyes:

I take it as a compliment that I should be summarily be dismissed as looking "pathetic" by the likes of you. It would be rather worrying, knowing your batty worldview, if instead I was praised

Right, I forgot the proletariat was well educated and class conscious in 1917 in the Soviet Union, and that it was a developed, industrialized country.
When are you going to learn what context means?
Idealist :thumbdown:

robbo203

18th January 2010, 20:29

Right, I forgot the proletariat was well educated and class conscious in 1917 in the Soviet Union, and that it was a developed, industrialized country.
When are you going to learn what context means?
Idealist :thumbdown:

Interesting you should say that because that was not the view of Lenin. He was quite clear in saying that the Russian workers were nowhere near ready for socialism, yet he still thought he could make a revolution on their behalf and call it a "socialist" revolution. Who exactly is the "idealist" in this context?

Kayser_Soso

18th January 2010, 20:32

Interesting you should say that because that was not the view of Lenin. He was quite clear in saying that the Russian workers were nowhere near ready for socialism, yet he still thought he could make a revolution on their behalf and call it a "socialist" revolution. Who exactly is the "idealist" in this context?

Yeah he should have just sat it out, somehow knowing that someone like you might disapprove of any other action not in accordance with every last letter that Marx or Engels ever wrote. So easy to criticize from the stands.

syndicat

18th January 2010, 20:32

Actually there are worker intellectuals.
Me:
There are worker intellectuals.

This is true, the terms are not mutually exclusive. There is no reason to consider them so, though there are also non-proletarian intellectuals. Because of this, it seems beneficial to a greater understanding of the special role of intellectuals if we clip them off specifically and place them in their own group.

"Beneficial" from the point of view of creating a new bureaucratic ruling class, yes. Not "beneficial" from the point of view of working class self-liberation. For that, there is another approach. And that is working through efforts at popular education to develop the skills, knowledge, confidence of rank and file workers, their ability to theorize their experience etc, who participate in unions and other social movements to enhance their ability to participate effectively and work as activists and organizers.

You take for granted the permanence of the division of labor of capitalist society, which has denied to the working class opportunities for self-development, for developments of their skill and expertise and which encourages things like lack of confidence and knowledge. By assuming that you imply you think this class division will continue into a post-capitalsit society
me:

But what I thnk you don't understand is that your own conception prefigures a new bureaucratic ruling class, dominating the workers.

you:
But what I thnk you don't understand is that your own conception prefigures a new bureaucratic ruling class, dominating the workers.

Yes, perhaps. However, this new group of intellectuals and revolutionaries are special because of their particular skills in being strategic and visionary leaders, traits which should be used, instead of flattening decision making to brute "democracy".

The large group of potential voters do not have the time or resources to understand all the issues and make critical and calm reflection. What is the benefit to having what is popular among the general population, that isn't necessarily atypically good at strategic or visionary thinking, have absolute rule? Where as representative institutions can ensure a certain level of checks and balances, to say democracy is somehow a valuable goal in itself is making a leap which requires further defense.

You're talking about statist electoral politics it seems. That's a fairly pathetic way to understand democracy. In any event, the point to democracy is that it is the only way the working class can run things. Since you don't believe in democracy, you don't believe in the workers running things. As I said, your viewpoint favors the emergence of a new bureaucratic ruling class.

It seems irrationally populist to say that "elitism" is somehow a negative thing, if by "elitism" one means utilizing people's individual skills. Intellectuals should not slave over manual labor if they can better serve the group elsewhere, and if they do not wish to perform manual labor.

What a laugh. And you call yourself a revolutionary? You certainly do not have in mind the self-emancipation of the working class.

me:
If the workers themselves do not build and control the mass movements that are the basis of the revolution and control what happens, then this means that some minority group with various forms of expertise will use that to end up on top, and creating the basis for a new bureaucratic ruling class.

you:

If the workers themselves do not build and control the mass movements that are the basis of the revolution and control what happens, then this means that some minority group with various forms of expertise will use that to end up on top, and creating the basis for a new bureaucratic ruling class.
Cooperation involves utilization of an individual's skills for the betterment of the group. This is an inherent characteristic of any system which wishes to effectively and efficiently perform tasks. To treat everyone as if they are not specifically abled is to deny a fundamental trait of human groups. Not only a fundamental trait, a very useful trait.

And of course you assume that the existing division of labor, which is a product of capitalism, is inevitable and universal. Your view isn't even consistent with Marxism.

me:
Within capitalism there is a "functional" group that tends to concentrate much expertise, because capitalism needs an administrative layer separate from control by workers, which exercizes control over them...managers, lawyers, professors, engineers.
Within capitalism there is a "functional" group that tends to concentrate much expertise, because capitalism needs an administrative layer separate from control by workers, which exercizes control over them...managers, lawyers, professors, engineers.
you:
Yes, but in capitalism this group has powers given to them by the class which own the means of production. Under socialism, the theory goes that everyone owns the means of production in common, and so they would have no special power, merely helping the process of production along.

The usual ideological rationalization for the bureaucratic class. The bureaucratic class also has its own class interests. In particular it has an interest in its domination over, and exploitation of, the working class.

While you do not say it outright, by mentioning you are against this system of an intellectual "elite", and mentioning engineers, lawyers, and professors as part of this "elite, one can make an intuitive connection that you do not support these positions in a post-revolutionary society. However, I will wait for your confirmation on this point before I potentially derail the conversation due to a misunderstanding on my part.

That's right. I believe that in a society where the workers have taken over, one of the first revolutionary tasks is a change to the educational system, and redesign of jobs, to ensure that everyone has the skills and expertise to effectively participate in the decisions. This means educating a large part of the working class in science-based knowledge and the ability to do engineering.

Teachers would do their teaching and also some practical laboring activity apart from teaching. This might be work in an industry relevant to their specialized knowledge, so that they have the benefit of practical experience to add to their theoretical knowledge.

Nolan

18th January 2010, 20:36

Interesting you should say that because that was not the view of Lenin. He was quite clear in saying that the Russian workers were nowhere near ready for socialism, yet he still thought he could make a revolution on their behalf and call it a "socialist" revolution. Who exactly is the "idealist" in this context?

What the fuck is so idealist about a vanguard party organizing and educating the working class for Socialism? Do you just expect the fairies and the sprites to do that?

KlÃ©ber

18th January 2010, 20:43

If this is not elitism then what is? Robbo, those quotes from Lenin are merely a defense of the Bolsheviks' right to constitute an independent political party. So Lenin is an "elitist" for recognizing that some workers are too comfortable or conservative to support the revolution, but you guys are the ones who want to create a SEPARATE UNION just for left-wing workers, WTF is that?

So your criticisms here is implicitly a criticism of Marxism since it was the emphasis on a party running a state that led all the Marxist and Leninist parties to join the Popular Front government.None of those parties were Marxist or Leninist, because they opposed the first principle of Marxism, the political independence of the proletariat.

Every Marxist and Leninist party in Spain was beating the drum for joining that "bourgeois" government. The anarcho-syndicalists held out the longest.There was in fact a Marxist organization that opposed participation in favor of the call for workers' councils, La Sección Bolchevique-Leninista de España, Spanish section of the Fourth International. The Spanish Bolshevik-Leninists helped defend workers' power against the Stalinists and Social-Democrats, alongside the working class partisans of the opportunist CNT-FAI and POUM, during the 1937 May Days.

The soviets did not take power, the party did. That's what the Council of People's Commissars was all about. The CNT did not run things, the FAI did. That's what the secrecy was all about.

The Popular Front government was a multi-class government, but not a "bourgeois" one because the capitalists had by then been expropriated.Who's being obfuscatory now?

It would be more accurate to say that the alliance was between working class organizations and organizations of the small employer and bureaucratic middle classes.That's the most pathetic excuse for the opportunism of the CNT-FAI ever. The fact that Robespierre was popular with artisans but not bankers didn't stop him from beheading the proletarian leaders. There is no such thing as a liberal bourgeoisie, stop deluding yourself with that Zinovievist-Stalinist nonsense. There was a ruling class in Republican Spain, Orwell didn't notice it because they just disguised themselves in militia-style fatigues until the workers had been suppressed, then they put their suits and gold watches back on. The Popular Front represented the working class tying one hand behind its back as a show of capitulation to capitalism and Allied imperialism.

Vanguard1917

18th January 2010, 21:03

In Lenin's conception, the vanguard simply refers to the most politically advanced, militant and class conscious section of the working class in the class struggle. It does not necessarily refer to communist activists -- it only does so if this vanguard has been won over to communism (e.g. as it had been in revolutionary Russia). Indeed, in class struggles post WW2, the vanguard, more often than not, was not communist at all: it by and large gave its support to bourgeois social democratic parties. In Britain, for example, the most advanced workers voted for Labourism election after election. The vanguard had not been won over to communist politics. And what Lenin argued was that winning the vanguard over to communist politics was the first step in the broader fight for communism:

"The proletarian vanguard [in Russia] has been won over ideologically. That is the main thing. Without this, not even the first step towards victory can be made. But that is still quite a long way from victory. Victory cannot be won with a vanguard alone. To throw only the vanguard into the decisive battle, before the entire class, the broad masses, have taken up a position either of direct support for the vanguard, or at least of sympathetic neutrality towards it and of precluded support for the enemy, would be, not merely foolish but criminal."
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch10.htm)

robbo203

18th January 2010, 23:51

What the fuck is so idealist about a vanguard party organizing and educating the working class for Socialism? Do you just expect the fairies and the sprites to do that?

The idealism comes from expecting socialism or labelling what was a capitalist revolution as "socialist" when the majority of workers do not yet have a socialist outlook. It is the working class itself that has to organise for socialism, not some vanguard.

syndicat

18th January 2010, 23:58

me:

Every Marxist and Leninist party in Spain was beating the drum for joining that "bourgeois" government. The anarcho-syndicalists held out the longest.

kleber:

There was in fact a Marxist organization that opposed participation in favor of the call for workers' councils, La Sección Bolchevique-Leninista de España, Spanish section of the Fourth International. The Spanish Bolshevik-Leninists helped defend workers' power against the Stalinists and Social-Democrats, alongside the working class partisans of the opportunist CNT-FAI and POUM, during the 1937 May Days.

Re-read what I said. I said "party". The minuscule sectarian grouplet you refer to had between 50 and 150 members at most. It was totally irrelevant. Besides, the CNT did in fact call for workers power in Spain, via regional and national worker congresses and elected defense councils to run a unified worker militia. So they were advocating essentially what the irrelevant grouplet you refer to was advocating. But you can't have workers congresses or councils without workers. The UGT organized half the workers in Spain and were the majority in the center of the country and Asturias. And the UGT blocked the CNT proposals.

me:

The soviets did not take power, the party did. That's what the Council of People's Commissars was all about.

you:

The CNT did not run things, the FAI did. That's what the secrecy was all about.

Nonsense. Where is your evidence? And all those mass assemblies and elections of delegates in workplaces, what were they, mere show? Certainly a vastly higher level of worker input than workers had in Russia under the Bolsheviks.

me:

The Popular Front government was a multi-class government, but not a "bourgeois" one because the capitalists had by then been expropriated. It would be more accurate to say that the alliance was between working class organizations and organizations of the small employer and bureaucratic middle classes.

you:

That's the most pathetic excuse for the opportunism of the CNT-FAI ever. The fact that Robespierre was popular with artisans but not bankers didn't stop him from beheading the proletarian leaders. There is no such thing as a liberal bourgeoisie, stop deluding yourself with that Zinovievist-Stalinist nonsense.

I'm describing the facts, unlike you. I wasn't providing an "excuse" since I don't agree with the decision to join the Popular Front government. I believe they should have followed Durruti's strategy, taking power in the regions where they were the majority and had the power to do so, the strategy advocated by Friends of Durruti in 1937. But the revolutionaries in the CNT did not win the support of a majority of the rank and file in the CNT.

robbo203

19th January 2010, 00:03

Yeah he should have just sat it out, somehow knowing that someone like you might disapprove of any other action not in accordance with every last letter that Marx or Engels ever wrote. So easy to criticize from the stands.

Well no - for starters that are quite a few things that Marx or Engels wrote that I dont agree with and have said so as well you now. But your argument is specious anyway - that lenin had to do what he had to because someone had to do it anyway. There are a lot of things he didnt have to do but did with disastrous consequences for communist movement

KlÃ©ber

19th January 2010, 00:22

The minuscule sectarian grouplet you refer ... It was totally irrelevant. ... the irrelevant grouplet you referThe Stalinists must say that to you a lot, comrade. Go on, take it out on the Trots, if it makes you feel better.

Nonsense. Where is your evidence? And all those mass assemblies and elections of delegates in workplaces, what were they, mere show? Certainly a vastly higher level of worker input than workers had in Russia under the Bolsheviks.Sure.. and those supermarket lines in the West are much shorter and move quicker than long cold Soviet bread lines.

But the revolutionaries in the CNT did not win the support of a majority of the rank and file in the CNT. And thus the CNT was lost as an organization of the revolutionary proletariat. This is why Lenin was right about the need for a professional revolutionary organization that can't be held hostage by reactionary feelings among the working class. The FAI represents a flawed attempt at this and, yes, Lenin's theories are also flawed and in need of updating, but the central point of his "vanguard theory" is calling a spade a spade. A revolution means war and a modern war can not be conducted on a purely democratic and egalitarian basis. I am concerned about the tendency to presume that we can build a successful revolutionary army that is free of any sign of hierarchy and authority; I haven't been in any wars, but from what little I know of military history and theory, this sounds too good to be true. If we start lying to ourselves now, we will never be able to consciously dismantle our revolutionary army after the victory.

syndicat

19th January 2010, 00:32

This is why Lenin was right about the need for a professional revolutionary organization that can't be held hostage by reactionary feelings among the working class.

And no doubt this "we know best" mentality was used to justify the Bolshevik party overturning the results of the soviet elections where they lost in the spring of 1918 and ruling by military force. But you can't will the course of action without accepting the results. The inevitable result of the elitist course you favor is the consolidation of a new administrative layer over the workers...which becomes a new bureaucratic ruling class. The circumstance that has eventuated in every Leninist controlled revolution.

you:

The FAI represents a flawed attempt at this and, yes, Lenin's theories are also flawed and in need of updating, but the central point of his "vanguard theory" is calling a spade a spade. A revolution means war and a modern war can not be conducted on a purely democratic and egalitarian basis. I am concerned about the tendency to presume that we can build a successful revolutionary army that is free of any sign of hierarchy and authority; I haven't been in any wars, but from what little I know of military history and theory, this sounds too good to be true. If we start lying to ourselves now, we will never be able to consciously dismantle our revolutionary army after the victory.

Now it is you who are agreeing with the line of argument used by the Stalinists in Spain, following the example of Trotsky and the Bolsheviks in the spring of 1918, in that they advocated the construction of a conventional hierarchical army, replete with parades, saluting, higher pay for officers and all the rest of that crap.

A militia can be a successful force. The 100,000 member militia in Spain saved most of the country from the army. It's main defect wasn't democracy but lack of coordination and lack of training and lack of arms. These defects could have been remedied by the CNT's proposals for a unified militia and a training school embued with a revolutionary, democratic spirit. There would be some hierarchy in their proposal...There would be officers. But it would be directly answerable to the mass worker organizations, the unions. This is what the Stalinists opposed.

Nolan

19th January 2010, 00:54

The circumstance that has eventuated in every Leninist controlled revolution.

And every Leninist revolution was threatened by war or the immediate threat of war. Looking back to see how they "performed" is a fools game.

Nolan

19th January 2010, 00:58

The idealism comes from expecting socialism or labelling what was a capitalist revolution as "socialist" when the majority of workers do not yet have a socialist outlook. It is the working class itself that has to organise for socialism, not some vanguard.

That's nice and all, but I don't want to sit around and wait centuries for the entire working class to get on board. So I'll take the vanguard, made from the ranks of the class-conscious workers. :)

syndicat

19th January 2010, 01:46

And every Leninist revolution was threatened by war or the immediate threat of war. Looking back to see how they "performed" is a fools game.

It's truly a fool's game to advocate revolution not knowing what you're going to end up with. And in this case we have a lot of good empirical evidence for an inductive argument as to what Leninism buys you.

A.R.Amistad

19th January 2010, 02:25

Ok, whether anybody likes it or not, vanguards are everywhere. You just can't get rid of them, no matter what. All that a vanguard is is a group of people who are more dedicated than the majority of people. People really make a huge mistake by saying that Lenin's vanguard party idea was elitist, because it probably was much less elitist than the petty bourgeois parties who thought that the actual bureaucracy of the party should talk down to the masses, instead of the masses making their own decisions in a voluntary organization such as a democratic centralist party. Lenin was just being a realist in saying that "OK, every social movement has a vanguard, wouldn't it be nice if we embodied that vanguard in an organization.' Thats really all it meant. Vnguards never relly even act as "leaders" as anarchists would like to pose it. They just push the masses, and we have to be realistic, the masses are largely apathetic, so they only act en masse at the most crucial momements. Leninist vanguard parties are just groups of people who voluntarily choose to be active in the movement, and work with the party to help prepare and organize the masses. Honestly, its not that new of an idea, so people shouldn't be vulgarizing it. Just about every major activist organization follows the same principle on a smaller scale. NAACP=vanguard of the civil rights movement ACLU=vanguard of the free speech/expression/consciousness movement the list goes on of "vanguards."

19th January 2010, 03:28

Edit

black magick hustla

19th January 2010, 05:52

I think the problem with anarchists is that they think the "vanguard" is some sort of political program , artificially imposed. the vanguard emerges organically, the idea that some of the "leftist" leninists have that the vanguard is something you form by proclaiming it is silly. anarchists have their own "vanguards" and defacto leaders too.

ComradeRed22'91

19th January 2010, 07:42

As has been said, every coach needs a team. Especially when the team in question is mostly illiterate.

Many among us put down a movement simply because it had power to begin with.

Such a mentality is to me on par with racial bigotry. it's like the relation to Satanism and Christianity: One is an inversion of the other, but reactionary religion nonetheless.
The Ultraleft putting down of any movement whatsoever that held power shares this same relation to racial bigotry.

Was Che Guevara not an 'elitist' by this same logic?

Kayser_Soso

19th January 2010, 07:49

It's truly a fool's game to advocate revolution not knowing what you're going to end up with. And in this case we have a lot of good empirical evidence for an inductive argument as to what Leninism buys you.

It's far more desirable than what anarchism buys- arbitrary executions without trial, utter political failure, and then loads of excuses to explain the former two.

But seriously...I know that anarchists are often slapped with a (possibly) unfair stereotype of being middle-class rebellious teenagers and college students- but with this angsty knee-jerk reaction to anything that can be seen as "hierarchy", "leadership", "vanguards" or whatever, it isn't hard to see where that stereotype comes from.

There will always be leaders of some sort, and some kind of authority. The problem in this world isn't that power exists, its the injustice, the exploitation, the barbarism.

19th January 2010, 07:57

Edit

Kayser_Soso

19th January 2010, 08:03

Can you people seriously stop the "No, yours is a failure!" arguments for one fucking second, please? They're incredibly stupid and pointless and don't even make sense.

Some failures are more spectacular than others. There's "damn, another 747 crashed", and "Holy shit, Professor Quigley's Vibro-umbrella Flying Machine just rolled off a cliff with him in it!!!"

This of course leads to the typical anarchist/Trot/etc. argument, bolstered by and often surpassing those of fanatical anti-communists, that Leninism or "Stalinism" was actually WORSE than capitalism, or at least no better, and didn't contribute anything to mankind of the historic struggle of the working class. Rinse, repeat.

robbo203

19th January 2010, 08:46

That's nice and all, but I don't want to sit around and wait centuries for the entire working class to get on board. So I'll take the vanguard, made from the ranks of the class-conscious workers. :)

Well if you do that you wont get socialism since socialism absolutely requires that a majority of the working class want and understand it. All that will happen is that you will be compelled to administer capitalism. Despite appearing to be pro-worki ng class at the beginning, you will soon enough be forced by the very process of adminstering capitalism to change tack. You will become more and more capitalist in your outlook. Eventually, even the idea of establishing socialism will recede from sight.

This is what happened in the Soviet Union when Lenin's Vanguard - the Red Bourgeosie - those high ranking members of the pseudo communist party - ditched state capitalism in favour of corporate capitalism. As a ruling class -and no ruling class in hisotry has ever voluntarily given up power - they realised that from their point of view state capitalism was no longer particularly useful.

You would end up doing exactly the same thing and saying exactly the same thing if you seriously though you could go it alone with you and your little vanguard

robbo203

19th January 2010, 08:55

The fact that anyone focuses on and attacks the most organized, active, advanced section of a movement shows that they have no idea what they are talking about. Demonizing agitators, activists and propagandists just because they're active in the struggle is stupid.

This is dumb. Nobody is saying this. The argument is about whether a social revolution can be accomplished by a tiny minority or not. Some of us say emphatically not. But that doesnt preclude what is at the moment a minority from agitating and propagandising to persuade our fellow workers about the need for a majoritarian social revolution to overthrow capitalism

Revy

19th January 2010, 09:17

robbo203

19th January 2010, 09:30

It's really quite simple. A vanguard is the forefront of any movement. In this case, the socialist movement. A vanguard party, or more clearly, the party of the vanguard, would be the mass party that most of the working class revolutionaries end up supporting.

Yes but - and this is important to recognise - once you have a majority of the working class who are socialist-minded then the "vanguard" by definition disappears. There is no role for it whatsoever. The revolution can only be accomplished by the majority, not a minority, because socialism (aka communism) requires that people know what it stands for and support it. As the Communist Manifesto quite rightly points out
"The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority"

To put it differently, the purpose of socialist activity is to get a significant majority of the working class to join this vanguard so that it is no longer the vanguard but the norm;)

19th January 2010, 11:09

^^ Ignoring most of the infighting within this thread, I'm going to say that my opinion on what the vanguard is would be an advisory organisation of sorts working alongside a direct democracy.

Kayser_Soso

19th January 2010, 11:11

Yes but - and this is important to recognise - once you have a majority of the working class who are socialist-minded then the "vanguard" by definition disappears. There is no role for it whatsoever. The revolution can only be accomplished by the majority, not a minority, because socialism (aka communism) requires that people know what it stands for and support it. As the Communist Manifesto quite rightly points out
"The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority"

To put it differently, the purpose of socialist activity is to get a significant majority of the working class to join this vanguard so that it is no longer the vanguard but the norm;)

History has already disproved your claim here that revolutions must be carried out by the majority. The American Revolution is case and point. Your reading of the Communist Manifesto, is way too literal and taken at face value, just like your reading of everything else that Marx or Engels wrote.

A vanguard will always develop in every possible movement. You may convince the majority of workers that socialism is desirable and good, but some people will want to just support it while others will want to spend what little free time they have advancing it in a myriad of ways.

I highly advise you not to read Marxist texts as though they were holy prophesies. It's really creepy.

A.R.Amistad

19th January 2010, 13:33

I don't mean to be praising Obama by ANY means at all, but I want to make an observation that might make the idea of the vanguard easier to understand. Obama's group "Organizing for America" virtually created a social movement around one man (cult of personality? I think so) and it was a broad group, yet it wasn't so broad that it was full of dead weight. It was and is one of the largest activist groups in the US today (albeit a screwed up and misguided one) but essentially thats what a vanguard is. Its not a clique or a club. In the Leninist case, its a political organization of people responsible for 1. organizing the masses for revolution 2. fighting for the immediate aims of the working class 3. propaganda 4. responsiveness to the workers movement 5. refusal to sell out to bourgeois politics

^^ Ignoring most of the infighting within this thread, I'm going to say that my opinion on what the vanguard is would be an advisory organisation of sorts working alongside a direct democracy.

Thats what it is. And democratic centralism is not alien to direct democracy, its just something necessary for an activist group. Its "complete freedom of discussion, unity in ACTION, not THOUGHT OR OPINION. People get so scared of DC because they think its going to turn them into robots. But really, it just means you can think what you want, but since you voluntarily joined a party, you should pull your weight like everyone else.

Tower of Bebel

19th January 2010, 13:34

Our goal is a communist society. To reach for it we need to build a workers movement capable of taking over the state (call it the destruction of the state or the creation of a workers state) prior to the transformation of society. So the workers movement is a mean towards an end. Yet, to create such a workers movement that can pose the question of power we need other means. This is where the vanguard comes in play. My idea of a vanguard is based on that of Proyect:

Has there ever been an "ideological" vanguard, Trotskyist or otherwise? The answer is no. This is an idealistic conception of politics that has been disastrous [for Trotskyism throughout its entire existence]. A vanguard is a goal, not a set of ideas. The goal of the vanguard is to coordinate the revolutionary conquest of power by the workers and their allies. Building a true vanguard will require correct ideas but these ideas can only emerge out of dialectical relationship with mass struggles. To artificially separate a revolutionary program from the mass movement is a guarantee that you will turn into a sectarian.

[...] The most detailed presentation of Lenin's concept of a vanguard occurs in the section of "What is to be Done" titled "The Working Class as Vanguard Fighter for Democracy". The notion of a vanguard emerges out of Lenin's struggle with the "economists", *not* the "Mensheviks". This fact is often neglected by those "Marxist-Leninists" who use the pamphlet as some kind of organizing handbook.

As opposed to Martynov the Economist who expects the class political consciousness of workers to develop from within their economic struggle, Lenin argues that "class political consciousness can only be brought to the workers from without, that is, only from outside the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers."
The Social Democrat should not aspire to be a trade union secretary, but instead the "tribune of the people." This tribune will "react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum of people it affects; who is able to generalize all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat."Lenin in context (http://www.columbia.edu/%7Elnp3/mydocs/organization/lenin_in_context.htm)

The vanguard is a goal which, if reached, will become a means towards another end. To set up such a vanguard we need pioneers active in the workers movement but also educated with lessons from class struggles from the past. When such pioneers unite a vanguard organization (formal or informal is created). The difference between most anarchists and Marxists in this respect is the creation of a political party. This party has as its aims a struggle for working class internationalism, radical democracy and working class power against both the labor bureaucracy and the capitalist state.

The ideas of this vanguard are written down in a political program. Of course this doesn't mean that every self-proclamed vanguard with a program would be a vanguard. The vanguard, again, can only be formed in a dialectical relation with the class struggle. It is not a matter for small groups of revolutionaries to try to define programs that act like cookbooks, but rather to struggle with the class to find the demands around which an organization can be created.

History has already disproved your claim here that revolutions must be carried out by the majority. The American Revolution is case and point. Your reading of the Communist Manifesto, is way too literal and taken at face value, just like your reading of everything else that Marx or Engels wrote.
The revolution usually refers to the socialist revolution. In Robbo's case too. A majority is needed if we want the socialist revolution to succeed. However not one of mechanical or idealist interpretation (like an electoral majority or the Hegelian idea of unity of the will).The majority is made out of the massive participation of the working class in their struggles.

robbo203

19th January 2010, 15:12

History has already disproved your claim here that revolutions must be carried out by the majority. The American Revolution is case and point. Your reading of the Communist Manifesto, is way too literal and taken at face value, just like your reading of everything else that Marx or Engels wrote.

A vanguard will always develop in every possible movement. You may convince the majority of workers that socialism is desirable and good, but some people will want to just support it while others will want to spend what little free time they have advancing it in a myriad of ways.

I highly advise you not to read Marxist texts as though they were holy prophesies. It's really creepy.

You evidently have no understanding at all of the enormous difference between a capitalist revolution and a communist revolution. What you are adopting is a completely ahistorical and dogmatic approach to this question.

Look, I dont have to invoke Marx and Engels to claim legitimacy for what I write. As I have said many times before (and you keep forgetting this in your usual asinine and idiotic manner) there are quite a few things on which I strongly disagree with what they wrote and have said so many times. Frankly I couldnt care a toss whether it was Herr Marx or Joe Bloggs down the road who said something that I happen to agree with. I quote Marx because, well, most people here will not have heard of Joe Bloggs while they may well have heard of and read Marx and, in any case, Marx did put his points across in a way which is usually pretty forceful and clear cut. But in no way does what I am saying depend on him. Religious Leninists like yourself might want to canonise Marx at the same time as you grossly distort him by prostituting and pressganging marxism into the service of supporting the Bolshevik capitalist revolution but this is not my position at all. As well you know.

So I am not going to apologise to the likes of you for once again quoting Marx and Engels on the matter. And here is one quote that really puts the issue in focus.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority (Chapter 1. "Bourgeois and Proletarians" Manifesto of the Communist Party 1848)

This is why your claim that "History has already disproved your claim here that revolutions must be carried out by the majority" is so utterly absurd and irrelevant All history has hitherto shown is that these past revolutions, without exception, were in no way communist revolutions. You cite the American Revolution as if to suggest that this has somehow clinched the argument and as if the American Revolution should provide a template for communist action in the 21st century. What the hell has the American revolution got to do with a revolution that introduces a fundamentally different kind of society - communism? That you should even cite it revealingly betrays your own bourgeois non-communist outlook

The fact of the matter is that communism or socialism of whever you call it cannot be introduced and cannot work unless and until a majority understand what it means and want it. You dont have to quote Marx to grasp this point. It is blatantly self-evident.

JimN

19th January 2010, 17:28

A vanguard will always develop in every possible movement. You may convince the majority of workers that socialism is desirable and good, but some people will want to just support it while others will want to spend what little free time they have advancing it in a myriad of ways.

A vanguard will always develop in every possible movement
How can you possibly know this? You may want it to be true, but it is not the case.

but some people will want to just support it while others will want to spend what little free time they have advancing it in a myriad of ways
How does spending what little free time you have advancing socialism make you part of a vanguard?

Kayser_Soso

20th January 2010, 07:43

How can you possibly know this? You may want it to be true, but it is not the case.

It is true in virtually every political movement, and even non-political movements as well. A lot of grass-roots movements are for causes which already head popularity before, but didn't materialize until a group of very dedicated people decided to organize those masses. The American anti-abortion movement is a good example of this.

How does spending what little free time you have advancing socialism make you part of a vanguard?

Because such people are working to advance the cause of revolution, instead of just sitting around complaining about the boss or system. Face it- many workers express anger at the system, and yet all these centuries we don't see spontaneous, constant uprising. It is just a fact that some people will lead, not necessarily out of some desire for power, but because they just don't see anyone else doing something.

Kayser_Soso

20th January 2010, 08:02

You evidently have no understanding at all of the enormous difference between a capitalist revolution and a communist revolution. What you are adopting is a completely ahistorical and dogmatic approach to this question.

Funny you mention dogmatic....

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority (Chapter 1. "Bourgeois and Proletarians" Manifesto of the Communist Party 1848)

As usual, you read this far to rigidly and literally. It is a movement of the majority because proletarians are naturally the majority, as opposed to say the middle class of the era of bourgeois revolution. Nothing here says that this movement won't arise as virtually every other movement in history does- beginning with the most passionate and dedicated members of the movement.

This is why your claim that "History has already disproved your claim here that revolutions must be carried out by the majority" is so utterly absurd and irrelevant All history has hitherto shown is that these past revolutions, without exception, were in no way communist revolutions. You cite the American Revolution as if to suggest that this has somehow clinched the argument and as if the American Revolution should provide a template for communist action in the 21st century. What the hell has the American revolution got to do with a revolution that introduces a fundamentally different kind of society - communism? That you should even cite it revealingly betrays your own bourgeois non-communist outlook

If you can't figure it out on your own, I doubt I can explain it to you.

The fact of the matter is that communism or socialism of whever you call it cannot be introduced and cannot work unless and until a majority understand what it means and want it. You dont have to quote Marx to grasp this point. It is blatantly self-evident.

How is it self-evident if it hasn't happened yet? And what constitutes a majority exactly? 50.1%? 51%?

robbo203

20th January 2010, 09:31

As usual, you read this far to rigidly and literally. It is a movement of the majority because proletarians are naturally the majority, as opposed to say the middle class of the era of bourgeois revolution. Nothing here says that this movement won't arise as virtually every other movement in history does- beginning with the most passionate and dedicated members of the movement.

Actually it is you who is being too rigid and literal minded. When marxists insist that:

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority

we are talking the conditions that are needed to accomplish a proletarian communist revolution. In other words you cannot accomplish a communist revolution without the immense majority understanding and wanting it. It doesnt mean, as you seem to be suggesting, that the movement has to be a majoritarian movement in order for it to be a communist movement at all. That is completely daft. Of course it is true that the communist movement will arise as "virtually every other movement in history does- beginning with the most passionate and dedicated members of the movement" Every movement has to start somewhere which means it is small to begin with and grows larger over time. But this not the point is it. The communist movement has to be a majoritarian self conscious movement by and in the interests of the immense majority in order for communism to be established. That is the point

If you can't figure it out on your own, I doubt I can explain it to you.

Well do enlighten me, O Enlightened One, because Im buggered if I can see how communists can use the American Revolution, of all things, as a template for creating a totally different kind of society. The ends determine the means and if the ends are different so too must be the means. Or do I take it that you disagree with the above quotation from the Communist Manifesto which differentiates a communist revolution from all past minority revolutions

How is it self-evident if it hasn't happened yet? And what constitutes a majority exactly? 50.1%? 51%?

What sort of argument is this? Something doesnt have to happened yet in order for it to be self evident. It is self evident that at some point in the future our solar system is going to be destroyed as physicists tell us but I havent yet noticed the sun expanding to the point of engulfing the earth before it becomes a spent force. Have you?

Kayser_Soso

20th January 2010, 09:38

Actually it is you who is being too rigid and literal minded. When marxists insist that:

we are talking the conditions that are needed to accomplish a proletarian communist revolution. In other words you cannot accomplish a communist revolution without the immense majority understanding and wanting it. It doesnt mean, as you seem to be suggesting, that the movement has to be a majoritarian movement in order for it to be a communist movement at all. That is completely daft. Of course it is true that the communist movement will arise as "virtually every other movement in history does- beginning with the most passionate and dedicated members of the movement" Every movement has to start somewhere which means it is small to begin with and grows larger over time. But this not the point is it. The communist movement has to be a majoritarian self conscious movement by and in the interests of the immense majority in order for communism to be established. That is the point

Way to write a lot without actually saying anything of merit. You are reading that passage too literally, period.

Well do enlighten me, O Enlightened One, because Im buggered if I can see how communists can use the American Revolution, of all things, as a
template for creating a totally different kind of society.

Did anyone suggest that the American revolution is a template for creating a new society? Take some remedial English classes, and get back to me on this one.

The ends determine the means and if the ends are different so too must be the means. Or do I take it that you disagree with the above quotation from the Communist Manifesto which differentiates a communist revolution from all past minority revolutions

I don't disagree with it- but I don't read as much into as you do.

What sort of argument is this? Something doesnt have to happened yet in order for it to be self evident. It is self evident that at some point in the future our solar system is going to be destroyed as physicists tell us but I havent yet noticed the sun expanding to the point of engulfing the earth before it becomes a spent force. Have you?

But you haven't shown how your claims are self-evident, other than posting a passage from the Communist Manifesto with your ultra-literal interpretation of it.

robbo203

20th January 2010, 11:33

Way to write a lot without actually saying anything of merit. You are reading that passage too literally, period.

Did anyone suggest that the American revolution is a template for creating a new society? Take some remedial English classes, and get back to me on this one.

I don't disagree with it- but I don't read as much into as you do.

But you haven't shown how your claims are self-evident, other than posting a passage from the Communist Manifesto with your ultra-literal interpretation of it.

Perhaps you might care to address the points I actually made rather than indulge in this typically evasive approach of yours. Like I said it is not me who is being overly literal-minded here but you and for reasons which I spelt out clearly enough in plain english notwithstanding your cheeky suggestion that I should take "remedial english classes"

JimN

20th January 2010, 17:38

Originally Posted by JimN
How can you possibly know this? You may want it to be true, but it is not the case.

You said

It is true in virtually every political movement, and even non-political movements as well. A lot of grass-roots movements are for causes which already head popularity before, but didn't materialize until a group of very dedicated people decided to organize those masses. The American anti-abortion movement is a good example of this.

You said

A vanguard will always develop in every possible movement
"Always" "every possible"
Now you say "virtually every political movement.
So, if it's not always it means that the working class can organise democratically without leaders for socialism.

Because such people are working to advance the cause of revolution, instead of just sitting around complaining about the boss or system. Face it- many workers express anger at the system, and yet all these centuries we don't see spontaneous, constant uprising. It is just a fact that some people will lead, not necessarily out of some desire for power, but because they just don't see anyone else doing something

Why does advancing the cause for revolution mean that they are leaders?
Only by starting with the assumption that leadership is required do you come to this conclusion.

Dave B

20th January 2010, 19:30

Re the nature of vanguards in ‘revolutions’ Kayser soso post 62

Engels did discuss it, and Robbo's take on it is OK as usual.

Ie; part played by vanguards in ‘non proletarian revolutions’ and how basically the same approach to some extent had been taken on board by the working class movement, and that it was a mistake that they had learned from etc.

Thus, again!;

The Class Struggles In France, Introduction by Frederick Engels, 1895.

All revolutions up to the present day have resulted in the displacement of one definite class rule by another; all ruling classes up till now have been only minorities as against the ruled mass of the people. A ruling minority was thus overthrown; another minority seized the helm of state and remodeled the state apparatus in accordance with its own interests.

This was on every occasion the minority group, able and called to rule by the degree of economic development, and just for that reason, and only for that reason, it happened that the ruled majority either participated in the revolution on the side of the former or else passively acquiesced in it.

But if we disregard the concrete content of each occasion, the common form of all these revolutions was that they were minority revolutions. Even where the majority took part, it did so—whether wittingly or not—only in the service of a minority; but because of this, or simply because of the passive, unresisting attitude of the majority, this minority acquired the appearance of being the representative of the whole people.

They appeared applicable, also, to the struggles of the proletariat for its emancipation; all the more applicable, since in 1848 there were few people who had any idea at all of the direction in which this emancipation was to be sought. The proletarian masses themselves, even in Paris, after the victory, were still absolutely in the dark as to the path to be taken. And yet the movement was there, instinctive, spontaneous, irrepressible. Was not this just the situation in which a revolution had to succeed, led certainly by a minority, but this time not in the interests of the minority, but in the real interests of the majority?

If, in all the longer revolutionary periods, it was so easy to win the great masses of the people by the merely plausible and delusive views of the minorities thrusting themselves forward, how could they be less susceptible to ideas which were the truest reflex of their economic position, which were nothing but the clear, comprehensible expression of their needs, of needs not yet understood by themselves, but only vaguely felt? To be sure, this revolutionary mood of the masses had almost always, and usually very speedily, given way to lassitude or even to a revulsion to its opposite, so soon as illusion evaporated and disappointment set in.

But here it was not a question of delusive views, but of giving effect to the very special interests of the great majority itself, interests, which at that time were certainly by no means clear to this great majority, but which must soon enough become clear in the course of giving practical effect to them, by their convincing obviousness.

And if now, as Marx showed in the third article, in the spring of 1850, the development of the bourgeois republic that had arisen out of the "social" revolution of 1848 had concentrated the real power in the hands of the big bourgeoisie—monarchistically inclined as it was—and, on the other hand, had grouped all the other social classes, peasants as well as petty bourgeoisie, round the proletariat, so that, during and after the common victory, not they, but the proletariat grown wise by experience, must become the decisive factor—was there not every prospect here of turning the revolution of the minority into the revolution of the majority?

History has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong.

The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for [with body and soul]. The history of the last fifty years has taught us that. But in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long, persistent work is required, and it is just this work which we are now pursuing, and with a success which drives the enemy to despair.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/intro.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/intro.htm)

Of course ‘vanguardist’ weren’t called vanguardists prior to Lenin they were called Blanquists and Jacobins.

Balnquists were described by Engels as below;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/06/26.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/06/26.htm)

And described in;

1891 Introduction by Frederick Engels
On the 20th Anniversary of the Paris Commune

PostScript

The Blanquists fared no better. Brought up in the school of conspiracy, and held together by the strict discipline which went with it, they started out from the viewpoint that a relatively small number of resolute, well-organized men would be able, at a given favorable moment, not only seize the helm of state, but also by energetic and relentless action, to keep power until they succeeded in drawing the mass of the people into the revolution and ranging them round the small band of leaders. this conception involved, above all, the strictest dictatorship and centralization of all power in the hands of the new revolutionary government

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm)

A quote that was used by Trotsky to describe the Bolsheviks in the last 'missing' chapter of ‘Our Political Tasks’, called ‘Dictatorship Over The Proletariat’.

Trotsky also called the Bolsheviks Jacobins, something the Bolsheviks obviously aspired to live up to.

Lenin 1917

Can "Jacobinism" Frighten the Working Class?

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jul/07a.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jul/07a.htm)

And later in Lenin’s attempt to prove that Marx’s 18th Brumiere thesis that history repeats itself was correct;

"Is it impossible to find among us a Fouquier-Tinville to tame our wild counter revolutionaries?"

Footnote chapter 7, `The Bolshevik Revolution' by one of Maximilien
Lenin's fans E.H. Carr.

Fouquier-Tinville was Robespierre’s public prosecutor and executioner.

Engels predicted in un-flattering terms the role of 'modern' Russian Blanquists and Jacobins in the forthcoming Russian revolution in a letter to Vera Zasulich;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885/letters/85_04_23.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885/letters/85_04_23.htm)

Ted Grant, and others, understood well enough the theoretical reasons why Russia could not be admitted to be state capitalist;

If Cliff’s argument is correct, one could only conclude that the same thing happened with the Russian as with the French Revolution. Marx was the prophet of the new state capitalism. Lenin and Trotsky were the Robespierres and Carnots of the Russian Revolution. The fact that Lenin and Trotsky had good intentions is beside the point, as were the good intentions of the leaders of the bourgeois revolution. They merely paved the way for the rule of the new state capitalist class.

http://www.tedgrant.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm (http://www.tedgrant.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm)

The;

but the proletariat grown wise by experience, must become the decisive factor

amusingly appears elsewhere as an almost exact jacobin parahrase, bur perhaps for later.

.

Kayser_Soso

20th January 2010, 20:14

So, if it's not always it means that the working class can organise democratically without leaders for socialism.

When did "democratic" mean "without leaders"?

Why does advancing the cause for revolution mean that they are leaders?
Only by starting with the assumption that leadership is required do you come to this conclusion.

I think your definition of leadership might be a little flawed. Like I said- there are some people who get pissed off about things, and some people step up and do something about it- and the former then often take inspiration from the latter. This is called leadership.

robbo203

20th January 2010, 23:06

I think your definition of leadership might be a little flawed. Like I said- there are some people who get pissed off about things, and some people step up and do something about it- and the former then often take inspiration from the latter. This is called leadership.

That is one way of looking at leaders but it is not generally what is meant when socialists say they oppose leaders. Leadership in the political sense is about power and the structure of decisionmaking rather than charisma or inspration.

Its like the word vanguard which has two distinct meanings - one elitist , the other not. The non-elitist definition of the vanguard simply denotes a section of the working class who are most advanced in their thinking ie. class consciousness. It is an empirical description. The elitist definition of the vanguard . on the other hand, holds that a majority's emancipation is dependent upon a minority . It is prescriptive as well as descriptive.

Lenin used both senses of the term vanguard. Socialists on the other hand reject the idea that the emancipation of our class is dependnt upon a small vanguard capturing power on our behalf but argue instead that the emancipation of our class must be carried out by workers themselves consciously and aware of what they are doing.

In this sense we do not need leaders

Uppercut

30th January 2010, 18:25

I'm gonna stay out of this argument all together.

I think a vanguard party should be responsible for advising and educating the masses, as well as encouraging them to join the party. That way, anyone can join and take part in inner-party democracy. Of course, there would have to be some restrictions for the bourgeoisie, capitalists, former bureaucrats, etc....

Red Monkey

30th January 2010, 18:59

The essential purpose of communist leadership is to bring to the masses the revolutionary and communist consciousness that enables them to take to the stage of history.

Lenin (correctly) felt it was needed because the inherently uneven development of a world characterized by imperialism yielded the emergence of a labor aristocracy that prevents the proletariat from spontaneously grasping its interests in a very full way.

red cat

30th January 2010, 19:15

Red Monkey

30th January 2010, 19:56

Good point, red cat!

StalinFanboy

30th January 2010, 21:27

But how do you plan to win the revolutionary war? How will the masses fight back an organized military operation coordinated at, say, a city-level?
You think that it'll be possible in this day and age to confront some of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world? Riiiiight.

The revolution will not be militarized, and any talk of it being so is insanity and class suicide. The only way a revolution will be realized is if the working class occupies spaces and stops the production and flow of commodities outside of recuperative organs.

red cat

30th January 2010, 21:49

You think that it'll be possible in this day and age to confront some of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world? Riiiiight. Precisely so.

The revolution will not be militarized, and any talk of it being so is insanity and class suicide. The only way a revolution will be realized is if the working class occupies spaces and stops the production and flow of commodities outside of recuperative organs. And the ruling classes will send their troops in to throw flowers at the workers and cheer them up, won't they ?

robbo203

2nd February 2010, 00:11

Precisely so.

And the ruling classes will send their troops in to throw flowers at the workers and cheer them up, won't they ?

These troops will not be immune to the growth of socialist consciousness and its impact upon the whole social climate which in turn will increasingly constrain the ruling class and selectively modify their approach to such matters. Violence can only hinder rather than help the revolution. It needs to be absolutely minimised

red cat

2nd February 2010, 17:09

These troops will not be immune to the growth of socialist consciousness and its impact upon the whole social climate which in turn will increasingly constrain the ruling class and selectively modify their approach to such matters. Let us know when you achieve that without any foreign army or the proletariat inflicting a military blow on the government troops.

Violence can only hinder rather than help the revolution. It needs to be absolutely minimised

Great theory. So let us ask unarmed workers to rally in front of the army's bayonets in order to minimize violence.

robbo203

2nd February 2010, 17:43

Let us know when you achieve that without any foreign army or the proletariat inflicting a military blow on the government troops.

Great theory. So let us ask unarmed workers to rally in front of the army's bayonets in order to minimize violence.

You didnt pay any attention whatsoever to the counter-argument I offered, did you? You just ignored it.

How do you imagine that socialism is remotely possible without mass socialist consciousness to bring it about? And how do you imagine that it is remotely possible for society as a whole , including the armed forces, to be immunised and remain unaffected by this incremental spread of socialist ideas?

Daydeamers like youself like to indulge in juvenile fantasies of armed proletarians engaging government forces in military conflict as the way to effect a socialist revolution. It is utterly ludicrous, of course, and a certain recipe for suicide. How precisely are you going to wage a war against tanks, artillery, choppers, and all the other deadly paraphenalia of war available to the modern state? Its absolute nonsense and highly irresponsible nonsense at that

Even if by the remotest possibility the "armed proletariat" succeeded, it would not be socialism that would be established but another form of class society. The means determine the ends. Armed struggle requires a brutalising hierachical and self perpetuating chain of command which will hold on to power long after "victory" has been secured.

The need to resort to armed struggle is a sign of weakness not strength. It almost certainly demonstrates that your actions are those of a minority not a majority and of course you cannot have socialism without a majority wanting it. Can you not see this?

red cat

2nd February 2010, 18:07

You didnt pay any attention whatsoever to the counter-argument I offered, did you? You just ignored it.

How do you imagine that socialism is remotely possible without mass socialist consciousness to bring it about?
And how do you imagine that it is remotely possible for society as a whole , including the armed forces, to be immunised and remain unaffected by this incremental spread of socialist ideas?

Daydeamers like youself like to indulge in juvenile fantasies of armed proletarians engaging government forces in military conflict as the way to effect a socialist revolution. It is utterly ludicrous, of course, and a certain recipe for suicide. How precisely are you going to wage a war against tanks, artillery, choppers, and all the other deadly paraphenalia of war available to the modern state? Its absolute nonsense and highly irresponsible nonsense at that

Even if by the remotest possibility the "armed proletariat" succeeded, it would not be socialism that would be established but another form of class society. The means determine the ends. Armed struggle requires a brutalising hierachical and self perpetuating chain of command which will hold on to power long after "victory" has been secured.

The need to resort to armed struggle is a sign of weakness not strength. It almost certainly demonstrates that your actions are those of a minority not a majority and of course you cannot have socialism without a majority wanting it. Can you not see this?

Bringing about "mass socialist consciousness" by a true revolutionary communist party is something that the ruling classes will never allow. Though in bourgeois democracies, legal organizations can be used to some extent to do this, the main CP will eventually have to become clandestine. Even before a small fraction of the working class has any idea about the programme of the CP, it will be outlawed.

This will be followed by attempts to annihilate the leadership. Public meetings of workers will be attacked.

Every individual in the government troops is strictly trained to obey orders. And they view their organization as invincible. That is why they dare to engage in sadistic pleasure in My Lai or Abu Ghraib. Until their army suffers a big defeat, it is impossible to take off their ideological blindfolds on a large scale. History has taught us this again and again.

In the past, we have seen in many countries how the armed proletariat brings about socialism. Today, if the oppressed masses can deal defeating blows on government troops in the third-world, then so can their counterparts in the first and second worlds.

robbo203

2nd February 2010, 18:24

Bringing about "mass socialist consciousness" by a true revolutionary communist party is something that the ruling classes will never allow. Though in bourgeois democracies, legal organizations can be used to some extent to do this, the main CP will eventually have to become clandestine. Even before a small fraction of the working class has any idea about the programme of the CP, it will be outlawed. .

Have you the even the slightest shred of evidence to back up this absurd conjecture? In fact the very opposite of what you say is far more credible. The more a genuine communist movement grows the less will the capitalist state be able to prevent this growth.

And of course you have boxed yourself into a corner by this ridiculous assertion. If the ruling class will not allow mass communist consciousness then either it will suceed in which case you wont ever get communism anyway or it wont suceed in which case you have just contradicted your whole argument!

In the past, we have seen in many countries how the armed proletariat brings about socialism. Today, if the oppressed masses can deal defeating blows on government troops in the third-world, then so can their counterparts in the first and second worlds.

But they didnt bring in socialism did they. All they achieved was state capitalism and the substitution of one ruling class for another. There is a lesson in that which you evidently have not learnt

robbo203

2nd February 2010, 18:38

Bringing about "mass socialist consciousness" by a true revolutionary communist party is something that the ruling classes will never allow. Though in bourgeois democracies, legal organizations can be used to some extent to do this, the main CP will eventually have to become clandestine. Even before a small fraction of the working class has any idea about the programme of the CP, it will be outlawed. .

Have you even a shred of evidence to back up this dogmatic claim? In fact quite the opposite outcome is far more likely. The larger the communist movement grows the less will the capitalist state be able to suppress.

Besides you have boxed yourself into a corner. If the ruling class wants to suppress mass socialist consciousness then either it will succeed in which case you will never get socialism anyway or it wont suceed in which case you have just contradicted your whole argument!

In the past, we have seen in many countries how the armed proletariat brings about socialism. Today, if the oppressed masses can deal defeating blows on government troops in the third-world, then so can their counterparts in the first and second worlds.

They did not bring about socialism but state capitalism and the substitution of one ruling class for another. There is a lesson in that which you evidently have not learnt

red cat

2nd February 2010, 18:46

Have you even a shred of evidence to back up this dogmatic claim? In fact quite the opposite outcome is far more likely. The larger the communist movement grows the less will the capitalist state be able to suppress.

Besides you have boxed yourself into a corner. If the ruling class wants to suppress mass socialist consciousness then either it will succeed in which case you will never get socialism anyway or it wont suceed in which case you have just contradicted your whole argument!

Can you explain why you think your assertions are true? I have already given you an idea of what the movement will be like.

They did not bring about socialism but state capitalism and the substitution of one ruling class for another. There is a lesson in that which you evidently have not learnt

Yes every invalid tendency claims that. Our deductions are a bit different.

syndicat

2nd February 2010, 19:07

In the past, we have seen in many countries how the armed proletariat brings about socialism.

Except that they haven't. An authentic socialism would mean that the institutional power that creates dominating and exploiting classes is removed and the working class is directly managing production and has created new democratic social institutions to govern society. In the Russian revolution the party-state became the basis of a new bureaucratic exploiting class. And this has happened in every Communist revolution, particularly those where a party controlled guerrilla army, as in China, gains power.

Violence should be minimized in a revolutiion due to its bad effect on the revolution itself. But some level of violence is probably inevitable.

Often in countries where mass socialist concsiousness has developed, as in Russia in 1917 and Spain in 1936, sections of the military and police go over to the side of the working class. The more this happens, the more it reduces threat of violence.

Tzadikim

2nd February 2010, 19:45

I believe that both sides in this thread are approaching the question in a completely backwards fashion.

As I indicated in this thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/economics-and-history-t128519/index.html), I believe that the role of the vanguard - that is to say, our role - is not merely to raise class consciousness, or to lead some sort of militaristic coup d'etat against the bourgeois State.

It is, rather, and for the time being must be, to prepare for revolutionary conditions on an economic level. It is our task to create those structures which can be implemented immediately in the aftermath of a revolution; we must create and preserve them now, so that, when revolution does come, they are tried and true and tested and ready for instant implementation, minus the need for a debilitating period of experimentalism.

We must not only be political activists, but also, and foremost, economic ones. And this means, quite literally, experimenting now with new arrangements that can be adapted to future necessities. Marxism is, above all, a scientific form of economics. We must therefore, in order to appeal to the working classes, render it reproducible.

red cat

3rd February 2010, 18:47

Except that they haven't. An authentic socialism would mean that the institutional power that creates dominating and exploiting classes is removed and the working class is directly managing production and has created new democratic social institutions to govern society. In the Russian revolution the party-state became the basis of a new bureaucratic exploiting class.

Let us see someone creating that kind of socialism in one stage first.

And this has happened in every Communist revolution, particularly those where a party controlled guerrilla army, as in China, gains power.

Over simplification.

Violence should be minimized in a revolutiion due to its bad effect on the revolution itself. But some level of violence is probably inevitable.

Often in countries where mass socialist concsiousness has developed, as in Russia in 1917 and Spain in 1936, sections of the military and police go over to the side of the working class. The more this happens, the more it reduces threat of violence.

I don't know about Spain, but in Russia this was accompanied by countless soldiers perishing at the front.

red cat

3rd February 2010, 18:50

syndicat

3rd February 2010, 19:33

me:
Often in countries where mass socialist concsiousness has developed, as in Russia in 1917 and Spain in 1936, sections of the military and police go over to the side of the working class. The more this happens, the more it reduces threat of violence.
I don't know about Spain, but in Russia this was accompanied by countless soldiers perishing at the front.

But the intial transfer of power from the provisional government was mostly peaceful. The invasion with backing of imperialist powers didn't happen for 8 months. And even then, much less military support was given to the whites than was the case in the Spanish revolution in '30s. Civil war occurred for about a year and a half...one year less than in Spain. A lot of the problem was that Russia had been in World War 1 at outset of the revolution. This led to demoralization of army, which favored revolution. But also caused great economic dislocation, due to end of war production, which had been main employment in St Petersburg.

red cat

3rd February 2010, 19:37

me:

But the intial transfer of power from the provisional government was mostly peaceful. The invasion with backing of imperialist powers didn't happen for 8 months. And even then, much less military support was given to the whites than was the case in the Spanish revolution in '30s. Civil war occurred for about a year and a half...one year less than in Spain. A lot of the problem was that Russia had been in World War 1 at outset of the revolution. This led to demoralization of army, which favored revolution. But also caused great economic dislocation, due to end of war production, which had been main employment in St Petersburg.

The revolution was mostly peaceful ? What makes you think that?

And I think that it was due to the war that communists had been able to win over the army so easily.

syndicat

3rd February 2010, 21:13

anomaly

3rd February 2010, 23:46

Has anyone read Terry Eagleton's "Lenin in the postmodern age"? I think it has a lot of good things to say about this problematic issue of "the vanguard." Hopefully the link works!

http://books.google.com/books?id=YCk5GA0QhrYC&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=eagleton+lenin+in+the+postmodern+age&source=bl&ots=eEpZ8cebwf&sig=AkQBpBM7nloCAYqTFuH9hcNu_pw&hl=en&ei=HQtqS_jGOpTf8QafwI2xBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=eagleton%20lenin%20in%20the%20postmodern%20age&f=false

anomaly

Tower of Bebel

4th February 2010, 11:02

there were only a few cadets defending the government palace. the storming of the palace has always been over-hyped. it wasn't a big deal. that's for transfer of power in the capitol. took 3 months to consolidate power throughout Russia, but there wasn't a huge amount of fighting.
I think that you should look at it from a different perspective. The socialist revolution is supposedly a "majority action". Previous revolutions (revolts) were waged by the so called toiling masses, but in the name of a tiny minority that supposedly represents "the people". Different rulers and ruling classes set up portions of the population against each other (like countryside against cities or the poor against the artisans). If the palace could be taken without bloodshed, and if the units defending it would surrender, then many revolutionaries would have regarded it proof of the character of the socialist revolution (as that of, for and by a working class or several toiling classes which constitue the majority of the population). When news came in from Moscow that the "coup" resulted in a serious fight between troops of socialists and cadets Bolshevik moral droped (temporarily).

It explains the depictions of the October Revolution in St. Petersburg by Bolsheviks and their supporters to this day.

red cat

4th February 2010, 11:43

Uppercut

4th February 2010, 12:56

Except that they haven't. An authentic socialism would mean that the institutional power that creates dominating and exploiting classes is removed and the working class is directly managing production and has created new democratic social institutions to govern society. In the Russian revolution the party-state became the basis of a new bureaucratic exploiting class. And this has happened in every Communist revolution, particularly those where a party controlled guerrilla army, as in China, gains power.

Actually, Lenin's original ideas were not bueaurocratic at all (Soviet Democracy) and neither were Mao's. Type in "anti-bueaurocracy" into google images and look at the first few images. You'll see a Mao-era anti-buearocracy poster. True Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Hoxhaists are wary of a government elite, as well, despite being labeled pro-state.

and I know I didn't spell beaurocracy right. -_-

syndicat

4th February 2010, 18:38

Actually, Lenin's original ideas were not bueaurocratic at all (Soviet Democracy) and neither were Mao's. Type in "anti-bueaurocracy" into google images and look at the first few images. You'll see a Mao-era anti-buearocracy poster. True Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Hoxhaists are wary of a government elite, as well, despite being labeled pro-state.

This is not plausible. In "State and Revolution" Lenin presents the German post office as his model of how industry should be run under socialism. This means subordination of workers to a hierarchical managerial structure throughout the economy. And hence the consolidation of a bureaucratic ruling class. A bureaucracy is a group who have a relative monopoly over decision-making authority and certain key kinds of information or expertise in running things.

Uncle Rob

4th February 2010, 22:50

This is not plausible. In "State and Revolution" Lenin presents the German post office as his model of how industry should be run under socialism. This means subordination of workers to a hierarchical managerial structure throughout the economy. And hence the consolidation of a bureaucratic ruling class. A bureaucracy is a group who have a relative monopoly over decision-making authority and certain key kinds of information or expertise in running things.

Can I pose to you the question as to how exactly the dictatorship of the proletariat is to be protected against hostile class elements such as careerists, capitalist in-roaders etc.? The Bolsheviks placed communists in the soviets and trade unions to assure class enemies would not use the newly established government to corrupt it. But these people could still be recalled from their positions if they if the members within the soviets etc. felt that these people were not doing their job. How the hell is that bureaucratic?

syndicat

4th February 2010, 23:01

Can I pose to you the question as to how exactly the dictatorship of the proletariat is to be protected against hostile class elements such as careerists, capitalist in-roaders etc.? The Bolsheviks placed communists in the soviets and trade unions to assure class enemies would not use the newly established government to corrupt it. But these people could still be recalled from their positions if they if the members within the soviets etc. felt that these people were not doing their job. How the hell is that bureaucratic?

Nothing like that ever happened. You have an historically inaccurate picture. In 1918 when workers tried to "recall" the Bolsheviks in new soviet elections, the Bolshevik party overthrew the soviets thru armed power in many cities. See "Before Stalinism" by Sam Farber or "The Mensheviks After October" for details.

The working class can only "protect itself" against domination by bosses if it has power over social production and over social governance. If you put an elite few into office over them, you've already created the basis of a new dominating class. And the experience of USSR, Yugoslavia, China shows this class will eventually want to go back to capitalism to secure its dominant position even further, to enrich itself further.

Most of the soviets in the Russian revolution were organized originally by the Mensheviks. They were very top-down affairs with power centralizd into the executive committee, and later into even a smaller group, the Presidium (about 7 people in St Petersburg & Moscow). The people at the top were mainly drawn from the educated elite, the intelligentsia. When the Bolsheviks gained majorities in the soviets, they didn't democratize the structure. They just took over the top positions. Workers did not actually make the decisions. The executive committees tended already in 1917 to treat the delegates like a rubber stamp, and this only got worse in 1918. Read "Soviets & Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution" by historian Pete Rachleff.

http://www.geocities.com/~johngray/raclef.htm

Uncle Rob

4th February 2010, 23:35

Nothing like that ever happened. You have an historically inaccurate picture. In 1918 when workers tried to "recall" the Bolsheviks in new soviet elections, the Bolshevik party overthrew the soviets thru armed power in many cities. See "Before Stalinism" by Sam Farber or "The Mensheviks After October" for details.

The working class can only "protect itself" against domination by bosses if it has power over social production and over social governance. If you put an elite few into office over them, you've already created the basis of a new dominating class. And the experience of USSR, Yugoslavia, China shows this class will eventually want to go back to capitalism to secure its dominant position even further, to enrich itself further.

Most of the soviets in the Russian revolution were organized originally by the Mensheviks. They were very top-down affairs with power centralizd into the executive committee, and later into even a smaller group, the Presidium (about 7 people in St Petersburg & Moscow). The people at the top were mainly drawn from the educated elite, the intelligentsia. When the Bolsheviks gained majorities in the soviets, they didn't democratize the structure. They just took over the top positions. Workers did not actually make the decisions. The executive committees tended already in 1917 to treat the delegates like a rubber stamp, and this only got worse in 1918. Read "Soviets & Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution" by historian Pete Rachleff.

Enrich itself huh? That's why members of the party made as much as specialists right? From all that money they were making how could they not enrich themselves!

I have another question to ask you, If workers constituted the red army and were in the soviets, according to your claim, did we see Bolsheviks killing other Bolsheviks? I don't recall any such happening within the early years, and to be frank, it sounds like an outright absurdity. Who knows maybe I have my facts wrong. And if I do, I'm sure as hell not going to get the "facts" from pro Menshevik literature.

The working class maintains its dictatorship from closing wage gaps, liquidating the division of labour -both for the purpose of minimizing bureaucracy- and to have its aims represented by the vanguard which is to be fully integrated with the working masses, made up of leaders chosen by the workers to lead to a successful class struggle. Again, having communists within the working class organizations was to secure against capitalist in-roaders, and was intended to be a temporary measure until such hostilities were defeated. The issue was brought up during the 1937 meeting to establish a new constitution (unfortunately democratic reforms weren't passed and the issue was undermined. But as history shows hostile class forces still existed within the U.S.S.R. which led to revisionism within the party and ultimately to the whole U.S.S.R.) Without such measures, how do you hope to protect a workers state against these enemies?

I am fully aware of the Menshevik's role in establishing the soviets in Russia, but there is a reason they failed to lead the revolution in Russia. The Mensheviks over and over proven themselves to be an erroneous organization. And I'm sick and tired of seeing these threads where people like you and your Menshevik buddies get together and fervently denounce all that has been proven through practice to be successful. It's all right there in black and white, waiting for you on its once healthy, now bruised knees, begging for you to grasp it. I can understand how the USSR's collapse could lead to a reinsurance of poisonous trends such as left communism, Menshevism, Trotskyism and reformism, but fuck dude, to throw out the rich experience the Bolsheviks have given the working class is to side with the capitalists and their criticisms that serve only to keep the working class subservient and to play by their rules. So run to your bourgeois authors, run to your Menshevik pals, but remember this: history has defeated these trends and proved their utter falsity, and it shall do so once again.

syndicat

5th February 2010, 02:00

I have another question to ask you, If workers constituted the red army and were in the soviets, according to your claim, did we see Bolsheviks killing other Bolsheviks?

You seem to be missing the point. First, the Red Army was run by tens of thousands of ex-czarist officers paid more than average soldier, and with top-down military discipline. The red army replaced the early workers militia and Red Guards, which were run by workers. But that was at an end by the spring of 1918.

second, in spring of 1918 the Bolsheviks lost the elections to the soviets in 19 cities. so they were now a minority. but they used military force to maintain their rule against the working class. Is that what you favor?

And if I do, I'm sure as hell not going to get the "facts" from pro Menshevik literature.

You don't have to read "pro-Menshevik" literature. You can read Ida Mett on Kronstadt (she was a libertarian communist). You can read Israel Getzler's book "Kronstadt" which is mainly sympathetic to the maximalists, who were the dominant political current in Kronstadt in Oct 1917. They were to the left of the Bolsheviks. You can read "Soviets & Factory Committees in the Russian revolution" by libertarian Marxist historian Pete Rachleff. You can read "The Bolsheviks & workers control' by Maurice Brinton, these are libertarian socialists, not sympathetic to the Mensheviks, but rather to the syndicalists.

The issue was brought up during the 1937 meeting to establish a new constitution (unfortunately democratic reforms weren't passed and the issue was undermined. But as history shows hostile class forces still existed within the U.S.S.R.

LOL. Yes, there were indeed "class forces" that were "hostile" to the working class, namely, the massive bureaucratic apparatus of managers, planners, top engineers, generals, party apparatchiks. This was the new bureaucratic class who were dominating and exploiting the working class.

I am fully aware of the Menshevik's role in establishing the soviets in Russia, but there is a reason they failed to lead the revolution in Russia. The Mensheviks over and over proven themselves to be an erroneous organization. And I'm sick and tired of seeing these threads where people like you and your Menshevik buddies get together and fervently denounce all that has been proven through practice to be successful. blah blah blah

You're not paying attention. When I pointed out that the Mensheviks created top-down soviets, with power concentrated at the top, I was *criticizing* this. This showed that the Mensheviks were not interested in the workers themselves running the soviets. But the Bolsheviks didn't change this. They were not interested in the workers themselves running things either.

Kayser_Soso

5th February 2010, 11:26

You seem to be missing the point. First, the Red Army was run by tens of thousands of ex-czarist officers paid more than average soldier, and with top-down military discipline. The red army replaced the early workers militia and Red Guards, which were run by workers. But that was at an end by the spring of 1918.

The Red Guards were inadequate to fight against the threats the Bolsheviks were fighting at the time- not only the Whites but also the forces of several imperial powers plus nationalists and religious fundamentalists. Using Tsarist officers was at the time a necessary evil.

Granted, the Red Army was never able to strike a balance when it came to developing a real peoples army by the end of WWII. Albania and Vietnam did far better in this respect. There were prominent Marshals however, who did express discontent about the introduction of shoulder-boards and gold braid after the Battle of Stalingrad- the most important being K.K. Rokossovsky.

The problem is, that war(far more in this modern age) is complicated and officers are people trained in military science. Even back then war was a hell of a lot more complicated than "point-and-shoot". Hell, many bourgeois officers of that era were stupid enough to come up with brilliant strategies like: "Walk to the German trench and kill them" (See: The Somme), or "Run to the Turkish trench and kill them" (Gallipoli).

second, in spring of 1918 the Bolsheviks lost the elections to the soviets in 19 cities. so they were now a minority. but they used military force to maintain their rule against the working class. Is that what you favor?

So when someone loses some municipal elections it suddenly means that the working class is automatically against them? So you could then say that when the German Communists fought German stormtroopers in their own territory- they were imposing their will by force?

You don't have to read "pro-Menshevik" literature. You can read Ida Mett on Kronstadt (she was a libertarian communist).

So you KNOW it will be objective!

They were to the left of the Bolsheviks. You can read "Soviets & Factory Committees in the Russian revolution" by libertarian Marxist historian Pete Rachleff. You can read "The Bolsheviks & workers control' by Maurice Brinton, these are libertarian socialists, not sympathetic to the Mensheviks, but rather to the syndicalists.

Left of Bolsheviks does not necessarily mean they are right, or that their radical plans are workable. This is the fundamental problem with anarchists and their ilk- your plans and ideas are wonderful and radical, but you have a serious problem starting revolutions and surviving reaction- and instead of owning up to their failures the anarchists blame the Bolsheviks.

LOL. Yes, there were indeed "class forces" that were "hostile" to the working class, namely, the massive bureaucratic apparatus of managers, planners, top engineers, generals, party apparatchiks. This was the new bureaucratic class who were dominating and exploiting the working class.

Class is based on relation to the means of production. Bureaucrats are not a class. They certainly had some privileges but they did not privately own the means of production, and it is simply a lie to say that Soviet workers had no say in their workplace.

robbo203

5th February 2010, 13:05

Class is based on relation to the means of production. Bureaucrats are not a class. They certainly had some privileges but they did not privately own the means of production, and it is simply a lie to say that Soviet workers had no say in their workplace.

But the party elite did have a totally different relation to the means of production than the ordinary workers didnt they? They had absolute control over the broad allocation process and the distribution of income. This control is literally inseparable from de facto ownership. Afterall what does ownership of capital mean if not the right to determine how it is ultimately used?

It is ridiculous to assert that class ownership depends crucially upon private de jure legal entitlement to capital. The Catholic Church some centuries ago owned huge tracts of land throughout Europe as well as other forms of means of production (many monastries for example were thriving centres of small scale industry). You wouldnt say that these vast means of production were owned by the church congregations, would you? Of course not. They were effectively owned and controlled by the Church hierarchy and needless to say, the principle of inheritance did not apply in this case. There are other ways of recruitmnet into a ruling class than by legal entitlement to private capital. Trotsky's denial of this and his fixation with the legalistic arrangements of society rather than the underlying relations of production stems from an idealistic rather than materialist analysis of history.

The state capitalist class in the Soviet Union was fully a capitalist class in the only way that really counts - its de facto control over, and hence ownership of , the means of production

Uncle Rob

5th February 2010, 16:54

But the party elite did have a totally different relation to the means of production than the ordinary workers didnt they? They had absolute control over the broad allocation process and the distribution of income. This control is literally inseparable from de facto ownership. Afterall what does ownership of capital mean if not the right to determine how it is ultimately used?

No. Stop. They really didn't. If you would please, stop getting this shitty info from bourgeois authors and your high school history teacher.

Dave B

5th February 2010, 19:01

It doesn’t come from ‘bourgeois authors’ it comes from Lenin; then again maybe it does.

The ‘workers’ or the casual elements who worked in factories were too degraded and corrupted to run and organise state capitalism for the themselves and it had to be done by the party of the ‘bourgeois intelligentsia’ or the Bolsheviks.

And with it being a party of the bourgeois intelligentsia it was naturally enough a small party never being more than 1% of the population and requiring regular purging.

The workers were not even to be permitted to appoint their own factory managers otherwise what would be the point of a state capitalist class party?

V. I. Lenin THE PARTY CRISIS

Pravda No. 13, January 21, 1921

Why have a Party (of a state capitalist class), 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.marx2mao.net/Lenin/TPC21.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/TPC21.html)

Something that any self-respecting capitalist could only agree with.

Read your Lenin!

.

ZeroNowhere

5th February 2010, 19:08

No. Stop. They really didn't. If you would please, stop getting this shitty info from bourgeois authors and your high school history teacher.
Indeed, bloody bourgeois authors (http://openlibrary.org/b/OL1426784M/Marxian_concept_of_capital_and_the_Soviet_experien ce). Next thing you know, they'll make the word 'proletarian' into a meaningless slur! Friedrich Engels would never have tolerated bourgeois authors, had they existed in his day.

robbo203

5th February 2010, 19:13

No. Stop. They really didn't. If you would please, stop getting this shitty info from bourgeois authors and your high school history teacher.

What a shitty critique! Youve said absolutely nothing to back up your shitty comment. Try to present some kind of argument instead, eh?

syndicat

5th February 2010, 19:35

I will simply list here a number of relevant books and essays, NONE by "bourgeois authors."

Revolution from Above, by David Kotz & Fred Weir, about the old Soviet bureaucratic dominating and exploiting class and their transformation of Russia back into capitalism.

Soviets & Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution by Marxist historian Pete Rachleff
http://www.geocities.com/~johngray/raclef.htm

"The Bolsheviks & Workers Control" by Maurice Brinton (reprinted in the AK Press anthology, "For Workers Power")

Israel Getzler, "Kronstadt 1917-1921", an excellent concrete history of the grassroots soviet in Kronstadt during the revolution and its internal politics

Ida Mett, Kronstadt, a detailed account of the strike at Kronstadt in 1921 and its repression

"Before Stalinism" by Sam Farber, a Marxist sociologist

redasheville

6th February 2010, 17:53

Before Stalinism, while is a critical and at times helpful contribution, never pins Bolshevik policy on any sort of "original sin" of "vanguardism". Sam Farber is no lazy anarchist.

As someone who considers himself a Leninist, I think questions about a lot of Bolshevik policy are open questions and it is fair to criticize the actions of the Bolsheviks after the revolution. However, the decisions (whether right or wrong) that the Bolsheviks made did NOT stem from the Bolsheviks adopting any sort of authoritarian organizational model. This argument IS a bourgeois one. It is also lazy, dogmatic, ahistorical and frankly wrong.

Dave B

6th February 2010, 19:17

Why? I don’t understand.

Do you accept that the Bolsheviks adopted an ‘authoritarian organizational model’?

I think that the ‘authoritarian organizational model’, ‘IS a bourgeois one’.

The point is with the Bolshevik revolution is; does it weigh like a ‘nightmare on the brains of the living’ (whether right or wrong).

Ted Grant

Against the Theory of State Capitalism

Reply to Comrade Cliff

Cliff himself points to the fact that in the bourgeois revolution the masses did the fighting and the bourgeois got the fruits. The masses did not know what they were fighting for, but they fought in reality for the rule of the bourgeoisie. Take the French Revolution. It was prepared and had its ideology in the works of the philosophers of the enlightenment, Voltaire, Rousseau, etc. However, they really did believe in the idealisation of bourgeois society. They believed the codicils of liberty, equality and fraternity which they preached. As is well known, and as Cliff himself quotes Marx to prove, the French Revolution went beyond its social base.

It resulted in the revolutionary dictatorship of the sans culottes which went beyond the bounds of bourgeois society. As Marx explained, this had the salutory effect of completing in a few months what would otherwise have taken the bourgeois decades to do. The leaders of the revolutionary wing of the petty bourgeoisie which wielded this dictatorship - Robespierre, Danton, etc, sincerely believed in the doctrines of the philosophers and attempted to put them into practice. They could not do so because it was impossible to go beyond the economic base of the given society.

They inevitably had to lose power and merely paved the way for bourgeois society. If Cliff’s argument is correct, one could only conclude that the same thing happened with the Russian as with the French Revolution. Marx was the prophet of the new state capitalism. Lenin and Trotsky were the Robespierres and Carnots of the Russian Revolution. The fact that Lenin and Trotsky had good intentions is beside the point, as were the good intentions of the leaders of the bourgeois revolution. They merely paved the way for the rule of the new state capitalist class.

And;

If Comrade Cliff’s thesis is correct, that state capitalism exists in Russia today, then he cannot avoid the conclusion that state capitalism has been in existence since the Russian Revolution and the function of the revolution itself was to introduce this state capitalist system of society ( Ha Ha, Leftwing Childishness). For despite his tortuous efforts to draw a line between the economic basis of Russian society before the year 1928 and after, the economic basis of Russian society has in fact remained unchanged.

http://www.tedgrant.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm (http://www.tedgrant.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm)

So you see that I is why I have a little bit of respect for Ted Grant, his intellectual vanity wouldn’t allow him to be remembered posthumously as an idiot, being remembered as a lying bastard was something else.

.