modern Leninism and vanguard party

[lots of laughs]

Do modern Leninists still believe in a vanguard party? And if so, what role does this party play in bringing about revolution? My understanding is that the vanguard party is meant to play a central role in the revolution. But didn't Marx say that revolution was by the mass of the people, and that the communist party was only to promote ideas and not be the lead worker party? Thank you in advance for useful answers.

[ComradeOm]

Despite what many, both apologists and detractors, think, the vanguard is simply the most militant and revolutionary segment of the working class. The 'vanguard party', a phrase that I don't believe Lenin actually used, is the vehicle that this revolutionary proletariat uses to further its aims. It is not some sort of secret cabal of 'professional revolutionaries'

See the essay in my sig for an overview of the actual role of the Bolshevik party in 1917

[GPDP]

What muddles the debates centering around vanguardism seems to mostly boil down to semantics. Officially, Leninism holds the vanguard to be made up of little more than the most class-conscious, and thus most revolutionary segments of the working class, such that a proper vanguard party would still come out of and be an organic part of the working class. However, the detractors of Leninism point to vanguardism as being a method wherein intellectuals outside the working class lead their revolution in a top-down fashion, leading the workers and later taking control of them.

I think the most fruitful debates would probably center not in ideological commitment to vanguardism, but on whether a vanguard party in the Leninist sense has ever actually existed, such as in Russia in 1917.

[ComradeOm]

I think the most fruitful debates would probably center not in ideological commitment to vanguardism, but on whether a vanguard party in the Leninist sense has ever actually existed, such as in Russia in 1917.The key phrase here being "in the Leninist sense". Interestingly, and this is what drove me to write the piece I referred to above, the Bolshevik party of 1917 was almost certainly a vanguard party in that it expressed the aspirations and enjoyed the support of the most revolutionary segment of the working class. By October 1917 the Bolsheviks were dominant wherever workers organised - in the soviets, the factory committees and the unions*. The result was a mass open democratic party with only the loosest of control being exerted by the Central Committee. However this is not what people typically assume to be "the Leninist sense". The typical 'Leninist' vanguard party that exists in the popular imagination and was advocated by various Communist parties - meaning a highly organised and disciplined cadre of professional revolutionaries - simply did not exist in 1917

* Which is not to ignore the other elements of the radical left 'fringe' - the Menshevik Internationalists and the anarchists - but these were dwarfed by the Bolsheviks in terms of numbers and influence

[LibertarianSocialist1]

But didn't Marx say that revolution was by the mass of the people
No, he never said that.

[Zanthorus]

Not in those terms, no. However I believe the OP was referring to passages such as this:


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.- Manifesto of the Communist Party

[Jose Gracchus]

The greatest flaws with libertarian accounts of the Russian Revolution is that the Bolshevik party, as ComradeOm has indicated, and is well-supported in scholarship, was one of the mass democratic revolutionary institutions of the revolutionary masses in 1917. That the party leadership ended up evolving to the top wrung in an administrative hierarchical apparatus that served in essence to transmit orders from the top on down is no less true. How it came to be that this apparatus served increasingly to blunt the activity of the revolutionary masses, to quash many revolutionary gains - even those of the bourgeois-democratic revolution -, and to maintain the status quo vis-a-vis the privileged sections of the new society is one of the great historical questions of our time - perhaps the question. But the simple reality is the Bolsheviks- taken as a whole, and especially in 1917 and prior - were not some other species from other historical actors. I'm afraid simplistic analysis of their 'ideology' as being a deterministic factor in their degeneration is just that: excessively simplistic. On the other hand, we should not be misled by legalistic casuistry as is routinely indulged by the 'authoritarians' to absolve the Bolshevik regime of its increasing crimes, and failure to carry through or preserve the revolution (perhaps in the end analysis will indicate that it was predominantly the product of exogenous factors, like isolation and intervention, but nonetheless it is what happened to the Russian Revolution).

[robbo203]

Do modern Leninists still believe in a vanguard party? And if so, what role does this party play in bringing about revolution? My understanding is that the vanguard party is meant to play a central role in the revolution. But didn't Marx say that revolution was by the mass of the people, and that the communist party was only to promote ideas and not be the lead worker party? Thank you in advance for useful answers.

Marx certainly did hold the view that the socialist/communist revolution had to be a majoritarain one. He argued that the realisation of communism itself depends upon on the "alteration of men on a mass scale" (The German Ideology) - that is, a huge growth in the numbers of individuals adopting a communist outlook - and cannot be achieved by just the minority who are presently communist. Thus in the Communist Manifesto it is pointed out 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 (Chapter 1. "Bourgeois and Proletarians" Manifesto of the Communist Party 1848)


Turning to Lenin and the question of the vanguard I think there are two senses in which one can use the term vanguard

1) The most militant or revolutionary section of the working class in the sense of an avant garde

2) A minority that seeks to capture political power on the pretext of furthering the interests of the majority who are not yet revolutionary in outlook. This position clearly contradicts the marxian position that the proletarian revolution has to be majoritarian one.

I think there is strong evidence to suggest that lenin held this latter view. Consider for example the following:



From 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 struggle, 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)


And again:

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://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm)


A similar view was expressed by Trotsky:
The masses are held down with "compulsory general education", kept "on the verge of complete ignorance", exist in "spiritual slavery" and are terrorised to such a degree that the minority must seize power on their behalf. Then, and only then, can the "most ignorant, most terrorised sections of the nation" be slowly educated in the "meaning of socialist production" (L Trotsky Terrorism and communism,London 1975, pp58-59).

The problem is of course that if this vanguard minority captures it will not be able to introduce a socialist society since that depends on the the majority wanting and understanding it. Therefore the minority having taken power will be compellled by circumstances to develop capitalism and in due course to oppose themselves to the working class. This is precisely what happened in the Soviet Union with the establishment of state capitalism

[LibertarianSocialist1]

There´s nothing in that passage that says that revolution must be carried out by the mass of the people.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Marx certainly did hold the view that the socialist/communist reoilution had to be a majoritarain one. He argued that the realisation of communism itself depends upon on the "alteration of men on a mass scale" (The German Ideology) - that is, a huge growth in the numbers of individuals adopting a communist outlook - and cannot be achieved by just the minority who presently communist. Actually:

"Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration that can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; the revolution is necessary, therefore, not only the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew." - Marx, The German Ideology.

Also may be of interest:

"As a general rule, Marx and Engels were final arbiters in questions of party policy. After Marx’s death this role became naturally concentrated in the person of Engels. Though prepared to give due weight to the practical exigencies of the situation on all occasions, the old colleague and survivor of Marx till the last held to the view that the social revolution could not be inaugurated otherwise than by the methods of forcible insurrection – least of all in Germany. I have more than once heard him say that as soon as one man in three, i.e. one-third, of the German army actually in service could be relied on by the party leaders, revolutionary action ought to be taken." - Ernest Belfort Bax

[Dave B]

I think the idea of vanguardism from 1902, as I hope to prove by factual quotations, is quite simple.

The workers, the people who work in factories, are a bunch of thick bastards who are incapable, due to their position in society, of understanding anything more than that they are getting a rough deal, and perhaps not even that. That is because the working class are so corrupted by capitalism itself and/or imperialism etc, and lack the intelligence/education to see the bigger picture.

It is up to the bourgeois intelligentsia and intellectuals, the frustrated ‘managerial’ lickspittles of the owning class (for their own reasons and motivations) to educate the working class as to how the working class are being shafted and what they should do about it etc.

Some sections of the working class can of course buy into this argument and thus, in doing so, become accepted de-facto honorary members of bourgeois intelligentsia (vanguard) class themselves, or the ‘vanguard of their own class’.


Thus;





The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.[* (http://www.revleft.com/vb/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=2001809#np37)] The theory of Socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals. According to their social status, the founders of modern scientific Socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose quite independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement, it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of ideas among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia. At the time of which we are speaking, i.e., the middle of the 'nineties, this doctrine not only represented the completely formulated program of the Emancipation of Labour group, but had already won over to its side the majority of the revolutionary youth in Russia.


And Lenin quoting Kautsky;




The vehicle of science is not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia (K. K.'s italics): it was in the minds of individual members of this stratum that modern Socialism originated, and it was they who communicated it to the more intellectually developed proletarians who, in their turn, introduce it into the proletarian class struggle where conditions allow that to be done. Thus, socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without (von Aussen Hineingetragenes) and not something that arose within it spontaneously (urwüchsig). Accordingly, the old Hainfeld program quite rightly stated that the task of Social-Democracy is to imbue the proletariat (literally: saturate the proletariat) with the consciousness of its position and the consciousness of its task There would be no need for this if consciousness arose of itself from the class struggle. The new draft copied this proposition from the old program, and attached it to the proposition mentioned above. But this completely broke the line of thought

Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology being developed by the masses of the workers themselves in the process of their movement*

* This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no part in creating such an ideology. But they take part not as workers, but as socialist theoreticians, as Proudhons and Weitlings; in other words, they take part only when, and to the extent that they are able, more or less, to acquire the knowledge of their age and advance that knowledge.


http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/WD02i.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/WD02i.html)


When the theory is translated into practice we have;



But the dictatorship of the proletariat (vanguard) 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 (party) that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class.


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

The vanguard rules!

The ideas and theories that Lenin’s state capitalism degenerated into an economic system of a bureaucratic ‘managerial’ caste is less surprising if one thinks that that was where it originated from; and it didn’t so much degenerate as evolve.

I am not quite sure what the ‘1917’ thing is, is comradeom admitting by omission that things started to go wrong in 1918 once in power as predicted in 1905?

.

[ComradeOm]

I am not quite sure what the ‘1917’ thing is, is comradeom admitting by omission that things started to go wrong in 1918 once in power as predicted in 1905?You might have missed this while trawling for quotes that you can take out of context, but there was a little affair in 1917 called the 'Russian Revolution'. I believe the Bolsheviks were somehow involved in that whole "thing". Or so I've heard. Might be of interest to anyone wondering what this whole 'vanguard party' thing looked like in reality. Someone should probably look into that...

But then you've also completely missed my point. Which is that neither the Revolution or the role of the Bolshevik party corresponds to the 'predictions of 1905'. If you do want to know what 'went wrong' after October - or indeed the role of the 'vanguard party' in all this - then I suggest studying the actual history. Probably a more productive use of time than poring over what Lenin said over a decade prior to said events. Funny that it takes a 'Leninist' to point that out

[Jose Gracchus]

ComradeOm and I probably lie on 'formally' opposite positions along the sectarian lines, but he's the only one not relying on an ahistorical, quasi-scriptural, chiliastic approach. The question of socialist revolution and where it went wrong after 1917 is an important question, but that means it is to be taken seriously. There are quite voluminous modern scholarship on this matter, which seems to fly right under the radar in discussion after discussion. Perhaps because quoting self-serving sectarian polemics and The Great Men out of context is less hard work than serious historical reading, study, and investigation.

But I don't think clarity will follow from laziness here.

[Robocommie]

chiliastic

Goodness, there's a word I've never seen before. :lol:

[blake 3:17]

Goodness, there's a word I've never seen before.

That means you haven't read Making of the English Working Class. Time to hit the books!

[blake 3:17]

Marx certainly did hold the view that the socialist/communist revolution had to be a majoritarain one.

I see this as the central dilemma and problem of small "c" communist politics. Why are those of us who believe in universal and international social liberation such minor players? When capitalism is destroying the air we breathe and the water we drink, why doesn't socialism/communism present itself as the obvious solution?

Some easy answers to those questions may be valid, but shouldn't be used as excuses.

[Sixiang]

But didn't Marx say that revolution was by the mass of the people, and that the communist party was only to promote ideas and not be the lead worker party?

I'm pretty sure Marx was in favor of the communist party being a tool of the workers to further the revolution.

[Jose Gracchus]

Goodness, there's a word I've never seen before. :lol:

To be honest this collection titled Revolution in Russia: Reassessments of 1917 (ed. Edith Rogovin Frankel, Jonathan Frankel, and Baruch Knei-Paz, Cambridge University Press Cambridge: 1992 and dedicated to Israel Getzler) contains this essay called "The Libertarians Vindicated?" (by Edward Acton, pg. 338) that characterized old libertarian rhetoric and accounts that way, and I couldn't resist borrowing it. Interestingly enough, the part about where the libertarians are wrong is their characterization of "the Bolshevik party" as it were sounds as if ComradeOm could have written it. It is exactly along those lines.

[Die Neue Zeit]

It's the word "casuistry" that caught my attention. I have not seen or heard that ethics word in years. See, there's jargon for ya! :D

[Robocommie]

That means you haven't read Making of the English Working Class. Time to hit the books!

Hah, man I have a reading list as long as your leg (of texts I've yet to read)

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

ComradeOm and I probably lie on 'formally' opposite positions along the sectarian lines, but he's the only one not relying on an ahistorical, quasi-scriptural, chiliastic approach. The question of socialist revolution and where it went wrong after 1917 is an important question, but that means it is to be taken seriously. There are quite voluminous modern scholarship on this matter, which seems to fly right under the radar in discussion after discussion. Perhaps because quoting self-serving sectarian polemics and The Great Men out of context is less hard work than serious historical reading, study, and investigation.

But I don't think clarity will follow from laziness here.

I guess the view from up there on your high horse is a little askew.

Some of us here have spent countless days, and even more ink, on the "Russian Question."

You'll forgive me if I don't spend hours typing up all my personal findings in every thread that mentions 1917... Especially when my post containing quotes from "The Great Men out of context" were posted in direct response to another poster who was using same.

[Jose Gracchus]

I guess the view from up there on your high horse is a little askew.

Some of us here have spent countless days, and even more ink, on the "Russian Question."

You'll forgive me if I don't spend hours typing up all my personal findings in every thread that mentions 1917... Especially when my post containing quotes from "The Great Men out of context" were posted in direct response to another poster who was using same.

Uh, how was I replying to you. I was just remarking how many people who attack the concept of a 'vanguard party' per se do so with ignorance of what the Bolshevik party and its relation to the revolutionary masses actually was in 1917. I don't see how that presupposes an attack on you. This view is hardly irreconcilable with what you posted.

[Lucretia]

No, he never said that.

Are you suggesting that Marx never said that the masses did not need to be involved in a socialist revolution. Marx and Engels firmly believed that, to quote them, "the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself." The idea that the revolution could be carried out by a small minority of the working class, or some group external to the working class, on behalf of the entire working class (substitutionism), was completely and totally foreign to Marx and Engels.

[robbo203]

You might have missed this while trawling for quotes that you can take out of context, but there was a little affair in 1917 called the 'Russian Revolution'. I believe the Bolsheviks were somehow involved in that whole "thing". Or so I've heard. Might be of interest to anyone wondering what this whole 'vanguard party' thing looked like in reality. Someone should probably look into that...

But then you've also completely missed my point. Which is that neither the Revolution or the role of the Bolshevik party corresponds to the 'predictions of 1905'. If you do want to know what 'went wrong' after October - or indeed the role of the 'vanguard party' in all this - then I suggest studying the actual history. Probably a more productive use of time than poring over what Lenin said over a decade prior to said events. Funny that it takes a 'Leninist' to point that out

This thread as I understand it, is about the attitude of Lenin and Leninism towards the notion of a vanguard. It is not irrelevant to point out what this amount to not least because because ideological factors obviously do have an input in the way history develops and Lenin/Leninists clearly meant by vanguard more than just the most advanced or militant sections of the working class: vanguardism was prescriptive as well as descriptive. It advocated the seizure of power by a minority to run society (allegedly) for and on behalf of the majority. In other words, to capture power in advance of the working class becoming revolutionary socialist in outlook. This could only have one outcome. Given that there is no way on earth that you can impose socialism on a majority who neither understand or want it, you are lumbered with existing society which in Russia's case was an admixture of capitalist and pre-capitalist elements.

Certainly, millions of Russian workers participated in the the events of 1917. No one I think is disputing this and there is little point in going on and on about it. Much more interesting and significant is the nature of this participation. What did the Russian workers hope to achieve (and we should not forget the peasantry who formed the vast bulk of Russian society)?

Anyone who believes that the majority of Russian workers, let alone the majority of Russian society, want to bring about a genuine socialist society in the sense in which this was traditionally conceived (as opposed to the leninist conception of socialism - a state capitalist monopoly purportedly run in the interests of the whole people) is simply indulging in idealistic retrospection. No marxist could ever seriously mantain that Russia in 1917 was ready for socialism - whether objectively in terms of the development of the productive forces or subjectively in terms of mass revolutionary socialist consciousness. The mass of Russian workers were not revolutionary socialists in 1917. They did not seek the overthrow of the wage labour-capital relation but rather the reorganisation of this relationship on terms more favourable to the workers. And, yes, many workers did believe that Bolsheviks would bring this about.

The rest as they say is history and history delivered quite another verdict. Out of the chaos of revolution the state gradually accumulated and consoldiated its power and, with it, a newly emergent state capitalist class who would take the side of capital in the antagonistic wage labour-capital relation. This state capitalist class was latter to oversee one of the harshest regressions in working living standards under the Stalin regime, to maximise the state's appropriation of surplus value in order to faciliate capital accumulation.

It is in this light, I suggest, that we should view the leninist concept of the vanguard. It provided the ideological justification for minority control of the state and the imposition of a dictatorship over the proletariat in order to develop capitalism in the guise of state capitalism.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Uh, how was I replying to you. I was just remarking how many people who attack the concept of a 'vanguard party' per se do so with ignorance of what the Bolshevik party and its relation to the revolutionary masses actually was in 1917. I don't see how that presupposes an attack on you. This view is hardly irreconcilable with what you posted.

Maybe I was confused when you said ComradeOm was "the only one not relying on an ahistorical, quasi-scriptural, chiliastic approach."

[Kiev Communard]

Some form of political organization of advanced revolutionaries is undoubtedly needed, but it shouldn't strive to be ideologically monolithic all the time (e.g., banning factions, etc.) and try to establish one-party regime after the revolution to be maintained indefinitely. This organization should not be organized along the lines of "classical" Leninism, but its lessons - on the par with the lessons of Anarcho-Syndicalism and Platformism - must without doubt be reflected on in the future.

In short, the truly revolutionary party must be neither the ideologically monolithic order of "priests of Holy {insert name there}", nor the discussion club or counterculture society. Both these extremes ought to be avoided at all costs.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Neither counterculture society? Define "counterculture," if not the alternative culture of the pre-war SPD. :confused:

[Kiev Communard]

Neither counterculture society? Define "counterculture," if not the alternative culture of the pre-war SPD. :confused:

No, I actually meant the "counter-culture" of the style generally promoted by different "lifestylist" movements of vaguely anarchist orientation among the marginalised youth.

[Dave B]

Responding to ComradeOm on 1905 predictions of Bolsheviks, from your own Trotsky (then evil Menshevik);


From the last and ‘missing’ chapter of Trotsky’s ‘Our Political tasks’;


A Dictatorship Over The Proletariat



We repeat: the Ural Comrades are perfectly consistent in the replacement of the dictatorship of the proletariat by the dictatorship over the proletariat, of the political rule of the class by the organizational rule over the class. But this is a consistency not of Marxians, but of Jacobins, or of their translation into the "Socialist" language, of Blanquists… Of course, with the peculiar aroma of the culture of the Urals.
Thus we have charged our Ural Comrades with Blanquism …………………… …………………………………………….That is why we consider it highly useful to quote Engels on the question of the role which the Blanquists ascribe to themselves at the moment of the socialist revolution.

"Trained in the conspiratorial school, accustomed to the strict discipline required in a conspiracy, they acted on the view that a relatively small number of determined and well organised people may, under favourable circumstances, not only capture the power, but through the application of powerful merciless energy maintain it until they succeed in rallying to the revolution the masses of the people and grouping them around the small handful of leaders. This requires, above all, the strictest dictatorial centralization of power in the hands of the new government."

(Marx "The Civil War in France", Engels’ Preface to the third German Edition).


And more famously;



In the internal politics of the Party these methods lead, as we shall see below, to the Party organisation "substituting" itself for the Party, the Central Committee substituting itself for the Party organisation, and finally the dictator substituting himself for the Central Committee;


http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1904/tasks/ch03.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1904/tasks/ch03.htm)


And 15 years later from a 'reformed' Trotsky;



Both economic and political compulsion are only forms of the expression of the dictatorship of the working class in two closely connected regions. True, Abramovich (Menshevik) demonstrated to us most learnedly that under Socialism there will be no compulsion, that the principle of compulsion contradicts Socialism, that under Socialism we shall be moved by the feeling of duty, the habit of working, the attractiveness of labor, etc., etc. This is unquestionable.

Only this unquestionable truth must be a little extended. In point of fact, under Socialism there will not exist the apparatus of compulsion itself, namely, the State: for it will have melted away entirely into a producing and consuming commune. None the less, the road to Socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the State. And you and I are just passing through that period. Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the State, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the most ruthless form of State, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction. Now just that insignificant little fact – that historical step of the State dictatorship – Abramovich, and in his person the whole of Menshevism, did not notice; and consequently, he has fallen over it.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/ch08.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/ch08.htm)


In which Trotsky is responding to Kautsky’s ‘accusations’ of state capitalism, not refuted;

Karl Kautsky Terrorism and Communism

Chapter VIII The Communists at Work (cont’d)
The Change in Bolshevism




The absolutism of the old bureaucracy has come again to life in a new but, as we have seen, by no means improved form; and also alongside of this absolutism are being formed the seeds of a new capitalism, which is responsible for direct criminal practices, and which in reality stands on a much lower level than the industrial capitalism of former days. It is only the ancient feudal land estate which exists no more. For its abolition conditions in Russia were ripe. But they were not ripe for the abolition of capitalism. This latter system is now undergoing resuscitation, nevertheless in forms which, for the proletariat, are more oppressive and more harmful than those of yore.

Private capitalism has now taken on, in place of the higher industrial forms, the most wretched and corrupt form of smuggling, of profiteering, and of money speculation. Industrial capitalism, from being a private system, has now become a State capitalism. Formerly the bureaucrats of the State and those of private capital were often very critical, if not directly hostile, towards one another. In consequence the working-man found advantage sometimes with the one, and sometimes with the other. To-day, however, both State and capitalist bureaucracy have merged into one system. That is the final result of the great Socialist upheaval, which the Bolsheviks have introduced.

It represents the most oppressive of all forms of despotism that Russia has ever had. The substitution of democracy by the arbitrary rule of the Workmen’s Council, which was to serve for the "expropriation of the expropriators," has now given place to the arbitrary rule of a new form of bureaucracy. Thus it has been made possible for this latter to render democracy for the workmen a complete dead letter;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1919/terrcomm/ch08b.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1919/terrcomm/ch08b.htm)



Abramovich;

http://www.uea.ac.uk/his/webcours/russia/documents/abramovich.shtml (http://www.uea.ac.uk/his/webcours/russia/documents/abramovich.shtml)

http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Abramovich_Rafail (http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Abramovich_Rafail)

[Kiev Communard]

Well, the Bolsheviks at least tried and failed. Kautsky, on the other hand, didn't even make a try.

[ComradeOm]

It is not irrelevant to point out what this amount to not least because because ideological factors obviously do have an input in the way history develops and Lenin/Leninists clearly meant by vanguard more than just the most advanced or militant sections of the working class: vanguardism was prescriptive as well as descriptiveYou say that, yet clearly it was not. Or at least your conception of Bolshevik ideology/positions is flawed. One of these must be true because it is absolutely and unmistakably clear that the Bolshevik party of 1917 was not some "minority" seeking to "capture power in advance of the working class". That is, it simply does not fit the model of 1905. You can say this as much as you want but it does not change the reality

Now either the programme of 1905 does not mean what you think it does or this organisational platform was not employed in 1917. Pick one


Certainly, millions of Russian workers participated in the the events of 1917. No one I think is disputing this and there is little point in going on and on about it. Much more interesting and significant is the nature of this participation. What did the Russian workers hope to achieve (and we should not forget the peasantry who formed the vast bulk of Russian society)? I, and every sane socialist, views the organisation of millions of workers into revolutionary bodies (be they factory committees, industrial unions or soviets) and the adoption of countless resolutions calling for revolutionary social change to be evidence of, well, a revolutionary socialist proletariat. You on the other hand would prefer that these same workers had retreated to the libraries and started writing up theses on the inadequacies of early French socialism

This is something that we've been through before and I have no intention of rehashing the same arguments about whether or not the Russian proletariat were revolutionary just because they fail to fit your own inane definition of socialism


Responding to ComradeOm on 1905 predictions of Bolsheviks, from your own Trotsky (then evil Menshevik)I do love how you respond to a post criticising the use of out of context snippets as a substitute for real historical study with... a series of out of context quotes. Sometimes I wonder if there is really a 'Dave B' or if I'm merely conversing with a random quote generator

[robbo203]

You say that, yet clearly it was not. Or at least your conception of Bolshevik ideology/positions is flawed. One of these must be true because it is absolutely and unmistakably clear that the Bolshevik party of 1917 was not some "minority" seeking to "capture power in advance of the working class". That is, it simply does not fit the model of 1905. You can say this as much as you want but it does not change the reality


Firstly, you should be a little more attentive. I did not say the Bolshevik party of 1917 sought to "capture power in advance of the working class". I said quite clearly that it sought to capture power in advance of the working class "becoming revolutionary socialist in outlook". There is a difference and I surely do not have to spell that out to you.



If you are trying to dispute this point then I am afraid the evidence shows that it is your conception of "Bolshevik ideology/positions" that is flawed, not mine. Ive provided this list with quote after quote from people like Lenin and Trottsky which clearly demonstrate beyond a shadow of doubt that they were not prepared to wait until the majority of workers were socialist before capturing. Lenin himself was not even prepared to countenance the working class as a class exercising power within what he called the "dictatorship of the proletariat" (in reality a dictatorship over the proletariat). Here's the quote again in case you missed it the first time

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://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...920/dec/30.htm (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm)).

BTW it is interesting to note here that Lenin admits Russia is a backward capitalist country in 1920! So much for the so called socialist revolution that is supposed to have taken place in 1917!


Secondly , you contest my claim that "Lenin/Leninists clearly meant by vanguard more than just the most advanced or militant sections of the working class: vanguardism was prescriptive as well as descriptive" You assert that "clearly it was not." Really? So according to you, the idea of a vanguard in leninist thinking was purely descriptive not prescriptive. Yet in a speech to the Congress of Peasants’ Soviets on 27 November, 1917 we find Lenin saying:

"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)

So when Lenin said this about the vanguard of the working class you dont think he was talking about vanguardism in a prescriptive sense, eh?. I suggest you go and get yourself a good dictionary:rolleyes:





I, and every sane socialist, views the organisation of millions of workers into revolutionary bodies (be they factory committees, industrial unions or soviets) and the adoption of countless resolutions calling for revolutionary social change to be evidence of, well, a revolutionary socialist proletariat. You on the other hand would prefer that these same workers had retreated to the libraries and started writing up theses on the inadequacies of early French socialism

If you think the majority of the Russian working class was "revolutionary socialist" in outlook in 1917 then you are absolutely deluded. You may be be intimately acquainted with thedramatis personae of the events of 1917 but you know sod all about socialism if this is what you really think.

Not even Lenin thought the majority of workers let alone the majority of the population who were overwhelming non-workers (i.e. peasants). So sneer away for all you like about retreating to the libraries to study the inadequacies of early french socialism but the only one who comes out of this with egg all over their red and flustered face is you, my friend.

You doubt what I say? Well then consider this.In April 1917 at the Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P Lenin said clearly "We cannot be for "introducing" socialism—this would be the height of absurdity. We must preach socialism. The majority of the population in Russia are peasants, small farmers who can have no idea of socialism". A month later he was saying that the "proletariat and semi proletariat", had "never been socialist, nor has it the slightest idea about socialism, it is only just awakening to political life(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/7thconf/24c.htm). Even after the October revolution, in an addresss to trade unionists in June 1918 Lenin pointed out "there are many...who are not enlightened socialists and cannot be such because they have to slave in the factories and they have neither the time nor the opportunity to become socialists (Lenin, Ibid, Vol. 27 page 466). And in another speech, this time at the Second All-Russia Congress Of Commissars For Labour May 22, 1918 he frankly admitted "We know how small is the section of advanced and politically conscious workers in Russia". This, of course, was precisely Lenin's pretext for his vanguard party supposedly drawn from this small and politically advanced section of the working class; the great majority of workers and peasants, in his estimation, were not yet imbued with a socialist consciousness and so the vanguard had to take power and act on their behalf.


But let me throw back the challenge to you. You claim that "every sane socialist, views the organisation of millions of workers into revolutionary bodies (be they factory committees, industrial unions or soviets) and the adoption of countless resolutions calling for revolutionary social change to be evidence of, well, a revolutionary socialist proletariat" OK so now go ahead prove this! Ex cathedra type statements from Mr Know-all are simply not acceptable. Give me one example - just one - calling for the establishment of an authentic socialist/communist society. And let us be quite clear what we mean by this. In the Marxian sense of the term "socialism" or "communism" meant a society in which the means of production are commonly owned , where there is no longer any buying or selling, wage labour, market prices, capital and profits, and where the state as the central regulating institution of class society has disappeared along with class relations of production

Where are these "countless resolutions" calling for such a society? I think you are hallucinating, frankly. No sane socialist would ever contenance such idealistic romantic balderdash as anything other than hopelessly wishful thinking. Note that I do not say there were no socialists involved in the Russian revolution; I simply assert that the majority of workers were not socialists in the above marxian sense

So come on Comradeom, you have made this outrageous claim. Lets see you back it up if you can! And please dont come to me with examples of resolutions calling for the nationalisation of the means of production becuase you know as well as I do that this is completely inadmissable as evidence and does not constitute socialism in its original sense in any way at all.






This is something that we've been through before and I have no intention of rehashing the same arguments about whether or not the Russian proletariat were revolutionary just because they fail to fit your own inane definition of socialism

Inane? Youve got a friggin nerve havent you? Not that I expect a non-socialist bourgeois academic like yourself to appreciate the point but actually this definition of socialism was almost universally upheld prior to the radical redefinition of the term effected by the likes of Lenin and co in the early 20th century


Even among the Russian social democrats, prior to their break up into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, this particular usage prevailed. A key text called A Short Course of Economic Science, written by A Bogdanoff, talked of socialism being "the highest stage of society we can conceive", in which such institutions as taxation and profits will be non-existent and in which "there will not be the market ,buying and selling, but consciously and systematically organised distribution.". This book was published in 1897 and a revised edition, published in August 1919, was used as a textbook in schools and study circles of the Russian Communist Party (Russia 1917-1967: A Socialist Analysis, Socialist Party of Great Britain 1967). Stalin, too, in this early period talked of socialism in this way. For instance, in his book Anarchism or Socialism (1906) he wrote that "Future society will be socialist society. This means also that, with the abolition of exploitation commodity production and buying and selling will also be abolished and, therefore, there will be no room for buyers and sellers of labour power, for employers and employed -- there will be only free workers". In socialism, argued Stalin, "Where there are no classes, where there are neither rich nor poor, there is no need for a state, there is no need either for political power, which oppresses the poor and protects the rich. Consequently, in socialist society there will be no need for the existence of political power.". (Anarchism or Socialism?J. V. Stalin,Works, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954, Vol. 1, pp. 297-391) It was this same Stalin who in the 1930s claimed that the Soviet Union was now a fully formed "socialist state" controlled by the working class when he had previously excluded both the state and classes from his conception of socialism!!(http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/11/25.htm).

[LibertarianSocialist1]

If a part of the working class emancipates it, then the working class has emancipated itself.

[Jose Gracchus]

What should the members of major socialist parties or factions like the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, Left Mensheviks, Maximalists, anarchists, and yes! Bolsheviks supposed to do when both their party members throughout the militant masses as well as common workers and peasants organized in a revolutionary fashion, calling for the Provisional Government to be annulled, for the revolutionary mass organizations to be elevated to the instruments of social power in place of the bourgeois state, to do?

The Russian Revolution degenerated based on many factors, many of them in historical dispute and worthy of debate. It is not some magic proprietary formula like "insufficient support for communism" and "insufficient productive forces". That's not a honest reading of the history.

You'd have them do what, exactly? Sit around until close enough reading of the Classics pointed that it was possible to turn around and convince everyone of how wonderful communism is, and then magically implement organically? That's fantasy. You're debating like an old-style Chinese mandarin about his Confucian classics, or some Jesuit.

[Lucretia]

If a part of the working class emancipates it, then the working class has emancipated itself.

Marx clearly did not subscribe to this view.

As Marx and Engels also stated in the CM: "All previous historical movements were movements of minorities or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority."

M&E claimed that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class, and therefore an act of the immense majority, so this leaves zero possibility that they entertained the possibility of an authentically socialist revolution occurring as a result of a tiny minority of workers wielding power on behalf of every one.

[Kléber]

Engels on Blanquism:

From Blanqui's assumption, that any revolution may be made by the outbreak of a small revolutionary minority, follows of itself the necessity of a dictatorship after the success of the venture. This is, of course, a dictatorship, not of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of the small minority that has made the revolution, and who are themselves previously organized under the dictatorship of one or several individuals.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/06/26.htm


What I know or believe about the situation in Russia impels me to the opinion that the Russians are approaching their 1789. The revolution must break out there in a given time; it may break out there any day. In these circumstances the country is like a charged mine which only needs a fuse to be laid to it. Especially since March 13. This is one of the exceptional cases where it is possible for a handful of people to make a revolution, i.e., with one small push to cause a whole system, which (to use a metaphor of Plekhanov's) is in more than labile equilibrium, to come crashing down, and thus by one action, in itself insignificant, to release uncontrollable explosive forces. Well now, if ever Blanquism--the phantasy of overturning an entire society through the action of a small conspiracy--had a certain justification for its existence, that is certainly in Petersburg. Once the spark has been put to the powder, once the forces have been released and national energy has been transformed from potential into kinetic energy (another favourite image of Plekhanov's and a very good one)--the people who laid the spark to the mine will be swept away by the explosion, which will be a thousand times as strong as themselves and which will seek its vent where it can, according as the economic forces and resistances determine.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885/letters/85_04_23.htm

[robbo203]

What should the members of major socialist parties or factions like the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, Left Mensheviks, Maximalists, anarchists, and yes! Bolsheviks supposed to do when both their party members throughout the militant masses as well as common workers and peasants organized in a revolutionary fashion, calling for the Provisional Government to be annulled, for the revolutionary mass organizations to be elevated to the instruments of social power in place of the bourgeois state, to do?

The Russian Revolution degenerated based on many factors, many of them in historical dispute and worthy of debate. It is not some magic proprietary formula like "insufficient support for communism" and "insufficient productive forces". That's not a honest reading of the history.

You'd have them do what, exactly? Sit around until close enough reading of the Classics pointed that it was possible to turn around and convince everyone of how wonderful communism is, and then magically implement organically? That's fantasy. You're debating like an old-style Chinese mandarin about his Confucian classics, or some Jesuit.


See, its people like you who peddle this argument which Ive frankly heard time and time again on this list, who rather miss the point altogether. You pooh-pooh the basic Marxian position that without mass communist consciousness and without a sufficiently developed infrastructure you simply cannot have communiusm. You say this is "not an honest reading of history." Bollocks! How else do you propose to realise communism without meeting this two absolute preoinsitions first. A wave of the magic wand perhaps? And you are the one who talks about "fantasy"!

It just amazes the extent to which some people will duck and dive, twist and turn, to retain intact their deluded and utterly romanticised view of the Bolshevik Revolution. You say it "degenerated" for many reasons. But what is implied by the term "degenerated"? That had it not been for these various other reasons you mention Russia might have been on course for what? What is that "what". Come on , spit it out and tell me exactly what you think Russia would have achieved had the revolution not "degenerated" in your terms.

I can tell you straightaway what it would have achieved. Some or other version of capitalism. Perhaps a more liberal version than the oppressive regime the Bolsheviks eventually brought into existence but a capitalist regime all the same. Idealists think that things could have been so radically different and that, even without mass communist consciousness and a sufficiently developed economic base, maybe even communism might have been achieved. No they would not have been different not in broad historical terms, though the specifics might well have been different.

One last thing, I am less interested in the argument of "what the Bolsheviks should have done" than what they are ultimately compelled to do - develop capitalism. We do not have to approach this matter from the standpoint of some kind of political consultant, advising government on policy which is a somewhat ridiculous posture to adopt anyway. Nor do we need to take some kind of conspiratorial view of the events in Russia or for that matter question the motives of the leading players. I am sure people like Lenin well understood what was precisely meant by Marxian socialism - even if our resident Russian hisotorian on this list dismisses it as an "inane idea". Its quite obvious to me reading lenin that he hated capitalism and favoured the idea of a socialist(communist) society. There is a quote from him I came across which I have mislaid (but no doubt Dave B will remind me) where Lenin is actually talkining in rthe most approving terms of free access communism

Point is it was simply not on the cards. So we have 3 choices. Do we colloborate with the existing capitalist state to further capitalism - the Menshevik option. Do we overthrow the existing capitalist state to reconfigure it in a new form in order to develop state capitalism - the Bolshevik option. Or do we reject both approaches while recognising realistically that communiusm was not on the cards and retain our political independence to promote the interests of wage labour industrially and politically in opposition to those of capital and the capitalist state - the revolutionary socialist position.

I know which option I would chose and it would be interesting to see just how many people on this list who call themselves socialists would chose.

[Jose Gracchus]

Uh, maybe you abandon thinking about things because they don't appear in your 'classic texts'; like I said, you're a child of the Confucian tradition in spirit, not scientific. I don't care if you can textually demonstrate Marx and Engels said that. This is not a debate on a forum of Biblical inerrantists. Just because Marx and Engels said something does not make it likely or the final word on how history or movements will unfold. There will be no magic transition organically to mass consciousness for explicit communism spontaneously. That bears no resemblance to how any historical past revolutionary scenarios have occurred. I do think there must be broad preparation, a mass base prepared for it, and broad international collaboration. But while public majoritarian support for the revolution is a necessity, it will not come by everyone academically coming around to support communism and being able to quote Marx-Engels, etc., etc. You have this shtick that being the most ultra-orthodox Marxist out there is some virtue or back-to-the-basics authenticity; its just the sad Marxist equivalent of Christian restorationism. There will be no day you wake up and it just happens that the economy performs adequately and everyone wants to live in a classless, stateless society. That's not going to happen.

[Jose Gracchus]

See, its people like you who peddle this argument which Ive frankly heard time and time again on this list, who rather miss the point altogether. You pooh-pooh the basic Marxian position that without mass communist consciousness and without a sufficiently developed infrastructure you simply cannot have communiusm. You say this is "not an honest reading of history." Bollocks! How else do you propose to realise communism without meeting this two absolute preoinsitions first. A wave of the magic wand perhaps? And you are the one who talks about "fantasy"!

These things are processes and arrive-at dynamically in the course of struggle and education. They do not happen on their own. I do not intend for the workers' movement to simply sit on its ass and defend reforms in capitalism until magically the time arrives when all workers will want "free access communism". That's idiotic. The conditions by which that looks like an immediate alternative will not exist until the conditions for the political overthrow of the capitalist class and the capitalist state infrastructure has passed. Most people are not going to percieve - and fairly so - "free access communism" to be technically possible on their hunches. I don't think you have any idea how politics and historical change has ever occurred historically.


It just amazes the extent to which some people will duck and dive, twist and turn, to retain intact their deluded and utterly romanticised view of the Bolshevik Revolution. You say it "degenerated" for many reasons. But what is implied by the term "degenerated"? That had it not been for these various other reasons you mention Russia might have been on course for what? What is that "what". Come on , spit it out and tell me exactly what you think Russia would have achieved had the revolution not "degenerated" in your terms.

You would've stood at your pulpit like a scolding churchman lecturing the foolishness of the working masses in 1917. I hope most here would have chipped in to the workers' struggle.

You have no ability to cite history, to work with the facts, etc. to reach for a conclusion. There's only one possibility for you in debate, and that is some version of vulgar determinism. Oh, "it was on a capitalist historical track, so the workers were implicitly stupid". That's ridiculous.


I can tell you straightaway what it would have achieved. Some or other version of capitalism. Perhaps a more liberal version than the oppressive regime the Bolsheviks eventually brought into existence but a capitalist regime all the same. Idealists think that things could have been so radically different and that, even without mass communist consciousness and a sufficiently developed economic base, maybe even communism might have been achieved. No they would not have been different not in broad historical terms, though the specifics might well have been different.

Vulgar determinism. Again, what would you have been telling workers in 1917? "You're a bunch of morons, go back to work"?


One last thing, I am less interested in the argument of "what the Bolsheviks should have done" than what they are ultimately compelled to do - develop capitalism. We do not have to approach this matter from the standpoint of some kind of political consultant, advising government on policy which is a somewhat ridiculous posture to adopt anyway. Nor do we need to take some kind of conspiratorial view of the events in Russia or for that matter question the motives of the leading players. I am sure people like Lenin well understood what was precisely meant by Marxian socialism - even if our resident Russian hisotorian on this list dismisses it as an "inane idea". Its quite obvious to me reading lenin that he hated capitalism and favoured the idea of a socialist(communist) society. There is a quote from him I came across which I have mislaid (but no doubt Dave B will remind me) where Lenin is actually talkining in rthe most approving terms of free access communism

As discussed in "The Libertarians Vindicated?" by Robert Acton in Revolution in Russia: Reassessments of 1917, the Russian Revolution was a social revolutionary venture, with mass popular support for precisely socially revolutionary outcomes. Masses of peasants and workers did interface through mass organizations and revolutionary agitation and action to dramatically change the conditions of their life. Many of their policies and actions were essentially rational and straightforward. It is we who stand behind and with this legacy, with trying to be on the barricades with the workers and peasants to try and help them organize society on a revolutionary basis to put the worst of a cruel and despotic social, economic, and political system behind them. You would sit and scold on the basis of dogmatic textual readings of Marx and Engels.


Point is it was simply not on the cards. So we have 3 choices. Do we colloborate with the existing capitalist state to further capitalism - the Menshevik option. Do we overthrow the existing capitalist state to reconfigure it in a new form in order to develop state capitalism - the Bolshevik option. Or do we reject both approaches while recognising realistically that communiusm was not on the cards and retain our political independence to promote the interests of wage labour industrially and politically in opposition to those of capital and the capitalist state - the revolutionary socialist position.

I know which option I would chose and it would be interesting to see just how many people on this list who call themselves socialists would chose.

In practice, what would this policy have entailed, if you had a political party or some other organizational vehicle for promulgating your views and policy concepts with a group of similarly viewing workers? How would you propagandize the working masses?

[robbo203]

Uh, maybe you abandon thinking about things because they don't appear in your 'classic texts'; like I said, you're a child of the Confucian tradition in spirit, not scientific. I don't care if you can textually demonstrate Marx and Engels said that. This is not a debate on a forum of Biblical inerrantists. Just because Marx and Engels said something does not make it likely or the final word on how history or movements will unfold. There will be no magic transition organically to mass consciousness for explicit communism spontaneously. That bears no resemblance to how any historical past revolutionary scenarios have occurred. I do think there must be broad preparation, a mass base prepared for it, and broad international collaboration. But while public majoritarian support for the revolution is a necessity, it will not come by everyone academically coming around to support communism and being able to quote Marx-Engels, etc., etc. You have this shtick that being the most ultra-orthodox Marxist out there is some virtue or back-to-the-basics authenticity; its just the sad Marxist equivalent of Christian restorationism. There will be no day you wake up and it just happens that the economy performs adequately and everyone wants to live in a classless, stateless society. That's not going to happen.

You just dont get, do you? It is not really my concern to resort some kind of exegetical approach of quoting this or that figure as if what they said was some kind of holy scripture. This is a sneer that frankly wont wash Its a cop out - a way of evading the substantive points that have been put to you and which you have failed to answer

At the end of the day it really does not matter what Karl Marx or Groucho Marx had to say on the subject. Unlike a lot of people on this list I have shown a robustly critical attitude to quite a lot of what had to say - like his incoherent concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, like his views on supporting so called national liberation struggles and so on . So dont try and stick that one on me with your pathetic comparison of my approach to some kind of " sad Marxist equivalent of Christian restorationism".

Independently of what Marx or anyone else had to say on the matter it is a plain simple incontrovertible l fact that you cannot have a communist society unless

1) the mass of workers are communist minded -want and understand communism
2) the productive forces are sufficientlly developed to enable a communist mode of production to function


In your previous post you contended that Russian Revolution "degenerated" for a variety of reasons and not becuase of " some magic proprietary formula like "insufficient support for communism" and "insufficient productive forces". That, you said, was "not a honest reading of the history"


I asked you to explain what you meant by "degenerated". Degenerated in relation to what? Did you mean by this "failed to establish communism"? Unfortunately you supply no answer while lecturing others on the subject of honesty. Why you have been unable to supply and answer is simple - youve been caught with your theoretical trousers down around your ankles. Now youve been forced into conceding that yes afterall "there must be broad preparation, a mass base prepared for it" Exactly. So what the friggin hell was all that pompous-sounding bluster about, eh? There could not have an authetic communist or socialist society in Russia in 1917 - and therefore no communist or socialist revolution - becuase there simply was not the "mass base prepared for it". Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themsleves big time


One last thing - nobody ever suggested that there will be a day when we "wake up and it just happens that the economy performs adequately and everyone wants to live in a classless, stateless society". This another massive red herring on your part. The build up of a mass communist is consciousness is a drawn out process that place over time and is circumstance-dependent. I m well aware of that, thank you very much and you have no need to teach my grandmother how to suck eggs. I have my own ideas about to expedite the gradual accumulation of communist consciousness but that is not what we have been talking about. What we have been talking about is the need to have a mass communist consciousness in the first place if we are going to establish a communist society

[Jose Gracchus]

Why don't you challenge the historical scholarship and present sources proving your point, rather than tilting at windmills, then? I put up, now you should. Do you want citations and quotes, I can provide that. Can you?

Your nonsense would leave us with no guide to the future but platitudes and scriptural reading of (self-servingly selected, I might add) Marx and Engels.

[robbo203]

Why don't you challenge the historical scholarship and present sources proving your point, rather than tilting at windmills, then? I put up, now you should. Do you want citations and quotes, I can provide that. Can you?

Your nonsense would leave us with no guide to the future but platitudes and scriptural reading of (self-servingly selected, I might add) Marx and Engels.


I have no idea of what you wittering on about. Tell me what "nonsense" I was supposed to have written and then perhaps I can robustly answer the charges you make. Be more specific and stop rambling so. What citations and quotes can you provide and what precisely is the point that you are trying to illuminate by providing them?

[Dave B]

Ah so then, I am a random quote generating machine.


Well it seems that it is OK when a Trotskyist like Tony Cliff does it.

So is quoting Cliff quoting Trotsky, sort of, on seizing power and ‘military insurrection’ (coup d'état) acceptable then?

Tony Cliff Trotsky: Towards October 1879-1917

15. Towards the insurrection



At last on 5 October the central committee bent to Lenin’s will and resolved, with only one dissenting voice – Kamenev’s, to withdraw from the Pre-Parliament on its first day. Trotsky succeeded in convincing the Bolshevik delegates to the Pre-Parliament that they should boycott this body – again with only one vote against.

On 7 October Trotsky read out a fighting statement at the Pre-Parliament. This was probably the first time he appeared as the main Bolshevik spokesman. Sukhanov describes the scene:………..



‘The officially stated aim of the Democratic Conference,’ Trotsky began, ‘was the elimination of the personal regime that fed the Kornilov revolt, and the creation of a responsible government capable of liquidating the war and promoting the convocation of a Constituent Assembly at the appointed time……………..


………. If the propertied elements were really preparing for the Constituent Assembly in a month and a half, they would have no grounds for defending the non-responsibility of the government now. The whole point is that the bourgeois classes have set themselves the goal of preventing the Constituent Assembly ...’

There was an uproar. Shouts from the right: ‘Lies!’
……….. The propertied classes, who provoked the uprising, are now moving to crush it and are openly steering a course for the bony hand of hunger, which is expected to strangle the revolution and the Constituent Assembly first of all.



‘Nor is foreign policy any less criminal. After forty months of war the capital is threatened by mortal danger. In response to this a plan has been put forward for the transfer of the government to Moscow. The idea of surrendering the revolutionary capital to German troops does not arouse the slightest indignation amongst the bourgeois classes; on the contrary it is accepted as a natural link in the general policy that is supposed to help them in their counter-revolutionary conspiracy.’

The uproar grew worse.
The patriots leaped from their seats and wouldn’t allow Trotsky to go on speaking. Shouts about Germany, the sealed car and so on. One shout stood out: ‘Bastard!’
……………………….The chairman called the meeting to order. Trotsky was standing there as though none of this were any concern of his, and finally found it possible to go on.
‘We, the Bolshevik fraction of the Social-Democratic Party, declare that with this government of national treachery and this "Council" we –’
The uproar took on an obviously hopeless character. The majority of the right got to their feet with the obvious intention of stopping the speech. The chairman called the speaker to order. Trotsky, beginning to lose his temper, and speaking by now through the hubbub, finished:
‘–……... We appeal to the people: Long live an immediate, honourable democratic peace, all power to the Soviets. All land to the people, long live the Constituent Assembly!’

All the Bolsheviks stood up and walked out of the assembly hall to the accompaniment of shouts ‘Go to your German trains!’


http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1989/trotsky1/15-towards.html (http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1989/trotsky1/15-towards.html)

Liar indeed!

Apart from the bit about the bourgeois (intelligentsia) having set themselves the goal of preventing and ‘strangling’ the Constituent Assembly, a few months later. But who would have had a better inside understanding of that than the Bolsheviks.

The repeated ‘conviction’ on the convening of a popular constituent assembly was old material, eg 1911, seven years before it was strangled at birth;

Lenin;



When we look at the history of the last half-century in Russia, when we cast a glance at 1861 and 1905, we can only repeat the words of our Party resolution with even greater conviction:

"As before, the aim of our struggle is to overthrow tsarism and bring about the conquest of power by the proletariat relying on the revolutionary sections of the peasantry and accomplishing the bourgeois-democratic revolution by means of the convening of a popular constituent assembly and the establishment of a democratic republic".


http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1911/mar/19.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1911/mar/19.htm)

Yes indeed, quote, quote and quote again.

But the vanguardist intelligentsia are supposed to be educating me, a factory worker.

So when the likes of Lars Tea Lar Lee, or whatever is name is, was intellectually contemplating ‘what Lenin meant by the consummation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution’ are the educators not entitled to be educated; with quotations?

As a ‘libertarian Trotskyist’ I think Cliff was the better of a bad bunch.

And please read the context if you want, I have provided the links so you can.

.

[LibertarianSocialist1]

This doesn´t mean that a revolution can´t be carried out by a part of the working class.

[robbo203]

This doesn´t mean that a revolution can´t be carried out by a part of the working class.

I know that some people here dont like others quoting quotes at them- particularly quotes that make for uncomfortable reading from their point of view. They prefer to talk in high-falutin, snobby, academic-sounding terms such as "historical scholarship" - as if historians dont copiously quote each other in the little spats they get embroiled in. But - sod it! - and at the risk of once again being inanely accused of "treating Marx and Engels like holy scripture" I am once again going to put it nice little quote your way. This time from Engel's introduction to Class Struggles in France. Here it is:


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.

This is why a communist revolution cannot be carried out by a small minority. The masses must be involved if a complete transformation of the social organization is to be brought about. But not only must the masses be involved - they must grasp what is at stake. A revolution, even one carried out by the bulk of the working class will not be a communist revolution unless it is backed up mass communist consciousness. Without that it will simply lead to a society in which a minority effectively sieze power at the expense, and on the backs, of the majority. An army might win a battle against another army but the position of the footsoldier is still one of powerlessness vis-a-vis the generals and the COs

Here's another quote from Marx which makes this very poiint - that a revolution carried out by workers and peasants could quite easily turn out to be a capitalist revolution:

If the proletariat destroys the political rule of the bourgeosie, that will only be a temporary victory, only an element in the service of the bourgeois revolution itself, as in 1794, so long as in the course of history, in its movement, the material conditions are not yet created which make necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production and thus the definitive overthrow of bourgeois political rule ("Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality", 1847 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/10/31.htm).

What characterises a revolution as "socialist" or "capitalisr" is first and foremost its outcome - did it achieve socialism of capitalism? For a revolution to be called a socialist (or communist) revolution it is necessary that it be carried out by a working class majority but it is certainly not sufficent for this to be the case . Something else is required besides majority action and this is what the Marx quote is trying to alert us to

[Jose Gracchus]

I have no idea of what you wittering on about. Tell me what "nonsense" I was supposed to have written and then perhaps I can robustly answer the charges you make. Be more specific and stop rambling so. What citations and quotes can you provide and what precisely is the point that you are trying to illuminate by providing them?

That 1917 in Russia was an attempt by masses of working and toiling people - proletarians and peasants - to intelligently and rationally remake their society in social revolution. They agitated for it; they participated in it. There were working-class uprisings throughout the Powers and Europe. You claim you know that is was perfectly knowable in 1917 that productive forces were not developed, that some doctrinaire definition of communism was not a majority ideology of the masses. Allowing for that (though you've provided no evidence whatsoever), you should establish how one can know the productive forces are adequately developed, and how you expect to get an informed, educated, majority demand for communism. I also want you to tell me why workers in 1917 Russia should not have pushed for a workers' and peasants' government, for some measure of workers' control and for land reform. Are you saying its pointless to try? Clearly workers - "historical laws" or not - have successfully probed the limitations of the system and forced strongly better conditions and relations upon it than in other instances where they were crushed. What would you say to the really-existing revolutionary agitating proletariat and peasantry of 1917?

[Lucretia]

This doesn´t mean that a revolution can´t be carried out by a part of the working class.

Actually, it does, since if only a part of the working class is on board, the revolutionaries won't constitute "the vast majority" referred to by Marx and Engels.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Robbo, you suggest that Lenin believed a vanguard was:

2) A minority that seeks to capture political power on the pretext of furthering the interests of the majority who are not yet revolutionary in outlook. This position clearly contradicts the marxian position that the proletarian revolution has to be majoritarian one.The problem with your formulation here is that you are ignoring the historical context in which any of these arguments are made. The consideration of the Bolsheviks here was not how a minority Vanguard within the class can rule over the "backward" working class, but how the Russian proletariat as a MINORITY class among a larger oppressed group of toilers could rule.

I haven't read these specific works you quoted but after a quick skim I could see:


From 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 struggle, 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)The Russian working class even at the height of the revolutionary period (by 1920, the Bolsheviks were already substituting themselves and heading in a bad direction IMO) was not the main exploited toiling class, the peasants were. Clearly, Lenin in the above quote is argueing for uniting the non-working toiling classes to the leadership of the "only revolutionary class" the prols.

Why make this argument? Because in the historical context the interests of the peasants was diverting from the interests of the working class - specifically, they were bartering grain and resisting attempts by the towns to get grain.


A similar view was expressed by Trotsky:
The masses are held down with "compulsory general education", kept "on the verge of complete ignorance", exist in "spiritual slavery" and are terrorised to such a degree that the minority must seize power on their behalf. Then, and only then, can the "most ignorant, most terrorised sections of the nation" be slowly educated in the "meaning of socialist production" (L Trotsky Terrorism and communism,London 1975, pp58-59).Can you tell me what the context of that quote is or are you just quoting someone eles's argument because I have the online version of that and don't have the page numbers. Maybe could you tell me the chapter and subheading?


The problem is of course that if this vanguard minority captures it will not be able to introduce a socialist society since that depends on the the majority wanting and understanding it. Therefore the minority having taken power will be compellled by circumstances to develop capitalism and in due course to oppose themselves to the working class. This is precisely what happened in the Soviet Union with the establishment of state capitalism

"Therefore the minority having taken power will be compellled by circumstances" what were those circumstances? In 1920 when all these quotes were written, the working class which had shrunk in size by 67% since the beginning of WWI.

I couldn't find the quote, but I read a bit of the article trying to find it and this was from the first subheading in Chapter 7:


The revolutionary epoch burst upon us through the least barricaded door. Those extraordinary, truly superhuman, difficulties which were thus flung upon the Russian proletariat have prepared, hastened, and to a considerable extent assisted the revolutionary work of the West European proletariat which still lies before us.

Instead of examining the Russian Revolution in the light of the revolutionary epoch that has arrived throughout the world, Kautsky discusses the theme of whether or not the Russian proletariat has taken power into its hands too soon.


“For Socialism,” he explains, “there is necessary a high development of the people, a high morale amongst the masses, strongly-developed social instincts, sentiments of solidarity, etc. Such a form of morale,” Kautsky further informs us, “was very highly developed amongst the proletariat of the Paris Commune. It is absent amongst the masses which at the present time set the tone amongst the Bolshevik proletariat.” (Page 177)


For Kautsky’s purpose, it is not sufficient to fling mud at the Bolsheviks as a political party before the eyes of his readers. Knowing that Bolshevism has become amalgamated with the Russian proletariat, Kautsky makes an attempt to fling mud at the Russian proletariat as a whole, representing it as an ignorant, greedy mass, without any ideals, which is guided only by the instincts and impulses of the moment.


Throughout his booklet Kautsky returns many times to the question of the intellectual and moral level of the Russian workers, and every time only to deepen his characterization of them as ignorant, stupid and barbarous.

Trotsky goes on to list a bunch of anecdotes about spontaneous and heroic sacrifices of workers after the Revolution and during the civil war. The argument that many high-profile bolsheviks saw the role of the vanguard as "A minority that seeks to capture political power on the pretext of furthering the interests of the majority who are not yet revolutionary in outlook." doesn't quite fit with Trotsky's arguments that the industrial workers were ALREADY engaged in Revolution and were so dedicated as to voluntarily make sacrifices in order to defend the possibility of socialism.

I think the role of the vanguard for the early Bolshiviks was not a question of who makes a revolution, that was settled, it was the proletariat, but how it does it and holds onto it (specifically in Russia with a working class that was still the minority of the toiling masses).

[robbo203]

That 1917 in Russia was an attempt by masses of working and toiling people - proletarians and peasants - to intelligently and rationally remake their society in social revolution. They agitated for it; they participated in it. There were working-class uprisings throughout the Powers and Europe. You claim you know that is was perfectly knowable in 1917 that productive forces were not developed, that some doctrinaire definition of communism was not a majority ideology of the masses. Allowing for that (though you've provided no evidence whatsoever), you should establish how one can know the productive forces are adequately developed, and how you expect to get an informed, educated, majority demand for communism. I also want you to tell me why workers in 1917 Russia should not have pushed for a workers' and peasants' government, for some measure of workers' control and for land reform. Are you saying its pointless to try? Clearly workers - "historical laws" or not - have successfully probed the limitations of the system and forced strongly better conditions and relations upon it than in other instances where they were crushed. What would you say to the really-existing revolutionary agitating proletariat and peasantry of 1917?

In the first place, no one is denying that the Russain masses wanted to "intelligently and rationally remake their society in social revolution" or that "they agitated for it; they participated in it". For the umpteenth time this is not the issue. Why do people keep on bringing on up? The issue is simply that what they wanted to intelligently remake their society into was NOT a communist or socialist society - not at least in the sense in which these terms were then understood to be and back in the 19th century. You may call it a doctrinaire definition of communism for all you like but it cuts no ice with me. That is what it meant until people like Lenin started mauling around the word. Ive gave plenty of evidence of this in a previous post- check it out if you are so inclined

Secondly, you assert that I have provided no evidence that communism - the real thing - was not the ideology of the masses. Well actually I did and in your haste you may have overlooked this. Go back and read what I wrote. As for the productive forces being insufficiently developed, do a bit of homework and find out for yourself. Read somebody like Alec Nove whose Economic History of the USSR is a good primer. Of course the material conditions were nowhere near conducive to a communist society. They were absolutely grim and chaotic Food shortages were rife, transportation links were piss-poor and factory closures were the order of the day. In fact in the first few years after the revolution the Russian working class dramatically contracted in size under the deteriorating conditions of the time. Many workers went back to the countryside in response to the food shortages they faced in the cities. Clearly, even if the masses were communist minded there was no prospect of instituting communism under these conditions. I would have hardly thought this was a controversial point to make. You must be the first person I have ever encountered to seemingly dispute it.

Thirdly you ask why workers in 1917 Russia should not have pushed for a workers' and peasants' government, for some measure of workers' control and for land reform.This, at least is an admission on your part that what was aimed for and achieved was not a socialist or communist society. But you havent really been paying much attention have you? What is this absurd construction you call a "workers and peasants government". Oh, you can staff the government to the brim with workers and peasants, I grant you, but that will not make it one wit more a "workers and peasants' government". The Ramsay MacDonald Labour government in Britain in 1924 and 1929 was stuffed with horny handed sons of toil, gruff proletarian MPs from the northern mining communities. MacDonald himself was the illegitimate son of a farm labourer and came from pretty humble origins Yet on both occasions he was in power as Prime Minster his government was notable for the viciousness of its attacks on the working class. Ditto a so called "workers and peasants government". If you have capitalism there is only one way in which you can operate capitalism and that is in the interests of capital and therefore against the interests of wage labour. It appals me that Revleft is full of people who claim to be revolutionary socialists but so few seem to understand this basic elementary point. It is the absolute litmus test that separates the genuine socialist revolutionary from the refromist and romantic dreamer


Finally you ask what would I do under the circumstances of the time. Well lets get one thing clear, shall we? Some people here have made and continue to make the utterly dumb inference that becuase I claim that there was no mass communist consciousness that I am saying that all that needs is to propagandize for communism. We have the sneering idiotic comment from ComradeOm which infuriated me talking about retreating to the libraries to study the deficiencies of early French Socialism, if you please. This is unworthy of serious debate and I wish people would stop trying to foist an utter caricature of a point of view on me that I do not hold.

While of course I accept that propagating communist ideas is absolutely essential by no means do I think that this was all that needed to be done in the coircumstances of 1917. For instance, one of the most promising developments in Russia at the time was emergence of the factory committees which unlike the Soviets (which tended to be top down institutions), were grassroots institutions. Were I a Russian worker in 1917 I would certainly have thrown my weight behind the development of factory committees - but without illusions mind. Workers absolutely need to organise as militantly as possible on the industrial front and I would be 100% behind that.

Where I draw the line is where one crosses over from the camp of wage labour into the camp of capital when one becomes embroiled in the political management of capitalism. Once you do that, once you start trying to manage capitalism as part of a government however well meaning, youre finished. You can kiss goodbye to any pretensions to bringing about a socialist society. Capitalism can only be run in the interests of capital and therefore against the interests of the workers, and any government including a so called workers and peasants government would necessarily come down on the side of capital and turn on the very people it purported to represent. That is in fact what happened after the Bolshevik Revolution and the lessons of history completely vindicate this position

[robbo203]

:The problem with your formulation here is that you are ignoring the historical context in which any of these arguments are made. The consideration of the Bolsheviks here was not how a minority Vanguard within the class can rule over the "backward" working class, but how the Russian proletariat as a MINORITY class among a larger oppressed group of toilers could rule..

Sorry but this is incorrect. The vanguard was a minority within the working class or proletariat in Lenin's view, it was not the working class as a whole who were, of course, a minority of Russian society. This is made absolutely clear in the quote I provided

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://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...920/dec/30.htm (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm)).

[Dave B]

The "Quote:"
A similar view was expressed by Trotsky:
The masses are held down with "compulsory general education", kept "on the verge of complete ignorance", exist in "spiritual slavery" and are terrorised to such a degree that the minority must seize power on their behalf. Then, and only then, can the "most ignorant, most terrorised sections of the nation" be slowly educated in the "meaning of socialist production" (L Trotsky Terrorism and communism,London 1975, pp58-59).


sounds like it is from

Chapter 3
Democracy

Either Democracy, or Civil War

The Imperialist Transformation of Democracy

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/ch03.htm

[Jose Gracchus]

[sigh] Why don't we just title you SPGB Bot and be done with it. It is ridiculous how many threads are polluted with bad-faith replies containing only regurgitation of "my sect's lines."

Don't bullshit me with definitions of communism. There is this kind of thing called the bourgeois-democratic revolution, the agrarian revolution, etc. Lenin and Trotsky as well as the predominant view was that Russia had to be the weakest link in a chain of revolutionary republics that would help overturn the backwardness and isolation of the Russian proletariat, and allow the peasants to participate in a supportive fashion in a great European proletarian movement toward socialism. But the latter was an eventual achievement; Lenin's "Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry", etc. presupposed, like you, that socialism would not be constructed in the immediate. Rather, the complete tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution could not be completed by the vestigial state-centric weak native bourgeoisie, but rather they would have to be swept away with the Tsarist bureaucracy and landowner classes in order to end the war and settle an economy. Do you understand workers were hungry? A war was killing thousands and thousands of common Russians and other peoples? What was to be done about this?

Your entire approach presupposes there is not a single political act to be performed, ever. You're truly a dogmatic ideologue who has not a thing to contribute to class struggle.

[lots of laughs]

A very interesting historical discussion. I was also interested in comments on how modern Leninists saw the role of modern Leninist parties in a future revolution. Is your party "the" vanguard party? Does it make sense in the modern context to say that there is "one" vanguard party? Again, thank you for useful answers in advance.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Sorry but this is incorrect. The vanguard was a minority within the working class or proletariat in Lenin's view,Yeah, no shit. But you are argueing that it is an elited coup-plotting minority over the heads of the uninterested working class - like Che's Revolutionaries who make the revolution.


it was not the working class as a whole who were, of course, a minority of Russian society. This is made absolutely clear in the quote I providedA quote you provided in order to argue that Lenin saw the vanguard as:


A minority that seeks to capture political power on the pretext of furthering the interests of the majority [of the working class] who are not yet revolutionary in outlook.

Then you quote Lenin saying " that the majority of the exploited toilers can achieve complete clarity of socialist consciousness and firm socialist convictions" implying that the toilers are the proletariet, but the toilers he's talking about are the non-proletariet. He goes on to say in the same quote: "the masses of the toilers and exploited can be educated, trained and organised around the proletariat under whose influence and guidance..." yadda-yadda-yadda. So in this quote you are using to argue that Lenin sees the vanguard as the minority who makes revolution on behalf of the not-yet revolutionary working class Lenin is actually arguing that the proletariat, IS revolutionary, but it's the rest of the toiling masses who are not convinced of socialist modes of production (since they were more immediately interested in land reform than collectivized production or worker councils or whatnot).

The question of how the working class as a MINORITY of the oppressed masses, is a major concern of all the Russian Revolutionaries in the post-Populist socialist movement.

Then you quote Trotsky, again, arguing that the leading Bolsheviks saw the vanguard as separate and above and acting on behalf of an inactive working class yet in the article - as much of it as I skimmed looking for the original context of the quote - Trotsky repeatedly emphasizes that the working class was already IN MOTION as historical protagonists, acting out revolution themselves.