Did Leninism die with Che Guevara?

[peaccenicked]

Che Guevara (http://www.che-lives.com/home/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=2) was a proclaimed Leninist and Vanguardist. When he died he left a theoretical vaccuum. Fidel alhough he spoke out on many things never approached the same theoretical depth as Che.
Trotsky never got beyond the fourth international but anyone reading his works would be jealous of his profundity. Gramsci died in a prison cell,
ten years of fascist imprisonment. Yet he was still able to smuggle out his writings elucidating culture and class.

There are perhaps poets of worth Pablo Neruda, Scotlands second greatest poet, Hugh Macdiarmid (http://srsm.port5.com/macleanarchive/Krassivy.html) who considered themseves Leninists.

However I cant think of anyone who outranks Che.
There is no one who only paid lipservice to his name worth mentioning.
There others who stood up and did not abuse Lenins name.
Like the poet Christopher Caudwell who died in Spain but they wrote on more obscure things than the soul of class struggle.
Can anyone toss an historical or even present day figure into the ring?

[SonofRage]

Hmm, that's interesting. I can't think of any significant contributions to Marxist-Leninist theory for many decades. I'd be interested if anyone can come with one.

[The Feral Underclass]

People realised the fatality of it a long time ago.

[redstar2000]

Well, you could try this site...

http://struggle.net/Ben

He is a former disciple of Enver Hoxha and currently considers himself a "cyber-Leninist" trying to breathe some life into the old corpse. He's also rather "prickly" and difficult to deal with... ;)

But he has occasionally interesting ideas about post-capitalist society.

http://anarchist-action.org/forums/images/smiles/redstar.gif

The RedStar2000 Papers (http://www.anarchist-action.org/marxists/redstar2000/)
A site about communist ideas

[peaccenicked]

'' Cyber-leninism"
Yeah thats extreme, dude,
He seems earnest enough but its a pity, that information war ie the propaganda war is exclusive to the net.
There is a lot on that site though I ll examine it later.
He is no comparison to Che so far.

Anarchist Tension,

Leninism and anarchism have not had a good record anywhere for decades.
Demos are just not good enough.
However you see that this messageboard has atracted over a million visitors who hardly are all ignorant of Ches politics.

[Saint-Just]

The movement is very small and so there are no popular figured for the movement today. Che and Castro developed Leninism. They said that it is possible to create the conditions for revolution.

Ho Chi Minh was popular in the 70s but he is no longer. I think another question would be, will there be Leninist figures in the future like Che or Mao.

[Hate Is Art]

me! well if i have my way anyway allthough im not a leninist, anarchism is the way forward my good friend!

[peaccenicked]

Mao moved from Leninism to Stalinism.
Che moved from early admiration of Stalin to ctiticism of the USSR
which continually prioritised its own interests over the interests of the international working class.
Mao in short became a renegade.
His earlier actions were indeed heroic and in tune with militant materialism to a great degree but then he became a lapdog for Stalins purposes.
In other words a great disappointment as someone entrusted with so much power.
He then is nowhere near Che on the scale of performing revolutionaries.
Indeed Mao is one of the reasons so many think anarchism and its flawed theory of State is the way forward.

[SonofRage]

Personally, I have lately been more interested in Murray Bookchin's idea of Libertarian Municipalism (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/gp/perspectives24.html).

[Saint-Just]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19 2003, 04:22 AM
Mao moved from Leninism to Stalinism.
Che moved from early admiration of Stalin to ctiticism of the USSR
which continually prioritised its own interests over the interests of the international working class.
Mao in short became a renegade.
His earlier actions were indeed heroic and in tune with militant materialism to a great degree but then he became a lapdog for Stalins purposes.
In other words a great disappointment as someone entrusted with so much power.
He then is nowhere near Che on the scale of performing revolutionaries.
Indeed Mao is one of the reasons so many think anarchism and its flawed theory of State is the way forward.
-Mao and the rest of the CPC leadership were carrying out Stalin's orders from the late 20's. They had 'Stalinists' like Otto Braun in their ranks for decades.
-Che maintained his admiration from Stalin when Stalin died, and criticised the USSR because it deviated from Marxism-Leninism, as did Mao.
-Mao still followed Stalin after he died, Mao wrote one of his greatest works 'On Khrushchev's Phoney Communism' after Stalin died.

He then is nowhere near Che on the scale of performing revolutionaries.

What does this mean. Mao performed many great revolutionary feats, and both Che and Mao admired Stalin before and after he died, they were both 'lapdogs' of 'Stalinism' their entire lives.

[Guest1]

Well, no leninists I can think of.

but socialists who stand against the centraliziation of power, yep. socialists who want real democracy, from the bottom up, yep.

sub-comandante marcos, of the zapatistas, who refuses to be recognized as in any way better or more important than any other within the zapatista revolutionary movement. he is a leader, by respect, and not by institution. that, I believe, is the way revolutions should work. leaders rising naturally, based on people's respect, being willingly followed. but no leaders being given power over others. leaders would be motivators and organizers, but their power would lie only in their ability to convince people to rise together, mutually, cooperatively, in order to achieve. neither will they be immune to that duty. whatever they propose, politics is not their job, working is. politics is volunteer work. they must still be working class, and how can they be working class if they don't work? they'll work as much as anyone else.

anyways, that's my rant.

[redstar2000]

Mao and the rest of the CPC leadership were carrying out Stalin's orders from the late 20's. They had 'Stalinists' like Otto Braun in their ranks for decades.

I think that's wrong...or at least misleading.

My memory is a little "fuzzy" on this one, but as I recall, there were a number of young Chinese comrades trained in the USSR's "University of the East" and sent back to China in the early or middle 1930s to "lead" the revolution from a Stalinist perspective...and Mao had them all purged (possibly shot...I don't remember).

Toward the end of World War II, Stalin tried very hard to convince Mao to enter a coalition government with the semi-fascist and corrupt Chiang kai-Shek oligarchy...and Mao, while never actually disagreeing with Stalin, rejected this advice and carried through his revolution to its conclusion in 1949.

Evidently, Stalin did not have a high opinion of Mao and did not think his peasant rebellion would succeed...but after Mao won, Stalin agreed to provide assistance to China and both countries cooperated in waging war against U.S. imperialism in Korea. That war, in fact, is supposedly what convinced Stalin that Mao was "a real communist".

http://anarchist-action.org/forums/images/smiles/redstar.gif

The RedStar2000 Papers (http://www.anarchist-action.org/marxists/redstar2000/)
A site about communist ideas

[peaccenicked]

"We must remember this and insist again and again upon this fact: The victory of the Cuban people can never come solely through outside aid, however adequate and generous, however great and strong the solidarity of all the peoples of the world with us may be. Because even with the ample and great solidarity of all the people of the world with Patrice Lumumba and the Congolese people, when conditions inside the country were lacking, when the leaders failed to understand how to strike back mercilessly at imperialism, when they took a step back, they lost the struggle. And they lost it not just for a few years, but who knows for how many years! That was a great setback for all peoples."

Che Guevara's revolutionary nationalism



"By the way, you see that we have already taken the first serious step towards the solution of the problem of creating a new technical intelligentsia. Let us hope that this step will not be the last. (Stormy and prolonged applause.) "
Stalin's nationalism.


I applaud Che a million times more.


Che only admired Stalin in his early years,

this is from an interview with his close comrade Ricardo Napuri.

"You convinced Che to read Trotsky?

Che had never read Trotsky and asked me to find a book where Trotsky presented his thoughts. It was not easy to find a book by Trotsky in Havana in those days, but in a bookshop I found a very old edition of the Permanent Revolution. I immediately bought it and took it to the Bank of Cuba, where Che was president. A fortnight later, he called me to tell me he had read the book. He had underlined and written on its margins with his very small physician's letter, the same which became known later because of his diary in Bolivia.
In a long conversation at two in the morning, which was the best time for him, he said that Trotsky was consistent and he was right in many things, but that "it was too late" to change the orientation of the revolutionary process in Cuba. Intelligent as he was, he immediately grasped Trotsky's idea of the transformation of the democratic revolution into the socialist revolution, the uninterrupted character of the revolution to become international and global. In this talk we discussed about everything, about the social and political subject of the revolution: the proletariat. But he said: "Well, we did the revolution without the working class." And in the end this was what defeated any argument. You gave him the books, and there he was, larger than life with his long beard … and he had led a revolution. He looked at you and you realised that he thought to himself: "And where did you make a revolution?" And you had to give it to him. Besides, he would say: "OK, make a revolution", as if he meant: "Try it".
Che was a person with whom you could discuss. The only thing was that, as they were in a hurry to expand the revolution, he would say: "I did a revolution. Now you do your own, with all the differences you want, but mine was different and until somebody shows me that I was mistaken, I will stick to my method." It was in this sense that he told me that for him it was too late to become a trotskyist. In our discussion, I was impressed by the way in which he would grasp concepts and his strength to defend his political ideas. He died believing that his approach to the revolution was the only possible one.



http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/wo...works/1931-tpv/ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1931-tpv/)