To what extent was Lenin a Blanquist?

[Let's Get Free]

Blanquism is described by Engels as follows:

"Brought up in the school of conspiracy, and held together by the strict discipline which went with it, they started out from the viewpoint that a relatively small number of resolute, well-organized men would be able, at a given favorable moment, not only seize the helm of state, but also by energetic and relentless action, to keep power until they succeeded in drawing the mass of the people into the revolution and ranging them round the small band of leaders. This conception involved, above all, the strictest dictatorship and centralization of all power in the hands of the new revolutionary government."

[Ostrinski]

Trash this thread.

It's been dealt with and not worth having again.

[Zeus the Moose]

He wasn't.

His politics certainly weren't. The Bolshevik seizure of power was not done in a Blanquist fashion (up until 1918 the soviet government was functionally a majority government of a coalition between the Bolsheviks and Left-SRs, with passive support from some left-Mensheviks.) After 1918 the majority collapsed and the Bolsheviks took measures to preserve their power in spite of it, though I don't think that should be considered Blanquist. Undemocratic, most probably. Desperate, certainly. But not Blanquist.

[Questionable]

No. The Bolsheviks were a mass party.

[jookyle]

No. The Bolsheviks may not have had an open membership as it were but they were not a secret group that assumed power through conspiracy. They led a mass revolution.

[Art Vandelay]

Why am I not surprised by who started this thread?

[l'Enfermé]

Maybe Luxemburg might answer this question for us.
http://marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1906/06/blanquism.html

Anyway, if Lenin was actually a Blanquist, he would have been very popular with our comrades the Anarchists. After all, does our shared praise for the now legendary Paris Commune not unite us(Marxists and Anarchists)? Were not the majority of the Parisian Communards students and disciples of Blanqui, and was Blanqui not elected president of the Commune itself, even though he was imprisoned by the government in a castle (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_du_Taureau)?

[Sea]

I guess this is sort of off-topic, but this work by Hal Draper gives a pretty decent idea of what might happen if Lenin critiqued contemporary 'Leninism'.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm

Pretty sure it'll answer your question better than RevLeft can.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

We dealt with this before, the anti-Leninists really didn't have that good of arguments last time.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/charge-blanquism-against-t171367/index.html?t=171367

[Yuppie Grinder]

Maybe Luxemburg might answer this question for us.
http://marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1906/06/blanquism.html

Anyway, if Lenin was actually a Blanquist, he would have been very popular with our comrades the Anarchists. After all, does our shared praise for the now legendary Paris Commune not unite us(Marxists and Anarchists)? Were not the majority of the Parisian Communards students and disciples of Blanqui, and was Blanqui not elected president of the Commune itself, even though he was imprisoned by the government in a castle (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_du_Taureau)?
The dominant revolutionary tendency in the Paris Commune was Mutualism.

[Yuppie Grinder]

To no extent is Leninism Blanquist. Lenin understood that society can't just be sculpted by a state into whatever form they see fit. That is not the way the real world works. Lenin fought for a worker's dictatorship, not a dictatorship of a conspiratorial minority who can be trusted to magically reform society along whatever lines they see as ethical.

[Let's Get Free]

Lenin fought for a worker's dictatorship, not a dictatorship of a conspiratorial minority who can be trusted to magically reform society along whatever lines they see as ethical.

I deny it. The working class did not take political power or have their own dictatorship. What took power was a political organization claiming to represent the interests of the workers. Big, big difference. But as Ostrinksi has pointed out, this topic has already been exhaustively debated, and maybe we're wasting our time bringing it up again.

[Yuppie Grinder]

I deny it. The working class did not take political power or have their own dictatorship. What took power was a political organization claiming to represent the interests of the workers. Big, big difference.

You deny a party dictatorship can be a proletarian dictatorship? In State and Revolution Lenin outlines a system of checks and balances to keep the worker's party state accountable to and representative of the workers. Obviously, things went wrong and the state did bureaucratize, but it sounds like your dismissing Lenin without knowing much of his history or thought.

[Let's Get Free]

You deny a party dictatorship can be a proletarian dictatorship? In State and Revolution Lenin outlines a system of checks and balances to keep the worker's party state accountable to and representative of the workers. Obviously, things went wrong and the state did bureaucratize, but it sounds like your dismissing Lenin without knowing much of his history or thought.

Yes. No self appointed vanguard can seize power on "behalf" of the proletariat. Only workers themselves can secure their own self emancipation. That is basic Marxism.


And I don't think the party was really all that accountable to the workers. Not all at once, but gradually and incrementally over the course of a few years, the working class movement was crushed and democratic institutions were destroyed, under an increasingly oppressive and powerful state capitalist dictatorship that consolidated its grip over society. Look what happened to the trade unions and the factory committees.

[Yuppie Grinder]

The worker's state as conceived by Lenin is not something separate or alien from the proletariat. It is not something without a class character that reforms society from above out of benevolence. The class character of the Bolshevik movement was proletarian, and initially so was the Bolshevik state. If you support the idea of a proletarian dictatorship, but reject the idea of this dictatorship being organized as a party dictatorship because that conflicts with your democratic principles, I don't think you have a very good understanding of the Leninist conception of the worker's state and party. What is inherently unproletarain about a one party state? Nothing.
Also, criticizing a state for being "oppressive" is totally inane. That's what states fucking are.
I understand what happened to the soviets in the '20s, likely better than you do, and I don't make excuses for it.
As for the principle of democracy you hold so dearly to, democracy can be a very efficient mode of political organization, but as a principle it's not something I care about. Liberation in the real world does not mean having a set of beautiful ideals to reorganize society along. That's a liberal mindset. The liberty and equality I care about are not ideals that society should be measured against, but real material realities. This abstract democratic ideal that is seen as holy by so many self-proclaimed materialists is not something I'm very concerned with.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Sorry if what I just typed was garbled nonsense, I am rather stoned.

[Let's Get Free]

The class character of the Bolshevik movement was proletarian

Yes, just as the bourgeois French revolution was carried out mostly by the non-bourgeois sectors of the population. However, the nature of a revolution is not determined by the class character of its participants but by its historical outcome.


If you support the idea of a proletarian dictatorship, but reject the idea of this dictatorship being organized as a party dictatorship because that conflicts with your democratic principles, I don't think you have a very good understanding of the Leninist conception of the worker's state and party. What is inherently unproletarain about a one party state? Nothing.
Well, when the Bolshevik party seized of state power they immediately moved to dismantle any independence of the worker soviets and to impose a new discipline of work and maximized production.


Liberation in the real world does not mean having a set of beautiful ideals to reorganize society along. That's a liberal mindset. The liberty and equality I care about are not ideals that society should be measured against, but real material realities. This abstract democratic ideal that is seen as holy by so many self-proclaimed materialists is not something I'm very concerned with.

Democracy is a cornerstone of socialism/communism. Oligarchy, political and/or economic means class society, regardless of whether the oligarchy claims to be working in the interests of the workers.


Sorry if what I just typed was garbled nonsense, I am rather stoned.

That's quite alright.

[hetz]

However, the nature of a revolution is not determined by the class character of its participants but by its historical outcome.And the outcome of the French Revolution was... Napoleon taking power? Is 1991 the "historical outcome" of October? I don't think so.
There's a big problem with your logic.
The nature of a revolution is determined by many things. The Russian revolution ended in the forces of reaction being defeated and a workers state of some kind being established.


Well, when the Bolshevik party seized of state power they immediately moved to dismantle any independence of the worker soviets and to impose a new discipline of work and maximized production. "Independence" of various soviets at that time amounted to anarchy and chaos in a situation where organized production, defense and so on was a question of survival of Bolshevik power. There were cases where local soviets didn't want to let certain products go to where they were most needed and so on.

[Let's Get Free]

And the outcome of the French Revolution was... Napoleon taking power? Is 1991 the "historical outcome" of October? I don't think so.
There's a big problem with your logic.
The nature of a revolution is determined by many things. The Russian revolution ended in the forces of reaction being defeated and a workers state of some kind being established.

Once you start shooting striking workers, you stop being a "workers" anything.


"Independence" of various soviets at that time amounted to anarchy and chaos in a situation where organized production, defense and so on was a question of survival of Bolshevik power. There were cases where local soviets didn't want to let certain products go to where they were most needed and so on.

Economically, Lenin publicly called for “state capitalism.” He ignored the factory committees’ suggestions and instead used Tsarist structures as the framework for "socialism." In workplace the he urged and imposed dictatorial one-man management. Not surprisingly, these policies and structures made a bad situation a lot worse. The economy collapsed as the bureaucracy mismanaged it. To quote Kropotkin "“a strongly centralized government” running the economy was undesirable” and “wildly Utopian." For example, the central economic body did not even know how many workplaces it was managing

[hetz]

Once you start shooting striking workers, you stop being a "workers" anything.That's a moralist argument, don't you think so?
When Kornilov was marching on Petrograd some people in some weapons-factory ( think it was the Putilov factory, doesn't really matter ) went on strike, that is to say, sabotaged production crucial to the war effort and the fate of millions of people.


He ignored the factory committees’ suggestions and instead used Tsarist structures as the framework for "socialism."He did? Elaborate please and give sources.
I know that Lenin always talked about smashing the Tzarist state apparatus...


Not surprisingly, these policies and structures made a bad situation a lot worse.The Bolsheviks ensured the minimum necessary to win the war.

[Let's Get Free]

That's a moralist argument, don't you think so?
No, I don't.


He did? Elaborate please and give sources.
I know that Lenin always talked about smashing the Tzarist state apparatus...

I think this gives a good explanation.
http://www.prole.info/texts/factorycommitteesinrussia.html

"In his pamphlet 'State & Revolution' written before October, but not published till 1918, Lenin had called for 'every cook to govern', for workers to plan the socialist society. The militant activists in the factory committees were aware of the need to co-ordinate their activities and centralize. The very day after the October Revolution, representatives from the Central Council of Factory Committees met Lenin and some Trade Union leaders to propose a Provisional All-Russian People's Economic Council. Here was a genuine plan from elements of the real working class vanguard. They suggested that this Council should have as two-thirds of its members, workers' representatives from the factory committees, trade unions and the Soviet's Central Executive Committee, and one-third drawn from the owners and technicians. The Council would have separate divisions corresponding to different parts of the economy, each division to be overseen by control commissions composed only of workers, these forming a control commission over the whole Council. The Council would regulate industry, transport and agriculture, and would be able to take over private firms. This constructive attempt to grapple with the problems of the economy, thought out by those most affected, was turned down flat by Lenin, who had his own "workers' plan" In the form of a draft decree which accepted economic conditions and relations that the factory committees were trying to go beyond. His decree in effect intended the committees to be subordinate to the unions. Lenin also refused to let the committees borrow money: the effect of this is looked at further on. On day one of Bolshevik rule, the workers' own plan was rejected."


The Bolsheviks ensured the minimum necessary to win the war.

It's funny, because many of the Bolshevik's anti-working class policies were implemented BEFORE the civil war had started.

[l'Enfermé]

The dominant revolutionary tendency in the Paris Commune was Mutualism.
Mutualism didn't act like a revolutionary tendency. The Proudhonians wanted to ignore the political system, the neo-Jacobins of the Commune only wanted to reform it, the truly revolutionary party of the Commune were the Blanquists and their sympathizers, the "instigators and executors of all the truly revolutionary and effective measures".


The members of the Commune were divided into a ma-
jority of Blanquists, who had also predominated in the
central committee of the National Guard, and a minority,
which consisted for the most part of members of the
International Workingmen’s Association, who were ad-
herents of the Proudhonian School of Socialism. The
great mass of the Blanquists at that time were socialists
only because of their revolutionary proletarian instinct. Says Friedrich Engels on the 20th anniversary of the Paris Commune.

Because Anarchists and Marxists tend to ignore and downplay the role of the Blanquists out of some misplaced sectarianism, that doesn't erase their great contributions. French historians of the Commune love to pretend the Blanquists didn't exist too, you know. What joy it gives them to annihilate the proletarian revolutionaries of 1871 with a mere stroke of a pen!

[Art Vandelay]

Yawn, Gladiator showing his liberalism again.

[Let's Get Free]

Being opposed to the Bolsheviks anti working class agenda makes me a liberal?

[Drosophila]

This:


Being opposed to the Bolsheviks anti working class agenda makes me a liberal?

Is made irrelevant by this:


Yes, just as the bourgeois French revolution was carried out mostly by the non-bourgeois sectors of the population. However, the nature of a revolution is not determined by the class character of its participants but by its historical outcome.

The Bolsheviks had a working class agenda when they overthrew the provisional government. The new state was quickly opposed by counter-revolutionaries, thus starting a civil war in which the Communists were forced to resort to methods that, in a different context, would be considered anti-communist. Of course, following the civil war the Soviet Union degenerated due to its isolation and other material factors.

They either had to have a working class agenda at one point in time, or they never had one because of what happened several years later.

[Art Vandelay]

Being opposed to the Bolsheviks anti working class agenda makes me a liberal?

Nope. There are plenty of anti-bolsheviks on the site who I wouldn't classify as liberals, you're just not one of them.

[Let's Get Free]

Nope. There are plenty of anti-bolsheviks on the site who I wouldn't classify as liberals, you're just not one of them.

Whatever, I dont need validation from some nobody on the internet. Btw, "liberal" as it's often used on this site is a meaningless term, a curse word used to squash debate when you can't make a legitimate argument. "Im a communst, your a liberal." Then you walk away.

[Art Vandelay]

Whatever, I dont need validation from some nobody on the internet. Btw, "liberal" as it's often used on this site is a meaningless term, a curse word used to squash debate when you can't make a legitimate argument. "Im a communst, your a liberal." Then you walk away.

Many may use it like that; I, however, use it to describe someone whose analysis has underlying traces of liberalism in it, as opposed to being grounded in materialism.

[ind_com]

Yes. No self appointed vanguard can seize power on "behalf" of the proletariat. Only workers themselves can secure their own self emancipation. That is basic Marxism.

Can you clearly describe what such a self-emancipation would look like, from the workplace to the military fronts?

[Let's Get Free]

Many may use it like that; I, however, use it to describe someone whose analysis has underlying traces of liberalism in it, as opposed to being grounded in materialism.

Look, I'm don't see the Bolsheviks as some kind of superhumans who could have flown in the face of material reality, nor could they have. The Bolsheviks did the only thing the material conditions allowed them to do- develop Russian capitalism, since you cannot impose socialism from above onto a population that neither wants or understands what a socialist society entails. I have absolutely no illusions about what Lenin or the Bolsheviks did or could have done. I am just stating the facts as I see them. It is idealists like yourself who seem to think the Bolsheviks were, or could have been, something other than what the circumstances required them to be - the administers of state-run capitalism.

[Let's Get Free]

Can you clearly describe what such a self-emancipation would look like, from the workplace to the military fronts?

Simple: Direct action of the workers themselves, through their own class organizations (production syndicates, factory committees, cooperatives, etc.) The pretension that one can bring about revolution by "governing" of "guiding" the masses is as illusory as that of the Bolsheviks and for the same reasons.

In the Spanish revolution, for example, the farmers ceased to pay rent to the landlords, the agricultural day laborers occupied land and began to cultivate it, the villagers got rid of their municipal councils and hastened to administer themselves, the railwaymen went on strike to enforce a demand for the nationalization of the railways. The building workers of Madrid called for workers' control, the first step toward socialization. The revolution instituted worker-self management through federations and syndicates, and In Catalonia a regional congress of peasants were called together by the CNT and agreed to the collectivization of land under trade union management and control. Large estates and the property of fascists were socialized, while small landowners would have free choice between individual property and collective property. Local administration were organized by neighborhood committees, and war committees saw the formation of workers' militias.

[Let's Get Free]

The Bolsheviks had a working class agenda when they overthrew the provisional government. The new state was quickly opposed by counter-revolutionaries, thus starting a civil war in which the Communists were forced to resort to methods that, in a different context, would be considered anti-communist. Of course, following the civil war the Soviet Union degenerated due to its isolation and other material factors.
They either had to have a working class agenda at one point in time, or they never had one because of what happened several years later.

You blame Bolshevik policies on the civil war, but there is a problem with that. Bolshevik capitalism started before the start of the civil war and major economic collapse. Whether it is soviet democracy, workers' economic self-management, democracy in the armed forces or working class power and freedom generally, the fact is the Bolsheviks had systematically attacked and undermined it from the start. They also, repressed working class protests and strikes along with opposition groups and parties. As such, it is difficult to blame something which had not started yet for causing Bolshevik policies.

[robbo203]

The worker's state as conceived by Lenin is not something separate or alien from the proletariat. It is not something without a class character that reforms society from above out of benevolence. The class character of the Bolshevik movement was proletarian, and initially so was the Bolshevik state.. (my emphasis)


Lenin:

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)

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).

[Yuppie Grinder]

Mutualism didn't act like a revolutionary tendency. The Proudhonians wanted to ignore the political system, the neo-Jacobins of the Commune only wanted to reform it, the truly revolutionary party of the Commune were the Blanquists and their sympathizers, the "instigators and executors of all the truly revolutionary and effective measures".


Of course, that's what Proudhonians, self-identified or not, always end up doing. I'm just saying they were the majority group who fancied themselves revolutionary.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Lenin was not a Blanquist for numerous reasons well-articulated by various previous posters on this thread. The accusation of Blanquism was originally raised by Mensheviks and other Second International opponents of the Russian Revolution. It is an old accusation that was as baseless in 1917 as it is in 2012. The Soviet Union's slide into a dictatorship over the proletariat rather than dictatorship of the proletariat was due to many factors, but Blanquism was not one of those factors.

[Agathor]

so what's everyone doing this weekend??? im probably going to get a haircut at some point. What should my attitude to my barber be? He's petit-bourgeoisie, so he's a class enemy and at least a potential fascist, but he usually does a good job.

[robbo203]

Look, I'm don't see the Bolsheviks as some kind of superhumans who could have flown in the face of material reality, nor could they have. The Bolsheviks did the only thing the material conditions allowed them to do- develop Russian capitalism, since you cannot impose socialism from above onto a population that neither wants or understands what a socialist society entails. I have absolutely no illusions about what Lenin or the Bolsheviks did or could have done. I am just stating the facts as I see them. It is idealists like yourself who seem to think the Bolsheviks were, or could have been, something other than what the circumstances required them to be - the administers of state-run capitalism.

Yes I think this is more or less correct

As for the organisational model of the party advocated by Lenin and its relationship to the wider working class, the charge of "Blanquism" owes a lot to his early pamphlet What is to be Done (1902), which prompted a split in the RSDLP into Mensheviks and Bolsheviks over precisely this question of party organisation. In this pamphlet Lenin called for "a powerful and strictly secret organisation, which concentrates in its hands all the threads of secret activities, an organisation which of necessity must be a centralised organisation" . This is what commentators often have in mind when discussing the Lenin's views on political organisation - that he seemed to be advocating a kind of top down conspiratorial Blanquist-style organisation with a restricted membership to foment minority insurrection.

However, such an interpretation is not entirely fair or accurate. It overlooks the historical specificity of the model in question. In an autocratic tsarist state in which individuals had no political rights and were subject to intense police surveillence, harrassment and possible imprisonment one might be forgiven for thinking that a degree of secrecy and discretion was called for. That Lenin should have argued that this need to maintain secrecy inevitably required that a revolutionary organisation should constitute itself as a small tightly knit body of professional revolutionaries and subject to a rigorously hierarchical command structure, was at least understandable under the circumstances - even if one disagrees with the particular organisational model he put forward in response to this presumed need - but, in any case, it was not Lenin's view that this was the only way in which a revolutionary party could or should organise itself. As Lars Lih points out in Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? in Context (Haymarket Books 2008), he also clearly aspired to create a broad mass party with an open membership along the lines of the Social Democratic parties in Western Europe, most notably the German SDP, which circumstances at the time prevented him from doing.

In short it was for pragmatic rather than ideological, reasons that he favoured an apparent Blanquist-style organisation Not that these Social Democratic parties were themselves all that "democratic". They shared the same kind of elitist assumptions common to all leadership-based organisations, assumptions which Lenin took for granted in arguing that "no movement can be durable without a stable organisation of leaders to maintain continuity" (What is to be Done). Indeed, Marx and Engels were scathing in their criticism of the elitism within the German Party that Lenin looked up to , declaring that "we cannot co-operate with men who say openly that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves, and must first be emancipated from above by philanthropic members of the upper and lower middle classes (Circular Letter to August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Wilhelm Bracke and Others, 1879)


It is not really the supposed Blanguism in Lenin that is the issue - I can readily accept that Lenin, coming as he did from a social democratic background, was not in principle a Blanquist. The real issue is lenin's disastrous idea of vanguardism - the idea that a small enlightened minority can seize power and administer society in the interests of the majority who are not yet socialist in outlook and inclination. That is a policy that, quite apart from the material conditions, meant that the Russian revolution could only ever end up with one outcome - capitalism.

It was in essence a capitalist revolution carried out in the main by the Russian workers despite the militant anti-capitalism of many. As we know from the ant-capitalist movement today mere anti capitalism is not enough to ensure a socialist revolution and almost invariably collapses into some or other radical scheme for reforming and hence perpetuating capitalism in one form or another

[Robocommie]

Btw, "liberal" as it's often used on this site is a meaningless term, a curse word used to squash debate when you can't make a legitimate argument. "Im a communst, your a liberal." Then you walk away.

That's true, but that doesn't mean it's never accurate.

[Robocommie]

so what's everyone doing this weekend??? im probably going to get a haircut at some point. What should my attitude to my barber be? He's petit-bourgeoisie, so he's a class enemy and at least a potential fascist, but he usually does a good job.

Be an ultra-leftist; stab him in the throat with his own scissors and then cut your own hair as an act of proletarian emancipation.

[Prof. Oblivion]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2534060#post2534060) Yes. No self appointed vanguard can seize power on "behalf" of the proletariat. Only workers themselves can secure their own self emancipation. That is basic Marxism.

This is a false dichotomy.

[l'Enfermé]

Of course, that's what Proudhonians, self-identified or not, always end up doing. I'm just saying they were the majority group who fancied themselves revolutionary.
So what, in 20 years time Engels somehow forgot that the Proudhonians were a majority of the Communards and proclaimed that the Blanquists were a majority?


Lenin was not a Blanquist for numerous reasons well-articulated by various previous posters on this thread. The accusation of Blanquism was originally raised by Mensheviks and other Second International opponents of the Russian Revolution. It is an old accusation that was as baseless in 1917 as it is in 2012. The Soviet Union's slide into a dictatorship over the proletariat rather than dictatorship of the proletariat was due to many factors, but Blanquism was not one of those factors.
The charge of Blanquism was not raised by the Mensheviks. It was raised by the revisionists and opportunists of the Second International, chiefly Bernstein, against the revolutionary Marxist wing, i.e the Luxemburgs, the Kautskys, Bebels, Liebknechts, Leninis, Plekhanovs, etc of the Second International.

The opportunists and traitors of later generations only plagiarized the opportunists and traitors of the old.



In short it was for pragmatic rather than ideological, reasons that he favoured an apparent Blanquist-style organisation Not that these Social Democratic parties were themselves all that "democratic". They shared the same kind of elitist assumptions common to all leadership-based organisations, assumptions which Lenin took for granted in arguing that "no movement can be durable without a stable organisation of leaders to maintain continuity" (What is to be Done). Indeed, Marx and Engels were scathing in their criticism of the elitism within the German Party that Lenin looked up to , declaring that "we cannot co-operate with men who say openly that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves, and must first be emancipated from above by philanthropic members of the upper and lower middle classes (Circular Letter to August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Wilhelm Bracke and Others, 1879)
Except , by "stable organization of leaders", Lenin doesn't mean leaders drawn from philanthropic members of the middle class, but leaders drawn from the ranks of the militant proletariat and intellectuals who betrayed their class and defected to the side of the proletariat(like Marx and Engels).

You can't wage a war against the ruling classes without an army and an army without officers is a mere rabble incapable of making thought-out decisions or acting in an organized fashion.


It is not really the supposed Blanguism in Lenin that is the issue - I can readily accept that Lenin, coming as he did from a social democratic background, was not in principle a Blanquist. The real issue is lenin's disastrous idea of vanguardism - the idea that a small enlightened minority can seize power and administer society in the interests of the majority who are not yet socialist in outlook and inclination. That is a policy that, quite apart from the material conditions, meant that the Russian revolution could only ever end up with one outcome - capitalism. Why do you credit Stalinist and Trotskyist "vanguardism" to Lenin? Revolution by "Small enlightened minority"? Where is this found in Lenin's writing or speeches? Nowhere.

Lenin's conception of the "vanguard party" is not Lenin's but Kautsky's, so if it's a "disastrous idea", it's not Lenin's "disastrous idea" but Karl Kautsky's. Lenin's model "vanguard party" was the German SPD. The German SPD had 1 million members before it's disgrace in 1914 and organized millions of workers under affiliated trade unions.

A million proletarians is not a small "enlightened" minority.

The Orthodox Marxist(i.e the Kautsky, Lenin, Bebel, etc) definition of the vanguard party is not a party that seizes power and exercises a dictatorship over the non-socialist minority. It's not a party that has "to bring salvation from its misery to the proletariat from above,"(Kautsky). It's the opposite. It's a party whose duty it "is to make the class struggle of the proletariat aware of its aim and capable of choosing the best means to attain this aim". It's the party whose duty it is to spread revolutionary class consciousness among it's fellow proletarians. It's the party whose aim it so to "imbue the proletariat with the consciousness of its position and the consciousness of its task".



It was in essence a capitalist revolution carried out in the main by the Russian workers despite the militant anti-capitalism of many. As we know from the ant-capitalist movement today mere anti capitalism is not enough to ensure a socialist revolution and almost invariably collapses into some or other radical scheme for reforming and hence perpetuating capitalism in one form or anotherA capitalist revolution in already capitalist society, where state power was in the hands of the bourgeoisie, which resulted in either the killing or the emigration of most members of the ruling classes in Russia to Europe and America.

Makes perfect sense.

A capitalist revolution which abolished private property.

Of course!

[robbo203]

Except , by "stable organization of leaders", Lenin doesn't mean leaders drawn from philanthropic members of the middle class, but leaders drawn from the ranks of the militant proletariat and intellectuals who betrayed their class and defected to the side of the proletariat(like Marx and Engels).

You can't wage a war against the ruling classes without an army and an army without officers is a mere rabble incapable of making thought-out decisions or acting in an organized fashion.

You are aware, I presume, of what you seem to be implying here? Armies tend to be based on a hierarchical chain of command - not democratric decisionmaking - and this is what you are seemingly advocating as a model of proletarian organisation, yes? Actually, it matters not a jot what the social background of your leaders-cum-officers are - their structural relationship to what you contemptuously call the "rabble" (and which you suggest, are incapable of thinking for themselves) guarantees that there is no way on earth that the latter can hope to achieve its own self emancipation while it continues to look to some self appointed elite to lead them to the promised land. Which is precisely what you are seemingly urging them to do.

What is it with the Left with its anal fixation on this absurd principle of leadership and its accompanying militaristic metaphors. Sheesh . Sometimes some of you guys come across - no doubt unintentially - as frustrated wannabee members of a ruling class just itching to want to keep the low orders firmly in their place

The bit about armies needing officers is revealing, Every officer coup there has ever been has only reproduced the society its purportedly overthrew and in some cases in an even more brutalised and vicious form . That, frankly, is the last thing I want to hear - some fucking officer barking orders at me - and I find it astonishing that someone who purports to want to change the very basis of society should be so insentive to the finer nuances of the metaphors he employs. Ah but I guess, like a number of others here, Realpolitik and "capitalist realism" weighs more heavily than the niceties of socialist first principles.



Why do you credit Stalinist and Trotskyist "vanguardism" to Lenin? Revolution by "Small enlightened minority"? Where is this found in Lenin's writing or speeches? Nowhere..

I wasnt really addressing Stalinist and Trotskyist vanguardism although, of course, they are grounded in the Leninist model which in turn drew on certain elitist ideas that had currency with the broader social democratic movement, - ideas which Marx and Engels scathingly attacked. You doubt that Lenin ever suggested anything of the sort? Well, a few posts back I provided a quote that shows this to be precisely the case. Just for your benefit I will reproduce it again since you obviously 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)[/B][/I]





The Orthodox Marxist(i.e the Kautsky, Lenin, Bebel, etc) definition of the vanguard party is not a party that seizes power and exercises a dictatorship over the non-socialist minority. It's not a party that has "to bring salvation from its misery to the proletariat from above,"(Kautsky). It's the opposite. It's a party whose duty it "is to make the class struggle of the proletariat aware of its aim and capable of choosing the best means to attain this aim". It's the party whose duty it is to spread revolutionary class consciousness among it's fellow proletarians. It's the party whose aim it so to "imbue the proletariat with the consciousness of its position and the consciousness of its task".

This is terribly confused. What you are you doing here is conflating two quite different understandings of the term "vanquard". Of course, while the revolutionary movement comprises only a minority of the working class it is a vanguard in that sense - of being a minority. It is at the cutting edge of social thinking and yes of course its task is to aid the spread of such thinking to fellow workers. The aim of this so called vanguard is to abolish its own existence so to speak by ensuring that the ideas it holds becomes sufficiently commonplace that it can no longer be said to be a vanguard any longer.

All this is non constroversial but what I am talking about and what is known as the "Leninist theory of vanguardism" entails something quite different - that a small minority captures political power in advance of there being a socialist majority and that this small minority attempts to steer society in a socialist direction

Now it cannot be denied that this was the basis of Lenin's approach and I defy anyone to show othwerwise. He candidly admitted on numerous occasions that Russian workers , let alone the peasantry, were very far from being socialist-minded and in my opinion he was quite correct in saying this. However that rather begs the question as to what then was the relationship between the newly constituted Boslshvik government and the Russian working class and I would say it very much conforms to what I have said above. However, since socialism by it very nature cannot be imposed on a non socialist majority the Bolsheviks had no other option but to adminster and develop capitalism





A capitalist revolution in already capitalist society, where state power was in the hands of the bourgeoisie, which resulted in either the killing or the emigration of most members of the ruling classes in Russia to Europe and America.

Makes perfect sense.

A capitalist revolution which abolished private property.

Of course!

This is naive and simplistic. Yes capitalism existed to a degree in Russia and no one is doubting that. But what also existed at the time was still powerful precapitalist elements that had yet to be overthown. The Russian bourgeosie had shown themselves to be too weak , dithering and compromised to accomplish thatatsk and sweep away the remaining obstackles to capitalist development. That is the historc task, as they say, that fell to Bolshevik regime to accomplish. Capitalist revolutions are not necessarily one-off affairs but can be protracted and partial

So, yes, notwithstanding the ideological wrappings to the contrary, the Bolshevik revolution was in essentials, a capitalist revolution and Lenin and his contemporaries were bourgeois revolutionaries on a par with those of the French revolutuionaries more than a century earlier. Instead of the clarion call of "Liberty Equality and Fraternity" , you had "Peace Landand Bread" - and of course "socialism" (state capitalism). Engels presciently saw it all coming when he said in a letter to a Russian correspondent that for all he knew, Russia was "approaching its 1789"

Your last remark about a "capitalist revolution which abolished private property" is , I take it, a thinly disgused attempt to refute the idea that the Bolshevik revolution was a capitalist revolution since it allegedly abolished "private property". If you mean by this property or capital to which individuals have private and legal entitlement than I have to tell you that this is not what is meant by "capitalism" as such. It is only a specific form of capitalism, State capitalism is another and as this quote from Engels suggests , the Bolshevik policy of nationalisation in no way removed capitalism. It rather brought it to a head in the form of a particularly brutal form of capitalist dictatorship over the proletariat which effectively crushed any real resistance from the latter.

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head.
(Socialism Utopian and Scientific)

[Art Vandelay]

Look, I'm don't see the Bolsheviks as some kind of superhumans who could have flown in the face of material reality, nor could they have.

Of course not.


The Bolsheviks did the only thing the material conditions allowed them to do- develop Russian capitalism

The Bolsheviks in the end, were doomed due to the material conditions, yes; however while they developed the productive forces, I do not agree that they developed Russian capitalism, ultimately the USSR was some sort of non-mode of production (never before seen on the face of the earth).


since you cannot impose socialism from above onto a population that neither wants or understands what a socialist society entails.

This is absolute nonsense and reaks of not only a great man theory of history, a lack of a understanding of the events which transpired in Russia in 1917, and smug elitism. I'm sorry but that's not how a revolution works, the Russian revolution was due to the self organization of the working class, who had come to understand their collective position in society. I always find the anti-Bolshevik stance to be one that deems the masses as uneducated (funny given the slur usually hurled at proponents of a vanguard party) and that they were somehow duped by Lenin and co. Why was the proletariat organizing itself in to soviets? Why were they explicitly demanding for a socialist society? Those are questions you simply cannot answer, cause they don't conveniently fit into the narrative you've constructed in your head.


I have absolutely no illusions about what Lenin or the Bolsheviks did or could have done. I am just stating the facts as I see them.

Perhaps pick up a history book and double check those "facts."


It is idealists like yourself who seem to think the Bolsheviks were, or could have been, something other than what the circumstances required them to be - the administers of state-run capitalism.

Coming from you, I take being called an idealist as a compliment.

[Let's Get Free]

The Bolsheviks in the end, were doomed due to the material conditions, yes; however while they developed the productive forces, I do not agree that they developed Russian capitalism, ultimately the USSR was some sort of non-mode of production (never before seen on the face of the earth).

"Non mode of production?" What the hell does that even mean? If there isn't common ownership, there must be some kind of class ownership, right?



the Russian revolution was due to the self organization of the working class, who had come to understand their collective position in society.
That is true


I always find the anti-Bolshevik stance to be one that deems the masses as uneducated (funny given the slur usually hurled at proponents of a vanguard party) and that they were somehow duped by Lenin and co. Why was the proletariat organizing itself in to soviets? Why were they explicitly demanding for a socialist society? Those are questions you simply cannot answer, cause they don't conveniently fit into the narrative you've constructed in your head.

The fact is that most of the Russian working class at the time were simply NOT socialist minded. Militant, yes, but being militant is still a long way away from being socialist. Lenin himself freely admitted this. A new form of capitalism will inevitably be created as happened in the Soviet Union should it be the case that a majority of workers are still not socialist minded, as there is no way you can run a wageless, stateless society without the vast majority of people understanding what such a society entails. That clearly applied in the case of Russia 1917. For that reason alone socialism was simply not on the table. By default, the Bolsheviks had to take on the administration of capitalism and, in the course of doing so, those who controlled the state became the new capitalist class with complete control over the disposal of the economic surplus.



Perhaps pick up a history book and double check those "facts."

Which ones?




Coming from you, I take being called an idealist as a compliment.
You're welcome.

[Art Vandelay]

Well, a few posts back I provided a quote that shows this to be precisely the case. Just for your benefit I will reproduce it again since you obviously missed it the first time

It doesn't make the point that you think it does.


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)[/B][/I]

How on earth you think this means Lenin proposed a party to seize state power and implement socialism from above is mind numbing and the fact that you think this is some sort of trump card is kinda funny. Perhaps you should be sure to understand the quotes before you attempt to score points with them in an exchange.

All Lenin is addressing here is that it would be absurd to expect the entirety of the proletariat to gain class consciousness. That is it, nothing else, no talk of implementing socialism (as if something could be done). I'd be surprised to hear you argue otherwise really; does false consciousness not exist, will there not always be backwards elements of any class?


All this is non constroversial but what I am talking about and what is known as the "Leninist theory of vanguardism" entails something quite different - that a small minority captures political power in advance of there being a socialist majority and that this small minority attempts to steer society in a socialist direction

This is simply, regurgitated rhetorical nonsense.


Now it cannot be denied that this was the basis of Lenin's approach and I defy anyone to show othwerwise.

Generally someone making a claim, is the one who provides evidence.

[Art Vandelay]

"Non mode of production?" What the hell does that even mean? If there isn't common ownership, there must be some kind of class ownership, right?

http://vimeo.com/29505740


The fact is that most of the Russian working class at the time were simply NOT socialist minded. Militant, yes, but being militant is still a long way away from being socialist. Lenin himself freely admitted this.

Where? And please don't pull up the quote about trade union consciousness.


A new form of capitalism will inevitably be created as happened in the Soviet Union should it be the case that a majority of workers are still not socialist minded, as there is no way you can run a wageless, stateless society without the vast majority of people understanding what such a society entails.

The USSR was the most radical break with traditional property relations in the history of man, the society which it produced (while not what was intended) wasn't simply some new form of capitalism; that's just lazy thinking.


That clearly applied in the case of Russia 1917. For that reason alone socialism was simply not on the table.

I'm guessing you would of sided with the Mensheviks then? Traitors to the proletarian cause.


By default, the Bolsheviks had to take on the administration of capitalism

I never denied otherwise, neither did Lenin; the NEP was just that, a strategic step back.


Which ones?

You could start with this (which even bourgeois historians hold up as one of the greatest historical accounts of the revolution):

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/index.htm

[Let's Get Free]

How on earth you think this means Lenin proposed a party to seize state power and implement socialism from above is mind numbing and the fact that you think this is some sort of trump card is kinda funny. Perhaps you should be sure to understand the quotes before you attempt to score points with them in an exchange.

Is that not what he did? A decentralized society based on workers running their workplaces and the peasants controlling the land was not only possible but was being implemented by the people themselves. However, we see the Bolsheviks implementing one man management and a centralized, top-down economic regime BEFORE the civil war had started. The functions of the soviets had become purely nominal. They were transformed into institutions of government power. "You must become basic cells of the State," Lenin told the Congress of Factory Councils on June 27, 1918. As Voline expressed it, they were reduced to the role of "purely administrative and executive organs responsible for small, unimportant local matters and entirely subject to 'directives' from the central authorities: government and the leading organs of the Party." They no longer had "even the shadow of power." Yet socialism needs the mass participation of all in order to be created. Centralization, by its very nature, limits that participation (which is precisely why ruling classes have always centralized power into states).



All Lenin is addressing here is that it would be absurd to expect the entirety of the proletariat to gain class consciousness. That is it, nothing else, no talk of implementing socialism (as if something could be done). I'd be surprised to hear you argue otherwise really; does false consciousness not exist, will there not always be backwards elements of any class?


According to Lenin,consciousness was something to be obtained, like knowledge in mathematics.. This is a bourgeois mentality and was pouted by the likes of Classical Liberals in Bourgeois Revolutions. Consciousness is a response to the material conditions in a society, and the movement of the proletariat towards Communism is a material fact as fighting against existing conditions of alienation and exploitation. Lenin thought this wasn't true and that there was no natural movement of the Proletariat towards Communism, that they had to be lead by a political minority to that end. He refuted partially following the uprising of the proletariat in 1905 in Russia.

[robbo203]

The Bolsheviks in the end, were doomed due to the material conditions, yes; however while they developed the productive forces, I do not agree that they developed Russian capitalism, ultimately the USSR was some sort of non-mode of production (never before seen on the face of the earth).
.


How on earth can you have such a thing as a "non mode of production". Ticktin was talking bollocks, frankly, with this strange concept of his. A "mode of production" comprises 1) the forces of production 2) relations of production, No form of society that has ever existed lacked either



This is absolute nonsense and reaks of not only a great man theory of history, a lack of a understanding of the events which transpired in Russia in 1917, and smug elitism.
.

This is your response to Gladiator's point that "since you cannot impose socialism from above onto a population that neither wants or understands what a socialist society entails." Actually if you think about it carefully Gladiator is putting forward what is the very opposite of the great man theory. He is saying that a fundamental change in the basis of society depends crucially on the mass of workers wanting and understanding it and not simply a minority, still less some "Great man"



I'm sorry but that's not how a revolution works, the Russian revolution was due to the self organization of the working class, who had come to understand their collective position in society. I always find the anti-Bolshevik stance to be one that deems the masses as uneducated (funny given the slur usually hurled at proponents of a vanguard party) and that they were somehow duped by Lenin and co. Why was the proletariat organizing itself in to soviets? Why were they explicitly demanding for a socialist society? Those are questions you simply cannot answer, cause they don't conveniently fit into the narrative you've constructed in your head.
.

Oh come now - youve got an awful of explaining to do before you can make these cocksure assertions of yours stick with any degree of certainty

You say the proletariat were "explicitly demanding a socialist society" Reaaalllly? "The" Russian proletariat? Lets be charitable and assume you mean a majority of the proletariat in which case here's two simple questions for you to answer

1) What did the Russian proletariat mean by a "socialist society" when you say they were explicitly demanding it. If its got anything to do with nationalisation (Mr Lenin demanded the nationalisation of the big banks claiming they constituted nine tenths of socialist apparatus) then you can forget about it. You are not talking about socialism at all but state run capitalism

2) Where oh where is your evidence that a majority of proletariat demanded any such thing. Ive lost count of the number of times Ive challenged people on this forum to back up this astounding claim only to be met with stony silence or the odd snigger. My reading of Russian history is that most workers wanted things like job security, reliable access to the basics (especially food) and of course exit from the War which is the one really good thing the Bolsheviks did and upon which a lot of their popularity depended (support for the Bolsheviks fell away quite sharply afterwards)


Lenin himself had no doubt that the bulk of Russian workers (let alone the peasants) were not socialists. In April 1917 at the Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P he said "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.

Finally, you say I always find the anti-Bolshevik stance to be one that deems the masses as uneducated (funny given the slur usually hurled at proponents of a vanguard party) and that they were somehow duped by Lenin and co. The irony is that that is precisely what lenin himself considered to be the case when he argued ythatr "the Socialist political party, that is the vanguard of the working class must not allows itself to be halted by the lack of education of the masses" (Ten Days that shook the world John Reed p.263)

[Agathor]

Be an ultra-leftist; stab him in the throat with his own scissors and then cut your own hair as an act of proletarian emancipation.

is that how lenin got bald????

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Once you start shooting striking workers, you stop being a "workers" anything.



Economically, Lenin publicly called for “state capitalism.” He ignored the factory committees’ suggestions and instead used Tsarist structures as the framework for "socialism." In workplace the he urged and imposed dictatorial one-man management. Not surprisingly, these policies and structures made a bad situation a lot worse. The economy collapsed as the bureaucracy mismanaged it. To quote Kropotkin "“a strongly centralized government” running the economy was undesirable” and “wildly Utopian." For example, the central economic body did not even know how many workplaces it was managing
I think that Lenin was, after a fashion, a Blanquist. But mainly around the need for a disciplined, well-organized party to lead the revolution. It should be obvious to most people here that the Bolsheviks were not some kind of small conspiratorial group. They were a mass party when they took power and their program was no secret.

I think your understanding of the circumstances Lenin and the Bolsheviks had to deal with after the revolution is sorely wanting. The Civil war, the ravaged economy and the invading powers all had to be deal with. The USSR was in crisis for at least the first four years of its existence. Left to most other types of leadership (that would, of course, not have been able to make the revolution in the first place), counterrevolution would have occurred swiftly.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Isn't baldness a genetic trait specifically inherited from one's maternal grandfather?;)

[Sea]

How on earth can you have such a thing as a "non mode of production". Ticktin was talking bollocks, frankly, with this strange concept of his. A "mode of production" comprises 1) the forces of production 2) relations of production, No form of society that has ever existed lacked eitherThe "non mode of production" thing isn't to be taken literally. What Ticktin meant was that their mode of production lacked theoretical legitimacy, which is precisely what he argued in the What about Russia? (http://vimeo.com/29505740) bit.
This is your response to Gladiator's point that "since you cannot impose socialism from above onto a population that neither wants or understands what a socialist society entails." Actually if you think about it carefully Gladiator is putting forward what is the very opposite of the great man theory. He is saying that a fundamental change in the basis of society depends crucially on the mass of workers wanting and understanding it and not simply a minority, still less some "Great man"Making a statement like "That evil Lenin was trying to force socialism on everyone and they didn't even want it!" sure smells like the not-so-great man theory to me.
1) What did the Russian proletariat mean by a "socialist society" when you say they were explicitly demanding it. If its got anything to do with nationalisation (Mr Lenin demanded the nationalisation of the big banks claiming they constituted nine tenths of socialist apparatus) then you can forget about it. You are not talking about socialism at all but state run capitalismNationalization is a tool to take power out of the hands of capitalists without doing away with everything that capitalism has created. Hence state-capitalism. As part of a transitional strategy from capitalism to socialism, I see nothing wrong with this.
2) Where oh where is your evidence that a majority of proletariat demanded any such thing. Ive lost count of the number of times Ive challenged people on this forum to back up this astounding claim only to be met with stony silence or the odd snigger. My reading of Russian history is that most workers wanted things like job security, reliable access to the basics (especially food) and of course exit from the War which is the one really good thing the Bolsheviks did and upon which a lot of their popularity depended (support for the Bolsheviks fell away quite sharply afterwards)First of all, I advise you to re-read 9mm's post, it seems to me he partially covered the question you have in bold. Can job security, access to food and an exit from the war not be provided for by the doing away with Czarism and the development of a socialist society, when most of Russia's perils at the time were a direct result of the Czarist regime? When it comes to what the workers wanted, a little dash of inductive reasoning certainly points to socialism! I'm quite certain that the reason you are met with blank stares isn't that people are unable to reply, but that they are dumbfounded.
Lenin himself had no doubt that the bulk of Russian workers (let alone the peasants) were not socialists. In April 1917 at the Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P he said "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". Precisely! The Russian people knew what they want, but they did not all know that socialism is the answer to those wants. Many did, hence that the Bolsheviks, who were open socialists of course, found support at all. But Russia is vast, and most were not in the big cities where ideas spread rapidly. Hence the necessity of a vanguard party to educate the masses.
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.Whoa there buckaroo! Supposedly? Considering just about all of this fine group (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Delegates_VIII_Congress_of_the_RKP%28b%29.jpg) knew a hell of a lot more about Marxism and had far more passionate desire to see their knowledge flourish in practice than either you or I, your claims that Bolshevism amounts to some big anti-proletarian conspiracy fall on deaf ears.
is that how lenin got bald????Yes.
Isn't baldness a genetic trait specifically inherited from one's maternal grandfather?;)Booshwa proppergandy.
I think that Lenin was, after a fashion, a Blanquist. But mainly around the need for a disciplined, well-organized party to lead the revolution. It should be obvious to most people here that the Bolsheviks were not some kind of small conspiratorial group. They were a mass party when they took power and their program was no secret.make up your mind bro

[Let's Get Free]

Making a statement like "That evil Lenin was trying to force socialism on everyone and they didn't even want it!" sure smells like the not-so-great man theory to me.


Th point is that when you have a party seizing power before the working class (and, even less, the 80 per cent peasant majority of the population) had prepared themselves for Socialism, all the Bolshevik government could do, as Lenin himself openly admitted, was to establish state capitalism in Russia. Which is what they did, while at the same time imposing their own dictatorship over the working class.

We see the Bolsheviks succeeding in imposing a program of "21 Points" upon the Comintern parties that effectively made them instruments of Stalin's Central Committee. The "left-wing" council communists were expelled from the party, and most went into exile and obscurity. The ruling Bolsheviks removed the last vestiges of the Soviet democracy, crushed rank-and-file rebellions led by the Kronstadt sailors and by the Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Makhno, and expelled and purged the councilist "Worker Opposition" within the Soviet government. In essence, the Bolsheviks installed "socialism" by destroying socialism.


Nationalization is a tool to take power out of the hands of capitalists without doing away with everything that capitalism has created. Hence state-capitalism. As part of a transitional strategy from capitalism to socialism, I see nothing wrong with this.


The road to socialism via state capitalism is a totally discredited theory.


Precisely! The Russian people knew what they want, but they did not all know that socialism is the answer to those wants. Many did, hence that the Bolsheviks, who were open socialists of course, found support at all.

Lenin argued that the people who would have to bring “socialist consciousness” to the working class “from without” would be “professional revolutionaries”, drawn at first mainly from the ranks of the bourgeois intelligentsia. In fact he argued that the Russian Social Democratic Party should be such an “organization of professional revolutionaries”, acting as the vanguard of the working class. The task of this vanguard party to be composed of professional revolutionaries under strict central control was to “lead” the working class, offering them slogans to follow and struggle for. It is the exact opposite of Marx’s theory of working class self-emancipation.


Whoa there buckaroo! Supposedly? Considering just about all of this fine group knew a hell of a lot more about Marxism and had far more passionate desire to see their knowledge flourish in practice than either you or I, your claims that Bolshevism amounts to some big anti-proletarian conspiracy fall on deaf ears.
I am not denying that probably a lot of the old Bolsheviks emotionally and idealistically identified with the abstract goal of a communist socialist society. However the strategy they used proved in the end to be an absolute disaster, and along with the revolution failing to spread outside Russia, the Bolsheviks imposed even more external discipline on workers.

[robbo203]

The "non mode of production" thing isn't to be taken literally. What Ticktin meant was that their mode of production lacked theoretical legitimacy, which is precisely what he argued in the What about Russia? (http://vimeo.com/29505740) bit.


What? What sort of explnatation is this? A non mode of production turns out to be not a "non mode of production" at all but a mode of production that...ahem...lacks "theoretical legitimacy". It seems to me that the only thing that lacks theoretical legitimacy here is Ticktin's daft and over-intellectualised formulation in the first place. I would like to hear the video but the audio facility on my antique computer long ago packed up. Do you have another link so I can further explore this batty concept



Making a statement like "That evil Lenin was trying to force socialism on everyone and they didn't even want it!" sure smells like the not-so-great man theory to me.


In the first place nobody is suggesting Lenin was trying to force socialism on everyone. Matter of fact Lenin himself denied this as when in April 1917 at the Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P he said "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". The problem with Lenin though is that he was the most inconsistent and at times incoherent of writers and you are never quite sure what he means by "socialism". Sometimes he used the Marxian definition of socialism as a synonym for communism - the only concept of socialism for which i have any interest, frankly - at other times he used it in his own made-up state capitalist sense of the word. But, hey, if any old defintion of socialism is acceptable why not lets call the Nazis our "socialist comrades". After all they were ..ahem..."national socialists" werent they?


Secondly, youve got it precisely the wrong way round in your understanding of the great man theory. You should read Plekhanov's classic essay "The Role of the Individual in History" to get a good handle on this. The great man theory maintains that there are limits to what individuals or even social minorities can do - not that they cannot have an effect. It is not possible to for an individual or a minority, however enlightened, to impose socialism on a majority and it is to deny that that is tantamount to endorsing a great man theory



Nationalization is a tool to take power out of the hands of capitalists without doing away with everything that capitalism has created. Hence state-capitalism. As part of a transitional strategy from capitalism to socialism, I see nothing wrong with this.First of all, I advise you to re-read 9mm's post, it seems to me he partially covered the question you have in bold. Can job security, access to food and an exit from the war not be provided for by the doing away with Czarism and the development of a socialist society, when most of Russia's perils at the time were a direct result of the Czarist regime? When it comes to what the workers wanted, a little dash of inductive reasoning certainly points to socialism! I'm quite certain that the reason you are met with blank stares isn't that people are unable to reply, but that they are dumbfounded.


This is so full of nonsense it is difficult to know quite where to start deconstructing it,

Firstly, nationalisation may take power from some individual capitalists but it doesnt abolish capitalism in the slightest and therefore doesnt abolish the capitalist class relations that underpin a system of capitalist production. It merely reconstititutes the capitalist class in the form of the small minority who effectively exert complete control over the disposal of the economic surplus via their stranglehoild on state power - the apparatchik or nomenklatura class. Political control of state is what allows them de facto economic ownership of the means of production which ownership is exercised collectively by this state capitalist class and not in the form of de jure legal entitlement to capital as private individuals. That is the major structural difference between soviet state capitalism and western style capitalism but both versions were/are equally capitalist to their rotten core

Secondly , how on earth does providing job security etc translate into constituting or advocating "socialism", huh? Christ even the most liberal free market capitalist politician could be construed as a socialist on those terms in wanting to "expand opportunities for employment etc etc" Andm you know, those of those of you still sympathistic to the discredited Bolshevik cause really need to be a little more consistent here. Is it Czarism or capitalism that you claim it got rid of it? I would certainly agree that it got rid of Czarism but precisely to entrench and develop capitalism and in particular vicious and repressive anti working class form at that.

And thirdly - what on earth are we to make of this bizarre claim - "when it comes to what the workers wanted, a little dash of inductive reasoning certainly points to socialism! " Really ? How's that then? "I want job security. I wanted better access to food. I want Russia to exit the First World war.. Therefore I want socialism!" And you say I am the one who is met with blank stares because people are dumbfounded!!




Precisely! The Russian people knew what they want, but they did not all know that socialism is the answer to those wants. Many did, hence that the Bolsheviks, who were open socialists of course, found support at all. But Russia is vast, and most were not in the big cities where ideas spread rapidly. Hence the necessity of a vanguard party to educate the masses

Oh so first we have you running to the defence of 9mm who denies the meaning of the leninist theory of vanguardism - that it involves the capture of state power by an enlightened minority in order to direct society in a socialist direction - then we have you seemingly advocating the very same thing! As Gladiator has pointed out - in de facto terms this is precisely what happened. The vast majority in Russia by Lenin's own admission were not socialist . So the capture of political power by the Bolsheviks claiming to want to introduce "socialism" had therefore logically to amount to precisely what the leninist theory of the vanguard advocates.

Of course the Russian people "knew what they wanted" - like any people anywhere. We all have wants that press themselves on our consciousness. But this is a rather banal statement which has no relevance whatsoever to the topic under discussion.

You say "many" wanted socialism but you define what you mean by socialism in this context and you dont say how many is "many" or provide any evidence of the numbers involved. This is what I have been asking for . Some evdience however rough and ready. But none to date has ever been forthcoming from those here who favour the quite deluded idea that the Bolshevik revolution was in some actual sense a socialist revolution. All we get from this shower is sloppy emotional assertons that lack any kind of empirical substance whartsoever.

The Bolshevik Revolution was nothing of the sort. It was a capitalist revolution - or rather the culmination of the capitalist revolution in Russia - dressed up in the garb of socialist emancipation- in just the same way as the French Revolution of 1789 spoke of "Liberty Fraternity and Equality" being the goal of that Revolution but delivered a capitalist society that was hardly that.

It is the outcome of a revolution that defines the character of a revolution - not the justificatory language it employs to serves its end or even the class composition of those who carried out the revolution We all know the outcome of the Bolshevik revolution and it had nothing to do , or ever could have anything to do, with introducing socialism under the circumstances of time in which there was neither the mass support for a socialist society not the material means to sustain it - even if you could have "socialism in one country, that is.

[Sea]

edit: Robbo I'll come back to you tomorrow. It's 2:00 AM so my head's pretty foggy. Heck, I'll be surprised if I didn't poop up this post somehow.

double edit: Actually yeah screw that. Just re-reading some of it I did poop it up.

[Dire Helix]

Not only a Blanquist, but a Manichaean too:


But other things were not equal. Revolution and civil war brought the Bolsheviks to power, men who were determined to wipe out anybody who might conceivably oppose them and their Manichaean ideology. Neither the aristocracy nor the new bourgeoisie survived the reign of terror that Lenin unleashed upon them.http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/18/former-people-russian-smith-review

[Prof. Oblivion]

^Was that a joke?

[Sea]

Th point is that when you have a party seizing power before the working class (and, even less, the 80 per cent peasant majority of the population) had prepared themselves for Socialism, all the Bolshevik government could do, as Lenin himself openly admitted, was to establish state capitalism in Russia. Which is what they did, while at the same time imposing their own dictatorship over the working class.Wasn't one of the goals of the Bolsheviks to prepare the workers for socialism?


We see the Bolsheviks succeeding in imposing a program of "21 Points" upon the Comintern parties that effectively made them instruments of Stalin's Central Committee. The "left-wing" council communists were expelled from the party, and most went into exile and obscurity. The ruling Bolsheviks removed the last vestiges of the Soviet democracy, crushed rank-and-file rebellions led by the Kronstadt sailors and by the Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Makhno, and expelled and purged the councilist "Worker Opposition" within the Soviet government. In essence, the Bolsheviks installed "socialism" by destroying socialism.What 21 points are you talking about? I'm not big up on Lenin or the revolution, so forgive my ignorance. It's also my understanding that Kronstadt demanded some things with rather unreasonable implications. I won't defend the Bolsheviks reg. the left-communists, again out of ignorance, same goes for the anarchists. To say that they were trying to destroy socialism is utterly ridiculous though; you cannot destroy what does not exist in the first place. I think it's quite clear that they were trying to nurture an infantile disorder and developing socialism. The USSR in its early years was promising, not an established beacon of hope.


The road to socialism via state capitalism is a totally discredited theory.I don't advocate state capitalism as the road to socialism. Not even as a single stepping stone! Nationalization is but merely one tool; it is one bullet in an entire armory! Lenin certainly did not make it his outright goal to establish state capitalism as the be-all and end-all.



Lenin argued that the people who would have to bring “socialist consciousness” to the working class “from without” would be “professional revolutionaries”, drawn at first mainly from the ranks of the bourgeois intelligentsia. In fact he argued that the Russian Social Democratic Party should be such an “organization of professional revolutionaries”, acting as the vanguard of the working class. The task of this vanguard party to be composed of professional revolutionaries under strict central control was to “lead” the working class, offering them slogans to follow and struggle for. It is the exact opposite of Marx’s theory of working class self-emancipation.I'd advise you to read you to read the first two or so sections of this (https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm) text that I've linked to earlier in this thread. It covers the issue of bourgeois intellectuals as well as professional revolutionaries. By resolving those two issues, it should do a fine job of clearing up your "contrary to Marxism" claim.


I am not denying that probably a lot of the old Bolsheviks emotionally and idealistically identified with the abstract goal of a communist socialist society. However the strategy they used proved in the end to be an absolute disaster, and along with the revolution failing to spread outside
Russia, the Bolsheviks imposed even more external discipline on workers.The abstract goal? Mind you, we're speaking of people who dedicated a great portion of their lives to studying the topic! If Lenin deviated from established Marxist theory, you can bet your buns that he knew about it -- by your logic, either the Bolsheviks studied in vain and didn't understand a single word of what they've reaed, or they were trying to willfully deceive the Russian people by claiming to represent socialism. Both of these things contradict your "I am not denying..." line. There is, of course, a third possibility, that they weren't so evil after all. As for the strategy proving to be an "absolute disaster", I've said it before and I'll say it again -- the horrible monster that will forever haunt the reputation of leftists known as the late Soviet Union did not embark upon its path of dictatorship and degeneracy by following Marxism-Leninism. Nor is the path it took inherent to or (as far as I know) a likely result of Marxism-Leninism.

[Sea]

What? What sort of explnatation is this? A non mode of production turns out to be not a "non mode of production" at all but a mode of production that...ahem...lacks "theoretical legitimacy". It seems to me that the only thing that lacks theoretical legitimacy here is Ticktin's daft and over-intellectualised formulation in the first place. I would like to hear the video but the audio facility on my antique computer long ago packed up. Do you have another link so I can further explore this batty conceptTicktin was using the phrase "non-mode of production" as a figure of speech. This should be rather obvious, because in the video he did not argue that the USSR had neither forces of production nor relations of production. He means to say that the Soviet Union's mode of production was not very productive.


In the first place nobody is suggesting Lenin was trying to force socialism on everyone. Matter of fact Lenin himself denied this as when in April 1917 at the Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P he said "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".I know damn well that Lenin wasn't trying to "force socialism" on people, there's no need to explain that to me.


The problem with Lenin though is that he was the most inconsistent and at times incoherent of writers and you are never quite sure what he means by "socialism". Sometimes he used the Marxian definition of socialism as a synonym for communism - the only concept of socialism for which i have any interest, frankly - at other times he used it in his own made-up state capitalist sense of the word. But, hey, if any old defintion of socialism is acceptable why not lets call the Nazis our "socialist comrades". After all they were ..ahem..."national socialists" werent they?Comparing Lenin to the Nazis is bullshit hyperbole and you know it. It's rather immature to fault Lenin for not using your favorite terminology. You also fail to realise that when Trots refer to Stalinism as being state capitalist, they're not talking about the same thing as Lenin's NEP. Far from it.


Secondly, youve got it precisely the wrong way round in your understanding of the great man theory. You should read Plekhanov's classic essay "The Role of the Individual in History" to get a good handle on this. The great man theory maintains that there are limits to what individuals or even social minorities can do - not that they cannot have an effect. It is not possible to for an individual or a minority, however enlightened, to impose socialism on a majority and it is to deny that that is tantamount to endorsing a great man theoryI was referring to the great man theory in the colloquial sense, so don't read too much into it. Furthermore I never once argued for such a thing; I doubt you'll find many leftists who would make the outlandish claim that socialism can be bestowed upon the working masses by some heroic great.


Firstly, nationalisation may take power from some individual capitalists but it doesnt abolish capitalism in the slightest and therefore doesnt abolish the capitalist class relations that underpin a system of capitalist production. It merely reconstititutes the capitalist class in the form of the small minority who effectively exert complete control over the disposal of the economic surplus via their stranglehoild on state power - the apparatchik or nomenklatura class. Political control of state is what allows them de facto economic ownership of the means of production which ownership is exercised collectively by this state capitalist class and not in the form of de jure legal entitlement to capital as private individuals. That is the major structural difference between soviet state capitalism and western style capitalism but both versions were/are equally capitalist to their rotten coreOnce again, nationalization is not a solution in itself and I never once said it was. Nor did I ever say that nationalization in itself fundamentally poses a challenge to capitalism. If it did, we'd all be voting to social democrats. Nevertheless, the disaster of state capitalism in the Soviet Union was not the result of state capitalism, it was a result of the perverse greed of the Soviet Union. This brings me back to my other point viz. as the USSR strayed farther and farther away from Marxism-Leninism, the perils of its nature showed themselves more and more.



Secondly , how on earth does providing job security etc translate into constituting or advocating "socialism", huh? Christ even the most liberal free market capitalist politician could be construed as a socialist on those terms in wanting to "expand opportunities for employment etc etc" Andm you know, those of those of you still sympathistic to the discredited Bolshevik cause really need to be a little more consistent here. Is it Czarism or capitalism that you claim it got rid of it? I would certainly agree that it got rid of Czarism but precisely to entrench and develop capitalism and in particular vicious and repressive anti working class form at that.

And thirdly - what on earth are we to make of this bizarre claim - "when it comes to what the workers wanted, a little dash of inductive reasoning certainly points to socialism! " Really ? How's that then? "I want job security. I wanted better access to food. I want Russia to exit the First World war.. Therefore I want socialism!" And you say I am the one who is met with blank stares because people are dumbfounded!!
The wants of the Russian people could be secured by socialism. I never once fucking said that anything that can quench the wants of the Russian people must in turn be socialism. I merely said that socialism could solve those wants. In other words, socialism was qualified to suit the needs of the Russian people. And don't even get me started on your sly supposition that free-market capitalism could've also provided good jobs, good food and an end to imperialist war. Your invocation of bourgeois propaganda is irrelevant -- mainly because it's bourgeois propaganda. I hope I'm not sounding too dogmatic to you. I'm not a Leninist, I'm just merely arguing as I see fit. If you bring out an especially good whopper, I pinky promise I'll admit when I'm wrong. Pinky promise.

[robbo203]

Ticktin was using the phrase "non-mode of production" as a figure of speech. This should be rather obvious, because in the video he did not argue that the USSR had neither forces of production nor relations of production. He means to say that the Soviet Union's mode of production was not very productive..

I'm well aware that it is only a "figure of speech" albeit it a pretty naff one at that. What I wanted to know was what lies behind this concept of the so called "non mode of production". Your "explanation" explains nothing. If the SU had a mode of production, as you now seem to agree it had, then what was it? Saying it was "not very productive" is no answer to this specific question. As far as I can tell Ticktin seems to think it was neither socialism nor capitalism in which case it is incumbent upon him to explain what sort of mode of production it was and not hide behind a "figure of speech". Because the SU, sure as hell, was not a society without a mode of production,






I know damn well that Lenin wasn't trying to "force socialism" on people, there's no need to explain that to me.

I wasnt suggesting you thought otherwise - merely ticking you off for seeing fit to claim others were suggesting Lenin tried to force socialism on people when this was not what they were suggesting at all . I refer to your statement as follows:

Making a statement like "That evil Lenin was trying to force socialism on everyone and they didn't even want it!" sure smells like the not-so-great man theory to me.




Comparing Lenin to the Nazis is bullshit hyperbole and you know it. It's rather immature to fault Lenin for not using your favorite terminology. You also fail to realise that when Trots refer to Stalinism as being state capitalist, they're not talking about the same thing as Lenin's NEP. Far from it.

Dont be silly. Im not comparing Lenin to the Nazis. Im merely suggesting the application of the label "socialism" to describe one's point of view does not necessarily make one a socialist. Nazis call themselves national "socialists" and I am sure you would agree that such a description is completely inapt



I was referring to the great man theory in the colloquial sense, so don't read too much into it. Furthermore I never once argued for such a thing; I doubt you'll find many leftists who would make the outlandish claim that socialism can be bestowed upon the working masses by some heroic great.


Again you misunderstand. I not accusing you of subscribing to the great man theory , I am ticking you off for attributing such a view to others when it is simply not the case. Try to be a little more attentive before shooting your mouth off.




Once again, nationalization is not a solution in itself and I never once said it was. Nor did I ever say that nationalization in itself fundamentally poses a challenge to capitalism. If it did, we'd all be voting to social democrats. Nevertheless, the disaster of state capitalism in the Soviet Union was not the result of state capitalism, it was a result of the perverse greed of the Soviet Union. This brings me back to my other point viz. as the USSR strayed farther and farther away from Marxism-Leninism, the perils of its nature showed themselves more and more.


Youve just completely ignored what I was saying, havent you? Why does that not surprise me?

You said originally and I quote:

Nationalization is a tool to take power out of the hands of capitalists without doing away with everything that capitalism has created. Hence state-capitalism. As part of a transitional strategy from capitalism to socialism, I see nothing wrong with this.

Im saying this is nonsense. Nationalisation - state capitalism - is a dead end It does not take power out of the hands of capitalist class. What it does is reconstitute the capitalist class in the form of the small minority who effectively control the state and thereby own the means of production in a de facto sense - that is to say, this minority exercises complete control over the disposal of the economic surplus.

Anyone who thinks a member of the politburo/ state enterprise manager/army general etc etc had the same relation to the means of prpduction as an ordinary Russian worker has seriously lost the plot. The nomenklatura - the state capitalist class - not only enjoyed a privileged existence way beyond what the Russian workers could ever dream of but arrogated to themselves all of the important economic decisions in the Soviet Union thereby enabling themselves to perpetuate their paraistic and privileged class position in society

Nationlisation is an utter irrelevance as far as socialism is concerned and in no sense does it expedite the cause of socialism, It is not a transitional means of achieving socialism but a serious impediment to achieving socialism . Im aware that this position will put me somewhat at odds with the kind of views expressed say in the Communist Manifesto. So be it. But Marx and Engels did not have the benefit of hindsight to see what an utter disaster this whole state-capitalist-road-to-socialism approach has been - though at least they did not confuse state capitalism with socialism, unlike Lenin.

[l'Enfermé]

robbo:

Comrade, unfortunately, you have a very poor understanding of Bolshevism and Lenin's views and you seem to be determined to take everything out of its historical context. I will do my best to rectify this and explain to you your mistakes. I'm not blessed with much spare time these days, so I trust you will forgive me for not replying to all of your posts immediately. I will reply to the rest tomorrow. Meanwhile, I will address the last one.


I'm well aware that it is only a "figure of speech" albeit it a pretty naff one at that. What I wanted to know was what lies behind this concept of the so called "non mode of production". Your "explanation" explains nothing. If the SU had a mode of production, as you now seem to agree it had, then what was it? Saying it was "not very productive" is no answer to this specific question. As far as I can tell Ticktin seems to think it was neither socialism nor capitalism in which case it is incumbent upon him to explain what sort of mode of production it was and not hide behind a "figure of speech". Because the SU, sure as hell, was not a society without a mode of production,
You have little understanding of Ticktin's analysis of the Soviet Union. Probably because you haven't read. This fact begs the following question: why do you criticism something with which you are not in the least familiar with? Now, I must admit, I'm not an expert on Marxian political economy, nor am I an expert on Ticktin's analysis, but I will try to explain Ticktin's meaning.

By "non-mode of production" the following is meant: The Soviet Union's mode of production was not viable in the long-term. It simply wasn't feasible and was doomed to a collapse that would restore capitalism. Certain historical peculiarities postponed this collapse, true enough. But even the most supercificial glance at Ticktin's writings would lead one to conclude that Ticktin is in no way implying the there was no mode of production in the Soviet Union. That would be an absurd claim.




Im saying this is nonsense. Nationalisation - state capitalism - is a dead end It does not take power out of the hands of capitalist class. What it does is reconstitute the capitalist class in the form of the small minority who effectively control the state and thereby own the means of production in a de facto sense - that is to say, this minority exercises complete control over the disposal of the economic surplus.

Anyone who thinks a member of the politburo/ state enterprise manager/army general etc etc had the same relation to the means of prpduction as an ordinary Russian worker has seriously lost the plot. The nomenklatura - the state capitalist class - not only enjoyed a privileged existence way beyond what the Russian workers could ever dream of but arrogated to themselves all of the important economic decisions in the Soviet Union thereby enabling themselves to perpetuate their paraistic and privileged class position in societyThere was no capitalist class in the Soviet Union. Marx and Engels defined the "modern class of capitalists" as that class of people which owns the "social means of production" and "employs wage-labour".

The nomenklatura in the Soviet Union did not own the means of production. But they did have a limited control over the surplus product.

The nomenklatura did not employ wage-labour. They couldn't even if they wanted to, really, simply because there was no wage-labour in the Soviet Union, there wasn't even money("money" as defined by Marx and bourgeois economists also), in the sense that it wasn't a universal measure of value(real money was abolished in the 1930s as an attempt to deal with shortages in the economy). Labour in the Soviet Union was forced-labour and semi-forced labour

There is no basis for calling the Soviet nomenklatura a capitalist class.



Nationlisation is an utter irrelevance as far as socialism is concerned and in no sense does it expedite the cause of socialism, It is not a transitional means of achieving socialism but a serious impediment to achieving socialism . Im aware that this position will put me somewhat at odds with the kind of views expressed say in the Communist Manifesto. So be it. But Marx and Engels did not have the benefit of hindsight to see what an utter disaster this whole state-capitalist-road-to-socialism approach has been - though at least they did not confuse state capitalism with socialism, unlike Lenin.You will forgive me, of course, if I prefer Marx's position on nationalisation.

As for Lenin confusing state-capitalism with socialism, I have debunked this myth for you a long time ago but you don't seem to care as this myth reinforces your anti-Bolshevik ideology.

[Sea]

IDont be silly. Im not comparing Lenin to the Nazis. Im merely suggesting the application of the label "socialism" to describe one's point of view does not necessarily make one a socialist. Nazis call themselves national "socialists" and I am sure you would agree that such a description is completely inaptAs far as I'm aware, Lenin never used the term socialist (in a context that makes it distinct from communist) to describe his outlook. Lenin used the term communist for that. Perhaps it would help you to think of Lenin's concept of socialism as a period of socialization.

As far a minority still retaining control being something that's necessary in state capitalism, that sort of loses its validity if the state is accountable to the workers.

[Let's Get Free]

Wasn't one of the goals of the Bolsheviks to prepare the workers for socialism?

By doing what? A lot of idealists are think that Lenin could have somehow guided the ignorant masses to a revolution but this is unrealistic and does not work in the long-term and never has.


What 21 points are you talking about?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-one_Conditions


It's also my understanding that Kronstadt demanded some things with rather unreasonable implications.
Indeed, the Kronstadt rebels suffered and died for a set of "unreasonable" demands, These demands were:

free and fair elections to the soviets;
freedom of speech for workers, peasants, anarchists and socialists;
free trade union activity;
peasants to control land without employing wage labor.

These demands were drowned in blood by the Bolsheviks and without any sense of irony they celebrated the crushing of Kronstadt on the 18th March – the 50th anniversary of the Paris Commune.


I won't defend the Bolsheviks reg. the left-communists, again out of ignorance, same goes for the anarchists. To say that they were trying to destroy socialism is utterly ridiculous though; you cannot destroy what does not exist in the first place. I think it's quite clear that they were trying to nurture an infantile disorder and developing socialism.

Well, if we look back, we see the Bolsheviks gradually suppressing any sort of independent workers activity. We see Lenin in 1918 forward insisting upon - no, wait, that's not the word- salivating - over top-down one man-management as an industrial strategy - hardly a case of the working class exercising power was it? We see the factory committees being gradually crushed. We see Trotsky, with his despicable anti-working class militarization of labor. We see political opponents being being oppressed banished and eliminated and we see the subordination and assimilation of the trade unions into the state structure to become merely an arm of the state to bully and control the workers into producing more surplus value.



I don't advocate state capitalism as the road to socialism. Not even as a single stepping stone! Nationalization is but merely one tool; it is one bullet in an entire armory! Lenin certainly did not make it his outright goal to establish state capitalism as the be-all and end-all.


Here's a quote from Engels to explain why that's wrong.

"The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution."


I'd advise you to read you to read the first two or so sections of this (https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm) text that I've linked to earlier in this thread. It covers the issue of bourgeois intellectuals as well as professional revolutionaries. By resolving those two issues, it should do a fine job of clearing up your "contrary to Marxism" claim.

The problem with Lenin's party was that he subscribed to a vanguardist theory of revolution. According to this, the enlightened minority of socialists would capture power in advance of the majority becoming socialists and, from this position of power, would somehow steer society in a "socialist" direction. Unfortunately it just does not work out like this and, however well intentioned Lenin may have been, his vanguardist policy in retrospect has been a disaster.


the horrible monster that will forever haunt the reputation of leftists known as the late Soviet Union did not embark upon its path of dictatorship and degeneracy by following Marxism-Leninism. Nor is the path it took inherent to or (as far as I know) a likely result of Marxism-Leninism.

Then what was the path they took?

[robbo203]

You have little understanding of Ticktin's analysis of the Soviet Union. Probably because you haven't read. This fact begs the following question: why do you criticism something with which you are not in the least familiar with? Now, I must admit, I'm not an expert on Marxian political economy, nor am I an expert on Ticktin's analysis, but I will try to explain Ticktin's meaning.

By "non-mode of production" the following is meant: The Soviet Union's mode of production was not viable in the long-term. It simply wasn't feasible and was doomed to a collapse that would restore capitalism. Certain historical peculiarities postponed this collapse, true enough. But even the most supercificial glance at Ticktin's writings would lead one to conclude that Ticktin is in no way implying the there was no mode of production in the Soviet Union. That would be an absurd claim.


I am aware of all this, thank you, but you are completely missing the point that I am trying to get at. Ticktin is trying to say in a rather clumsy fashion - clumsy because of the stupid expression "non mode of production" - that the Soviet Union was neither socialist not capitalist but something else. You are doing exactly the same as Sea did in misunderstanding this point. It tells us exactly nothing about what precisely the Soviet mode of production is by saying it is "non viable". What is the "it" that is said to be non viable?






There was no capitalist class in the Soviet Union. Marx and Engels defined the "modern class of capitalists" as that class of people which owns the "social means of production" and "employs wage-labour".

The nomenklatura in the Soviet Union did not own the means of production. But they did have a limited control over the surplus product.

The nomenklatura did not employ wage-labour. They couldn't even if they wanted to, really, simply because there was no wage-labour in the Soviet Union, there wasn't even money("money" as defined by Marx and bourgeois economists also), in the sense that it wasn't a universal measure of value(real money was abolished in the 1930s as an attempt to deal with shortages in the economy). Labour in the Soviet Union was forced-labour and semi-forced labour

There is no basis for calling the Soviet nomenklatura a capitalist class.


This is utter nonsense from start to finish. And the reason why its is nonsense is because you have a very narrow limited conception of what capitalism and a capitalist class are. Engels long ago pointed out how capitalism had evolved way beyond the simple notion of the individual capitalist running his or her own business to trusts and joint stock companies and finally, nationalised industries. Here is what he had to say about the last of these:

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. (Socialism: Utopian and Scientific)


In the Soviet Union those who exercised ultimate control over the economy thereby enjoyed de facto onwerhsip of the means of production. In fact , when you think about it - what is ownerwhip but ultimate control? It means the same thing. Of course the capitalist class in the Soviet Union did not own the means of production by de jure legal title to capital as private individuals. Nobody is suggesting this . In this respect there is indeed a difference between Soviet capitalism and western capitalism. In the Soviet Union the capitalist class owned - or ultimately controlled - the means of production collectively as an exploiting class and shared the spoils of exploitation through mechanisms that differered from those operating in the West. However such historically contingent differences as there undoubtedly were between Soviet capitalism and western capitalism pale by comparsion with what they have in common.

The rest of wat you claim - that there was no wage labour and no money in the SU - is just so much tripe. These claims have been dealt with in a previous post - http://www.revleft.com/vb/does-idea-soviet-t176207/index.html?p=2532973#post2532973 - so I wont go over the arguments in same degree of detail

Your postion is what I call the mystical theory of the Soviet Union which takes the forms and economic catergories of capitalism that were undeniably present in the Soviet Union to be just empty husks. The exponents of this mystical theory, however, fail conspicuously to explain why such empty husks should have existed in the first place - why Russian workers got paid wages or why Russian consumers paid for commodities in roubles, if such practices had no real substantive content.


Russian workers clearly got paid wages. Soviet official data provides abundant evidence of wages levels that different occupations attracted. Yet our mystical theorists would have us believe that these were not really wages at all becayse they were fixed by the planners and non negotiable or subject to market forces. Even is this was true (and it is far from the truth since in the real world, state enterprises had considerable leeway to offer additional inducements, if needs be, to attract workers, and particularly much sought after skilled workers) it would in no way make what the workers received any the less a wage. All it would signify is that the Soviet Union was a particularly repressive capitalist state in which independent trade union struggle over wages was not permitted. A highly regulated market for labour power is still a market. Labour power is still being exchanged for a wage at the end of the day.

The same goes for the argument about money. The claim that "there wasn't even money("money" as defined by Marx and bourgeois economists also), in the sense that it wasn't a universal measure of value" is absurd. Monetary accounting ran alongside physical planning , monetary values - prices - being assigned to means of production which were bought and sold between state enterprises, as well as to commodities. To say that money was not used as a measure of value is clearly quite wrong.


It is quite true of course that money prices did not necessarily reflect values in the marixian sense of the term - as socially necessary labour time - but this is true even a free market economy. Prices, however, fluctuate around value. Even in the Soviet Union they were not and could not be entirely arbitrary






As for Lenin confusing state-capitalism with socialism, I have debunked this myth for you a long time ago but you don't seem to care as this myth reinforces your anti-Bolshevik ideology.

You dd nothing of the sort. Lenin clearly equated state capitalism with socialism - something that Marx and Engels never did - in this quote from The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It,(1917) in which he argued that "socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly"

What Lenin was doing here was differentiating between one form of state capitalist monopoly which, in his view, could be made to serve the interests of the whole people and which he called socialism, and another form of state capitalist monopoly which by inference only serves the interests of the capitalust class. The state capitalist monopoly that he calls "socialism" is the next step forward from this later form of state capitalist monpoly but they are both clearly state capitalist monopolies -obviously

[Comrade Marxist Bro]

You dd nothing of the sort. Lenin clearly equated state capitalism with socialism - something that Marx and Engels never did - in this quote from The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It,(1917) in which he argued that "socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly"

What Lenin was doing here was differentiating between one form of state capitalist monopoly which, in his view, could be made to serve the interests of the whole people and which he called socialism, and another form of state capitalist monopoly which by inference only serves the interests of the capitalust class. The state capitalist monopoly that he calls "socialism" is the next step forward from this later form of state capitalist monpoly but they are both clearly state capitalist monopolies -obviously

Actually, in a part of Socialism, Utopian and Scientific which you did not quote, Engels says
Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. Whilst it forces on more and more of the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialized, into State property, it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into State property.

But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinction and class antagonisms, abolishes also the State as State. Society, thus far, based upon class antagonisms, had need of the State. That is, of an organization of the particular class which was, pro tempore, the exploiting class, an organization for the purpose of preventing any interference from without with the existing conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited classes in the condition of oppression corresponding with the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom, wage-labor). The State was the official representative of society as a whole; the gathering of it together into a visible embodiment. But, it was this only in so far as it was the State of that class which itself represented, for the time being, society as a whole:

in ancient times, the State of slaveowning citizens;
in the Middle Ages, the feudal lords;
in our own times, the bourgeoisie.

When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not "abolished". It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase: "a free State", both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific inefficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State out of hand.

Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

"The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into State property."

I did not add the italics to that sentence - the sentence appears that way in the original.

I know you're fond of the other Engels quote from the same chapter of the same work:
The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head.

But he clearly distinguishes between nationalization under the bourgeois state and nationalization under the working class, as part of the revolutionary process of abolishing class society. When class society has gone extinct, the state "dies out."

You describe Lenin as suggesting that socialism was a no more than a specific type of "state capitalist monopoly" but he is referring to a state monopoly that has ceased to be a state capitalist monopoly because it has become a state monopoly that serves "the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly."

But that is precisely Engels' position: "the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society." Only then does the state begin to die out.

Why do you adamantly hold that there is a difference?

[robbo203]

Actually, in a part of Socialism, Utopian and Scientific which you did not quote, Engels says

"The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into State property."

I did not add the italics to that sentence - the sentence appears that way in the original.

I know you're fond of the other Engels quote from the same chapter of the same work:

But he clearly distinguishes between nationalization under the bourgeois state and nationalization under the working class, as part of the revolutionary process of abolishing class society. When class society has gone extinct, the state "dies out."

Yes I know all this and I am not disputing that this was the view of M & E. I am saying something quite different

1) that this whole idea of nationalisation as a transitional step towards socialism is wrong - disastrously wrong. It was one of several gross errors or misjudgements, in my view, that Marx and Engels made and I have never hidden the fact that I implacably oppose their opinion in these matters. Of course they did not have the benefit of hindsight to see all this. We do. Without hesitation i would say the whole long drawn out experience of Soviet state capitalsim which even today some still think - incredibly enough - had something to do with "socialism", has easily been the single biggest factor in holding back the movement of socialist ideas. No wonder the political right keep insisting that the Soviet Union or anything else to do with the state equals socialism. The collapse of the SU amongst other things allows them to triumphantly claim socialism has failed. And the most irksome thing about this all is that sections of the Left obligingly hand them all this on a platter by confriming their mistaken assumptions about what "socialism" is supposedly about

2) Though Marx and Engels clearly did advocate nationalisation of the means of production as a transitional step to socialism at no point did they ever call this socialism. Socialism for them and indeed for many others was simply a synonym for communism. They explained in one of the prefaces to the Communist Manifesto why they initially preferred the term communism but in later years switched more and more to the term socialism





You describe Lenin as suggesting that socialism was a no more than a specific type of "state capitalist monopoly" but he is referring to a state monopoly that has ceased to be a state capitalist monopoly because it has become a state monopoly that serves "the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly."

But that is precisely Engels' position: "the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society." Only then does the state begin to die out.

Why do you adamantly hold that there is a difference?



You would be correct except for one little detail which both you and l'Enfermé have overlooked. Lenin did NOT say , socialism is merely a "state monopoly" which is made to serve the interests of the whole people. He said quite clearly , socialism is merely a state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people as opposed to the interests of the capitalists alone


It is pretty obvious what Lenin was trying to do and both of you have missed this point completely. He was trying to distinguish between different kinds of state capitalism , one particular kind of which he identified as "socialism". This becomes clearer when you consider the following quote from a speech that Lenin made at the Third Congress Of The Communist International in June 22-July 12, 1921:

But state capitalism in a society where power belongs to capital, and state capitalism in a proletarian state, are two different concepts. In a capitalist state, state capitalism means that it is recognised by the state and controlled by it for the benefit of the bourgeoisie, and to the detriment of the proletariat. In the proletarian state, the same thing is done for the benefit of the working class, for the purpose of withstanding the as yet strong bourgeoisie, and of fighting it.(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jun/12.htm)

[Sea]

By doing what? A lot of idealists are think that Lenin could have somehow guided the ignorant masses to a revolution but this is unrealistic and does not work in the long-term and never has.I'm certainly not one of those idealists, rest assured. How the Bolsheviks were planning on going about this is, I think, wrapped up quite well in the theory of a vanguard party.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-one_ConditionsI see absolutely no grounds to take issue with a single one of these points. If anything, the Stalinist may be the ones who object, considering that under Stalin's reign democratic centralism wasn't exactly the choice method of organization. Furthermore these conditions were for joining the Comintern; they were not intended to be conditions under which every self-declared communist must live his or her life. Not only that but it's rather strange to blame these demands for making Comintern parties "instruments of Stalin's Central Committee". The points outlined were designed to prevent a re-play of the SI. Perhaps you should be blaming Stalinist bureaucracy instead?

Indeed, the Kronstadt rebels suffered and died for a set of "unreasonable" demands, These demands were:

free and fair elections to the soviets;
freedom of speech for workers, peasants, anarchists and socialists;
free trade union activity;
peasants to control land without employing wage labor.

These demands were drowned in blood by the Bolsheviks and without any sense of irony they celebrated the crushing of Kronstadt on the 18th March – the 50th anniversary of the Paris Commune.Freedom of speech for anarchists and socialists? That's absurd. Anarchists would jump at the chance to spout their condemnation of the revolution. I also get the creeping feeling that by "socialists" you mean petty-bourgeois Mensheviks, social-democrats and the like. After all, these are the ones that would want to speak out against Bolshevism. I'm not sure at all why you would support trade unions in this specific case. I don't say that in the way of a right-wing union buster, I say that considering that unions are only a solution if you think patronizing the workers is better than freeing them.


Well, if we look back, we see the Bolsheviks gradually suppressing any sort of independent workers activity. We see Lenin in 1918 forward insisting upon - no, wait, that's not the word- salivating - over top-down one man-management as an industrial strategy - hardly a case of the working class exercising power was it? We see the factory committees being gradually crushed. We see Trotsky, with his despicable anti-working class militarization of labor. We see political opponents being being oppressed banished and eliminated and we see the subordination and assimilation of the trade unions into the state structure to become merely an arm of the state to bully and control the workers into producing more surplus value. I'd like some sources on this.
Here's a quote from Engels to explain why that's wrong.

"The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution."The first two sentances of your quote should let you know that Engels was speaking on capitalist states. Capitalist as in France, the USA, England, etc. As it's been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, Marx and Engels both supported a revolutionary state seizing sections of bourgeois production via nationalization. Perhaps you should be rooting around for Bakunin quotes instead.


The problem with Lenin's party was that he subscribed to a vanguardist theory of revolution. According to this, the enlightened minority of socialists would capture power in advance of the majority becoming socialists and, from this position of power, would somehow steer society in a "socialist" direction. Unfortunately it just does not work out like this and, however well intentioned Lenin may have been, his vanguardist policy in retrospect has been a disaster.How does a vanguard party lead to such disaster? You think that having even a smidgeon of power magically makes you corrupt? And well-intentioned? I have a hard time believing that Lenin's theoretical knowledge was so lacking that he was able to fuck the workers over with good intentions.
Then what was the path they took?If the moon is not made of cheese, then what is it made of? This is not a valid question and anyway I'm sure those anti-Stalinist Bolshevists on this forum will be better able to answer this than I. What I would like you to do is show me how Leninist theory requires an evil dictatorship, or otherwise show me that Stalin's track record is nothing more than the result of putting said theory into practice.

[blake 3:17]

I don't understand the hate for the great Blanqui.

Peeps might actually want to read him: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/blanqui/index.htm

[Sea]

I don't understand the hate for the great Blanqui.

Peeps might actually want to read him: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/blanqui/index.htmI'm pretty sure his name is merely being used to slander.

[Guayaco]

Look, I'm don't see the Bolsheviks as some kind of superhumans who could have flown in the face of material reality, nor could they have. The Bolsheviks did the only thing the material conditions allowed them to do- develop Russian capitalism, since you cannot impose socialism from above onto a population that neither wants or understands what a socialist society entails. I have absolutely no illusions about what Lenin or the Bolsheviks did or could have done. I am just stating the facts as I see them. It is idealists like yourself who seem to think the Bolsheviks were, or could have been, something other than what the circumstances required them to be - the administers of state-run capitalism.

Lenin himself admitted as much when he said that the success of the Russian Revolution was contingent on the success of the Revolution in Europe. Marxist theory rules out Socialism in a primarily agrarian society (the Russian industrial working class was only 10% of the population).

In fact, Stalin´s forced industrialization was the logical corollary to Socialism in One Country (an idea that appealed to a war-weary party). The use of coercion and force- and the abandonment of Socialism in the name of Socialism- was the only way to accomplish this rapid industrialization.

It is very clear that Lenin´s analysis was correct.

[robbo203]

Lenin himself admitted as much when he said that the success of the Russian Revolution was contingent on the success of the Revolution in Europe. Marxist theory rules out Socialism in a primarily agrarian society (the Russian industrial working class was only 10% of the population).

In fact, Stalin´s forced industrialization was the logical corollary to Socialism in One Country (an idea that appealed to a war-weary party). The use of coercion and force- and the abandonment of Socialism in the name of Socialism- was the only way to accomplish this rapid industrialization.

It is very clear that Lenin´s analysis was correct.



This is slightly misleading though true up to a point, The point that Gladiator made, however, still stands - you cannot impose socialism on a population that neither understands or wants it, Hypothetically speaking, if a "revolution in Europe" had materialised while Russia was still in a situation in which, as Lenin himself candidly admitted, the great majority simply had no idea of socialism, what then? You would still not have been able to have had socialism

If we are to brutally honest with ourselves there was simply no prospect at all of a revolution in Europe at the time. Socialist ideas had simply not yet taken root in any significant way The European working class had just been patriotically butchering each other in their masters' cause. The vast majority of workers everywhere were essentially no more than reform minded and looking to capitalist political parties for their salvation and material advancement - including , of course, the parties of the erstwhile Second International who had completely sold out on any socialist pretension they once had.

If things had been different in Europe perhaps it could indeed have had knock-on consequences for Russia - not immediately but over time - which might have transformed the prevailing social outlook into a socialist one. Who knows? Its all academic now anyway.

The point is that the Bolsheviks completely misjudged the situation in Europe and you have to wonder why that was the case if Lenins analysis was as correct as you claim it was...

[Comrade Marxist Bro]

You would be correct except for one little detail which both you and l'Enfermé have overlooked. Lenin did NOT say , socialism is merely a "state monopoly" which is made to serve the interests of the whole people. He said quite clearly , socialism is merely a state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people as opposed to the interests of the capitalists alone

But he effectively is saying that. He called socialism "the next step forward from from state-capitalist monopoly." Once you take the state-capitalist monopoly away from the capitalist state it is no longer a state-capitalist monopoly. What else could Lenin have meant by "socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly"? Why did he italicize the word "ceased"?


It is pretty obvious what Lenin was trying to do and both of you have missed this point completely. He was trying to distinguish between different kinds of state capitalism , one particular kind of which he identified as "socialism". This becomes clearer when you consider the following quote from a speech that Lenin made at the Third Congress Of The Communist International in June 22-July 12, 1921:

But state capitalism in a society where power belongs to capital, and state capitalism in a proletarian state, are two different concepts. In a capitalist state, state capitalism means that it is recognised by the state and controlled by it for the benefit of the bourgeoisie, and to the detriment of the proletariat. In the proletarian state, the same thing is done for the benefit of the working class, for the purpose of withstanding the as yet strong bourgeoisie, and of fighting it.(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jun/12.htm)

Yes, but the "state capitalism in a proletarian state" Lenin was referring to here was the New Economic Policy (NEP). It was a concession to private capital, forced upon the Bolsheviks as a result of the destruction of the Russian economy through war and the peasants' demand for petit-bourgeois capitalism.

Since the peasants still constituted the vast majority of Russia's population, NEP was essentially the best Lenin could do because of the conditions Russia was in. The Bolsheviks had had to maintain an alliance with the peasants, as they had done from the very beginning of the revolution.

In order to maintain political power, the Bolsheviks were forced to backtrack from an immediate transition to socialism. So they adopted NEP. Lenin referred to it as "state capitalism in a proletarian state."

In fact, Lenin famously described NEP as a "retreat" on the transition from capitalism to socialism. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/oct/17.htm The next great matter was the famous argument about socialism in one country.

It's absolutely clear that the Bolsheviks did not regard socialism as a variety of "state capitalism." Of course, you can get the opposite impression by taking Lenin's quotes out of context.

[Comrade #138672]

As far as I'm aware, Lenin never used the term socialist (in a context that makes it distinct from communist) to describe his outlook. Lenin used the term communist for that. Perhaps it would help you to think of Lenin's concept of socialism as a period of socialization.

As far a minority still retaining control being something that's necessary in state capitalism, that sort of loses its validity if the state is accountable to the workers.I'm quite sure that he has used Socialism in his writings.

Edit: Oh, I see. Distinct from Communism. Never mind then.

[Art Vandelay]

This is slightly misleading though true up to a point, The point that Gladiator made, however, still stands - you cannot impose socialism on a population that neither understands or wants it, Hypothetically speaking, if a "revolution in Europe" had materialised while Russia was still in a situation in which, as Lenin himself candidly admitted, the great majority simply had no idea of socialism, what then? You would still not have been able to have had socialism

If we are to brutally honest with ourselves there was simply no prospect at all of a revolution in Europe at the time. Socialist ideas had simply not yet taken root in any significant way The European working class had just been patriotically butchering each other in their masters' cause. The vast majority of workers everywhere were essentially no more than reform minded and looking to capitalist political parties for their salvation and material advancement - including , of course, the parties of the erstwhile Second International who had completely sold out on any socialist pretension they once had.

If things had been different in Europe perhaps it could indeed have had knock-on consequences for Russia - not immediately but over time - which might have transformed the prevailing social outlook into a socialist one. Who knows? Its all academic now anyway.

The point is that the Bolsheviks completely misjudged the situation in Europe and you have to wonder why that was the case if Lenins analysis was as correct as you claim it was...

I'm sorry but this is absolute garbage. So I guess we can assume that since socialism wasn't on the page in Europe in 1917, then certainly it wasn't in 1918-1919, so I guess the German revolution, shouldn't of been supported. But then again if the material conditions weren't right then, they certainly weren't right 1871, so the Commune wasn't to be supported either.

Just come out and say it already, you would of been a supporter of the Mensheviks.

Bottom line, is that we shouldn't be looking at whether or not the material conditions exist within a state, for socialism to take root (we're internationalists after all who understand that socialism depends on the success of the global civil war) but rather whether or not the productive forces have sufficiently developed globally, for socialism to develop.

[robbo203]

But he effectively is saying that. He called socialism "the next step forward from from state-capitalist monopoly." Once you take the state-capitalist monopoly away from the capitalist state it is no longer a state-capitalist monopoly. What else could Lenin have meant by "socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly"? Why did he italicize the word "ceased"?.


No, Im sorry, but you are definitely misreading this.

When he says "socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly." he means by the latter "state capitalism in a society where power belongs to capital" - to put it in the words of the other quote I gave you

When he says "socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly" he means by this NOT that socialism has ceased to be a state capitalist monopoly - but, to use the other quote again - has become "state capitalism in a proletarian state" and no longer "state capitalism in a society where power belongs to capital"


There is absolutely no way way you can wriggle out of this one Saying that socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people" means precisely that Lenin is equating socialism with a state capitalist monopoly but is qualifying what he means by state capitalist monopoly


Lenin quite clearly differentiated between what he saw as different types of state capitalism so I really cannot see why you have such difficulty accepting this simple point - that for lenin in this case socialism was a particular form of state capitalist monopoly

[robbo203]

I'm sorry but this is absolute garbage. So I guess we can assume that since socialism wasn't on the page in Europe in 1917, then certainly it wasn't in 1918-1919, so I guess the German revolution, shouldn't of been supported. But then again if the material conditions weren't right then, they certainly weren't right 1871, so the Commune wasn't to be supported either.

Just come out and say it already, you would of been a supporter of the Mensheviks.

Bottom line, is that we shouldn't be looking at whether or not the material conditions exist within a state, for socialism to take root (we're internationalists after all who understand that socialism depends on the success of the global civil war) but rather whether or not the productive forces have sufficiently developed globally, for socialism to develop.

Dont be ridiculous. Whether or not one "supported" the Paris Commune or the Spart uprising is neither here nor there and it not what is being discussed. What is being discussed is what is required in order to establish socialism and those requirements were conspicuous by their absence in both these cases as well as of course in the Russian Reveolution.

And, no, for your information I would not have been a supporter of the Mensheviks anymore than i would have supported the Bolsheviks. You would be well advised to be a little less cocky in presuming to read other peoples' mind

[Let's Get Free]

I'm certainly not one of those idealists, rest assured. How the Bolsheviks were planning on going about this is, I think, wrapped up quite well in the theory of a vanguard party.

Lenin’s vanguardism is a fundamental denial of the basic socialist – and Marxist – proposition that the emancipation of the working class “must be the work of the working class itself”. There is no way that a cooperative socialist society could be created by a minority vanguard party, and so Bolshevik tactics were quite useless from the socialist perspective – even dangerous.
An actual revolutionary period for the working class already presupposes a mass organization with an independent, class-strugglist program that commands majority political support from the working class.


Freedom of speech for anarchists and socialists? That's absurd. Anarchists would jump at the chance to spout their condemnation of the revolution. I also get the creeping feeling that by "socialists" you mean petty-bourgeois Mensheviks, social-democrats and the like. After all, these are the ones that would want to speak out against Bolshevism. I'm not sure at all why you would support trade unions in this specific case. I don't say that in the way of a right-wing union buster, I say that considering that unions are only a solution if you think patronizing the workers is better than freeing them.

The Bolsheviks were based on the dictatorship of a single party which led unavoidably to the repression of all freedom of speech, press, organization, and action, even for revolutionary tendencies. The Bolshevik leaders had once and for all identified the Revolution with the Bolshevik Party, and anything which went against this myth must, in their eyes, appear as "counter-revolutionary." Kronstadt frightened them the most, since they were governing in the name of the proletariat and, suddenly, their authority was being disputed by a movement which they knew to be authentically proletarian.


I'd like some sources on this.
http://www.revolutioninretreat.com/article906.pdf

http://www.prole.info/texts/factorycommitteesinrussia.html


The first two sentances of your quote should let you know that Engels was speaking on capitalist states. Capitalist as in France, the USA, England, etc. As it's been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, Marx and Engels both supported a revolutionary state seizing sections of bourgeois production via nationalization. Perhaps you should be rooting around for Bakunin quotes instead.

I think Robbo has already explained this.


How does a vanguard party lead to such disaster? You think that having even a smidgeon of power magically makes you corrupt?

Well, vanguard parties tend to be opportunistic, as all forms of concentrated power are. Who was it that overthrow that archetypal "workers state", the mother of all "workers states" - the Soviet Union? That's right - the red fat cats, your glorious fucking vanguard party. How ironic is it that Lenin's vanguard party who was supposed to lead the Soviet workers to socialism opted for corporate capitalism at the first sign of trouble?

[Art Vandelay]

Dont be ridiculous. Whether or not one "supported" the Paris Commune or the Spart uprising is neither here nor there and it not what is being discussed. What is being discussed is what is required in order to establish socialism and those requirements were conspicuous by their absence in both these cases as well as of course in the Russian Reveolution.

What matters is whether or not the productive forces have sufficiently developed globally for socialism to emerge. The genuine Bolsheviks knew that isolated they were doomed.

[robbo203]

What matters is whether or not the productive forces have sufficiently developed globally for socialism to emerge. The genuine Bolsheviks knew that isolated they were doomed.

It is not just a question of whether the productve forces were sufficiently developed; it is also a question of whether or not there was mass socialist consciousness in the sense of a majority wanting and understanding socialism. There clearly was not - either in Russia or anywhere else in the world at the time and, to that extent, the point about Russia's isolation is a complete red herring .

Even if hypothetically Europe had had genuine socialist majorities at the time - as opposed to the mass social democratic, reformist and pro-capitalist labour parties that actually existed - it would still not have been possible to introduce socialism in Russa at the time given the clear absence of support for it as acknowleged by Lenin himself. It is simply not possible to impose socialism on a population anywhere that neither understands it or wants it. But then this is academic since had Europe actually experienced a massive movement towards socialism, it is inconceivable that socialist ideas would not have made themselves felt elsewhere too on a massive scale - including Russia. Which is not to adopt a eurocentric position. merely to point out that socialist ideas know no boundaries.

The lack of support for socialism in one part of the world is thus in a sense proof positive of the lack of support elsewhere in the world as well.

[Geiseric]

For the record, kronstadt was in reaction to a grain seizure by the bolsheviks done to the rich peasants. All of the leaders of kronstadt were peasantry based, many of them sons of kulaks. Its no secret that the entire uprising needed support from the french and white forces inside of finland, if it carried on, and on top of that those armies were ready to invade and walk right into petrograd. Also the vanguard party were all killed off by the white army or stalin at some point or another, if anything re affirming that generation of revolutionary wokers importance, seeing as there was hardly any mass political opposition to the bureaucracy, which was more or less the same as it was before the revolution.