Lenin's letter to American workers.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

So I was going through the archives of marxist.org and I found this neat little letter (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/aug/20.htm) that Lenin wrote to the workers of America.

In it, Lenin both praises the accomplishments of America (especially its revolution) and condemns the capitalist parasites that have been born out of America. It's mostly a call for support of the newly founded socialist state.

It's just a little reminder that the socialist cause is a truly international one. All who sympathize with the cause of worker's emancipation are comrades in arms.

[Rural Comrade]

Great Letter there. This also reminded us America though Capitalist and Imperialist did one great thing oust the King from our territory.

[Popular Front of Judea]

If you want to read something that will really cause you to think -- and rethink -- try reading Trotsky's letter to Americans:

If America Should Go Communist (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/08/ame.htm)

[Brutus]

Have read both letters before, and they are both brilliantly written. The last line of Lenin's letter really is the most brilliant line in the whole text

In short, we are invincible, because the world proletarian revolution is invincible.

[Mark the Leninist]

Great letter! Really points out the flaws that European imperialism has. Shame that there wasn't a people's revolution at that time here in the USA

[Popular Front of Judea]

The most poignant line in the letter is in the second to last paragraph:

We are now, as it were, in a besieged fortress, waiting for the other detachments of the world socialist revolution to come to our relief.

Alas the socialist cavalry never arrived. The die was cast.

[nizan]

The letter is shit. Lenin was an admirer of America not without due cause, he admired the heights of its alienation, the proficiency of its bourgeois in the art of diffuse exploitation, the effectiveness of its civil society in the spectrum of obscurification and consciousness.

Internationalist points, if you'd like, but not internationalist in the sense of revolution, as it has long since been shown by such history that class domination may too be international in its weight, just as well as the mass parties of the 'proletariat'.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

The letter is shit. Lenin was an admirer of America not without due cause, he admired the heights of its alienation, the proficiency of its bourgeois in the art of diffuse exploitation, the effectiveness of its civil society in the spectrum of obscurification and consciousness.

Internationalist points, if you'd like, but not internationalist in the sense of revolution, as it has long since been shown by such history that class domination may too be international in its weight, just as well as the mass parties of the 'proletariat'.

I'm not sure what you're trying to convey here. I don't believe that Lenin was defending the interests of the American state or bourgeois at all in this letter, especially since he refers to it as the newest player of imperial exploits.


As it has long since been shown by such history that class domination may too be international in its weight, just as well as the mass parties of the 'proletariat'.

This is particularly confusing.

[G4b3n]

If you want to read something that will really cause you to think -- and rethink -- try reading Trotsky's letter to Americans:

If America Should Go Communist (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/08/ame.htm)

I found the very last portion to be particularly humerus and extremely interesting. All though it appears that his prediction of one century is a bit off.

"While the romantic numskulls of Nazi Germany are dreaming of restoring the old race of Europe’s Dark Forest to its original purity, or rather its original filth, you Americans, after taking a firm grip on your economic machinery and your culture, will apply genuine scientific methods to the problem of eugenics. Within a century, out of your melting pot of races there will come a new breed of men – the first worthy of the name of Man."

[hashem]

that letter was translated to Farsi many years ago. i scanned the old book and its now available on internet.

this is my favourite part of the book:


"Let the corrupt bourgeois press shout to the whole world about every mistake our revolution makes. We are not daunted by our mistakes. People have not become saints because the revolution has begun. The toiling classes who for centuries have been oppressed, downtrodden and forcibly held in the vice of poverty, brutality and ignorance cannot avoid mistakes when making a revolution. And, as I pointed out once before, the corpse of bourgeois society cannot be nailed in a coffin and buried. The corpse of capitalism is decaying and disintegrating in our midst, polluting the air and poisoning our lives, enmeshing that which is new, fresh, young and virile in thousands of threads and bonds of that which is old, moribund and decaying.

For every hundred mistakes we commit, and which the bourgeoisie and their lackeys (including our own Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries) shout about to the whole world, 10,000 great and heroic deeds are performed, greater and more heroic because they are simple and inconspicuous amidst the everyday life of a factory district or a remote village, performed by people who are not accustomed (and have no opportunity) to shout to the whole world about their successes.

But even if the contrary were true—although I know such an assumption is wrong—even if we committed 10,000 mistake for every 100 correct actions we performed, even in that case our revolution would be great and invincible, and so it will be in the eyes of world history, because, for the first time, not the minority, not the rich alone, not the educated alone, but the real people, the vast majority of the working people, are themselves building a new life, are by their own experience solving the most difficult problems of socialist organization."

[nizan]

I'm not sure what you're trying to convey here. I don't believe that Lenin was defending the interests of the American state or bourgeois at all in this letter, especially since he refers to it as the newest player of imperial exploits.

This is particularly confusing.

Not directly, surely, but what was ever linguistically direct about the ideological chimera of 'soviet' power?

By supporting the models of American production, Lenin essentially finds himself supporting the infrastructure of commodity production, or, a direct production of its metaphysical nuance, a material embodiment of the logic of capitalistic development. Yes, he does not outright paint himself to be a friend of the American state or bourgeoisie, his preferences lay in the bureaucratic class of a more humane and democratic capitalism, but the division is only a disunity of unity in power, a division used to facilitate only the advancement of those factors of historical power which are relevant. In this case, the expansion of capital could be seen, after the Bolshevik Revolution, to be in a desirable scenario with a variety of capitalism's at its behest. Lenin assisted this project as the image of the negative.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

It's a great piece of rhetoric to get some sympathy from workers from the US, which was kind of essential because the country wasn't particularly liked by the rest of the countries.

But I don't really see much of theoretical or historical value in it. Lenin's work for and activity in the Zimmerwald Left are much more valuable for the question of internationalism than this. And it has more historical importance for the position of Lenin in the movement and the first steps in the forming of a new international, which would be the Comintern, after the collapse of the Second International.

[Rusty Shackleford]

I have a physical copy of this i picked up at a neat book store in San Francisco. (Bolerium if anyone is in the area)


Ill have to read it in earnest. only a buck. Such great stuff at that place.

[synthesis]

Captain Sadoul, a French army officer who, in words, sympathised with the Bolsheviks, but was in deeds a loyal and faithful servant of French imperialism, brought the French officer de Lubersac to see me... But this did not in the least prevent me from entering into an “agreement” with de Lubersac concerning certain services that French army officers, experts in explosives, were ready to render us by blowing up railway lines in order to hinder the German invasion. This is an example of an “agreement” of which every class-conscious worker will approve, an agreement in the interests of socialism... In this way we served the interests of the working class of Russia and of other countries, we strengthened the proletariat and weakened the bourgeoisie of the whole world, we resorted to the methods, most legitimate and essential in every war, of manoeuvre, stratagem, retreat, in anticipation of the moment when the rapidly maturing proletarian revolution in a number of advanced countries completely matured.

Man, this guy really likes patting himself on the back.

On the other hand...


We know that circumstances brought our Russian detachment of the socialist proletariat to the fore not because of our merits, but because of the exceptional backwardness of Russia, and that before the world revolution breaks out a number of separate revolutions may be defeated.

Although this carries the sweet scent of stagism, it's still an admirably honest sentiment.

Also, maybe I'm just ignorant, but I never knew Lenin was so into Eugene Debs.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Also, maybe I'm just ignorant, but I never knew Lenin was so into Eugene Debs.

He, and most other communists in Russia at the time, were dedicated anti-nationalists. If you said something like 'FOR ZE MOTHERLAND' during the Russian Revolution, you'd probably get shot.

[synthesis]

He, and most other communists in Russia at the time, were dedicated anti-nationalists. If you said something like 'FOR ZE MOTHERLAND' during the Russian Revolution, you'd probably get shot.

I'm not at all clear as to how this relates to the part you quoted. I just found it surprising because I think of them as having very different approaches to Marxist praxis - Lenin being the quintessential vanguard guy, who led an armed revolution, and Debs being a guy who made serious electoral efforts but also largely avoided substitutionism - and because I don't generally think of Debs as being the least bit internationalist in his political approach, if not his stated views.

They just strike me as apples and oranges in that period of Marxism, is all. I'm sure all of the conceptions I just listed are completely debatable.

[Ismail]

I'm not at all clear as to how this relates to the part you quoted. I just found it surprising because I think of them as having very different approaches to Marxist praxis - Lenin being the quintessential vanguard guy, who led an armed revolution, and Debs being a guy who made serious electoral efforts but also largely avoided substitutionism - and because I don't generally think of Debs as being the least bit internationalist in his political approach, if not his stated views.

They just strike me as apples and oranges in that period of Marxism, is all. I'm sure all of the conceptions I just listed are completely debatable.Debs was a revolutionary though, in that he sought the total transformation of society on the basis of the emancipation of labor. He lived in an era before Leninism made its mark on the world and his politics reflected this. What was important is that he, like De Leon (who in debates always liked to show how "all-American" socialists were and how it was supposedly the USA's historical destiny to bring socialism to the world), denounced imperialist war and opportunism, and consistently stood for the fundamental interests of the working-class despite lacking the path that would allow for carrying out said interests to the end.

The 1970's Great Soviet Encyclopedia sums up both men quite well:

Debs, Eugene Victor

Born Nov. 5, 1855, in Terre Haute, Ind.; died Oct. 20, 1926, in Elmhurst, Ill. A figure in the workers’ movement of the United States.

When Debs was 14, he began working for a railroad. In 1893 he headed the American Railway Union. The following year Debs was sentenced to prison for his leadership of the Pullman strike of 1894. In 1897-98, he helped create the Social Democratic Party of the United States, which became known as the Socialist Party in 1900-01. Debs was one of the leaders of the left wing of the Socialist Party and opposed the policy of class collaboration pursued by the leaders of the American Federation of Labor. In 1905 he helped found the trade union the Industrial Workers of the World. He was the most popular leader among the working masses and was called “the American Bebel” by V. I. Lenin (see Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 32, p. 100). He was nominated for president by the Socialist Party in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920. During World War I (1914-18), Debs maintained an internationalist position. He hailed the Great October Socialist revolution in Russia and opposed anti-Soviet intervention. In 1918, Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison for his active struggle against the war. He was granted amnesty in 1921. In his last years, he vacillated on the question of creating a revolutionary workers’ party of the new type in the United States and on many other questions, but he later became aware of his errors.
De Leon, Daniel

Born Dec. 4, 1852, on the island of Curasao, in the Netherlands Antilles; died May 11, 1914, in New York. A leader of the workers’ movement in the USA.

De Leon was educated in Germany, the Netherlands, and the USA, where he moved in 1872. He lectured in law at Columbia University from 1883 to 1889. In 1890 he joined the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) and soon became its leader and ideologist. In 1891, De Leon became the editor of People, the official organ of the SLP. He defended the idea of the class struggle and opposed craftguild mentality and the ideology of trade unionism. He led the struggle against the rightist and centrist leaders of the SLP and the reformist leaders of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). De Leon exposed the policy of the opportunist leaders of the Second International. However, he committed serious sectarian errors and ignored the significance of the struggle for the everyday demands of the workers. De Leon was defeated in the struggle within the AFL and called on socialists and revolutionary-minded workers to leave the organization. In 1905 he participated in the creation of the Industrial Workers of the World. At the same time, De Leon rejected the leading role of political parties in the labor movement and the necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat, thus in effect agreeing to the bourgeois theory that America was an exception to general historical laws.Keep in mind that the relatively few Americans in the early CPUSA were originally syndicalists (like Foster), anarchists, and former Socialist Party members whose first contacts with Lenin's theories came with the October Revolution. Debs was just about the best sort of socialist you could have been in America pre-1917.

[Brutus]

Good ol' reliable Ismail. Either GSE or Hoxha quotes.