The Role Of Ideology
3rd May 2004, 20:31
The problem is that your question is not a very good one.
The phrase "last true leader" suggests that when Fidel retires or dies, it will be the end of the line for us.
I can see why you would make an assumption like that; all of 20th century communism revolved around various and sundry "great leaders" and those who wanted to be. It was once thought that all you had to do was "pick a great leader" and "follow and obey" and communism would be achieved.
I hope we are finally in the process of learning better than that. Communist revolution is something achieved by an entire class; it is not the result of clever maneuvers by a "gifted elite" or "grand historical figure".
In a way, it would be good if Fidel is that "last true leader"...perhaps then we'd get that stupid "leadership monkey" off our backs and realize that we must all be "leaders" or communism ain't gonna happen.
I'm not sure how any of this relates to Lenin's works?
(She quit in disgust when the politburo refused to provide direct military assistance to the communist uprising in Finland...that was subsequently crushed by German troops.)
Why would the newborn Soviet republic risk the anger of the entire capitalist world by literally invading Finalnd?
Yes, Marx did indeed call for a "dictatorship of the proletariat"...a quasi-state apparatus that would have as its primary purpose the final crushing of bourgeois counter-revolutionary resistance.
There is no indication, in theory or in practice, that Marx endorsed either personal dictatorship in the form of "a great leader" or any kind of "elite" dictatorship over the working class itself
This is largely if not wholey in-line with Lenin's view on the dictatorship of the proletariat.
It is not a dictatorship of an individual but one of class over another class, with no 'great leaders' or in fact any leaders changing the nature of the class dictatorship lest it revert straight back to a borgoeis character. Which is another reason why Lenin advocates complete democracy and recountability of the leaders of this transitional quasi-state. Do you think you could find where in Lenin's writings he actually advocates a dictatorship of one or a group over the working class. The dictatorship/revolutionary govt as he wrote must 'never lose it's class nature'
The concept of a "vanguard leadership" and an elite dictatorship was a Leninist "patch" on the Marxist "program"...its purpose was to allow the program to be run on a "backward operating system": a semi-feudal society dominated by a superstitious peasantry.
No, but Marx never wrote about the replacement of free market with a planned economy either but would you say that that was 'un-marxist'?
The Vanguard party is probably the best practical apparatus for proletarians to operate by in a revolutionary system, without the proletariat becoming the vanguard of the revolution who knows what character it would take on? Semi-Borgeois in a Peasant revolution or a liberl/social-democratic sham revolution bringing about little real change.
Of course it can't really achieve socialism, much less communism.
Why not?
and does so in an era in which the emerging bourgeoisie in those semi-feudal countries are too "feeble" to resist the demands of imperialism.
Elaborate...
What is really harmful about Leninism is the attempt to apply it in advanced capitalist countries. The working class is sufficiently advanced as to understand almost at once that Leninism will simply replace old bosses with new ones. Who needs that?
How do you mean? The party beruecracy or some other post-Lenin revamp that the revisionists brought into practice?
These accusations really need examples, an interesting one would be an application of Leninism in the advanced west!
In practice, the Leninist parties in the west have been almost always reformist, even if the rhetoric was sometimes better. The German KPD was probably the "best" of the lot; the French CPF was almost certainly the worst.
The German KPD was never Leninist; as the Spatacist league and the CP under Luxembourg it opposed and was critical of the Russian revolution. Even after the death of Luxembourg it never fell inline with the 3rd international or Lenin. Just reading into 'Left-wing communism - an infantile disorder' we can see Lenin's distaste for the party and it's methods/policies. After Lenin's death we can hardly see the leading KPD members as anything other than social fascists (E.g. sharing the stand at rallies with the Nazis against the Social-democrats).
What was wrong with the PCF of Lenin's time anyway?
The actual effect of 20th century Leninism in the west has been to discredit Marx
Depends what you define '20th century Leninism' as. Personally I would blame stalinism for the incredible set-back that the communist movement has faced.
I am not now nor will I ever be a candidate for "leader" of anything.
Except the theory forum :P.
Well, my basic response to your post is that you simply assert things to be true that seem to me to be dubious or wrong.
Perhaps on paper the procedures that you describe in North Korea exist...in fact, perhaps they exist in reality...but neither you nor I have any first-hand reliable knowledge of what really goes on there.
Looking at revolutions where we do have a multitude of first-hand sources, such as Russia or Spain or the May 1968 events in France, what is the first thing we notice? The tremendous ferment among the masses, the raging debates, the furious controversies, the struggle not merely against the material power of the old ruling class but against what Marx called "all the old shit."
Where is even the faintest hint, the merest trace of such ferment in North Korea? All we hear from North Korea (be it true or not) is "praise to the Great Leader".
Do you really believe that communism is simply a bunch of hard-working ants busy doing ant-stuff without a thought of anything else?
What a stunted, dismal, boring vision of communism.
Marx had a name for this (as he had for many things): he called it barracks communism and Prussian communism. He had a pretty low opinion of it.
So do I.
What has any of this got to do with Leninism?
It has been asserted millions of times that Leninism is a "natural development" of Marxism...but that doesn't make it true.
You could say that but then again, Marx is dead so we will never know it is more of an 'extension' of Marxism.
There is nothing in Marx about vanguard parties or "great leaders".
There is nothing in Lenin about Great leaders either.
There is nothing in Marx about "socialist" revolutions in pre-capitalist countries.
Neither was there in Lenin really, the Russian revolution was to at best 'spark workers revolt in western nations' rather than form the foundation of the first workers state.
The notion of "professional revolutionary" cannot be found in Marx, nor the idea that the working class can "only develop trade-union consciousness". No reference can be found in Marx to the idea of "democratic centralism"
Does that make it wrong? How can you govern all revolutionary action just by what Marx wrote years and years ago? The Rules of the Communist League and the International Workingmen's Association of Marx's day are based on the same principles of democratic centralism, reflecting the organisational norms of the working class of their day. However, it was Lenin who was first to make a special study of working class organisation and coined the term.
Even the idea of socialism as a transition stage to communism is un-Marxist...
How so? Socialism was just the buzzword give to the lower phase of communism rather than muddling around 'higher or lower' all the time.
There is nothing in Marx about worker-peasant alliances
Again, so what? Without worker peasant alliances the revolution gains a steadfast and terrible enemy. The peasantry like it or not is a necessary ally for the success of the revolution.
or "people's democracies"
this was not an idea of Lenin's it was what Stalin imposed on Soviet buffer states to bring them into line with his imperialist foreign policy.
In fact, the only real "Marxist" work by Lenin is Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism. (I'm not counting State and Revolution because he just copied everything from Marx and Engels in that one.)
How so? What is 'un-Marxist' about the rest of them? This whole 'un-Marxist' thing pangs of 'un-American' delving even into McCarthyism.
But, that's it. All the rest of Leninism is a patch. If it were written "Marxism + Leninism", the relationship, both historical and logical, would be a lot clearer.
This is almost as infantile as the whole 'McCartney-Lennon, Lennon-McCartney' dispute.
(Maoism, by the way, is a logical extension of Leninism...if your group called itself "Leninist-Maoist" that would be much closer to an accurate ideological description.)
How so? How can you connect the peasant and agricultural and 'new democracy' emphasis of Mao to Lenin's industrial and proletarian manifesto?
I said that the working class in the advanced capitalist countries have been quick to recognize Leninism as just a new bunch of boss-wannabes...and somehow you converted that into a non-class issue of abstract leaders, followers, and rebels. No, it is a class issue: all bosses are bad!
So all Lenisnists are power-hungry boss-wanabees? Generalisation anyone?
The documented answer is clearly no to the first question. As to the second question, the experience of history is that Leninism works...but only in pre-capitalist countries.
Not necessarily, it was the effectiveness of the Leninist vanguard organisation that destined the communists to be the effective leaders of the wartime resistence in occupied nations and to inflict the worst damage to the invaders. It was their fierce war-time actions that won european communist parties such high election results after the war was over. It even boiled down to revolution in Yugoslavia and Albania!
In the advanced capitalist countries, it has pretty much always degenerated into what Lenin himself properly called "parliamentary cretinism".
Indeed European CPs all seem to of regressed to parliamentary cretinism. But is this the fault of Leninism? I doubt it, personally I blame the oppurtunism of the leaders and the blindness of these conditions of the rank and file members.
That's "too good" to let go of, even though all the Leninists that I've heard of or read about have, at best, very distant plans in that direction. The immediate Leninist plan in every country is: "Put Us in Power and we'll treat you better than the bosses you have now."
In which direction emancipation from wage-slavery? In what way do Leninists oppose this? It has to be a gradual process in the same way that the socialist transition has to be. Anyway isn't the 'we'll treat you better than the other guy' what everyone says? Strategy has to overcome all feelings of undying loyalty and dogmatism to Marx's exact words.
As to the Leninist-Maoist global strategy--that "socialism" will sweep across the pre-capitalist and semi-feudal countries, chopping out the material supports of the imperialist countries...causing, at long last, proletarian revolution in the "west"--I'm sceptical, to say the least.
In which of his writings did Lenin say this?
Anyway avoiding all the rhetoric, that about wraps it up. I look forward to your response :)
Cheers,
Matt
The phrase "last true leader" suggests that when Fidel retires or dies, it will be the end of the line for us.
I can see why you would make an assumption like that; all of 20th century communism revolved around various and sundry "great leaders" and those who wanted to be. It was once thought that all you had to do was "pick a great leader" and "follow and obey" and communism would be achieved.
I hope we are finally in the process of learning better than that. Communist revolution is something achieved by an entire class; it is not the result of clever maneuvers by a "gifted elite" or "grand historical figure".
In a way, it would be good if Fidel is that "last true leader"...perhaps then we'd get that stupid "leadership monkey" off our backs and realize that we must all be "leaders" or communism ain't gonna happen.
I'm not sure how any of this relates to Lenin's works?
(She quit in disgust when the politburo refused to provide direct military assistance to the communist uprising in Finland...that was subsequently crushed by German troops.)
Why would the newborn Soviet republic risk the anger of the entire capitalist world by literally invading Finalnd?
Yes, Marx did indeed call for a "dictatorship of the proletariat"...a quasi-state apparatus that would have as its primary purpose the final crushing of bourgeois counter-revolutionary resistance.
There is no indication, in theory or in practice, that Marx endorsed either personal dictatorship in the form of "a great leader" or any kind of "elite" dictatorship over the working class itself
This is largely if not wholey in-line with Lenin's view on the dictatorship of the proletariat.
It is not a dictatorship of an individual but one of class over another class, with no 'great leaders' or in fact any leaders changing the nature of the class dictatorship lest it revert straight back to a borgoeis character. Which is another reason why Lenin advocates complete democracy and recountability of the leaders of this transitional quasi-state. Do you think you could find where in Lenin's writings he actually advocates a dictatorship of one or a group over the working class. The dictatorship/revolutionary govt as he wrote must 'never lose it's class nature'
The concept of a "vanguard leadership" and an elite dictatorship was a Leninist "patch" on the Marxist "program"...its purpose was to allow the program to be run on a "backward operating system": a semi-feudal society dominated by a superstitious peasantry.
No, but Marx never wrote about the replacement of free market with a planned economy either but would you say that that was 'un-marxist'?
The Vanguard party is probably the best practical apparatus for proletarians to operate by in a revolutionary system, without the proletariat becoming the vanguard of the revolution who knows what character it would take on? Semi-Borgeois in a Peasant revolution or a liberl/social-democratic sham revolution bringing about little real change.
Of course it can't really achieve socialism, much less communism.
Why not?
and does so in an era in which the emerging bourgeoisie in those semi-feudal countries are too "feeble" to resist the demands of imperialism.
Elaborate...
What is really harmful about Leninism is the attempt to apply it in advanced capitalist countries. The working class is sufficiently advanced as to understand almost at once that Leninism will simply replace old bosses with new ones. Who needs that?
How do you mean? The party beruecracy or some other post-Lenin revamp that the revisionists brought into practice?
These accusations really need examples, an interesting one would be an application of Leninism in the advanced west!
In practice, the Leninist parties in the west have been almost always reformist, even if the rhetoric was sometimes better. The German KPD was probably the "best" of the lot; the French CPF was almost certainly the worst.
The German KPD was never Leninist; as the Spatacist league and the CP under Luxembourg it opposed and was critical of the Russian revolution. Even after the death of Luxembourg it never fell inline with the 3rd international or Lenin. Just reading into 'Left-wing communism - an infantile disorder' we can see Lenin's distaste for the party and it's methods/policies. After Lenin's death we can hardly see the leading KPD members as anything other than social fascists (E.g. sharing the stand at rallies with the Nazis against the Social-democrats).
What was wrong with the PCF of Lenin's time anyway?
The actual effect of 20th century Leninism in the west has been to discredit Marx
Depends what you define '20th century Leninism' as. Personally I would blame stalinism for the incredible set-back that the communist movement has faced.
I am not now nor will I ever be a candidate for "leader" of anything.
Except the theory forum :P.
Well, my basic response to your post is that you simply assert things to be true that seem to me to be dubious or wrong.
Perhaps on paper the procedures that you describe in North Korea exist...in fact, perhaps they exist in reality...but neither you nor I have any first-hand reliable knowledge of what really goes on there.
Looking at revolutions where we do have a multitude of first-hand sources, such as Russia or Spain or the May 1968 events in France, what is the first thing we notice? The tremendous ferment among the masses, the raging debates, the furious controversies, the struggle not merely against the material power of the old ruling class but against what Marx called "all the old shit."
Where is even the faintest hint, the merest trace of such ferment in North Korea? All we hear from North Korea (be it true or not) is "praise to the Great Leader".
Do you really believe that communism is simply a bunch of hard-working ants busy doing ant-stuff without a thought of anything else?
What a stunted, dismal, boring vision of communism.
Marx had a name for this (as he had for many things): he called it barracks communism and Prussian communism. He had a pretty low opinion of it.
So do I.
What has any of this got to do with Leninism?
It has been asserted millions of times that Leninism is a "natural development" of Marxism...but that doesn't make it true.
You could say that but then again, Marx is dead so we will never know it is more of an 'extension' of Marxism.
There is nothing in Marx about vanguard parties or "great leaders".
There is nothing in Lenin about Great leaders either.
There is nothing in Marx about "socialist" revolutions in pre-capitalist countries.
Neither was there in Lenin really, the Russian revolution was to at best 'spark workers revolt in western nations' rather than form the foundation of the first workers state.
The notion of "professional revolutionary" cannot be found in Marx, nor the idea that the working class can "only develop trade-union consciousness". No reference can be found in Marx to the idea of "democratic centralism"
Does that make it wrong? How can you govern all revolutionary action just by what Marx wrote years and years ago? The Rules of the Communist League and the International Workingmen's Association of Marx's day are based on the same principles of democratic centralism, reflecting the organisational norms of the working class of their day. However, it was Lenin who was first to make a special study of working class organisation and coined the term.
Even the idea of socialism as a transition stage to communism is un-Marxist...
How so? Socialism was just the buzzword give to the lower phase of communism rather than muddling around 'higher or lower' all the time.
There is nothing in Marx about worker-peasant alliances
Again, so what? Without worker peasant alliances the revolution gains a steadfast and terrible enemy. The peasantry like it or not is a necessary ally for the success of the revolution.
or "people's democracies"
this was not an idea of Lenin's it was what Stalin imposed on Soviet buffer states to bring them into line with his imperialist foreign policy.
In fact, the only real "Marxist" work by Lenin is Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism. (I'm not counting State and Revolution because he just copied everything from Marx and Engels in that one.)
How so? What is 'un-Marxist' about the rest of them? This whole 'un-Marxist' thing pangs of 'un-American' delving even into McCarthyism.
But, that's it. All the rest of Leninism is a patch. If it were written "Marxism + Leninism", the relationship, both historical and logical, would be a lot clearer.
This is almost as infantile as the whole 'McCartney-Lennon, Lennon-McCartney' dispute.
(Maoism, by the way, is a logical extension of Leninism...if your group called itself "Leninist-Maoist" that would be much closer to an accurate ideological description.)
How so? How can you connect the peasant and agricultural and 'new democracy' emphasis of Mao to Lenin's industrial and proletarian manifesto?
I said that the working class in the advanced capitalist countries have been quick to recognize Leninism as just a new bunch of boss-wannabes...and somehow you converted that into a non-class issue of abstract leaders, followers, and rebels. No, it is a class issue: all bosses are bad!
So all Lenisnists are power-hungry boss-wanabees? Generalisation anyone?
The documented answer is clearly no to the first question. As to the second question, the experience of history is that Leninism works...but only in pre-capitalist countries.
Not necessarily, it was the effectiveness of the Leninist vanguard organisation that destined the communists to be the effective leaders of the wartime resistence in occupied nations and to inflict the worst damage to the invaders. It was their fierce war-time actions that won european communist parties such high election results after the war was over. It even boiled down to revolution in Yugoslavia and Albania!
In the advanced capitalist countries, it has pretty much always degenerated into what Lenin himself properly called "parliamentary cretinism".
Indeed European CPs all seem to of regressed to parliamentary cretinism. But is this the fault of Leninism? I doubt it, personally I blame the oppurtunism of the leaders and the blindness of these conditions of the rank and file members.
That's "too good" to let go of, even though all the Leninists that I've heard of or read about have, at best, very distant plans in that direction. The immediate Leninist plan in every country is: "Put Us in Power and we'll treat you better than the bosses you have now."
In which direction emancipation from wage-slavery? In what way do Leninists oppose this? It has to be a gradual process in the same way that the socialist transition has to be. Anyway isn't the 'we'll treat you better than the other guy' what everyone says? Strategy has to overcome all feelings of undying loyalty and dogmatism to Marx's exact words.
As to the Leninist-Maoist global strategy--that "socialism" will sweep across the pre-capitalist and semi-feudal countries, chopping out the material supports of the imperialist countries...causing, at long last, proletarian revolution in the "west"--I'm sceptical, to say the least.
In which of his writings did Lenin say this?
Anyway avoiding all the rhetoric, that about wraps it up. I look forward to your response :)
Cheers,
Matt