Leninism...

[Lamanov]

Leninism... " :unsure: ummmm "

When we say "Leninism" what do we mean by it : Lenin's scientific contribution to marxism or his political formulas and his politicized practice democratic dictatureship of proletariat and peasantry] ??

These two in some/much cases [how ever you like it] stand in opposition, allthough his deviated practice was a necesity, due to "unmarxist conditions" of the revolutionary ground, deviating from his "marxist work". But some, again, were a clear mistake, which in most cases led to later - rather easy - Stalinist usurpation .
Here, I'm confused, and I need to make it clear so when I say "Leninism" [or Marxism-Leninism], I don't have this duality in my head. Noam Chomsky calls his "State and Revolution" a [i]"intelectual deviation". I would rather call his practice a deviation. But still - question remains - what do we think when we say "Leninism" ??

[RedLenin]

Leninism refers to lenins contributions to marxism. His most famous is that of the vanguard party. Lenin believed that the proletariat needed strong, centralized, revolutionary leadership to acheive socialism. He said that without this proletarian vanguard, the proletariat would just be interested in reform, not revolution. The idea of the vanguard party was to lead the workers in the right direction.


democratic dictatureship of proletariat and peasantry

By this he meant what marx did, the suppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat. I however think he carried it out wrong. Marx said himself, "the proletariat cannot simply take hold of the ready-made state machinery". I believe that, since the proletariat is a majority class, centralized authoritarian institutions like the state cannot be used for socialist pouposes.

According to most, Leninism is an extention of marxism. I, however, view it as a step in the wrong direction. I think he took what marx said and carried it out wrong. The only way to have a proletarian revolution is to give all power directly to the workers themselves, not a vanguard or "professional revolutionaries".

[Poum_1936]

Leninism refers to lenins contributions to marxism.

What Cobra said.


He said that without this proletarian vanguard, the proletariat would just be interested in reform, not revolution.

Not so. The party is there to give the workers an already though out idea of events that need to transpire (i.e. socialism). Lenin changed his idea (more Kautsky's really) that the workers can reach nothing more than a tade union consciousness during the events of 1905.


I think he took what marx said and carried it out wrong.

Not everything always goes according to plan. One needs to always look at the conditions surrounding the actions.


Noam Chomsky calls his "State and Revolution" a "intelectual deviation".

What do you expect from an "anarchist"? Chomsky is a jackass. Has some really good works but is a jackass when it comes to Marxism.

http://www.marxist.com/Theory/chomsky_part2.htm

[Lamanov]

I've allready red Heiko Khoo's critique of N.Chomsky. However, I still don't get an answer to what is Leninism between the science and sometimes bad politics.

"Democratic dictatorship of the Proletariat and peasantry" is not a marxist concept. It is a political necesity lying in the cotroversial center of the revolutionary conditions in Russia. "Dictatorship of the proletariat" [a class for itself - through worker's democracy takes dictatorial controll] IS!

[Bolshevist]

You cannot criticize Lenin for wanting to include the peasantry in the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry since they were not only heavily exploited, they also constituted of 80% of the Russian population pre-revolution.

[Social Greenman]

Why do Communist in the U.S. and Canada still hold to central planning and a vanguard party? There is anti-statist setiments through out the U.S. What may have once worked in the beginning in the Soviet Union, being backward industrally, does not hold true today. Therefore a new type of governence and economics should be discussed by Communist. I do advocate Socialist Industrial Unionism and Time Labor Vouchers but I don't understand how SIU was considered dogmatic considering the Soviet model was far more rigid with a top down administration.

[JC1]

Not so. The party is there to give the workers an already though out idea of events that need to transpire (i.e. socialism). Lenin changed his idea (more Kautsky's really) that the workers can reach nothing more than a tade union consciousness during the events of 1905.


I think that this issue needs to be disscused. Lenin said in "What is to be done" that the Intelgensia was required within the workers movement. I beleive he thought this becuase at that point the prolatariat was never a force that orginizied its self. Look at the Communist League of Marx and Engels , it was not orginizied by workers but by intelectuals , Or Mao's guerillias , witch was a student driven orginization witch planted counsince in the minds of the peasentry and working class .

However, Lenin also knew this was a stage that the [Immature] Prolatariat required orginization from without. But did he believe this was a permant requirement ? By 1907 he was already saying that the Russian Working Class could discard the petit-bourgoise . You see , comrades , I think there is 2 things we take into consideration when looking at WITBD .

1) It was primarily a polemic against plekhanov

2) When lenin talked about the requirment of the Middle class he was making refrence to Working Classes just begining to develop its Class Counsince and Advanced Section .

Sorry for this lil' Tirades spelling in advance. Im just interested to see the reaction of the members of this anarchist poluted board =D .

[Social Greenman]

Even in 1905 American workers had advanced to Industrial unionism. Unfortunately workers in America were more class conscious than they are today. To develope class consciousness in the U.S and Canada efforts have to be made to educate the workers. However, the workers are going to ask "by what method?" or what structure or type of socialism. Socialism is going to have to relate to workers social and private interest. Vauge proclaimations of free health care and education won't cut it for most of them when they have false beliefs that they themseves could become capitalist--and in rare cases it does happen. If we are to say the Soviet model then they might open their zippers and pee on you. It's time for a different approach since Communism had it's day and failed.

[JC1]

Even in 1905 American workers had advanced to Industrial unionism. Unfortunately workers in America were more class conscious than they are today. To develope class consciousness in the U.S and Canada efforts have to be made to educate the workers. However, the workers are going to ask "by what method?" or what structure or type of socialism. Socialism is going to have to relate to workers social and private interest. Vauge proclaimations of free health care and education won't cut it for most of them when they have false beliefs that they themseves could become capitalist--and in rare cases it does happen. If we are to say the Soviet model then they might open their zippers and pee on you. It's time for a different approach since Communism had it's day and failed.

This is true , however Industrial America in '05 had a much more developed Workin' Class in Cousince and other factors that Fuedal Russia in '05 . However the bolshevists had alot less ground to cover and so by '17 most workers had socialist cousince to some degree or another.

But the Statement about vague statemnts is correct. Thats why lenin said we must connect the immidate demands with the struggle for socialism.

[NovelGentry]

Thats why lenin said we must connect the immidate demands with the struggle for socialism.

And thus dilute the masses who do understand the struggle for socialism (very few), with a pummel of reactionary peasantry, handicraftsmen, small merchants, and even military who hear, "Bread, Peace, and Land!"

The immediate demands are just as easily fulfilled by any propagandist who knows what the demands of the masses are and wishes to appeal to them, connecting them to a particular struggle, especially that of socialism in a quasi-feudal-capitalism, is a fallacy.

To answer the original poster's question, when one thinks of Leninism, they should think of the defunct ideology that doesn't even pertain to 90% of the world, and didn't even pertain to the rest of Europe and the US at that time. Leninism is a feasible way to advance small early-capitalist or "imperialized" nations with limited development of infrastructure towards sovereign state capitalist nations, and that's about it.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by DJ-TC+--> (DJ-TC)Noam Chomsky calls his "State and Revolution" a "intellectual deviation". I would rather call his practice a deviation. But still - question remains - what do we think when we say "Leninism" ??[/b]

It seems to me that in terms of social impact that it is Leninist practice that has had far more influence than the Lenin who wrote State and Revolution.

In practical terms, Lenin made the role of the party and especially its leadership central to the entire communist project...without it, you just "can't do anything" of consequence within the Leninist paradigm.

That was a very sharp break with the views of Marx...who said bluntly that the emancipation of the workers must be the work of the workers themselves.

So when I use the word "Leninism", I am talking about that view which says: Proletarian revolution is primarily the product of a correct and disciplined leadership.

When Leninists fail at revolution, it's "because" the leadership was "incorrect" or the party was "not disciplined enough" or both. When spontaneous revolutions fail, it's "because" they altogether "lacked correct Leninist leadership".

The Maoist variant of Leninism, with its strong emphasis on the landless peasantry as "the revolutionary class" in the "third world" has had some practical success...and may be even more successful in this century.

But in the advanced capitalist countries, both the "Stalinist" and the "Trotskyist" variants of Leninism have come to grief...they have simply been uniformly unable to lead a successful proletarian revolution.

When someone tells you that they "know how" to perform some difficult task...and yet they continually fail to actually "do it", our skepticism of further such claims should be overwhelming.

How many times do they have to "get it wrong" before it is only reasonable to conclude that they can never "get it right"?

Whatever criticisms may be legitimately made of other strategies does not alter the inescapable conclusion that Leninism is fundamentally wrong.


JC1
I'm just interested to see the reaction of the members of this anarchist polluted board.

Be nice! :)

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Social Greenman]

What are those demands? I don't think trying to bring about reforms in laws with capitalism would produce any desired effects when capitalism is made to have a happy smiley face. Workers are going to think capitalism can be made workable and serve their interest. Back in the 1970's, when I was much younger, most of us knew that work was easy to come by with wages that were easy to live off of and benfits were 100 percent covered by the employer. Since capitalism is showing its more ugly side with reduced wages and benefits including cuts and underfunding of social programs, what were the results? Revolutionary tendencies have arisen is differing parts of the U.S. and Canada.

Therefore, I ask, by what method would convince the majority of workers that socialism is a positive alternative to capitalism? The ideas of American and Canadian workers about the Soviet Union is about repression, workers having no say in how to produce commodities in a better way without being labeled disloyal and/or insorbordinate, food items on the way to distributions centers were rotted before they got there. Most of these claims were true. If administrators in plants wanted to make changes in production or distribution he/she would have to submit it to Gosplan, Gosplan would submit it to the Communist Executive Committee, the CEC would vote yea or nay, pass their decision back down to Gosplan, Gosplan would inform the administrators of the decision. No wonder the Russians decided to scrap the whole thing.

[JC1]

And thus dilute the masses who do understand the struggle for socialism (very few), with a pummel of reactionary peasantry, handicraftsmen, small merchants, and even military who hear, "Bread, Peace, and Land!"



Actualy its " Land, Peace and Bread !" . But I think that no one was diluted , Becuase the party was pretty exclusive to prolatarians up till 1923 when the amount of factory cells shrank from 1/2 to 1/6.


What are those demands? I don't think trying to bring about reforms in laws with capitalism would produce any desired effects when capitalism is made to have a happy smiley face. Workers are going to think capitalism can be made workable and serve their interest. Back in the 1970's, when I was much younger, most of us knew that work was easy to come by with wages that were easy to live off of and benfits were 100 percent covered by the employer. Since capitalism is showing its more ugly side with reduced wages and benefits including cuts and underfunding of social programs, what were the results? Revolutionary tendencies have arisen is differing parts of the U.S. and Canada.


The IWW led strikes , but its Workers didnt think capitialissm was " All smiley Faces ". And lookin' for Legal Reforms isnt the only means of Immideate Struggle . Not Showing up to Draft Stations is Immidiate Struggle. Re-Distributing Land to poor Peaseants is Immidiate Struggle .

And those Reveloutionary Tendcy's you talk about are ... none existant. All the Anarchist led struggles of the last decade either .. went nowhere ( I.E. the battle of seattle ) or achieved Immidate aims but didnt spread any class counsince.

Give me one example of a Anarchist Struggle that led to winning over people to our class pole ?

There have Mass Leninist Partys in the first world but no mass anarchist movements. Anarchism is infact the idealogy to " advance small early-capitalist or "imperialized" nations with limited development of infrastructure towards sovereign state capitalist nations, and that's about it. "

Look comrades , All anarchism has ever done is create some cool graphics ,
get land reform in spain and Ukraine ( And then turn into brutal Khmer like regimes ) and make ground amonst Labour Aristocrats at Kronsdat.

[Social Greenman]

I am not an anarchist and I was not refering to the I.W.W. strikes in the early days or what anarchist have done. I was talking of reforms in law that put a smiley face on capitalism which has made the working class apathetic to class consciousness. However, I do believe more and more people are becoming class conscious and tendencies are starting to form due to cutting social programs and lowering wages and benefits. If you noticed the capitalist class is countering with intense media propaganda

[Lamanov]

comrades cobra, NovelGentry and Redstar... thank you for your [marxist] objectivity [since it was only you who gave me a theoretical answer -* as opposed to history "lessons" we all know very well...] ;)


>>It&#39;s time for a different approach since Communism had it&#39;s day and failed.<<
[and]

>>The ideas of American and Canadian workers about the Soviet Union is about repression, workers having no say in how to produce commodities in a better way without being labeled disloyal and/or insorbordinate, food items on the way to distributions centers were rotted before they got there. Most of these claims were true.<<

Offcourse they were true... BUT [<there&#39;s allways a big one]:
let&#39;s not get childish... No1 here [except the blind Stalinists] calls USSR socialist, or much less communist. If we are to "educate the workers", that is at least bit of history we would teach them, and we would at least insist that socialism means democracy for them. At least for me, thats what i constantly insist when i get into any type of discussion regarding such history and theory.

----------

One thig I would like to add [dogmatic-Leninists may not agree, but wtf can i do. After all, i&#39;m an undogmatic-marxist]:
One-vanguard-party is a failure. Thats clear, especially today, when we are broken into variations.
BUT [again] - joint vanguard isn&#39;t - and i could say that thats the course we should take.
Joint vanguard is basicly all revolutionary pro-worker-democracy tendecies acting in sync. [Funny thing is, we are doing it unconsienceslly]

[chebol]

"BUT [again] - joint vanguard isn&#39;t - and i could say that thats the course we should take.
Joint vanguard is basicly all revolutionary pro-worker-democracy tendecies acting in sync. "

Funny. That&#39;s kind of what the RSDLP once was (only with a slightly larger degree of internal unity). Oh, and that&#39;s the idea behind all the MultiTendency Socialist Parties (MTSPs) being formed out there.
Regrouping the left.

Of course, different people and organisations are going to want varying degrees of "regroupment", but the basic principle stands.

And we should ALWAYS leave room for political and organisational evolution (as a necessary component of revolution).

;)

[red_che]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 09:14 PM
Leninism refers to lenins contributions to marxism. His most famous is that of the vanguard party. Lenin believed that the proletariat needed strong, centralized, revolutionary leadership to acheive socialism. He said that without this proletarian vanguard, the proletariat would just be interested in reform, not revolution. The idea of the vanguard party was to lead the workers in the right direction.


democratic dictatureship of proletariat and peasantry

By this he meant what marx did, the suppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat. I however think he carried it out wrong. Marx said himself, "the proletariat cannot simply take hold of the ready-made state machinery". I believe that, since the proletariat is a majority class, centralized authoritarian institutions like the state cannot be used for socialist pouposes.

According to most, Leninism is an extention of marxism. I, however, view it as a step in the wrong direction. I think he took what marx said and carried it out wrong. The only way to have a proletarian revolution is to give all power directly to the workers themselves, not a vanguard or "professional revolutionaries".
Leninsm is Marxism in the era of Imperialism and Proletarian Revolution. Dictatorship of the proletariat Through its Political Party (the Communist Party, in most cases) is not a deviation to Marxism. It is a tool in completely eradicating the Bourgeois State machinery. In an era where the Bourgeois still reign, and their influences still strong in almost all aspects of life, a Party is needed to guide the entire proletariat (because not all proletariat do have marxist or socialist thinking yet).

[Severian]

Originally posted by DJ&#045;[email protected] 15 2005, 02:06 PM
These two in some/much cases [how ever you like it] stand in opposition, allthough his deviated practice was a necesity, due to "unmarxist conditions" of the revolutionary ground, deviating from his "marxist work".
I disagree. His practice was derived from the particular conditions using his theory. There was no contradiction.

And there are no "unmarxist conditions". If you think your theory is in contradiction with reality, I suggest changing the theory rather than badmouthing reality.


??

Before you say that was a mistake, do you understand what it meant?


But some, again, were a clear mistake, which in most cases led to later - rather easy - Stalinist usurpation [i.e. his attitude towards the WO and the unions question].

Ah. You don&#39;t have to approve of each and every measure to be a Leninist, any more than you have to agree with everything Marx ever wrote to be a Marxist. After all, there was plenty of disagreement within the Bolshevik Party, among communists, on things like the "trade union controversy."

But I think trying to separate theory from overall political practice is an error.


Noam Chomsky calls his "State and Revolution" a [i]"intelectual deviation". I would rather call his practice a deviation.

I think either would be an error. Lenin&#39;s actions, overall, were consistent with the approach laid out in "State and Revolution".

[Severian]

Originally posted by DJ&#045;[email protected] 15 2005, 05:49 PM
"Democratic dictatorship of the Proletariat and peasantry" is not a marxist concept. It is a political necesity lying in the cotroversial center of the revolutionary conditions in Russia.
Why can&#39;t it be both? Marxism is supposed to be applied to concrete conditions. The truth is always concrete.

It&#39;s true that this slogan was never proposed for countries other than Russia, and would have been wrong outside its particular semi-feudal conditions...

But it&#39;s not true that "dictatorship of the proletariat" is the international equivalent. That&#39;s a later stage, as the power of the workers is consolidated and the capitalists&#39; property is taken from them.

The international equivalent is "workers and farmers government". As proposed by the "Resolution on Tactics" of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in 1922.

It&#39;s interesting to note that even Trotsky, who disagreed with Lenin on this question, also proposed the "workers and farmers government" slogan in the 1938. link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1938-tp/index.htm#Workers_Government)
and comments "It is impossible in advance to foresee what will be the concrete stages of the revolutionary mobilization of the masses."

Experience since then shows that when capitalist political rule is overthrown, an workers&#39; and farmers&#39; government typically follows.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 06:07 PM
I think that this issue needs to be disscused. Lenin said in "What is to be done" that the Intelgensia was required within the workers movement.
No, he didn&#39;t.

The point was, that communist consciousness needs to be brought to workers&#39; struggles from outside. Not that "intellectuals" necessarily have to be the people to do it.

It&#39;s impossible to draw communist conclusions solely from the experience of a particular struggle, like say, economic strikes. Lenin was polemicizing against the Economists, who argued that&#39;s all that was needed, to support those strikes. He pointed out its necessary to understand the big picture, the conflicts and relationships between all the classes. He argued it was necessary to have a newspaper that covered all that stuff, even the frickin&#39; spineless Zemstvo liberals...not for the benefit of the Zemstvo people, but for the education of the workers involved in those important but insufficient economic strikes.

I don&#39;t remember if he emphasized this in "What is to be done", but it&#39;s also necessary to base oneself on the whole world situation, and not just one country, to draw communist conclusions. Certainly that&#39;s the method Lenin used when analyzing any particular situation.

***

There&#39;s a real vogue for the idea of broader or more inclusive parties nowadays....the attempt, in practice, seems to be an attempt to go back to the pre-WWI all-inclusive socialist parties.

Those parties broke up because of the irreconcilable elements within &#39;em...so far, the modern equivalents, like the Socialist Alliance or whatever in Britain, have done likewise. An older example was the disintegration of SDS - inclusiveness is a recurring fad, not a new one.

It&#39;s sometimes said that attempts to build Leninist parties in the advanced capitalist countries haven&#39;t had very impressive results....that&#39;s true in most cases. Those who advocate broader, more inclusive parties, however, have even less to show for their efforts. Those "regroupment" organizations which show some stability...seem to combine the weaknesses of the political sect and the pre-WWII all-inclusive party.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Social [email protected] 15 2005, 06:25 PM
Even in 1905 American workers had advanced to Industrial unionism.
Not most of them. Mass production industries were not organized in any lasting way until the 1930s.

Even with all the blows the labor movement has taken over the past...nearly 30 years...we&#39;re still probably ahead of anytime before 1934 in that respect.

Plus, consider the damage that&#39;s been done to racism and sexism.

Just a few things to consider before making a categorical statement that workers were more class-conscious in the past than today.

[kirov78]

I could well be mistaken, but when I think "Leninism", I think of the concept that the revolution must be guided by a literate elite, as opposed to a general proletariat, or a sympathetic bourgeois.

I say this before reading the thread....

cobra90x says:


Lenin believed that the proletariat needed strong, centralized, revolutionary leadership to acheive socialism. He said that without this proletarian vanguard, the proletariat would just be interested in reform, not revolution. The idea of the vanguard party was to lead the workers in the right direction.

That&#39;s precisely what I think of when I think of "Leninism".

[Lamanov]

>>Before you say that was a mistake, do you understand what it meant?<<

yea.. a socially-conditioned "necesity" which damaged the industrial proletariat.


>>Why can&#39;t it be both? Marxism is supposed to be applied to concrete conditions. The truth is always concrete.<<

Marxism is a &#39;science&#39;, and its&#39; &#39;practice&#39; demands conditions. The biggest truth marxism stresses is that socialism can&#39;t be built in low-developed society. Imperialism, on the other hand, causes problems in societies where they can&#39;t be solved - so you can start a revolution in Russia but you can&#39;t finish it there... when you &#39;try&#39; to - you must make compromises. As i can see, alot of people here see Leninism as such &#39;compromise&#39;



i apologise for my shortenss, my keyboard&#39;s fucked up. im using the on-screen keyboard

[D_Bokk]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 09:14 PM
Leninism refers to lenins contributions to marxism. His most famous is that of the vanguard party. Lenin believed that the proletariat needed strong, centralized, revolutionary leadership to acheive socialism. He said that without this proletarian vanguard, the proletariat would just be interested in reform, not revolution. The idea of the vanguard party was to lead the workers in the right direction.
When I say I am a Leninist, this is what I am referring too. I&#39;m not necessarily referring to his practices as a leader, but more so how a Socialist state is obtained and run.

For Karl Marx, it was easy to theorize that the whole proletariat must rise up against their oppressors and bring about Communism on their own, that will undoubtedly be a success. However, this occurring isn&#39;t going to be in the near future.

This means that many generations of people will suffer from poverty, imperialism and oppression before the utopia occurs. For an educated person, this isn&#39;t something they would like to live with. Do any of you remember the days when you knew very little about politics and history? For me, I remember being happier then as opposed to now. For us to stand by and let Capitalism rape their own people would be immoral. With that, we must then find a quicker approach to bringing about Communism. This is precisely what Lenin set out to accomplish, and his system seems doable. However due to many circumstances in history, his attempts were hindered.

Leninism can, and more than likely will be slightly oppressive. However, the trade off of many many generations of oppression as opposed to only several is for the best. The people must take it upon themselves to tough it out for the future of humanity. Once much of the materialistic greed (Capitalists) is eradicated, the Communist Party can then become more and more democratic, but keeping a careful eye on the elected officials to ensure that they&#39;re really there to further the cause of Communism.

[Severian]

Originally posted by DJ&#045;[email protected] 19 2005, 06:07 PM

>>Before you say that was a mistake, do you understand what it meant?<<

yea.. a socially-conditioned "necesity" which damaged the industrial proletariat.
And why do you think this idea was wrong?


Marxism is a &#39;science&#39;, and its&#39; &#39;practice&#39; demands conditions. The biggest truth marxism stresses is that socialism can&#39;t be built in low-developed society. Imperialism, on the other hand, causes problems in societies where they can&#39;t be solved - so you can start a revolution in Russia but you can&#39;t finish it there... when you &#39;try&#39; to - you must make compromises. As i can see, alot of people here see Leninism as such &#39;compromise&#39;

Revolutions never happen under ideal conditions, and compromises are always involved. I really think this whole way of describing the question reflects a desire that reality conform to a schema, which it never does. Reality is more complex than any possible theory attempting to describe it.

And by possible theory, I mean any theory which can be formulated or understood by a brain smaller than the universe.

[Lamanov]

And why do you think this idea was wrong?


6. Who has gained From the Revolution?

Only the peasants gained directly by the revolution. As far as the middle classes are concerned, they very cleverly adapted themselves to the new conditions, together with the representatives of the rich bourgeoisie&#33; who had occupied all the responsible and directing positions in the Soviet institutions (particularly in the sphere of directing State economy, in the industry organizations and the re-establishment of commercial relations with foreign nations). Only the basic class of the Soviet Republic, which bore all the burdens of the dictatorship as a mass, ekes out a shamefully pitiful existence.
The Workers&#39; Republic controlled by the Communists, by the vanguard of the working class, which, to quote Lenin, has absorbed all the revolutionary energy of the class&#39;, has not had time enough to ponder over and improve the conditions of all the workers (those not in individual establishments which happened to gain the attention of the Council of the People&#39;s Commissars in one or another of the so-called &#39;shock industries&#39;) in general and lift their conditions of life to a human standard of existence.
The Commissariat of Labor is the most stagnant institution of all the Commissariats. In the whole of the Soviet policy, the question was never seriously raised on a national scale and discussed: what must and can be done in the face of the utter collapse of industry at home and a most unfavorable internal situation to improve the workers&#39; conditions and preserve their health for productive labor in the future, and to better the lot of the workers in the shops?
Until recently, Soviet policy was devoid of any worked out plan for improving the lot of the workers and their conditions of life. A11 that was done in this field was done almost incidentally, or at random, by local authorities under the pressure or the masses themselves. During these three years of civil war, the proletariat heroically brought to the altar of the revolution their innumerable sacrifices. They waited patiently. But now that the pulse of life in the Republic is again transferred to the economic front, the rank and file worker considers it unnecessary to &#39;suffer and wait&#39;. Why? is he not the creator of life on a Communist basis? Let us ourselves take up this reconstruction, for we know better than the gentlemen from the centers where it hurts us most.
The rank and file worker is observant. He sees that so far the problems of hygiene, sanitation, improving conditions of labor in the shops - in other words, the betterment of the workers&#39; lot has occupied the last place in our policy. In our solution to the housing problem, we went no further than housing the workers&#39; families in inconvenient bourgeois mansions. What is still worse, so far we have not even touched the practical problem of housing in regard to workers. To our shame, in the heart of the Republic, in Moscow itself, working people are still living in filthy, overcrowded and unhygienic quarters, one visit to which makes one think that there has been no revolution at all. We all know that the housing problem cannot be solved in a few months, even years, and that due to our poverty, its solution is faced with the serious difficulties. But the facts of ever-growing inequality between the privileged groups of the population in Soviet Russia and the rank and file workers, &#39;the frame-work of the dictatorship&#39;, breed and nourish the dissatisfaction.
The rank and file worker sees how the Soviet official and the practical man lives and how he lives - he on whom rests the dictatorship of the proletariat. He cannot but see that during the revolution, the life and health of the workers in the shops commanded the least attention; that where prior to the revolution there existed more or less bearable conditions, they are still maintained by the shop committees. And where such conditions did not exist, where dampness, foul air and gases poisoned and destroyed the workers&#39; health, these conditions remain unchanged. "We could not attend to that; pray, there was the military front. &#39;&#39; And yet whenever it was necessary to make repairs in any of the houses occupied by the Soviet institutions, they were able to find both the materials and the labor. What would happen if we tried to shelter our specialists or practical men engaged in the sphere of commercial transactions with foreign capitalists in those huts in which the masses of workers still live and labor? They would raise such a howl that it would become necessary to mobilize the entire housing department in order to correct &#39;the chaotic conditions&#39; that interfere with the productivity of our specialists.

Alexandra Kollontai, "Workers&#39; Opposition" [1921.]


From Trotsky:

5. Was the ‘Democratic Dictatorship Realized on Our country? If so, When? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1931-tpv/pr05.htm)

7. What does the Slogan of the Democratic Dictatorship Mean Today For the East (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1931-tpv/pr07.htm)


From the &#39;Basic Postulates&#39; of "Permanent Revolution":

4. No matter what the first episodic stages of the revolution may be in the individual countries, the realization of the revolutionary alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry is conceivable only under the political leadership of the proletariat vanguard, organized in the Communist Party. This in turn means that the victory of the democratic revolution is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat which bases itself upon the alliance with the peasantry and solves first of all the tasks of the democratic revolution.

Trotsky agrees with the conclusion that peasantry is incopatable to play an independent role in the revolution. SR&#39;s have proven that. It&#39;s funny, he states that "revolutionary alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry is conceivable only under the political leadership of the proletariat vanguard". I say that, in conclusion of this, dictatureship of the proletariat and the socialist [not only &#39;democratic&#39;] transformation is conceivable only in terms of the dictatureship of the proletariat itself, through workers&#39; democracy, not "democratic dictatureship of proletariat and peasantry". When democratic revolution plays out its role - revolution stops for the peasantry - but for the proletariat - it continues&#33;
In terms of agrarian reform peasantry is revolutionary. In terms of socialism - peasantry is counter-revolutionary.

[red_che]

As I can see, a big deal in the discussions here on Leninism is the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" and the worker-peasant alliance.

Well, let me speak a little about these.

Lenin taught that a dictatorship of the proletariat through its vanguard party is needed in order to guide the democratic revolution up to socialism. It is necessary for the proletariat to ally with the peasantry to gain more power in defeating the bourgeoisie. And in that alliance, it is necessary to advance the democratic aspirations of the peasantry (which are bourgeois in nature) in order to eliminate all feudal remnants in the society and to modernize (read: industrialize) the mode of production which is a primary requirement for socialist construction.

As Lenin said, there are two stages of the revolution. First is the democratic revolution, which is primarily aimed at eliminating all feudal remains and backwardness and to industrialize the mode of pruduction. The second stage would be the socialist revolution that will pave the way for socialist construction. In these two stages, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat will play a very important role. the Dictatorship of the Proletariat will ensure that Socialism will be built and will prosper.

The proletariat, as Marx puts it, must have its own political party that will embody its goals and advance its intersts. It is impossible that in a newly-built socialist society, all proletarians, and all the other classes will become communists at once. So, a proletarian party will serve as a vanguard of the entire proletarian class and shall lead it until communism is reached.

Dictatorship of the Proletariat through its vanguard party should not be seen as an elite group such as that of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. They are different. Bourgeoisie never lets everybody become bourgeois, Communists will train everyone to become communists.


In terms of agrarian reform peasantry is revolutionary. In terms of socialism - peasantry is counter-revolutionary.

That is if they will remain as peasnats in the entire socialist construction. That will be the role of the Proletarian Party, to make all of them become communists.

[shadows]

Leninism and the vanguard of the proletariat are inextricably linked, and for good reason. Lenin understood that by themselves the proletariat would never attain anythng like conscious knowledge of itself as the gravedigger of capitalism and the harbinger of socialism. I.e., the vanguard is conscious knowledge of socialism, while the masses without the vanguard are relatively unconscious, and act both sporadically and spontaneously. Lenin&#39;s conception of stages changed over time, and he came to agree with Trotsky that the revolution would be &#39;permanent&#39; in the sense of socialism contained within every demand for democracy. Mao, on the other hand, retained a mechanical stagist perspective and referred to &#39;new democracy&#39; as the first stage, a sort of scaffolding for the second, socialist, stage. Trotsky did not see a conflict between political fights for oppressed minorities, for civil rights, for broadening democracy and the fight for proletarian power. After all, why would the proletariat smash the bourgeois state and then rule over capitalist exploitation of itself in the name of &#39;democracy&#39;?

[Lamanov]

>>Lenin taught that a dictatorship of the proletariat through its vanguard party is needed in order to guide the democratic revolution up to socialism.<<

As I&#39;ve said: there is no need for the history lessons we all know very well. Things have changed over the last 100 years. What "worked" for Russia then will not work for anyone today.

It is an asumption that doesn&#39;t count for the rest of the world.
Role of the peasantry is needed, but not in that sence. Peasantry is not capable of self-consciousnes independent political activity, and when higher layers of the peasantry [rich farmers today, kulaks then] in the form of their independent party [SR&#39;s] take part in the revolution it is inevetable that peasant would "go along with the burgoise".

Proletariat, on the other hand, does not need vanguard party AFTER the revolution.
Before it - yes - "by themselves the proletariat would never attain anything like conscious knowledge of itself as the gravedigger of capitalism and the harbinger of socialism. I.e., the vanguard is conscious knowledge of socialism, while the masses without the vanguard are relatively unconscious, and act both sporadically and spontaneously". BUT - AFTER the revolution [&#33;], all lays on the proletariat itself and BY ITSELF or it DOESN&#39;&#39;t lay AT ALL&#33; Socialism can only be built by the urban proletariat as a whole in the atmnospehere of self-initiative, democracy, and selfmanagement, or it can&#39;t built it at all ...[not the part of it, not the party, not the vanguard, not the tehnicians... but whole proletariat].


>>After all, why would the proletariat smash the bourgeois state and then rule over capitalist exploitation of itself in the name of &#39;democracy&#39;?<<

You ARE kidding... right?

"Rule over capitalist exploatation" - what does that mean?
Only people who can rule over the capitalist exploatation are capitalists - with the help of state [that&#39;s what it&#39;s for].
How can proletariat "rule over capitalist exploatation"?

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Other thing - "In the name of democracy" ?
Damn, I gotta repeat myself again:

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My question:
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It might sound naive, but I have this idea that the term "dictatureship of the proletariat" should be changed with a term which better explains the meaning of the transitional system. Not that this one is wrong [au contraire, it expresses it right], but simply to avoid stalinist or anti-revolutionary misinterpretation. I would suggest it should be called "worker&#39;s democracy" , which it really is - a dictatorship of the working class through democratic system built for the working class. Simply to put an end to nebulosis like "inteligent absolutism" or "dictatorship for the workers" which nececarily bring the notion of need for bueraucacy and life-long bonapartist dictators.

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Debate with the stalinist:
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I didn&#39;t say the term is wrong [obviosly], but its misinterpretation. I didn&#39;t even think of questioning the soul meaning of it, which you unfortunately don&#39;t understand. If you did, you wouldn&#39;t mention the Leninist conception which goes agains yours.

Direct democracy is idealism? I see... So working class overthrowing the system in order to hand it over to the "disciplined vanguard" is supposed to be a materialist conception of social dynamics. Right.
"Strong centralised governement"... yes, when you say it, I can&#39;t help it, I see "bueraucracy" written all over it. But seriously, what is "Strong centralised governement", and is it nececarily bueraucratic? [Retorical Q]
For real, I see nothing but contradiction in your views which teare your conceptions apart, and we should settle it for good.
Lets talk materialism. Growth of the working class is proportional to development of capitalism. Developing-capitalism is developing urban-structures. Urbanism is proportional to intelectual capability of the population and its colective conciousness, including the proletariat. Since ideas don&#39;t determine the social dynamics, but the production of real life, revolutions must be determined by the specific elements, such as high level of productional forces - also - proportional to the level of exploatation, mass unemployment, material deversity - and since globalisation is bringing this to a global scale - polarisation between rich and poor countries.

Workers start their revolutions not because "vanguard" is teling them to do so, but because they are reaching the point where they can&#39;t take it any more [oversimplification, but to the point]. Vanguardist mission is to be dedicated to the revolution and the working class - not to political power - as we all agree. This position - again - isn&#39;t determined by the idea of it - but the material reality. How? Like this...

If development is low - vanguard, in direct hit to all of it&#39;s idealism is - in order to improve planned economy and distribution - destined to take drastic measures, such as stripping society of it&#39;s worker-democratic [soviet] principles, and imposing authority [bueraucratic]. Formation of such responsible authority with no recall leads to formation of so-called "intelectual labour" with bigger pay checks and more power for abusment, which - again - leads to careerism, so so-called "disciplined vanguard" can only sit back and watch how "dictatureship of the proletariat" turns into "dictatureship of the bueraucracy". Proletariat becomes the servant of the newely formed class with it&#39;s own interests, particulary interest of staying in office. They chose "leaders" amongst themselves, those who will defend those interests [historical example : USSR, Stalin]

I repeat, this is not socialism - it is the death of it.

On the other hand, when development is high enough, we have a completely different picture.
First of all - distrubution is no longer a problem because there are enough goods to share. There is no need for authority with no recall which has to say how much you can and can&#39;t have. Working class makes nececary concensus about distribution which at first keeps it&#39;s burgoise determination of sharing by productivity. Not beacuse the idea of it seems good, but because every worker sees this as his interest - working class acts by electing a centralised form of ITS dictatureship in order to organise planned economy which will to the fullest satisfy its needs, and thus, needs of [hopefully] every worker.
And since this form of worker&#39;s government is democraticly elected, every member of this centralised authority falls under a controll of every worker, and thus, he can be recalled at any time. His wage is no bigger than average worker&#39;s wage. *[Those who are fit will be elected to think and serve the interests, and no-one will even think of trying to abuse its given authority]

Anyway, in order to elect someone, be elected, take controll or express your thoughts - you have to WORK - and this is why - it&#39;s called the >Dictatureship OF the Proletariat<, or - as I would call it - WORKER&#39;S DEMOCRACY.
*[by the way, this is the main element that encourages increase of productivity and employment]

Soviets/communes [as legislative/executive authority] fall under controll of the syndicates/worker-councils [as controll/electoral authority], and not some party which calls itsef "communist".

Since you&#39;ve mentioned Lenin, I&#39;ll sum it up with this:
1. Free and democratic elections with right of recall of all officials.
2. No official must receive a higher wage than a skilled worker.
3. No standing army but the armed people.
4. Gradually, all the tasks of running the state should be carried out by the masses on a rotating basis. When everybody is a bureaucrat in turn, nobody is a bureaucrat. Or, as Lenin put it, "Any cook should be able to be prime minister."

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"Disciplined vanguard". Hmmm.... yes... &#39;the leaders, the thinkers, the brave dedicated men.&#39; Right. But when do they come: before or after the revolution ??
Seriously, if vanguard represents those that are more dedicated to the class war and class interests, what happens to them when &#39;our side wins&#39; ? [RQ]
You would be surprised how the &#39;vanguard&#39; takes up a new form... new blood even. After half of them dies and other half gets old and tired there is no vanguard any more. Just a party full of newely-commers who pin stars to their sleaves but who don&#39;t understand nothing except their own stomacks.
[a story from my country] It&#39;s funny how same people who proudly call themselves "communists" overnigt turn to nazi vultures, new &#39;gentlemen&#39; with profound new identity and recent epifanies of Jesus and Allah. Former comrades become war criminals and the new-formed capitalists.

There is no place for such Bonapartism in Socialism.
Those that dedicated their whole life to the struggle should have no worries about will the working class chose them as their representatives. Those that assume they proved themselves will proudly take a chance to withstand a public criticism and a chance to be confirmed by their working class comrades as their representatives, and when they seize to satisfy the class interest they would step down if the workers decide so.

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QUOTE
"mass urbanization has lead to the development of a middle class that has very little in common with the traditional proletariat."

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Even if this is true [I would love to see some stats anyway, I&#39;m pretty interested], things are a bit more complicated than that...
Ah yes, the so-called "middle class".
First off, existance of this class is conditioned by the economical politics and a global economic position of that country. I capitalist countries, it exists within the small handfull of rich ones which are on top of the financial imperialist &#39;food-chain&#39;. Due to global capitalism and imperialism wealth of these coutries exists upon the cheap labour of poor countries [Computer: made in USA, everything inside: made in Taiwan], and their stability depends upon the social-peace which exists only on their wealth. In so-called socialist ones this &#39;civilian society&#39; depends upon the centrall planned economy, well, actually it&#39;s efficiency. We all witnesed how this &#39;civilian society&#39; revealed itself as a fragile construction which dissapears in a day when economical balance is destroyed. [fall of the USSR, war in SFRY etc.]. When proletariat of the poor countries starts to revolt against the imperialst capitalism what do you think happens to the middle class, their fine wage and their nice jobs?&#33; Until then - unseen - class consciousness will *****slap them so hard untill they realise they have only one thing left to do.


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Power vacuum? Again with the stalinist conceptions of socialism.
You don&#39;t get it. There IS NO more vanguard after the revolution to fill any vacuum. If there is no economic ground for socialism vanguard gets squeesed out by the oportunists, and all the story falls down the drain. On the other hand - just how I explained at the end of my 2nd and 4th post - if there are all conditions for transformation vanguard comes to be those who are fit to serve [or to continue to serve and fight for] the proletariat, and as such THEY WILL BE CHOSEN by the proletariat.. [can we all say: "democracy"]

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QUOTE
"This one-party dictatorship fills the power void which would be wide open for remaining capitalists, reactionaries, etc."

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Reactionaries? This is the same retard story stalinists used to tell even decades after the October to justify all one bueraucrat has. [can we all say: "sovbur"]
You really think next time workers won&#39;t think about what they are doing when they give up their revolutionary right [just like early soviet period, before stalinist reaction] of running the society. "Vanguard" or "the Party" will never again poses executive power unless it is chosen on demcratic elections. ....

[shadows]

The proletariat does not make a revolution and then allow the re-emergence of capitalist forms - thus the continuing need for the vanguard, after the revolution in command of the state and composed of all proletarian parties. Without the proletarian dictatorship the bourgeoisie would likely come back, or make inroads on the revolution. Class struggle does not cease until classes are destroyed, and this is unlikely to occur overnight as a singular event. The dictatorship of the proletariat is a transitional form that functions to protect and extend the revolution into all spheres. The danger that the dictatorship of the proletariat will degenerate is evident from history, especially under adverse conditions as those that Russia experienced. Either the revolution extends internationally or it will likely collapse in isolation, an island of socialism with national distortions.

[Severian]

Originally posted by DJ&#045;[email protected] 20 2005, 04:44 PM

And why do you think this idea was wrong?
6. Who has gained From the Revolution?

Only the peasants gained directly by the revolution.
I don&#39;t see how the Kollontai article&#39;s relevant. It belongs to a later and much different stage of the revolution than the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry." Kollontai is describing some real problems and the Workers Opposition reflected some legitimate discontent with bureacratic privilege, but there&#39;s no reason to think the worker-peasant alliance caused these problems, or that workers would have been better off with a less pro-peasant policy. On the contrary, harsher policy towards the peasants worsened food shortages in the cities during "war communism." Maybe I just don&#39;t understand what you&#39;re getting at here.

The stuff from Trotsky, and your comments at the end, are very relevant: and thanks for raising these important questions about what kind of government follows a revolution; the relationship between the different classes supporting the revolution and the different kinds of social transformation the revolution must carry out. They&#39;re essential if you take revolution and taking power seriously; a lot of people and tendencies don&#39;t much care about or often discuss them...IMO because they&#39;re not serious about revolution.


From Trotsky:
No matter what the first episodic stages of the revolution may be in the individual countries, the realization of the revolutionary alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry is conceivable only under the political leadership of the proletariat vanguard, organized in the Communist Party.

On this point, Lenin agreed; and obviously that&#39;s what happened in October, that the alliance was led by the Bolshevik Party. This point has meaning only against Stalin&#39;s position, not Lenin&#39;s.

The difference is: Stalin separated the bourgeois-democratic and socialist tasks into two separate revolutions, and argued the capitalists must lead the first. Lenin regarded them as two phases of one revolution, and said the workers must lead both. Trotsky, at times, tended to put everything, or too much anyway, together in one phase of one revolution. (His position was not constant throughout his life.)


This in turn means that the victory of the democratic revolution is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat which bases itself upon the alliance with the peasantry and solves first of all the tasks of the democratic revolution.

Which is a description of the "democratic dictatorship", or in other countries, the "workers and farmers government", not the dictatorship of the proletariat.

And yes, the "democratic dictatorship" was realized in Russia. In the initial coalition between the Bolsheviks and the petty-bourgeois Left SRs, and in that government&#39;s initial land policy.

It adopted the SR&#39;s petty-bourgeois agrarian program, you may recall. As Trotsky recognizes in this article, the Bolsheviks initially marched together with the whole peasantry against the landlords and the semifeudal elements of Russian society. The peasantry is not a class but a spectrum of classes, including petty exploiters, the rural bourgeoisie aka kulaks.

Without this initial democratic period, without the alliance with the whole peasantry on the basis of the peasantry&#39;s own democratic - not socialist - agrarian program, the October Revolution would have been impossible, or at least very short-lived.

Trotsky writes in the 1931 article you linked, "In reality, however, the class dynamics so thoroughly ‘mixed up’, that is, combined these two stages, that our unfortunate metaphysician is no longer in a position even to find the threads." Perhaps Radek couldn&#39;t, but Lenin could and did in a passage Trotsky had just quoted: the democratic phase gave way to the socialist phase with the creation of the poor peasants&#39; committees and the opening of the struggle against the rural bourgeoisie in mid-1918. Trotsky himself had earlier written of the initial period of the revolution as a workers and peasants government.

He also writes: "With his own hand, Lenin wrote the inscription over this door: No Entrance—No Exit." Trotsky&#39;s simply mistaken on this point, understandably in the conditions of exile with books left behind, etc. Lenin never reversed his position on the "democratic dictatorship"; he put forward the slogan of "All Power to the Soviets" as a concrete form of that general idea.

From the second chapter linked: "Accordingly, the capacity of the Chinese peasantry for independent revolutionary political struggle for the democratic renovation of the country certainly cannot be greater than was the Russian peasantry’s. " Clearly history has shown Trotsky wrong on this point. A peasant war, under a petty-bourgeois Stalinist misleadership, eventually overthrew capitalist rule, set up a "New Democratic" coalition government, and carried out a revolutioanry-democratic land redistribution. Some but far from all capitalist property was initially nationalized. The working class did not play a major role - certainly no revolutionary working-class party did. A couple years later, in response to the Korean War, the same regime, passed from the democratic to the socialist phase and smashed capitalist property relations.

To be sure, this was all under exceptional conditions coming out of WWII, and with Chiang rejecting Mao&#39;s proposals for a coalition government including both of them; but from "The Permanent Revolution" you would think it was wholly impossible. Certainly Trotskyists worldwide were greatly surprised by this turn of events; a lot of multi-sided debate ensued over the character of the CCP and the state it headed.

In contrast, the "Resolution on Tactics" of the Fourth Congress of the Comintern, which proposed the slogan of the "workers and farmers government", correctly predicted that under exceptional circumstances a petty-bourgeois reformist party might take power overthrowing capitalist rule.

For that matter, the platform of the United Opposition drafted by Trotsky in 1927 was more correct: link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1927/opposition/ch09.htm)That platform was written from a Leninist, not a specifically "Trotskyist" or "permanent revolution" position, and IMO it stands up better.

Just to avoid misunderstanding; Trotsky, at any time, is correct against the Stalinists (or earlier, the Mensheviks) and their conception of a capitalist-led bourgeois revolution; but after 1928 he was not correct against Lenin. One is a difference between communists and betrayers of the revolution; the other is a disagreement among communists.

DJ-TC wrote:
"In terms of agrarian reform peasantry is revolutionary. In terms of socialism - peasantry is counter-revolutionary." This statement is fully true only of the kulaks, and comparable layers of small-time rural exploiters in other countries. It is sometimes true of the middle peasants. Not of the poor peasants if the politics of the worker-farmer alliance are handled right. Again, the peasants, or "family farmers" in the U.S., are a spectrum of classes. Most are exploited toilers, many do wage labor in addition to working on their own or rented land.

Besides, it should perhaps also be mentioned that the October Revolution initially attempted to promote workers&#39; control of enterprises remaining under capitalist ownership and partially capitalist management. It was the Civil War that forced the Soviet government to rapidly expropriate all capitalist property in order to crush capitalist resistance - not because it was economically desirable.

Under better circumstances the elimination of capitalist property would likely have been postponed further, until the working class had gained more experience in management. The "workers&#39; and farmers government" democratic phase would have been further prolonged. That is, some inroads on capitalist property typically occur from the beginning, but democratic tasks (agrarian revolution, national liberation, etc.) typically predominate at the beginning. The full smashing of capitalist economic power does not occur until later.

The experience of later revolutions has confirmed all this. Most have involved some initial coalition with petty-bourgeois forces; all have involved an initial period of concentration on democratic tasks. In all cases it has taken some time before capitalist property relations are smashed, marking the creation of a workers&#39; state aka dictatorship of the proletariat.


but I have this idea that the term "dictatureship of the proletariat" should be changed with a term which better explains the meaning of the transitional system.

How about &#39;workers&#39; state&#39; then? And "workers and farmers government" as the most immediate proposal for a replacement for the bosses&#39; government.

The DoP can still be used theoretically or when you have time to explain its meaning, but the other terms IMO are better for general propaganda purposes.


I say that, in conclusion of this, dictatureship of the proletariat and the socialist [not only &#39;democratic&#39;] transformation is conceivable only in terms of the dictatureship of the proletariat itself, through workers&#39; democracy, not "democratic dictatureship of proletariat and peasantry".

Yes, I agree, Lenin agreed. The socialist transformation requires that.

But you won&#39;t get to that socialist transformation if you discount the democratic phase, and neglect to get every possible ally for the revolution on the basis of the democratic tasks of the revolution. Every country has more or less unresolved business from the age of bourgeois-democratic revolutions. In the U.S., a major element is racism, a legacy in part of the bloody counterrevolution which smashed Radical Reconstruction after the betrayal of bourgeois democracy by the bourgeoisie in 1877. The national question is an unresolved democratic task.

The agrarian question also remains a major question - not as big as in Russia of course - but working farmers still produce a majority of food (IIRC) in this country, the world&#39;s biggest agricultural exporter. Their help is essential is you aim to go on eating after the revolution.

You have to go through the workers and farmers government - or, under the particular conditions of Russian semifeudalism, the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry - to get to the workers&#39; state.

Every anticapitalist revolution so far has begun there, with the workers and farmers government.

An article by Lenin laying out his perspective on these questions:
On the Two Lines of the Revolution (1915) (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/nov/20.htm) Mostly against the Mensheviks, but partly against Trotsky

The most detailed presentation of Lenin&#39;s views is in the booklet, "Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution." The Bolsheviks tactics vs the Mensheviks, that is.

[Lamanov]

>>Without this initial democratic period, without the alliance with the whole peasantry on the basis of the peasantry&#39;s own democratic - not socialist - agrarian program, the October Revolution would have been impossible, or at least very short-lived.<<

I agree, and this is all very good and justified, but there is a point i was trying to make, which you must not miss... as you said "If you think your theory is in contradiction with reality, I suggest changing the theory rather than badmouthing reality".
There&#39;s a problematic possibility:
Once you disort the theory with unexamed hypothesis [due to disorted conditions or even historical unconsciousnes] - your revolutionary practice might create a negative chain reaction which you could have not predicted before you started to make changes - and that&#39;s exactly what happened&#33;

The real question is not the problem of "democratic dictatureship", but it&#39;s main condition: "the vanguard party"&#33; [The main problem i have with "leninism"]
I&#39;m against the role of the "vanguard" party AFTER the revolution [in that sense].

I said: "dictatureship of the proletariat and the socialist [not only &#39;democratic&#39;] transformation is conceivable only in terms of the dictatureship of the proletariat itself, through workers&#39; democracy, not "democratic dictatureship of proletariat and peasantry"."


>>Yes, I agree, Lenin agreed. The socialist transformation requires that.<<

"Lenin agreed"?

I&#39;m confused: what was Lenin&#39;s theory then:
- socialism can be built only under the leadership of the vanguard party
or
- socialism can be built only through worker&#39;s democracy [dictatureship of the proletariat itself - and by itself&#33;]

If he would agree with me, and these two theories are counterposed, than Lenin had an... hmmm.. practical deviation ?? [&#33;]


DJ-TC wrote:
"In terms of agrarian reform peasantry is revolutionary. In terms of socialism - peasantry is counter-revolutionary." This statement is fully true only of the kulaks, and comparable layers of small-time rural exploiters in other countries. It is sometimes true of the middle peasants. Not of the poor peasants if the politics of the worker-farmer alliance are handled right. Again, the peasants, or "family farmers" in the U.S., are a spectrum of classes. Most are exploited toilers, many do wage labor in addition to working on their own or rented land.

Peasantry is allways reactionary. This is my point&#33; Poor peasant will follow the revolution so far as the agrarian reform. When he takes/gets his nice piece of land the revolution is over for him - he becomes a &#39;petty-land-owner&#39; - a sort of a petty-burgoise, with petty-burgoise intrests.

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I&#39;ve started a discussion few months ago about Rural Areas and Agriculture (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=33436), and allot of people had really nice visions which drove me to a single conclusion : we don&#39;t really need peasants as a class, but farms and profesional farmers organised as an industry, and powerd by newest production technology, tied with the urban proletariat. Russia could not build such conclusions 100 years ago, but today we don&#39;t have that problem.

[Zingu]

I&#39;m not really a fan of what is "strictly Leninist" and what is not.

But, I was wanting to propose the question; don&#39;t you think vanguards will naturally rise out of the midst of a revolution? Let it be a workers&#39; council, student lead coalition, ect. But, don&#39;t you think that is what would happen?

Individuals would emerge to build the organization of a revolutionary vanguard as the revolution commences. These individuals would emerge from the rank and file when class struggle starts to heat up, let them be student activists that give public speechs, to rouse and agatiate the proletariat. Soon, people would rally around them, seeing them as natural leaders.

True, these people would not be your "professional revolutionaries", but rank and file people who emerge to form a revolutionary vanguard, this revolutionary vanguard could be in any form, an organized workers&#39; army, the factory labor union, an emerging network of students&#39; and workers&#39; Soviets.

Take example the American Revolution, there was a "vanguard" in sense, but they were not a group of people that had created a pre-revolutionary party focused solely on establishing the first burgeoise state, but merely were at the right place at the right time.

What I&#39;m saying is, leadership would emerge, a state would emerge among the fires of revolution. People would organize against the burgeoise, and that organization would create the state, the workers&#39; state.

Now, would this idea of the vanguard be born out of the revolution be a Leninist idea or no?

[NovelGentry]

Sounds Gentist

[Zingu]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24 2005, 12:37 AM
Sounds Gentist
Shut up&#33; :P

On a serious note, true, it was gent that infulenced me with that idea. But I am not stooping to leader worshipping&#33;

[Severian]

Originally posted by DJ&#045;[email protected] 23 2005, 03:47 PM
The real question is not the problem of "democratic dictatureship", but it&#39;s main condition: "the vanguard party"&#33;
What? Those are different political questions. I don&#39;t understand why you&#39;re treating them as one. They&#39;re both part of the Leninist program, of course, and both serve the same revolutionary goal, but they&#39;re different points of that program.

One is about the worker-peasant alliance and the relation between the democratic and socialist tasks of the revolution. The other is about the kind of party needed to carry out an anticapitalist revolution.

You were just linking Trotsky who rejected the "democratic dictatorship" (except from 1917-1928) but defended Lenin&#39;s concept of the party to the end of his life.

And as I was pointing out, workers&#39; and farmers&#39; governments have been created in a number of countries whose revolutions were under petty-bourgeois leaderships, not parties composed of vanguard workers like the Bolshevik Party. China, Yugoslavia, Albania, Cuba, Algeria, Nicaragua, Grenada....A Leninist party is useful but not essential for that step. It&#39;s more important for ensuring that the workers&#39; and farmers&#39; government moves ahead to the socialist phase of the revolution and the creation of a workers&#39; state aka dictatorship of the proletariat.

You&#39;re right, I don&#39;t understand your point. And I think that&#39;s either because you&#39;re not expressing it clearly, or perhaps because you don&#39;t understand it yourself.


[The main problem i have with "leninism"]
I&#39;m against the role of the "vanguard" party AFTER the revolution [in that sense].

I said: "dictatureship of the proletariat and the socialist [not only &#39;democratic&#39;] transformation is conceivable only in terms of the dictatureship of the proletariat itself, through workers&#39; democracy, not "democratic dictatureship of proletariat and peasantry"."

Again, what does this have to do with the vanguard party exactly? How is the strong role of the party linked to the involvement of the peasantry in government? If anything these are two criticisms running in opposite directions since there were few peasants in the party.


I&#39;m confused: what was Lenin&#39;s theory then:
- socialism can be built only under the leadership of the vanguard party
or
- socialism can be built only through worker&#39;s democracy [dictatureship of the proletariat itself - and by itself&#33;]

Both. It&#39;s a false dichotomy, counterposing the party to workers&#39; democracy.

And why "by itself"? It&#39;s also a false dichotomy to counterposing workers&#39; democracy to involvement of the peasants in government decision-making. There&#39;s no way the fullest workers&#39; democracy could be built on the basis of excluding other exploited toilers from political rights. Certainly not in a majority-peasant country. Those who consent to the oppression of others, forge their own chains.

I might point out that the Paris Commune concept of workers&#39; democracy, as described by Marx, does not require excluding everyone but wage-workers either. Other layers of the toiling population in Paris were also part of the Commune, which was elected by universal suffrage in a city where industrial workers were probably a minority. If the revolutionary government had been successful, and extended nationwide, it woulda been necessary to similarly include peasants.


Peasantry is allways reactionary. This is my point&#33; Poor peasant will follow the revolution so far as the agrarian reform. When he takes/gets his nice piece of land the revolution is over for him - he becomes a &#39;petty-land-owner&#39; - a sort of a petty-burgoise, with petty-burgoise intrests.

That&#39;s wholly false. Poor peasants, working a small plot of land, are not petty-bourgeois small exploiters. They are exploited producers. With common interests with wage-workers.

Certainly no revolutionary Marxist of that time held such views about poor peasants. Many - including both Trotsky and Luxemburg at times - underestimated the possibility of drawing in the upper and middle peasants through democratic demands. Nobody held the view that the rural exploited working people were hopelessly anti-socialist. If that was true, revolution would have been - would still be - doomed, not only in Russia, but everywhere.

This kind of statement reflects a profound and deliberate ignorance of actual economic conditions and relations in the countryside. A vicious cycle sets in: knowing little about the countryside, false assumptions are made. These assumptions lead to the conclusion that working farmers are unimportant and you don&#39;t have to learn anything about their situation. This perpetuates the original ignorance.


I&#39;ve started a discussion few months ago about Rural Areas and Agriculture (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=33436), and allot of people had really nice visions which drove me to a single conclusion : we don&#39;t really need peasants as a class, but farms and profesional farmers organised as an industry, and powerd by newest production technology, tied with the urban proletariat. Russia could not build such conclusions 100 years ago, but today we don&#39;t have that problem.

"Really nice visions." In other words, utopian schemas, which have no relation to actual class relations in the countryside or a revolutionary program that can be applied to those real-world conditions.

And regardless of technology, any attempt to forcibly take the land of working farmers and set up state farms universally, is just a repeat of the Stalinist forced collectivization policy - which has led to famine, and breaking the worker-peasant alliance, everywhere it&#39;s been tried.

Cuba sets a better example, of gradual, voluntary collectivization. As well as a greater degree of workers&#39; democracy than anything since the early USSR - but Cuba&#39;s been able to preserve it over a much longer time.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23 2005, 05:48 PM
But, I was wanting to propose the question; don&#39;t you think vanguards will naturally rise out of the midst of a revolution? Let it be a workers&#39; council, student lead coalition, ect. But, don&#39;t you think that is what would happen?
....
Now, would this idea of the vanguard be born out of the revolution be a Leninist idea or no?
This idea was raised by some syndicalist delegates at congresses of the early Communist International. Some made a comparison to the Jacobins, a party which arose in the course of the French Revolution.

Bolshevik leaders responded that their party had been built up in advance of the revolution. And that this was precisely the difference between Russia, where workers had successfully taken power, and other countries with better objective conditions, where workers&#39; revolutions had failed and been crushed.

Historically, working people have only taken power in the course of a revolution, if a centralized party has been built up in advance. In all other workers&#39; revolutions, some bourgeois group has been able to move into the vacuum of leadership and take power instead.

[red_che]

As I&#39;ve said: there is no need for the history lessons we all know very well. Things have changed over the last 100 years. What "worked" for Russia then will not work for anyone today.

Yeah, things might have changed over the last 100 years, but these were not fundamental changes to warrant a change in the basic concepts of the socialist revolution or the manner of attaining it. It is also very important to study history particularly those whose revolutions had succeeded, to grasp the lessons of those revolutions and apply whatever are necessary in today&#39;s struggles. These victories serve as lessons for us today. These are already what happened. We should not invent or try to invent new things now just to accomodate oue own ideas or ideas of those thinkers who haven&#39;t proven anything yet. But I am not saying to copy exactly what they did. What I meant to say is that we should study the lessons of those revolutions and apply them today in our current struggles based on the concrete conditions.


Proletariat, on the other hand, does not need vanguard party AFTER the revolution.
Before it - yes - "by themselves the proletariat would never attain anything like conscious knowledge of itself as the gravedigger of capitalism and the harbinger of socialism. I.e., the vanguard is conscious knowledge of socialism, while the masses without the vanguard are relatively unconscious, and act both sporadically and spontaneously". BUT - AFTER the revolution [&#33;], all lays on the proletariat itself and BY ITSELF or it DOESN&#39;&#39;t lay AT ALL&#33; Socialism can only be built by the urban proletariat as a whole in the atmnospehere of self-initiative, democracy, and selfmanagement, or it can&#39;t built it at all ...[not the part of it, not the party, not the vanguard, not the tehnicians... but whole proletariat

What do you mean after the revolution? When will the revolution actually ends? Was it after getting power? NO&#33; Getting the political power from the hands of the capitalists does not end the revolution right away&#33; A socialist construction is still needed before Socialism is achieved completely. And through that stage, capitalists will be more violent as it tries to get back to power. And through that same stage, all proletariats does not necessarily turn communists right away as there still are bourgeois influences as it had today. Bourgeois remnants and influences are still around and needs to be guarded. In that stage, the dictatorship of the proletariat is more needed to protect the proletarian state. I agree that all power lays to the proletariat, and that power is exercised through its party and the state. That is what Dictatorship of the Proletariat means. Only when communism is achieved that the proletarian state and dictatorship withers away.


It is an asumption that doesn&#39;t count for the rest of the world.
Role of the peasantry is needed, but not in that sence. Peasantry is not capable of self-consciousnes independent political activity, and when higher layers of the peasantry [rich farmers today, kulaks then] in the form of their independent party [SR&#39;s] take part in the revolution it is inevetable that peasant would "go along with the burgoise".

Peasants will go along with the bourgeoisie if their activities will not be closely guarded. That is why a Dictatorship of the Proletariat must be established at the core of the Democratic People&#39;s Government, to ensure that all economic, political and cultural activities of the society will serve the socialist revolution and construction and leads towards socialism. The peasantry plays a very important role in the socialist construction and that their consciousness must be rid with bourgeois concepts. As you have stated above, socialism can be built alone by the urban proletariat, that is precisely why a first stage of the revolution (the Democratic Revolution) must be completed first to smash all feudal remnants in the society and in order to modernize the society and lay the foundations for socialism. Smashing away feudal remnants does not mean killing all peasants but guiding them and proletarianizing them and modernizing their mode of production.

[NovelGentry]

That&#39;s wholly false. Poor peasants, working a small plot of land, are not petty-bourgeois small exploiters. They are exploited producers. With common interests with wage-workers.

I agree to some extent. The issue is as follows. Their common interest is in that they want a better life, aside from that, the peasant has not developed on the downturn of capitalism, in fact, they are whiped out with capitalism. Their "revolutionary" better life IS with agrarian reform. While they may not strictly strive for capitalism and may be OK with socialism, it is in effect simply because they&#39;re gonna get the land.

I don&#39;t believe socialist revolution should even be conceived in areas where peasants still make up any significant portion of society. I&#39;d say less than 10% would be necessary at least. But if it is to happen, and I would support such actions, despite my feeling that it would fail, collectivization of agriculture must happen immediately. Not simply redrawing borders and lines, immediate collectivization.

Still... the sneaking problem doesn&#39;t come in the form of peasants. Quite the contrary, they are extremely abrupt in their actions -- if they are going to be revolutionary, they are going to revolt for what it is they want, regardless of what you say or what equality you speak of. The real killer is those who strictly want full blown capitalism in such a backwards nation, and rightfully so (in the sense that it is the common progression).

[Lamanov]

>>What do you mean after the revolution?<<

"After the revolution".. After the expropriation of the capitalists.
It was kind of obvious. You didn&#39;t think I was talking about the point when communism was reached...? #&#036;^#&#036;%&@?


>>And through that stage, capitalists will be more violent as it tries to get back to power.<<

You are a Stalinist, aren&#39;t you?

[Lamanov]

>>...ignorance...ignorance...ignorance..."<<

damn..&#33; is it?&#33; my bad&#33;

:rolleyes:

Lets see what Luxemburg has to say:

The Bolshevik Land Policy (from the "Russian Revolution", 1919.)

"The Bolsheviks are the historic heirs of the English Levellers and the French Jacobins. But the concrete task which faced them after the seizure of power was incomparably more difficult than that of their historical predecessors. (Importance of the agrarian question. Even in 1905. Then, in the Third Duma, the right-wing peasants&#33; The peasant question and defense, the army.) [1]
Surely the solution of the problem by the direct, immediate seizure and distribution of the land by the peasants was the shortest, simplest, most clean-cut formula to achieve two diverse things: to break down large land-ownership, and immediately to bind the peasants to the revolutionary government. As a political measure to fortify the proletarian socialist government, it was an excellent tactical move. Unfortunately, however, it had two sides to it; and the reverse side consisted in the fact that the direct seizure of the land by the peasants has in general nothing at all in common with socialist economy.
A socialist transformation of economic relationships presupposes two things so far as agrarian relationships are concerned:
In the first place, only the nationalization of the large landed estates, as the technically most advanced and most concentrated means and methods of agrarian production, can serve as the point of departure for the socialist mode of production on the land. Of course, it is not necessary to take away from the small peasant his parcel of land, and we can with confidence leave him to be won over voluntarily by the superior advantages first of union in cooperation and then finally of inclusion in the general socialized economy as a whole. Still, every socialist economic reform on the land must obviously begin with large and medium land-ownership. Here the property right must first of all be turned over to the nation, or to the state, which, with a socialist government, amounts to the same thing; for it is this alone which affords the possibility of organizing agricultural production in accord with the requirements of interrelated, large-scale socialist production.
Moreover, in the second place, it is one of the prerequisites of this transformation, that the separation between rural economy and industry which is so characteristic of bourgeois society, should be ended in such a way as to bring about a mutual interpenetration and fusion of both, to clear the way for the planning of both agrarian and industrial production according to a unified point of view. Whatever individual form the practical economic arrangements may take -- whether through urban communes, as some propose, or directed from a governmental center -- in any event, it must be preceded by a reform introduced from the center, and that in turn must be preceded by the nationalization of the land. The nationalization of the large and middle-sized estates and the union of industry and agriculture -- these are two fundamental requirements of any socialist economic reform, without which there is no socialism.
That the Soviet government in Russia has not carried through these mighty reforms -- who can reproach them for that&#33; It would be a sorry jest indeed to demand or expect of Lenin and his comrades that, in the brief period of their rule, in the center of the gripping whirlpool of domestic and foreign struggles, ringed about by countless foes and opponents -- to expect that under such circumstances they should already have solved, or even tackled, one of the most difficult tasks, indeed, we can safely say, the most difficult task of the socialist transformation of society&#33; Even in the West, under the most favorable conditions, once we have come to power, we too will break many a tooth on this hard nut before we are out of the worst of the thousands of complicated difficulties of this gigantic task&#33;
A socialist government which has come to power must in any event do one thing: it must take measures which lead in the direction of that fundamental prerequisite for a later socialist reform of agriculture; it must at least avoid everything which may bar the way to those measures.
Now the slogan launched by the Bolsheviks, immediate seizure and distribution of the land by the peasants, necessarily tended in the opposite direction. Not only is it not a socialist measure; it even cuts off the way to such measures; it piles up insurmountable obstacles to the socialist transformation of agrarian agriculture.
The seizure of the landed estates by the peasants according to the short and precise slogan of Lenin and his friends -- "Go and take the land for yourselves" -- simply led to the sudden, chaotic conversion of large landownership into peasant landownership. What was created is not social property but a new form of private property, namely, the breaking up of large estates into medium and small estates, or relatively advanced large units of production into primitive small units which operate with technical means from the time of the Pharaohs.
Nor is that all&#33; Through these measures and the chaotic and purely arbitrary manner of their execution, differentiation in landed property, far from being eliminated, was even further sharpened. Although the Bolsheviks called upon the peasantry to form peasant committees so that the seizure of the nobles’ estates might, in some fashion, be made into a collective act, yet it is clear that this general advice could not change anything in the real practice and real relations of power on the land. With or without committees, it was the rich peasants and usurers who made up the village bourgeoisie possessing the actual power in the hands in every Russian village, that surely became the chief beneficiaries of the agrarian revolution. Without being there to see, any one can figure out for himself that in the course of the distribution of the land, social and economic inequality among the peasants was not eliminated but rather increased, and that class antagonisms were further sharpened. The shift of power, however, took place to the disadvantage of the interests of the proletariat and of socialism. Formerly, there was only a small caste of noble and capitalist landed proprietors and a small minority of rich village bourgeoisie to oppose a socialist reform on the land. And their expropriation by a revolutionary mass movement of the people is mere child’s play. But now, after the "seizure," as an opponent of any attempt at socialization of agrarian production, there is an enormous, newly developed and powerful mass of owning peasants who will defend their newly won property with tooth and nail against every attack. The question of the future socialization of agrarian economy -- that is, any socialization of production in general in Russia -- has now become a question of opposition and of struggle between the urban proletariat and the mass of the peasantry. How sharp this antagonism has already become is shown by the peasant boycott of the cities, in which they withhold the means of existence to carry on speculation in them, in quite the same way as the Prussian Junker does.
The French small peasant become the boldest defender of the Great French Revolution which had given him land confiscated from the émigrés. As Napoleonic soldier, he carried the banner of France to victory, crossed all Europe and smashed feudalism to pieces in one land after another. Lenin and his friends might have expected a similar result from their agrarian slogan. However, now that the Russian peasant has seized the land with his own fist, he does not even dream of defending Russia and the revolution to which he owes the land. He has dug obstinately into his new possessions and abandoned the revolution to its enemies, the state to decay, the urban population to famine.
(Lenin’s speech on the necessity of centralization of industry, nationalization of banks, of trade and of industry. Why not of the land? Here, on the contrary, decentralization and private property.)
(Lenin’s own agrarian program before the revolution was different. The slogan taken over from the much condemned Socialist-Revolutionaries, or rather, from the spontaneous peasant movement.)
(In order to introduce socialist principles into agrarian relations, the Soviet government now seeks to create agrarian communes out of proletarians, mostly city unemployed. But it is easy to see in advance that the results of these efforts must remain so insignificant as to disappear when measured against the whole scope of agrarian relations. After the most appropriate starting points for socialist economy, the large estates, have been broken up into small units, now they are trying to build up communist model production units out of petty beginnings. Under the circumstances these communes can claim to be considered only as experiments and not as general social reform. Grain monopoly with bounties. Now, post-festum, they want to introduce the class war into the village&#33;)
The Leninist agrarian reform has created a new and powerful layer of popular enemies of socialism on the countryside, enemies whose resistance will be much more dangerous and stubborn than that of the noble large landowners."



>>A Leninist party is useful but not essential for that step. It&#39;s more important for ensuring that the workers&#39; and farmers&#39; government moves ahead to the socialist phase of the revolution and the creation of a workers&#39; state aka dictatorship of the proletariat.<<

So when did any of these couintries move to the &#39;socialist step&#39; ?


>>What? Those are different political questions.<<

Different, but combined:


>>Again, what does this have to do with the vanguard party exactly? How is the strong role of the party linked to the involvement of the peasantry in government? If anything these are two criticisms running in opposite directions since there were few peasants in the party.<<

It&#39;s clear as day. In such conditions party&#39;s role is crutial in holding on to a political and economical compromise between proletariat and peasantry. But, we all know what happens in time when bueraucrats and experts, thanks to this one party system, take over.
It&#39;s different when proletariat [urban] plays a leading political role in the revolution * [not in the up-down one party form, but &#39;elect-recall&#39; democratic form]. Huge difference.
Using the Russian model doesn&#39;t help much your cause. Au contraire.. The only way a party could have become a proletarian-vanguard party is if the leading accepted the WO&#39;s proposition of removal of non-proletarians from the party.


>>And why "by itself"? It&#39;s also a false dichotomy to counterposing workers&#39; democracy to involvement of the peasants in government decision-making.<<

You say it is &#39;a false dichotomy&#39;. Can you prove it?
It was the &#39;paralias&#39; who built Athens, not &#39;diakrias&#39;. You change slaves with industrial technology you get to this conclusion: the urban proletariat will build socialism, not peasantry.
You have no historic example, but pure assumptions. History is more likely to be on my side.

[red_che]

Originally posted by DJ&#045;[email protected] 24 2005, 08:53 PM

>>What do you mean after the revolution?<<

"After the revolution".. After the expropriation of the capitalists.
It was kind of obvious. You didn&#39;t think I was talking about the point when communism was reached...? #&#036;^#&#036;%&@?


>>And through that stage, capitalists will be more violent as it tries to get back to power.<<

You are a Stalinist, aren&#39;t you?
So therefore, do you agree that a vanguard party of the proletariat is needed during the entire period of socialism (socialist construction and revolution)? I am getting confused with your positions. Or maybe you just did not make a distinction between communism and socialism.

What I know is that Socialism is the initial step or the first stage of communism. That is why in this period (socialism), the society&#39;s transformation to communism is a lengthy and complex process. And because of that, a vanguard (not an elite) party of the proletariat to ensure that socialist construction and revolution will be led towards communism. However, in the course of the earlier socialist constructions (USSR, China, etc.), Revisionism stopped the transformation of the society to socialism and instead the revisionists (Kruschev, Brezhnev, Deng Xiaoping, and their successors) took the path of capitalism. They systematically revised Marxism-Leninism. That is why now, the former USSR is dismantled and China is becoming an Imperialist country.



>>And through that stage, capitalists will be more violent as it tries to get back to power.<<

You are a Stalinist, aren&#39;t you?

Yeah, why? and am a Maoist too.

[red_che]

It&#39;s clear as day. In such conditions party&#39;s role is crutial in holding on to a political and economical compromise between proletariat and peasantry. But, we all know what happens in time when bueraucrats and experts, thanks to this one party system, take over.


Using the Russian model doesn&#39;t help much your cause. Au contraire.. The only way a party could have become a proletarian-vanguard party is if the leading accepted the WO&#39;s proposition of removal of non-proletarians from the party.

The example of Russia, (Lenin and Stalin time :rolleyes: ) is a good example. After them, (Kruschev onwards :angry: ) is bad. Kruschev and his successors did not really intend to reach communism that is why all they did was to reverse the victories gained in the October Revolution until Stalin&#39;s time.

Lenin&#39;s principle of Dictatorship of the Proletariat through its vanguard party is a dictatorship meant to include not to exclude all previously exploited classes in the establishment of socialism.


the urban proletariat will build socialism, not peasantry.

What should be done with the peasants and other previously oppressed and exploited classes then? Extinguish them all? :angry: I don&#39;t think so. That&#39;s not a good idea, that will only make them reactive to the socialist construction and would turn them into enemies of the proletariat. They should be given a definite role in the socialist construction and revolution and they should not be excluded from the party of the proletariat, as well. All what is needed is to remold these classes, take away all their selfish interests and make them embrace proletarian revolution and socialism through a Cultural Revolution.


Au contraire.. The only way a party could have become a proletarian-vanguard party is if the leading accepted the WO&#39;s proposition of removal of non-proletarians from the party.

Sounds like being an elitist, self-destructive and enemy-magnetting proposition. I think the party must accept all those remolded (proletarianized) elements from the other classes. So long as they have removed all their influences and thinking of their previous classes, and are willing to do their own sacrifice in the socialist construction then the peasants and all other classes must be included in the party.

[Severian]

Responding to DJ-TC&#39;s post with the long Luxemburg paste:

Instead of pasting in articles, why don&#39;t you explain what your point is. Certainly a smaller quote or a link woulda done as well.

Anybody can paste an article; understanding it is harder.

OK, if by opponents of socialism you mean the poor peasants will want to hold onto their newly acquired land, that&#39;s true. Which is what Luxemburg is saying, they&#39;re enemies of socialization of agriculture. Yes, but the rapid and forced collectivization approach is wrong anyway, so increased difficulty of carrying it out...is no loss.

And that doesn&#39;t make them enemies of the revolution, of nationalizing capitalist industry, of settling with the rural bourgeoisie, or of gradual and voluntary collectivization that offers them an improvement in their conditions of life.

As the experience of a number of revolutions have shown, those who refuse to distribute land to individual farmers cannot win them to the revoution. It is that approach which makes the peasants &#39;enemies of socialism.&#39; As, around the same time as the Russian Revolution, the Soviet Lithuania and Soviet Hungary found out. (Lithuania was led by Luxemburgists.) As the Sandinistas, who often made forming a collective a condition of receiving land, found out.


So when did any of these couintries move to the &#39;socialist step&#39; ?

The Russian Revolution, as I said earlier, moved to that phase in late 1918; Cuba&#39;s revolution became socialist in August 1960; China&#39;s sometime during the Korean War I don&#39;t remember exactly, etc.

That&#39;s not to say they built socialism; but that they started on the path of socialist revolution - became workers&#39; states.


In such conditions party&#39;s role is crutial in holding on to a political and economical compromise between proletariat and peasantry.

It&#39;s crucial under any conditions. But as history proves, the worker-peasant alliance is much easier to maintain with "land to the tiller" than with an overly rapid collectivization or socialization of agriculture approach. So if your point is that one-party rule was needed because of all those "enemies of socialism", the reverse makes more sense. If that&#39;s not your point, please explain.

Also, you&#39;re muddying up two different things - the need for a vanguard party, and one-party rule. The Bolsheviks never regarded one-party rule as as a principle, and it arose from something very simple: all other parties joined the armed counterrevolution - except for splitoffs from &#39;em which merged with the Bolsheviks. A party organizing the most conscious workers is needed, but there&#39;s no reason it couldn&#39;t govern alonside parties representing other layers of the working class, or other classes of working people such as....gasp...working farmers.


The only way a party could have become a proletarian-vanguard party is if the leading accepted the WO&#39;s proposition of removal of non-proletarians from the party.

Excuse me? The Bolshevik party "become a proletarian-vanguard party" well before the October Revolution. If you mean it ceased to be one, say so.

Lemme point out, though, it continued to include the most conscious workers along with bureaucratic layers; certainly the non-party workers never showed any ability to combat the bureaucratic counterrevolution.


You have no historic example, but pure assumptions.

Excuse me? I&#39;ve given more historical examples than anyone in this discussion - I think that statement would be truer if you said it to a mirror.

Here&#39;s one more: the history of the 1st and 2nd agrarian reforms in Cuba is worth examining; basically the first dealt with landlordism and the second with the rural petty exploiters - kulak equivalents. Lemme point out they did both, and gradually promoted cooperatives and collectives, without the peasants ever becoming "enemies of socialism."

[Lamanov]

red_che: I&#39;m not debating with stalinists. It&#39;s a time loss.

Come on Severian, you should be a litle more comradely. There&#39;s no need for cockienes.
You are taking me for a naive guy, but some things go without saying, so i don&#39;t feel like I should explain such trivia [I&#39;m counting on your inteligence]... i.e. :


>>Excuse me? The Bolshevik party "become a proletarian-vanguard party" well before the October Revolution. If you mean it ceased to be one, say so.<<

Yes, it was a >proletarian + proletarianised inteligence< party. Later - it bueraucritized. Logical.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In order to explain "my point" I would have to approach this problem in a more constructive way.

Wage worker and a poor peasant do not have same intrests. True, they have points of contact, but never the less, it&#39;s meaningfull so far as the expropriation of capital goes [freedom from the yoke of capital, need for better life]. After that - they counterpose each other. Common intrest for better life splits in two parts just like these two branches of labor are split and held there with the economical laws which determine the whole basis of society.
Proletariat needs freedom of self-activity and economical freedom in order to democraticly run the socialist planned economy. This requires collective managment. Pesants, on the other hand, want to hold on to their new land, and if you politically and economicly equalise them to proletarians, there we have an economical conflict.

This labor division between industry and agriculture can not exist in the basis of socialist society. This division must be destroyed. On one side you have collective &#39;ownership&#39; and managment, in need of rational usage of labor power, and on the other side you have individual land ownership, counterposed to socialist economy with it&#39;s need for "freedom of trade", a kind of production-relationship which escapes planing and appropriate distribution, and slows it down to it&#39;s minimum.

The key is in destruction of this division between agriculture and industry. This is what Engels was talking about in Anti-Duhring when he wrote that division of labor between city and village must be annihilated. Instead of building an economical and political relationship where proletariat is politicaly equal to peasantry [in such relationship where labor of industry and its colective producers [proletariat] is significatly spent on satisfying the needs of the huge number of these individual land owners], we must strive towards rational usage of labor power, and industrialization of agriculture itself, not it&#39;s prolonged independant existance, but it&#39;s transformation into a productional branch which serves the economical intrests of proletariat. There is a way to do this. *[note]

I&#39;m against the revolution when there are no objective conditions. True, "Workers and Farmers government" was a need for Russia. But in Russia 7 million proletarians stood next to dozens of millions of peasants. Today - It&#39;s different. Am I badmouthing reality ? No, just the period of this reality.

In my understanding - development is proportional to number of urban proletariat and it&#39;s &#39;industrial army&#39; [potential workforce], so same goes for Hungary and Lithuania: method may not be wrong, but the factical conditions are.

----------

note * [And it&#39;s neither of these two - unconditional distribution /nor/ forced colectivization. Objective conditions have changed, we have open ways for new approach.]

[Severian]

Originally posted by DJ&#045;[email protected] 25 2005, 01:50 PM
Come on Severian, you should be a litle more comradely.
I&#39;m sure I should be, and I&#39;m sorry. But I&#39;m not a saint, and wading through your posts has been kinda exasperating. Your latest has been clearer, thanks for that.

I can guess what you mean - and I have been - but I prefer not to, since somebody usually accuses me of misrepresenting them.


Yes, it was a >proletarian + proletarianised inteligence< party. Later - it bueraucritized. Logical.

There&#39;s no reason to think a worker-only party is the solution to bureaucratization; the German SPD was full of ex-worker bureaucrats - so is the AFL-CIO. Really, that was the largest problem with the degeneration of the Bolsheviks - its mostly working-class members getting drawn out of the factories into the apparatus and army.

And if you say no bureaucrat can belong to the party, you have the problem of maintaining control over that bureaucracy. Constantly recruiting more class-conscious workers is a better solution...it&#39;s just that the Bolsheviks kinda ran out of class-conscious workers.


Proletariat needs freedom of self-activity and economical freedom in order to democraticly run the socialist planned economy. This requires collective managment. Pesants, on the other hand, want to hold on to their new land, and if you politically and economicly equalise them to proletarians, there we have an economical conflict.

Well, don&#39;t then. Until you can do it in a way which means an improvement in the life of working farmers....which will take time. Efficiencies of scale are harder to achieve in agriculture than industry, even for the capitalists, which is why there are so many small farms. It&#39;s not easy to get to a point where state or cooperative farms will be more productive than small farms.


This labor division between industry and agriculture can not exist in the basis of socialist society.

Sure. But socialism is some distance off, and requires revolutions in more than one country.


you have individual land ownership, counterposed to socialist economy with it&#39;s need for "freedom of trade", a kind of production-relationship which escapes planing and appropriate distribution, and slows it down to it&#39;s minimum.

You don&#39;t have to allow farmers "freedom of trade" necessarily. Depends on the situation. That&#39;s a source of tension, I agree...but not an insoluble one as Cuba shows.


There is a way to do this.

What way is that? It can&#39;t be done by attempting, by an act of will or utopian schema, to skip over necessary historic development, I&#39;m sure of that. People who impatiently attempt to skip earlier phases of the revolutionary process don&#39;t arrive at the later stages more quickly. Rather, they don&#39;t arrive at all.


I&#39;m against the revolution when there are no objective conditions.

Revolutionary situations don&#39;t depend on your will or mine. They don&#39;t develop anytime we wish for &#39;em...and similarly, don&#39;t wait until the perfect "objective conditions" arrive. When they develop, it&#39;s take power or be crushed.

Those who recommend passivity rather than struggle, and advocate missing chances at state power, are not revolutionaries let alone communists. Being a revolutionary is not just a matter of theory but of will and, to speak metaphorically, instinct. You need to feel it in your gut not just your brain, and people who are "against the revolution" until some unspecified later time...don&#39;t feel it.

We wouldn&#39;t be having this discussion without the Russian Revolution - and the Chinese, even, and others. Don&#39;t knock &#39;em.


True, "Workers and Farmers government" was a need for Russia. But in Russia 7 million proletarians stood next to dozens of millions of peasants. Today - It&#39;s different.

As I said earlier, the alliance with working farmers is still a necessity if you intend to go on eating after the revolution. Their numbers have greatly declined...their economic importance has declined far less. I said earlier that you were ignorant of actual conditions in the countryside, and you responded by pasting an old theoretical article. That&#39;s not substitute for a knowledge of the current facts.

The weight of democratic tasks in the revolution is far less than in Russia, that phase may well be shorter..but that doesn&#39;t mean you can successfully ignore or skip over it.


Objective conditions have changed, we have open ways for new approach.]

Again, what approach is that? If it&#39;s conditional distribution, that didn&#39;t work real well for the Sandinistas.

Of course, some lands can and should be converted directly to state or collective farms; but a refusal to carry out a bourgeois-democratic land reform, to give something to working farmers to win &#39;em to the revoluton, is disastrous. For a start, tenant farmers need to be given the lands they rent.

[red_che]

DJ-TC: Why won&#39;t you debate with a Stalinists? Is that how narrow-minded you are? However, I will not stop from answering your points, even if these were not directed to me.


Wage worker and a poor peasant do not have same intrests. True, they have points of contact, but never the less, it&#39;s meaningfull so far as the expropriation of capital goes [freedom from the yoke of capital, need for better life]. After that - they counterpose each other. Common intrest for better life splits in two parts just like these two branches of labor are split and held there with the economical laws which determine the whole basis of society.
Proletariat needs freedom of self-activity and economical freedom in order to democraticly run the socialist planned economy. This requires collective managment. Pesants, on the other hand, want to hold on to their new land, and if you politically and economicly equalise them to proletarians, there we have an economical conflict.


Yes, workers and peasants do not have the same interests. That is if the peasant class will remain to be that, peasant. However, in the Socialist construction, this condition (just like the one you mentioned above) will not remain like that forever. As you have quoted Engels "that division of labor between city and village must be annihilated. Instead of building an economical and political relationship where proletariat is politicaly equal to peasantry [in such relationship where labor of industry and its colective producers [proletariat] is significatly spent on satisfying the needs of the huge number of these individual land owners], we must strive towards rational usage of labor power, and industrialization of agriculture itself, not it&#39;s prolonged independant existance, but it&#39;s transformation into a productional branch which serves the economical intrests of proletariat.", this is what exactly Stalin and Mao did. When Engels said the division between city and village must be annihilated, he does not mean to take away all their properties and collectivize it or make it state-owned properties right away . In order to industrialize agriculture, certain conditions must be met first, and that includes collectivization of farms, communes, modernizing their mode of production, etc. But this step is not that simple as was proven in such countries as Russia, China and anywhere else. It needs to be done patiently. Otherwise, it would only serve to strengthen the capitalists who will try to get back and incite rebellions against the Proletarian State.

True, many peasants (specially rich peasants) do not want their lands to be taken away from them and distributed to the entire population just like that. It should take a Cultural Revolution. A revolution not just political (by imposing on them the will of the proletarian state) or economical (by collectivization of lands/farms) but also cultural (removing away from their consciousness the concept of private ownership) through painstaking Marxist education. This way, just as China have proven, peasants will be more productive and helpful in the socialist construction. This way, peasants are proletarianized (economically, politcally and culturally and consciously) and thus they will no longer become peasants and agriculture will not become capitalist (if you get what I mean).


In my understanding - development is proportional to number of urban proletariat and it&#39;s &#39;industrial army&#39; [potential workforce], so same goes for Hungary and Lithuania: method may not be wrong, but the factical conditions are.

In my understanding, development (socialist development) does not necessaily increase the number of urban proletariat, but rather increase the productivity of the entire workforce through conscious and modernized/industrialized mode of production, be it in the urban or rural areas.


Yes, it was a >proletarian + proletarianised inteligence< party. Later - it bueraucritized. Logical.

It was bureaucratized when the revisionists (capitalist roaders) came into power.

[Lamanov]

The point is in the nature of revolution.
Socialism IS some distance off, and it DOES require world wide revolution. But we build that basis NOW, no matter how far off the expansion of the superstructure is. When you have 80% of peasantry within the population of the revolutionary ground, it&#39;s perfectly logical that you have to accomodate them with economical and political equality which complements THEIR intrests.

Today, it&#39;s different. True, if we want to eat, we would make a proletarian revolution suitable for the peasantry, but only in the sence of the proletarian revolution [actually, proletarians would do that]. Alliance between the city and the farms is needed, but farmers are not about to decide the destiny of the proletariat and the city in the political way.
If the dictatureship of the proletariat is going to be that in it&#39;s full, democratic sence, then the urban proletariat is going to be it&#39;s driving force. It&#39;s going to form councils, democratic, non-hierarchical syndicates, and democraticly elected communes, and it&#39;s going to decide about it&#39;s economy.

One of the economical question which would meet the proletarians is the food question, and the alliance with the peasantry.
There must be a following solution:

1.) Proletariat will help the peasantry to prusuit the agrarian reform [land distribution], but the proletariat must not make a mistake: whole land MUST NOT be distributed to the peasantry&#33; [*note] This land which is left must be colectivized by the proletariat [that is, by the city], and it must be a ground set for what I called the "industrialization of the agriculture", where, in near future, colective food-factories would be built, supplied by industrial technology and qualified workforce. If it&#39;s possible, it would be best that colectivized land is very close to the cities, or better yer, surrounding it.
2.) Ofcourse, this can&#39;t happen soon enough [especially because of the reason you said: "socialism is some distance off, and requires revolutions in more than one country"], and it must be done gradually. Until this could take place, proletariat would rely on farmers for agriculture, so communes would have to co-operate with peasants and organise communal farming syndicates. But these "peasant-syndicates" would NOT be a constitutent part of the dictatorship of the proletariat and it&#39;s communes.
3.) In time, as city develops, and as industrial-farms develop, peasants move into the urban areas, where they get an education, jobs, join their syndicates and get full rights as a proletarian.
I know that a peasant&#39;s child would rather go to the city where he has a future, than to stay on the village and work on, as Luxemburg said, "primitive small units which operate with technical means from the time of the Pharaohs."


note:
In 80% peasantry Russia, this was not possible.
But in these 100 years capitalism has done it&#39;s thing, and it&#39;s still doing it:

Urban/rural popolation (http://www.geohive.com/global/gen_rururb.php), check this out.

Urban population by 2030:
-----------------------
Africa - 53.5%
-----------------------
E Africa - 53.5%
M Africa - 54.4%
N Africa - 48.6%
S Africa - 67.0%
W Africa - 58.9%
-----------------------
Asia - 54.5%
-----------------------
E Asia - 62.6%
S-C Asia - 43.7%
S-E Asia - 60.7%
W Asia - 72.3%
-----------------------
Europe - 79.6%
-----------------------
E Europe - 74.3%
N Europe - 87.7%
S Europe - 74.1%
W Europe - 86.4%
-----------------------
La. America - 84.6%
-----------------------
No. America - 86.9%
-----------------------
Oceania - 74.9%
-----------------------

[red_che]

1.) Proletariat will help the peasantry to prusuit the agrarian reform [land distribution], but the proletariat must not make a mistake: whole land MUST NOT be distributed to the peasantry&#33; [*note] This land which is left must be colectivized by the proletariat [that is, by the city], and it must be a ground set for what I called the "industrialization of the agriculture", where, in near future, colective food-factories would be built, supplied by industrial technology and qualified workforce. If it&#39;s possible, it would be best that colectivized land is very close to the cities, or better yer, surrounding it.


Those lands owned by big landlords will be expropriated and will be transformed into communes and collective farms for the poor, landless peasants (which comprised the biggest number of the peasant population). While on the part of the rich peasants (specially those who were friendly and supportive of the revolution), their lands will be expropriated in excess of five hectares (or depending upon the the necessary limit imposed by the conditions in a certain country) and will be distributed for collective farming. This way, the peasants will be helpful in the socialist construction and the socialist transformation of agriculture - industrialization of agriculture - will be carried out. This step should be coupled by a cultural/ideological education to transform their consciousness from bourgeois-thinking into proletarian consciousness.

While the above-program is being done, the government that will be established is a democratic people&#39;s government - that is - mainly composed of and elected representatives from all sectors and classes except , of course, the big bourgeoisie, and the dictatorship of the proletariat (proletarian leadership) is at the core and at all levels of this government.

How is Dicatatorship of the Proletariat realized, then, in this form of government?
Here&#39;s how.

1. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (DOP) will be exercised through its political party (the Communist Party, in most cases), which will ensure that all the programs of government must be geared towards the socialist construction.
2. The Party (Communist Party) must have absolute (ideological, political, organizational) leadership over the people&#39;s army.
3. The Party must recruit members from all the classes, but should ensure that these elements must have went through a process of remolding and Marxist education in order to remove all their previous bourgeois influences from their previous class. This way, the DOP and the Party leadership will be manifested in the established People&#39;s Democratic Government.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat or the Party&#39;s leadership will be manifested through its ideological leadership (exercised through their members who were at different classes) over the established people&#39;s democratic government.

[Lamanov]

Fuck off red_che. Nobody&#39;s reading your stalinist bullshit <_< :P
When I want to debate bonapartist reactionaries i just go to OI.

[red_che]

Originally posted by DJ&#045;[email protected] 28 2005, 11:26 AM
Fuck off red_che. Nobody&#39;s reading your stalinist bullshit <_< :P
When I want to debate bonapartist reactionaries i just go to OI.
getting pissed-off? :lol: why? that&#39;s not a good sign of your being a marxist(or... are you really a marxist?) :P . marxists are patient and would explain to everyone its points no matter who they are debating with. marxists debate on issues not on personalities. :angry:

[Lamanov]

Pissed off? :lol:
Silly little boy, don&#39;t give yourself too much credit by thinking that a pitty stalinist can piss me off.

Realize this: you are a stalinist so you can&#39;t really know what is marxist and what is not. Debate is one thing. Stalinism, on the other hand, is an "issue" which you drop soon as you become a real marxist.

I&#39;ll give you time to think it over and than we can talk dialectics. :D ..aight


There is no point to discuss your antithesis when I have
allready adressed it: thread (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=34058)

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 1 2005, 03:37 AM
marxists are patient and would explain to everyone its points no matter who they are debating with.
I see....so there one personality type that you have to have to be a Marxist.

"marxists debate on issues not on personalities. :angry:"

I think ya just broke that yerself.

[flyby]

is it just me, or does the method of approach here AVOID any discussion of the central issues?

1) lets raise what the central disagreements are...
2) then let&#39;s measure what people are saying up against objective reality...
3) and then "compare and contrast" where their various lines will lead (objectively).

I think if we use that scientific materialist method, we might actually get somewhere -- and even if we don&#39;t agree (with each other), those reading the threads can get a sense of who is actually helping to lead toward revolution and who is not.

----------------------------------

on one of the points of discussion I have to disagree with red-che.

He wrote that the approach to large landed estates is to nationalize them.

I think history has shown that this approach leads to state capitalism (and toward large landed estates now run by a new bourgeoisie, without the masses engaged or empowered.)

A different approach is the one fought for by Mao (and Maoists historically) which is to divide up the large landed estates through agrarian revolution ("land to the tiller&#33;") and then in a protracted and living political struggle fight for more collectivity -- through voluntry cooperatives to collectives.

This is a way in which the masses trhemselves are involved in forging and developing the new socialist forms of ownership -- and is very different from the "get rid of the old boss, here is your new boss" method of dealing like in cuba.

[Severian]

Originally posted by DJ&#045;[email protected] 27 2005, 10:08 AM
Alliance between the city and the farms is needed, but farmers are not about to decide the destiny of the proletariat and the city in the political way.
If the dictatureship of the proletariat is going to be that in it&#39;s full, democratic sence, then the urban proletariat is going to be it&#39;s driving force. It&#39;s going to form councils, democratic, non-hierarchical syndicates, and democraticly elected communes, and it&#39;s going to decide about it&#39;s economy.
I think the basic problem with this whole proposal is that it isn&#39;t derived from the course of the class struggle, or the experience of past struggle, but is reasoned out a priori.



1.) Proletariat will help the peasantry to prusuit the agrarian reform [land distribution], but the proletariat must not make a mistake: whole land MUST NOT be distributed to the peasantry&#33; [*note] This land which is left must be colectivized by the proletariat [that is, by the city], and it must be a ground set for what I called the "industrialization of the agriculture", where, in near future, colective food-factories would be built, supplied by industrial technology and qualified workforce. If it&#39;s possible, it would be best that colectivized land is very close to the cities, or better yer, surrounding it.

OK, a step forward in recognizing the need to distribute some land. And I agree that some land - how much depending on concrete conditions - can and should be converted directly from capitalist farms to state farms and collectives. (In the U.S., the amount available may be somewhat limited...employment of lots of wage-labor seems to be concentrated in areas like fruit production and some ranching and "factory-farm" animal raising.)

Two points on this, though: you can&#39;t base this solely or even primarily on future plans for the "industrialization of agriculture", you have to be able to keep it in production now.

And it can&#39;t, practically, be done by city or industrial workers, but by farmworkers. Our class in the countryside, the people working on these larger farms, and who will be working on the state farms after nationalization. If this property transformation is to be done by action of the workers and not by bureaucratic decree, that is...and even the most bureaucratic of regime, when they carry out a fundamental transformation in types of property, have to rely on a mobilization of the working people involved to some extent. (Even Eastern Europe under Soviet occupation for example.)


so communes would have to co-operate with peasants and organise communal farming syndicates. But these "peasant-syndicates" would NOT be a constitutent part of the dictatorship of the proletariat and it&#39;s communes.

In a country where working farmers were not numerous, why would it be necessary to disenfranchise them? Their votes wouldn&#39;t be sufficient to change the basically proletarian character of the government.

And disenfranchising people tends to piss &#39;em off. Which causes problems in terms of food production and for the political challenge of promoting voluntary collectivization.

Also, you don&#39;t make it clear where you stand on this, but it&#39;s very important that the formation of collectives, or syndicates, or whatever, be voluntary. Working farmers are growing most of the staple crops like grain and soybeans.


I know that a peasant&#39;s child would rather go to the city where he has a future, than to stay on the village and work on, as Luxemburg said, "primitive small units which operate with technical means from the time of the Pharaohs."

Primitive is not part of an accurate description of a lot of working farmers in the world today. Where it is, a government of working people could not leave them in that state, rather help them out of it together with encouraging the formation of collectives.

And I think you underestimate the desire of working farmers to stay on the land. One symptom of that desire: Today, a lot of working farmers are actually plowing off-farm income (including from industrial jobs) into keeping their farms afloat. There&#39;s a joke about the farmer who won the lottery: "I&#39;ll just keep farming til the money runs out."

Throughout history, capitalism&#39;s had to drive people off the land in order to create a labor force for its factories. And I don&#39;t see why socialism would want to continue this process and create even more urban bloat, on the contrary the direction of the struggle is to "overcome the contradiction between city and countryside", equalizing conditions between city and countryside. Besides the "idiocy of rural life", Marxists have always criticized the effects of piling huge numbers of people on top of each other in the cities - effects that can today be seen in the sprawling, polluted shantytowns of Africa, Asia, and Latin America as well. Suburban sprawl can be seen as a destructive, capitalist expression of the need to overcome this contradiction.

Incidentally there&#39;s already a lot of industry in rural and suburban areas.

I can&#39;t help wondering if this kind of proposal is party the expression of the concentration of middle-class radicals in cities and college towns, mostly in just some parts of the country, and tending to fall into the blue state-red state dichotomy promoted by bourgeois politics in the U.S. today. Having little or no contact with rural working people or conditions, and tending to write off whole regions of the country as hopelessly reactionary, in part simply because of a choice of Tweedledee over Tweedledum. Certainly those factors could help make these kind of proposals more easily accepted by leftists in the U.S. today.

[1949]

I have yet to read all this thread, but I would like to ask Flyby a few questions.

Flyby, you wrote: "on one of the points of discussion I have to disagree with red-che.

"He wrote that the approach to large landed estates is to nationalize them.

"I think history has shown that this approach leads to state capitalism (and toward large landed estates now run by a new bourgeoisie, without the masses engaged or empowered.)"

Could you please expand on why you think this is true?

You also wrote: "A different approach is the one fought for by Mao (and Maoists historically) which is to divide up the large landed estates through agrarian revolution ("land to the tiller&#33;") and then in a protracted and living political struggle fight for more collectivity -- through voluntry cooperatives to collectives."

What if the peasants "voluntarily" wanted to move straight to ownership by the whole people?

Also, do you think this approach is correct for nations without a peasantry, such as the U.S.? The RCP Draft Programme, part two, appendix 14, "The New Socialist Economy--Part 2: Agriculture, City and Countryside, Ecology, and Planning" (link) (http://rwor.org/margorp/a-socec2-e.htm), seems to hold that it would be possible to move straight to ownership by the whole people after the proletarian revolution in the U.S.

Which leads to my last question: if it is possible to bring both industry and agriculture under the ownership of the whole people after the proletarian revolution in the U.S., would it still be farfetched to suggest that we could fairly quickly do away with commodity production, wage labour, and classes, and thus move on to communism within a single country, as Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and (up until the early sixties) Mao thought was possible? After all, without commodities, money, and lower forms of socialist ownership in agriculture, what would be the internal basis for the regeneration of the bourgeoisie in society? I find appendix six of the Draft Programme, "The Party Under Socialism, and the Transition to Communism" (link) (http://rwor.org/margorp/a-party2.htm), to be somewhat vague on this question; the only major contradiction it mentions is the contradiction between mental and manual labour, which I think would be relatively easy to overcome in the absence of that other stuff I mentioned.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 5 2005, 10:29 AM
I have yet to read all this thread,
Ya might want to. It&#39;s a good one.


[Flyby] You also wrote: "A different approach is the one fought for by Mao (and Maoists historically) which is to divide up the large landed estates through agrarian revolution ("land to the tiller&#33;") and then in a protracted and living political struggle fight for more collectivity -- through voluntry cooperatives to collectives."

If this is going to be discussed further I&#39;d just like to point out that in reality, Mao&#39;s approach was forced collectivization, which was disastrous as everywhere else. It&#39;s necessary to look at honest history and Mao&#39;s actions, not Mao&#39;s rhetoric.

[The American Bolshevik]

We all seem to be forgetting, that Lenin lead the first successful (Yes, successful. After the October Revolution, a worker state was achieved), not to mention first time ever that Marxist theory was applied to the proletarian revolution. And the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) was the first country founded on communism.

Thus, we must allow for some leway. Lenin was a pioneer into the proletarian revolution. While he made many mistakes (Like we would if we were to now create/cause a proletarian revolution) but overall, it must be considered as a success.

It is unfortunate that bereaucracy took over the second Stalin took power. And from that day forward, the USSR began down a slippery slope of despotism and bereaucratic rule. While I do not condone all of Lenin&#39;s ideas, I do agree that a party is needed, but not necessarly needed to lead the proletarian revolution. More of an educational (Yes, more &#39;educating the proletariat&#39;) backbone that is there for support.

In this day an age, where 95% of the people in America when they say the pledge, don&#39;t even know what a republic is, an educational and supportive force is needed to help unite the working class into a force which at the right moment, can strike the bourgeoisie and topple capitalist imperialism.

[flyby]

Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2005, 02:28 AM

[Flyby] You also wrote: "A different approach is the one fought for by Mao (and Maoists historically) which is to divide up the large landed estates through agrarian revolution ("land to the tiller&#33;") and then in a protracted and living political struggle fight for more collectivity -- through voluntry cooperatives to collectives."

If this is going to be discussed further I&#39;d just like to point out that in reality, Mao&#39;s approach was forced collectivization, which was disastrous as everywhere else. It&#39;s necessary to look at honest history and Mao&#39;s actions, not Mao&#39;s rhetoric.
I think this should be discussed.

Since this is one of the key differences between revolutionary communism and castro/guevarism -- how to stand on agrarian revolution.

The revcom (MLM) approach is agrarian revolution relying on the masses, fighting for "land to the tiller" and redistribution of the land, then a road to voluntary and creative development of higher socialist forms of rural organization starting with voluntary cooperatives.

This is very opposed to guevarism -- which on one hand, promotes the masses watching passively as a few bearded hero activist-soldiers form a foco and shake the government.... and on the other hand, views a quick transition to big state farms in order to produce for the world market (in a rather crudely neo-colonial way).

This was a big issue in Peru, not just in cuba. And also in Castro&#39;s advice to the sandinistas not to do major land reform in the rich agricultural region (south Nicargua).

I.e. the castro guevara line (despite its revolutionary covering) has boiled down to "seize the plantations of the sugar lords, and create state-owned plantations of the new sugar lords." -- which even if it is brought along with some reforms leaves the masses as bystanders in the revolution.

In fact, the collectivization in China was profoundly different from the Soviet Union -- it was not mandated by the state, it often outstripped the ability of the party to initiate and lead, it was highly popular and sweeping at its core, and it produced vibrant new forms of rural life in many places (though like any revolution involving a quarter of humanity it inevitably involved other currents, themes and tides)

The trotskyist argument of always (and mechanically) assuming/insisting that Mao&#39;s approach was just "Stalin imported to China" is fundamentally wrong -- since Mao&#39;s approach to the land question was based on a profound (and correct) critique of Stalin&#39;s approach. And key to Mao&#39;s approach was "unleashing and relying on the masses of peasants themselves for agrarian revolution" (which is why "land to the tiller" is central, and the initiative of the masses gives it a much more profoundly voluntary and mass character.)

[1949]

Flyby, I cannot help but say two things about your response:

First of all, as of my writing this response, you have yet to answer my questions, which I think brought up some very important issues.

Second, you speak a lot of Mao&#39;s "profound (and correct) critique of Stalin&#39;s approach" to collectivization without actually addressing the question Severian brought up about whether Mao applied this in actual practice. I feel as if you have just repeated what you already said previously without providing any concrete evidence for your assertions, as if by virtue of you saying it repeatedly, it automatically becomes true--which is starkly opposed to the method our Chairman is fighting for in the epistemology talk (link) (http://rwor.org/chair_e.htm#epistemology). Perhaps you could cite some historical books you have read which bolster your claim that the collectivization campaign in socialist China was predominately voluntary?

[flyby]

Thanks for that sharp question, 1949.

To take the second one first:

I think i did answer Severian. First factually, he is wrong (in the main and overall). And second his method is to proceed from apriori conclusion to the invention of reality. (Or else, he is at least relying on the analysis of people who have employed that mechanical and idealist method.)

Severian&#39;s view (here and elsewhere) is essentially that "Mao is just a subset of Stalin, and so whatever mao said or even fought for, the reality is that he was essentially like stalin in everyway that matters." It is mechanical and circular reasoning -- and it is constantly unleashed to make arguments that are profoundly wrong.

Clearly in something as sweeping as "socialist revolution in the Chinese countryside" there are many complex and diverse events and currents. I won&#39;t (and didn&#39;t) pretend to sum it all up here.

And just as clearly, there is in every great revolutionary event an element of coersion -- even in the revolutionary movements that are most genuinely rooted in the masses, filled with mass initiative and led by genuine communists unleashing that initiative. (No revolution is purely voluntary, nor could it be, if you think about it for a moment. The very fact that guns and armies are needed, and remain after the revolution is a sign that an element of coersion is always part of revolutionary transition -- hence the very concept and practice of the dictatorship of the proletariat. And as BA points out in the K. Venu polemic, it is not simply or mechanically coersion aimed at the former rulers -- in socialist society and revolution, there is also an element of coersion vis a vis the masses, or sections of them, even if that is NOT the principal aspect. (This is even true in strikes, where there is an element of coersion against the desires of potential scabs among the masses.)

But in fact, even given all those ABCs of revolution, the revolution in china was one of the most sweeping, breathtaking, profoundly popular, and life changing revolutionary movements in history -- both in its agrarian revolutionary stage and in its successive stages of cooperatives and then various forms of collectivization.

It is worth noting, just as an example, that the whole approach of the Peoples Communes was not developed by Mao (or by the Communist Party).

It was a creation (similar to the Soviets originally in 1905) that first happened "in the field" -- based on mass experimentation and initiative. And at first, it was very controversial in the party (and especially among conservatives in the leadership.)

Mao went on extensive investigation into the countryside, met with the peasants, went to areas where the peoples communes were being set up, and wrestled with whether they were the way to go at that point (in the 1950s).

There was a historic moment, where after work, and struggle, and investigation, he finally announced his opinion: "The peoples communes are fine." And the gnashing of teeth among the conservatives in the party, and those hoping for expanded capitalist relations in the countryside, was intense. And even more intense was a sweeping upsurge of peasants creating these communes acorss the country. Now some of those communes (which were a county wide ownership formation, often with communal villages, and kitchens, and educational systems and collective workpoints payment systems that were not based on family units -- which was a big deal for women and their equality&#33;).... now some of these communes could not be sustained... in places where the level of socialist consciousness was low. So there were places they were set up, and then fell appart (or only existed on paper.)

But the fact remains, historically and truthfully, that the collectivization of agriculture in china was a genuine mass movement, rooted among the peasants, full of joy, initiative, complexity and the emergence of new political problems.

By contrast, in the Soviet union, there was a "mass movement" for collectivization -- but this mass revolutionary character often took the form of the movement of workingclass communist urban youth (the famous 20,000) "going to the countryside" to bring collectivizaiton to the peasants. And as the struggle progressed there was in a great many places not only coersion but almost war-like conditions.... especially in the extremely conservative western Ukraine, where it had to be imposed.

There was an element of Red army soldiers (and others) "going to the peasants" to participate in the agrarian revolution in China, and the later collectivization movements -- but it was quite different, and the mass initiative and activism of the peasants was on a whole different scale.

To equate the approach of mao, with the approach of STalin, is to speak without knowing, and also it is to speak without really caring about the truth. Because the approaches are so radically different.

And mao&#39;s critique (in his larger work Critique of Soviet Economics (http://www.marx2mao.com/Mao/CSE58.html)) is worth studying -- and of course, that is just the beginning, since his writings during the chinese events themselves are rich and revealing.

As for your points 1949, let me touch on some.

You write: "What if the peasants "voluntarily" wanted to move straight to ownership by the whole people?"

Well, the subjective ocnsciousness of the people is part of the objective conditions for the communists. There are times when the masses of people are actually mobilized for very advanced forms, and it is a complex issue to know what to do.

Marx was against trying to create the Paris commune -- he thought it would fail. But when it happened, he hailed it, send urgent advance. And when it was crushed, he didn&#39;t say "i told you so" but in a profound scientific and communist way, he upheld it and fought to extract what he could learn from it.

Lenin&#39;s estimation of what was needed in Russia did not agree with the actual political sentiments of the peasants in 1917. The peasants rallied to the SR land program -- Lenin was (if i remember correctly) for "land to the tiller" and the breaking of the estates, and the peasants were much more focused on preserving and expanding the traditional communal lands (called mir, in russian). Lenin&#39;s approach was to adopt the SR program, and say "This is what you have rallied around, we have power and can walk down that road with you. And together we will develop and learn the forms of transition to socialism and communism in the land."

Mao (as I wrote above) investigated the Peoples communes to identify where to stand, and in a similar confronted the creation of the Shanghai Commune a decade later during the great proletarian cultural revolution.

On the other hand, when the revolution FIRST happened (before and just after 1949) the peasants of china were desperate for land. they were starved for land. It was their dream and their obbession. Mao had spend decades deeply studying the peasants, their lives, their aspirations, and their connection with the larger revolutionary process. He did not just pull his approach of "land to the tiller" out of a hat.... but it was a synthesis based on both deep investiagtion and approaching the peasant question from the larger communist world revolution.

So in the 1949 revolution, there was really no chance that 500 million peasants would suddenly demand state owned land.... they were desperate for their own plots of land, and winning that (through revolutonary armed struggle and agrarian revolution) was a complex and intense war (literally) and left the new revolution with deep roots among the peasants and a powerful basis for the next stages of the revolution.

you write: "Also, do you think this approach is correct for nations without a peasantry, such as the U.S.? The RCP Draft Programme, part two, appendix 14, "The New Socialist Economy--Part 2: Agriculture, City and Countryside, Ecology, and Planning" (link), seems to hold that it would be possible to move straight to ownership by the whole people after the proletarian revolution in the U.S."

Clearly where there is no peasantry, a long history of capitalist "family farms" and a huge dominance of agribusiness, the material and poltical conditions are different.

The programme (which is a draft) calls for moving straight to ownership by the whole people (with some exception, like the Native people&#39;s land). I don&#39;t know if that will remain in the final version of the programme.

finally: if it is possible to bring both industry and agriculture under the ownership of the whole people after the proletarian revolution in the U.S., would it still be farfetched to suggest that we could fairly quickly do away with commodity production, wage labour, and classes, and thus move on to communism within a single country, as Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and (up until the early sixties) Mao thought was possible?"

I think there is a huge difference between socialist ownership by the whole people and full communist relations. This is a larger question we can return to, and I don&#39;t want to muddy this particular thread by inserting this huge new topic.

But socialist relations are only a transition to commuist relations, and they are (even if the ownership is nominally "by the whole people") riddled with contradictions, capitalist remanants, the partial-at-least governance by the law of value and commodity relations. And so there is a lot to do and change (including on a world scale) for full communist relations to emerge.

[Severian]

Old thread where all this Maoist BS was refuted, both on China and Cuba. (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=31514&hl=)

Really I see why DJ-TC refuses to debate with you lot. The level of discussion instantly drops from real questions of revolutionary policy - we were even able to get into some nuances - to refuting Stalinist Big Lies about basic historical events which are not disputed by any honest and knowledgeable person.

[flyby]

Originally posted by [email protected] 8 2005, 07:30 AM
The level of discussion instantly drops from real questions of revolutionary policy - we were even able to get into some nuances - to refuting Stalinist Big Lies about basic historical events which are not disputed by any honest and knowledgeable person.
I&#39;m sure i&#39;m not the only person to notice that severian&#39;s response does not engage a single fact (despite his little link to earlier discussions), or any serious attempt to refute anything discussed (about the land question, the Maoist approach, the difference with Stalin&#39;s approach, the experience of the peasants, the transition from cooperatives to high socialist forms of ownership, and so on -- which are not contained in previous threads.)

We can of course, also deal with the issues in those previous threads (which i feel barely scratched on some important historical and political issues differentiating revolutionary communism from forms of revisionism, including Castro&#39;s road). And bring them in here. But lets not pretend that "all is settled, all is known" -- when that obviously wasn&#39;t and isn&#39;t true.

What does Severian claim? He says the "basic historical events" are known by "any honest and knowledgable person" -- and so when we maoists bring facts and analyses he doesn&#39;t agree with into all this, we are just importing "big lies" that everyones knows is wrong. (Just like everyone is supposed to know "communism failed" or that "America is fighting for democracy"? Just like everyone knows "Stalin is a monster worse than Hitler" and so on?)

What method is this? How unscientific&#33;

Where ordinary bourgeois "conventional wisdom" ends, and trotskist dogma begins is often hard to tell, isn&#39;t it&#33;

What a clever method&#33; Everyone knows the facts about the basic historical events, severian claims, so actual discussions of actual facts are not needed.

And those tiresome Maoists who insist on bringing facts are offending the sensibilities of every "honest and knowledgable" person by raising such information (which we all know MUST be lies, since it contradicts Severian&#39;s apriori assumptions and verdicts&#33;).

hehehhe not so clever, huh?

Why don&#39;t you discuss the "learn from Taichai campaign," severian? Or explain why the "Peach tree model" is wrong (or perhaps you think it is right?)

Or perhaps you really have never bothered to study ANYTHING about the Chinese agrarian and socialist revolution that you lightly and casually condemn. Or perhaps you assume that every "honest and knowledgable" person already knows all about these things?

I won&#39;t discuss who in this conversation is "honest."
And I won&#39;t discuss who is "knowledgable."
I think everyone can see for themselves.
So lets leave Severian&#39;s cheezy accusations about "honesty" where they belong.

I suggest that those of us, who want to, get back into the cardinal questions about how revolutoins were tried and how revolutons happen, and into the real history and meaning of all this.

[Severian]

Sufficient facts already given in other thread.