Lenin's "Left Wing Communism" approved by Nazis?

[Marion]

Just read a pamphlet by Ruhle in which he claims that "When in 1933 Hitler suppressed all socialist and communist literature in Germany, Lenin's pamphlet [Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder] was allowed publication and distribution". This is in the context of Ruhle arguing that Bolshevism and Fascism are similar.

Anyone know any more details about the claimed non-suppression?

[abbielives!]

lenin is critical of communism in that so i would not be supprised if it was allowed to be published.
Bolshevism and fascism are similar in that they are both dictatorships, that is where the similarity ends

[bolshevik butcher]

What the fuck abbie lives that just ridiculous. Yes Leninism advocates the dictatorship of the proletariat, the rule of the working class that is compeltley contrary to fascism. This is just pathetic trolling, leninism= facism is reminicent of something from a bad cold war comic.

I don't know whether or not this is true but it would seem rather odd. Lenin criticises "left wing" communism for not being the correct approach through which to leed the working class to revolution, not from a right wing perspective.

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

Originally posted by abbielives!@July 14, 2007 11:28 pm
lenin is critical of communism in that so i would not be supprised if it was allowed to be published.
Bolshevism and fascism are similar in that they are both dictatorships, that is where the similarity ends
:lol: :lol:

[KC]

lenin is critical of communism in that

Provide your quotes.

That pamphlet rocks.

[Vargha Poralli]

Originally posted by abbielives!@July 15, 2007 03:58 am
lenin is critical of communism in that so i would not be supprised if it was allowed to be published.
Bolshevism and fascism are similar in that they are both dictatorships, that is where the similarity ends
:lol: :lol: :lol: Thanks for that very funny joke comrade ;)

BTW any fool who reads that article could understand what Lenin writes about in that Pamphlet. So I doubht Nazis would have ever allowed its publication.

[Luís Henrique]

Well, dictatorships can be extremely stupid. Here in Brazil, Stendhal's novel The Red and the Black was forbidden, because the censorship deduced, by the title, that it might be Communist propaganda.

But their stupidity usually results in forbidding things that wouldn't need prohibition, not in allowing things that should, from their point of view, be forbidden.

If Rühle argues that Leninism and fascism are similar, and uses this (regardless of if it's true or not) as evidence, then it says a lot more about Rühle than about either Leninism or fascism.

(and, finally, when are people going to learn not to pass judgement on books they haven't even opened, much less read?)

Luís Henrique

[Bilan]

Originally posted by Zampanò@July 15, 2007 10:55 am
That pamphlet rocks.
No, it really doesn't. It's a load of crap.

[Panda Tse Tung]

Wow, the level of intelligence in this thread just springs out!
On topic: Hitler believed that most Communists would make good Nazi's (for being hard-working, etc... etc...) thats why at a point he tried to emphasize his 'unitary' stance towards the Communists. Later this strategy seemed to fail because of the high level of ideological education within the Communist Party, so he changed strategy's.

[Leo]

Lenin's "Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder" pamphlet is clearly one of the most right-wing and counter-productive works Lenin has ever written as it is for the most part nothing but a defense of opportunism. It is possible that the Nazis allowed this work, however to me it seems highly unlikely. First of all, although the pamphlet is defending opportunism, it can hardly be defined as capitalist, let alone fascist so it is not something which would be ideologically useful to the Nazis. Also this pamphlet was actually written as a part of a debate: Lenin listened to the left communist Jan Appel, wrote the pamphlet, Gorter replied and so forth. Rühle, although clearly an internationalist, was not really interested in discussions as it seems - I remember reading that he left in the middle of a Comintern congress where he was a delegate of the KAPD! Anyway, most importantly, I would expect the political situation Nazis faced would prevent them from allowing anything from Lenin being published as by 1933, Lenin had already been turned into a "god", he had been turned into a symbol of Russian imperialism and the Stalinist counter-revolution and the Nazis considered the representatives of Russian imperialism as real enemies as they thought that their imperialist ambitions would lead them to wage war with Russia. It might have been true that Nazis printed Lenin's work for some reason, after all if a bourgeois would pick one of Lenin's works and reprint and redistribute it, it would have been this pamphlet, however it wouldn't be a good move for the Nazis regardless.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 15, 2007 03:26 pm
Lenin's "Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder" pamphlet is clearly one of the most right-wing and counter-productive works Lenin has ever written as it is for the most part nothing but a defense of opportunism.
It was a defense of strategy; Lenin discussed how this related to the Bolshevik experience, and relayed how their tactics that are wrongly deemed "opportunism" by you had actually lead them to conquer the state power. Keep in mind, Lenin was assisting in the formation of the policies of the Communist International; if mistakes were made in drawing in the theoretical importance of their tactics, then the failure of the world revolution would clearly be in their hands. I don't think it was counter-productive, at best, it was the opposite of this.


"Third, the "Left" Communists have a great deal to say in praise of us Bolsheviks. One sometimes feels like telling them to praise us less and to try to get a better knowledge of the Bolsheviks’ tactics. We took part in the elections to the Constituent Assembly, the Russian bourgeois parliament in September-November 1917. Were our tactics correct or not? If not, then this should be clearly stated and proved, for it is necessary in evolving the correct tactics for international communism. If they were correct, then certain conclusions must be drawn. Of course, there can be no question of placing conditions in Russia on a par with conditions in Western Europe. But as regards the particular question of the meaning of the concept that "parliamentarianism has become politically obsolete", due account should be taken of our experience, for unless concrete experience is taken into account such concepts very easily turn into empty phrases. In September-November 1917, did we, the Russian Bolsheviks, not have more right than any Western Communists to consider that parliamentarianism was politically obsolete in Russia? Of course we did, for the point is not whether bourgeois parliaments have existed for a long time or a short time, but how far the masses of the working people are prepared (ideologically, politically and practically) to accept the Soviet system and to dissolve the bourgeois-democratic parliament (or allow it to be dissolved). It is an absolutely incontestable and fully established historical fact that, in September-November 1917, the urban working class and the soldiers and peasants of Russia were, because of a number of special conditions, exceptionally well prepared to accept the Soviet system and to disband the most democratic of bourgeois parliaments. Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks did not boycott the Constituent Assembly, but took part in the elections both before and after the proletariat conquered political power. That these elections yielded exceedingly valuable (and to the proletariat, highly useful) political results has, I make bold to hope, been proved by me in the above-mentioned article, which analyses in detail the returns of the elections to the Constituent Assembly in Russia.

The conclusion which follows from this is absolutely incontrovertible: it has been proved that, far from causing harm to the revolutionary proletariat, participation in a bourgeois-democratic parliament, even a few weeks before - the victory of a Soviet republic and even after such a victory, actually helps that proletariat to prove to the backward masses why such parliaments deserve to be done away with; it facilitates their successful dissolution, and helps to make bourgeois parliamentarianism "politically obsolete". To ignore this experience, while at the same time claiming affiliation to the Communist International, which must work out its tactics internationally (not as narrow or exclusively national tactics, but as international tactics), means committing a gross error and actually abandoning internationalism in deed, while recognising it in word."

Lenin's analysis of participation in parliament was overwhelming correct; the Bolsheviks built a support base from workers who were more reliant on social-democratic and liberal politics, so I don't think that this was a wrong policy whatsoever. Lenin was correct on the trade-unions also.

[abbielives!]

Originally posted by bolshevik [email protected] 14, 2007 10:45 pm
What the fuck abbie lives that just ridiculous. Yes Leninism advocates the dictatorship of the proletariat, the rule of the working class that is compeltley contrary to fascism. This is just pathetic trolling, leninism= facism is reminicent of something from a bad cold war comic.

I don't know whether or not this is true but it would seem rather odd. Lenin criticises "left wing" communism for not being the correct approach through which to leed the working class to revolution, not from a right wing perspective.

for the thousandth time: the DoP is not the rule of the working class it is the rule of the party.
if you had payed attention you might have noticed that i said that the fact that they were dicatorships is where the similarity ends.

I would not be supprised if it slippedthough the censors because of the title "Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder" given thatthe Nazis refered to themselves as socialists.

[bolshevik butcher]

This thread isnt about what we think of the DOP. You said that leninism was similar to facism without at all justifying it.

[Devrim]

Originally posted by Leo Uilleann
t is possible that the Nazis allowed this work, however to me it seems highly unlikely.
Yes, it is true.
Maybe people should think why.
Devrim.
P.S. I don't agree with Rhule.

[Leo]

Originally posted by RedDali+--> (RedDali)It was a defense of strategy; Lenin discussed how this related to the Bolshevik experience, and relayed how their tactics that are wrongly deemed "opportunism" by you had actually lead them to conquer the state power. Keep in mind, Lenin was assisting in the formation of the policies of the Communist International; if mistakes were made in drawing in the theoretical importance of their tactics, then the failure of the world revolution would clearly be in their hands. I don't think it was counter-productive, at best, it was the opposite of this.[/b]


Originally posted by Lenin+--> (Lenin)Third, the "Left" Communists have a great deal to say in praise of us Bolsheviks. One sometimes feels like telling them to praise us less and to try to get a better knowledge of the Bolsheviks’ tactics. We took part in the elections to the Constituent Assembly, the Russian bourgeois parliament in September-November 1917. Were our tactics correct or not? If not, then this should be clearly stated and proved, for it is necessary in evolving the correct tactics for international communism.[/b]

Well, it was not correct however it was merely a mistake back then which was understood and not repeated - hardly opportunism. About the elections which the Bolsheviks did participate in, Lenin says:


Originally posted by Lenin
Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks did not boycott the Constituent Assembly, but took part in the elections both before and after the proletariat conquered political power... The conclusion which follows from this is absolutely incontrovertible: it has been proved that, far from causing harm to the revolutionary proletariat, participation in a bourgeois-democratic parliament, even a few weeks before - the victory of a Soviet republic and even after such a victory, actually helps that proletariat to prove to the backward masses why such parliaments deserve to be done away with; it facilitates their successful dissolution, and helps to make bourgeois parliamentarianism "politically obsolete".

And you say:


[email protected]
Lenin's analysis of participation in parliament was overwhelming correct; the Bolsheviks built a support base from workers who were more reliant on social-democratic and liberal politics, so I don't think that this was a wrong policy whatsoever.

Now, this election was a fiasco for the Bolsheviks: they made big preparations, they lost big time. Here, Lenin's argument boils down to saying that the Russian revolution had to do with the Bolsheviks participation in the bourgeois parliament. This argument has no material basis: considering the effect of the interventions of the Bolshevik party within the proletariat, the electoral fiasco has got nothing to do with victory, and the slogans such as "All power to the Soviets" or "Smash the Bourgeois State" has everything to do with it. It also makes little sense to argue that this would help the Bolsheviks build a support base for social-democratic and liberal workers: first of all, what made the workers have confidence in the Bolsheviks was their slogans to turn to imperialist war into civil war, them really going all the way in what they were saying, them really pushing in the soviets for proletarian take over. Social -democratic and liberal workers suffered from the same conditions all other workers did: they saw a point in what the Bolsheviks were saying. If anything, Bolsheviks' electoral participation would push the social-democratic and liberal workers away as they were not succesful, what social-democrats and liberals would think would be that they did not have "democratic" support: an argument used against the October revolution by social democrats and liberals for a long time. In those arguements Lenin is forgetting what happened in 1917, he is turning his back on what he said in 1917. That's why this pamphlet marks the leading figure of the left-wing of the Bolshevik Party, Lenin turning to centrism.

Yet, this was, as I said, a mistake rather than opportunism, principally because the Bolsheviks did not see this as a long-term policy in Russia and also because it was a position which was contradicting what the left-wing majority of the Bolshevik party had been saying since February and they ended up holding on to what they were saying. However, on a general theoretical level: with communist world revolution being a possibility and permanent reforms and "democratic" gains being an impossibility, there can be no proletarian use of the parliaments; it would be nothing but taking the proletarian struggle out of the class terrain, wasting the energy of the militants but most importantly, whether it is desired or not, supporting the myth of bourgeois parliaments working and "people" actually being in power. It is impossible to do what Lenin is suggesting communists to do successfully: it is impossible to be succesful in bourgeois politics when you are saying that all you will do in the parliament is trying to prove parliamentarianism wrong - you simply won't get votes, you will lose the elections, as the Bolsheviks did. Even if a few communists are sent into the parliament with this slogan on an extraordinary situation, their propaganda in the parliament will not have any effect at all compared to the propaganda communist make at the workplaces, during the struggles. Parliaments in reality are subjected to the power of the bureaucracies of the state mechanisms, they can't be used as a stage for communist propaganda, they do not hold power, they are not centers of attention. If you claim that things in workers' lives will change if communists are sent to the parliament, the parliamentarian policy might be more succesful but you would be basing your campaign on something that is not possible and also on the preservation of the bourgeois parliaments.


abbielives!
the DoP is not the rule of the working class it is the rule of the party.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is not the the rule of the party. Had it been the rule of the party, it would have been called the dictatorship of the party, not the dictatorship of the proletariat which literally means the rule of the working class. If the working class isn't the sole possessor of all power, then it is not a dictatorship of the proletariat.

[abbielives!]

Originally posted by bolshevik [email protected] 15, 2007 07:16 pm
This thread isnt about what we think of the DOP. You said that leninism was similar to facism without at all justifying it.

but that is how they are silimar as I have been saying all along, THEY ARE BOTH DICTATORSHIPS

[abbielives!]

Originally posted by Leo Uilleann+July 15, 2007 07:48 pm--> (Leo Uilleann @ July 15, 2007 07:48 pm)

abbielives!
the DoP is not the rule of the working class it is the rule of the party.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is not the the rule of the party. Had it been the rule of the party, it would have been called the dictatorship of the party, not the dictatorship of the proletariat which literally means the rule of the working class. If the working class isn't the sole possessor of all power, then it is not a dictatorship of the proletariat. [/b]

you know very well that all politicians use a moral cloak to obscure their actions and make them seem justified. by your standards no goverment has ever been a DoP. A state cannot mean that power is in the hands of the working class, because the state nessiarily centeralizes power into the hands of the few who hold positions in the goverment.

[Leo]

you know very well that all politicians use a moral cloak to obscure their actions and make them seem justified.

I haven't said a single word about politicians. This has nothing to do with what I am saying.


by your standards no goverment has ever been a DoP.

Russia was at the beginning; the proletariat lost power. Paris Commune was, of course. Proletarian dictatorship was established at times during the German Revolution.


A state cannot mean that power is in the hands of the working class, because the state nessiarily centeralizes power into the hands of the few who hold positions in the goverment.

What is a state? Is it an "unholy monster" or something like that? A state is an instrument of a class for ruling other classes. A bourgeois state obviously cannot mean that power is in the hands of the working class because the bourgeois state necessarily serves the bourgeoisie. When the proletariat takes power, it will organize itself into what can technically be called a state but something that has got nothing to do with the bourgeois state: what I am talking about is the dictatorship of workers' councils.

[abbielives!]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 15, 2007 09:48 pm
what I am talking about is the dictatorship of workers' councils.
dictatorship is not the best way to describe that.
i don't think any of those examples would fit the anarchists definition of the state, since the state is nessisarily hierarchical.

[Rawthentic]

The state is an organ of class rule, whether that be bourgeois or proletarian. Thats an objective fact.

[Luís Henrique]

Anecdotally, I only read one book by Otto Rühle. I bought it back in my teens - at a time no sane person would ask for a book by Lenin in a Brazilian bookshop.

By his reasoning, that should mean that council communism and military dictatorship are the same thing?

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

dictatorship is not the best way to describe that.

No dictatorship is actually the best way to describe that, such organs of the proleterait are necessarily very oppressive towards the bourgeoisie.


i don't think any of those examples would fit the anarchists definition of the state, since the state is nessisarily hierarchical.

Actually, I think you are mistaken about the anarchists definition of the state, I thought that anarchists explained based on the concept of authority rather than hierarchy, and of course the anarchism is itself an ideology based around opposition to authority, or at least it originally was something like that. Anyway, according to the definition saying state is authoritarian, the proletariat organized as a ruling class will necessarily be authoritarian towards the bourgeoisie. This organization is not a state as we have seen and known however, it has been called a semi-state in the past, if that would help you swallow it.

[Tower of Bebel]

Originally posted by abbielives!@July 14, 2007 11:28 pm
lenin is critical of communism in that so i would not be supprised if it was allowed to be published.
Bolshevism and fascism are similar in that they are both dictatorships, that is where the similarity ends
Abbie, you must love such threads.

[gilhyle]

Originally posted by Zampanò@July 15, 2007 12:55 am

lenin is critical of communism in that

Provide your quotes.

That pamphlet rocks.
I second that emotion

[Leo]

Why?

[gilhyle]

Cos its a brilliant pamphlet that turned me into a communist.

In this pamphlet Lenin attains, not as a perspective for the Russian party, but as a world perspective, a methodology that can surpass the moment of the Russian Revolution and the particular period in which he lived and guide (or at least a set of key hints for ) communists in all their work.

Left Wing Communism is the consoling refuge of the sincere. Marx's project was to transform communism from a doctrine of dissent into a methodically objective system for taking up every opportunity to build the working class organisations and their power, while avoiding descent into revisionism.

This pamphlet is the culmination of Lenin's political development and it points clearly to the centrality of discerning consciousness in achieving revolution, for it demands an exacting capacity on the part of the revolutionary party to differentiate the revolutionary course between the twin centrist errors of ultra-leftism and revisionism. Crucially, it illustrate that there are no guarantees as to the right course, only the constant iterative rexamination of the pitfalls and errors that lie at every turn.

Unfortunately, its almost impossibly demanding.

[syndicat]

the quote RedDali cites from Leftwing Communism doesn't really provide any argument as to why it was a good thing for the Bolsheviks to have participated in the elections to the Constituent Assembly in Nov. 1917. The Bolsheviks got only about a fourth of the vote, tho probably a majority in the cities of European Russia, where they already had gotten a majority in elections to the soviets, and a majority in the army and navy on the western front. It could be argued, i suppose, that if they'd boycotted the elections and called openly for suppression of the Constituent Assembly, they may have lost some support. At that time they were competing with the Mensheviks for support within the Russian working class. On the other hand, the slogan that got them elected as the majority in the urban soviets was "All power to the soviets". And that implied doing away with parliamentary government. Even the Mensheviks by Octover 1917 were forced to agree to "All power to the soviets" tho they said it should be "temporary" until the Constituent Assembly met.

But Lenin says that he is talking about policy of the international, and thus the international's opposition to anti-parliamentarism in western countries. The effect of that position was to push the Communist parties in the west to become parliamentary parties. Over time the Communist parties in Western Europe became virtually indistinguishable from social-democratic parties. And from the point of view of anti-parliamentary revolutinaries, that outcome was predictable.

[bolshevik butcher]

Originally posted by abbielives!+July 15, 2007 09:21 pm--> (abbielives! @ July 15, 2007 09:21 pm)
bolshevik [email protected] 15, 2007 07:16 pm
This thread isnt about what we think of the DOP. You said that leninism was similar to facism without at all justifying it.

but that is how they are silimar as I have been saying all along, THEY ARE BOTH DICTATORSHIPS [/b]
All states are dictatorships of one class or another. Therefore anyone who'se ever held government or advocated a class taking state power was a fascist? That's bizzare and ridiculous.