What kind of "Marxism" is Leninism?

[p.m.a.]

What Kind of "Marxism" is Leninism? (http://rs2k.revleft.com/theory.php?subaction=showfull&id=1083082462&archive=&start_from=&ucat=&)

The defining work of Leninism is What is to be Done? written at the beginning of the 20th century. When Lenin wrote this small book, he was a "Kautskyist"...that is, a supporter of Karl Kautsky's German Social Democracy, heir to Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel and, of course, Engels himself.

It was Lenin's inspiration (if that's the right word) to recognize that the parliamentary strategy of social democracy "would not work" in the autocracy that was the Russian Empire.

Probably borrowing from earlier Russian revolutionary traditions (nihilists?), Lenin developed the concept of a "vanguard party of professional revolutionaries" that would operate underground to organize resistance to the old regime.

Naturally, such a party had to be highly disciplined and at least quasi-militarized. It also had to consist of people who already had considerable political sophistication--in the Russia of that era, that meant mostly middle-class intellectuals (Stalin was very much an exception to the usual class background of the early Bolsheviks).

It was never expected, in those long-ago days, that Russia would have a proletarian revolution. All trends of Russian revolutionary thought more or less expected a capitalist revolution (Engels was predicting it back in the 1870s).

Thus, Lenin never thought that his "vanguard party" was anything more than the nucleus of an eventual mass Social Democratic party that would take its place among like-minded parties in Europe after the Czarist autocracy was overthrown and Russia became a bourgeois republic.

And it's worth noting that although there was not a great deal of internal democracy in the early Bolshevik party, there was some. In particular, there was quite a bit of "freedom of discussion"...Lenin may have made most of the substantive decisions, but people openly criticized him in the party press and did so without any kind of "punishment".

History might well suggest that it was Lenin's success that was his undoing. The Bolshevik apparatus was remarkably well-suited for revolutionary struggle under Russian conditions and did win a substantial degree of working-class support in the new industrial complexes in Russia, particulary in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

When the Bolsheviks took a position of uncompromising opposition to World War I and the war went badly for the Russian aristocracy, the Bolsheviks looked stronger and stronger. When the mass revolution took place in February 1917, the Bolsheviks were the only political party with a clear record of opposition to "all the old shit".

By the summer of 1917, it must have dawned on Lenin and many other Bolsheviks that the new Russian bourgeois ruling class was extraordinarily weak...that it might very well be possible to overthrow them and proceed to a socialist revolution. If there were socialist revolutions in the rest of Europe (many thought that inevitable), then Russian backwardness could be overcome and it might be possible to "skip the capitalist stage" in Russia altogether...or, at least, minimize its intensity and duration.

Most of what we now think of as Leninism derives from those optimistic conclusions. The "vanguard party" went on to rule "on behalf of the workers"; the lines between socialism and state capitalism essentially vanished; much of "the old shit" was revived; etc., etc.

Stalin, Trotsky, and Mao all developed their own versions of Leninism, of course, and whenever you hear a group call themselves "Marxist-Leninist", it usually means a little bit of Marx, a little more of Lenin, and a generous chunk of one or more of those three guys.

By now, the variants of Leninism have theoretically exhausted themselves...there's really been nothing of any significance since Mao. (Note that there is no "Marxism-Castroism" for example.)

In backward countries (peasant revolutions), Maoism is still a vital force. It "works" in those material conditions. But in the "first world", almost all Leninist parties have become reformist--they either support "left" bourgeois parties or run their own candidates in bourgeois elections...proposing an "orderly" and "gradual" transition to "socialism". Internally, they resemble a church far more than they resemble Lenin's early Bolshevik party...dissent is rare and usually punished by excommunication (expulsion).

Those who want to mount a revolutionary opposition to capitalism in the "first world" have returned to Marx and what he really meant by proletarian revolution and the replacement of capitalism by communism.

To be "just a" Marxist or communist these days still sounds strange to people's ears. The shadow of Lenin and his heirs is a long one and we still have considerable distance to travel before we get out of it altogether.

But progress is being made.

-redstar2000 (http://rs2k.revleft.com/)

[Lenin II]

I mostly agree. While this article seems a bit anti-Leninist, there is no truly revolutionary party left in my country except the RCP. Most have become watered down and pro-Democrat or have been too caught up in sectarianism. No one talks of weakening the government and violent revolution anymore. It's so disappointing. :( Remember-No Justice, No Peace!

[p.m.a.]

I encourage you to check out RS2k's other writings, especially those dealing with why that is the case.

[Dros]

Whenever you hear a group call themselves "Marxist-Leninist", it usually means a little bit of Marx, a little more of Lenin, and a generous chunk of one or more of those three guys.

Nope. I would say that all Marxist-Leninist groups build the vast base of their ideology on Marx. Lenin then expanded on Marx's theory. And the others built on that.


The shadow of Lenin and his heirs is a long one and we still have considerable distance to travel before we get out of it altogether.

But progress is being made.

I'm unclear about what you are attempting to say. Is this some cleverly worded critique of Leninism? Or are you talking about trying to move away from the Soviet stain on communist ideology?

If this is a critique of Marxism-Leninism, it would be helpful of you to provide some kind of substantive argument.

[BobKKKindle$]

Those who want to mount a revolutionary opposition to capitalism in the "first world" have returned to Marx and what he really meant by proletarian revolution and the replacement of capitalism by communism.


Marx's works do not provide a guide as to how a proletarian revolution can be achieved. Lenin overcame this absence of praxis by developing the concept of the vanguard based on his own experiences and the conditions of the country in which he struggled. Marxism-Leninism (without Stalin's perversions) unites economic analysis and praxis and are inseparable.


To be "just a" Marxist or communist these days still sounds strange to people's ears. The shadow of Lenin and his heirs is a long one and we still have considerable distance to travel before we get out of it altogether.

This article is clearly concerned primarily with Lenin's theory of organization, but his most important contribution is, in my view, his analysis of Imperialism, which, far from being something we need to discard as no longer applicable to contemporary capitalism, is accurate (in that his predictions have been affirmed by historic experience) and relevant to the most important issue facing the left – American military expansion in the Middle East.

[freedomofspeech91]

I believe Lenin totally misunderstood what Marx said.

Marx did say the people need a vangaurd to lead the way but Lenin created an actual "dictatorship" of the proletariot.

[temp918273]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29, 2007 12:52 am
I believe Lenin totally misunderstood what Marx said.

Marx did say the people need a vangaurd to lead the way but Lenin created an actual "dictatorship" of the proletariot.
That's a pretty bold claim, Lenin was a pretty rigorous scholar of Marxism and the idea of a vanguard party was all Lenin's theory. Marx on the other hand explicitly called for a "dictatorship of the proletariat", but didn't really give many details about what he thought it should look like.

I'd suggest you check out Marx's Manifesto of the Communist Party and Critique of the Gotha Programme as well as Lenin's State and Revolution and What is to be Done? to educate yourself on what the two had to say about the subject because you seem pretty confused.

[Led Zeppelin]

It's not that we have forgotten RS2K's works, it's just that we don't give a shit about them.

Don't think twice, it's all right.

[Marsella]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29, 2007 07:55 pm
(temp918273) That's a pretty bold claim, Lenin was a pretty rigorous scholar of Marxism and the idea of a vanguard party was all Lenin's theory. Marx on the other hand explicitly called for a "dictatorship of the proletariat", but didn't really give many details about what he thought it should look like.

(bobkindles) Marx's works do not provide a guide as to how a proletarian revolution can be achieved.
On the contrary, he gave quite a detailed opinion on what the dictatorship of the proletariat would look like.

Leninists have the habit of ignoring that, however.

If you would like a more detailed exposition then check out The Civil War in France (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/index.htm)


It's not that we have forgotten RS2K's works, it's just that we don't give a shit about them.

Don't think twice, it's all right.

True.

Leninists do not give a shit about what RS2K stood for.

I actually printed a copy of some of his writings (Marxism Without the Crap, The Curse of Lenin's Mummy and some others), and showed them to a handful of work mates. They all thought he explained what communists really stand for quite effectively, in a humerous and witty way.

Now, try handing a worker The Collected Works of Lenin or The Collected Works of Mao, and well...its probably going to end up as a decent paperweight.

And rightfully so.

[Led Zeppelin]

I have an issue of Mao's collected works...in my bathroom.

It's kindof rough on the edges but it does the job well. :)

[Marsella]

Originally posted by Led [email protected] 29, 2007 08:37 pm
I have an issue of Mao's collected works...in my bathroom.

It's kindof rough on the edges but it does the job well. :)
We agree at last! :lol:

But seriously, if you are short of toilet paper, then I suggest the bible.

[temp918273]

Originally posted by Martov+November 29, 2007 11:05 am--> (Martov @ November 29, 2007 11:05 am)
[email protected] 29, 2007 07:55 pm
(temp918273) That's a pretty bold claim, Lenin was a pretty rigorous scholar of Marxism and the idea of a vanguard party was all Lenin's theory. Marx on the other hand explicitly called for a "dictatorship of the proletariat", but didn't really give many details about what he thought it should look like.

(bobkindles) Marx's works do not provide a guide as to how a proletarian revolution can be achieved.
On the contrary, he gave quite a detailed opinion on what the dictatorship of the proletariat would look like.

Leninists have the habit of ignoring that, however.

Now, try handing a worker The Collected Works of Lenin or The Collected Works of Mao, and well...its probably going to end up as a decent paperweight.

And rightfully so. [/b]
If I recall correctly, The Civil War in France was not a really major theoretical work and was more of a sympathetic analysis of the paris commune. Marx acknowledged the event it was a very concentrated expression of the capabilities of proletarian organization, but it failed for a reason. In the first International Marx argued that the lack of centralization and militarization led to its downfall.
Lenin had the same criticisms, and wrote a little about the commune(here's one of his papers on it off the top of my head. (http://www.marx.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mar/23.htm))


Your average worker would probably use the major works of Marx as a paperweight as well. Most of the people I know would roll their eyes at me if I gave them a copy of Capital. That doesn't necessarily take away from their importance, and only reinforces the idea that there needs to be a vanguard party playing a leadership role in organizing a revolution.

[nom de guerre]

Temp, you lie. The Civil War in France completely redefines the nature of the state within the Marxist paradigm of history. It portrays the Paris Commune as being the only historical occurrence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, up until its time. And the funny thing is, Marx concludes in the book that "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes."

Marx is claiming that the Paris Commune is the minimum-standard for the DofP as relevant for his current era. Looking as the Paris Commune, you see that is significantly more democratic than Bolshevism had ever been. It was a proto-soviet, through which the Parisian working class controlled one of the largest urban areas in the capitalist fucking world.

Marx claims that the Commune's key fault was its over-centralization, a relic of the days of absolute monarchy, and incompatible with the means of production in a developed capitalist economy. Can any of you tell me how you can justify a centralized despotism to what is described in the Civil War in France, especially considering the former was derived for neo-feudal Russia, circa 1900?

Have you even read the Civil War in France, or are you just blowing smoke out of your ass?

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

There is intentional confusion over the term .Leninism'.

Can some please define it explicitly, since it's quite hard to respond to RS2K when terms that are very contentious are used.

Simply put though, RedStar2k was a Maoist before an anarchist, so his understanding of Leninism comes from the point of view that Lenin = Stalin = Mao. Which was you know very well, huge numbers of Marxists reject as simply moronic reasoning.

[nom de guerre]

Leninism as an organizational praxis is summed up in Lenin's work What Is To Be Done?. In it he states that as a result of the underdeveloped proletariat in Russia, Marxists needed to organize a vanguard party. Because the political atmosphere in tsarist Russia was extraordinarily authoritarian, Lenin stated that the party must consider of a small number of professional revolutionaries, who must work in secrecy, to prepare to take power for the backwards working class, and build socialism without being subject to a significant era of capitalist development of the means of production. This is known as the vanguardist paradigm of socialism.

Well, we see how that worked out in history: basically, every Leninist country developed into contemporary capitalism. Regardless of the sincerity of the intentions of those who were doing it all, the ebb and flow of the material forces that underpin the country seem to need to develop through capitalism, regardless of the will to power.

Further more, any Marxist capable of critical thought can see the logical fallacy of trying to apply a paradigm of praxis developed to be relevant in semi-feudal, proto-capitalist 20th century Russia, when today we are working in the 21st century era of hyper-advanced capitalism. It simply doesn't make sense. And it's almost as funny as this little image I found:

http://www.redanarchist.org/images/marxleninmusic.gif

[temp918273]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 29, 2007 09:04 pm
Temp, you lie. The Civil War in France completely redefines the nature of the state within the Marxist paradigm of history. It portrays the Paris Commune as being the only historical occurrence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, up until its time. And the funny thing is, Marx concludes in the book that "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes."

Marx is claiming that the Paris Commune is the minimum-standard for the DofP as relevant for his current era. Looking as the Paris Commune, you see that is significantly more democratic than Bolshevism had ever been. It was a proto-soviet, through which the Parisian working class controlled one of the largest urban areas in the capitalist fucking world.

Marx claims that the Commune's key fault was its over-centralization, a relic of the days of absolute monarchy, and incompatible with the means of production in a developed capitalist economy. Can any of you tell me how you can justify a centralized despotism to what is described in the Civil War in France, especially considering the former was derived for neo-feudal Russia, circa 1900?

Have you even read the Civil War in France, or are you just blowing smoke out of your ass?
Comrade, I'm not lying, I've read the pamphlet. I think it was in the Hague Congress where Marx made those specific criticisms of the commune that I mentioned in my post. Every socialist in Europe was gushing over the commune as it was happening and shortly after but Marx, being the critical man that he was, soon found much to criticize saying that "the majority of the Commune was in no wise socialist, nor could it be".
The Paris commune was one of the most important moments in modern history, and deserves to be studied extensively, however it ought to be looked at critically.

You guys are being far too dismissive of Lenin and the achievements that were made in the Soviet Union. I can agree that a significant amount of leninist theory is simply irrelevant today in modern "first world" countries, but doing away with the entirety of Lenin's theoretical contributions to revolutionary organization is just foolish.

[temp918273]

Speaking of rs2k, where'd he go?

[nom de guerre]

Unfortunately RS2k is no longer with us. He passed away last year.

I don't do away with Lenin's entire theoretical contributions, but as a Marxist, I have to criticize and analyze them. His theoretical analysis of imperialism is a very concise and accurate look at the workings of monopoly capitalism. However, it is marred by his simplistic conclusion that Imperialism is the "highest stage of capitalism." I feel like history has shown that one to be false - capital has clearly evolved many more times, from monopoly capitalism to Fordism-Keynesianism, and currently into neoliberalism. So while I respect his work as being relative to his era, I do not hold him to be the most important Marxist evar. I think that title goes to either Marx himself, or one of the many theoretical analysts that exist today, as they are most relevant to now.

So to correctly determine whether Lenin's practical conclusions based on his theory are still applicable, we have to compare the material conditions. Russia, in Lenin's era, was a post-feudal aristocracy; while the serfs were liberated creating a modern labor-market (as Lenin describes in "The Development of Capitalism in Russia), I feel like subsequent observation of history has shown this is not the only precondition for capitalism to be a hegemonic force of accumulation.

Lenin was confused due to the myopia of his sources. There were labor markets in Russia - but there was not a powerful bourgeoisie capable of shirking imperialist domination. Nor was there a proletariat capable of organizing a socialist revolution. It is from this problem Lenin deduced the necessity of the vanguard party - a problem that we do not face today in the modern era. His conclusions were that professional revolutionaries must make socialism for the workers, until they are developed enough to take over. Whether or not that is authentically Marxist is for you to decide (I personally enjoy RS2k's topic on the matter, Are Workers "Sheep"? (http://rs2k.revleft.com/theory.php?subaction=showfull&id=1082852859&archive=&start_from=&ucat=&)).

But that dispute is currently irrelevant. Marxists draw their analysis from the material conditions of their era - we are historically responsible as having the only truly materialist analysis of history in the realm of thought. To blindly assert that our conditions today call for the same organizational conclusions as those of feudal Russia circa 1900 is idealistic, and directly contradictory to the core of Marxism itself.

It is clear that all efforts, then, to build a "vanguard party" to take "state power" and build a "workers' state" run contrary to what the material conditions permit - and thus said efforts are in vain, unproductive work for the Marxist project.

This is why I propose that the Marxists here need to re-evaluate their efforts towards revolution, as I think they are at best a waste, and at worse a hindrance to the revolution itself.

[Connolly]

Unfortunately RS2k is no longer with us. He passed away last year.

No he didnt. <_<

[IronColumn]

Lenin is a philosophically bourgeois thinker, as is his party. Thus it&#39;s no surprise that they created such a capitalist state in Russia. Lenin got his Marxism from Kautsky, which explains a fair amount. Anyone looking to further educate themselves on this issue should read Pannekoek&#39;s "Lenin as Philosopher", which quite clearly analyzes Lenin&#39;s "Materialism and Empiro-Criticism" to reveal its bourgeois conceptions.

Thus for anyone to pretend that Marxists can gain anything by studying Lenin is laughable. Unless of course, you&#39;re looking for "What not to do" as Kropotkin said.

[apathy maybe]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29, 2007 11:11 pm
There is intentional confusion over the term .Leninism&#39;.

Can some please define it explicitly, since it&#39;s quite hard to respond to RS2K when terms that are very contentious are used.

Simply put though, RedStar2k was a Maoist before an anarchist, so his understanding of Leninism comes from the point of view that Lenin = Stalin = Mao. Which was you know very well, huge numbers of Marxists reject as simply moronic reasoning.
First things, I&#39;m not really interested in arguing with Leninists (of any sort) about this (what is wrong with Leninism) sort of thing. I&#39;ve tried it before, and such arguments go around and around. Some times the debate hinges on what the "state" is, sometimes it hinges on the very organisational method of a revolutionary, post-revolutionary society, sometimes other things. Either way, the arguments don&#39;t get far.

Now, as to redstar2000 being an anarchist... No he wasn&#39;t. He is a Marxist, and specifically disclaimed the label &#39;anarchist&#39; (at the very least in a PM to me when I questioned him on the matter). He thought that anarchism was too broad, that &#39;any could call themselves an anarchist and be accepted as such&#39; (paraphrase). I don&#39;t agree with him on that completely, but I see his point.

redstar2000 is a Marxist, but he is an autonomist Marxist (though I&#39;m not sure if he ever used the term himself). And from the point of view of a Leninist, I guess anarchist, autonomist either/or both the same. But they are different, even if they share the same basic goal, and many of the same organisational methods.


Finally, I&#39;m not sure I even agree with the statement of redstar2000&#39;s understanding of Leninism as being from Maoism. I think you don&#39;t do him credit. He is widely read, and would no doubt realise the differences between Trots, Stalinists, &#39;plain&#39; Leninists etc. And he rejects them all, from a distinctly Marxist perspective.

I think it would do you good to re-read his writing if you don&#39;t see that.

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by apathy [email protected] 30, 2007 01:19 am
Now, as to redstar2000 being an anarchist... No he wasn&#39;t. He is a Marxist, and specifically disclaimed the label &#39;anarchist&#39; (at the very least in a PM to me when I questioned him on the matter). He thought that anarchism was too broad, that &#39;any could call themselves an anarchist and be accepted as such&#39; (paraphrase). I don&#39;t agree with him on that completely, but I see his point.

redstar2000 is a Marxist, but he is an autonomist Marxist (though I&#39;m not sure if he ever used the term himself). And from the point of view of a Leninist, I guess anarchist, autonomist either/or both the same. But they are different, even if they share the same basic goal, and many of the same organisational methods.
His Marxism was stagist and a rejection of proletarian revolution - especially his arguments that the thrid world could only be liberated by bourgeois revolutions.

[nom de guerre]

His Marxism was stagist and a rejection of proletarian revolution - especially his arguments that the thrid world could only be liberated by bourgeois revolutions.

First of all, what does "stagist" even mean? For example, Marx himself, using historical materialism, created a clear paradigm designating different historical stages corresponding to the dominant mode of production. Does this mean Marx was "stagist"?

RS2k did not reject proletarian revolution - in fact, he said it was necessary that anyone claiming to be a Marxist use historical materialism to further this goal. He merely said he did not believe the material forces, which Marxists believe determine the social construct of an era, were at a point that allowed (in the context of Marx&#39;s theory of being determines consciousness) the proletariat to be conscious as to communism being in their interests. He repeatedly stressed, however, that this does not mean our efforts are in vain and we simply have to wait - quite the opposite, he stated that our role is to develop Marxist ideas and continuously present them to our class, so that when the working-class begins looking for a reason why these things are happening, we&#39;re the first with the best explanation. The proletariat cannot become conscious without this - we just cannot force Marxism on it before the conditions permit.

He also did not argue that the "third world" (a very reactionary term for pre-capitalist or neo-colonial nations) could only be liberated by bourgeois revolution - Marx did himself. He said no nation can escape the laws of the material forces of history - every nation will have to develop through capitalism, and this cannot be skipped by an imposition of a revolutionary&#39;s "will to power." He decried that as being idealism. I suggest you read up on what historical materialism actually means as a paradigm for analysis - you can start here (http://rs2k.revleft.com/theory.php?subaction=showfull&id=1139269704&archive=&start_from=&ucat=&)).

Furthermore, anyone who claims RS2k is an anarchist has clearly not even put forth the effort to read his papers - they are fundamentally built on the materialist conception of history, and are written with the intention of furthering Marxism&#39;s credibility as a scientific methodology.


No he didnt. dry.gif

If he didn&#39;t, and I&#39;ve been given misinformation, I&#39;m very glad to hear he&#39;s still alive, and hopefully recovering well from his incident.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by p.m.a.+November 23, 2007 02:40 pm--> (p.m.a. &#064; November 23, 2007 02:40 pm) What Kind of "Marxism" is Leninism? (http://rs2k.revleft.com/theory.php?subaction=showfull&id=1083082462&archive=&start_from=&ucat=&)

The defining work of Leninism is What is to be Done? written at the beginning of the 20th century. When Lenin wrote this small book, he was a "Kautskyist"...that is, a supporter of Karl Kautsky&#39;s German Social Democracy, heir to Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel and, of course, Engels himself.

...


And it&#39;s worth noting that although there was not a great deal of internal democracy in the early Bolshevik party, there was some. [/b]
First of all, some people here REALLY need to read Lars Lih&#39;s Lenin Rediscovered (http://books.google.com/books?id=8AVUvEUsdCgC&dq=lars+lih+lenin&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=5h9u8nuIYq&sig=wlmF6YYuAk3dVxVEBe1kJ-at584).


Stalin, Trotsky, and Mao all developed their own versions of Leninism, of course, and whenever you hear a group call themselves "Marxist-Leninist", it usually means a little bit of Marx, a little more of Lenin, and a generous chunk of one or more of those three guys.

By now, the variants of Leninism have theoretically exhausted themselves...there&#39;s really been nothing of any significance since Mao. (Note that there is no "Marxism-Castroism" for example.)

If you mean the three or so spinoff variants, by all means you are correct. One has descended into sectarianism, another into Zinovievite reformism, and a third into the historical past with regards to the peasantry.

I, however, am a minority amongst "Leninists," being one who doesn&#39;t subscribe to any of the spinoffs (after having found two of them wanting by once subscribing to them).


Martov
(temp918273) That&#39;s a pretty bold claim, Lenin was a pretty rigorous scholar of Marxism and the idea of a vanguard party was all Lenin&#39;s theory. Marx on the other hand explicitly called for a "dictatorship of the proletariat", but didn&#39;t really give many details about what he thought it should look like.

(bobkindles) Marx&#39;s works do not provide a guide as to how a proletarian revolution can be achieved.
On the contrary, he gave quite a detailed opinion on what the dictatorship of the proletariat would look like.

Leninists have the habit of ignoring that, however.[/b][/quote]

I am actually aware of this, and consider his contribution to be very positive in this regard. If you know my stuff regarding pre-monopoly capitalism, "peak" monopoly capitalism, "reactionary stamocap," "primitive stamocap" / "revolutionary democracy," and "revolutionary stamocap" / DOTP (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=65240&view=findpost&p=1292295858), it is very good that, while Lenin was merely aiming for "revolutionary democracy" in the immediate term, he had good insight into the possible operating mechanisms of the DOTP itself.

[nom de guerre]

Even if you don&#39;t take sides in the eternal internal Leninist battle, as a Marxist are you not compelled to wonder why that battle exists? Could it be that, perhaps, it is an inevitable reflection of the nature of the Leninist paradigm of revolution? Look at what the results in every country governed by a Leninist dictatorship: they all have or are emerging into developed capitalist nations. In extraordinarily short times at that&#33;

Leninism is not a useless paradigm - it&#39;s very successful at developing a feudal/neo-colonial economy into a modern capitalist state, in a very short time period, with relatively fewer casualties than standard capitalism creates. This is also a reflection of the material context within which the paradigm was created - that of 19th century Russia&#33;

Lenin felt he needed to prove Russia was a capitalist country in order to justify it as Marxist to lead a revolution there. He attempted this in The Development of Capitalism in Russia, published at the turn of the century. As a Marxist, you are obligated to consider for yourself whether he was correct in his assessment of what he found.

He found that since the emancipation of the serfs, Russia had developed a labor-market exactly as found in developed capitalist economies. However, the social construct of 19th century Russia was entirely feudalistic - that is, the means of production were controlled by the aristocracy. He recognized the development of labor markets rightly as being an early sign of the development of the means of production for the capacity for capitalism to emerge, but it hadn&#39;t quite come about yet. The efforts of the 1905 revolution was largely an expression of the need for a bourgeois revolution, which, as in the French revolution before it, was popularly supported by the small working class.

Unfortunately, the working class was small for a reason. Contained by the neo-colonial tsarist system, the means of production were not capable of allowing a developed working-class. There simply wasn&#39;t enough work. And unfortunately as well, the bourgeoisie in Russia was too weak to develop the material conditions themselves.

It is at this point we need to remember the roll Leninism ending up serving in history: transforming undeveloped countries into modern capitalist economies in compressed amount of time. And now, considering the material conditions of the era, can you possibly accept maybe Leninism itself simply is not and has never been a relevant Marxist paradigm for revolutionaries in the western, already-capitalist working-class? And maybe that it&#39;s time we develop something new?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 29, 2007 10:43 pm
Even if you don&#39;t take sides in the eternal internal Leninist battle, as a Marxist are you not compelled to wonder why that battle exists? Could it be that, perhaps, it is an inevitable reflection of the nature of the Leninist paradigm of revolution? Look at what the results in every country governed by a Leninist dictatorship: they all have or are emerging into developed capitalist nations. In extraordinarily short times at that&#33;

Leninism is not a useless paradigm - it&#39;s very successful at developing a feudal/neo-colonial economy into a modern capitalist state, in a very short time period, with relatively fewer casualties than standard capitalism creates. This is also a reflection of the material context within which the paradigm was created - that of 19th century Russia&#33;
The problem with your assessment is that you are implicitly lumping Lenin with Sun Yat-sen, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, etc. in regards to what I call "primitive stamocap" (see your other Theory thread for the link on my explanation of it). Furthermore, as I said in your rather insightful Theory thread, there is a modern trend towards authoritarian capitalism, not unlike that witnessed by Ilyich himself.


Lenin felt he needed to prove Russia was a capitalist country in order to justify it as Marxist to lead a revolution there. He attempted this in The Development of Capitalism in Russia, published at the turn of the century. As a Marxist, you are obligated to consider for yourself whether he was correct in his assessment of what he found.

He found that since the emancipation of the serfs, Russia had developed a labor-market exactly as found in developed capitalist economies. However, the social construct of 19th century Russia was entirely feudalistic - that is, the means of production were controlled by the aristocracy. He recognized the development of labor markets rightly as being an early sign of the development of the means of production for the capacity for capitalism to emerge, but it hadn&#39;t quite come about yet. The efforts of the 1905 revolution was largely an expression of the need for a bourgeois revolution, which, as in the French revolution before it, was popularly supported by the small working class.

I&#39;ll have to brush up on that work. :(


Unfortunately, the working class was small for a reason. Contained by the neo-colonial tsarist system, the means of production were not capable of allowing a developed working-class. There simply wasn&#39;t enough work. And unfortunately as well, the bourgeoisie in Russia was too weak to develop the material conditions themselves.

That last part, however, is very important. The proper bourgeoisie were both "materially" weak (in terms of their role in the economy) and politically weak (by accommodating too much to the czarist state machinery). However, it seems that, ever since WWI, proper bourgeoisie everywhere were/are too weak to press on with their own historical tasks.

[I won&#39;t delve too much into left-communist theories of decadence. Mind you, while I have disagreements over "when," and mainly because its features don&#39;t hit you all at the same time, this ineptitude was and is one of the earlier features of that decadence.]

[nom de guerre]

I personally feel like "decadence" is a meaningless tool for analyzation. Capital, as the highest form of class society, develops the means of production towards the inevitable level of abundance; when it is materially feasible to provide enough for everybody. An inevitable byproduct of that is to see a rise in social standards in the population - a capability to spread value out to satisfy more people. But furthermore to claim that the working-class is "decadent" and thus must be "lead" is logically impossible: it is the elite ruling class, the bourgeoisie, who is decadent in its lavish lifestyles. This is reflected in art and culture - entirely subjective phenomena which always reflects the social construct in accordance to the means of production. Clearly history is not full of proletarian culture, but of bourgeois culture. So to claim developed capitalist nations creates a decadent class of parasites is simply irrational idealism - and thus not a justification. I also criticize the left-communists such as those at the ICC for drawing this conclusion, which is the logical result of fetishizing Lenin&#39;s analysis as somehow being universal and not a product of its era.


he problem with your assessment is that you are implicitly lumping Lenin with Sun Yat-sen, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, etc.

I&#39;m not lumping Mao with Sun Yat-sen - but when have we ever seen a bourgeois revolution in which the emerging ruling class did not fight amongst itself for control? Regardless of the ideological intentions of Mao, we must look at the material implications of the history of China - and despite his ideas and their inspired rhetoric, the material conditions clearly display the development of neoliberalism.

We see this to some degree or another in every Leninist state - every actual attempt you guys have gotten to implement your plan in the real world. Russia demonstrated neoliberal "shock therapy", as Chile did in &#39;73; Cuba is going slowly, but no one can deny the importance of the capitalist tourist economy in propping up the island&#39;s sovereignty; and China&#39;s become more successful capitalists than the current American bourgeoisie&#33; To claim that things happened this way was due to "improper ideas" or whatever is anti-Marxist: analogous to Marx&#39;s own decrying of the utopian socialists of the 19th century.

If you are going to call yourself a Marxist, it is your intellectual obligation to base your conclusions on a materialist analysis of history. If you find yourself still persuaded by Lenin, that&#39;s fine - just please stop calling yourself a Marxist. You can still be Marxian, or Marx-influenced - but for us Marxists, material conditions come first, and idealistic wishes follow.


However, it seems that, ever since WWI, proper bourgeoisie everywhere were/are too weak to press on with their own historical tasks.

This is simply not true, another fetishization of decadence theory. As David Harvey&#39;s "On Neoliberalism" concisely lays out, the American and European bourgeoisie were successfully developing the means of production up until only recently. How else can you describe the Fordist boom that created the middle class, the militarization of the Reagan years, and the 1990s dotcom boom? Or the fact that Germany and Japan were the fastest growing economies throughout the 1980s? Leninism is too quick to claim that its observations are indicative of the global condition of capital, instead of realizing that capital is a global system that develops different regional markets at different rates at different times, depending on what is most profitable at the present?

[blackstone]

That last part, however, is very important. The proper bourgeoisie were both "materially" weak (in terms of their role in the economy) and politically weak (by accommodating too much to the czarist state machinery). However, it seems that, ever since WWI, proper bourgeoisie everywhere were/are too weak to press on with their own historical tasks.

Do you think that has anything to do with primitive accumulation and permanent accumulation? Only reason i propose proper bourgeoisie handled their historical task was because of the vast accumulation of primitive and permanent capital.

Primitive, or "original accumulation", refers to the initial process that led to a &#39;critical mass&#39; of accumulation that enabled capital to be set in motion. It&#39;s a concept developed by Karl Marx to explain how the capitalist mode of production came into fruition. Marx says we must envision an accumulation of capital that was not a consequence of capitalist production but was the starting point of capitalist production. He called this "primitive accumulation of capital".

So what is this primitive or original/previous accumulation of capital? According to Marx it was the,


discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of that continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of blackskins, are all things which characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation. [Marx 1977, p. 915]

Capitalist development was due to the brutal exploitation of Blacks and indigenous people as consumers and workers. African slaves were forced to perform free labor for almost 250 years. Karl Marx notes,


Direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery, credits, etc. Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that has given the colonies their value; it is the colonies that have created world trade, and it is world trade that is the pre-condition of large-scale industry.
-The Poverty of Philosophy: A Reply to M. Proudhon’s Philosophy of Poverty, New York, International Publishers, n.d., pages 94-5.

More about how Capitalism underdeveloped oppressed nations here, particularly of the African diaspora here,

http://power-2-people.blogspot.com/2007/11...ist-agenda.html (http://power-2-people.blogspot.com/2007/11/putting-reparations-on-socialist-agenda.html)

After slavery, and after WWI and dividing up Africa there was still an extraction of surplus value at a high rate of exploitation from oppressed nations and nationalities. If you wasn&#39;t a power by then, you wasn&#39;t gonna be one&#33; All other national bourgeoisie will be subservient to the capital of the imperialist nations and therefore cannot complete their historic task.

Care to add on?

[VukBZ2005]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 30, 2007 01:51 am
If you are going to call yourself a Marxist, it is your intellectual obligation to base your conclusions on a materialist analysis of history. If you find yourself still persuaded by Lenin, that&#39;s fine - just please stop calling yourself a Marxist. You can still be Marxian, or Marx-influenced - but for us Marxists, material conditions come first, and idealistic wishes follow.
No; we must stop calling real Marxian Socialists "Marxists". That term has been "overabused" by the Leninists.

[nom de guerre]

Do you think that has anything to do with primitive accumulation and permanent accumulation? Only reason i propose proper bourgeoisie handled their historical task was because of the vast accumulation of primitive and permanent capital.

First of all, primitive capital doesn&#39;t really mean anything. And all nations have historically moved through a stage of primitive accumulation during the laying down of the fundamental substructure for modern capitalism to emerge. The most eminent and relative example for us is the brutal oppression and genocide of the native americans, a group that refused to be subsumed into the developing labor-markets of early American capitalism, and thus a hindrance to the development of the bourgeois mode of production. Thus they were killed off, as to more thorough exploit the resources of their land. Your example also holds true.

I also do not understand what you mean by "permanent accumulation" - the nature of capital is transitory, as to produce surplus value, all accumulation must be reinvested in optimal conditions. Thus even the capitalists rarely accumulate anything permanently - as Marx described, if capital is not in motion then it is dead.

However, contemporary Marxist theorists such as David Harvey do correctly identify a type of accumulation that has become central to the current era of capitalism that largely reflects primitive accumulation. Harvey identifies it in The New Imperialism as "accumulation by dispossession", and it is characterized by the privatization of markets that were previously in the public or state-owned domain, markets that were built as a result of the state-interventionist policies of Fordism-Keynesianism. An example of this is the great transition British capital made during the Thatcher era whereby the previously state-controlled low-income housing market was privatized; Harvey explains how this is a method of absorbing the overaccumulation of value inherent in capital&#39;s crisis, a kind of dispersal of abundant value that is unable to reproduce itself profitably otherwise. This is a central tactic used in the neoliberal mode of production.


All other national bourgeoisie will be subservient to the capital of the imperialist nations and therefore cannot complete their historic task.

There is truth in this statement, but it is confused. It is not just the bourgeoisie that is subservient to imperial capital - it is the material means of production of every nation. Marx&#39;s historical materialism is first and foremost a study of the development of the means of production of a economy, traditionally defined along nation-terms (although that is in the process of becoming obsolete). So in Russia, or in any undeveloped economy, the entire material conditions of living are subservient to capital&#39;s imperialism. This is why the bourgeoisie was incapable of becoming significant - because there was already an imperialist bourgeois class. And they only have room for so many&#33;

In the early capitalist nations, there was not an already-established hegemonic bourgeoisie - Britain, for example, had minor imperial struggles during the rise of its Empire, but it was clear its means of production were far more advanced than the rest of Europe, with France and Germany following behind. The rise of the American empire was greatly aided by the favorable material conditions of WWII-era capital - and, upon review, seems mostly to be a lucky coincidence that it was able to exploit the war for its own purposes for so well.

The problem is, nations are going to develop their means of production regardless of the presence of a current imperial capitalist bourgeoisie - it is a fundamental law of history that the material forces of production are going to drive forward, and the social construct is going to reflect that. This is shown in two of the most recently developed capitalist states - Russia and China - in the role the Bolshevik revolutions ended up playing in the long-run. Regardless of ideological sympathies, Bolshevism proved very effective at its task of modernizing an economy when the traditional bourgeoisie is incapable of doing so itself. This demonstrates the previous assertion that this development is an inevitable product of our material conditions.

Thus, the forces of production are going to complete their historic task of developing forward towards the capacity for abundance regardless of the politics reflected in the social construct. It simply becomes a matter of what objective conditions allow for, and what occurs seems to be probabilistic, but based on what is most favorable. For example, the reason why the Bolshevik party was able to win the support of the large population of Russia is that there was no other political party with a track record of being that beneficial to the workers. But, its historical role it played is still a direct consequence of the nature of the party itself - the party is, after all, a bourgeois construct designed to serve the need for a bourgeoisie.

[temp918273]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 30, 2007 05:43 am
It is at this point we need to remember the roll Leninism ending up serving in history: transforming undeveloped countries into modern capitalist economies in compressed amount of time. And now, considering the material conditions of the era, can you possibly accept maybe Leninism itself simply is not and has never been a relevant Marxist paradigm for revolutionaries in the western, already-capitalist working-class? And maybe that it&#39;s time we develop something new?
I wouldn&#39;t say that Leninism is completely useless in creating revolution in the first world. The concept of the vanguard party is indispensable for the tasks of national coordination, maintaining unity, and playing a leading role in the establishment and defense of a dictatorship of the proletariat.

The &#39;vanguard party&#39; doesn&#39;t necessarily even need to take the same form that the Bolshevik party took, it may take the form of a collection of highly democratic affinity groups such as the CNT/FAI during the Spanish civil war. Considering that Lenin borrowed heavily from the organizational tactics of russian anarchists and underground anti-czar populist groups, I think that we communists ought to do the same today. Pretty much every communist group out there is still stuck in the same socialist-party-running-in-bourgeois-elections rut that they&#39;ve been in for decades and getting nowhere. If anything, parties need to follow the Bolshevik&#39;s example even closer and get their hands dirty&#33;

[nom de guerre]

I wouldn&#39;t say that Leninism is completely useless in creating revolution in the first world. The concept of the vanguard party is indispensable for the tasks of national coordination, maintaining unity, and playing a leading role in the establishment and defense of a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Repeating something until you&#39;re blue in the face does not make something true. Unfortunately for your case, not only has there never been a successful revolution to validate this claim, but there is not even any example to prove it&#39;s possible. No self-proclaimed vanguard party has ever even become relevant to a workers&#39; everyday-life in the first world - the closest we ever saw in America was the Black Panther Party - and we know how that ended&#33;

So to continue making this positive assertion - that the vanguard is an applicable organizational paradigm for "first"-world Marxists - requires some kind material evidence to validate the claim. And, unfortunately, there is little for you to work with here.


The &#39;vanguard party&#39; doesn&#39;t necessarily even need to take the same form that the Bolshevik party took, it may take the form of a collection of highly democratic affinity groups such as the CNT/FAI during the Spanish civil war. Considering that Lenin borrowed heavily from the organizational tactics of russian anarchists and underground anti-czar populist groups, I think that we communists ought to do the same today. Pretty much every communist group out there is still stuck in the same socialist-party-running-in-bourgeois-elections rut that they&#39;ve been in for decades and getting nowhere. If anything, parties need to follow the Bolshevik&#39;s example even closer and get their hands dirty&#33;

I suggest you re-evaluate the context within which the vanguard paradigm was devised. Lenin was not, as you claim, heavily influenced by the Russian anarchists - in fact, the history of his thought in concretely in the development of the Social Democratic Second International. Lenin, up until 1912 or so, was a Kautskyist, whose entire conception of how to organize politically was based on the presupposition of a party parallel those of bourgeois institutions. When Lenin rejected Kautsky&#39;s S-D inclinations, all he was really decrying Kautsky for is claiming that the SI&#39;s rhetoric matched its practice - Lenin preferred to keep Marxist rhetoric to support his bourgeois organizational ideas.

Regardless of how it&#39;s argued, Lenin&#39;s conception of the vanguard party and its role in the revolution is still the same as Kautsky&#39;s, both in structure and in function. Lenin&#39;s means differed, but strategy was still inherently the same - through a political party, take state power. These objective conditions are the root for the evolution you described of first-world Bolshevism inevitably decaying into reformism. It&#39;s proof that to continually attempt to implement a paradigm divorced of its objective material conditions is an exercise in futility.

The vanguard paradigm of revolution is drawn first from Lenin&#39;s writings. And, in fact, no where in WISTB does Lenin even suggest that a trade-union federation (such as the CNT/FAI) model would be appropriate. To claim so retroactively is nonsensical - a vanguard party is explicitly a political party lead by a small cadre of revolutionaries, with the intent of not only instigating revolution, but leading it. To believe that the revolutionaries roll is to "lead" the working-class "like sheep" is the logical conclusion of the Kautskyist influence on Lenin&#39;s thought, and testament to the claim that vanguardism is simply 20th century Jacobisn or Blanquism - that is, thoroughly un-Marxist&#33;

[temp918273]

I suggest you re-evaluate the context within which the vanguard paradigm was devised.
I suggest you stop being in such a hurry to correct me and think about what I&#39;m saying.

Lenin was not, as you claim, heavily influenced by the Russian anarchists - in fact, the history of his thought in concretely in the development of the Social Democratic Second International.
Well, it&#39;s common knowledge that Lenin and every socialist of his day was heavily influenced by Kautsky but I would argue that he was very influenced by earlier revolutionary and populist movements within Russia. This was especially true when the Bolsheviks split and went underground, and it has been pointed out by several authors there are many connections between Leninism and Bakuninist anarchism.

The vanguard paradigm of revolution is drawn first from Lenin&#39;s writings. And, in fact, no where in WISTB does Lenin even suggest that a trade-union federation (such as the CNT/FAI) model would be appropriate. To claim so retroactively is nonsensical - a vanguard party is explicitly a political party lead by a small cadre of revolutionaries, with the intent of not only instigating revolution, but leading it. To believe that the revolutionaries roll is to "lead" the working-class "like sheep" is the logical conclusion of the Kautskyist influence on Lenin&#39;s thought, and testament to the claim that vanguardism is simply 20th century Jacobisn or Blanquism - that is, thoroughly un-Marxist&#33;
When I brought up the CNT/FAI I was referring more to the FAI which operated on the ideological and military end of things while the CNT coordinated industry. I would agree with Lenin in What is to be Done? because such an organization would have been inappropriate for creating a revolution in Russia, however implementing Lenin&#39;s ideas today doesn&#39;t necessarily have to mean a complete transplant of his entire programme.
For the record, I don&#39;t agree that the entire concept of a vanguard organization taking up a central leadership role in a communist revolution ought to be dismissed. As you pointed out, the BPP is one excellent example of a vanguard organization that was enormously successful but using the fact that many of them were brutally murdered and imprisoned as evidence of ineffectiveness is absurd. Leadership is a necessity in propagating class consciousness, practical coordination, and the creation of a dictatorship of the proletariat. Without it, you&#39;re left with hoping that the masses of people suddenly and spontaneously realize the need for revolution.


Just a small edit to clarify:
I am taking liberties with the term "vanguard" and using a much looser definition than you may be. I think you and I are in complete agreement that a vanguard party in the form that existed in the soviet union is completely irrelevant.

[BobKKKindle$]

On the contrary, he gave quite a detailed opinion on what the dictatorship of the proletariat would look like.

Please don&#39;t misrepresent me. I never suggested that Marx did not describe the commune as a model for the DoP - I agree with you in this respect. I contend, however, that Marx did not indicate how a revolution could actually arise and simply assumed that the gradual integration of workers in large units of production and the tendency of capitalism to undergo periodic crises would make class consciousness (and subsequently, revolution) inevitable.

Lenin recognized the existence of internal divisions and contradictory consciousness (Gramsci&#39;s phrase) within the working class and from this developed the concept of the vanguard and recognnized the important of political agitation. As such, Lenin filled in a &#39;gap&#39; that had previously prevented Marxism from transcending the sphere of theoretical analysis.

[nom de guerre]

Well, it&#39;s common knowledge that Lenin and every socialist of his day was heavily influenced by Kautsky but I would argue that he was very influenced by earlier revolutionary and populist movements within Russia. This was especially true when the Bolsheviks split and went underground, and it has been pointed out by several authors there are many connections between Leninism and Bakuninist anarchism.

Yes... in theory. Lenin&#39;s S&R draws many parallels to anarchist thought, especially as espoused by Russians such as Bakunin, Kropotkin, etc. Unfortunately for you, however, a Marxist cannot only look at the theoretical side of what&#39;s happening - in fact, we&#39;re only supposed to focus on the material.

So what are the material circumstances surrounding State & Revolution? Lenin began to write the theoretical piece after the February 1917 rebellion. This was the time period when the Bolsheviks were scrambling, all around Europe, to get things into place for their October coup. Lenin had to rally support for a Bolshevik government by winning over both those who were more radical than the Leninists (the anarchists), and those who were more liberal. Lenin attempted to do this by writing two pieces.

The first was the "April Theses", in which, among other things, Lenin claims that the Bolsheviks goal was to dismantle the army, the police, and the bureaucracy that was "suffocating" Russian civil society. But his substantiative claim is that the Bolsheviks were NOT trying to "immediately introduce" socialism with themselves at the helm - he wrote, instead, that all they were working towards was to bring all production and distribution under the power of the workers&#39; soviet councils. It is from here that S&R picks up. It is basically an amalgamation of every quote by Marx & Engels on the subject of dictatorship of the proletariat. This is why it appears to take such an "anarchist" approach to revolution - again, insisting that the soviets are the building block of proletarian revolution, and that the Party is "just there to educate".

However, there is a huge discrepancy between what Lenin theoretically espoused, and what the Party actually did. And rather than dismantling the army, police, and bureaucracy, they dismantled the soviets - beginning in April 1918, before the civil war had even begun&#33; By the time "war communism" was invented (a clear paradoxical term), the soviets had become simply ceremonial bodies for supporting Party positions. In fact, when faced with the real prospect of soviet rule, embodied in the Makhnovischina and the Krondstadt rebellion, the Bolsheviks reacted the exact opposite of their "theoretical line" that they took power on.

As a Marxist, it is your intellectual obligation to focus on the material conditions of what happened, and not the revolutions "theoretical line" - as the latter is a social construct, and thus focusing on it is idealism. And the fact of the matter is that the Bolsheviks line and their praxis are obviously contradictory - apparently Lenin agreed much more with Kautsky than he ever did with Marx.

The fact that you&#39;re still defending this discrepancy is proof of my claim that you may be a Leninist, but you are certainly not a Marxist.


I would agree with Lenin in What is to be Done? because such an organization would have been inappropriate for creating a revolution in Russia, however implementing Lenin&#39;s ideas today doesn&#39;t necessarily have to mean a complete transplant of his entire programme.

(emphasis mine)

If the organizational paradigm that is the foundation of Leninism was appropriate for creating revolution in Russia, how is it not logically absurd to claim that it is thus also entirely applicable in the postmodern, neoliberal 21st century America? To claim spits in the face of Marx, as it not only ignores material conditions, but it claims that those material conditions do not fucking matter if your "will to power" is sincere enough.

Lenin&#39;s programme failed at making socialism for his own country - so how is it in any way applicable to ours?


As you pointed out, the BPP is one excellent example of a vanguard organization that was enormously successful but using the fact that many of them were brutally murdered and imprisoned as evidence of ineffectiveness is absurd.

Actually, their brutal murder displays the great weakness of a vanguard model: leadership. All COINTELPRO had to do was kill half a dozen or so people, and the entire BPP collapsed upon itself, incapable of anything else but factional dispute. This is a perfect example of why the vanguard model is incompatible with industrialized capitalist nations.

If your model cannot deal with the resistance of capitalists (either from the White Guards in Russia, or COINTELPRO in the US), then it is effectively useless for making revolution.

You can&#39;t keep just making excuses.


Leadership is a necessity in propagating class consciousness, practical coordination, and the creation of a dictatorship of the proletariat. Without it, you&#39;re left with hoping that the masses of people suddenly and spontaneously realize the need for revolution.

Again, you just keep repeating this, while offering no verification. And, in fact, upon inspecting the role of the vanguard in both the "first" and the "third" world, all materialist conclusions actually indicate the contrary. If you are so in love with the vanguard model, by all means continue to espouse its necessity - just stop calling yourself a Marxist, and admit the idealistic root of your fantasy&#39;s lie in Lenin&#39;s fault.


I am taking liberties with the term "vanguard" and using a much looser definition than you may be. I think you and I are in complete agreement that a vanguard party in the form that existed in the soviet union is completely irrelevant.

I&#39;m using Lenin&#39;s definition of a "vanguard": that is, a political party, consisting of "professional revolutionaries", whose role is to make revolution for a backwards working-class, and then "lead" it into socialism.

[KC]

I attempted to reply to this thread so many times but just gave up because of the amount of idiocy contained in it.

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 30, 2007 04:05 am

His Marxism was stagist and a rejection of proletarian revolution - especially his arguments that the thrid world could only be liberated by bourgeois revolutions.

First of all, what does "stagist" even mean? For example, Marx himself, using historical materialism, created a clear paradigm designating different historical stages corresponding to the dominant mode of production. Does this mean Marx was "stagist"?


Stagist means adhering to the marxist theory of society pasing through stages of development very rigidly, in a doctrinaire way. This was the problem with Stalinist parties and hence their popular front.

I&#39;ll give you a real world example. When the Official IRA/SF adopted their Communist line from Moscow, they argued that Ireland was not ready for a socialist revolution, and that first the northern state had to be democratised, then reunification, then economic development, then the fight for socialism. So any forces struggling for socialism and anti-imperialism were in their analysis counter-revolutionary, and the logical outcome of this was their attempt to kill off the IRSP. This placed OSF to the right of many working class people in the occupied six counties.

This is a rather extreme example of stagism, but it illustrates my point. As does this:


He merely said he did not believe the material forces, which Marxists believe determine the social construct of an era, were at a point that allowed (in the context of Marx&#39;s theory of being determines consciousness) the proletariat to be conscious as to communism being in their interests.



He also did not argue that the "third world" (a very reactionary term for pre-capitalist or neo-colonial nations) could only be liberated by bourgeois revolution - Marx did himself. He said no nation can escape the laws of the material forces of history - every nation will have to develop through capitalism, and this cannot be skipped by an imposition of a revolutionary&#39;s "will to power." He decried that as being idealism. I suggest you read up on what historical materialism actually means as a paradigm for analysis - you can start here (http://rs2k.revleft.com/theory.php?subaction=showfull&id=1139269704&archive=&start_from=&ucat=&)).


I&#39;ve read a bit about historical materialism. I&#39;ve read most all of RS2K&#39;s work, I admired some of it and used to correspond with him. I liked RS2K, and though he was wrong on a few things, I agreed with him on many others. I&#39;m also nearly finished with a book on historical materialism right now that&#39;s pretty decent by a CPGB member. So although I&#39;m far from an expert I&#39;m not unfamiliar with HM - familiar enough with it not to reduce it to a mere paradigm.

He argued that revolutions in the third world today were &#39;bourgeois&#39;. This isn&#39;t accurate, and is stagist. Marx was right in his time, but time has moved on. The entire world is capitalist, many underdeveloped countries of today are more developed than the Europe of Marx&#39;s time. If the entire world is capitalist, than colonialism and imperialism must be fought on a class basis. This is an important lesson that many miss.

[Led Zeppelin]

Originally posted by PRC&#045;UTE+December 02, 2007 01:39 am--> (PRC&#045;UTE &#064; December 02, 2007 01:39 am) He argued that revolutions in the third world today were &#39;bourgeois&#39;. This isn&#39;t accurate, and is stagist. [/b]
Actually comrade, don&#39;t let the Orthodox Marxist fool you.

Marx wrote of the possibility of countries "skipping" stages on several occasions, the most well-known being the possibility of Russia building communism through the means of peasant communes.

But, on the subject of "skipping" historical stages:


On the Skipping of Historical Stages
The question must be put first and foremost: If in 1905 it was for me simply a matter of the ‘socialist revolution’ then why did I believe that it could begin in backward Russia sooner than in advanced Europe? Out of patriotism? Out of national pride? And yet, somehow, that is what did happen. Does Radek understand that if the democratic revolution had been realized in Russia as an independent stage, we should not have had today the dictatorship of the proletariat? If this came earlier here than in the West, then it was precisely and only because history combined the main content of the bourgeois revolution with the first stage of the proletarian revolution – did not mix them up but combined them organically.

To distinguish between the bourgeois and the proletarian revolution is political ABC. But after the ABC come syllables, that is, combinations of letters. History accomplished just such a combination of the most important letters of the bourgeois alphabet with the first letters of the socialist alphabet. Radek, however, would like to drag us back from the already accomplished syllables to the alphabet. This is sad, but true.

It is nonsense to say that stages cannot in general be skipped. The living historical process always makes leaps over isolated ‘stages’ which derive from theoretical breakdown into its component parts of the process of development in its entirety, that is, taken in its fullest scope. The same is demanded of revolutionary policy at critical moments. It may be said that the first distinction between a revolutionist and a vulgar evolutionist lies in the capacity to recognize and exploit such moments.

Marx’s breakdown of the development of industry into handicraft, manufacture and factory is part of the ABC of political economy, or more precisely, of historico-economic theory. In Russia, however, the factory came by skipping over the epoch of manufacture and of urban handicrafts. This is already among the syllables of history. An analogous process took place in our country in class relationships and in politics. The modern history of Russia cannot be comprehended unless the Marxist schema of the three stages is known: handicraft, manufacture, factory. But if one knows only this, one still comprehends nothing. For the fact is that the history of Russia – Stalin should not take this personally – skipped a few stages. The theoretical distinction of the stages, however, is necessary for Russia, too, otherwise one can comprehend neither what this leap amounted to nor what its consequences were.
Bold added

On the Skipping of Historical Stages (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr06.htm)

That&#39;s a pretty good writing on the subject, it refutes the Stalinist and Orthodox Marxist stagist "theory" (if you could even call it that).

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 30, 2007 04:05 am
He also did not argue that the "third world" (a very reactionary term for pre-capitalist or neo-colonial nations) could only be liberated by bourgeois revolution - Marx did himself.
No, "third world" is not a "reactionary term". And much less it is composed by pre-capitalist countries.

Take Brazil, for instance. It is a third world country. It is completely capitalist; the remnants of pre-capitalist modes of production - basically petty-bourgeois simple production of commodities, and oligarchic exploitation of peasants - are not, economically, socially, or politically, more important than they are in Europe or North America. The State is capitalist, dominated by the bourgeoisie, not semi-feudal or anything else. Practically everything that is produced here is produced as a commodity, by workers who sell their labour force, to be sold at the market, to make profit for capitalist owners of means of production. There is nothing here that the bourgeoisie can liberate. A revolution, here, can only be against the capitalist mode of production and the capitalist State. It can only be a proletarian revolution.

The same is true of all of Latin America, all of Asia, and quite probably of all of Africa too. There are no longer feudal States in this world.

Do you really believe differently?

Luís Henrique

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

Originally posted by apathy maybe+November 30, 2007 02:19 am--> (apathy maybe @ November 30, 2007 02:19 am)
[email protected] 29, 2007 11:11 pm
There is intentional confusion over the term .Leninism&#39;.

Can some please define it explicitly, since it&#39;s quite hard to respond to RS2K when terms that are very contentious are used.

Simply put though, RedStar2k was a Maoist before an anarchist, so his understanding of Leninism comes from the point of view that Lenin = Stalin = Mao. Which was you know very well, huge numbers of Marxists reject as simply moronic reasoning.
First things, I&#39;m not really interested in arguing with Leninists (of any sort) about this (what is wrong with Leninism) sort of thing. I&#39;ve tried it before, and such arguments go around and around. Some times the debate hinges on what the "state" is, sometimes it hinges on the very organisational method of a revolutionary, post-revolutionary society, sometimes other things. Either way, the arguments don&#39;t get far.

Now, as to redstar2000 being an anarchist... No he wasn&#39;t. He is a Marxist, and specifically disclaimed the label &#39;anarchist&#39; (at the very least in a PM to me when I questioned him on the matter). He thought that anarchism was too broad, that &#39;any could call themselves an anarchist and be accepted as such&#39; (paraphrase). I don&#39;t agree with him on that completely, but I see his point.

redstar2000 is a Marxist, but he is an autonomist Marxist (though I&#39;m not sure if he ever used the term himself). And from the point of view of a Leninist, I guess anarchist, autonomist either/or both the same. But they are different, even if they share the same basic goal, and many of the same organisational methods.


Finally, I&#39;m not sure I even agree with the statement of redstar2000&#39;s understanding of Leninism as being from Maoism. I think you don&#39;t do him credit. He is widely read, and would no doubt realise the differences between Trots, Stalinists, &#39;plain&#39; Leninists etc. And he rejects them all, from a distinctly Marxist perspective.

I think it would do you good to re-read his writing if you don&#39;t see that. [/b]
Well, not really, because he attacked the subsequent "Leninist" countries as being the natural conclusion of Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

The Maoists also see that the "Leninist" countries continued "Leninism" in the USSR and PRC among others.

That is something they share together, which he obviously has taken from his youth. He just now disagrees with the fact that the "Leninist" countries were progressive and socialist, which the Maoists would accept.

My contention is that, many forms of Marxism accept Lenin and the Bolsheviks, would describe themselves as some kind of "Leninist" but hold very different opinions on the societies that emerged when those "Leninist" countries matured.

The attacks on "Leninism" by RS2K really constituted an attack on Stalinism and Maoism. At least from a Trotskyist perspective.

He stated many times though, that he believed Stalin and Mao were "good" communists and "Leninists", but that "Leninism" the obscure term, remains undefined, meaning that Lenin is associated with the subsequent countries that called themselves "Leninist".

Trotskyists don&#39;t accept that, citing the obvious fact of the killing and imprisonment of the Bolsheviks that carried out the revolution, the anti-"Leninist" policies of Stalin and Mao and many others.

The organizational methods of Lenin and the Bolsheviks is different from the organizational methods of the Maoists and Stalinists.

Also, before he left, he made a post about state capitalism, in which he cited the book &#39;state capitalism&#39; that he had recently read, and wondered if anyone knew anything about Tony Cliff, a big character inside the Trotskyist movement, whether you agree or disagree with him. I think he knew about Trotskyism in the same way as many Maoists do.

[marxist_god]

Originally posted by Lenin [email protected] 23, 2007 11:16 pm
I mostly agree. While this article seems a bit anti-Leninist, there is no truly revolutionary party left in my country except the RCP. Most have become watered down and pro-Democrat or have been too caught up in sectarianism. No one talks of weakening the government and violent revolution anymore. It&#39;s so disappointing. :( Remember-No Justice, No Peace&#33;


haha, you are right, like the people of http://www.commondreams.org or http://www.alternet.org who might be labeled "light socialists"

marxist_god

[marxist_god]

Originally posted by Zampanò@December 01, 2007 09:30 pm
I attempted to reply to this thread so many times but just gave up because of the amount of idiocy contained in it.

Hello comrade: How self absorved you are, we came here to learn, not to bash others, for their "idiocy". Hitler was smart and look what he did &#33;&#33; :-)

marxist_god

[KC]

Because the political atmosphere in tsarist Russia was extraordinarily authoritarian, Lenin stated that the party must consider of a small number of professional revolutionaries, who must work in secrecy, to prepare to take power for the backwards working class, and build socialism without being subject to a significant era of capitalist development of the means of production. This is known as the vanguardist paradigm of socialism.

I&#39;d love to see you back this up with some direct quotes (you know, the part about substitutionalism).


Well, we see how that worked out in history: basically, every Leninist country

What countries are those and how are they Leninist?


developed into contemporary capitalism.

Many countries with socialist revolutions already were part of the capitalist system.


Regardless of the sincerity of the intentions of those who were doing it all, the ebb and flow of the material forces that underpin the country seem to need to develop through capitalism, regardless of the will to power.

Nobody denied this.


However, it is marred by his simplistic conclusion that Imperialism is the "highest stage of capitalism." I feel like history has shown that one to be false - capital has clearly evolved many more times, from monopoly capitalism to Fordism-Keynesianism, and currently into neoliberalism.

Wow, you really don&#39;t know what you&#39;re talking about.


Lenin was confused due to the myopia of his sources. There were labor markets in Russia - but there was not a powerful bourgeoisie capable of shirking imperialist domination. Nor was there a proletariat capable of organizing a socialist revolution.

Except there was.


It is from this problem Lenin deduced the necessity of the vanguard party - a problem that we do not face today in the modern era. His conclusions were that professional revolutionaries must make socialism for the workers, until they are developed enough to take over.

Again with this Blanquist straw man&#33; Why don&#39;t you ever substantiate what you say with quotes?


But that dispute is currently irrelevant. Marxists draw their analysis from the material conditions of their era - we are historically responsible as having the only truly materialist analysis of history in the realm of thought. To blindly assert that our conditions today call for the same organizational conclusions as those of feudal Russia circa 1900 is idealistic, and directly contradictory to the core of Marxism itself.

Studying Lenin&#39;s writings and the Russian Revolution has nothing to do with imitating it. Again you are setting up a straw man.


Lenin got his Marxism from Kautsky, which explains a fair amount.

No, Lenin "got his Marxism" from Marx and Engels.


First of all, what does "stagist" even mean? For example, Marx himself, using historical materialism, created a clear paradigm designating different historical stages corresponding to the dominant mode of production. Does this mean Marx was "stagist"?

No, because you are simplifying (vulgarizing) his materialist conception of history and putting it on a pedestal above all others as the be-all and end-all of historical progress.


RS2k did not reject proletarian revolution - in fact, he said it was necessary that anyone claiming to be a Marxist use historical materialism to further this goal. He merely said he did not believe the material forces, which Marxists believe determine the social construct of an era, were at a point that allowed (in the context of Marx&#39;s theory of being determines consciousness)

Marx&#39;s statement was that social being determines consciousness. In omitting such an essential word, and as is evident in your posts, you are dismissing the importance of class struggle in historical progress through your worship of the "stageist" conception of history. That is a complete departure from Marxism.


He also did not argue that the "third world" (a very reactionary term for pre-capitalist or neo-colonial nations) could only be liberated by bourgeois revolution - Marx did himself. He said no nation can escape the laws of the material forces of history - every nation will have to develop through capitalism, and this cannot be skipped by an imposition of a revolutionary&#39;s "will to power." He decried that as being idealism. I suggest you read up on what historical materialism actually means as a paradigm for analysis - you can start here).

Go read The German Ideology.

And by the way, which countries currently aren&#39;t capitalist?


Furthermore, anyone who claims RS2k is an anarchist has clearly not even put forth the effort to read his papers - they are fundamentally built on the materialist conception of history, and are written with the intention of furthering Marxism&#39;s credibility as a scientific methodology.

Neither of which disprove the fact that he is an anarchist. His views were in direct contradiction to Marx&#39;s views of the class struggle, the materialist conception of history, the political struggle and the resulting dictatorship of the proletariat and the withering of the state.

Anyone with a speck of common sense and a cursory knowledge of Marxism can point it out.


Even if you don&#39;t take sides in the eternal internal Leninist battle, as a Marxist are you not compelled to wonder why that battle exists? Could it be that, perhaps, it is an inevitable reflection of the nature of the Leninist paradigm of revolution?

No, it is a result of the vulgarization of Marxist theory by "Marxist" thinkers.


they all have or are emerging into developed capitalist nations. In extraordinarily short times at that&#33;

Was Cuba capitalist before the revolution? Is it capitalist now?


Leninism is not a useless paradigm - it&#39;s very successful at developing a feudal/neo-colonial economy into a modern capitalist state, in a very short time period, with relatively fewer casualties than standard capitalism creates. This is also a reflection of the material context within which the paradigm was created - that of 19th century Russia&#33;

You still have yet to define Leninism and show why it is attributed to Lenin.


Lenin felt he needed to prove Russia was a capitalist country in order to justify it as Marxist to lead a revolution there. He attempted this in The Development of Capitalism in Russia, published at the turn of the century. As a Marxist, you are obligated to consider for yourself whether he was correct in his assessment of what he found.

And have you read the book? He neither claimed that Russia was "capitalist" nor "feudalist" because he recognized the transformation that the country was going through at the time. But, as a stageist, that probably would make your mind explode.


He found that since the emancipation of the serfs, Russia had developed a labor-market exactly as found in developed capitalist economies. However, the social construct of 19th century Russia was entirely feudalistic - that is, the means of production were controlled by the aristocracy.

Hahaha can you seriously back this up? Are you seriously going to claim that there was no Russian bourgeoisie at the time, and that the struggle was between proletarian, peasant and aristocrat? And you seriously call yourself a Marxist?


Unfortunately, the working class was small for a reason.

How "small" is small to you? How large does a revolutionary working class have to be before it is "acceptable" to you? Do you not support the working class movement in Russia at the time because it went "against the laws of materialism (stageism)"?


And unfortunately as well, the bourgeoisie in Russia was too weak to develop the material conditions themselves.

Is that why Russia was one of the most productive nations on earth in numerous industries at the time?


So what are the material circumstances surrounding State & Revolution? Lenin began to write the theoretical piece after the February 1917 rebellion. This was the time period when the Bolsheviks were scrambling, all around Europe, to get things into place for their October coup. Lenin had to rally support for a Bolshevik government by winning over both those who were more radical than the Leninists (the anarchists), and those who were more liberal. Lenin attempted to do this by writing two pieces.

Ah, so it was all just some huge conspiracy for Lenin to take power. That&#39;s completely substantiated, right? :rolleyes:


As a Marxist, it is your intellectual obligation to focus on the material conditions of what happened, and not the revolutions "theoretical line" - as the latter is a social construct, and thus focusing on it is idealism. And the fact of the matter is that the Bolsheviks line and their praxis are obviously contradictory - apparently Lenin agreed much more with Kautsky than he ever did with Marx.

This is always what happens when one attempts to extract the actual substance of "Leninism" from Leninologists. First, they claim that Lenin made certain theoretical assertions and, when it is shown that these assertions have been mischaracterized, vulgarized and taken out of context they resort to speaking of the "actions" of the Bolsheviks, as if it is relevant to so-called "Leninism" (which, supposedly, is a body of theories developed by Lenin that are separate from that of Marx&#39;s). What does this prove? That they have no argument against "Leninism" as they can&#39;t even define it&#33;


Actually, their brutal murder displays the great weakness of a vanguard model: leadership. All COINTELPRO had to do was kill half a dozen or so people, and the entire BPP collapsed upon itself, incapable of anything else but factional dispute. This is a perfect example of why the vanguard model is incompatible with industrialized capitalist nations.

Because the BPP was organized along identical lines as the Bolsheviks. :rolleyes:

Are you seriously that dense/biased as to be so intellectually dishonest just to support your assertion?


If you are so in love with the vanguard model

What exactly is the vanguard model? How about you actually define it for us?


I&#39;m using Lenin&#39;s definition of a "vanguard": that is, a political party, consisting of "professional revolutionaries", whose role is to make revolution for a backwards working-class, and then "lead" it into socialism.

Again, source it, and then I will show you that you are incorrect by sourcing extensively to the contrary. But I will give you a chance to "prove yourself" first.


Hello comrade: How self absorved you are, we came here to learn, not to bash others, for their "idiocy". Hitler was smart and look what he did &#33;&#33; :-)

Nobody&#39;s here to learn; everyone is here to further entrench their ideologies by learning to sufficiently defend them.

[Leo]

I attempted to reply to this thread so many times but just gave up because of the amount of idiocy contained in it.

That happens to me quite often.

[nom de guerre]

First of all, when I try to post my response, I only see this:

403 Forbidden

Your action was recognized as a forbidden process
This site is protected against abusive actions

WTF is this all about?

[nom de guerre]

I&#39;d love to see you back this up with some direct quotes (you know, the part about substitutionalism).

See the following:


Originally posted by "Lenin &#045; WISTB?"+--> ("Lenin &#045; WISTB?")"We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without....

The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia."[/b]


Originally posted by "Lenin"@
I assert that it is far more difficult to unearth a dozen wise men than a hundred fools. This position I will defend, no matter how much you instigate the masses against me for my "anti-democratic" views, etc. As I have stated repeatedly, by "wise men, " in connection with organization, I mean professional revolutionaries, irrespective of whether they have developed from among students or working men. I assert: (1) that no revolutionary movement can endure without a stable organization of leaders maintaining continuity; (2) that the broader the popular mass drawn spontaneously into the struggle, which forms the basis of the movement and participates in it, the more urgent the need for such an organization, and the more solid this organization must be (for it is much easier for all sorts of demagogues to side-track the more backward sections of the masses); (3) that such an organization must consist chiefly of people professionally engaged in revolutionary activity and who have been professionally trained in the art of combating the political police, the more difficult will it be to unearth the organization; and (5) the greater will be the number of people from the working class and from the other social classes who will be able to join the movement and perform active work in it.


"Lenin"
"But the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard."

- V.I. Lenin
The Trade Unions, The Present Situation And Trotsky&#39;s Mistakes
December 30, 1920
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm

These three quotes, ranging from 1901 to 1920, encapsulate the theoretical foundations upon which the Bolshevik paradigm of praxis is built: 1) the proletariat in Russia in the early 1900s was incapable of naturally coming to revolutionary consciousness, and only "Social-Democratic" consciousness (see the Kautskyist influence anywhere?) could be brought to them by the middle-class intelligentsia; 2) these middle-class intelligentsia were to create a "party" who would theoretically work to develop revolutionary consciousness and spread it to the working-class, but would do so in the shape of a political-party; 3) because the proletariat is backwards, corrupted, and incapable of doing anything for itself, the aforementioned party will have to make revolution for it, by taking political power; and, most importantly, 4) the aforementioned party cannot, by its nature, consist of the entire working class, as it would become corrupt and defunct, and thus must remain small, consisting of "professional revolutionaries", which the first quote infers will likely come from the petty-bourgeois middle-class.

Now, please answer me this: how the fuck is this, in any way, Marxist?

Marx&#39;s methodology of historical materialism concludes that proletarian revolution needs capitalism to already be industrialized in order to occur.
Marx himself decried the Blanquists and the Jacobins, who advocated small, conspiratorial groups to make revolution. He called this bourgeois - because that&#39;s what happened in the English Revolution, French Revolution, etc.
He said, because revolution cannot be made by small groups, the proletarian revolution that makes communism must be made by the entirety of the working class itself.

Do you see how Lenin&#39;s proposals contradict these fundamentals of Marxism? Do you see then why I argue Lenin was so influenced by Kautskyist social-democracy that he wandered into the realm of idealism, rejecting Marxism in his myopic attempts to make revolution for Russia?


What countries are those and how are they Leninist?

The USSR, the Eastern Bloc, China, Vietnam, North Korea, and Khmer Rouge. I do not consider Cuba to be Leninist.


Many countries with socialist revolutions already were part of the capitalist system.

The aforementioned Leninist countries effectively were capitalist countries. CLR James concluded in State Capitalism and World Revolution that the means of production in the USSR from the mid-20s to the 50&#39;s were modeled directly after the Fordist and Taylorist structures that we saw industrialize the US in the 1910s and 1920s, and also in Germany in the 1930s, etc. James saw the only major different between the economic structures of the US and the USSR was the former saw surplus-value accumulated by private ownership, while the latter saw it accumulated by party ownership. He thus deduced that the USSR functioned as a "state capitalist" society - capitalist in its economic mode of production, but masked with the rhetorical of the proletariat and Marxism.

I highly recommend you read James&#39; work for the best materialist analysis of the economic workings of the early Soviet Union that may exist today.


Except there was.

Where was that proletariat in Russia? And if it was large enough and conscious enough to make revolution, why did the Bolsheviks come to power in a coup takeover of the Winter Palace, with less that a hundred people? You are making assertions with absolutely no material evidence.

Is it Marxist to just repeat something over and over again, bought-off by the shiny rhetoric and politics, and ignoring material reality?


No, Lenin "got his Marxism" from Marx and Engels.

Notice how WITBD? is a tract on developing social-democratic consciousness? Do you not see his Kautskyist roots? Do you even acknowledge his intellectual heritage within the Second International, or conveniently ignore it?

The "Renegade" Kautsky and His Disciple Lenin (http://www.geocities.com/~johngray/barrotk.htm)


Wow, you really don&#39;t know what you&#39;re talking about.

Okay, I&#39;m very inclined to ask whether you know what I&#39;m talking about. That is: do you know what the terms "Fordism", "Keynesianism", and "Neoliberalism" designate within Marxist theory? They differentiate between arrangements in the mode of production, that is, in the fundamental ways capitalism operates in accumulating successfully and dispersing overaccumulation. This is a very serious part to understanding Marxist theory today - for if we do not begin with a materialist analysis of the forces of production, then we are abandoning historical materialism, and thus Marxism, all together.

I really suggest you consider reading David Harvey (http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/lilley190606.html), and maybe some Erik Olen Wright and Bob Jessop. And wikipedia-ing the terms above&#33;


No, because you are simplifying (vulgarizing) his materialist conception of history and putting it on a pedestal above all others as the be-all and end-all of historical progress.

I am doing no such thing&#33; First of all - historical materialism is a tool. A tool for an analysis of history. One that rejects idealism as being second to our material reality, and thus looks first to material conditions to understand history. It is not the "end-all of historical progress" - it&#39;s a scientific hermeneutic with which to study history, and make predictions for the future. Your suggestion that I think it is the "end-all" clearly demonstrates your own vulgar depreciation of Marxism as a metanarrative hermeneutic into a bastard ideology of red-flags and politics.


Marx&#39;s statement was that social being determines consciousness. In omitting such an essential word, and as is evident in your posts, you are dismissing the importance of class struggle in historical progress through your worship of the "stageist" conception of history. That is a complete departure from Marxism.

No. Fucking. Shit.

Have you ever heard the term "species-being"? Go look it up on Wikipedia. It&#39;s the keystone of the Marxist understanding of human nature - upon which historical materialism is built.

To claim that I "dismiss" class-struggle is unsubstantiated. Please find me a post of mine where I&#39;ve ever said such a thing. Class-struggle is the driving force of human history. Don&#39;t bullshit me.


Was Cuba capitalist before the revolution? Is it capitalist now?

Yes and yes.


You still have yet to define Leninism and show why it is attributed to Lenin.

See above quotes. For a quick recap:

Leninism is a theoretical paradigm of praxis developed in proto-capitalist material conditions, arguing proletarian revolution is only possible if a group of self-designated "professional revolutionaries" form a "vanguard party" whose exclusive ranks theoretically work merely to "teach" the working-class, but as history has shown always intend for themselves to be the political leaders of the post-revolutionary society. It has historically shown itself to be an excellent paradigm for modernizing very underdeveloped countries into advanced capitalist economies, but has yet to produce in any one of its dozen attempts a communist society.

Thus, to continue to claim that it can is idealism.


And have you read the book? He neither claimed that Russia was "capitalist" nor "feudalist" because he recognized the transformation that the country was going through at the time. But, as a stageist, that probably would make your mind explode.

To quote from my dog-eared copy of The Essential Works of Lenin (Dober Thrift Edition, pg. 46-47):

"The characteristic features described above, which distinguish large-scale machine industry from preceding forms of industry, may be summed up in the words - socialization of labor. Indeed, production for an enormous national and international market, the development of close commercial contracts with various parts of the country and with various countries in the purchase of raw materials and auxiliary materials, the enormous technical progress, the concentration of production and the population by enormous enterprises, the destruction of the outworn traditions of patriarchal life, the creation of mobility among the population and the raising of the stanrd of rquires and the development of the worker - all these are elements of the capitalist process which more and more socialize the production of the country."


Hahaha can you seriously back this up? Are you seriously going to claim that there was no Russian bourgeoisie at the time, and that the struggle was between proletarian, peasant and aristocrat? And you seriously call yourself a Marxist?

Again, I never said Russia had "no bourgeoisie". It had a small and weak bourgeoisie smothered by the imperialist bourgeoisie, and thus relevantly inconsequential in the greater class construct of early 20th century Russia. Furthermore - to claim Russia was not a feudal society in the 19th century is absurd. Even Marx and Engels wrote in their lifetimes that they expected Russia to go through its bourgeois 1789 revolution soon - and that was in 1880&#33;


Ah, so it was all just some huge conspiracy for Lenin to take power. That&#39;s completely substantiated, right? rolleyes.gif

No, that&#39;s an un-materialist way to think, and a crude reduction of my rejection of Leninism. I think Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and Mao were all fighting sincerely and ardently for communism. But the material conditions of their time did not allow for communism to be actually feasible, their relative nations were doomed to have to develop a capitalist economy, regardless of their intentions. Their material conditions constricted their ability to do anything but make bourgeois revolution for an incompetent bourgeoisie - and their history has shown them to be very good at doing so. Significantly less violent and protracted than the bourgeois revolutions seen in Europe.

Lenin sincerely believed he could make a revolution in the Marxist sense of the word. But if you don&#39;t think we can do a lot better than him, I have to question whether you actually think like a Marxist, or whether you just like to call yourself one.


How "small" is small to you? How large does a revolutionary working class have to be before it is "acceptable" to you? Do you not support the working class movement in Russia at the time because it went "against the laws of materialism (stageism)"?

In a capitalist society, the proletariat is the largest class. If the working-class is not the most numerous, then it is "small" and thus materially bound to be inconsequential in the summation of its actions.


This is always what happens when one attempts to extract the actual substance of "Leninism" from Leninologists. First, they claim that Lenin made certain theoretical assertions and, when it is shown that these assertions have been mischaracterized, vulgarized and taken out of context they resort to speaking of the "actions" of the Bolsheviks, as if it is relevant to so-called "Leninism" (which, supposedly, is a body of theories developed by Lenin that are separate from that of Marx&#39;s). What does this prove? That they have no argument against "Leninism" as they can&#39;t even define it&#33;

The logical straw-man self-evident in your last sentence has been refuted twice in this post alone. Please try again?


Nobody&#39;s here to learn; everyone is here to further entrench their ideologies by learning to sufficiently defend them.

Are you fucking joking?

This is the sentiment of a Bolshevik: learning&#39;s useless, you must fall in line with those who argue their ideology most.

If this board doesn&#39;t function as an educational tool for newcomers to revolutionary politics, then it only serves as mutual masturbation for isolated and irrelevant idealist douchebags who will never really effect the world.

To say we&#39;re not here to educate each other is un-communist in every way.

[apathy maybe]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 07, 2007 10:23 am
First of all, when I try to post my response, I only see this:

403 Forbidden

Your action was recognized as a forbidden process
This site is protected against abusive actions

WTF is this all about?
Anti-spam measures. They go away when you hit fifty posts.


See this thread in technical for a recent &#39;discussion&#39; http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=74016

[KC]

You made the claim that Lenin supported the Blanquist notion that a minority party should "revolt for the proletariat". That is substitutionalism. That is not what Lenin is advocating in any of the quotes you have provided. Here is a good paragraph by Lenin in What Is To Be Done? that you probably missed:

"What was the source of our disagreement? It was the fact that on questions both of organisation and of politics the Economists are forever lapsing from Social-Democracy into trade-unionism. The political struggle of Social-Democracy is far more extensive and complex than the economic struggle of the workers against the employers and the government. Similarly (indeed for that reason), the organisation of the revolutionary Social-Democratic Party must inevitably be of a kind different from the organisation of the workers designed for this struggle. The workers’ organisation must in the first place be a trade union organisation; secondly, it must be as broad as possible; and thirdly, it must be as public as conditions will allow (here, and further on, of course, I refer only to absolutist Russia). On the other hand, the organisation of the revolutionaries must consist first and foremost of people who make revolutionary activity their profession (for which reason I speak of the organisation of revolutionaries, meaning revolutionary Social-Democrats). In view of this common characteristic of the members of such an organisation, all distinctions as between workers and intellectuals, not to speak of distinctions of trade and profession, in both categories, must be effaced. Such an organisation must perforce not be very extensive and must be as secret as possible. Let us examine this threefold distinction."

Notice the part that I&#39;ve emphasized. By posting this quote I just wanted to show you the importance of not taking anything said in What Is To Be Done? out of context. This was a work that Lenin was writing in 1902 in order to gain support for the organization of such a party, and wasn&#39;t a theoretical work about party organization and tactics in general. Because of that, you can&#39;t make any claims that the assertions laid out in this work are absolute and all-encompassing ideas of how Lenin thought parties should organize and act.

Second, you might use the latter part of this paragraph to support your assertion that Lenin was a "Blanquist". However, the justification for a "secret party" must be taken into account; political opposition was being suppressed everywhere and there were also illegal tasks that must be taken on within the movement. Because of this it was necessary to have such an organization. It also must be taken account, as I said above, that this organizational structure wasn&#39;t one that was held onto absolutely; it was a structure that developed out of the material conditions of the time and slowly died out as the conditions warranted working in public through other means.

Now, let&#39;s go through the quotes you&#39;ve provided above, put them into context and discuss them thoroughly:


"We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without....

The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia."

The latter paragraph that you have posted is completely true, and I don&#39;t think one can even argue against it. It was academics and scholars that have developed socialist theory, and eventually Marxist theory (Marx was an "intellectual"). So I&#39;m guessing your problem is with the former part of this quote that you are in disagreement with. As for the former part that you&#39;ve quoted, here it is in full:

"We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc."

There is a footnote to this quote that is placed right after "etc." which I would also like to add here:

"Trade-unionism does not exclude “politics” altogether, as some imagine. Trade unions have always conducted some political (but not Social-Democratic) agitation and struggle. We shall deal with the difference between trade union politics and Social-Democratic politics in the next chapter. —Lenin"

It is important not to take this out of context, as it is commonly done so and used as an attack against Lenin. So what does Lenin mean here when he says that workers by their own volition cannot develop Social-Democratic consciousness? He is merely speaking of the origins of social-democratic theory. He is saying three things here:

1. That socialist theory came out of the theoretical conclusions of members of the bourgeois intelligentsia itself, and intellectuals in general. This, as I said earlier, isn&#39;t really debatable as it&#39;s a fact that&#39;s simply proven true by examining who developed these theories.

2. That social-democratic consciousness doesn&#39;t in itself arise out of the class struggle spontaneously. What this means is that workers by their own accords (i.e. without the work of communists) are unable to see past capitalism and towards a classless society. They cannot by themselves gain a social-democratic consciousness.

Now, this might still be confusing, because it sounds like we are saying that the workers in general are not capable of performing proletarian revolution. This is not what we are stating. Rather, we are stating that, without communist agitation and education, without the work of communists, proletarian revolution will not happen. Proletarian revolution isn&#39;t something that spontaneously arises out of the development of capitalism. It requires not only the objective conditions offered by the current economic and political developments of the time, but also the subjective conditions created by the work of communists in agitating, educating, and helping organize the proletariat.

3. That social-democratic consciousness must be brought "from without". Now the origins of this statement have its foundations in the latter part of your quote. The very reason that Lenin brings up the origins of Marxist theory is because that is where this "from without" has started. The origins of socialist theory lay not in the class struggle (i.e. workers are theorists), but in the works of the intelligentsia. In this sense Marxist theory is coming from "without" - i.e. from outside of the working class. It is undeniable that socialist theory has come from "without" as I stated above.

I realize that I am somewhat repeating the point I made in part one but that is because the origins of socialist theory are crucial in understanding what Lenin means in this part of the quote, and what its implications are for what I am going to say further.

Now, as stated in part two, in order for social-democratic consciousness to be raised within the working class it requires the work of communists. This is what Lenin meant when he stated that it must "come from without". The origins of socialist theory lay in the intelligentsia, who passes this on to communists, who are adherents to these theories and bring them to the masses through education and agitation.

So now, with those three points in mind, we must question what it means to be communist and who can be part of this group that brings it "from without". What is a communist and who can be one? Lenin, later in the same work, states the following:

"The fact that the masses are spontaneously being drawn into the movement does not make the organisation of this struggle less necessary. On the contrary, it makes it more necessary; for we socialists would be failing in our direct duty to the masses if we did not prevent the police from making a secret of every strike and every demonstration (and if we did not ourselves from time to time secretly prepare strikes and demonstrations). And we will succeed in doing this, because the spontaneously awakening masses will also produce increasing, numbers of “professional revolutionaries” from their own ranks (that is, if we do not take it into our heads to advise the workers to keep on marking time)."

It is here that Lenin states that while social-democratic consciousness comes from without as stated above, it is fostered and promoted by those who maintain that consciousness. Members of the working class in general become members of the proletarian vanguard. Members of the working class gain social-democratic consciousness, become communist, and assist in the spreading of consciousness. Lenin recognized the fact that workers themselves would get involved in their own struggle and help advance that struggle once they were conscious of it. Because of this the quote you have provided not only doesn&#39;t support your claim of substitutionalism, but actually disproves it.

On to your next quote:


I assert that it is far more difficult to unearth a dozen wise men than a hundred fools. This position I will defend, no matter how much you instigate the masses against me for my "anti-democratic" views, etc. As I have stated repeatedly, by "wise men, " in connection with organization, I mean professional revolutionaries, irrespective of whether they have developed from among students or working men. I assert: (1) that no revolutionary movement can endure without a stable organization of leaders maintaining continuity; (2) that the broader the popular mass drawn spontaneously into the struggle, which forms the basis of the movement and participates in it, the more urgent the need for such an organization, and the more solid this organization must be (for it is much easier for all sorts of demagogues to side-track the more backward sections of the masses); (3) that such an organization must consist chiefly of people professionally engaged in revolutionary activity and who have been professionally trained in the art of combating the political police, the more difficult will it be to unearth the organization; and (5) the greater will be the number of people from the working class and from the other social classes who will be able to join the movement and perform active work in it.

As I have stated earlier, the organization into a small group of committed revolutionaries was due to the material conditions in Russia at the time and isn&#39;t a stance on how parties in general should be formed. Let&#39;s go through the points he brings up individually, take them apart, and determine their meaning:


(1) that no revolutionary movement can endure without a stable organization of leaders maintaining continuity

In a revolutionary movement there are always leaders, whether they are the kind that are recognized as such simply for their dedication and experience or are the kind that are dictating the role of such a movement. In this case the form is irrelevant, as Lenin is simply talking about leaders in general. Revolutions don&#39;t succeed without leaders, as leaders are made by those revolting for whatever reason. Those that are most active and most experienced generally become leaders within the movement simply for their action and experience. Anyone that has been in an organization realizes that generally there are those that are more active within the organization and because of that are looked at in a different way than the rest of the group. It&#39;s simple group dynamics.


(2) that the broader the popular mass drawn spontaneously into the struggle, which forms the basis of the movement and participates in it, the more urgent the need for such an organization, and the more solid this organization must be (for it is much easier for all sorts of demagogues to side-track the more backward sections of the masses);

Within any class or group of people there will always be those that are more progressive in terms of the movement and those that are more backwards. The proletariat isn&#39;t a homogeneous class; within it there are progressive elements and there are reactionary elements.

What Lenin is saying is that because of the broad mass of people involved in the movement, the greater the power of those backward elements in side-tracking the movement. Because of this, with a larger movement, the more progressive elements must be more organized, more experienced, and more consistent.


(3) that such an organization must consist chiefly of people professionally engaged in revolutionary activity and who have been professionally trained in the art of combating the political police, the more difficult will it be to unearth the organization;

This is a statement countering the "amateurism" of the time in performing revolutionary activity. What it means to be a "professional revolutionary" is that one is well-trained, disciplined (not subservient; there is a difference), and experienced. What it means here to be a "professional" is that one carries out their work in a professional manner. That is all this means.


(5) the greater will be the number of people from the working class and from the other social classes who will be able to join the movement and perform active work in it.

This goes back to the last few paragraphs of the last quote I talked about, and goes against your assertion that Lenin was a Blanquist. He is stating here that the working class will get involved in its own struggle and that they will be able to perform active work in it. Here he is again recognizing the fact that the working class will be an active part in its own movement, and that it will be the driving force behind it. This is completely contrary to what you are asserting.

Onto the next quote:


"But the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard."

This again goes back to the statement that there are different strata within the proletariat that are more or less progressive and more or less backwards. Because of this, the dictatorship of the proletariat isn&#39;t exercised through an organization embracing the entire class, as reactionary elements aren&#39;t embraced but fought against. For example, a proletarian found working to subvert proletarian dictatorship isn&#39;t embraced but punished. This is all that is being stated here.


2) these middle-class intelligentsia were to create a "party" who would theoretically work to develop revolutionary consciousness and spread it to the working-class, but would do so in the shape of a political-party

I think I addressed this sufficiently above, but what do you mean when you say "but would do so in the shape of a political-party"?


3) because the proletariat is backwards, corrupted, and incapable of doing anything for itself

Again, this is a straw man you have constructed, which I have deconstructed solely by using the quotes you&#39;ve provided. Lenin never claimed the proletariat was "backwards [and] corrupted" for example; he stated that there are different strata within the proletariat where some are backwards. Do you disagree that within the proletariat there are progressive elements, backwards elements, and a wide variety of those in between? Do you consider the proletariat a monolithic, homogeneous class or not?

As for being "incapable of doing anything for itself" this was already proven using the quotes you&#39;ve provided to be a straw man. Lenin clearly realized the primary role that the proletariat would play in the revolution, as was shown above in the quotes you&#39;ve provided.


the aforementioned party will have to make revolution for it

You haven&#39;t provided a shred of substantiation for this Blanquist substitutionalist nonsense.


4) the aforementioned party cannot, by its nature, consist of the entire working class, as it would become corrupt and defunct

Actually he stated that the party couldn&#39;t embrace the whole working class. Again I ask: should the dictatorship of the proletariat "embrace" a proletarian that is so reactionary as to work against proletarian dictatorship or should they execute them?


and thus must remain small

Again I covered this above. You are taking what he said out of context; I sufficiently have proven that Lenin recognized that what he was saying wasn&#39;t about party organization in general but was "only refer[ring] to absolutist Russia" (his own words).


Do you see how Lenin&#39;s proposals contradict these fundamentals of Marxism?

I see how your representations of Lenin&#39;s statements (your straw men) to contradict these fundamentals of Marxism, but as far as what Lenin actually said, I would consider it to adhere perfectly to Marxist theory.


The USSR, the Eastern Bloc, China, Vietnam, North Korea, and Khmer Rouge. I do not consider Cuba to be Leninist.

I asked you also how you consider these to be Leninist. And if you&#39;re going to consider Democratic Kampuchea to be a "Leninist" revolution then you&#39;re either insane or incredibly ignorant of what happened there.

I would like you tell me how these countries were/are "Leninist". I am especially interested in hearing your explanation for DK, though.


The aforementioned Leninist countries effectively were capitalist countries.

I was talking about before the revolutions.

Anyways, I&#39;m not going to respond to the rest of your post here because I really don&#39;t feel like going back and forth with these huge posts and I consider the issue I&#39;ve covered above to be the underlying one of all of them, so I think that&#39;s where we should focus.


Are you fucking joking?

This is the sentiment of a Bolshevik: learning&#39;s useless, you must fall in line with those who argue their ideology most.

I wasn&#39;t making such a statement; I was merely stating that everyone here considers themselves "right" and won&#39;t (or hardly ever will) budge on their ideology. It&#39;s just a simple truth.

[KC]

I would also like to include these links to Hal Draper&#39;s The Myth of Lenin’s “Concept of The Party” or What They Did to What Is To Be Done? which directly address your assertions and take them apart.

Socialist Consciousness and Intellectuals (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#section1)
Let us start with the myth which claims that, according to Lenin’s views in 1902 and forever, the workers cannot come to socialist ideas of themselves, that only bourgeois intellectuals are the carriers of socialist ideas...

“Professional Revolutionaries” and Spontaneity (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#section2)
Let us take the second claim, that the Leninist “concept of the party” demanded that the party should consist of so-called professional revolutionaries only. This view was “deduced” from WITBD by opponents. As soon as the deduction and the claim appeared, Lenin denied (scores of times) that he wanted a party made up of professional revolutionaries only. The Leninologists endlessly repeat the “deduction,” and do not mention that Lenin consistently and firmly repudiated it.

Lenin’s Party Concepts (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#section3)
We still have to take up Lenin’s later comments on WITBD. But something of a historical introduction is necessary here.

The reader of Lenin’s WITBD must understand that if it embodied some specially Leninist “concept of the party” Lenin himself was entirely unaware of it at the time. He thought he was putting forward a view of party and movement that was the same as that of the best parties of the International, particularly the German party under the leadership of August Bebel – only allowing for the big difference that the Russian movement faced the special problems of illegality under an autocracy.

I highly suggest you read this work, as it directly addresses every single point you have brought up. If you are unwilling to do so, though, I am willing to pull out relevant sections for you to read.

[nom de guerre]

Originally posted by Zampanò+December 07, 2007 09:46 pm--> (Zampanò &#064; December 07, 2007 09:46 pm) You made the claim that Lenin supported the Blanquist notion that a minority party should "revolt for the proletariat". That is substitutionalism. That is not what Lenin is advocating in any of the quotes you have provided. Here is a good paragraph by Lenin in What Is To Be Done? that you probably missed:[/b]

First of all, I&#39;d like to thank you for the refreshing wave of Hal Draper&#39;s interpretation of the role of the party of whatever. Truthfully, when I started reading it, I became lost in nostalgia for the 1930&#39;s and the Left Opposition&#33; While I couldn&#39;t manage to swallow it all, I still appreciate the daydream.

Now, I&#39;m going to do something seemingly bizzarre to many folks here: instead of nitpicking through your last post, quote-by-quote, point-and-counterpoint - I&#39;m going to summarize your argument (that Lenin never said the role of the vanguard was a "substitutionalist" one, and thus the vanguard model still should be fought for today in America) - and reply to it in its entirety.

I&#39;m going to ask you, Zampano (although I encourage all other readers to join in and think&#33;) to do something that may seem very hard: I want you to put aside all these things that Lenin said, and let us consider, in a materialist and historical sense, what Lenin ended up having to do, and what played out in the Soviet Union. I&#39;m going to try to appeal to you with logic instead of the "Who Can Quote _____" game.

First off, you are right that Lenin&#39;s writings do not explicitly state that the vanguard must preform a "substitutionalist" role, and this is the only way proletarian revolution can occur. I cannot, upon review of my old notes in my copies of Lenin, find anything incriminating to that regard. So it must be disregarded as a vulgar argument.

However, no one here can say that, historically, the vanguards which did succeed did not preform said "substitutionalist" role. To do so would be ignoring history, and thus diverging from Marxism.

So, as a Marxist, we must consider the objective conditions which influenced the Bolshevik party to preform such role in Russia as it did in the early 20th century. To do so, we must consider the context within which Lenin worked.

Lenin was faced with the difficult problem of making proletarian revolution in a country which, while may having capitalist attributes, was ultimately not an industrialized power on the scale of, say, France or Germany in the latter half of the 19th century. Russia was a nation of peasants; ex-serfs with little work, and what work they did do was shit farming. Around 80% of the country lived in rural areas, were illiterate, and entirely unskilled in any kind of proletarian labor.

Now let&#39;s stop and consider: do you think this is what Marx and Engels had in mind when they discussed the necessity of a proletarian-borne revolution to advance society and the means of production into communism? Does this resemble, say, what we saw in the Paris Commune?

No. Obviously not.

Using historical materialism, we can obviously conclude that this was due to the fact that Russia had, until Lenin&#39;s time, not yet experienced a bourgeois revolution. Marx had written in his time that he expected Russia would experience its 1789 revolution pretty soon. But, until February 1917, it had not yet occurred.

Now, still holding aside what Lenin wrote throughout his life, let us again consider what actually happened. In February 1917 Russia experienced the beginning of its bourgeois revolution - the tsar was overthrown and Kerensky was the head of the new Provisional Government. But by no means did Russia industrialize as France or Germany or Britain had by the end of the 19th century - by October 1917&#33; So, within our Marxist hermeneutic, how is that possible?

When looking at Russia&#39;s material state of affairs in 1917, it&#39;s obvious that the only existing bourgeoisie was very incapacitated by the imperial powers and their war. Russia could only lose soldiers in WWI - hell, many of them were unarmed, or waving pitchforks at the earliest automatic weapons and tanks. Russia couldn&#39;t begin to develop its new bourgeois economy through war, because its industrial base was too small. It had not had sufficient time to go through, as Marx phrased it, primitive accumulation, in order to lay the foundations necessary for a capitalist society. And with such a ruckus to the west, the newborn Russian bourgeoisie found it quite difficult to accumulate new capital for its new economy.

With a crippled bourgeoisie, and riding on the wave of fervor still shaking the country from the spring revolution, the Bolsheviks formed a party that had a history of actively and passionately fighting for the workers of Russia. And as the government was situated entirely in the urban areas of Russia, the workers were the important constituency to reach out to. Every other political party was completely corrupt, and shown to be working against the interests of the fledgling proletariat.

So the Bolshevik Party went for it, overthrew Kerensky and the Provisional Government at the coup at the Winter Castle, and the first successful socialist revolution in history occurred.

Now we must pause again. Let us remember that despite our differences in opinion, we are both Marxists. You call yourself a "Marxist-Leninist" - well, remember whose name is first. We derive our praxis from our Marxist analysis, based on the methodology of historical materialism, and considering the material conditions first, and the social construct that rises above them second.

Russia&#39;s objective material conditions in 1917 were not, as we already established, developed in the sense of what Marx and Engels were talking about as a necessary prerequisite to a proletarian revolution. Marx talked about workers beginning to take power in their immediate and everyday life - he talked about a revolution more radical than the Paris Commune&#33; He knew that if it came directly from the working-class acting, as he put it, as a "class for itself" - that is, conscious of its own material interests and right to rule - and thus destroying bourgeois society themselves, and creating something none of us have ever conceived of before.

Is this what we saw in Russia in 1917?

No Marxist can honestly claim that. The vestiges of worker power, the soviet councils, had begun to be deconstructed by the new Bolshevik government as early as April 1918. This is, mind you, long before the Russian civil war began in any significant form.

When looking at what the Bolsheviks did do, we understand, within a historical materialist paradigm, what did occur. The Bolshevik Party did not destroy the governmental structures of the Provisional Government - it seized them, and made changes to them to suit their rhetoric. The government immediately created a safety net, and did avidly work to provide healthcare, employment, housing, bread and electricity to everyone. And the cost of that was dangerous.

The economy, as it had all of six months to develop under bourgeois direction, was not built to support this. As such, Socialist Russia had a very hard time in the beginning. The civil war didn&#39;t help, but, even after it had ended, and Stalin won the power struggle (amazing how the Trotsky-Stalin thing so resembles typical bourgeois politics, occurred in a party structured on the bourgeois political model, huh) - he still didn&#39;t manage to really industrialize the Russian economy enough to build a social order developed enough to support the proletariat as such, until the 1950&#39;s, after the war (which, this time, the Russian economy was very stimulated by).

So, we&#39;ve just taken a pretty down-to-earth, materialist overlooking - crude, no doubt - of the Russian Revolution. But, considering how hindsight is 20/20, and we have the advantage of seeing what happened in its entirety (that is - where Russia and China are now&#33;), we see that Marx was right once again.

Objective and material conditions always prevail.

Russia had to experience a capitalist revolution, regardless of what anyone said or intended.

History required it to be done - but has now shown us that it can occur in many ways.

Many decry Marxism as being a deterministic hermeneutic of analysis with history - it strongly states that what happens had to happen, but can just happen in many ways. It doesn&#39;t infer how its going to happen - that&#39;s decided by the material conditions.

For example, capitalism has shown to be capable of development in many different circumstances, and many different objective conditions. How it develops varies, it seems probabilistic but influenced by its material conditions, yet always seems to happen in the most efficient way materially feasible within said conditions.

So, despite the rhetoric and philosophy of Lenin&#39;s words, if Marx was correct about anything, history necessitated that Russia had to experience a capitalist revolution before any words or struggles towards communism were even feasible, let alone possible or realistic.

Now, if history has judged that the Bolsheviks were, despite their intentions, doomed to serve the function of a bourgeoisie (with the variance of private ownership substituted by party ownership) - perhaps we can see how that corresponds to what Lenin wrote and did.

You are correct that Lenin did not explicitly define the vanguard as having a substitutionalist role. But how can you account for the fact that every Leninist revolution (which, by the way, all seemed to happen in areas in conditions similar or worse to that of Russia in 1917, who were in dire need of a bourgeois revolution) ended up producing capitalist economies?

How can you continually justify Lenin and his paradigm as being relevant to our objective conditions today?

How can ignore the obvious failures of the Leninst movement in advanced capitalist nations - they all have turned to parliamentarism and politiks, unionism and corruption.

Isn&#39;t this what Lenin decried about the Social-Democrats of the Second International?

Doesn&#39;t that suggest something to you about the applicability of the Leninist vanguard paradigm within already industrialized nations?

All Leninists, by nature of their argument, are making the assertion that Leninism is still acceptable, relevant, and applicable to our objective materialist conditions as defined within Marxist historical materialism.

You guys are the ones making the positive statement: "Lenin is still right&#33;"

I am calling you out on that.

In fact, I think I can pretty effectively show why Lenin was wrong. We must remember that Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was, first, a human. Humans are susceptible to mistakes. Marx made plenty of them, I have made plenty of them, and I&#39;m sure you have. It is the very nature of our being - but, as the only creatures graced with such potential for abstract thought, our existence is futile if we don&#39;t look at where we&#39;ve come from, and try to do something better.

Regardless of anyone&#39;s opinions on Vladimir Ulyanov as a man, or Lenin as an institution or paradigm, history has shown what the vanguard model is materially effective at, and the conditions within. The logical conclusion, then, is we can find roots of this in Lenin&#39;s thought and writings - and I think this apparent throughout your previous response.


Originally posted by "Lenin (abridged+ for emphasis)"--> ("Lenin (abridged &#064; for emphasis)")The political struggle of Social-Democracy is far more extensive and complex than the economic struggle of the workers against the employers and the government. Similarly (indeed for that reason), the organisation of the revolutionary Social-Democratic Party must inevitably be of a kind different from the organisation of the workers designed for this struggle... the organisation of the revolutionaries must consist first and foremost of people who make revolutionary activity their profession (for which reason I speak of the organisation of revolutionaries, meaning revolutionary Social-Democrats). In view of this common characteristic of the members of such an organisation, all distinctions as between workers and intellectuals, not to speak of distinctions of trade and profession, in both categories, must be effaced. Such an organisation must perforce not be very extensive and must be as secret as possible. [/b]

First of all, we still see Lenin&#39;s Kautskyist origins quite clearly : as explicated above, Lenin things that the Party must indeed engage in the political infrastructure of parliamentary elections. After all, his Party is adapted from the bourgeois model - the context of which is the struggle for power of the political apparatus through "democratic" voting. When you try to distance Lenin from Kautsky, you&#39;re shooting yourself in the foot. And this quote proves that.

Secondly, Lenin elaborates on who must make up the vanguard party for it to be successful. Lenin says that, to make revolution, the organization must consist of those who make revolutionary politics their "profession". Can we possibly draw any parallels to our situation today - who makes politics their profession?

Politicians&#33; Which is exactly whom the party is to consist of, in Lenin&#39;s paradigm, in order for revolution to be successful. Further testament to the crypto-Kautskyism in the Leninist paradigm.

Remember, as we reviewed earlier, that historical materialism concludes that a proletarian revolution with the goal of creating communism will only be successful if it is made by the entirety of the working class, for itself. Here we see, again, Lenin diverging from Marxism. Lenin says the revolution can&#39;t be made by the workers as a class - such spontaneity is unheard of; a party of politicians will surely suffice.

Lenin is claiming that the workers didn&#39;t take matters into their own hands, but instead should entrust decisions to a party of professional politicians, who will represent their interests in deciding things within the political apparatus.

Now, this sounds a lot like how bourgeois revolutions happen. And, as Marxists, if it looks like a bourgeois revolution, and it sounds like a bourgeois revolution, we&#39;re obligated to call it a bourgeois revolution. Not at all what we mean when we discuss proletarian revolution today, in the 21st century.

If you, as a Leninist, feel otherwise - the burden is on you to prove it. You&#39;re making the positive assertion that Lenin is still relevant for revolutionaries today.

("Lenin")"We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc."[/b][/quote]

This is a baseless assertion. For example - do you think when workers in Paris in 1871 were chanting "Marx Marx Marx" when they revolted? Did they sit down and discuss the fine-points of his critique of capital, before determining to overthrow the bourgeoisie?

No. It was clear to them based on their lived experiences that it was in their material interests to take a stand and try to take what is rightly theirs.

If Marx is right, then this mindset will become more and more common as conditions in society are getting worse. It will just become obvious: hey, these guys have no idea how to run things for everyone, why don&#39;t we try.

Yes, Lenin is right above: theory tends to come from the intelligentsia. In fact, exclusively so in early capitalist nations, where a developed and cultured proletariat is not possible. But theory is only a reflection of the material conditions - an attempt, upon review, to fit what&#39;s happening within a logical paradigm.

Only today have we begun to see the potential capability for a largely educated and cultured working class. The internet can teach people about anything, instantaneously and pretty cheaply. So, Marx was right: the development of material technology forward has produced an innovation which has the potential to change consciousness on a massive scale. I know the internet has been imperative to the development of my own consciousness. If Marx will continue to be right, we should see that growing pretty soon.

But, clearly, in Lenin&#39;s time, no such capacity to disseminate revolutionary consciousness existed - because Russia was an unindustrial proto-capitalist nation of farmland and small fledgling cities.

So, by nature of the conditions of Lenin&#39;s time, of course the Party would have to consist of professional revolutionaries. But don&#39;t you see how this parallels a bourgeois revolution, and thus is anachronistic for our circumstances today?

We don&#39;t need a party anymore&#33;

("Lenin")"Trade-unionism does not exclude “politics” altogether, as some imagine. Trade unions have always conducted some political (but not Social-Democratic) agitation and struggle. We shall deal with the difference between trade union politics and Social-Democratic politics in the next chapter."[/b][/quote]

You further elucidate on this quote as such: "That social-democratic consciousness doesn&#39;t in itself arise out of the class struggle spontaneously. What this means is that workers by their own accords (i.e. without the work of communists) are unable to see past capitalism and towards a classless society. They cannot by themselves gain a social-democratic consciousness."

Now, as we discussed directly above, Marx actually concludes that consciousness doesn&#39;t develop sporadically either: it is long and subject to objective material conditions which, over the course of their development, make revolution the obvious choice to the workers.

You are effectively diverting people from historical materialism. Of course nothing develops "spontaneously" - that would infer that it is not subject to influence by its material conditions. What Marx said was that shifts in consciousness come slowly, from the development of the species-being in response to the changes in its material environment over long periods of time.

We&#39;re talking about history here - large-scale changes take long periods of time.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks seemed to think the six months following the bourgeois revolution in February was long enough. Despite their intentions, however, they are not beyond the material laws of history.

To compensate for this, Lenin argued that if the Bolsheviks took power then, they could develop the consciousness of the proletariat to where the "withering away of the state" would occur, and Russia would progress into communism.

This is profoundly anti-Marxist. Marxist historical materialism explicitly suggests that the proletariat must become a "class for itself" - that is, recognize its own right and capacity to create communism - before the revolution could occur.

How can you have a proletarian revolution, if it&#39;s not made by the proletariat?

Yet another point at which Lenin diverged from Marxism.


"Zampano"@
3. That social-democratic consciousness must be brought "from without". Now the origins of this statement have its foundations in the latter part of your quote. The very reason that Lenin brings up the origins of Marxist theory is because that is where this "from without" has started. The origins of socialist theory lay not in the class struggle (i.e. workers are theorists), but in the works of the intelligentsia. In this sense Marxist theory is coming from "without" - i.e. from outside of the working class. It is undeniable that socialist theory has come from "without" as I stated above.

This is how Lenin resolved the issue above. "Professional revolutionaries" can, from the "outside", push the proletariat into "becoming revolutionaries" and making communism.

Again, Lenin infers that idealism, or the might and resolve of a particular idea, can supersede the objective material prerequisites for communist proletarian revolution.

Thank you, again, for further illustrating my point.

Do I really have to keep going through your regurgitation of the gospel according to Vladimir? Your own quotes just provided three solid columns of support for the beginning of my post.

So, now, the burden is on you:

Prove to me that the Leninist vanguard, despite its crypto-bourgeois rhetoric, and historically-bourgeois role, are still relevant and applicable within the Marxist paradigm for revolutionaries in the industrialized countries today.

If you cannot or do not want to, then just please stop calling yourself a Marxist.


"Zampano"
I wasn&#39;t making such a statement; I was merely stating that everyone here considers themselves "right" and won&#39;t (or hardly ever will) budge on their ideology. It&#39;s just a simple truth.

And this perfectly illustrates how everyone here is so caught up in the mindset of class society. You&#39;re all insecure and reactionary in your beliefs, quibbling about quotes from a hundred years ago that are irrelevant for today.

Marxists are obligated to keep learning forever, keep criticizing, and keep thinking for ourselves.
All I see here are Leninists quoting gospels. I cannot understand how you people can call yourselves Marxists. Do you not see the contradiction in this?

[KC]

However, no one here can say that, historically, the vanguards which did succeed did not preform said "substitutionalist" role. To do so would be ignoring history, and thus diverging from Marxism.

So, as a Marxist, we must consider the objective conditions which influenced the Bolshevik party to preform such role in Russia as it did in the early 20th century. To do so, we must consider the context within which Lenin worked.


This is exactly what I was expecting to happen. In order to characterize "Leninism" the Leninologist always starts with the Lenin quotes, ripped out of context and mischaracterized to the point of creating a straw man. Once it is shown that this is what was done, the Leninologist resorts to attempting to define "Leninism" through the actions of the Bolshevik party.

This is fallacious for many reasons, the primary one being that one cannot define Lenin&#39;s theories based on the actions of the Bolshevik party. It&#39;s intellectually dishonest to do so.

I am not here to discuss the events surrounding the Russian Revolution. You have conceded the point that Lenin supported substitutionalism and that this is what "Leninism" is, which was what we were debating.


You call yourself a "Marxist-Leninist"

I&#39;ve never called myself such, and against the term. I am a Marxist. Leninism, as has been shown in this thread, doesn&#39;t exist.


You are correct that Lenin did not explicitly define the vanguard as having a substitutionalist role. But how can you account for the fact that every Leninist revolution (which, by the way, all seemed to happen in areas in conditions similar or worse to that of Russia in 1917, who were in dire need of a bourgeois revolution) ended up producing capitalist economies?

You don&#39;t understand. The other revolutions you have listed weren&#39;t "Leninist" ones. I mean you put DK in there, for fuck&#39;s sake. You obviously have no idea what you&#39;re talking about. And since it has been shown that "Leninism" isn&#39;t what you claim it to be, no revolution can be "Leninist".


How can you continually justify Lenin and his paradigm as being relevant to our objective conditions today?

Because Marxism is relevant to our objective conditions today, and that is what Lenin wrote about and used.



How can ignore the obvious failures of the Leninst movement in advanced capitalist nations - they all have turned to parliamentarism and politiks, unionism and corruption.


"Where the working class is weak and divided, so is the party. Where the working class is strong and organized, so is the party."
-I don&#39;t remember who said that, and I&#39;m paraphrasing terribly, but it&#39;s completely true.


You guys are the ones making the positive statement: "Lenin is still right&#33;"

You have yet to say what Lenin was "wrong" about. You have conceded on every point to me regarding "Lenin&#39;s" theories yet you still claim that he is "wrong". Make up your mind.


history has shown what the vanguard model

What exactly is the "vanguard model"?


(emphasis mine)

You didn&#39;t emphasize anything.


First of all, we still see Lenin&#39;s Kautskyist origins quite clearly : as explicated above, Lenin things that the Party must indeed engage in the political infrastructure of parliamentary elections.

Where does it even mention parliamentary elections there?


Secondly, Lenin elaborates on who must make up the vanguard party for it to be successful. Lenin says that, to make revolution, the organization must consist of those who make revolutionary politics their "profession". Can we possibly draw any parallels to our situation today - who makes politics their profession?

I already covered this above. If you&#39;re going to keep repeating yourself then I&#39;m just going to direct you to where I&#39;ve already responded. You&#39;re again mischaracterizing what he has said, as I proved definitively above.



Remember, as we reviewed earlier, that historical materialism concludes that a proletarian revolution with the goal of creating communism will only be successful if it is made by the entirety of the working class, for itself. Here we see, again, Lenin diverging from Marxism. Lenin says the revolution can&#39;t be made by the workers as a class - such spontaneity is unheard of; a party of politicians will surely suffice.

Lenin is claiming that the workers didn&#39;t take matters into their own hands, but instead should entrust decisions to a party of professional politicians, who will represent their interests in deciding things within the political apparatus.

Now, this sounds a lot like how bourgeois revolutions happen. And, as Marxists, if it looks like a bourgeois revolution, and it sounds like a bourgeois revolution, we&#39;re obligated to call it a bourgeois revolution. Not at all what we mean when we discuss proletarian revolution today, in the 21st century.

If you, as a Leninist, feel otherwise - the burden is on you to prove it. You&#39;re making the positive assertion that Lenin is still relevant for revolutionaries today.

I already proved you wrong. You&#39;re repeating yourself. Look at my previous post.


Yes, Lenin is right above: theory tends to come from the intelligentsia. In fact, exclusively so in early capitalist nations, where a developed and cultured proletariat is not possible. But theory is only a reflection of the material conditions - an attempt, upon review, to fit what&#39;s happening within a logical paradigm.

What point are you making here that&#39;s relevant to anything at all? Are you saying that theory comes out of the struggle? This is easily shown to be false, as the theory came from the intelligentsia and not from workers active within the struggle.


So, by nature of the conditions of Lenin&#39;s time, of course the Party would have to consist of professional revolutionaries. But don&#39;t you see how this parallels a bourgeois revolution, and thus is anachronistic for our circumstances today?

No, because you have no idea what you&#39;re talking about when you say "professional".


Now, as we discussed directly above, Marx actually concludes that consciousness doesn&#39;t develop sporadically either: it is long and subject to objective material conditions which, over the course of their development, make revolution the obvious choice to the workers.

You are effectively diverting people from historical materialism. Of course nothing develops "spontaneously" - that would infer that it is not subject to influence by its material conditions. What Marx said was that shifts in consciousness come slowly, from the development of the species-being in response to the changes in its material environment over long periods of time.

And you are completely denying the role that communists play in the class struggle. So here again you are belittling the role of the class struggle and putting up on a pedastal the economic development of capitalism. What you don&#39;t realize is that both the class struggle and the development of the productive forces are elements of historical materialism that act together. Both the objective and subjective conditions must be taken into consideration.


Lenin and the Bolsheviks seemed to think the six months following the bourgeois revolution in February was long enough. Despite their intentions, however, they are not beyond the material laws of history.

Why did the workers support the Bolsheviks then, if they "weren&#39;t ready" for it?

Also, what would you have supported at the time? The Mensheviks?


This is how Lenin resolved the issue above. "Professional revolutionaries" can, from the "outside", push the proletariat into "becoming revolutionaries" and making communism.

How does consciousness arise? Spontaneously? Or is it fostered by agitation and education? You obviously think it "spontaneously" arises. Your "the class must become a class for itself" doesn&#39;t explain anything, because it doesn&#39;t explain how this happens. And you have yet to explain how it does so. You say that it "comes about through the development of material conditions" but yet this again is a vague statement devoid of any real in depth analysis.

You conceded to me on theoretical points, failed to respond to most of my argument, and then proceeded to repeat what I&#39;ve already responded to, and then went on to argue against what you&#39;ve already conceded. You&#39;re all over the place.

[nom de guerre]

This is exactly what I was expecting to happen. In order to characterize "Leninism" the Leninologist always starts with the Lenin quotes, ripped out of context and mischaracterized to the point of creating a straw man. Once it is shown that this is what was done, the Leninologist resorts to attempting to define "Leninism" through the actions of the Bolshevik party.

This is fallacious for many reasons, the primary one being that one cannot define Lenin&#39;s theories based on the actions of the Bolshevik party (1). It&#39;s intellectually dishonest to do so.

I am not here to discuss the events surrounding the Russian Revolution (2). You have conceded the point that Lenin supported substitutionalism (3) and that this is what "Leninism" is, which was what we were debating (4).

1. I judge Leninism by the actions of all the vanguard parties, everywhere. And the fact that now they&#39;re all capitalist states&#33;

2. Of course not. You&#39;re not a Marxist - you have no interest in a serious analysis of history.

3. You did not read my post clearly. I will now quote it to you:


Originally posted by "ME&#33;"+--> ("ME&#33;")
First off, you are right that Lenin&#39;s writings do not explicitly state that the vanguard must preform a "substitutionalist" role, and this is the only way proletarian revolution can occur. I cannot, upon review of my old notes in my copies of Lenin, find anything incriminating to that regard. So it must be disregarded as a vulgar argument.[/b]

You fail at the entire purpose of a message board (to read and respond). Again, way to shoot yourself in the foot.

4. To state that "Leninism" doesn&#39;t mean anything is idealistic absurdity.

Please try again.

EDIT (because it&#39;s relevant:


"Zampano"
And you are completely denying the role that communists play in the class struggle. So here again you are belittling the role of the class struggle and putting up on a pedastal the economic development of capitalism. What you don&#39;t realize is that both the class struggle and the development of the productive forces are elements of historical materialism that act together. Both the objective and subjective conditions must be taken into consideration.

I am doing no such thing. I thought as Marxists we began with the presumption that history is pushed forward by class conflict. That&#39;s kind of assumed in our paradigm. You&#39;re reducing my arguments to that of a straw-man. I am only saying communists cannot force the class struggle forwards towards revolution in stark contradiction with the material conditions.

But, if you had actually read my post above, you&#39;d already know that.

[More Fire for the People]

redstar2000 is Kropotkin, but worse, he is delusional.

[KC]

1. I judge Leninism by the actions of all the vanguard parties, everywhere.

Of course you do, because you start from the position that these countries are "Leninist", and then proceed to define Leninism by the action of these countries. This has nothing at all to do with Lenin or what he wrote.


you have no interest in a serious analysis of history.

Not here, no, as we are talking about Lenin&#39;s theories and not historical events. There is no point in analyzing the actions of the Bolsheviks; we were discussing Lenin&#39;s theories, I showed you what his theories were, and then you predictably went right from his theories to the actions of the Bolshevik party, in typical Leninologist fashion. I saw it coming the moment I first responded to you in this post. That&#39;s how predictable your position is.


You fail at the entire purpose of a message board (to read and respond). Again, way to shoot yourself in the foot.

I read exactly what you said and understood it perfectly. That was a concession to your assertion that Lenin was some sort of Blanquist that supported substitutionalism, which is what you originally argued.


4. To state that "Leninism" doesn&#39;t mean anything is idealistic absurdity.

You have failed to define any such thing. You first attempted to define it based on Lenin&#39;s writings and his theories. Once your position was shown to be vulgar, you then moved on to attempt to define it through the actions of the Bolshevik party. Now you are attempting to define it based on the actions of countries you deem "Leninist" (and how you deem that is beyond me, because if you&#39;re defining "Leninism" based on the actions of these countries, and defining these countries based on your notion of the term "Leninism" then that is circular logic). Again, you&#39;re all over the place.

Not only that, but you&#39;ve completely failed to respond to any of my arguments. In your last post you ignored my responses to you and repeated what you originally said. Once I pointed out to you that you were repeating yourself and that I already addressed your points, you proceeded to ignore what I have said. You then went on to disregard the debate almost in its entirety in order to attack me personally.

If you want to debate this then respond to what I have said (instead of repeating yourself, or resorting to personal attacks, or whatever else you could do to run away from the debate), otherwise I am done here.


I am doing no such thing. I thought as Marxists we began with the presumption that history is pushed forward by class conflict. That&#39;s kind of assumed in our paradigm. You&#39;re reducing my arguments to that of a straw-man. I am only saying communists cannot force the class struggle forwards towards revolution in stark contradiction with the material conditions.

Nobody ever claimed such.

[nom de guerre]

Of course you do, because you start from the position that these countries are "Leninist", and then proceed to define Leninism by the action of these countries. This has nothing at all to do with Lenin or what he wrote.

I start from the position that any revolution made based on the organizational paradigm as put forth by Lenin results in a Leninist country. Perhaps "Leninism" is not an accurate and definitive-enough phrase for a country - in which case, "state-capitalism" will certainly do.

My assertion: "Leninism" as a revolutionary paradigm will always result in "state-capitalism" as a socioeconomic construct.


Not here, no, as we are talking about Lenin&#39;s theories and not historical events. There is no point in analyzing the actions of the Bolsheviks; we were discussing Lenin&#39;s theories

Then you are divorcing ideas from their material basis. Marx called this "idealism". It goes against Marxism. Further proof that you are not a Marxist.


I read exactly what you said and understood it perfectly. That was a concession to your assertion that Lenin was some sort of Blanquist that supported substitutionalism, which is what you originally argued.

If you had read and comprehended what I wrote, you&#39;d understand that I clearly stated while Lenin may not have explicitly stated Blanquist revolution was his goal, all material and historical evidence has shown that to be the only possible outcome.

You have yet to provide any evidence to the contrary.


You have failed to define any such thing.

I have not. I have explicitly defined Leninism in two regards:

1. The Leninist paradigm of revolution, advocating the need for an enlightened despotism of philosopher-kings who claim they will lead the deaf, dumb, and blind proletariat into socialism and then maybe eventually communism through an organized political party.

2. The Leninist state, more aptly called "state-capitalism", which in every instance of occurrence has recreated capitalist relations of production in pre-capitalist economies, with the only noticeable variance being private-ownership substituted by party-ownership.

For you to continually ignore this and claim that "Leninism doesn&#39;t exist" but somehow Lenin&#39;s theories are still applicable is both idealistic and anti-Marxist.

And, quite frankly, until you can justify that, I don&#39;t give half a fuck what you have to say.

You&#39;re speaking with a corpse in your mouth&#33;

[KC]

I start from the position that any revolution made based on the organizational paradigm as put forth by Lenin results in a Leninist country.

Again, what paradigm is that? Are you going to repeat the same WITBD? quotes that I already responded to and disproved your assertion with?


Then you are divorcing ideas from their material basis. Marx called this "idealism". It goes against Marxism. Further proof that you are not a Marxist.

No I am not. You are ripping historical events out of context and attempting to call them Lenin&#39;s "theories" in typical Leninologist fashion (Lenin himself even stated that what he wrote in WITBD? was concerned with the conditions and events in Russia at the time and wasn&#39;t about party organization and action in general, as I&#39;ve already pointed out which you have yet to respond to). That "goes against Marxism".


1. The Leninist paradigm of revolution, advocating the need for an enlightened despotism of philosopher-kings who claim they will lead the deaf, dumb, and blind proletariat into socialism and then maybe eventually communism.

And I already showed this to be false, which you haven&#39;t responded to.


2. The Leninist state, more aptly called "state-capitalism", which in every instance of occurrence has recreated capitalist relations of production in pre-capitalist economies, with the only noticeable variance being private-ownership substituted by party-ownership.

Already addressed, which you have yet to respond to.


For you to continually ignore this

I didn&#39;t ignore it. I addressed it two posts ago.

Stop repeating yourself. If you want to debate then respond to my points, as I said above.

[nom de guerre]

You are ripping historical events out of context and attempting to call them Lenin&#39;s "theories" in typical Leninologist fashion

First of all, how exactly does one equate an historical event with a theory? I was under the (apparently mistaken) impression that history is history, and theory is theory. To understand the greater scope of things, we have to understand the latter in the context of the former.

My above post (which, as long as we&#39;re still being standoffish, you still haven&#39;t responded to) contextualized Lenin&#39;s theory with Lenin&#39;s timeperiod (I thought) pretty well. But you wouldn&#39;t know that, as you clearly never even read it.


Lenin himself even stated that what he wrote in WITBD? was concerned with the conditions and events in Russia at the time and wasn&#39;t about party organization and action in general, as I&#39;ve already pointed out which you have yet to respond to

Then why aren&#39;t you out there beating-down on Leninists who call themselves communists, and are screaming about how we need a vanguard party and Chairman Bob to lead the US proletariat towards communism, since apparently all of us workers are ass-backwards fuckfaces who couldn&#39;t find our way out of a matchbox?

Every single person who is trying to cut-and-paste Lenin&#39;s vanguard model into the 21st century is setting back the communist revolution by a long time.

Why are you still trying to sell me Hal Draper and all that bullshit?


And I already showed this to be false, which you haven&#39;t responded to.

What is false? You mean Lenin never lead a vanguard party? You can&#39;t just dismiss the paradigms that developed from the Russian revolution, and then inspired the Chinese, the Vietnamese, etc. For the last century, millions of people were convinced communism was achievable by supporting a political party. How can you wave your hand say this "doesn&#39;t exist"? That&#39;s idealism&#33;


Already addressed, which you have yet to respond to.

Where? Where have you addressed my analysis of state-capitalism? Or the inevitability of vanguardist revolutions to devolve into it? You&#39;re full of shit.

It&#39;s like posters on this forum are on the same level as religious fundamentalists - so many of you stuff your fingers in your ears and just shout the same shit over and over again.

[KC]

You should go back and respond to this post (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=73525&view=findpost&p=1292431068) and this post (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=73525&view=findpost&p=1292430879), because they contain responses to assertions you keep repeating.

[nom de guerre]

Neither of those two posts do anything of the sort.

I have clearly defined the vanguard model. And I have clearly defined state-capitalism. And I have clearly laid out how and why revolutions built on the former will inevitably lead to the latter.

Many, many times now.

You can simply repeat "Leninism doesn&#39;t exist" or "Leninism doesn&#39;t mean anything" - but in doing so you&#39;re (by your own admission) ignoring history. As such, your assertion that I am a "Leninologist" (whatever the fuck that means) is meaningless idealism.

Thanks for proving for everyone that you are not a Marxist. I guess I didn&#39;t have to work so hard to expose this - you did pretty well yourself.

[KC]

Here are all the points I have made that you have avoided addressing.

From this (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=73525&st=25&#entry1292430879) post:


1. That socialist theory came out of the theoretical conclusions of members of the bourgeois intelligentsia itself, and intellectuals in general. This, as I said earlier, isn&#39;t really debatable as it&#39;s a fact that&#39;s simply proven true by examining who developed these theories.

2. That social-democratic consciousness doesn&#39;t in itself arise out of the class struggle spontaneously. What this means is that workers by their own accords (i.e. without the work of communists) are unable to see past capitalism and towards a classless society. They cannot by themselves gain a social-democratic consciousness.

Now, this might still be confusing, because it sounds like we are saying that the workers in general are not capable of performing proletarian revolution. This is not what we are stating. Rather, we are stating that, without communist agitation and education, without the work of communists, proletarian revolution will not happen. Proletarian revolution isn&#39;t something that spontaneously arises out of the development of capitalism. It requires not only the objective conditions offered by the current economic and political developments of the time, but also the subjective conditions created by the work of communists in agitating, educating, and helping organize the proletariat.

3. That social-democratic consciousness must be brought "from without". Now the origins of this statement have its foundations in the latter part of your quote. The very reason that Lenin brings up the origins of Marxist theory is because that is where this "from without" has started. The origins of socialist theory lay not in the class struggle (i.e. workers are theorists), but in the works of the intelligentsia. In this sense Marxist theory is coming from "without" - i.e. from outside of the working class. It is undeniable that socialist theory has come from "without" as I stated above.

I realize that I am somewhat repeating the point I made in part one but that is because the origins of socialist theory are crucial in understanding what Lenin means in this part of the quote, and what its implications are for what I am going to say further.

Now, as stated in part two, in order for social-democratic consciousness to be raised within the working class it requires the work of communists. This is what Lenin meant when he stated that it must "come from without". The origins of socialist theory lay in the intelligentsia, who passes this on to communists, who are adherents to these theories and bring them to the masses through education and agitation.

So now, with those three points in mind, we must question what it means to be communist and who can be part of this group that brings it "from without". What is a communist and who can be one? Lenin, later in the same work, states the following:

"The fact that the masses are spontaneously being drawn into the movement does not make the organisation of this struggle less necessary. On the contrary, it makes it more necessary; for we socialists would be failing in our direct duty to the masses if we did not prevent the police from making a secret of every strike and every demonstration (and if we did not ourselves from time to time secretly prepare strikes and demonstrations). And we will succeed in doing this, because the spontaneously awakening masses will also produce increasing, numbers of “professional revolutionaries” from their own ranks (that is, if we do not take it into our heads to advise the workers to keep on marking time)."

It is here that Lenin states that while social-democratic consciousness comes from without as stated above, it is fostered and promoted by those who maintain that consciousness. Members of the working class in general become members of the proletarian vanguard. Members of the working class gain social-democratic consciousness, become communist, and assist in the spreading of consciousness. Lenin recognized the fact that workers themselves would get involved in their own struggle and help advance that struggle once they were conscious of it. Because of this the quote you have provided not only doesn&#39;t support your claim of substitutionalism, but actually disproves it.


In a revolutionary movement there are always leaders, whether they are the kind that are recognized as such simply for their dedication and experience or are the kind that are dictating the role of such a movement. In this case the form is irrelevant, as Lenin is simply talking about leaders in general. Revolutions don&#39;t succeed without leaders, as leaders are made by those revolting for whatever reason. Those that are most active and most experienced generally become leaders within the movement simply for their action and experience. Anyone that has been in an organization realizes that generally there are those that are more active within the organization and because of that are looked at in a different way than the rest of the group. It&#39;s simple group dynamics.


Within any class or group of people there will always be those that are more progressive in terms of the movement and those that are more backwards. The proletariat isn&#39;t a homogeneous class; within it there are progressive elements and there are reactionary elements.

What Lenin is saying is that because of the broad mass of people involved in the movement, the greater the power of those backward elements in side-tracking the movement. Because of this, with a larger movement, the more progressive elements must be more organized, more experienced, and more consistent.


This is a statement countering the "amateurism" of the time in performing revolutionary activity. What it means to be a "professional revolutionary" is that one is well-trained, disciplined (not subservient; there is a difference), and experienced. What it means here to be a "professional" is that one carries out their work in a professional manner. That is all this means.


This goes back to the last few paragraphs of the last quote I talked about, and goes against your assertion that Lenin was a Blanquist. He is stating here that the working class will get involved in its own struggle and that they will be able to perform active work in it. Here he is again recognizing the fact that the working class will be an active part in its own movement, and that it will be the driving force behind it. This is completely contrary to what you are asserting.


This again goes back to the statement that there are different strata within the proletariat that are more or less progressive and more or less backwards. Because of this, the dictatorship of the proletariat isn&#39;t exercised through an organization embracing the entire class, as reactionary elements aren&#39;t embraced but fought against. For example, a proletarian found working to subvert proletarian dictatorship isn&#39;t embraced but punished. This is all that is being stated here.


I think I addressed this sufficiently above, but what do you mean when you say "but would do so in the shape of a political-party"?


Again, this is a straw man you have constructed, which I have deconstructed solely by using the quotes you&#39;ve provided. Lenin never claimed the proletariat was "backwards [and] corrupted" for example; he stated that there are different strata within the proletariat where some are backwards. Do you disagree that within the proletariat there are progressive elements, backwards elements, and a wide variety of those in between? Do you consider the proletariat a monolithic, homogeneous class or not?

As for being "incapable of doing anything for itself" this was already proven using the quotes you&#39;ve provided to be a straw man. Lenin clearly realized the primary role that the proletariat would play in the revolution, as was shown above in the quotes you&#39;ve provided.


Actually he stated that the party couldn&#39;t embrace the whole working class. Again I ask: should the dictatorship of the proletariat "embrace" a proletarian that is so reactionary as to work against proletarian dictatorship or should they execute them?


I asked you also how you consider these to be Leninist. And if you&#39;re going to consider Democratic Kampuchea to be a "Leninist" revolution then you&#39;re either insane or incredibly ignorant of what happened there.

I would like you tell me how these countries were/are "Leninist". I am especially interested in hearing your explanation for DK, though.


From this (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=73525&st=50&#entry1292431068) post:


What exactly is the "vanguard model"?


Where does it even mention parliamentary elections there?


Why did the workers support the Bolsheviks then, if they "weren&#39;t ready" for it?

Also, what would you have supported at the time? The Mensheviks?



How does consciousness arise? Spontaneously? Or is it fostered by agitation and education? You obviously think it "spontaneously" arises. Your "the class must become a class for itself" doesn&#39;t explain anything, because it doesn&#39;t explain how this happens. And you have yet to explain how it does so. You say that it "comes about through the development of material conditions" but yet this again is a vague statement devoid of any real in depth analysis.



You can simply repeat "Leninism doesn&#39;t exist" or "Leninism doesn&#39;t mean anything" - but in doing so you&#39;re (by your own admission) ignoring history.

You don&#39;t get it; I&#39;m not repeating anything here. I&#39;ve responded to all of your arguments, yet you keep repeating yourself. So instead of repeating myself again to respond again to your repetitions, I have simply told you that you are repeating yourself and that I have already addressed what you are saying. Yet you never respond to my responses, but keep saying the same thing. I&#39;ve made it easy for you and quoted all my responses that you have avoided responding to, so it&#39;s that much easier for you to address.

[Leo]

Originally posted by Zampano+--> (Zampano)"Where the working class is weak and divided, so is the party. Where the working class is strong and organized, so is the party."
-I don&#39;t remember who said that, and I&#39;m paraphrasing terribly, but it&#39;s completely true.[/b]

Sounds like Bordiga.


Originally posted by Theses of the Abstentionist Communist [email protected]
This revolutionary struggle is the conflict between the whole proletarian class and the whole bourgeois class. Its instrument is the political class party, the communist party, which achieves the conscious organisation of the proletarian vanguard aware of the necessity of unifying its action, in space - by transcending the interests of particular groups, trades or nationalities - and in time - by subordinating to the final outcome of the struggle the partial gains and conquests which do not modify the essence of the bourgeois structure.


Party and Class Action
It is certain that as long as the contradictions and internal conflicts of capitalist society, from which the revolutionary tendencies originate, are only in their first stage of development, as long as the revolution appears to be far away, then we must expect this situation: the class party, the communist party, will necessarily be composed of small vanguard groups who have a special capacity to understand the historical perspective, and that section of the masses who will understand and follow it cannot be very large. However, when the revolutionary crisis becomes imminent, when the bourgeois relations of production become more and more intolerable, the party will see an increase in its ranks and in the extent of its following within the proletariat.

[KC]

Actually, Leo, I think I was referring to Pannekoek:


It is useless to deplore these conflicts as creating a pernicious situation that should not exist and which is making the workers powerless. As has often been pointed out, the working class is not weak because it is divided; on the contrary, it is divided because it is weak.
-Pannekoek, Anton Party and Working Class

[Leo]

:unsure: I thought the quote was about the party?

[KC]

Maybe I wasn&#39;t thinking of Pannekoek then. Or maybe I just implied it to mean about the party as well, as if the working class is divided then obviously so is the party?

Who knows what I was thinking. :wacko:

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by Leo Uilleann+December 08, 2007 04:30 am--> (Leo Uilleann @ December 08, 2007 04:30 am)
Originally posted by Zampano+--> (Zampano)"Where the working class is weak and divided, so is the party. Where the working class is strong and organized, so is the party."
-I don&#39;t remember who said that, and I&#39;m paraphrasing terribly, but it&#39;s completely true.[/b]

Sounds like Bordiga.


Theses of the Abstentionist Communist [email protected]
This revolutionary struggle is the conflict between the whole proletarian class and the whole bourgeois class. Its instrument is the political class party, the communist party, which achieves the conscious organisation of the proletarian vanguard aware of the necessity of unifying its action, in space - by transcending the interests of particular groups, trades or nationalities - and in time - by subordinating to the final outcome of the struggle the partial gains and conquests which do not modify the essence of the bourgeois structure.


Party and Class Action
It is certain that as long as the contradictions and internal conflicts of capitalist society, from which the revolutionary tendencies originate, are only in their first stage of development, as long as the revolution appears to be far away, then we must expect this situation: the class party, the communist party, will necessarily be composed of small vanguard groups who have a special capacity to understand the historical perspective, and that section of the masses who will understand and follow it cannot be very large. However, when the revolutionary crisis becomes imminent, when the bourgeois relations of production become more and more intolerable, the party will see an increase in its ranks and in the extent of its following within the proletariat. [/b]
In many ways, Leo, the Italian socialist thinkers were/are more deserving of being called "Lenin&#39;s theoretical successor(s)" than any of Lenin&#39;s Russian comrades. :(

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 08, 2007 04:43 am
2. Of course not. You&#39;re not a Marxist - you have no interest in a serious analysis of history.

who are you to tell us who is and isn&#39;t Marxist? -and repeatedly condemn vanguardism(&#33;)?

It&#39;s almost a compliment, anyway, as Karl said: &#39;je ne suis pas marxiste&#33;&#39;

[nom de guerre]

It&#39;s very simple:

Marxists base their outlook on a materialist analysis.

This is done by realizing the primacy of class relations in what actually happens in history.

As RS2k put it:


if Marx was right about consciousness being dependent on the stage of economic development of a given society (in turn resting on its level of technological development), then no matter how desperately you want to transform a predominately peasant economy into a socialist or communist economy, it can&#39;t be done. Even with foreign assistance from a developed socialist economy, the outcome is the rise of capitalism.

This is what has happened everywhere so far. How is it that people still think that "willpower" can be substituted for actual economic development...and still call themselves "Marxists"?

It&#39;s clear there are very few people on this forum that meet this criteria.

That&#39;s obvious by the fact that few of them have ever read anything by a "Marxist" that was written within the last 50 years.

In fact, most people just endlessly debate about shit that&#39;s done and in the past.

Their "Marxism" is not about critical class analysis, but about finding a posterboy from history, and then endlessly masturbating their waxy corpse.

I believe the relevant phrase is poseur.

Which is why I won&#39;t waste much more of my time here.

[KC]

nom de guerre, it is quite curious that you are completely unable to respond to arguments put forth in response to your outlandish assertions (in fact, you even conceded on a fundamental point). It is very telling of the way your position is precariously propped up and easily toppled.

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 10, 2007 11:32 pm

if Marx was right about consciousness being dependent on the stage of economic development of a given society (in turn resting on its level of technological development), then no matter how desperately you want to transform a predominately peasant economy into a socialist or communist economy, it can&#39;t be done. Even with foreign assistance from a developed socialist economy, the outcome is the rise of capitalism.

This is what has happened everywhere so far. How is it that people still think that "willpower" can be substituted for actual economic development...and still call themselves "Marxists"?
What&#39;s your point? The entire world is capitalist now.


That&#39;s obvious by the fact that few of them have ever read anything by a "Marxist" that was written within the last 50 years.

Their "Marxism" is not about critical class analysis, but about finding a posterboy from history, and then endlessly masturbating their waxy corpse.


Well the irony here is that Luís and I responded to your very outdated claim about the thrid world being pre-capitalist (now it is capitalist), and if you replied I didn&#39;t see it. If I recall correctly, several of us were arguing from recent history.

Your stagist argument isn&#39;t even relevant... the entire world is capitalist now.


Which is why I won&#39;t waste much more of my time here.

a bit dramatic, but alrite.

[nom de guerre]

Rather, we are stating that, without communist agitation and education, without the work of communists, proletarian revolution will not happen. Proletarian revolution isn&#39;t something that spontaneously arises out of the development of capitalism. It requires not only the objective conditions offered by the current economic and political developments of the time, but also the subjective conditions created by the work of communists in agitating, educating, and helping organize the proletariat.

Can you provide any proof for this? It&#39;s a very weighty claim, one that actually deviated from Marxism itself, and as such you must provide some reason for us to believe you.

Lenin&#39;s like to repeatedly decry that revolution cannot arise "spontaneously". This word is used as a straw-man - as if any revolution that does not have clearly defined leaders is "spontaneous." But it is understood by all Marxists that no revolutionary change in history arises "spontaneously" - it is concretely shaped by the class conditions of the era, which mobilize one class to believe it is fit to rule moreso than the classes proceeding it. The shift toward this perspective is caused by alterations in the material conditions of living by that class itself.

These changes occur slowly, over a protracted period of time. And they are reflected in many other parts of society, as being naturally occurring out of them. To say that any revolution is "spontaneous" is profoundly un-Marxist - to repeat over and over again that proletarian revolution "cannot be spontaneous" is thus asinine, and one of the continuously made arguments of those who deviate from materialism to hide the fact that they are doing so.


Now, as stated in part two, in order for social-democratic consciousness to be raised within the working class it requires the work of communists. This is what Lenin meant when he stated that it must "come from without". The origins of socialist theory lay in the intelligentsia, who passes this on to communists, who are adherents to these theories and bring them to the masses through education and agitation.

Marx disagrees with this. Marx claimed that proletarian revolution would only occur within the advanced capitalist nations after the proletariat had gone through a long period of immiseration, where their living standards are brought down drastically until it becomes obvious to them that the current social construct has become incapable of providing for the proletariat as it feels entitled.

It is for this reason that Marx described the role of the communist as a "midwife of the revolution": midwives cannot pull the baby from the uterus with their bare hands - but only assist it as the woman births it herself.

The role of communists, then, is not to "make revolution for the proletariat", nor to continually pester the proletariat into doing so. If Marx is right about anything, the proletariat will realize for itself that communist revolution is our only option. Marx described this as the proletariat becoming a "class for itself." Subsequent Marxist theorists have elaborated on the process as that of "self-valorization."

Leninists seem to believe that if they rally hard enough, scream loud enough, and engage long enough in political discourse, they can convince the proletariat to revolt. This is, again, how Lenin deviated from Marxist materialism into inane idealism.

He thinks the concentrated will of communists can overcome the capability for consciousness as allowed by the material conditions.

This is dangerous to our movement. As communists, we must instead develop Marxist theory to the point where it becomes obviously relevant to the everyday lived experiences of our fellow workers.

We cannot become a "vanguard," or "lead" anyone. We are midwives.

As Rosa Luxemburg once said, the revolutionary is doomed to repeat the same things over and over.

Not to revolt now, and then convince the other workers afterwards that they should let themselves be lead by us.


In a revolutionary movement there are always leaders, whether they are the kind that are recognized as such simply for their dedication and experience or are the kind that are dictating the role of such a movement. In this case the form is irrelevant, as Lenin is simply talking about leaders in general. Revolutions don&#39;t succeed without leaders, as leaders are made by those revolting for whatever reason. Those that are most active and most experienced generally become leaders within the movement simply for their action and experience.

Yes, in all revolutionary movements that establish class societies, there are always leaders. This has been true from Rome until Russia and through today.

But we are communists. We are working for a classless society.

If we as workers are not interested in all becoming leaders for ourselves, communism simply isn&#39;t feasible.

End of story.


Within any class or group of people there will always be those that are more progressive in terms of the movement and those that are more backwards. The proletariat isn&#39;t a homogeneous class; within it there are progressive elements and there are reactionary elements.

What Lenin is saying is that because of the broad mass of people involved in the movement, the greater the power of those backward elements in side-tracking the movement. Because of this, with a larger movement, the more progressive elements must be more organized, more experienced, and more consistent.

When the material conditions for communist revolution are not present, then you are right, the proletariat will not be a homogeneous class. History has proven this again and again. But if historical materialism holds true, the consciousness of the proletariat will shift to realize the necessity of communist revolution as the quality of their everyday life deteriorates. This cannot be substituted by the concentrated will of communists, no matter how hard we work. But, as a Marxist, you of course understand that we are subject to the material laws of history.


This is a statement countering the "amateurism" of the time in performing revolutionary activity. What it means to be a "professional revolutionary" is that one is well-trained, disciplined (not subservient; there is a difference), and experienced. What it means here to be a "professional" is that one carries out their work in a professional manner. That is all this means.

Why do you Leninists try to bring the division of labor into the issue of consciousness? Does this not suggest the bourgeois roots of your paradigm.

Revolution is not a profession. It is not a job. As long as you guys keep treating it like one, no one is going to join you.


This goes back to the last few paragraphs of the last quote I talked about, and goes against your assertion that Lenin was a Blanquist. He is stating here that the working class will get involved in its own struggle and that they will be able to perform active work in it. Here he is again recognizing the fact that the working class will be an active part in its own movement, and that it will be the driving force behind it. This is completely contrary to what you are asserting.

The boldened part again emphasizes the bourgeois undertones of your ideology.

When we workers revolt, we will kill anyone who is not a worker who tries to co-opt the revolution. The working-class will be the only part of the revolution - and anyone who tries to "lead" us or convince us they are more "professionally suited" for the job will be killed without remorse.


This again goes back to the statement that there are different strata within the proletariat that are more or less progressive and more or less backwards. Because of this, the dictatorship of the proletariat isn&#39;t exercised through an organization embracing the entire class, as reactionary elements aren&#39;t embraced but fought against. For example, a proletarian found working to subvert proletarian dictatorship isn&#39;t embraced but punished. This is all that is being stated here.

Again, the idealism of Leninism. You are making the assumption that the revolution will happen before the working-class makes its transformation into a "class for itself." Again, this is profoundly idealistic, and un-Marxist.

If historical materialism is correct, then the working-class will go through a long process of becoming cultured. Marx asserted this was why revolution necessitated advanced capitalist material conditions. That we, through our lived-experiences, will naturally begin to reject the backwards diseases of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., and realize our unity and not our difference.

Leninists do not realize that this is a necessary prerequisite for the revolution in the first place. And they use this convenient myopia to justify their brutal dictatorships - "we must beat the backwardness out of working-class, for the working-class&#33;"

Well, that worked for you guys when you were working with a bunch of peasants in feudal Russia. Good luck in the 21st century&#33;


I think I addressed this sufficiently above, but what do you mean when you say "but would do so in the shape of a political-party"?

I refer you to dictionary.com&#39;s definition: "a group of persons with common political opinions and purposes organized for gaining political influence and governmental control and for directing government policy"

A party is thus an organization whose sole role is to conquer political power, and wield it for some purpose.

Communists seek to destroy politics, government, and the whole notion of "control" (except, of course, when we enforce our will upon the bourgeoisie).

Again, to define the Leninist party for you: it is a self-proclaimed "vanguard" which seeks to educate and lead the working-class into conquering the state, putting the party leaders in charge, and then yielding it for some purpose.

As Marx said, the workers cannot simply lay hold of the reigns of power.

We must destroy them, entirely, utterly, and thoroughly - and come up with something new&#33;

How can we do this, by taking our organizational model from the bourgeoisie?

As history shown us, this cannot be done&#33; Current politics is a reflection of the capitalist mode of production. How can you believe we can use the reflection to move closer to communism? It&#39;s absurd&#33;


Again, this is a straw man you have constructed, which I have deconstructed solely by using the quotes you&#39;ve provided. Lenin never claimed the proletariat was "backwards [and] corrupted" for example; he stated that there are different strata within the proletariat where some are backwards. Do you disagree that within the proletariat there are progressive elements, backwards elements, and a wide variety of those in between? Do you consider the proletariat a monolithic, homogeneous class or not?

Of course not. But, as a Marxist, I believe the immiseration of my everyday conditions will destroy the variations between the backwards and the progressive elements - before revolution is even feasible&#33;

I feel like I addressed all your points already, so I won&#39;t continue.

[nom de guerre]

PRC-UTE: you think the only prerequisite for revolution is that capitalism exists? I see you are not a Marxist either...

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 10, 2007 06:57 pm
Leninists seem to believe that if they rally hard enough, scream loud enough, and engage long enough in political discourse, they can convince the proletariat to revolt. This is, again, how Lenin deviated from Marxist materialism into inane idealism.
You didn&#39;t even touch upon the vanguard stuff, and here you are already decrying the notion of revolutionary agitprop (which even the left-communists as a minimum subscribe to) as "idealist." :(


I refer you to dictionary.com&#39;s definition: "a group of persons with common political opinions and purposes organized for gaining political influence and governmental control and for directing government policy"

A party is thus an organization whose sole role is to conquer political power, and wield it for some purpose.

Communists seek to destroy politics, government, and the whole notion of "control" (except, of course, when we enforce our will upon the bourgeoisie).

Again, to define the Leninist party for you: it is a self-proclaimed "vanguard" which seeks to educate and lead the working-class into conquering the state, putting the party leaders in charge, and then yielding it for some purpose.

[...]

How can we do this, by taking our organizational model from the bourgeoisie?

By comparison, then, didn&#39;t the bourgeoisie take their organizational model(s) from the classes they replaced (in particular those classes which existed under "Asiatic modes of production"), less the nobility stuff? <_<






[b]When the material conditions for communist revolution are not present, then you are right, the proletariat will not be a homogeneous class. History has proven this again and again. But if historical materialism holds true, the consciousness of the proletariat will shift to realize the necessity of communist revolution as the quality of their everyday life deteriorates.

Care to explain, then, the hostile bourgeois attitudes towards their fellows Cromwell and Robespierre, or perhaps the heterogeneity of the bourgeoisie during the French Revolution in particular ? <_<

[KC]

Can you provide any proof for this? It&#39;s a very weighty claim, one that actually deviated from Marxism itself, and as such you must provide some reason for us to believe you.

Lenin&#39;s like to repeatedly decry that revolution cannot arise "spontaneously". This word is used as a straw-man - as if any revolution that does not have clearly defined leaders is "spontaneous." But it is understood by all Marxists that no revolutionary change in history arises "spontaneously" - it is concretely shaped by the class conditions of the era, which mobilize one class to believe it is fit to rule moreso than the classes proceeding it. The shift toward this perspective is caused by alterations in the material conditions of living by that class itself.

Yes, we all know that you and your kind like to speak of "material conditions" and "productive forces" as the "cause of revolution". The problem is that your theoretical ambiguities are absent from real world applications. One cannot apply the axiom that "alterations in the material conditions cause a rising in class consciousness". One cannot put that into action. Your isolation from real world events and real world actions causes your theory itself to be divorced from reality and inapplicable to it.

When someone like you is asked, "What should we do? What is the role of communists in the movement?" You reply with ambiguities such as "the proletariat must wrest political power from the bourgeoisie&#33;" and "the proletariat alone must control the direction of its own movement&#33;" We know all that already, and it doesn&#39;t help one bit in determining specifically the role of communists in the proletarian struggle.

The question was answered not only by Lenin, but by Marx as well in his Manifesto of the Communist Party:

"In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.

They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.

They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.

The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat."

Who are the communists?
The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country [no way, the vanguard&#33;], that section which pushes forward all others [they&#39;re supposted to lead, too?&#33;]; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

What is the goal of the communists?
The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

What are the methods of the communists?
1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

So it is laid bare by Marx himself as far back as 1847.


These changes occur slowly, over a protracted period of time. And they are reflected in many other parts of society, as being naturally occurring out of them. To say that any revolution is "spontaneous" is profoundly un-Marxist - to repeat over and over again that proletarian revolution "cannot be spontaneous" is thus asinine, and one of the continuously made arguments of those who deviate from materialism to hide the fact that they are doing so.

Here your hypocrisy shows. First you make the claim that calling "any revolution &#39;spontaneous&#39; is profoundly un-Marxist" yet then you go on to contradict yourself by saying "that proletarian revolution &#39;cannot be spontaneous&#39; is thus asinine etc..."&#33; You yourself have succumbed to that which you yourself claimed to be un-Marxist&#33; You have dug your own grave.


Marx disagrees with this. Marx claimed that proletarian revolution would only occur within the advanced capitalist nations after the proletariat had gone through a long period of immiseration, where their living standards are brought down drastically until it becomes obvious to them that the current social construct has become incapable of providing for the proletariat as it feels entitled.

Marx never followed the materialist conception of history absolutely (Engels said they considered it "a guide from which to study"); in fact, he never followed any theory absolutely. He realized that the theory came out of the developments of real movements, real events and real struggle, and as such he learned to revise his theories based on those developments.

Noting this, it is quite obvious that Marx knew there were exceptions to his theory of the development of history, and was able to reconcile them with his theory based on the fact that class society develops differently in different parts of the world because of the different objective and subjective conditions present. A cursory study of history would make someone easily understand this.

With that being said, it is appropriate here to note that Marx considered it possible for Russia to "skip capitalism" and develop into socialism based on the fact that the mir was a communal institution and was thus not yet dominated by capitalist property relations.


It is for this reason that Marx described the role of the communist as a "midwife of the revolution": midwives cannot pull the baby from the uterus with their bare hands - but only assist it as the woman births it herself.

Which is exactly what is being asserted by me and not you. Your assertion is that "the baby must birth itself, without the help of such authoritarian figures as &#39;leaders&#39; that wish to coopt the birthing struggle and lead it for its own sake".


The role of communists, then, is not to "make revolution for the proletariat"

This same tired straw man has been destroyed repeatedly by myself in this thread, yet you keep repeating it. I suggest that you go back and read the thread, and then read the part where you conceded on the issue that Lenin was a Blanquist.


nor to continually pester the proletariat into doing so.

How can one "pester the proletariat into revolting"? What a ridiculous thing to say.


Leninists seem to believe that if they rally hard enough, scream loud enough, and engage long enough in political discourse, they can convince the proletariat to revolt.

Ah, I&#39;d love to see you substantiate this with some quotes. Shall we have a round 2?


He thinks the concentrated will of communists can overcome the capability for consciousness as allowed by the material conditions.

This analysis is based on the fallacious idolization of productive forces, the downplaying of the importance of the class struggle, and the very fact that the Russian proletariat did revolt.


We cannot become a "vanguard," or "lead" anyone. We are midwives.


This same tired crap has already been disproven. Grow up and accept it.


Not to revolt now, and then convince the other workers afterwards that they should let themselves be lead by us.

Where the hell are you even getting this shit?


Yes, in all revolutionary movements that establish class societies, there are always leaders. This has been true from Rome until Russia and through today.

But we are communists. We are working for a classless society.

You completely failed to understand what I said. I suggest you reread it and actually respond with something relevant.


If we as workers are not interested in all becoming leaders for ourselves, communism simply isn&#39;t feasible.

Yes, "the class must lead itself". More economist sloganeering. The proletariat is one monolithic, homogeneous class that will all hold the same consciousness and spontaneously revolt based on economic developments. :wacko:


When the material conditions for communist revolution are not present, then you are right, the proletariat will not be a homogeneous class. History has proven this again and again. But if historical materialism holds true, the consciousness of the proletariat will shift to realize the necessity of communist revolution as the quality of their everyday life deteriorates.

Oh, I get it. You&#39;re completely devoid of rational thought. Claiming that all proletarians will hold an identical viewpoint that the revolution is to be supported is proven wrong not only by simple common sense, but by historical fact. In fact, nothing in history is so absolute. Your ignorance astounds me.


This cannot be substituted by the concentrated will of communists, no matter how hard we work.

Again, why are you still arguing this? This claim of substitutionalism was already thoroughly dismantled.


Revolution is not a profession. It is not a job.

Nobody claimed it is. Again you are repeating yourself. Perhaps I should repeat myself:

This is a statement countering the "amateurism" of the time in performing revolutionary activity. What it means to be a "professional revolutionary" is that one is well-trained, disciplined (not subservient; there is a difference), and experienced. What it means here to be a "professional" is that one carries out their work in a professional manner. That is all this means.

Do you think revolutionary work should be carried out in a haphazard, amateur and ultimately unreliable manner?


When we workers revolt, we will kill anyone who is not a worker who tries to co-opt the revolution.

Do you even have any knowledge of the history of the class struggle?



A party is thus an organization whose sole role is to conquer political power, and wield it for some purpose.


Good job&#33;


Communists seek to destroy politics, government, and the whole notion of "control" (except, of course, when we enforce our will upon the bourgeoisie).

OHHHHHHHH&#33;&#33;&#33; Now I get it. You&#39;re an anarchist. It all makes sense; the ripping quotes out of context, the constant repetition of assertions that have been thoroughly debunked, the railing against "Leninism". I understand now.


Again, to define the Leninist party for you: it is a self-proclaimed "vanguard" which seeks to educate and lead the working-class into conquering the state, putting the party leaders in charge, and then yielding it for some purpose.

Yet you are completely unable to substantiate your substitutionalist view that was already debunked, and you yourself admitted it&#33; Why would you assert something that you admitted was wrong?

Anyways, when are you going to go back and respond to the rest of my posts?

I suggest that you study the history of the Russian Revolution (try Trotsky&#39;s book) and then read some Lenin.

[synthesis]

Leninism is fundamentally the bourgeois adaptation of Marxism, in substance if not in form. It would be meaningless without its underlying assumption that the "will to socialism" can replace material conditions in the abolition of capitalism.

I believe that Leninism fundamentally serves to divide the socialist movement on the basis of their obedience to the State. Whether or not the government has popular support, Leninism is fundamentally undemocratic in that ultimate power is still retained by the minority.

Regardless of the ideological deficiencies of Leninism, the proof of the bourgeois nature of Leninism lies in the fate of all Leninist revolutions - bourgeois democracy, with many positions of power still retained by the Party elite.

[KC]

Leninism

Kun, can you define what you mean by Leninism? nom de guerre has tried and was defeated to the point of concession on the theoretical issue.


the "will to socialism" can replace material conditions in the abolition of capitalism.

Lenin never argued such a position. This was a position characteristic of the early Russian socialist movement, but was done away with during the rise of Marxism in Russia.

[synthesis]

I would argue that Leninism is the adaptation of anti-capitalist ideology to largely pre-industrial conditions, which eventually synthesize into capitalist democracy. Leninists more or less serve to replace the role of the bourgeoisie in industrialization and national self-determination in places where the national bourgeoisie is either weak, non-existent, or subservient to foreign capitalists.

[KC]

I would argue that Leninism is the adaptation of anti-capitalist ideology to largely pre-industrial conditions, which eventually synthesize into capitalist democracy.

I was hoping you could define it with some quotes by Lenin to actually show that whatever you consider "Leninism" to be was his viewpoint.

[synthesis]

I would personally rather focus on the substance of Leninist movements rather than their form, for what people advocate in theory is not necessarily how it plays out in real life.

I do not argue that Leninism is entirely "wrong"; it was exactly what places like Russia and China needed to establish equality with Western Europe and the U.S. in terms of global political influence.

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 11, 2007 01:59 am
PRC-UTE: you think the only prerequisite for revolution is that capitalism exists? I see you are not a Marxist either...
:huh:

Then neither was Marx- who thought proletarian revolutions would immediately follow bourgeois revolution. Anyway, this is a diversion- if you want to wear the crown of Most Marxist, go for it.

You still have not replied to my post, or Luís&#39; post explaining why you are wrong about Leninism being a pre-capitalist ideology.

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by Kun Fanâ@December 11, 2007 06:19 am
I would personally rather focus on the substance of Leninist movements rather than their form, for what people advocate in theory is not necessarily how it plays out in real life.

I do not argue that Leninism is entirely "wrong"; it was exactly what places like Russia and China needed to establish equality with Western Europe and the U.S. in terms of global political influence.
The basic content of Leninism is the Marxist analysis applied to imperialism. Comrades here are focusing on the "vanguard party"* and fetishising it while ignoring the real substance of Lenin&#39;s theories.











*Lenin doesn&#39;t deserve credit for the idea of a revolutionary workers&#39; party anyway, all Marxists, and most the workers&#39; movement thought this was &#39;the way to go&#39; at that time, and you cannot point to a credible alternative.

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by Kun Fanâ@December 11, 2007 06:10 am
I would argue that Leninism is the adaptation of anti-capitalist ideology to largely pre-industrial conditions, which eventually synthesize into capitalist democracy. Leninists more or less serve to replace the role of the bourgeoisie in industrialization and national self-determination in places where the national bourgeoisie is either weak, non-existent, or subservient to foreign capitalists.
Lenin&#39;s ideas for a revolutionary party were copied from German and other western socialist parties, ie the more advanced capitalist countries of the day. It was not created in Russia.

[synthesis]

Yet the ideology was never successfully implemented in advanced capitalist countries. It only "worked" when applied to pre-capitalist conditions.

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 07, 2007 08:25 am
I do not consider Cuba to be Leninist.
Could you elaborate on this please?

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by Kun Fanâ@December 11, 2007 06:36 am
Yet the ideology was never successfully implemented in advanced capitalist countries. It only "worked" when applied to pre-capitalist conditions.
Much of Russia was backwards, but the Russian Revolution was started and led by urban industrial workers.

And anyway, there&#39;s many reasons it didn&#39;t work in more advanced countries- Russia was the weakest link in the imperialist chain, the betrayal of the social democrats in Germany, etc.

[nom de guerre]

I think you two [Zampano & PRC] have again demonstrated how un-Marxist you are.

"You mean we have to base what we do on our material conditions? Preposterous&#33;"

If you want to know what we Marxists mean by today&#39;s "material conditions", check on the numerous posts I&#39;ve made on the writings of David Harvey and other. You know, Marxist analysis on the last thirty years of capitalism, and what that means for revolution tomorrow. Bourgeois sexual insult edited out (Luís Henrique)

I mean, Zampano admitted it himself: he, nor any of his idealist ilk, is not here to learn - but to prove that their great leader really was right (despite history&#39;s obvious conclusions).

You guys can keep looking for the future in the early 20th century Russian intelligentsia. I&#39;m going to look for it in today.

[KC]

We see this to some degree or another in every Leninist state - every actual attempt you guys have gotten to implement your plan in the real world. Russia demonstrated neoliberal "shock therapy", as Chile did in &#39;73; Cuba is going slowly, but no one can deny the importance of the capitalist tourist economy in propping up the island&#39;s sovereignty; and China&#39;s become more successful capitalists than the current American bourgeoisie&#33; To claim that things happened this way was due to "improper ideas" or whatever is anti-Marxist: analogous to Marx&#39;s own decrying of the utopian socialists of the 19th century.


I do not consider Cuba to be Leninist.

Yet another contradiction in nom de guerre&#39;s statements&#33;

Thanks PRC for reminding me of this earlier statement and bringing further hypocrisy to light.

Anyways, PRC, this is a pointless battle. Every single point that nom de guerre has made that I have responded to he has either conceded or avoided, and moved on to another point which also becomes thoroughly proven wrong.

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 11, 2007 06:49 am
I think you two have demonstrated how un-Marxist you are.
&#39;je ne suis pas marxiste.&#39;


You guys can keep looking for the future in the early 20th century Russian intelligentsia. I&#39;m going to look for it in today.

You say you have based your analysis on today yet you deny that the world is capitalist...

[nom de guerre]

PRC: When have I ever denied the world was capitalist?

Zampano: I&#39;m sorry, I should&#39;ve been more specific:

Cuba&#39;s revolution was not a traditional Leninist revolution. Not as we saw in Russia, or Eastern Europe for example. Their socialism was borne from the armed struggle which began with 16 men - it was not the work of a "vanguard" rallying the proletariat. It was peasant guerrilla warfare.

It has established a traditional Leninist state, however. There is one party of an elite manager class, which is clearly establishing modern capitalism, however slowly. However, their economy remains remarkably agrarian - as state-capitalism does without other state-capitalist nations to support it. Since the fall of the Soviet bloc, neoliberal capitalism has taken hold in Cuba, and will slowly transform it from within.

As is inevitable, as we Marxists know.

Perhaps I misspoke above, but give it to the Leninists to not be able to distinguish between revolutions and their subsequent states&#33; It&#39;s all the same to them&#33; :lol:

[KC]

I do not consider Cuba to be Leninist.

Does not say "I do not consider the revolution to have been Leninist."


It has established a traditional Leninist state, however.

So you do then consider Cuba to be "Leninist".

Wow, you&#39;re really grasping to save yourself. This is just getting sad that you can&#39;t admit that you flat out contradicted yourself.

[nom de guerre]

Zampano, clearly you are simply incapable of actually retorting to the substance of my posts, and must nitpick on a completely inconsequential contradiction that seemed to slip past my proof-reading.

What are you, fifteen?

[KC]

Zampano, clearly you are simply incapable of actually retorting to the substance of my posts

nom de enfante, I have already addressed (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=73525&view=findpost&p=1292433052) all of your "substance". In numerous posts, where I address your "substance" you resort to avoiding my responses, constructing logical fallacies in order to further your agenda and ignoring points that I have made. You have no footing to accuse me of not "retort to the substance" of your posts.


and must nitpick on a completely inconsequential contradiction that seemed to slip past my proof-reading.

It isn&#39;t an "inconsequential contradiction". It is one of many [i]theoretical contradictions made in your posts that show the wishy-washiness of your position.

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 11, 2007 06:57 am
PRC: When have I ever denied the world was capitalist?

Here, comrade, from the first page of this discussion:



He also did not argue that the "third world" (a very reactionary term for pre-capitalist or neo-colonial nations) could only be liberated by bourgeois revolution - Marx did himself. He said no nation can escape the laws of the material forces of history - every nation will have to develop through capitalism, and this cannot be skipped by an imposition of a revolutionary&#39;s "will to power." He decried that as being idealism.

Then I responded about why you were wrong on the second page. There are no pre-capitalist countries left, so arguing that bourgeois revolutions can liberate the third world is nonsensical.

[nom de guerre]

Originally posted by PRC&#045;UTE+December 11, 2007 07:10 am--> (PRC-UTE @ December 11, 2007 07:10 am)
nom de [email protected] 11, 2007 06:57 am
PRC: When have I ever denied the world was capitalist?

Here, comrade, from the first page of this discussion:



He also did not argue that the "third world" (a very reactionary term for pre-capitalist or neo-colonial nations) could only be liberated by bourgeois revolution - Marx did himself. He said no nation can escape the laws of the material forces of history - every nation will have to develop through capitalism, and this cannot be skipped by an imposition of a revolutionary&#39;s "will to power." He decried that as being idealism.

Then I responded about why you were wrong on the second page. There are no pre-capitalist countries left, so arguing that bourgeois revolutions can liberate the third world is nonsensical. [/b]
And again you think that capitalism itself is enough prerequisite for a revolution.

I&#39;m going to lay this out very simply:

1. Marxists study the forces of production
2. Capitalism changes the forces of production, developing them until they&#39;re capable of producing for all.
3. It is only after capitalism has developed the relative forces of production far enough forward, that revolution is possible.

You cannot say, for example, that simply because the whole world is capitalist, that Somalia should be expecting a revolution soon.

Capital has not developed the forces of production in Somalia very much at all, has it?

Then WTF?

[synthesis]

There are no countries that are immune to the effects of capitalism. There are still many countries that are dominated primarily by pre-capitalist conditions.

[nom de guerre]

nom de enfante, I have already addressed all of your "substance". In numerous posts, where I address your "substance" you resort to avoiding my responses, constructing logical fallacies in order to further your agenda and ignoring points that I have made. You have no footing to accuse me of not "retort[ing] to the substance" of your posts.

Okay, are you illiterate? Seriously?

I defined vanguardism. I defined state capitalism.
I clearly explained how vanguardism leads to state capitalism.
I concisely detailed how this is a result of the context within which these paradigms were devised.
I quickly summarized why these things happened with a historical materialist hermeneutic.

And your response was "Nuh-uh&#33; Leninism doesn&#39;t even exist&#33;"

You seriously must be illiterate.


Originally posted by "Kun"
There are no countries that are immune to the effects of capitalism. There are still many countries that are dominated primarily by pre-capitalist conditions.

Wow. Thankfully there are other Marxists on this board. You think I&#39;m wasting my breath on PRC&Z?

[KC]

There are no countries that are immune to the effects of capitalism. There are still many countries that are dominated primarily by pre-capitalist conditions.

Kun, which countries are those that aren&#39;t based on capitalist production relations and which conditions are those?


Originally posted by nom de enfante
blah blah blah

So I take it this means you&#39;re not going to respond to my post (yet again another attempt to evade the points I have made).

I&#39;ll take that as a concession.

[nom de guerre]

You made no points. You lose. You&#39;re an idealist. Keep praying to your copy of The Collected Works of Vlad, and maybe he&#39;ll save your soul. You&#39;re worse than a religious fundamentalist.

[KC]

You made no points. You lose. You&#39;re an idealist.

And there&#39;s the concession.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 10, 2007 11:57 pm
There is one party of an elite manager class
That you agree with me on the distinction between managers and the typical petit-bourgeoisie is one thing (six-class analysis, perhaps), but you haven&#39;t responded to my comments above.

From what I&#39;ve read above, you should really cool down (you&#39;re almost sounding like the typical sectarian "Spartacist" Trot that I don&#39;t want to discuss working-class issues with). <_<

[KC]

but you haven&#39;t responded to my comments above.

That&#39;s just his style.

:lol:

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 11, 2007 07:16 am
I&#39;m going to lay this out very simply:

1. Marxists study the forces of production
2. Capitalism changes the forces of production, developing them until they&#39;re capable of producing for all.
3. It is only after capitalism has developed the relative forces of production far enough forward, that revolution is possible.

There&#39;s a nuance you&#39;re not grasping here: the Marxist theory states that after capitalist production has run its course and developed itself to its fullest extent that then capitalist relations at the point of production become a fetter on further development. Then capitalism is decadent and revolution becomes an inevitability.

That does not mean revolution is impossible before then... in fact Marx discussed socialism under primitive conditions resultling in the &#39;equalisation of misery&#39;. Strangely you keep insisting you are the only true Marxist, but you take a dogmatic position contrary to Marx and Engels.



You cannot say, for example, that simply because the whole world is capitalist, that Somalia should be expecting a revolution soon.

Capital has not developed the forces of production in Somalia very much at all, has it?

Then WTF?

This is another discussion... I and others were raising the point that the capitalists no longer play a progressive role in history.

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 11, 2007 07:19 am
Okay, are you illiterate? Seriously?
You seriously must be illiterate.
I think this kind of carry on is beneath us.

Btw, I know many comrades in the workers&#39; movement who are indeed illiterate.

[VukBZ2005]

I would like to begin this post with addressing Zampanò.

Zampanò, even though you do have points that I agree with, I disagree with you on the point that Leninism does not exist. It does exist; it may not exist on an exact and unitary theoretical basis, but it exists as a physical reality, a reality that has manifested itself in countries that are economically, socially, culturally and politically backward. Moreover, it is a physical reality that also causes these backward countries to jump from being in an essentially early Capitalist condition to a late, industrialized, Capitalist condition through the use of statist, bureaucratic and, monopolistic institutions. To deny the fact that Leninism does not exist, even as a physical reality, is to deny the development of human societies in the course of the past 90 years.

I would also like to address nom de guerre.

Nom de guerre, even though you also have points that I agree with, I disagree with you on the point that history has unfold by an concurrent, step by step basis, just as Zampanò does, and, to some extent, Marx did.

The ideas and concepts that you have on the notion of Historical Materialism only seem to distort the meaning behind it. In other words, Historical Materialism should only be used as a guide for the understanding of how societies regularly evolve, they should not be reduced into stages that must happen and that must not be skipped. By doing this, you are negating certain situations that feature unique conditions that can not be viewed from the paradigm of an totally-deterministic Historical Materialism.

Allow me to give you an example to demonstrate what I mean; If one were to look at the history of the United States of America, it would become apparent that it skipped stages of historical materialistic evolution; it really did not go through the social and economic level of Feudalism, it skipped it. Instead of developing into a Feudal society from the basis of slavery, it developed into a modern and industrialized Capitalist society. The reason why the United States of America did not have to go through the stage of Feudalism is because it emerged and developed within a specific historical context, which featured special conditions that allowed it to become the modern Capitalist society that it is at the moment.

If you continue to hold on to this totally-deterministic form of Historical Materialism, nom de guerre, I will have to assume that you are idealistic about this dimension of Marxian Socialism and that you are, unconsciously, supporting the continuation of the Capitalist system. Remember now, this is not an insult, this is just an opinion of mine.

[synthesis]

Originally posted by Zampanò@December 11, 2007 12:20 am

There are no countries that are immune to the effects of capitalism. There are still many countries that are dominated primarily by pre-capitalist conditions.

Kun, which countries are those that aren&#39;t based on capitalist production relations and which conditions are those?
It would be more appropriate to ask:


Kun, which countries are those that aren&#39;t based on industrial production relations and which conditions are those?

And I believe the answer is fairly obvious.

The Marxist paradigm is fundamentally focused on industrial class relations, the conditions created by mass employment in factories, mines, and other such industrial endeavors.

Marxism is fundamentally predicated on workers assuming control of largely automated production. In places that are not dominated by the industrial paradigm, it doesn&#39;t work. Leninism tries to make it work, and it doesn&#39;t.

For example, in many countries that are not dominated by industrial class relations, a great deal of the urban economy revolves around the informal sector, such as people who operate stands, tiny shops, or stand in the street selling things they make or cook.

In the Marxist paradigm, these people would have to be considered "petit-bourgeois", as they are technically self-employed and do not employ others. Yet in historical terms, they often occupy the same revolutionary position as the industrial proletariat.

Also, the role of the "peasantry" in agricultural economies has been beaten to death a million times. Impoverished tenant farmers rarely have the same goals in mind as the socialist revolution - what they really want is land, not economic democracy.

That&#39;s why Leninism is fundamentally bourgeois, or at least a substitute for the bourgeoisie - it replaces them in terms of creating the seeds for industrialization, bourgeois democracy, and freedom from foreign suzerainty - in other words, the bourgeois revolution.

[KC]

Zampanò, even though you do have points that I agree with, I disagree with you on the point that Leninism does not exist. It does exist; it may not exist on an exact and unitary theoretical basis, but it exists as a physical reality, a reality that has manifested itself in countries that are economically, socially, culturally and politically backward.

Well, if you define it as such then of course it "exists". But that doesn&#39;t mean it has anything to do with Lenin.


It would be more appropriate to ask:

Not at all. Capitalism isn&#39;t based simply on industrial relations. That&#39;s just wrong.


For example, in many countries that are not dominated by industrial class relations, a great deal of the urban economy revolves around the informal sector, such as people who operate stands, tiny shops, or stand in the street selling things they make or cook.

Yeah, those are capitalist relations, too...


That&#39;s why Leninism is fundamentally bourgeois, or at least a substitute for the bourgeoisie - it replaces them in terms of creating the seeds for industrialization, bourgeois democracy, and freedom from foreign suzerainty - in other words, the bourgeois revolution.

You can&#39;t have a "bourgeois revolution" in countries that are already capitalist.

[synthesis]

"Capitalism" in this case means whatever you want it to, as long as there is money involved.

But that&#39;s not really what Marx said. In Marxian terms, capitalism is defined as the industrial mode of production and necessitates wage slavery to survive.

Where industry does not dominate, and where poverty is not codependent with wage slavery, the concepts of "bourgeoisie" and "proletariat" are totally meaningless.

People whose lives revolve around getting money from a position above them in a hierarchy almost always desire to replace those who are higher than them in the hierarchy.

On the other hand, in the same way that people whose lives require agriculture tend to be focused on owning their own land, people whose lives revolve around getting money, independent of a hierarchy, usually just want more money.

[KC]

But that&#39;s not really what Marx said. In Marxian terms, capitalism is defined as the industrial mode of production and necessitates wage slavery to survive.

This is not true. Marx&#39;s writings on the development of capitalism from feudalism, for example, aren&#39;t based on industrial production. Capitalism didn&#39;t start as industry.

I believe the marxists.org definition is the best:

"The socio-economic system where social relations are based on commodities for exchange, in particular private ownership of the means of production and on the exploitation of wage labour."

This is the Marxist definition of capitalism, and as explained before isn&#39;t necessarily based on industrial production.

[nom de guerre]

Originally posted by Communist [email protected] 12, 2007 06:38 pm
The ideas and concepts that you have on the notion of Historical Materialism only seem to distort the meaning behind it. In other words, Historical Materialism should only be used as a guide for the understanding of how societies regularly evolve, they should not be reduced into stages that must happen and that must not be skipped. By doing this, you are negating certain situations that feature unique conditions that can not be viewed from the paradigm of an totally-deterministic Historical Materialism.
You are correct in saying this. But I do not feel I ever stated that historical materialism states that what happened in Russia had to happen there. It is merely my point that regardless of anyone&#39;s will, nations are going to pass through capitalist development which serves to industrialize the relations of production. And, based on my perception of history, there is no evidence to suggest to the contrary.

I did not mean to come off as reductionist in my analysis earlier. Russia did not have to have a monopoly state-capitalist era to serve to industrialize its material conditions - but that industrialization was going to occur one way or another. Again, I want to stress that historical materialism is not reductionist, but rather probabilistic. It states that the history of humans is the history of the development forward of their material relations of production. The specifics of how this will occur is based probabilistically on the subjective conditions of the individual nation. I merely think that when considering historical materialism this way, the Russian revolution and its subsequent monopoly state-capitalism actually make intuitive logical sense.

How countries industrialize will be done a thousand different ways, depending on what their conditions are like. But the fact that they must industrialize one way or another, before proletarian revolution can be seriously discussed, is what I think Marx was trying to communicate.


Allow me to give you an example to demonstrate what I mean; If one were to look at the history of the United States of America, it would become apparent that it skipped stages of historical materialistic evolution; it really did not go through the social and economic level of Feudalism, it skipped it. Instead of developing into a Feudal society from the basis of slavery, it developed into a modern and industrialized Capitalist society. The reason why the United States of America did not have to go through the stage of Feudalism is because it emerged and developed within a specific historical context, which featured special conditions that allowed it to become the modern Capitalist society that it is at the moment.

I do not entirely agree with this - the US was for a long time dominated by feudal relations of production. Basically from 1492 until 1865 the dominant mode of production for the country was agrarian slavery. Clearly there was no bourgeois industry worthy of mentioning until the 19th century, and it did not become the most significant until the end of such. I think, ultimately, the Civil War was the real "bourgeois revolution" in America - it was the struggle between the industrialized North and the agrarian South over whose mode of production would remain pivotal in the development of American economy. And it&#39;s clear, then, why the North won.

[nom de guerre]

Also, Zampano is right above: capitalism, in the Marxist sense of the term, is the production of commodities for sale, under private ownership of the means of production. The function capitalism inevitably serves, however, is to industrialize the means of production. This is its logical consequence - capitalists must end up making more and more profit, and industry is the way to do so (at least in the earlier stages of capital&#39;s development). Thus, industrial production and capitalism go hand-in-hand, but it is the latter which serves to develop the former.

[synthesis]

Originally posted by Zampanò@December 12, 2007 02:52 pm

But that&#39;s not really what Marx said. In Marxian terms, capitalism is defined as the industrial mode of production and necessitates wage slavery to survive.

This is not true. Marx&#39;s writings on the development of capitalism from feudalism, for example, aren&#39;t based on industrial production. Capitalism didn&#39;t start as industry.

I believe the marxists.org definition is the best:

"The socio-economic system where social relations are based on commodities for exchange, in particular private ownership of the means of production and on the exploitation of wage labour."

This is the Marxist definition of capitalism, and as explained before isn&#39;t necessarily based on industrial production.
Well, then I stand corrected.

That may not have been what Marx said, but existing interpretations and implementations of his ideas just haven&#39;t worked. They always have more or less the same result - bourgeois democracy or dictatorship - and I believe I have aptly described why this is the case.

In other words, I believe that the Marxist paradigm is not a struggle against the trade of goods for profit, but the inequalities of industrialization - the concentration of workers in urban workplaces alongside the rapid automation of labor.

We must interpret Marx in the context of an industrial or industrializing society - those were the conditions that created his ideology in the first place. He saw the potential of the automation of labor to be used for socially productive rather than individualistic purposes, and envisaged a means by which workers could do so.

Outside this context, the Marxist paradigm usually just doesn&#39;t make sense to people. Marxism is fundamentally a struggle against wage slavery, not against the trading of goods.

[nom de guerre]

Outside this context, the Marxist paradigm usually just doesn&#39;t make sense to people. Marxism is fundamentally a struggle against wage slavery, not against the trading of goods.

You hit the nail on the head.

[nom de guerre]

EDIT: double post, m&#39;scusi

[VukBZ2005]

Originally posted by nom de guerre
I do not entirely agree with this - the US was for a long time dominated by feudal relations of production.

Oh really? Then that means that you are implying that slavery is a part of the Fedual mode of production. As far as I can see, Slavery is totally separate from the Feudal mode of production because of the fact that, unlike the Fedual mode of production, Slavery is not based on the existence of a landed, indenturing aristocracy, various middle classes and a free-landed peasantry; it is based upon three major classes; the slave-holding aristocratic class, the non-enslaved class and the enslaved class, and, the system of "mutuality" that exists amongst all of these three classes, which does exist with Fedualism, but not to the extent that it does with Slavery.

When you apply the stipulations that I have established above unto the American situation, it becomes apparent that the Fedual mode of production did not truly exist at all. If the Fedual mode of production had the chance to develop in the territory that is now the United States, then the United States would have not have come into existence; something that would be somewhat similar to the Europe of the Middle Ages would have instead.


I think, ultimately, the Civil War was the real "bourgeois revolution" in America - it was the struggle between the industrialized North and the agrarian South over whose mode of production would remain pivotal in the development of American economy. And it&#39;s clear, then, why the North won.

You are absolutely wrong on this. Absolutely. The reason why I am stating this to you is because, if you understood the history of the United States, it would be obvious that the "Civil War" was not really about the economic systems of both the North and the South fighting over whose economic system would have absolute control over the economical development of the entire country from that point forward, it was really about the Southern U.S. states declaring independence from the rest of the country and the desire of the Northern U.S states to bring the Southern U.S states back under their rule and control as so to force the it to abide by the tariffs that the Northern industrialists demanded it to abide by, and, to accelerate the development of its industrial manufacturing capacity through the use of the South&#39;s natural and human resources; something that happened when the South was defeated and forced back into the Union between the years of 1865 and 1877, a period of "American" history referred to as "Reconstruction".

If the South succeeded in its bid to obtain independence and sovereignty from the United States, then the United States would have continued to exist, to some extent, and, to industrialize, but it would not have industrialized to the point of it becoming the world&#39;s most powerful and wealthiest nation.

This is the reason why the "Civil War" must be referred to as the War for the Southern Independence, because that it what it was, a war for the independence of the Southern U.S states, or rather, the Confederate States of America.

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by Communist FireFox+December 14, 2007 08:40 pm--> (Communist FireFox @ December 14, 2007 08:40 pm)
nom de guerre
I do not entirely agree with this - the US was for a long time dominated by feudal relations of production.

Oh really? Then that means that you are implying that slavery is a part of the Fedual mode of production. As far as I can see, Slavery is totally separate from the Feudal mode of production because of the fact that, unlike the Fedual mode of production, Slavery is not based on the existence of a landed, indenturing aristocracy, various middle classes and a free-landed peasantry; it is based upon three major classes; the slave-holding aristocratic class, the non-enslaved class and the enslaved class, and, the system of "mutuality" that exists amongst all of these three classes, which does exist with Fedualism, but not to the extent that it does with Slavery.

When you apply the stipulations that I have established above unto the American situation, it becomes apparent that the Fedual mode of production did not truly exist at all. If the Fedual mode of production had the chance to develop in the territory that is now the United States, then the United States would have not have come into existence; something that would be somewhat similar to the Europe of the Middle Ages would have instead. [/b]
The USA skipped fuedelism entirley. There was never fuedelism of any kind.

I guess according to a stagist Marxist that is impossible, but that&#39;s what occured.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Interesting that the US also skipped the "slave mode of production," too (with the various cultures of the First Nations).

Anyhow, when the colonists settled in, they took with them their mercantilist ways. Another interesting question to consider is the strength of the political superstructure they established, which lasted until the war of independence.

[Luís Henrique]

It is quite hurtful to see the Stalinist stageist reformist drivel that I had to fight against during my youth represented as the cutting edge of Marxist theory.

********************

Feudalism is a phenomenon specific of Europe and Japan (perhaps a valid case can be made for the existence of a Tibetan feudalism, or a Hawaiian one; a case study would be necessary). The whole of the American continent, the whole of Africa, the whole of the "Muslism world", the whole of Australia, and most of Asia, never experienced feudalism.

Slavery as a mode of production was also quite restricted in its geographical expansion. Unless we count the colonisation of America as an instance of it, which is doubtful, it basically happened along the Mediterranean shores.

If people are really interested in understanding the pre-capitalist modes of production, they should take a look at Barry Hindess and Paul Hirst&#39;s work, Maurice Godelier, Perry Anderson&#39;s Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism - and, of course, Karl Marx&#39;s Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/precapitalist/index.htm).

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by nom de guerre+December 10, 2007 11:32 pm--> (nom de guerre &#064; December 10, 2007 11:32 pm) As RS2k put it:


redstar2000
if Marx was right about consciousness being dependent on the stage of economic development of a given society (in turn resting on its level of technological development), then no matter how desperately you want to transform a predominately peasant economy into a socialist or communist economy, it can&#39;t be done. Even with foreign assistance from a developed socialist economy, the outcome is the rise of capitalism.

This is what has happened everywhere so far. How is it that people still think that "willpower" can be substituted for actual economic development...and still call themselves "Marxists"?[/b]
If Marx was right about consciousness being dependent on the stage of economic development of a given society;

and if redstar2000 was right in stating that the stage of economic development [rests] on its level of technological development);

and if redstar2000 was right in his analysis of what was the level of economic development of Western Europe in the XIX century,

then Marx would have been evidently wrong in asserting that consciousness is dependent on the stage of economic development of a given society: he himself would have been an obvious example of a consciousness not dependent on the stage of economic development of his own society. :wacko:

Which should encourage us to put to rest redstar2000&#39;s post-but-not-excessively-post-Stalinist theories.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by nom de [email protected] 11, 2007 07:16 am
And again you think that capitalism itself is enough prerequisite for a revolution.

I&#39;m going to lay this out very simply:

1. Marxists study the forces of production
2. Capitalism changes the forces of production, developing them until they&#39;re capable of producing for all.
3. It is only after capitalism has developed the relative forces of production far enough forward, that revolution is possible.

You cannot say, for example, that simply because the whole world is capitalist, that Somalia should be expecting a revolution soon.

Capital has not developed the forces of production in Somalia very much at all, has it?
No, capitalism hasn&#39;t developed the productive forces that much in Somalia.

However, even in Somalia, the productive forces in the begining of the XXI century are stronger than they were in 1860 in England.

But the point is, capitalism is not going to develop Somalia further than it has already. In this sence, yes, Somalia is ripe for revolution; even there, capitalist social production relationships are a fetter on development.

The problem in Somalia is a different one, and it is, mutatis mutandi the same problem as in the United States: revolution is not an automatic process; it needs human resolve. In Somalia, as in the United States, the working class has not enough experience of struggle, not enough organisation, not enough tradition, not enough knowledge about the conditions of their emancipation, to effectively uprise against capital.

That&#39;s why there a proletarian uprise isn&#39;t happening at this moment in Somalia - not the backwardness of its productive forces.

And that&#39;s also why a proletarian uprise isn&#39;t happening in the United States at this moment - albeit their productive forces being the most advanced in the world.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Kun Fanâ@December 11, 2007 07:18 am
It would be more appropriate to ask:


Kun, which countries are those that aren&#39;t based on industrial production relations and which conditions are those?

And I believe the answer is fairly obvious.

For instance...?

Luís Henrique

[Marsella]

I will say this:

There is a difference between being demanding that all societies must go through all stages of slavery, feudalism, capitalism to be able to have a chance at communism and recognizing that capitalism is a prerequisite for communism.

True, some comrades argue that a level of technological advancement is necessary for the proletariat to effectively manage their affairs with the absence of a centralized planning authority or a state. That shows how the proletariat will manage their affairs post-revolution.

But it does not, in my mind, determine if the proletariat will choose to manage their affairs.

There seems to be something needed for that overthrow, whether it be an economic crises, civil war etc.


No, capitalism hasn&#39;t developed the productive forces that much in Somalia.

However, even in Somalia, the productive forces in the begining of the XXI century are stronger than they were in 1860 in England.

But the point is, capitalism is not going to develop Somalia further than it has already. In this sence, yes, Somalia is ripe for revolution; even there, capitalist social production relationships are a fetter on development.

So first you begin by stating that the productive forces in Somalia have changed significantly in the past 140 years, but then state that they will not continue to develop further than it already has?

That seems a bold statement.

Even comparing the class makeup of an advanced capitalist country like Australia, you would notice the significant change in the production forces.

And that has occurred in a mere 50 years. You could probably make that comparison to a majority of countries. China strikes as a good example, especially in recent years. Will the productive forces in China develop further in future years or will they remain a majority-based peasant society forever?

It seems just as dogmatic as stageism to state that development can occur no further.

Surely the accumulation of capital; the monopolization of global industry is really in its beginnings?

I think that that is vital, because society may well need to be divided into &#39;paupers and kings&#39; before we have a chance at its overthrow.

Capitalism digs its own grave in that it monopolizes business, centralizes all authority; it allows for its easy overthrow.

Now if we have a country which does not have these advanced conditions, then its (a) going to be a heck of a lot harder to overthrow it to begin with and (b) questionable whether a communist society could be built from it in the first place.


The problem in Somalia is a different one, and it is, mutatis mutandi the same problem as in the United States: revolution is not an automatic process; it needs human resolve. In Somalia, as in the United States, the working class has not enough experience of struggle, not enough organisation, not enough tradition, not enough knowledge about the conditions of their emancipation, to effectively uprise against capital.

That&#39;s why there a proletarian uprise isn&#39;t happening at this moment in Somalia - not the backwardness of its productive forces.

And that&#39;s also why a proletarian uprise isn&#39;t happening in the United States at this moment - albeit their productive forces being the most advanced in the world.

Well, quite frankly if it depends on human resolve then we truly are up shit creek without any oars.

A revolution can not be induced by organization. Consciousness should not be dependent on the whims of a party, of its particular strengths or ideological positions. (Edit: On second thought, I see that you were arguing not so much for a party, but for experience in the struggles of the proletariat. I largely agree with that.)

We need a revolutionary situation. I mean, look at Columbia. That country has quite an organized party, controlling a significant portion of the country with numerous foot soldiers. Have they achieved anything resembling socialism?

Would that same highly structured party make any difference to the situation in America?

Sure the proletariat must learn through its struggles, but something needs to happen for those struggles to actually begin.


then Marx would have been evidently wrong in asserting that consciousness is dependent on the stage of economic development of a given society: he himself would have been an obvious example of a consciousness not dependent on the stage of economic development of his own society. wacko.gif

I don&#39;t see how Marx himself (or indeed us&#33;) disproves that consciousness is not dependent on the stage of economic development of a society.

If anything, the terrible conditions of the working class in industrial England affirm this.

There must be a stage where the old system shows how it inhibits the contending class. If it was otherwise, a simultaneous model as you seem to suggest - where consciousness must = the current mode of production, then revolutions would never occur because consciousness would be stuck in status quo.

There is an overlap.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2007 12:56 pm

No, capitalism hasn&#39;t developed the productive forces that much in Somalia.

However, even in Somalia, the productive forces in the begining of the XXI century are stronger than they were in 1860 in England.

But the point is, capitalism is not going to develop Somalia further than it has already. In this sence, yes, Somalia is ripe for revolution; even there, capitalist social production relationships are a fetter on development.

So first you begin by stating that the productive forces in Somalia have changed significantly in the past 140 years, but then state that they will not continue to develop further than it already has?

That seems a bold statement.
Yes, it is probably bold.

However, capitalism has developed the productive forces in Somalia to the extent that it can make part of the international system of exploitation. Somalia is now part of the imperialist chain. Further developing its productive forces would change its place in that chain, something that isn&#39;t in the interest of the imperialist centre, nor in the interest of the Somalian bourgeoisie, as it relies on imperialism to ensure its grip on the Somalian exploited classes.

So further development of productive forces in Somalia requires that the whole system is still developing productive forces at the worldwide level (and, so, that capitalism is still a progressive force worldwide) or a breach of capitalist interests in Somalia - a political anti-bourgeois revolution.


And that has occurred in a mere 50 years. You could probably make that comparison to a majority of countries. China strikes as a good example, especially in recent years. Will the productive forces in China develop further in future years or will they remain a majority-based peasant society forever?

Well, China underwent a political anti-bourgeois revolution - that&#39;s why it was able to develop its productive forces beyond imperialist interests would.

I don&#39;t think China is a "majority-based peasant society" anymore.


It seems just as dogmatic as stageism to state that development can occur no further.

Maybe. I hope I have shown that there is a rational basis to such statement. But maybe Marxism itself is wrong, and capitalism will develop the productive forces forever?


Well, quite frankly if it depends on human resolve then we truly are up shit creek without any oars.

No doubt. If you want easy tasks, try playing chess blindfolded against multiple opponents...


A revolution can not be induced by organization.

Nope, but it can be prevented, aborted, or misguided by lack of organisation.


We need a revolutionary situation. I mean, look at Columbia. That country has quite an organized party, controlling a significant portion of the country with numerous foot soldiers. Have they achieved anything resembling socialism?

No, but I see no reason to fantasise the FARC as a socialist party.

They also do not control a significant portion of the country. Yes, it is about 40% of the territory - but it is about 1% of the population, and even less of the GNP.


Would that same highly structured party make any difference to the situation in America?

I don&#39;t think a similar party can exist in the US.


Sure the proletariat must learn through its struggles, but something needs to happen for those struggles to actually begin.

It happens everyday: it is called capitalist exploitation.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2007 12:56 pm

then Marx would have been evidently wrong in asserting that consciousness is dependent on the stage of economic development of a given society: he himself would have been an obvious example of a consciousness not dependent on the stage of economic development of his own society. wacko.gif

I don&#39;t see how Marx himself (or indeed us&#33;) disproves that consciousness is not dependent on the stage of economic development of a society.
Nor do I, but this because I reject redstar2000&#39;s technological reductionism.

He believes that a socialist revolution in Somalia is impossible, because Somalia is not yet capitalist, and he believes that Somalia is not yet capitalist because its productive forces are not as developed as, say, Germany&#39;s.

But the fact is that Somalia&#39;s productive forces, today, are more developed than England&#39;s productive forces were in 1860.

So, either redstar2000 is wrong in considering Somalia pre-capitalist, or Marx was wrong in considering XIX century England capitalist. And if we take redstar2000 as dogma, then it was Marx that was wrong. And if Marx was wrong in considering XIX century England capitalist, what was he talking about? I can only conclude that he was talking gibberish, or that he received a supernatural revelation. In any case, he could only be right if his thoughts did not correspond to the economic development of the society he lived in...


There must be a stage where the old system shows how it inhibits the contending class. If it was otherwise, a simultaneous model as you seem to suggest - where consciousness must = the current mode of production, then revolutions would never occur because consciousness would be stuck in status quo.

In fact, such "simultaneous" mechanicistic model is what I am trying to refute.

If consciousness isn&#39;t stuck in status quo, then we must accept that it develops unevenly. And if it develops unevenly, then vanguards are a fact: some workers have a more developed consciousness than others. And if so, they will start fighting back capitalist oppression while other workers will still be accepting it as the natural order of things. Which brings into question, of course, the issue of human resolve.

Marx said men make their history, but not under the conditions of their choice. Sometimes it is necessary to put the quote backwards, as Rosa Luxemburg did: men do not make history under the conditions of their choice - but it&#39;s them who make it.

Luís Henrique

[Labor Shall Rule]

Good posts Luis.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Labor Shall [email protected] 15, 2007 11:55 pm
Good posts Luis.
The opposition seems to think the same... :D

Luís Henrique