Hello. I was wondering if somebody could possibly tell me a left communists view on lenin and the vanguard party. Volkov
can you be more specific, for example about particular views defended by Lenin. And what do you mean by the term 'vanguard party'? Most left communists - though not the council communist wing, who tend to see Lenin as a bourgeois revolutionary at best - would see Lenin and the Bolshevik party as part of our history, and as playing a key role in the Russian revolution, both in its victory and its subsequent degeneration. A lot more could be said however, and I can point you to texts which deal with this or that aspect of Lenin's work.
I asked about the vanguard party because it generally has a different meaning among the communist left to the way it is conceived in the 'marxist leninist' milieu, for example. Most of us here would define the Maoist and Trotskyist vision of the party as an instrument of power as being, at its best, substitutionist, and at its worst militarist and bourgeois. But on the other hand, most of us would be for the formation of a world communist party, and do understand the communist political organisation as being an expression of the proletarian vanguard.
A vanguard party is a party that will guide and educate the proletariat, as the working class have only achieved trade union conscienceless as to date, is how I define the vanguard party. For views on Lenin, I mean a general view, and his policies such as war communism, the NEP, the red terror, and the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks
Which one would you support, by the RSDLP split
Or you could look at it this way: if the working class in this future you refer to has only achieved a trade union consciousness, it would not have reached the political maturity needed to give birth to the vanguard party. Lenin, in our view, very quickly abandoned the 'Kautskyite' theory of communist consciousness 'emanating from the bourgeois intelligentsia', which is usually attributed to him. We are no longer witnesses to the events of 1903, but most of our ancestors are those who were called Bolsheviks
So are left comms anti-Lenin(ist) or critically supportive?
They are anti-Leninist and pro-Lenin. That is how they see themselves, generally speaking. Though they are necessarily critical of Lenin the man as well as the Bolshevik party, with some being more critical than others.
Could you expand on this a little more please? I'm intrigued
Alf, how can you say Lenin abandoned the Kautsykyite theory on the one hand, when on the other hand you hold this theory responsible for the degeneration of the revolution? Did the bolsheviks (or Lenin himsef) according to you again return to that idea in WITBD in order to defend a degenerating revolution? Why did Lenin not indicate his change of opinions?
Some left communists reject the 'trade union consciousness' theory. Pannakoek and Gorter had conflicting views on the task of the International (the vanguard party), while people like Bordiga been called 'More Leninist than Lenin' (Bordiga and parts of the Italian communist left completely support the kind of party Lenin described in his texts and the Bolsheviks built in 1912-1917, and think that the deviations from this model of the party as a small minority of the class into mass parties is an example of opportunism and deviation). His texts 'Class and Party', 'Party and Class Action', 'Fundamental Theses of the Party' and 'Characteristic Theses of the Party' are all very good and explain this further.
Noa, Lenin did indicate that he had 'bent the stick too far in the polemic with the Economists'; I can find the reference if you want. After 1905 he also talked about the masses being 'spontaneously social democratic' and councils and party being equally vital, against the 'super-Leninists' among the Bolsheviks who demanded that the soviets adopt the party programme or dissolve. We don't think the Kautskyist theory was responsnible for the degeneration of the revolution. We put it down to all sorts of material factors: the isolation of the revolution, the decimation of the working class by the civil war, fusion of party and state, etc. It's true that various substitutionist ideas returned in force as the party became divorced from the working class during this process, and these false conceptions accelerated the degeneration, but we have never argued - as various libertarians and councilists do - that the Russian revolution's failure can be explained by the Kautskyite passage in What is to be Done..... subcp: it's true that Bordiga was in some ways more leninist than lenin, but I don't think he held to Kautsky's theory. He saw the party as an organ of the working class, not as the product of the bourgeois intelligentsia
I know the reference (preface to republication of WITBD), but I claim there is a misunderstanding (I think first launched by old Trotsky): Lenin ridicules those who say that he bent the stick too far. You will not find any Kautsky quote which he takes back. This entire issue is silly. In WITBD Lenin already counters those who select and jump on this phrase about "carrying from outside". And after 1905 he didn't buy into this intellectual-baiting for one moment; http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...907/mar/30.htm And amazingly all this ink is spilled without even having read Kautsky's article itself. Perhaps I should translate it.
