Anti-Traditional

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If the Bolsheviks are so dependent on Lenin to 'keep them right' it hardly says much for their revolutionary and internationalist credentials does it? I agree that the Bolsheviks did stay true to internationalism, but how? Only through the force of will of one of their leaing members. But we don't believe in 'great men of history', we're Marxists. History is made by classes in struggle. Lenin was a representative of the international proletariat; the Bolsheviks were representatives of the international proletariat; but had Lenin's character been different (if he'd been a Stalin for example) the results would also have been very different. That's not an indicator of the strength of Lenin, but the weakness of the revolutionary movement.

I don't have specific references I can give you now - I'm away from my library at the moment. I can give you some pointers in a few days when I'm back home.

I think my point about the April Theses is the same - but I draw different conclusions. Far from being the disciplined efficient democratic-centralist revolutionary machine some of its supporters like to claim, the party in 1917 was a shambles being blown the wind. If Lenin hadn't come back from Switzerland to take control, to wrest the party back from the course it was pursuing, the Bolsheviks under Stalin and Kamenev would at best have become junior partners in a defencist bourgeois government - betraying the working class and Marxism in exactly the same way as Noske and Scheidermann, Mussolini and all the other 'socialists' who became social-patriots.

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Ida Mett's 'The Kronstadt Commune' is a good place to start. It wasn't just the Fleet, it was the soviet in Kronstadt too.

I think Lenin's conception of the party was pretty much circumstantial. He changed his mind several times between 1903 and April 1917. Indeed, on my reading, the April Theses are necessary precisely because the Party isn't the revolutionary and internationalist instrument you're saying it was. He had to return to Russia and remonstrate with Stalin and Kamenev who were making noises about supporting the Provisional Government and supporting a 'national defence' position.

I think that Lenin did positive things, and negative things. I think the Bolsheviks did positive things, and negative things. Do the good things outweigh the bad things? Difficut to say. That comes down to 'is it better to have a revolution that in the end betrays the working class and lies about its own nature, or not have a revolution at all?' Certainly, the 90-year confusion of state capitalist dictatorship with 'communism' is a massive ideological weight on the working class. would it be better if there had never been a revolution though? I'm not sure. I don't think so.

I think Kronstadt was suppressed because the Bolshevik government (remember, the majority of the Kronstadt 'rebels' were also Bolsheviks) thought that it would be dangerous; conversely, I think they thought that maintaining the state capitalist dictatorship was necessary. The two options you present aren't mutually exclusive.

I think the only thing to do is construct state capitalism - with the councils making sure it remains as far as possible under workers' control - and hope the world revolution 'catches up' (and work for it by supporting the revolutionary working class in the still-capitalist territories naturally).

But if the revolution fails for a long time then it's all going to hell anyway.

Sorry about the confusion; I am quite vain