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I would argue that any genuine Bolshevik presence (the revolutionary proletarian class interests they represented) had been overthrown and defeated by the mid 20's; so no they didn't win, they were tragically defeated.
But the Communist Party of 1991 bore hardly any resemblance to its political forebear of 1917. Organizationally, theoretically, and politically it became the expressive vehicle of the counterrevolution by the late '20s-early '30s, as manifested by Stalin and other reigning reactionary elements.
Edit - Never mind, 9mm beat me to the punch.
"Socialist ideas become significant only to the extent that they become rooted in the working class."
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. . .Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
SocialistWorker.org
International Socialist Review
Marxists Internet Archive
I agree with you- but the nominally Marxist state and bureaucracy with continuity going back to 1917 lasted almost 80 years; weighing on communists since then. If it had been drenched in blood and defeated, would it be any more particularly noteworthy than the November Revolution, Hungarian Soviet Republic, Shanghai Commune, etc? This allure of success and material continuity leaves us haunted by a spectre of 'real existing socialism' which makes the 'Russian Question' this preeminent hobby horse generation after generation. It's hard to believe Lenin would be so highly regarded if he met a fate like Luxemburg.
No ones arguing that the existence of the Soviet Union, Stalinism, etc. could have happened without the February and October revolutions, right? It's debatable when revolutionary communist content had been strangled out of the party and revolution, but it almost sounds like you're arguing that the fSU has no link to 1917 and the Bolshevik Party, it's a bit disorienting.
Do you really believe a situation of collective property where an elite managed to position themselves at the top of society owing to their political power over the state apparatus rather than accumulated capital, without the ability to control relative surplus value or independently decide how the totality of the extracted surplus value of the labor of society was actually used is actually capitalistic in any honest sense of the word? I take issue with the statement that Leninism did not introduce collective property and did not abolish capitalism as a mode of production for the majority of the duration of the existence of the USSR ... I think "state-capitalism" in the USSR is poor theory and historical analysis at best... So, I still say Leninism was and is the only theory which managed to establish a situation of power which collectivized property for any meaningful duration of time.
"If conquest constituted a natural right on the part of the few, the many have only to gather sufficient strength in order to acquire the natural right of reconquering what has been taken from them." The Nationalisation of the Land Karl Marx
"To belittle the socialist ideology in anyway, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology." What Is To Be Done? V.I. Lenin
The absence of international revolution was one of, if not the most important contributor to the demise of the USSR, yes, but that only further reveals their failure at exporting the revolution, something they obviously were not up to the task of doing. Had they been more efficient in doing so, things might have turned out very differently.
@Le Socialiste: There is no way for me to know. Obviously the Leninist organizational model they used failed, but had they used a revised or altered version of it where needed, it is possible that it could have worked, a non-Leninist model could have worked as well if it were able to face the challenges of those times, but again, who knows? My guess is as good as yours.
Wait, where'd The Idler go? Isn't s/he the one who started this thread?
"Socialist ideas become significant only to the extent that they become rooted in the working class."
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. . .Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
SocialistWorker.org
International Socialist Review
Marxists Internet Archive
I'm sorry but this is makes absolutely no sense, it falls in the line of the caricaturisation of Trotsky's opinion that he wanted to export the revolution on the end of a bayonet, which of course was not his opinion what so ever. The emancipation of the working class, must be the work of the working class itself. The Bolsheviks could never have 'exported' the revolution. They could offer whatever material and educational support possible (which they did), but the task of the German revolution fell to the German proletariat and their party, not the Bolsheviks.
They held power more or less until Lenin's death. Then they were rounded up and executed by Stalin. Still the only example of any party establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat.
I'm waiting to see what the "other" methods would be, and what other party has similar experimental evidence to provide.
Otherwise, this is very similar to an inventor not having found the right fuse for the bulb and saying let's forget about trying to invent lightbulbs altogether, the last one burned out!
Pardon the incoherent nature of this, I'm fairly tired.
The biggest problem I have with the anti-Leninists is they are blatantly ignorant and unwilling to acknowledge the material conditions and context of the October revolution and thereafter. There are some, like Red banana, who seem to be trying to have a conversation, and that's awesome.
When we get down to looking at Russia, looking at party/proletariat organization, and looking at context we realize that Russia was fucked. From the underdeveloped nature of Russian Capital, to civil war which decimated the proletarian population, to bureaucratic deformities within the Bolshevik party structure, to the -- and most importantly -- failure of the German (and world) revolution. All of these things caused a great impact on the decisions made by the Bolsheviks; from War Communism, to NEP.
The dictatorship of the proletariat was short lived -- if not quite fully consolidated --, and I would say ended between 1919-1921 in the wake of civil war. We can criticize the actions of the Bolsheviks in this, but it's also important to understand WHY this occurred. Let us look at further context:
Peasantry as a threat to socialism and Proletarian Class interests:
We had food shortages in the beginning, peasants hording what they had harvested, white armies occupying agricultural areas. This lead to the forceful acquisition of foodstuffs from peasants to feed the urban populace, thus creating a hostile air (clearly showing the class interests of the peasantry is not the same as the proletariat).
This was early on. Even from the beginning, with the agrarian reform that let the peasants take the land, there was appeasement to the peasantry. The peasantry was needed to uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat, to help overthrow the bourgeoisie, and maintain hegemony.
The roles played by the peasantry is huge, and we see it go right through to the NEP and beyond, as we see a peasant middle class of landowners, who fought tooth and nail to keep their land from being socialised.
Parties as a threat to socialism and Proletarian Class interests:
The Bolsheviks faced threats from the other parties as well, who represented interests that were NOT proletariat -- but still managed to retain support from numbers of proletarians. For instance, the Mensheviks and Right SR's supported a return to the constituent assembly and bourgeois government of Kerensky, going so far as the support the white's against the Red Army. The right SR's carried out terrorist activity in support of that, and also joined the white forces.
The Left SR's, while being involved initially with the Bolsheviks and with plans for a "coalition" soviet government, resigned from their positions in the wake of Brest-Litovsk. With that, Left SR's essentially revolted, plotting the assassination of a German official, with plans to keep the war between Germany and Russia going, along with other terrorist activities. They occupied Cheka barracks, and had a force of 2000 (?) soldiers. A battle between Red Army forces and the Left SR Army saw the defeat of the Left SR forces, and eventually seen by 1919, the end of the Left SR party, with most of it going into the Bolsheviks -- the organization of the Left SRs had little to do with the plots and uprising.
Counter Revolution as a threat to Proletarian Class interests:
So, in this, a civil war in which most of the proletarian population who fought in the civil war, were killed. This was a huge slash in the population of proletarians in Russia, further seeing the interests of the peasantry begin to become clear to the peasantry itself -- and everyone else, and resistance mounted against the proletarian nature of Bolshevism.
This civil war was the red army of the Bolsheviks on one side, and the white army of reaction and capital (both foreign and domestic -- including Japanese, American and British).
Hopes that Russia would be saved:
Lastly, we must understand the role the "coming revolution" in Germany, and therefore the world, played in the actions of the Bolsheviks.
Lenin had said that Russia was doomed if the German's did have revolution. It was this revolution that was always in the back of Lenin and the Bolsheviks minds when it came to decisions -- (Soon, we will be pulled out of this mess by a proletariat who has overthrew the bourgeoisie in the advanced nations -- no more appeasing the peasantry, no more isolation, the ability to rapidly expand industry).
Underdeveloped Capital as a threat:
Too lazy....Maybe I'll fill it in tomorrow...you get the point...
Fair enough, though I never claimed the revolution could have been exported at the end of a bayonet, I do see your point. But wouldn't this mean that the Bolsheviks were doomed from the start, and that a different model would be needed to help ignite international revolution, rather than just one national revolution in Russia? Also, if it was modeled after the SPD, and the success of the revolution ultimately laid in German workers' hands, why are we even looking to the Bolsheviks, shouldn't the SPD (pre WWI) be of more value to us?
To say that I'm skeptical of Lih's attempts to portray the Bolsheviks as a carbon copy of the pre-war SPD would be an understatement. Perhaps it is true that Lenin's dream was to turn the Bolsheviks into the SPD, but I'm not sure how much evidence there is that he actually succeeded.
I'm only about sixty pages into Lenin Rediscovered but I am making it a point to take it with a grain of salt as I have been told that he tactically leaves out information.
You're going about this all wrong. The bolsheviks never wanted to be a national organization (all-russia would be the proper term, since there were so many nationalities in Russia).
The betrayal of the 2nd international left them isolated, and they had to build forward more or less alone. The Zimmerwald internationalists were their closest co-thinkers, but they were also isolated, and furthermore confused. Many of them would capitulate in the coming years
Then there are the real left internationally, people like Rosa and Karl in Germany, who agreed with the bolsheviks politically and broke with the opportunists eventually. Unfortunately, no one understood Lenin's method until it was too late. Rosa only began building a cohesive organization around the time she broke from the social democrats, after years of arguing against the need for one. Whereas Lenin had gathered a certain group around him far before the official break with the opportunists. And far before the revolution, more than a decade of preparing the cadres politically.
Rosa went into the german revolution with a group of young energetic communists who had zero experience and had only just broken with opportunism. She was outweighed by the ultraleft mood that gripped her youthful rank and file, and forced into an insurrection she believed was premature and a mistake. She died for that mistake, and so did the german revolution.
The problem was not that the bolsheviks "failed to export". The problem was that they were only able to build a new international after the revolution. Not enough countries had a bolshevik party.
Today, the task is to build an international with deep roots across the world, using the methods of the bolsheviks.
That is the only way to ensure the revolution spreads internationally.
Sorry will try to reply to some points.
While I don't quite agree with the force with which the author of the article in the first point makes his point, I think there is value in taking a step back and looking at the implications for today's working class.
To me, it's about relevance. Not relevance in the sense that discussions and understandings of Leninism has no role to play - indeed, it would be churlish to sweep this important element of revolutionary history under the rug. But relevance in the sense of how the modern working class identifies with this discussion. A discussion about such aspects of socialist history makes for fascinating reading for the likes of us, but the regular working class person is likely more concerned with putting food on the table, job security, being robbed of entitlements while bankers get paid public money in bailouts, LGBT rights, racism to name a few. In the face of the failure of capitalism and the increasing squeezing of the working class, it is the role of the revolutionary left to demonstrate the relevance of the left to the working class. This is even more imperative in the face of the rise of reactionary ideologies such as Golden Dawn. Understanding socialist theory and history is important if we're to have a basis on which to move forwards, but it's important not to get too hung up on the history of the Bolsheviks if the left is to maintain focus on the challenges of today.
As for the critique of the Leninist democratic-centralist party model, this is nothing new but the problems within the SWP right now suggest a complete breakdown of any democracy within the party. It is possibly not unreasonable to use this as grounds for a critique of democratic-centralism, but a potential creep towards oligarchy is hardly a problem exclusive to this party system.
Last edited by Left Voice; 21st February 2013 at 06:28.
Lih has made no such attempts at all and no one claims that he has, except for left-wing sectarians.
Spot on. To say that Lih attempts to make the Bolsheviks out to be exactly like, or a 'carbon copy' as Ostrinski says, of the German SPD, is simply ignorance or intellectual dishonesty. The point is that the Bolsheviks weren't attempting to create a party of the 'new type,' as it goes in the Lenin myth, but rather were continuing on the organizational structures of the 2nd international, albeit adapted to Russia's conditions.
That's the comradely and strategic point that many posters here are having difficulties accepting.
Anyway, as a note for you, Ostrinski, and others: the "Bolshevism" of the first four Congresses of the Comintern is organizationally irrelevant to workers today, even when Lenin tries to stress parts of the SPD model (because it's now in a corrupted form). Even Old Bolshevism is organizationally irrelevant to proletarian demographic majorities. There's only one institutional model viable enough to adapt to modern circumstances.
"A new centrist project does not have to repeat these mistakes. Nobody in this topic is advocating a carbon copy of the Second International (which again was only partly centrist)." (Tjis, class-struggle anarchist)
"A centrist strategy is based on patience, and building a movement or party or party-movement through deploying various instruments, which I think should include: workplace organising, housing struggles [...] and social services [...] and a range of other activities such as sports and culture. These are recruitment and retention tools that allow for a platform for political education." (Tim Cornelis, left-communist)
dammit ismail! get in here and defend the gains of socialism against the revisionist slander!
"Darwin did not know what a bitter satire he wrote on mankind ... when he showed that free competition, the struggle for existence, which the economists celebrate as the highest historical achievement, is the normal state of the animal kingdom." Engels
Left: 8.99, Libertarian: 5.84
What remains relevant about Leninism is the need to A. arouse the mass political consciousness in the proletariat insofar as they realize that they have interests of their own part from capitalism on the basis of a collectivized system of property with the proletariat democratically planning the means of production; i.e. the dictatorship of the proletariat and B. The need to do so on the platform of a MASS POLITICAL MOVEMENT of the proletariat as a class in alliance with the petty bourgeoisie ... I believe that in this day and age this is done primarily by waging the Gramscian 'war of position' - keep agitating and organizing among the proletarians - keep educating both the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie.
"If conquest constituted a natural right on the part of the few, the many have only to gather sufficient strength in order to acquire the natural right of reconquering what has been taken from them." The Nationalisation of the Land Karl Marx
"To belittle the socialist ideology in anyway, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology." What Is To Be Done? V.I. Lenin
This point is made repeatedly in the course of this discussion:
to the point where I thought I'd research it. What I found was that in 1914, while Germany may indeed have been one of the most advanced industrial societies of its time, 35% of its population was still engaged in agriculture.
For perspective (and this took a surprising amount of time to find), an example of a contemporary society where 35% of the workforce is in agriculture is the Philippines.
