SDF: Well, first of all, "communism" is going to get nowhere if its defenders are endlessly tied up in the defense of mass murderers like Lenin, whose Third International did more than anything to destroy Communist Parties around the world Andy: That's a bit of a crappy summary of Lenin's contribution don't you think?
1) Do you too succumb to the critics of Lenin who tell us he "ruled with an iron will"? (How many times was Lenin outvoted on the Central committee?)
2) Is the dictatorship of the proletariat legitimate? (ie can you suppress a counter-revolution or are you "revising" Marx?)
3) Did the Bolsheviks make some serious mistakes under no pressure from BOTH the antagonists of WW1? (or did the Bolsheviks make some very serious unforced errors?)
4) Did the Third International destroy any Communist Parties around the world or was Lenin's big mistake that he didn't recognise that the success of the Bolsheviks was the result of the revolutionary class struggle of the Russian Marxists beginning in the late 1890's where they learnt lots of lessons of all types of petty-bourgeois reformism, and he over-estimated how well developed the rest of the revolutionary parties were. It is not Lenin's fault that (eg) the Social Democratic Party of Germany was not steeled against the reformist influences within itself. And if you're referring to China, Lenin on the national question will contradict you there (which Stalin totally ignored)
While I disagree most heartily with the author you replied to, just who is the utopian and who is the Marxist?
SDF: Well, anyway, today the masses are in a trance brought on by excessive exposure to advertising, a trance which will end when capitalism collapses with certainty, i.e. not soon, but possibly within your lifetime. Only then will communists have a dim outside chance of making anything of the ensuing chaos.
Andy: Bloody hell! If we let capitalism collapse, then we're all stuffed! Listen up all you budding anti-capitalists - Socialism (and then Communism) can only exist with socialised production. The ONLY task we have left is to socialise ownership or control of production. If we let capitalism collapse, by definition capitalist production collapses. Even the greatest crimes of Stalin, Hitler and 20th century United States Presidents all put together won't pale in comparison to the mass starvation & mayhem that would occur in the "ensuing chaos".
Maybe you were just being sloppy SDF but for someone like you who knows a bit more than your average "dumbed down", intellectually conceited, "I'm right, you're wrong" village idiot, it's quite inexcusable. The point is we have to overthrow capitalism. You can't reform it (can't reform the law of value), nor can we let it decay until there is chaos.
Social movements come and go in response to the inevitable capitalist crisis - and after a short period, the capitalists have calmed everyone down, jailed the radicals, scapegoated a couple of naughty capitalists and slowly but surely stripped away a few more "taken for granted" priveledges the working class used to enjoy (this has been happening world-wide since the 1970's)
Only a revolutionary party - the kind of party that both Marx AND Lenin (and James P Cannon as well) envisioned - a party where:
* 9/10's of the struggle is against bourgeois pressures within the party
* where objective reality is NOT subordinated to subjective wishes (ie anti-utopian, anti-ultraleft)
* where revolutionary socialist ideas FUSE with the embryonic spontaneous working class upsurges in class struggle (ie anti-sectarian)
* where organisational questions are subordinated to the political program (ie anti-opportunist)
* and where the Marxist revolutionary party leads the working class to victory by marching together with it and not as a separate "vanguard" (ie Leninist)
- Only this type of party will succeed to overthrow capitalism if you agree we cannot let capitalism collapse. If you haven't found one yet, then start one up. What are you waiting for?
Someone once said: "read Lenin again (be careful)" - it's easy to criticise and never be wrong.
Are you against the Bolshevik's (Lenin's if you must) mistakes or the Bolshevik Party? There is NOT an inevitable connection between the two.
Lastly, a great read is Paul Le Blanc's "Lenin and the Revolutionary Party" (beats reading Lenin's Collected Works vols 1 to 50).
Andy.
