File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_2001/aut-op-sy.0102, message 187


Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 22:25:52 -0500
From: Neil Fettes <benn-AT-idirect.com>
Subject: AUT: New Intro to Dauve Article



Sorry for not posting this earlier. The following is the Red & Black Notes
introduction (2000) to Gilles Dauve's article "The Renegade Kautsky and His
Disciple Lenin." The whole thing should be up on the long announced long
overdue "Red & Black Notes" web site; due to be uploaded this weekend
(fingers crossed)

Neil 




The collapse of ‘actual existing socialism' in the years 1989-92 has meant
many things to the old left. For the social democratic parties it has meant
the end of their hollow  mouthing of words of opposition to the capitalist
world  order. In past decades the social democratic parties, who long ago
abandoned any presence of a final goal of socialism, spoke of a kinder
gentler capitalism bathed in the language of Keynesianism.  Hereafter social
democrats speak exclusively in the language of neo- liberalism and the
market. This newspeak has taken many forms, be it ‘Blairism' in Britain,
the ‘Third way' in continental Europe  or even in the case of the Canadian
New Democratic Party, the ‘Canadian Way.' Since capitalism no longer
requires Keynesian solutions, it has dispensed with the services of those
who espouse that ideology. Thus it is  comical that while the social
democrats have jettisoned the reform of capitalism in order to preserve
their physical existence, certain Trotskyist ‘revolutionaries' operating
within the shadow of social democracy continue to argue that the party will
disappear unless they adopt ‘socialist' measures. (i.e. retain their
neo-Keynesianism).  

On the other hand a new lease on life has been granted to the  old Leninist
groups: Partly because conditions within the former Soviet bloc have become
so awful that they have actually succeeded in making the former
state-capitalist regimes look appetizing. Partly because many Leninist
groups can now argue that what collapsed in the Soviet union was Stalinism
not communism; even though many of them had argued the Soviet experiment
represented a higher stage of society. 

Pointing to the old Soviet Union, the Trotskyists argue that its collapse
has been a defeat for the workers' movement. This defeat can only be
overcome by rallying to their banner and the revolutionary party which will
lead the workers to victory. What is not acknowledged is the link between
social democracy and Leninism. Both sought, in different ways, to manage the
workers. The ‘workers' movement is reaching the end of a stage whereby the
state was seen as a possible means for creating a new society. For the
social democrats this goal was to be accomplished through a parliament,
although as noted they had long ceased to believe in the promised land.  For
the Leninists through the dictatorship of the proletariat, or in reality the
dictatorship of the Bolshevist party acting in the ‘interests' of the workers. 

Though Marx expected the British working class to create the first mass
workers party , it was the German movement which achieved this task. In the
Social- Democratic Party of German (SPD) there was an almost perfect
division of labour.  After the repeal of the anti- socialist laws in 1890
the party acted  in parliament to secure reforms, while the unions managed
the working class.  Both of these factions were simply incorporated into the
governing body - not to say that the unions and the party were now simply
agents of the bourgeois state, but their primary identification was with the
nation-state. Much is made of the betrayal by the Second International in
1914, which was described by some as an instrument of peacetime, but not of
war. In fact the International did not betray, but followed the logical
conclusion of its identification with the bourgeois state in its respective
members countries.  

Today Karl Kautsky is virtually unknown out side of left-wing circles, but a
century ago he was the authoritative voice of ‘Marxism'  in the European
context. Editor of the SPD's  journal Die  Neue Zeit, Kautsky represented
the tradition of orthodox Marxism. While today Kautsky is virtually unknown
his greatest disciple Lenin still enjoys a fame and renown. Kautsky's views
are mostly known through  the polemics Lenin and Trotsky hurled at him
during the years after the Bolshevik Revolution: Lenin in The Proletarian
Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky and Trotsky in Terrorism and Communism.
Eighty years later the term ‘Kautskyism' occasionally rears its head as a
term of abuse, used in the same way ‘ultra left' is employed: reviled but
seldom understood by those who employ it.   

Yet despite the break, it should be remembered that Lenin was once Kautsky's
most loyal follower. Many of Lenin's early Lenin's defenders argue that
Lenin broke with Kautsky in deed if not in actuality prior to 1914 and his
actions after then serve as proof of the break. Yet while Lenin broke from
Kautsky politically he retained Kautsky's views on many theoretical questions. 

Much of Lenin's  What is to Be Done? is drawn directly  from Kautsky who
also believed that ‘socialist consciousness' would have to be injected into
the working class from outside. As a result Lenin was to be deeply
suspicious of the unbridled spontaneity of  the Soviets of the 1905
revolution.  While Lenin cried "All Power to the Soviets" at times in 1917
it is clear his actions meant "All Power to the Soviets so it may be given
to the Bolshevik Party."  Despite his defenders' rejection of the crude
formulas of What is to Be Done?, Lenin himself never repudiated the book.

A second point made by Lenin's defenders as evidence of Lenin's rejection of
‘Kautskyism.' is State & Revolution, which is  offered as Lenin's
rediscovery of the revolutionary Marxist tradition. While Lenin concedes
that anarchist critics and the  Pannekoek were right  against Kautsky, he
did  not uncritically endorse all of their views.  Lenin may well have
written that under socialism under any cook can govern, but in State &
Revolution he still admitted a fondness for the German postal system and
suggested it might represent a model for socialism organisation. While
organising Russian society on the same structure as the German post office
might have produced some advances, it was certainly not socialism. 

But more than Lenin's fine words in State & Revolution, what were the
actions that followed it?  The ways in which the Bolsheviks undermined,
crushed or co- opted the factory committees, the Soviets and the genuine
organisations of workers' power in Russia have been well documented
elsewhere and need not be recapitulated here. For those who argue the Lenin
of State & Revolution, there is also the Lenin of one-man management, and of
the suppression of factions inside and outside the party, and of Kronstadt.
All in the name of the working class. What Kautsky could not or would not do
with reformist measures, Lenin did with revolutionary ones. 

The article which follows this introduction originally appeared under the
name Jean Barrot, a pen name for Gilles Dauvé. The article "The Renegade
Kautsky and His Disciple Lenin" was written as a preface for a French
Edition of  Kautsky's article "The Three Sources of Marxism: The Historic
Work of Marx." (Spartacus, serie B, no. 78) This edited translation was
first published in English in 1987 by Wildcat (UK) as "Leninism or
Communism."   Kautsky's article was the inspiration for Lenin's article "The
Three Sources and the Three Component Parts of Marxism."  It is hoped that
the  re-publication of Dauvé's  will serve as a small warning to who  seek
to discover a revolutionary theory in Leninism.  

D. E. 8/00 

  
 



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