File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1996/96-11-15.074, message 42


Date: 10 Nov 96 04:02:54 EST
From: neil <74742.1651-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-G: Karl Carlile's "Distortions of Leninism"


dear friends,

True, the Bolsheviks with Lenin made some  horrific blunders
but they also blazed a trail of fabulous working class successes
that were only  mostly drowned out by capitalist counterrevolution 
by the early 1920s.

 But Karl C., in his armchair political quarterbacking  endeavors points 
to some of the major setbacks of the Russian (and world) 
revolution and  lays it all at the feet of Lenin! 

Remember Karl, this was the same Lenin that fought to save the
healthy parts of the 2nd international from its own lawyerism,
craft unionism, nationalism , legalism and pro imperialism 
and militarism which culminated with the anti-Lenin socialists
becoming national socialists  and becoming recruiting sergeants
 for their  respective ruling classes in  the barbarism  of 
capital  in  unleashing WW1, which wiped out 11million mainly
 young workers . It was under the  left-anti imperialist socialists
like Lenin, Luxembourg  & co. t hat  EVEN during the war and ruthless
 repression (whippings to death for the German red sailors at the  Kiel 
naval revolt  in 1917), other acts of bourgeois  white-terror for anti war
militants,
that valourously the real  marxism was restored to the movements
of proletarians , sialors and soldiers and a huge post war 
revolutioary wave  blasted back at the criminal rule of capital
and its "great war" from 1917-20!!
If this was all Lenin (and his associates) helped to build up 
for the masses cause, on this basis alone he would be a working class
giant!!

Yes , the bolsheviks and workers in russia (and elsewhere paid
a huge price for the Party  restoration of bourgeois  like  executive 
governance through the Council of Pepoles Commisars replacing
the mass assemblages of  the Exec. Committee of the All-russian
Congress of soviets which had brought about a Bolshevik 
majority ,and was key to the organized mass of revolutionary
workers and peasants that siezed the power from the bourgeois-
landlord  pro-war reaction regime  in Oct. 1917.
Party set ups of Permanent ministries NOT under rev. Soviet
control really helped drain the ral workers power from the 
Russian revolutionary movement.
But , the actual conditions of the Civil war and then 14 nation
imperialist invasion really drained out the best elements of 
the 1917-18 tidal wave of workers revolution. Workers who paid the 
price in blood to  defeat white terror and imperialists 
invasion armies from the Ukraine to Vladivostok.

In this later speeches and writings of 1921-23, Lenin
seems to realize the effects of the isolated and devastated 
Russia where the workers upsurge has been spent 
and the Bolshevik Party  retains power  but without 
the mass organizations of revolutionary workers that 
existed in 1917-8. Lenin did make huge "retreats" by 1921, 
both in domestic policy -huge state bureaucratic control, NEP,etc.
and in foreign policy (Cominternism) , turning back to building alliances
with reformist  parties, supporting PB nationalists , supporting
illusions in voting, role of legal trade unionism , etc. These
were "retreats" that when not corrected, became routs 
against the workers interests in many countries.

But i think if you look at the overall Lenin balance sheet ,
you see a breathtaking achievements for the cause of 
workers in many lands, but also policies leading to 
 events of tragic proportions, which may or may not have
 been able  to  been turned around at the time of Lenin,
especially given the material conditions and the counter-vailing
forces that had been established by the bourgeois states,
democratic and monarchist, &  fascist  to crush the 
workers efforts to really end the wage slave system of 
plunder and robbery.

Neil
 



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