From: dr.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 14:22:19 +0000
Subject: M-G: Louis's proletariat.



Lou replies:

Dave is not at all sure what I mean by:

>>Lenin applied the term [proletariat] to the most versatile and 
dynamic of all the classes.        

Then goes on to explain... one more time:

I was of course drawing a distinction between the proletariat 
(defined here as that class of industrial worker poised on the front line of the 
class struggle at the "point of production") as it existed in Lenin's time, 
and the "proletariat" of our own day.    Need I once again point out the 
obvious difference?    Lenin's ideas were formed at the very peak of Western
industrialization and machine-power,  when the proletariat was  growing
exponentially both in numbers and political power,  when virtually 
every public issue from health to transportation was obsessed with the 
salient social fact of this power.    If industrialization was the talisman 
for less advanced countries in Europe and Asia to achieve a status comparable 
with that of Britain or Germany,  the industrial working class and its
development was seen as its indispensable concomitant.     

Today,  we exist in a far different era.    We in the West have  
shifted to a new form of capitalism --to the ephemeral, decentralized world of
technology,  consumerism and the culture industry,  in which the  service,
finance and information industries triumph over traditional  manufacture,
and classical class politics yield ground to a diffuse range  "identity
politics."    The "proletariat" of Lenin's day is in steep and  irreversible
decline,  locked in the throes of epochal change,  in a depthless,
decentered,  ungrounded descent into near oblivion.    It is not,  by 
all accounts,   the leading force in history.     Its historic role has 
been, clearly,  one of reformism,  not revolution.     Can it continue to 
play even that limited role on the world stage? 

And I of course quarrel with your categorical statement that the 
"industrial proletariat" "led" the masses of poor peasants during the October
Revolution.    I am much more congenial to the view of E.H. Carr that 
the "party",  rather than the peasants or the proletariat,  were the main 
actors in 1917.

I do,  however,  share your endorsement of Trotsky's *History of the 
Russian Revolution*.   Unlike most of his followers,  Trotsky is always worth
listening to even when he's wrong.    And he was wrong at fairly  short
intervals. 


Louis gives away all his tricks in one move. First the proletariat 
did not exist in Russia, so therefore the party must have substituted 
for the class. Now it turns out that Lenin is being used to bolster 
Lous' `Western' Marxist conception of the proletariat, [ meaning 
that Lenin should have admitted to substitutionism]  which it turns 
out today is dying on its knees. This leaves only one hope that the 
`non-Western' proletariat which Louis agrees is growing -[ as if the 
`non-Western' proletariat is an afterthought].  Doesnt this suggest 
that the WM model is a bit out of touch?  It certainly does, and 
instead of dragging in Lenin to prop it up, what about looking back 
at what Lenin was really saying about the proletariat in  the Russian 
SEMI-COLONY.  He was saying that its "dynamism" and 
"versatility" was in its ability to push aside the bourgeoisie 
[and the menshevik evolutionary socialists] and  lead ALL 
classes oppressed by capitalist imperialism in an uninterruped/ permanent 
revolution!  Then if you look at "Better Fewer But Better" you find 
that Lenin was already pointing to the struggles in the EAST, rather 
than in  Europe,  coming to the rescure of the revolution. 

But Louis,  I dont trust your politics when it comes to fighting for that 
revolution in the `East', [I assume you wont be fighting for one in 
the `West'] since in one of your other posts on the 
betrayal of the Chinese Revolution, you attempt to excuse Stalinism 
>from blame in the betrayal of the CCP militants to the KMT 
executioners in 1927. Would you not say the theory of the "bloc of four 
classes" propounded in China had the effect of making the CCP 
militarily subordinated to the KMT?  Would you also not say that a 
revolutionary party which puts its military leadership in the hands 
of the bourgeoisie is also "confused"?  Would you not say that 
making Chiang Kai Chek an honourary member of the Comintern - i.e. a 
"friend" of the people,  may have added to that `confusion'  among 
the "comrades"?  The way to get rid of such deadly confusion is build a 
bolshevik-leninist international and  remove the mensheviks from the
 leadership of the working class and all oppressed people East and West

Dave.


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