From: dr.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz
Date: Wed, 25 Dec 1996 11:41:19 +0000
Subject: M-G: In defence of Marxism.


As usual Louis P. asks lots of questions but does not come up with 
adequate answers.  Picking up on a common thread in the M-I  list while 
Ive been on it, I'll put the Bolshie case against the Menshies.

I share Louis opposition to the market socialists,  who are in 
retreat from the failure of the "experiment".  Louis makes a good 
point when he says that we have to find marxist explanations for what 
went wrong in the USSR. There are several non-marxist traditions 
which need to be isolated and confronted. The Anarchists are one; the 
state capitalists are one;  the mensheviks are a third. As  cross-cousins 
they are related in their hostility to Bolshevism.  

Against these currents I would put the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks were 
those who understood the importance of uniting theory and practice in 
the class struggle.  How can you apply the dialectical method unless you 
are part of a Bolshevik party?  How can you test theory in practice and 
correct your programme unless you operate as a democratic centralist 
organisation?  Anything else is petty-bourgeois self-indulgence where 
everyone does their "own thing" and the result is organisation degeneration
into bureaucratic centralism around ideological gurus. 

Lenin and Trotsky were the outstanding examples of Bolsheviks. 
They  had a good grasp of Marxist dialectics which they applied to 
Russia  by developing Marx's analysis of capitalism as a world system - 
imperialism. For them  the "truth is concrete" . Russia was a backward
 semi-colony; was the `weakest link' where the working class could make 
a socialist revolution, but could not carry it through without the support 
of the European revolution. 
[ If this list has proved anything against people like Karl,  Leninism is 
not voluntarism, but revolutionary marxism at the head of the working
class and poor peasantry. 1917 shows that Lenin tested and changed his 
theory according to the developing struggle; that major divisions existed 
in the Bolsheviks about tactics.] 

Trotsky did not understand the significance of the vanguard party 
until 1917. This changed in 1917 when Trotsky took on the task of 
leading the Revolution.  1917 was therefore not an `experiment' at 
all but the product of Bolshevik leadership under conditions which 
were fully grasped theoretically and practically. The "weakest link" gave
but the rest of the chain stayed firm. Why?

As I understand it,  it was not the lack  of objective conditions. 
Imperialism was `rotten ripe' for revolution. Rather it  was a failure of 
leadership which has to be charged home to the petty bourgeois marxism 
prevalent in the European parties - in a word -  Menshevism.
Mensheviks and others who pour scorn on the Bolshevik revolution are 
in reality reponsible for its bureaucratisation, not the demise of 
the working class in Russia as Louis, and Tony Cliff argue. How many 
is enough workers?. In the Bolsheviks view there were sufficient 
workers and poor peasants to make a revolution, but insufficient to 
make "socialism in one country".  The insurrection was always going 
to be a "holding operation" until the rest of the world caught up.  
Lenin's last article "Better Fewer but Better" makes this clear.
 
Mensheviks were against the Bolshevik revolution - the closet Mensheviks Stalin, 
Zinoviev and Karmenev even conspired to prevent the insurrection - 
but failed to stop it.  They truly believed that a bourgeois stage 
was necessary to prepare the pre-conditions for socialism in Russia.
But they did succeed in preventing  revolutions in Europe and in Asia. 
They did so because they were in the leadership of the communist 
parties along with ultlralefts, and the European revolution was 
sacrificed for want of a Bolshevik leadership in Germany after 1918 
that could unite theory and practice and make a revolution.  

Once the European revolution had failed, the Mensheviks drew the usual 
conclusion - they did not blame themselves. They blamed the workers 
who were not ready yet because the objective pre-conditions were not complete. 
The whole of  Western Marxism from Bernstein onwards is one gigantic attack 
on the working class as backward, politically and ideologically, unready for 
revolution until the petty bourgeois leadership decides `history' is ripe.  
The mensheviks also gained power in Russia as the Stalinist bureauracy. 
The stalinists are mensheviks. They immediately reverted to a stage theory 
of world revolution, where semi-colonies must go through a national/democratic 
revolution before moving on to a socialist one.  Thus the prestige of the 
Bolshevik revolution for the worlds workers got dragged in the mud of 
this stage theory which required workers and peasants to form 
political alliances with their class enemy and hand over their 
weapons to the likes of  Chiang Kai Shek or today,  Nelson Mandela.
This stageism also brought about Hitler's victory over the German 
workers.  Stalin didnt fight Hitler, as recent postings to the list 
show, but believed that the victory of fascism would automatically 
result in the victory of Communism.  Or course the whole murderous 
stage theory was just an ideological prop for Stalin's alliances with 
"friendly" imperialist states to defend "socialism in one country".

There's a lot of hostility to post-war "Trostskyism" on the M-I list. 
Lets not fudge this question. Post-war Trotskyism succumbed to 
the same fatalism as the pre-war Stalinists. This meant abandoning 
the living link between the objective and subjective reality forged 
by the vanguard party, and tailing a whole range of petty bourgeois 
and bourgeois currents. But if post-war Trotskyism collapsed into 
bureaucratic centrism, it is Stalinist/menshevism that must 
be brought to account. Trotsky's attempts to keep the Bolshevik 
current alive had to face the murderous counter-revolution of Stalinists 
who slandered the opposition/Fourth International as bourgeois agents in the 
working class, and eliminated whole generations of revolutionaries.  
Even then,  the Stalinists were forced  to collaborate with the imperialists 
to stop Trotskyist-led revolutions in Greece and Indo-China, to name only 
two striking examples. 
[Check out the Revolutionary History web page for sources on these 
post-war Stalin-aborted revolutions].

If we want a Marxist explanation for the failure of the "experiment", 
then we should take a Bolshevik position against the Mensheviks. We 
cannot bury the past  behind  "non-aggression pacts" such as Rob wants. 
The record of  the Mensheviks is one of counter-revolution. To paraphrase 
Trotsky, those who cannot face up to this, who do not learn the lessons 
of history, cannot defend old conquests, and will not go on to make new ones. 

Dave. 


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