File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1997/marxism-general.9707, message 150


Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 00:51:16 +0100
From: Jim <jim-AT-cag1.demon.co.uk>
Subject: M-G: Re: M-I: Re: On the April theses and Trotsky


Comrades who bother to read the remarks fromHugh below will immediately
notice two things:

1. Hugh cannot answer my point

2. Hugh wants to insult me in order to provoke me into an over the top
reply.

1: This shows he has no position to defend,only pathetic Trotskyist
manoeuvreing

2: He will not succeed on tisscore. i am a disciplined communist, and
will not be provoked.

As before, I await you reply to my substantial question regarding Lenin
and the theory of Permanent Revolution

For communism
Jim Hillier
member of the Communist Action Group and acting moderator of the
Leninlist [leninlist-AT-cag1.demon.co.uk]



In message <l03020915aff0df7e8493-AT-[130.244.180.34]>, Hugh Rodwell <m-
14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se> writes
>The only good thing about Jim H's last post is its brevity.
>
>He has two points:
>
>1) >Why, if Lenin came over to the theory of Permanent Revolution, did he
>>never write a single line saying just that? Why did he make no verbal
>>admission either, outside of the alleged exchange with the Trotskyist
>>Joffe?
>
>This issue was never an issue as such between Lenin and Trotsky in the
>run-up to October or in the first few years of running the Soviet workers'
>state. The huge ideological watershed of Permanent Revolution vs Socialism
>in One Country and the Two-Stage Theory was a retroactive invention of the
>Stalinists at the time of Lenin's death and following it.
>
>To use Jim's method: if this issue is so incredibly important as between
>Lenin and Trotsky, how come Lenin, flattered shamelessly by Jim and his
>cronies for X-ray insight etc, never made anything of it himself while he
>was alive? Serving merely (and most conveniently) as Divine Inspiration to
>the Top Teacher of the Toilers after his death. The reason is that there
>was nothing to make of it. There was no substantive disagreement between
>Lenin and Trotsky on the question of proletarian vs peasant power or
>bourgeois-democratic vs proletarian state from the early days of WW1. It's
>up to Jim to give us chapter and verse on Lenin's fight against Trotsky
>over the erroneous, ultra-left theory of the Permanent Revolution from 1917
>to 1924. He won't, because he can't. No warnings, no asides, no private
>remarks, no letters, no speeches, no articles, no books, no nothing.
>
>But perhaps Jim can provide evidence of the Two-Stage Theory or the
>democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry (not to mention
>Socialism in One Country) in The State and Revolution???
>
>
>Jim's second point, much worse, is the following:
>
>>The April Theses do not mark a doctrinal shift, but are rather an
>>evaluation of the stage of the revolution, *after* February, in which
>>the main task had become the preparation for the next stage of the
>>revolution. Throughout the April Theses, the idea of two stages remains.
>>At no time does he go over to the "hopelessly leftist" position of the
>>permanentists.
>
>This is just wrong. There is no way a few weeks of a Tsar-free regime could
>have matured Russia through the bourgeois-democratic stage except in the
>infinitely capacious and arbitrary dimensional dream-world of Stalinism.
>Both Lenin and Trotsky were painfully aware that the bourgeois-democratic
>tasks of the proletarian revolution in Russia could only be solved after
>the working class had taken power. (See Lenin in The Proletarian Revolution
>and the Renegade Kautsky, and Trotksy in Terrorism and  Communism -- both,
>in passing, warmly recommended in relation to current events in Ulster and
>the Basque country.) Lenin and Trotsky were fully aware of the continued
>existence of bourgeois-democratic tasks in the world of imperialism,
>including after a victorious proletarian revolution as I have just pointed
>out, but they never viewed them in the static metaphysical manner of
>Stalinist Stage theory.
>
>Trotsky writes of the democratic dictatorship in his book The Permanent
>Revolution (in the chapter ""Was the democratic dictatorship realized?". He
>writes that the Bolshevik slogan was realized "*not before, but after
>October*" (T's emphasis). He writes a couple of pages later: " ... the
>agrarian question, which constituted the basis of the bourgeois revolution,
>could not be solved under the rule of the bourgeoisie. The dictatorship of
>the proletariat appeared on the scene not *after* the completion of the
>agrarian democratic revolution but as the necessary *prerequisite* for its
>accomplishment." (T's emphasis)
>
>Again Jim shoots his own balls off with his indirect method. If Lenin's
>approach in the April theses is so praiseworthy in 1917 after a couple of
>weeks of a bourgeois-democratic regime, why has nothing like it ever been
>attempted or allowed by Stalinist parties or Stalinist-influenced movements
>in subsequent bourgeois-democratic overturns??? I'll just mention Iran and
>Nicaragua in 1979, and South Africa in the very recent past to give an idea
>of the opportunities missed.
>
>I don't recall Jim or any other Stalinist so much as raising a peep about
>the April Theses in relation to South Africa. Only vile toadying to the
>counter-revolutionary class collaborationist sell-out line of the ANC.
>
>
>>For communism
>>Jim H
>
>Big joke.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Hugh
>
>
>
>
>     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

-- 
Jim


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