Date: Sat, 7 Feb 1998 13:43:49 +0000
Subject: M-G: Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism




Lenin quote:

What happened to such leaders of the Second International, such highly
erudite Marxist devoted to socialism as Kautsky, Otto Bauer and others
could (and should) serve as a useful lesson. They fully appreciated the
need for flexible tactics; they learned themselves and thought others
Marxist dialectics; but in the application of these dialectics they
committed such a mistake, or proved in practice to be so undialectical,
so incapable of taking into account the rapid changes of forms, and the
rapid acquiring of new content by the old forms, that their fate is not
more enviable than that of Hyhdman, Guesde and Plekhanov. We must see
to it that the same mistake, only the other way around, made by the
"Left" Communists is corrected as soon as possible.

Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism, Peking edition p. 109


Comrades,

I have a query on the above quote. Why does Lenin say that 'their
(Kautsky and Otto Bauer) fate is not more **enviable** than that of
Hyhdman, Guesde and Plekhanov'?  I can see the counterposition between
Kautsky and Otto Baur on the one hand and Hyndman (was Guesde a similar
Dutch political character?) on the other - the latter were ultra-left
sectarians whereas the former, though formally dialecticians, succumbed
to opportunism, but why is Plekhanov, surely formally a dialectician and
an opponent of ultra-leftism, included in the latter category? 

And what is 'the same mistake, though the other way around'? Were not
the ultra-lefts of 1920 (German, Dutch, Italian and British) making the
same mistake, **the same way around**, as Hyndman at least?

Comradely
-- 
Gerry Downing



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