From: dr.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 20:51:33 +0000
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: The Search for a Western Proletariat: Leninism


> Date:          Tue, 26 Nov 1996 11:45:51 -0500 (EST)
> To:            marxism-international-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU,
>                marxism-international-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
> From:          louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
> Subject:       Re: M-I: Re: The Search for a Western 
Proletariat:Permanent revolution.
> Cc:            dr.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz
> Reply-to:      marxism-international-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU

> Lou Godena writes:
> The responsibility was thus placed on the proletariat to complete the task,
> which the bourgeoisie had failed to perform,  of liquidating feudalism.
> In countries where the proletariat was weak or non-existent,  a new formula
> had to be devised.    Lenin,  in fact,  *did* work out a new scheme under
> which the proletariat was to seize power in conjunction with the peasantry,
> creating a "democratic dictatorship" of workers and peasants.    This became
> the official doctrine of the October revolution,  and was exported quite
> successfully to those countries where the original Marxist conditions for
> the revolutionary siezure of power were absent.    Unfortunately,  the
> national pattern of the *Manifesto*,  far from being universal,  proved
> difficult to extend beyond the narrow limits of the place (western Europe),
> or the time (the age of Cobden) in which it was designed.   But then,
> Marxism was never offered to the world as a static body of doctrine
> (notwithstanding the urgent efforts of people like yourself,  the Parson,
> and Adam Rose),  and Marx himself once confessed that he was no Marxist.
> In fact,  the constant evolution of doctrine in response to changing
> conditions is itself a canon of Marxism.    
> >
This is a nice story Lou, but very intellectually lazy. You correctly 
point to Marx originating the concept of permanent revolution, but 
you fail to show how Lenin applied and developed it concretely in Russia.
 In fact you misunderstand his application of it because you get it wrong.
 To talk of a "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and 
peasantry" as the "official doctrine of the October Revolution" could 
not be more wrong.  You are guilty of running together the pre-April
 theses position of Lenin [not shared by Trotsky whose conception of
 Permanent Revolution went back to 1903, but lets leave that for now] 
and the post-April theses position of the "dictatorship of the proletariat
 and poor peasantry".  
What you reconstruct  in the process is very central to your menshevik reading 
of history - the difference between the proletariat leading a 
bourgeois revolution which is a stage preparatory to socialism, 
 and the proletariat leading a bourgeois revolution which necessarily 
becomes  a socialist revolution i.e. permanent revolution.
In failing to make this distinction you miss what was decisive in the 
Bolsheviks method, not the ability to substitute themselves for the 
proletariat, but to lead the proletariat to a socialist revolution 
and not stopping on the way to  worship an historical schema.. 
Of course you are not unique in this, Stalin, Kamenev, Zinoviev 
and other leading Bolsheviks never really understood the change of 
line and resisted it, some more openly than others. With the rise of 
the bureaucracy and the demise of the left opposition, they could 
default to their menshevik position openly.  You mentioned sometime 
that you  read Trotsky's history of the Russian Revolution. You 
seem to have forgotten everything you read. Have you read the 
documents of the 1923 and 1927 Left Opposition?  Why not read some 
more documents of the real Bolsheviks about their actual struggles 
and not some bourgeois academic reconstruction via the Ivy League 
academy?
In missing this rather important  shift in the Bolsheviks theory 
and practice you accept the menshevik revisionist history  of the Russian 
revolution  a la Carr and Co, and reproduce its formula of "democratic 
dictatorship" which has been the stalinist/menshevik formula for the 
evolutionary, stageist road to socialism in the colonies and 
semi-colonies ever since. 
As I keep pointing out to you Lou your method stinks. You are an 
empiricist, so what changes for you is quantity. You cannot recognise 
quality. Your alibi is that it hasnt happened yet and you are 
pessimistic about it happening at all. 
I think the failure to recognise the shift from "democratic 
dictatorship" to " dictatorship" during 1917 is clear proof of your 
menshevik method.  There are changes and changes Lou. You miss the 
important ones. 
Dave.


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