Subject: Re: M-I: The socialism of Z Magazine From: jschulman-AT-juno.com (Jason A Schulman) Date: Thu, 26 Dec 1996 14:54:08 EST On Thu, 26 Dec 1996 10:35:42 -0500 (EST) Louis N Proyect writes: >Louis: Lenin was not a social scientist like David Edelstein. He was a >revolutionary politician. Every article he wrote and every speech he >made was calculated to mobilize the masses against capitalist rule. That is >why there is so much confusion about the "correctness" of Imperalism-the >Latest Stage of Capitalism. This was not an economics treatise, but an >attempt to provide a theoretical justification for the Zimmerwald >movement. Efforts to turn Lenin into a writer of eternal verities have >been disastrous. Agreed. This is one of the great problems that occurs when analyzing Lenin's writings. The guy never wrote a word, even when discussing the most abstruse philosophical question, which wasn't influenced by political and organizational considerations. Consider his relations with Bogdanov -- when they were in the same political bloc, Lenin declared that their basic theoretical disagreements were "completely irrelevant to the issue of the social revolution." Shortly afterward, when Lenin's tactical coaltion with Bogdanov ended, he devoted the better part of a book to demonstrating that Bogdanov's political heresies were the inevitable result of his metaphysical heresies. The only time Lenin broke >from this pattern was in 1914-15 when he was reading Hegel (the Philsophical Notebooks). > >There is no sense, however, in trying to understand the dictatorship >that replaced Soviet democracy--such as it was--on the basis of problematic >formulations in State and Revolution. This search for "what went >wrong" in the USSR can only be partially understood by the inability of Lenin >and others to anticipate the sort of issues that Jason is pointing to. > >It has much more to do with the complete disappearance of a socialist >working-class when it was most needed. You could have sent Michael >Harrington and David Edelstein and Samuel Farber and whoever back in a >time-machine to 1917 and sat them down with Lenin to point these >things out. Lenin could have slapped his head and cried out "Of course, why >didn't I think of that..." > >The problem is that no amount of textual redaction could have made up >for the brutal facts of class relations: > >1) The disappearance of the socialist working-class > >2) The re-emergence of the Czarist bureaucracy within the ranks of the >new Soviet state. (The Czarist insignias were replaced by a >hammer-and-sickle but this was the same social layer nonetheless.) > >3) The growth of a bureaucracy out of the CP apparatus, Stalin's base. > >4) The advent of NEP-men, a new true bourgeoisie. > >5) The development of the Kulaks in the countryside. > >These are phenomena that need the most attention paid to. All of which is true. And, of course, if the German revolution had been successful and continued to spread, there would be no focus on Lenin's problematic formulations, Samuel Farber wouldn't write books like *Before Stalinism*, etc. But this focus may be useful in determining why Lenin & Trotsky made specific decisions in response to the historical factors listed above. What I've always found most disturbing was not the fact that there came to be a one-party state in Russia, but the theoretical justifications that Lenin & Trotsky made for this situation. For example, Trotsky wrote in 1921 that soviet democracy is not a fetish, and that the party can exercise power not only in the name of the working class, but even in exceptional circumstances *against* the will of the majority of the class. (And it took far too long -- until 1936! -- for Trotsky to call for lifting the ban on opposition parties in the USSR.) It is true that neither the theses of the Third International on the dictatorship of the proletariat nor *State and Revolution* contain any explicit mention of a one-party state. But it seems to me that the Bolsheviks were guilty of the same anti-political bias as most early 20th century radicals (everyone from social democrats to DeLeonists to anarchists); under socialism , all government functions are reduced to economic issues, and there is essentially no more need for political parties. Anarchists, of course, never believed in using political parties, and council-communists believed that the parallel existence of both workers' councils and parties would imply that a part of "real political life" would be taking place elsewhere than in the councils. Granted, such flawed ideas don't have much influence over current-day Marxism, so it may be a moot point. -- Jason ______ "At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality." - Che Guevara --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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