File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9801, message 255


Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 13:31:16 -0800
From: Mark Jones <Jones_M-AT-netcomuk.co.uk>
Subject: M-I: "Godena Thought" on Lenin


It is a nice sunny globally-warmed winter's day so I'm taking the cat for 
a walk in a minute.

A minute is long enough to encapsulate Thoughts in askerisks:

Hitler's rise to power was *NOT* a result of the existence of the Soviet Union.

The October Rising was *NOT* a minority affair led by putschists.

Dimitrov did *NOT* argue such a thing.

The word "fundament" *is* a synonym of "bottom".

Lenin did *NOT* seek personal power.

*All* politicians do *NOT*  lie, double-deal and worse.

Hope that isn't too lumpen gangsterish. I am happy to seriously debate the issues
if the moderator first proscribes asterisks.

Sororally,
Asterix the Gaul



Louis R Godena wrote:

> You write:
>
> >I think Pipes and Carr are worlds apart, even though there opinions may
> >converge
> >on the question of Trotsky or Buhkarin.  Carr was a serious scholar,
> >about the
> >best that the bourgeoisie can produce.  Pipes is an ideologue, who's
> >work is
> >much cherished by the most rabid reactionaries; Carr is out of print,
> >probably
> >because he's a bit too sympathetic.
>
> Well, Carr is not out of print, though you have to go to Macmillan (London)
> to get his magisterial *History of Soviet Russia*.  There is another
> difference.  Carr always wrote for commercial publishers; his work depended
> on widespread public acceptance to remain in print.  Practically everything
> Pipes has written has come to us through the agency of a university press,
> the standards of which do not rest on strong commercial sales.
>
> As for their similarities, I've already given you a number of citations.
> Have you read Pipes?
>
> >This is really wrong: Nazism justified itself as defending Western
> >civilization
> >against the Communist, asiatic horde, and here you're saying they had a
> >point.
> >Fascism was stongest in Italy and Germany because those countries had
> >experienced
> >powerful revolutionary waves that nearly toppled the old order.  The
> >roots of the
> >Nazis where in the freikorps, who fought German communists long before
> >they fought
> >Russian ones.  Look, I *know* you're not anit-Lenin or anti-Communist,
> >but sometimes
> >you say things that clearly converge with reaction; it seems to be more
> >deliberately
> >provocative than iconoclastic.
>
> Agreed.  This is exactly what I'm saying.  The ferocious character of the
> Nazi holocaust against the Jews, the working class and the Communists may
> not have directly stemmed from capital's fear of the Soviet Union, but the
> very fact that they were able to take power certainly does.  Where is the
> problem?   I follow Dimitrov very closely on this.
>
> >You say over and over that Lenin "lusted for power".  People like Lenin
> >and Mao
> >knew that political power was fundament, everything was geared towards
> >it's
> >conquest.  The bourgeoisie always try to paint this as "see, they're
> >just like
> >us, they crave power for it's own sake", distorting the fundmental
> >difference of
> >power for the class vs. personal power.  I think you blur the lines here
> >a lot.
>
> I said (echoing, again both Carr and Pipes), "Lenin wanted power, the others
> didn't", just as I have said that, today "Yelstin and international capital
> want power in Russia, and the Communists don't.  The latter simply want to
> share in the spoils and enjoy their bygone privileges".  Lenin *did* lust
> for power, but not for himself, he wanted to seize control on behalf of the
> proletariat (however one defines "proletariat").  This to me is incontestable.
>
> >You've also said elsewhere that the Bolsheviks didn't have working class
> >support,
> >that they launched a coup.  This clearly converges with reaction. 1)
> >they were
> >able to win majority votes in the Soviets (read your Carr!) by sticking
> >to their
> >principles and exposing their rivals among the Mensheviks, Anarchists,
> >etc.
>
> I did read Carr, notably the very essay I quoted from the Pipes' volume. I
> suggest, instead, that you read it.
>
> >Had it only been a coup, they would have been unable to hold power in
> >the face
> >of opposition both by the reactionaries and the people.  Over the course
> >of the
> >civil war they were able to win over large sections of the poor
> >peasantry which
> >they didn't have before, to say nothing of mobilizing large sections of
> >the
> >working class to fight the war.  Anarchists always bring up Krondstat to
> >prove that the Bolsheviks betrayed the revolution; we must understand
> >there
> >deep contradictions within the class, but to go to the extreme position
> >that
> >the Bolsheviks had no working class support is both ahistorical and
> >liquidates
> >the whole notion of the party of the working class.  I think you are too
> >influenced by your own perceptions of what the U.S. Left is today.
>
> I have never brought up the issue of Krondstat, on which you and I pretty
> much agree.  This has nothing to do with my labeling the October revolution
> with what it was, essentially a *coup d'etat* by a tiny elite of determined
> revolutionaries.  Due to the anemic nature of its opposition, the coup did
> not need mass support to succeed, though the Bolsheviks (as you point out)
> *did* later amass considerable support in the countryside, as well as among
> selected sectors of the working class. But that is unrelated to what we are
> speaking about here.
>
> >I'm too uneducated to know what "pecululation" means, but deception and
> >double-dealing?
> >Marx, Lenin, etc. NEVER where deceptive about what they wanted -- look
> >at what Marx
> >said in the Manifesto. Social dems. and revisionist who claim to want
> >socialism
> >but then betray the class -- they apply deception and double dealing.
> >Perhaps you
> >meant Lenin was willing to deceive and double-deal with the
> >reactionaries -- you
> >should make this clear.  And even then the Bolsheviks make honest
> >treaties with
> >the reactionaries.  One of the things that should distinguish the
> >communist from
> >the opportunist is precisely on the question of honesty and
> >double-dealing.
>
> You're beginning to sound like my aunt Agnes when she discovered that Jesus
> may have had sex.  *All* politicians lie, double-deal and worse.  It is the
> nature of the system in which they move.  Your scenario of certain men
> standing above history possessing only the purest of motives, honest and
> self-abnegating at all times, is simply too silly to waste powder and shot
> on.  Yours is a coloring book version of what motivates historical actors.
> For me, the issue is not the "honest" or "dishonest" character of an act or
> personality; it is the nature of the change being sought and resisted.  As I
> wrote last year to Adolfo; "whatever advances the destruction of the
> bourgeoisie and the cause of communism, is moral, whatever retards them is
> immoral."
>
> >Fine.  Just don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.  The reason I'm
> >going
> >on about this is that I think you've shown some bad judgement in your
> >posts: you've
> >been charged with being anti-Semetic and now anti-Communist.  I know you
> >are not
> >those things, but the way you word things you create doubt and undermine
> >your
> >credibility as moderator.  It's not that you should pander after []
> >(who in my opinion is about as "Marxist" as any other penny-a-dance
> >Trot), but
> >that you should aim a little better before you shoot.
>
> I reject completely the charge that anything I've ever written on this list
> is anti-Semitic, or, for that matter, that I am anti-Communist in any
> meaningful sense.  I do stand four-square against the lumpen gangsterism of
> the "vanguard" groups and those among their number, past and present, who
> persist in behaving in their old ways.   This list, while I am moderator,
> will never succumb to the Thought Police, of whatever stripe and carrying
> whatever credentials.
>
> Louis G
>
>      --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---



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