Date: Wed, 3 Jul 96 08:41:55 GMT
From: Adam Rose <adam-AT-pmel.com>
Subject: Re: Vanguards?



A few points :

i) I agree with Louis' description of the vanguard party required in the
US, although as I have spent many posts arguing, such a vanguard party needs
to absorb in theory and practise many lessons about ultra leftism, centrism,
the united front etc. Reading about the Commintern helps with this, but is not
sufficient - the lessons must be learned and relearned in practise, they
must be translated from the original Russian, so to speak.

ii) By only looking at "What it is to be done" , you get an incomplete 
picture of what Lenin's idea of a vanguard. In 1905, he was arguing that
the masses were to the left of the party, that they were spontaneously
social democratic, that the floodgates of the party should be opened.

iii) You slightly over emphasise the point about the bourgeois democratic
movement, the Zemstvos. He said the Social Democrats should learn to "walk
amongst them" , or some such phrase. He did not say the Social Democrats 
should actually try to build amongst them, although I do believe he DOES
say how useful it would be to recruit a factory inspector.

iv) In "What is to be done" , Lenin puts forward what sort of party he
wanted to arrive at. The point being, the party he wanted to exist didn't 
yet exist. How did he go about constructing a vanguard party ? After all,
such a description can only legitimately be used for the Bolshevik party
>from about 1910 onwards. He got involved in a whole series of polemics,
at the same time as building up a cadre, mainly around the party's paper.
He built an ORGANISATION on a POLITICAL basis. As you have correctly argued,
these polemics were on Russian questions. To Rosa Luxembourg, whose party 
was part of the Russian Social Democratic Party, these disputes seemed 
crazy. But they were a crucial part of the clarification and political
organisation of the cadre which yes, formed the nucleus of the vanguard
party as it was later to become.

                                                       --------------------
v) Well, Louis, stopping whinging at everyone else and GET ON WITH IT THEN.
                                                       --------------------

vi) Well, this is really just to restate (i) and ask you what your answer to
this question is. Leninism is far more than Lenin on the party. I posed
the question once in relation to Bulgaria, and then again in relation to Italy.
How are we to avoid these defeats ?


Adam.



Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK


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