Lenin: a socialist analysis

[Deleted]

A just read an interesting article over at Infoshop (an anarchist website) that I think does a good job debunking Lenin. Here's an excerpt:

Starting with What Is To Be Done? (1902) Lenin said: “the history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness.” Lenin argued that socialist consciousness had to be brought to the working class by professional revolutionaries rather than a parliamentary party, drawn mainly from the petty-bourgeoisie, and organised as a vanguard party. But in 1879 Marx and Engels issued a circular in which they declared the opposite:

“When the International was formed we expressly formulated the battle cry: The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois” (www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1879/09/18.htm).

www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=03/12/25/4202952

Thoughts?

[eat the rich]

i think both things are true:

The emancipation of humanity must be the act of the masses of people themselves. There are no condescending saviors. And emancipation cannot be done merely "in the name of the people."

This is a concept Maoists call "the mass line."

However there is a separate and equally crucial question of where do the masses of people get the understanding, methodology, programs that they need to emancipate themselves. The simple fact of life and history is that the political understandings needed to "conquer the world," seize and wield power for a socialist society, do not and cannot emerge from the trade union struggle.

The understanding of how to form and lead a revolutinary movement, restructure an economy, transform culture and politics and the understanding of how to relate to all the complex riptides and class forces in the revolutionary process -- all that develops through the summation of history, economics and politics, it emerges from outside the sphere of the immediate struggle between worker and his/her boss.

And so the development of real revolutionary class requires a communist party, communist political work, and the larger summation which we call Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

Lenin's point is true. And so is Marx's point.
And they decribe different aspects of a single, dynamic and contradictory reality. And together they shape how communists conduct their political work and help lead political struggle.

[Deleted]

I don't understand this "Mass Line" concept. From what I know of it, it sounds like the workers having influence instead of having control.

I agree on the trade union issue. However, instead of creating this "vanguard" party, is it not better to help organize revolutionary Socialist Industrial Unions (one union for all workers) so that the workers can emancipate themselves?

[Andrei_X]

I'm an ex-Anarcho-Syndicalist turned Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, actually, and I think the key question that brought me back to the Marxist-Leninist current of thought is the idea of "how are we gonna defend this shit after we overthrow these fucks?" I mean, seriously, we will definitely need people's militias and collective organizing by the masses on ALL levels (good non-anarchist examples: the January Storm of 1967 in Shanghai, or the story of the Chinese village of Long Bow in the book Fanshen by William E. Hinton)- but how are we gonna inherit a world that has been fucked up and fucked over by the bourgeois assholes for centuries? Are we gonna expect people's attitudes and ideas to change overnight? Do you think the old order will just give up silently? No!

The problem is, we're gonna inherit a very fucked-up world. We'll need a "general staff" of our class to help bring forth strategy, leadership, and organization into the struggle- that "general staff" is the vanguard party, in this case. If we reject the need for such a party, we face the fact that bourgeois methods/forms of leadership will return and will prevail.

So how do we guarantee that the vanguard party won't become another bourgeois method/form of leadership? Well, firstoff, we must recognize that a party has the deep risk of betraying the masses (a la China today, USSR 1956-1991, Cuba, North Korea) due to the contradictions between leadership and led, as well as the fact that class struggle against the bourgeoisie and bourgeois consciousness continues under socialism. No Marxist-Leninist can deny that (unless they are revisionist). But that doesn't guarantee that the party will become a new ruling class. Struggle against revisionist and counterrevolutionary elements within the Party must be constantly waged, with the masses mobilized and brought forth into this struggle, both Party cadre and the non-Party masses. The PEOPLE must call out these wrongful elements and ideas and mobilize against them, so that the Party can maintain itself on the revolutionary road, and continue to lead the masses until the day that the state can wither away.

In other words, if you don't want a party to sell you short, you're gonna have to become part of the struggle and fight to emancipate yourself, you're gonna have to work with, join with, and join the Party yourself! It's up to YOU.

[Deleted]

Those kinds of concerns have kept me away from Anarcho-Syndicalism. I agree with Daniel De Leon's analysis of the role of a revolutionary Socialist Industrial Union:

Industrial Unionism, free from optical illusions, is clear upon the goal the substitution of the political State with the Industrial Government. Clearness of vision renders Industrial Unionism immune both to the Anarch self-deceit of the “No government!” slogan, together with all the mischief that flows therefrom, and to the politician’s “parliamentary idiocy” of looking to legislation for the overthrow of class rule.

The Industrial Union grasps the principle: “No government, no organization; no organization, no co-operative labor; no co-operative labor, no abundance for all without arduous toil, hence, no freedom." -- Hence, the Industrial Union aims at a democratically centralized government, accompanied by the democratically requisite “local self-rule.”

The Industrial Union grasps the principle of the political State -- central and local authorities disconnected from productive activity; and it grasps the requirement of the government of freedom”the central and local administrative authorities of the productive capabilities of the people.

The Industrial Union hearkens to the command of social evolution to cast the nation, and, with the nation, its government, in a mold different from the mold in which class rule casts nations and existing governments. While class rule casts the nation, and, with the nation, its government, in the mold of territory, Industrial Unionism casts the nation in the mold of useful occupations, and transforms the nation’s government into the representations from these. Accordingly, Industrial Unionism organizes the useful occupations of the land into constituencies of future society.

In performing this all-embracing function, Industrial Unionism, the legitimate offspring of civilization, comes equipped with all the experience of the age.

www.marxists.org/archive/deleon/works/1913/130120.htm

Basically, by organizing Socialist Industrial Unions, you will be building the future government in waiting. Unlike Anarcho-Syndicalist, De Leon believed that both direct-action and political education and action are important and these methods should be used simultaneously.

As was said once before, we all know that if Socialist were starting to gain power by the ballot box, the ruling class would reveal themselves as the dictators they really are. When the movement has reached that point, and the ruling class exposes themselves, the Socialist Industrial Union would already be in place to fight them off.

[Andrei_X]

but is an industrial union in position to seize power?

[Deleted]

The Union would be in position to sieze all the means of production. When the ruling class exposes itself as the dictators that they are, we would have the mandate for revolution and the party would give word to seize the means of production.

[nuttin special]

SonofRage said:

I don't understand this "Mass Line" concept. From what I know of it, it sounds like the workers having influence instead of having control.

this page has a good explanation of maoist mass line:

members.aol.com/TheMassLine/