[CrashList] Spontaneous struggle

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> cbcox@xxxxxxxxx 01/10/01 12:23PM >>>


Rob Schaap wrote:

> The proposition with which Lenin legitimised the substitution of party for
> proletariat was that a spontaneous mass movement must inevitably be
> bourgeois in character - that it needs a kernel of professional
> revolutionaries to guide it if it is to attain its socialist potential.

This is an utter mishmash, containing too many errors both of
history and of sheer literary construal to be answerable in a
post. I suggest you read Hal Draper, "The Myth of Lenin's 'Concept
of the Party': Or What They Did to _What Is To Be Done?_" in
_Historical Materialism_ 4 (Summer 1999), pp.187-214. (Of
course, if you haven't read WITBD, which seems probable, then
you haven't made any errors of literary construal.

((((((((((((

CB: I believe Lenin says in WITBD , not that the spontaneous mass movement of the workers must inevitabley be bourgeois in character, but that the working class can only obtain trade union consciousness ( not socialist consciousness) through spontaneous struggle.