Re: [CrashList] Leninism

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> farmelantj@xxxxxxxx 01/11/01 06:12PM >>>


On Thu, 11 Jan 2001 09:26:45 -0500 Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
>

Lenin, Plekhanov, Kautsky, and the other Social Democrats were
arguably simply reiterating Marx's own position on the development
of socialist consciousness.  Didn't Marx in the Communist
Manifesto emphasize the importance of defections of sections
of the intellectuals from the bourgeoisie to the side of
the proletariat as being an important factor in the development
of proletarian class consciousness?  As I recall this was one
issue that set him apart from anarchists like Bakunin who
preferred to emphasize spontaneity to the exclusion of almost
everything else.

Jim F.

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CB: Not to mention that Marx and Engels were a couple of main examples of intellectuals from the bourgeoisie who went over to the proletariat. And why should the proletariat be listening to any of the people in the debates on this issue if what Lenin said wasn't true. What exactly was or is the role of any of them or anybody on these lists in the proletarian struggle if not in this regard ?

In saying what he did about intellectuals bringing socialist consciousness to the working masses, Lenin did not claim to be stating anything but the obvious, and he didn't claim to originate the idea. In this specific context what was radical relative to his antagonists in _What is to be done ?_ was his proposal that the workers should be in the party and be involved in world and national and city politics beyond the parochial politics of their immediate plant or workplace, that the party should not consist only of the bourgeois intellectuals who came over to the side of the proletariat, that it was in the Party that the intellectuals imparted to the workers in the party whatever knowledge they had of history , economics, sociology, engineering, biology, medicine, law, philosophy to workers especially within party institutions ( which in Russia at that time would be "underground" , night classes, secret classes, announcing one subject to the boss and teaching _Capital_ in the class itself, as Krupskaya did with Lenin and describes, etc.). 

Lenin's main point was that workers should be political activists. His reference to intellectuals imparting class consciousness was almost a concession to his opponents in the debate represented in WITBD.

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Rob says:
 I also don't really know what stuff
like "Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound
scientific knowledge" might be construed to mean in practice (personally,

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CB: Well, at one level it means taking Marx and Lenin seriously when they claim that Marxism is science, in the sense that physics, biology, geology, jurisprudence etc. take a lot of study and thought, reading, writing, calculating, experimentation, practice.   Engels specfically says somewhere that Marxism takes study.

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Rob:
It certainly has the
potential to ignore constituencies, narrow debate, antagonise friends,
marginalise issues, criminalise dissentors, and, oh, mebbe dry up into a
static one-sided bureaucratic terror ...

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CB: Why do you say profound scientific knowledge has a tendency to become bureaucratic or terroristic ?  

Lenin is just coming right out, being frank and saying he believes that Marxism is profound scientific knowledge. You , I think, tend to think this is immodest or whatever, and you wouldn't quite grant Marxism that status. But if it is profound scientific knowledge, that aspect of it does not have any special affinity for bureaucracy or terror.

Marxists consider Marxism a science like others and therefore are disciplined in their adherence to its basic principles. It is a discipline, like other sciences. 

Skeptics of Marxism try to make a connection between this self-discipline and the "rigidity" of bureaucrats, but this is a sort of circular argument. It ignores that scientists are also critical thinkers, and that Lenin intends that the critical thinking of science is included in Marxism like other sciences.

The anti-democratic bureaucracy and illegal terror of the Soviet Union were not evidence of or connected to the profound scientific knowledge of which Lenin speaks. By the way, profound scientific knowledge did teach that terror would have to be used in defending against, displacing and suppressing the bourgeoisie and old ruling classes.  This was confirmed by the fierce terror unleashed against the revolution by the counterrevolution. Absolute pacificism is not the conclusion of profound scientific knowledge about the bourgeoisie, social revolution, the counterrevolution,  socialist conscioiusness , etc.