Re: Lenin: immediate socialist revolution is IMPOSSIBLE

[Jorn Andersen <ccc6639@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Carlos:
>    Lenin, who was a genius, was very capable of making mistakes.  That
>    was one of them, together with the support of a provisional
>    government with the bourgeoisie after the fall of the Czar.

For clarification: Lenin had a *theory* of the coming revolution that implied
that it would not be socialist. But he didn't actually support the provisional
government after the fall of the czar. It was the leadership *inside Russia*
(Kamenev, Stalin and the rest) that did. Lenin was exiled at the time.

It is true that this support was taken (incorrectly, I think) as the logical
consequence of the theory that Lenin with the rest of the bolsheviks
had had for 20 years.
It was reality that proved this theory wrong.

>    But ... he noticed that, and corrected with the "April Theses",
>    and paraphrasing Lenin himself "since he understood the question
>    of Permanent Revolution, Lenin became the best Trotskyist that
>    there was".

Yes - Theory should be a guide to action. If a theory proves wrong by real
life then it has to be abandoned.

Just sad the Stalinists failed to learn.

Yours

Jorn Andersen

IS
Denmark

>    P.S.: Trotsky also made mistakes.  One of them: the question of the
>    bolshevik party and the need for a resolute fight against the
>    Menshevik. "Since he understood that -- Lenin wrote -- Trotsky
>    become the best bolshevik" (quoted by memory).

True.

>    Stalin, on the other hand, remained unchanged: he supported the
>    provisional government "insofar ... -- remember?) but then remained
>    quiet until after Lenin's death and revived his revisionism in the
>    form of the "Popular Fronts".

Actually Stalin's later theories of Popular Fronts etc. had nothing to do with
Lenins old and abandoned theory. With all its weaknesses it had one
strength: Lenin and the Bolsheviks insisted that the working class was the
only class that was able to lead the coming revolution.

Stalin's Popular Front (and the rest of it) was never about that - but the 
opposite.

<<application/ms-tnef>>