Re: Summing Up(Lenin on ultraleftism)

[Dayne Goodwin <dayneg@xxxxxxxx>]

It's been a while since i last read Lenin's "Left-Wing Communism: An
Infantile Disorder."  It might be a good project for me, and everyone
else, to read it again.
        I think you are putting a misleading twist on it's central
message, Carroll. I hope you're not consciously doing that just to try to
score a point in an argument.
        
        As I recall, Lenin's primary concern and main criticism of the
ultralefts was that they insisted on their revolutionary purity and
refused to join the labor unions which enrolled the bulk of the organized
working class and refused to engage in "bourgeois politics" and run
revolutionary socialist campaigns for public office.  In other words, the
infantile leftists weren't willing to do the work to take revolutionary
socialism to the masses of working people.  The ultralefts' perspective
was to engage in "pure" revolutionary political gestures, postures,
rhetoric and theater - "look how revolutionary we are!" - and surely the
workers would come running to join the revolution.

        I think the fundamental issue is whether your political activity
is aimed at educating, agitating, uniting and mobilizing the working
class.  Reformist politics are aimed at the capitalist class and their
government - trying to persuade the capitalists to implement 'progressive'
policies, supporting the most liberal capitalist politicians, or even
running the government for the capitalists.
        Ultraleft politics are *also* aimed at the capitalist class and
their government - let *us* go fight those bastards!  I'm ready to be a
revolutionary fighter/hero/martyr.  The black bloc "anarchists" of today
are just one variant/manifestation of ultraleft politics.
        Revolutionary politics are aimed at the working class - what
tactics will be most effective in educating, agitating, uniting and
mobilizing the working class in struggle for workers needs and interests,
i.e. ultimately to make a socialist revolution.
        Dayne
        - - - - - -

On Sun, 29 Jul 2001, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> ermadog@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > They are a classic manifestation of the Infantile Disorder.
> >
>
> Let's be accurate. Lenin did not write about anarchists in _Left-Wing
> Communism, An Infantile Disoreder_, the wrote about COMMUNISTS, he
> praised the people he was attacking, saying that they just hadn't
> matured but would be good communists. And the main thing he criticized
> int hese left-wing communists was their unwillingness to work with
> non-communist groups. You and Lou fit his model of left-wing communism
> more closely than do the "anarchists," insofar as they don't claim to be
> communists of any sort.
>
> They wer "left opportunist" in that they were too fearful of their
> communism being contaminated by bourgeois contact of any sort. They
> thought they had to keep pure. Who has in this thread been arguing that
> communists should be kept pure from contact with non-communist radicals?
> Not Mac.
>
> Carrol
>