RE: [Marxism] Fatal Flaw of Socialism

["Jack Cade" <jack.cade@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Doug Smiley:
        I'm reading "Lenin" by Robert Service and it's quite interesting and
very detailed. Lenin was an amazingly gifted human being who felt that his
view of Marxism was the only view that could work.

Jack C:
        This is not true and I would not take Service's word for it anyway.
People like him make money writing these kinds of books. Sometimes they are
amazingly ignorant. Anyone sympathetic to or interested in developing
Marxist theory is going to find it hard to find a publisher and audience.

Doug Smiley:
        Why did Lenin put so much faith in the socialist revolution that
never happened in Europe? Was he really this complacent towards the European
working class? Was this the fatal flaw of socialism in the USSR?

Jack C:
        There was arguably a potential or actual revolutionary situation in
some European countries during and just after the First World War. In
Germany, in particular, revolution was expected in many quarters. There were
short lived soviet republics in Bavaria and Hungary. The balance of forces
meant they were crushed. But a revolutionary situation is not going to last
forever--a couple of years and the situation could be very different.
        The Comintern organised a fiasco in Germany in October 1923. Ernst
Thaelmann attacked a police station in Hamburg with arms brought in to the
docks. Radek was in Berlin to organise it. It was the failure of this
attempt that led Kuusinen to believe that revolution from within a working
class was no longer possible and that the probability for the future was of
spreading socialism through military conquest. According to his wife Aino,
in her book 'Before and after Stalin' he convinced Stalin of this view by
1934.
        The 'Zinoviev Letter' forgery devised by right-wing journalists on
the Daily Mail to counter the British Labour Party in the General Election
that year, led Chicherin, the Soviet Foreign Minister to demand that the
Comintern cease illegal work and transfer espionage to the 4th Dept. of the
Red Army. For Stalin preservation of the USSR, rather than world revolution,
became his paramount concern.
        Comintern activity in fostering the development of revolutionary
forces in the West, and especially in the USA, was largely unproductive. The
belief seemed to be that capitalism was on the verge of its 'final crisis'
and that organisation would ensure success when the collapse came, which it
never did.

Doug Smiley:
Finally, Lenin was upset when the German Social-Democratic Party voted to
give war credits to
their government during the "Great War". He felt betrayed by the German
socialists after the
International Congress adopted an anti-war policy.

Jack C:
        The vitality and potential of the German SDP was overrated by
virtually everyone in the Second International. It claimed a pre-eminent
position by virtue of its history, size and leading theorists like Karl
Kautsky. Its betrayal was a severe and unexpected blow.

Doug Smiley:
Can socialism really work if the working classes keep rallying to
nationalism during times of their country's national security?

Jack C:
        Does it? The popular response during the Iraq war and even now
suggests that the days of that kind of problem are over.

Doug Smiley:
It seems this cycle of progressive socialism and then imperialism is
neverending which may be the fatal flaw of civilization. Lenin believed that
socialism was the final stage after capitalism had collapsed but it seems we
are stuck in the endless cycle of capitaist greed and war. Socialism, in my
opinion, can only work if the working classes around the world are organized
and work in unity to bring about real change.

Jack C:
        If things look hopeless and doomed to recycling the same old
mistakes and flaws then think how awful it must have seemed to Lenin back in
1916-17. He actually said that he would not live to see revolution. We need
to learn lessons from the past, escape the clutches of Stalinism and
Trotskyism, and work positively with what we have in today's situation.



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