[Marxism] Re: Lenin's 'democratic dictatorship' slogan

[Ed George <edgeorge@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I take Simon's point (hi Simon) regarding imputing motives to people in
political debate, which indeed can be a diversionary tactic; but, again,
I do think it is necessary to ground this kind of discussion in concrete
and present reality. Historical debates of the
Lenin-said-Trotsky-said-Lenin-said-Trotsky-said type are all rather
pointless unless one has it clear why these questions matter. Our
approach needs to be what can we get out of these experiences, and the
interpretations of their participants, so that we can learn in the
present. This is what makes this all important, for, as Domhnall quite
rightly points out, what we really need to do is take account of people
like Chávez, or Sinn Féin - i.e. make exactly the kind of 'concrete
analysis of concrete circumstances' that he talks about - here and now
in the present. The lessons of historical experiences are crucial in
this respect, and the Russian revolutionary experience is an
extraordinarily important episode - but of course not the only one - in
the pantheon of revolutionary historical experience. But the context
must be what can we learn now in order - as Marxists - to know what to
in the present. Otherwise the debate never breaks out of scholasticism
(which is what it degenerated to in the USFI, especially as reflected
down into the British state section(s)). So it is not the case for me
that we have to regard the interpretations of Lenin and Trotsky as some
kind of gospel - Domhnal's points are well made here; but neither is it
the case that these experiences can have nothing to teach us in the
present either, for that would obviate the necessity of theory in the
first place. Call that dialectical if you will.

With this in mind it occurs to me that what lay behind the political
shifts of the US SWP and the then Australian SWP (now DSP) was not the
desire to junk Trotskyist baggage in order to make themselves more
acceptable to some imagined new political current, but that, once
correctly recognising the significance of the political forces to whom
they wanted to orientate, they *completely* misunderstood the
revolutionary experiences which had made them what they were. In this
sense it is no surprise that the 'Trotskyist' baggage they should have
dropped overboard but didn't (and Louis is absolutely right on this,
both in his recent post and repeatedly), since it is precisely the
'Trotskyist' failure to understand Trotsky (not to mention Lenin) with
regard to these matters that led them to abandon an orthodoxy that never
really was orthodox in the spirit of the theoretical outlook of Marx and
Engels in the first place.

With this in mind then - I would like to comment more substantively on
some of the points raised but it is simply not possible for me at the
moment - here is a link to some notes I sent to the list two years ago,
on these questions. (Regarding what I wrote, I would now cavil at my use
of the term 'Stalinism' - for reasons I have made clear here before -
but other than that I stand by what I said.) Below also is a link to a
thoughtful reply to what I wrote by Richard Fidler (hi Richard) to whom
I will one day make good my promise of replying.

Me:
<http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2002w30/msg00151.htm>

Richard:
<http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2002w31/msg00008.htm>

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