[PEN-L:7671] Leninism

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Doug:
>On point (1) - we're a long way from the Hilferdingesque world that Lenin
>wrote and thought about. Competition has intensified, finance and industry
>haven't joined into a single unit (bank-supervised cartels), etc. So while
>1917 was different from 1817, 1999 is pretty different from 1917, too. On
>point (2) - I think Soviet history confirmed that changing the folks at the
>helm is not without its problems, and that there was substantial continuity
>between Tsarist and Soviet Russia. If anything, that's an argument against
>Leninism's relevance today. And (3), well, any nominees for the vanugard
>party today? The Spartacist League? Again, I think you've got to confront
>the fact that organizations and strategies appropriate for a Tsarist police
>state don't have much relevance to an OECD country today.

Lenin wrote:
"The revolutionary parties must complete their education. They have learned
to attack. Now they have to realize that this knowledge must be
supplemented with the knowledge how to retreat properly. They have to
realize -- and the revolutionary class is taught to realize it by its own
bitter experience -- that victory is impossible unless they have learned
both how to attack and how to retreat properly. Of all the defeated
opposition and revolutionary parties, the Bolsheviks effected the most
orderly retreat, with the least loss to their "army," with its core best
preserved, with the least (in respect to profundity and irremediability)
splits, with the least demoralization, and in the best condition to resume
the work on the broadest scale and in the most correct and energetic
manner."

Of all Lenin's writings, this bit is what I have taken to my
heart--especially the part about retreating "with the least
demoralization." A lesson still relevant for (post-60s, post-USSR) leftists
without mass movements, I think, though sadly neglected.

Yoshie