Might I suggest that this whole top-down/bottom-up thing is a false dichotomy? Any successful revolutionary movement, of which the Bolsheviks were certainly one, is necessarily both. It has to have a mutually-reinforcing leadership and a rank-and-file, direction and mass enthusiasm. Democratic leadership is one in which every individual actor takes part in debating and formulating the correct "line."
Dan Lazare
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Rob Schaap:
>If I'm right, a social revolution, which might or might not entail
>violence, will well up from 'below', and our sustained collective
>insistence on reform will have been a necessary contributor. If I'm wrong,
>the world will be better for said insistence and the ultimately futile
>blood-letting so often associated with top-down utopian adventurism will be
>avoided.
What do you mean by top-down utopian adventurism? The Russian Revolution?
This is such a distortion of historical reality that I must recommend that
you read a little about the events before coming up with such a distortion.
Really, Rob, you have the most perverse determination to distort what Lenin
stood for. In reality, Lenin was trying nothing else except to create a
Social Democratic party in Russia, where none existed. There was nothing
"utopian" about this. His party was not "top-down" either. Historians agree
that the Mensheviks were far more "top-down" than the Bolsheviks. When the
Russian people overthrew the Czar, they had expectations that the Kerensky
regime would pull Russia out of the imperialist war and distribute land to
the farmers. When he refused to do this, Socialists had no other choice
except to fight for the goals of the February Revolution. The November
Revolution was nothing more than the expression of the Russian people to
secure the benefits they deserved when the Czar was overthrown.
Louis Proyect >>