This is a Weberian approach to Soviet history, one which focuses on organization and institutions rather than overall class dynamics. The main objective factors that led to bureaucracy are:
1) destruction of socialist workers in the civil war 2) mass working class unemployment after the civil war 3) international economic pressures from the capitalist class 4) failure of revolutions in Europe 5) power of the countryside over the town, which could not be resolved either through the NEP or through anti-NEP measures. In other words, a dilemma. Stalin's "resolution" was simply a postponement of capitalist restoration.
>I'm inclined to answer (a) I'm not really going on about what Lenin stood
>for - I haven't found anybody else in Russia in 1917 who stood for anything
>much at all - rather what he, in his trying circumstances, effectively did;
Perhaps you need to go to the library and research these matters before you pontificate on early Soviet history.
>(b) that April was a turning point at which the bolshie structure assumed
>an autonomous elite with totalitarian discretion;
April 1917? The purpose of the April Theses was to make the Soviets the new government. They were more democratic than the Duma. This was the choice: democratic Soviets versus anti-democratic Duma. You evidently favor the anti-democratic Duma.
(c) that the road of
>'uninterrupted revolution', as explicated by Lenin himself, depended on a
>mass consciousness that did not yet exist (as Lenin himself would shortly
>have to remind the left-commies); and
Sheer nonsense. Lenin never wrote in the abstract about "uninterrupted revolution." Perhaps you are confused with Hugh Rodwell. Lenin always wrote about conjunctural situations, as any Marxist should. You are discussing these questions in the framework of some sort of Weberian problematique. How absurd. It is history we need to discuss, not "mass consciousness" in the abstract. You are spreading academic squid's ink everywhere, when historical clarity is called for.
(d) somebody did have to do something
>after the disappointments of 1917, and Lenin was the only game in town -
>the fact that there would be no costless way out of the war by then wasn't
>his fault - but even there, I'd love to ask him why he persisted with his
>'revolutionary defeatismism' after the greater part of the German left
>decided to back the war.
The disappointments of 1917? You mean overthrowing the Czar and a workers revolution. If you want to talk about disappointment, take a look at the mess you created at Spoons thaxis instead. For somebody who has such a knack for destroying a Marxist space, I am amazed that you sit on judgement on Lenin.
>
>Lenin was stuck in a bad place at a bad time - my reservations are not to
>do with his personal make-up - but I reckon we'd do well to learn from the
>story of Lenin that (a) where there's a will there's a way, and (b)
>planting the seeds of bureaucratic centralism is not the way to approach
>any future. It can never compensate for 'a mutually-reinforcing leadership
>and rank-and-file'.
More useless abstractions. "Planting the seeds" is germane to psychological discussions. For example, my father planted the seeds of my neurosis when he locked me in the basement when I neglected to mow the lawn. The roots of the degeneration of the Russian revolution are in the unfavorable relationship of class forces that the revolution found itself in 80 years ago. The Sandinistas, who had a completely different model of socialism, failed for similar reasons. By blaming Lenin, you are letting the bourgeoisie off the hook, a typical ploy for liberals and social democrats.
>
>That way will inevitably be signposted by Kronstadts, and will ultimately
>take you to (not necessarily socialist) revolutionary pressures anew. I
>apologise for my smug 20/20 hindsight here, but it's all I've got.
You need to apologize for not only being smug, but for willfully obfuscating Soviet history and promoting a vision of socialism that is ten times more bankrupt than anything official Communism ever stood for. You are putting forward some really odious opinions. I hesitate to call them ideas, since they are so lacking in either economic, social or historical content.
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)