What's with all this "KPRF" stuff? If I remember correctly it was always the CPSU in the old days, not "KPSU." Is this your transliteration or somebody else's? Barkley Rosser On Sun, 06 Sep 1998 17:08:22 +0100 Mark Jones <Jones_M at netcomuk.co.uk> wrote:
> James Devine wrote:
> >
> > Rakesh wrote: >... Anti bolshevik communism is the theoretical expression
> > of the practical activity of the Soviets and German Councils, destroyed in
> > the German and Boslehvik counter revolutions in the late 1910s, to develop
> > bottom up organizations arising from the workplace
> >
> > I don't think Louis' reply is very useful. While I don't think workers'
> > councils were _enough_ (as I think the council communists did), I also
> > don't think the revolutionary party was _enough_. A _mass_ socialist
> > political party helps a lot.
> >
> > In fact, I think the Russian social democratic party of Lenin should have
> > centered their alternative to capitalism on the councils -- soviets --
> > because they (along with the peasants and rebellious soldiers) were the
> > social basis for the revolution. When the soviets faded, partly due to
> > Bolshevik efforts (perhaps well-intended), the locus of power shifted to
> > middle-class managers and party apparatchiks. Unfortunately, the situation
> > was really bad -- what with White Armies and imperialist invasion -- so
> > it's hard to imagine the soviets dominating.
>
> Rakesh on Bolshevik 'counter-revolution' is just being demented, of
> course. James, who like the rest of us is a little more prosaic, at
> least sees what is obviosu to any normal person: that in conditions of
> civil war and encirclement, There Was No Alternative to Lenin's way: and
> the more one studies the period the more one is forced to acknowledge
> the hopelss utopianism of council communist prescriptions.
>
> As for 'A _mass_ socialist political party', I'd say that's what the
> KPRF is: and the problem with that kind of party is that it is very hard
> to organise insurections with it: it is not the proper instrument. That
> is just waht the west's vulture-press is now crowing: Zyuganov can't
> hack it because his 500,000 strong party is just a load of old
> pensioners (it interests me BTW that western journos, who have never
> hidden their contempt for ordinary Russians, now almost openly gloat
> that the coming 'hard winter' wil decimate the ranks of the KPRF thru
> hunger and cold: the appalling Orlando Figes openly said as much in the
> Sunday Times today).
>
> Mark
>
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu