"CB: This can't be an objective example. There was no successful revolution in Germany in the period you describe."
KL:This really gets to the heart of our theoretical difference. Successful revolution is one of the possible outcomes. The other, which befell Europe, is "the common ruin of the contending classes." In my opinion, Alfred Sohn- Rethel's description of capitalist paralysis in Weimar Germany does inded explore one outer limit. I do not have his book today; if I did, I'd post the appropriate passages. (AS-R was a left communist, so Rakesh might be able to provide them.)
KL: As for the practical side, Charles reduces revolutionary strategy to an act of will in choosing Lenin over Gramsci because the former led a successful revolution while the latter did not. In fact, Lenin's (i.e., the Russian proletariat's) success is the strongest validation of Gramsci's strategy. Before the prospect of dual power appeared, Lenin advocated only a bourgeois revolution in Russia. Soviet dual power put socialism on the agenda.
KL: For North America and Europe today, Charles advocates preaching and teaching Marxism. Who could object to that? But I add that one must especially search out and join those struggles in which embryonic dual power is manifest, in which workers not only struggle, make demands on capital, engage in collective action, etc., but also display the elements of class rule. This type of proletarian struggle -- the "Rehearsal for Reconstruction" on the Georgia Sea Islands and at Davis Bend, Mississippi, in 1863 and 1864; the Seattle and San Francico general strikes; the Flint, Toledo, Anderson, and Atlanta sit-down strikes; the Minneapolis general strike; the Attica rebellion; the Wounded Knee and Akwesasne occupations; and so forth -- provides the precursors out of which can arise revolutionary challenges to bourgeois rule, as can exemplary revolutionary successes in other countries.
Ken Lawrence