>"party struggles lend a
>party strength and vitality; the greatest proof of a party's weakness is
>its diffuseness and the blurring of clear demarcations; a party becomes
>stronger by purging itself."
drawing the conclusion that
>leninism elevates sectarianism to a virtue
But how is Leninism as described above any different from Engels' comment: 'A party proves itself a victorious party by the fact that it splits and can stand the split.' 'Sectarianism' is a jibe often levelled at Marx for his purging of the anarchists, true socialist, Prudhonists and others from the first international. But somehow, it is only convenient for Angela to see it in Lenin.
Angela says Lenin
> does
>though mean, as jim implies here, that capitalist ideology is
>transcended not by workers but by petty-bourgeois intellectuals.
Do I? Does he?
Lenin of course says no such thing. What he does say is that the party should be made up of 'people who make revolutionary activity their profession'. Oh, Angela, I thought you said he was going to say, 'people who make small trade their profession'? But no, Lenin was not a representative of the shop-keeping class at all.
So are these professional revolutionaries then drawn exclusively from the petit bourgeoisie? No. 'In view of this common characteristic of the members of such an organisation, *all distinctions as between workers and intellectuals,* as between trade and profession, in both categories *must be effaced.*' (Lenin's emphases)
In order to magic up a difference of principle between Marx and Lenin, Angela has to tell all kinds of weird lies about what Lenin said.
Angela has Lenin calling for the dictatorship of twelve wise men. But here Lenin is quoting an opponent caricaturing his call for revolutionary leadership. He is not at all calling for 'twelve wise men'.
The argument of What is to Be Done is the same argument that Marx and Engels made time and time again against the English trade unionists, (first made by Bray) that in negotiating a better deal under capitalism, you only succeed in forging golden chains for yourself. It was Marx and Engels who first raised the argument that 'political indifferentism' would only succeed in handing the political initiative to the ruling class. And it was Marx and Engels who understood that socialists did indeed take the best of bourgeois culture and science.
But Lenin says no more nor less than that. He does not say that revolutionary ideology must come from the petit bourgeois. He says that 'class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is only from outside the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers.' It is straight- forward what Lenin means to anyone but one who is determined to misunderstand. He means that 'capital is a social and not a personal power', and that to see capital as a whole, you must stand back from the specific relations of worker and capitalist.
Whatever sectarian fight inculcated Angela's rage against Lenin is surely long since exhausted. If reading What is To Be Done has any great call anymore, we can afford to read with a little less dogmatism.
Incidentally, I think Angela fetishises soviets, too. Workers' councils are just an organisational form, that could, for all one knows, be superceded in turn. One should not make the mistake that Hegel made about the Prussian State, imagining it to be the end of history.
In message <001601bef5e4$69e95300$67ac10cb at rcollins>, rc-am
<rcollins at netlink.com.au> writes
>the question of a "proper relationship" between 'intellectuals and
>'workers' (assuming that there is still a distinction) is answered by
>marx very differently than it is by lenin. to think of it in terms of a
>"proper relationship" is to assume it's a moral question, and not one of
>the historical development and assumptions.
>
>the distinction is not one which allows us to talk in the terms that
>karl mannheim does, but is there because of a certain moment in
>capitalist production (formal subsumption, in which the so-called middle
>strata of managers, scientists, state personnel, knowledge-workers
>emerge), in which case, attention needs to be given to subsequent
>changes in the capitalist mode of production (real subsumption, in which
>those activities no longer entail a certain distance from the immediate
>processes of production, but become a branch of production). so, no
>longer is it plausible to say that intellectuals aren't workers any more
>than workers aren't intellectuals, even at the level of the labour
>process. see Marx's essay, "Results of the Immediate Process of
>Production" and _Capital v1_
>
>this suggest quite emphatically that the distinction b/n intellectuals
>and workers is a very precise one, and not at all one which sees no
>changes _within_ capitalism that would impact upon any theory of the
>party as it brings such distinctions to bear, largely as theoretical
>(epistemological) or banal (it's just the way it is) justifications.
>that these changes also took place in an strong sense in so-called
>developed countries between WW1 and after WW2, suggests a strong
>connection between the version of socialist planning advanced by
>leninists and the version of the party as the conscious
>petty-bourgeoisie. leo panitch puts it quite explicitly (and echoing
>the passage from _poverty of philosophy_ i cited earlier) when he says
>of british socdems: "Social democratic leaders discerned the emergence
>[after the experience of the Depression, WW2, the defeat of fascism and
>a booming economy) of an efficiency-oriented managerial class which had
>come to appreciate the limits of an unregulated capitalism and the
>virtues of macroeconomic planning, welfare reforms and stable industrial
>relations."
>
>moreover, so there were and are arguments between factions within the
>working class movement as engels insists? who ever claimed
>revolutionary (or even working class) consciousness amounts to
>homogeneity? not me, but lenin, who seems to think that THE party
>holds a monopoly on revolutionary consciousness. indeed, if, as engels
>says, the solidarity of the proletariat is accomplised by the conflicts
>between "different party groupings" of the proletarian movement, then
>this suggests clearly that the homogeneity of revolutionary
>consciousness attributed to one party constitutes the cessation of that
>development by virtue of an ontological fiat.
>
>sectarianism pervades most politics, but unlike anarchism and marxism,
>leninism elevates sectarianism to a virtue, opening up _wtbd_ with a
>quote from lassalle (of all people!) which goes: "party struggles lend a
>party strength and vitality; the greatest proof of a party's weakness is
>its diffuseness and the blurring of clear demarcations; a party becomes
>stronger by purging itself." _wtbd_ is no empirical study, but the
>preface to and theoretical justification of a purge, specifically of the
>Self-Emancipation faction.
>
>further, making a distinction between head and heart (as in the early
>writings of marx), and indeed saying that the each cannot be transcended
>without the other is definitely not a claim that revolutionary
>consciousness is the gift of petty-bourgeois intellectuals to the
>working class. what's decisive, and increasingly so in marx's writings,
>is not philosophy but working class struggle (which always includes both
>'economic' and political' consciousness) -- what becomes an even more
>pronounced recognition that philosophy only becomes revolutionary by
>virtue of a revolutionary m/ment in _poverty of philosophy_, in distinct
>
>contrast to what jim writes. lenin does not claim in _wtbd_ that the
>party is the highest level of *proletarian* consciousness. he does
>though mean, as jim implies here, that capitalist ideology is
>transcended not by workers but by petty-bourgeois intellectuals. the
>'self-criticism' of "proletarian revolutions" (which engels writes of)
>is not the autonomy of p-b intellectuals (a la lenin in _wtbd_).
>
>'dictatorship of the proletariat' is not the 'dictatorship over the
>proletariat' by a class outside it who, by virtue of the claim that they
>are 'beyond ideology', 'by force of rational will', rule by
>epistemological right as jim would have it. (is this where all that
>fetishism of the forces of production comes in?) the principle of
>self-emancipation is not nor has ever been a claim regarding the absence
>of violence, but in claiming a monopoly of true revolutionary
>consciousness for the p-b intellectuals, lenin accords them with the
>monopoly of violence as well.
>
>NB: i'll say it for the last time. this has not been an argument
>against parties. not once. nor is the lenin of _wtbd_, who declares
>that parties (or rather, THE party) are run by petty-bourgeois
>intellectuals as the key to any 'gap' (chaz's word), commensurate with a
>temporal and compositional characterisation of the development of
>revolutionary consciousness and forms WITHIN the working class . engels
>makes this precise point in the passage cited by jim, when he writes of
>the proletarian movement 'passing through stages', luxemburg makes the
>same point in criticising lenin's _wtbd_. finally, jim is trying to
>push polemical buttons which even he knows are misplaced. never once
>did i say marx was an anarchist. the arguments put here througout,
>quoted chapter and verse, have been from marx and luxemburg. jim offers
>a few more from marx and engels, none of which support what he wants to
>strains to make them say.
>
>Angela
>_________
>
>
-- Jim heartfield