But my point was that I don't see how Lenin's notions of imperialism and the national question, for example, FOLLOW FROM his vanguardism. Could just as easily be the other way round.
There are two quite distinct leftwing critiques of Leninism. One is itself vanguardist (e.g. Bordiga), which attacks Leninism for being too democratic, in the bourgeois sense, and, related to this, far too accommodating to bourgeois nationalism. According to this view then, all parliamentarianism, united front tactics (so beloved of Leninist 'hard-nosed realists' everywhere), democratic anti-fascist movements, etc., all just help capitalism over its current crises and help to perpetuate it in the long run.
In this view fascism and democracy are just two alternating forms of capitalism, each of which plays its role in diffusing capitalist crisis when the other can't. The Leninist linear and mechanistic thought rather would see a straight line to socialism through all sorts of stages of "progress". So nationalism to the Leninists, is seen as "progressive" in the anti-imperialist struggle, because as all good Leninists know there must first be a series of anti-imperialist national democratic revolutions which will sever the imperialist chain at its weakest points. Some very plausible theories take a while to show themselves to be rubbish, and this one's time has certainly come! What happens in practice of course is that an authoritarian state capitalist regime comes into being in some god-forsaken corner of the world, which large numbers of people then risk drowning and being shot for the chance to get away from. (I also never tire of pointing out that there are NO historical count! er-examples to this).
The second left critique of Lenin is of course the one that most respondents to this thread had in mind, the libertarian one, which has roots in Rosa Luxemburg, the council communists, more lately autonomous marxism, and which has some affinities with anarchism. This is the anti-vanguardist critique. (Luxemburg has the distinction of having asked us to choose between marxism and leninism some 80 years ago!)
There are of course profound connections between these different strands of Leninist thought and therefore I am of the opinion that both of those strands that I described above need to be combined now, as one finds in the thought of Jean Barrot, Jacques Camatte, and more recently Loren Goldner (check his fabulous website http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/ ) In fact the connections between the two strands of Leninism do show remarkably how it is a coherent body of thought, which is no doubt where the synthesising genius of Lenin lay. Note how he found it necessary to attack ALL strands of thought which lay to the left of his own, whether anarchism, Bordiga, Pannekoek, or even Sylvia Pankhurst.
The anti-imperialist (nationalist) revolution lead by a communist party inevitably establishes what I called the paternal and authoritarian welfare state, so often touted as the "lesser evil" by Leninists. The problem is not that it is necessarily the worse evil, but that it discredits marxism and makes real anti-capitalist revolution an ever more distant prospect. After all who wants it if that's all it leads to? This is intelligence on the part of the masses not a lack of 'consciousness'.
The Stalinist notion of socialism in one country is an inevitable counter-revolutionary consequence of Lenin's accommodations to bourgeois nationalism, his state-capitalist notion of 'socialism' and his mechanistic notions of progress.
Lenin was a deeply conservative thinker, who strove to preserve many aspects of bourgeois society that many progressive young people reject, such as family values, sobriety and the ethic of industriousness. Some Leninist parties still routinely condemn homosexuality and when Fidel Castro talks of cracking down on crime he means sex work!
But Leninism's worst feature in my view is its contribution to language. There is no more stultifying and ugly discourse than that found in Lenin - this is big-time counter-revolutionary. The shift to the right in South African politics overseen by the African National Congress is of course all couched in Leninist terms - condemnation of 'ulra-leftists', 'infantile' leftists, praise for revolutionary discipline and the loyal cadres of the vanguard ANC, who understand the national democratic phase of the revolution, etc., etc.
The arguments for Leninism that we have seen recently are facile and need to be discredited for the cretinism they are: we have to choose between the US and this or that other place (why North Korea or Cuba, why not Barbados, St Helena or the Commores, since we're using that sort of logic?); or this chestnut: how can there be worldwide revolution, when this would require all the workers in the world to revolt at exactly the same time? Words fail me when reading this crap in the face of the richness of the left communist tradition.
Down with the geriatric disorder! Bury the stinking corpse.
Tahir