--- Michael Dawson -PSU <mdawson at pdx.edu> wrote:
> >CB: I'd say he is a mostly accurate political
> theorist, proved his theory in practice. He changed
> the world more than anybody, pretty much.
>
> To me, being a good political theorist does not
> hinge on how much you changed the world or how much
> you put your ideas into practice. It depends on how
> well your analysis describes and predicts political
> processes and relationships. Lenin's political
> theory was that a) a revolution in Russia would
> trigger a world revolution, b) the economic
> backwardness of Russia could be overcome in building
> socialism there, c) vanguard parties are acceptable
> means of pursuing socialism, and d) democratic
> procedures are largely bourgeois claptrap. Wrong
> x4!
>
I don't wantto get too deep into this, and I preface this by saying that I am NOT a Leninist. I am a lowercase liberal democrat. However, it seems to me that MD sets the bar too high here: a political theorist (or leader?) has to be _right_ in his porognostications to be --what -- praiseworthy, good, great -- or do I misread you, Michael?
If that is what you are saying, are you sure? Don't you think that a theorist or leader can be, let's just call it good, even if he is wrong, as long as his ideas are deep or illuminating and his mistakes fruitful? After all, to take one of you examples, it appears that Luxemburg was wrong about the inevitability of the collapse of capitalism and the reasons for it, but her ideas are important and interesting, and of course her moral leadership and courgage was exemplary and her martyrdom heroic and inspiring.
In Lenin's case, one can argue that he attempted to make the best of a series of bad situations. The world did not follow his theory, but it presented his party with a series of bad choices. He might have said, and encouraged other Bolsheviks to say, Let this cup pass from me, we will not try for power, or try to keep it, under these circumstances and if we have to do what it appears we have to do. Maybe the Mensheviks did something like this, I don't necessarily been fully consciosuly and deliberately.
Well, it didn't turn out the way they'd hoped, and maybe it turned out the way they feared. But they tried -- was it mad to try? Was it foolish to try? To attempt to make things come out right in face of adversity, to gamble on long odds? (Would Russia have been better off, say, if the Whites had won?) Hindsight is always 20-20. But looking forward from 1917, it was not at all obvious that the Bolsheviks were going down a dead end. Or, indeed, it is not obvious to me what the reasonable alternatives were at the time.
One might reflect that things did not turn out the way that Lincoln, for example, in some ways a comparable revolutionary leader and, in his own way a practical political theorist, wanted either. Or, similarly, the Jacobins or the the American Framers too.
Now, maybe this hasn't to do with Lenin as a social theorist, though it does go to his goodness as a social leader, His theory didn't predict the way the world would go, you might say. But didn't it? Wasn't he right about what would have been needed to make things come out right, if being right is that important? And didn't his theory of Imperialism (in broad outlines) explain the origins of WWI, and maybe WWII? Wasn't he right, earlier, and insightful, about the development of capitalism in Russia? Wasn't he right, in the main, about the fracture lines in Russian society, and which way the social forces would end up pushing?
And even where he wasn't right, weren't his errors deep and instructive rather than pointless and empty -- after all, he lead a great revolution, fought a civil war, and pulled his country out of an abyss of starvation -- at a terrible price. Maybe too high a price. But he wasn't some silly cult leader with 200 followers who never accomplished anything.
Just asking . . . .
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