Not so far as I know, & I've read most of Lenin at one time or another. I'm not sure that Lenin (or anyone else) could identify _the_ primary path to revolution. Perhaps what I posted earlier today on another list is relevant here ---
******
> That spark will never be
> found by a Gallup pollster. It can only be found by people like us who
> are looking to start a fire in the first place.
I can't remember now the original coiner of the phrase, "fan the flames of discontent," but I think whoever it was had a slightly better take on this. (In general, of course, this is quite correct about polls -- they tell us almost nothing that we need to know.) But getting back to the flames of discontent.
Almost _always_ the flames catch us by surprise. It was not members of the RSDLP that _started_ either the 1905 or the 1917 revolutions. Nor was it marxists who _began_ the French Spring of '68. Unfortunately, the official marxists of the period (CPF) spent their time trying to douse the flames.
Our task, essentially, is not to ignite fires but to recognize them when they occur and fan them along.
Carrol ******
And in response to this, I received the following post off-list:
****** Subject: OFFLIST: Fanning the flames of Discontent
Carrol,
Have you had a chance to pick up the posthumous collection of Marty Glaberman’s essays from the Charles H. Kerr publishing house? It’s called “Punching Out and other writings.”
Anyway, much of the point of the book deals with exactly this theme. That the “conscious” of the working class cannot be measured by indicators like union density, or party membership, or even the statements of the members of the class, but rather by what the class is compelled to *do* in certain circumstances. Marty’s favorite example (from the courses in Capital I took from him during my Detroit stay) was that of autoworkers in the United States who voted in the majority for the no-strike pledge during WWII, but nonetheless violated the pledge repeatedly!
The Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and the May events in Paris of 1968 were his other two favorites, as well as Lenin’s reaction to the soviets of 1905. If you had taken a poll of Parisian workers in April of 1968, there would have been absolutely no indication of the events that would follow in the next month. [clip]
Solidarity, ______, Berlin *******
Incidentally, I know of nothing in Lenin that could suggest, even remotely, a phrase such as "dialectical movement, contradiction/resolution things." That just isn't the way one discusses history. Engels, in a book which Marx read in ms. and to which Marx contributed a long chapter, suggests that dialectics has neither heuristic nor probative force.
Carrol