shag wrote:
>
> At 07:49 AM 10/6/2008, Chris Doss wrote:
>
> >That's roughly Lenin's assertion (I hesitate to dignify it with
> >"argument"). It is, however, bullshit. I doubt you could find a single war
> >fought for this reason.
>
> ahh. it wasn't in What is to be done? it was in a link yoshie quoted (and I
> read) years ago, and her interpretation of it at the end of the quote in
> the link below.
>
> and holeee shitliotta. i was reading the archives, through that exchange i
> quote below, and omigawd. lenin speaks about a number of classes! crap! i
> have been duped! duped I say!
Many "Leninists" are as innocent of Lenin's actual thought as Chris Doss provesd himself to be every so often. Lenin of course wasn't talking about wars in general but a very specific war, being waged right then and there, and slaughtering millions. Debs. The Irish socialists. Luxemberg. The IWW all agreed with him.
But the crucial point for _us_, I think, is that Lenin was NOT a theorist; that is, he did not promulgate any abstract theory supposedly applicable to all revolutions everyplace. Revolution can't be abstractly theorized. The "theory" changinges for each revolutionary struggle, each mass struggle for reform. (Some of the Trotskyists, not all of them, over on the marxism list still cling to the silly concept that Trotsky laid down the laws of revolution for all time and places. That's how they assume they can 'judge' the Bolivian struggle from afar by whether it fits that abstract formula.)
Read Lenin for the "tone" -- i.e., for the relationslhip establsihed between Lenin and his subject matter and/or audience. It's that tone, not specific theoretical principles, that remains his great contribution to following generations. I didn't know this when I was reading Lenin back in the early '70s, and the result was I didn't read enough in his letters and his run-of-the-mill articles. At that time I was still looking for transportable theory.
Carrol