[lbo-talk] Robert Frost Defends Robespierre, Lenin, Mao

Mike Ballard swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au
Sun Apr 26 07:27:44 PDT 2009


Socialism in the 19th Century was to be attained by class conscious acts of the workers themselves. This principle ran like a leitmotif through the political documents of the 1st International. In the 20th Century, that notion was effectively dropped down the memory hole in the wake of the dictatorship of the party in the USSR (Google/read BOLSHEVIKS AND WORKERS' CONTROL and the pages which SA linked here a few days ago). This, of course, was accompanied by the collapse of any revolutionary pretence by the rest of the officially elected, parliamentary social democratic camp, early on in the 20th Century. Socialism in the 19th Century was equivalent to communism in most Marx and anarchist inspired activists. Thus socialism/communism implied the abolition of wage labour, classes and the State..."an administration of things", administered by a "free association of producers". That's the way Marx and Engels were thinking about the communist project.

In the 20th Century, socialism became a concept and practice meaning party control of State capitalist social relations amongst those ideologically attached to M-Lism. For the social democrats, the image projected was one where citizens attained socialist governments when a few self-described politicians e.g. Mitterand were bumped into national parliaments.

It's no wonder the majority of the individuals in the working class(which Ted keeps referring to) never achieved the class consciouness necessary to implement the sort of social relations which Marx was promoting...see e.g. GRUNDRISSE page 707 and numerous entries by Ted in the LBO archives.

I think it's legitimate to point to the difficult circumstances which the Bolsheviks found themselves in after the collapse of hope vis a vis successful revolutions happening in the West. The defeat of the Red Army at the gates of Warsaw was certainly the last wake up call for those Bolsheviks hoping to 'spark' world revolution in the wake of the carnage of the First Bosses' Great War.

What was to be done after that? Well, one can go through the various Trotsky/Stalin and offshoot e.g. Mao vs. Khruschev debates and those of the more critically minded revolutionaries of the 20th Century e.g. the Frankfurt School. One can also reflect on some of the ideas and actions of socialists of the 19th Century and whether the 'aufhebung', which occured in the mass of the 20th Century movement, destroyed too much of what was healthy in the mass of the movement of the 19th Century thus, providing workers with a set of theoretical and practical premises bound to fail in bringing about the abolition of the wage system.

Mike B)

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