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

[Carrol Cox]

wrobert at uci.edu wrote: "James actually agrees with you about the need
for a new approach to the revolution, in fact, he sees the party form
itself as an inherently problematic one.  I think this makes it worth
cutting through the bullshit."

I think there is among unattached marxists and other socialist
revolutionaries in the U.S. and elsewhere widespread agreement on this -
though "this" is frustratingly vague. The party-organizations of both
the 2d & 3d internationals are dead so deat that criticism of those
organizational forms tends to be bullshit antiquarianism, often grounded
in a silly conception of hwo we "learn lessons from history." Diatribes
against Stalin, for example, are utterly worthless as barricades to
whatever new forms of revolutionary error await us.

It may be of some interest that the prevailing opinion with in LRS
during its last years was that there would be no single-party hegemony
in any u.s. revolutionary struggle - but beyond that they were as vague
as anyone on this list of what actual shape such a multi-party
'leadership' would take. I'm not even sure the issue can be usefully
discussed prior to the rise of more active mass movements in the u.s.

Carrol