[lbo-talk] query: from anarchist to marxist???

[Carrol Cox]

I'm neither a Leninist nor a "Leninist." I was the latter for a few 
decades. I have come to believe that there is not such thing as 
"Leninism," for Lenin was not, actually, a theorists, & propounded not 
Theory of Revolution or of The Party. (Perhaps in the last years of his 
life he went along with a Theory of the Party developed by others, or 
rather, mostly, by the demands of daily actuality in the SU in iits 
first. State & Revolution was mostly a scholarly commentary on Marx & 
Engels. No real Theory of Revolution or Theory of The Party is 
articulated in it.  Comment on Lenin in the years 1898-1910 that are not 
grounded in a study of what Lars LIh has to say are nonsense.

Lenin believed Kdautsky to be THE correct interpreter of Marx. When he 
called Kautsky a Renegade, he meant that Kautsky was a renegade to his 
(Kautsky's) own theory. He never chaged his mind on this. He continued 
up to his death to see the pre-1914 Kautsky as THE source of truth about 
Marx. So when you criticize Lenin you are either criticizing Kautsky or 
you are criticizing a myth, "Lenin," not Lenin. What you write below 
might apply to the nominal beliefs of some CPs around the world for a 
few decades, but you say nothing about Lenin himself or his "theory.,"

But your reference to a "pipe dream" below is itself a sort of pipe 
dream: it lays claim on your part to the ability to predict the future. 
It's not predictable. I would guess that stanger things than armed 
revolution are apt to occur, but I wouldn't even guess at their nature.

Carrol

On 10/17/2011 2:28 PM, Max Sawicky wrote:
> I read State and Revolution, 40 years ago or so. A few shorter things I
> don't remember at all.  I take Leninism to be the idea of a centralized
> vanguard party that foments a socialist revolution in the U.S. by force of
> arms.  In other words, a pipe dream.  I do think industrial action -- mass
> strikes -- can force significant changes.  Seems to me anarchist ideas in
> all their diversity are more interesting as radical possibilities.  None of
> this dismisses the relevance of Marx, IMO.  Anarchists can be marxists.
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 3:05 PM, Julio Huato<juliohuato at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> Max wrote:
>>
>>> Leninism is a dry hole, AFAIAC
>>
>> Leninism perhaps, but Lenin is a completely different thing.  The bulk
>> of his work is online now at marxists.org.  One interesting way to
>> read the guy is from his (main) latest to his (main) earliest works.
>> Of course, no time to read his complete works -- which a small group
>> of us at the U of Havana did, and discussed at length, in the 1980s,
>> as the tomes were being published in Spanish by Progress Publishers,
>> and how glad I am I did such a thing! -- but there are a lot of small
>> documents worth reading and studying carefully.
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