peyman - 06/16/99 11:34:54
My Email:peyman.jafari@student.uva.nl
Country: Holland
Politics: revolutionary socialist
Organisation: International Socialists
| Comments:
Compliments for your article "Building the revolutionary party?"! While I don't agree with its central thesis (the degeneration of the Russian Revolution because of internal party factors), it is the best most serious critique from the anarchist point of
iew. Mainly because of its open, not sectarian, evaluation of Lenin and the Leninist party.
But about the central thesis:
the weakness of this analysis, lies in not placing the russian revolution in an historic context (it is easily dismissed of, by pointing to the civil war and the economic devistation), while heavily emphasising the "internal" factors. But what creates thi
internal factors, remains unclear and this suggests that the bolshevik ideologie was responsible.
The historic context:
the history of the twentieth century has been shaped by two currents.
1) the russian revolution and the reactions it received in the west (social democracy, more state intervantion etc.)
2)the reaction of Russia to the pressure of the devoloped capitalist core
The second point is here relevant. It is not only valid in Russia, but to all the less developed countries. The ruling classes in these counries mobilised all the initiative and resources of the state in order to survive the pressure of capitalist countri
s. This was a proces of "passive revolution" in Gramsci's terms. Its social implication was state capitalism, in its extreme form in Russia after 1928 and in milder forms in many "Third World" countries.
I do not want to underestimate the many weaknesses of the Bolshevik party. But the question is why that party became a monolithic bureacratic party linked to statepower..
The answer is, because it was destroyed by the proces of "passive revolution". It became an instrument of this historic movement. But before history could use it as its instrument, it had to reshape it. This was done between 1918-28 and the purges of Stal
n.
The rise of Stalinist bureaucracy can only be explained in this historic context. The state became the means to carry out a revoution from avove for the sace of primitive accumulation. And the bolshevik party (after being destroye as a revolutionary party
and the bureaucracy became the means to carry out this task.
I think the lack of a scientific (historic materialistic) understanding of the world is the biggest weakness of anarchism. Without this understanding it is impossible to understand how the world can be changed. In concrete: the revolutionary organisation,
its tasks and relation to the working class.
The core of your critique of the Leninst party is, that it also takes the political leadership by means of the state on its self. But I hope I have made clear that the special form it got after the Russian Revolution, was not because of Leninst ideas of o
e-party state, but because of the task history at that stage attributed to the state. The only way to resist this pressure towards state capitalism was world revolution as Lenin and Trotsky saw. The Bolsheviks did not create the state after the revolution
by free choice but in the concrete situation that existed. Maybe you suggest they should have taken a defeatist position, and give a way power. This not only would have been a coward act in front of the revolutionary perspective in Europe, but would have
ost their own lives and those of millions because of the counter-revolution. The Bolsheviks couldn't flee to Mars, they were the hostages of history.
It is important to defend that revolution, mainly because of its lessons its teaches us about democratic centralist organisation.
Solidarity forever.
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