Lenin’s Tomb
Off topic, but the voting in Morbo's vermin of the year is open now at < a href="http://throughthescarydoor.blogspot.com">Scary door!
Oops no html?
Lenin, plug me god damn it!
Hey it wasn't 'someone' who quoted the 'they have their culture, their way of life' thing from Blair. It was me! Me me me me me me me me me!
Ahem on a more serious note....if you want to read more about the grisly and unpleasant story of the British Empire, the Americans and the Jew hating House of Saud, read The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud (Said K. Aburish). It makes clear what everyone should know (but what hardly anyone does): that Saudi Arabia is completely (far more than, say, Iraq) a creation of the British Empire, and that the House of Saud were installed and have been supported by the British (and then the Americans) right from day one.
It also makes clear again what should be known but isn't: that all 'philosemitic' statements from Blair and Bush are completely worthless, as they have ALWAYS covered up, concealed, and apologised for the brutal anti-semitism of the Saudis. (The only Judenrein state in the world). He also makes clear that the British and Americans are not (and never were) controlled by the Saudis: instead the Saudis are controlled by the Americans and British (to quote a reviewer on Amazon: 'Ibn Saud, who is invariably described by Middle East 'experts' as the unifier of the tribes of Arabia and the man who brought them out of the dark ages and into the Twentieth Century (was in fact) basically used by the British as a bargain basement monarch to act as a front man for their oil companies....this role was taken over by the American after WW2'.)
Blair's 'concern' about Iran's recent conference should be viewed in this context.
FYI
Iraqi trade unions attack plans for foreign company control of oil
Further to Brendan's (above) comment re. Saud etc., Dreyfuss's "Devil's Game" is required reading, flaws notwithstanding.
Is Bliar really the most hated PM in British history? I'd be interested to see a poll showing this as although I certainly hate him enough to want to dance on his grave, he doesn't get booed everywhere he goes, nor stones thrown at his house, he hasn't had to commit suicide (yet - and that's only because he almost certainly feels no shame) nor has there been an assassination attempt on him. I'll agree that he's certainly up there in the top 10 and definitely the most hated of the 21st century but is he really the most hated ever?
'I'll agree that he's certainly up there in the top 10 and definitely the most hated of the 21st century but is he really the most hated ever?'
I think the reason that the there is not so much public hatred of him is that the media help keep a lid on it. The media did and do love Blair. A public school (and Oxbridge educated) munchkin, he is clearly 'one of them'...like them he likes the rich and powerful, likes to swan around with rock stars, is fashionably 'liberal' in unimportant 'social issues', whilst being 'fiscally conservative' (like them).
The media can't really face up to the monster they have unleashed as they would then have to face up to their own part in creating this monster.
Instead they pretend that Blair is a 'moderate' (instead of a dangerous extremist), that he's a 'nice kinda guy' etc. etc. etc.
This is the best political blog I've ever seen.
Lennie: "Look at him. Look at this creep. This man is co-responsible for one of the worst atrocities ever committed by the Anglo-American empire..."
One would never know from all this that, back when Blair gained office in 1997 'Socialist Worker' was "over the moon" for him.
Ah the fickleness of opportunism, and the shortness of its memory!
"One would never know from all this that, back when Blair gained office in 1997 'Socialist Worker' was "over the moon" for him."
One would indeed never know, Clod. Particularly since it's not true.
Morbo how do i vote in your poll?
Is Bliar really the most hated PM in British history?
It's either him or Thatcher.
And my money is on Maggie.
Red Cloud, stop trolling & stop fabricating, or get out.
I well remember the deafeat of the tory government in may 1997, I was dead happy to see the back of the Tories, almost over the moon. But I remember one sight that filled me with foreboding. It was the "Portillo moment".
I was ecstatic that the bastard was history, but then I saw the smiling face... of Stephen Twigg.
That was a warning - having come across Twigg in student politics, it was obvious that the coming years were not going to be nice and easy. But any working class person the day after the election was walking a bit taller, having seen the bosses given a tonking.
There is an obvious difference between being happy to see the back of the Tories and being "'Socialist Worker' was "over the moon" for him."
I was on the Jubilee line electricians' picket line soon after and they were certainly over the moon. I suppose these backwards elements are to be condemned as well, Cloddy?
There was a great disturbance in the force, as though a million petes cried out and were suddenly silenced.
I like Brendan's take on the matter of Bliar's 'popularity' but surely the media alone can't keep that level of resentment in check?
The media foment resentment. The natural default position of the British people is to be pro-Blair.
This one is approaching self-parody. Can we keep it, please? Please?
Re: SW "over the moon" for Blair '97
Every time an inconvenient reference is made to pronouncements from the SWP press of years gone by, their followers:
1. deny they ever printed it, claiming it's an 'outrageous fabrication';
2. admit, that ok, yes, they printed it, but that the words have been 'taken out of context';
3. admit they printed it, and insist that they were 100% right to do so;
4. admit they printed it but 'Red Cloud is a CIA agent';
5. admit they printed it but, hey, that was then and this is now!;
5. deny they ever printed it, etc.
(wash, rinse, repeat).
: - )))))
Pink Mist has a lovely smile, don't y'all think?
Big Al,
But what exonerates Thatcher is that she was pulled down by members of her own government: Hestletine, Hurd the Turd and Wee Willie Whitelaw.
It seems that even Reiver Brown can't get rid of Yo! Blair.
Just ban the fucker Lenin. For Gods sake. This is called Lenin's Tomb.
In the meantime this is important:
http://hrw.org/english/docs/
2006...isrlpa14652.htm
if it's true he's the least favourite prime minister in british history (which is going some considering, i mean worse than Pitt the Younger? Perceval? Callaghan? Thatcher?) then why are we still putting up with him. let's get the fucking prick out.
someone call a riot soon
"Pink Mist has a lovely smile, don't y'all think?"
He's well chuffed with himself!
Please don't ban him, people would pay to watch the Rosa Vs. Clodmeister battles.
This is the best political blog I've ever seen.
I missed this before. Cheers, and keep coming.
Johng--from that article you cited. Everything was going along nicely and then:
"In July 2006, Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups documented the IDF's forcible use of Palestinians as human shields in a well publicized incident during military operations in Beit Hanoun...And on November 3, Hamas militants hid behind civilian women when exiting from a mosque where the militants had been cornered by IDF forces after more than two days of fighting. The fact that the women voluntarily went to aid the men does not absolve the militants of their duty not to endanger civilians..."
Fair and balanced, fair and balanced, fair and balanced.
Also, "Duty not to endanger civilians" ? Not sure where that one comes from. How does it work again? Militants violate it by hiding behind civilians. Israeli willingness to kill the hell out of the civilians to get at the militants, however, is okay.
"This is the best political blog I've ever seen."
Not wanting to be sycophantic, but i agree entirely. It's the only Far Left (i.e. Real Left) blog listed as a political blog on wikipedia, too. We should publicise the status of this blog far and wide as THE place to go for accurate information and Marxist analysis.
quote:
any working class person the day after the election was walking a bit taller, having seen the bosses given a tonking. There is an obvious difference between being happy to see the back of the Tories and being 'Socialist Worker was "over the moon" for him.' I was on the Jubilee line electricians' picket line soon after and they were certainly over the moon. I suppose these backwards elements are to be condemned as well, Cloddy?
That's all very nice, but subsequent experience seems to confirm that the bosses were not, in any way, "given a tonking". The previous front(wo)men having been thoroughly discredited, and having thereby lost their utility, the bosses simply installed a new bunch, with a better PR campaign, who were able to advance the development of British fascism in ways the Tories could never have accomplished.
All of this could have been, and was, predicted by people and organizations familiar with the historical record over the last century of social democracy in general, and the British Labour Party in particular.
Workers who suffer from the misconception that the Labour Party represents their interests are not necessarily backward, nor should they be condemned. The fraudulent and destructive nature of social democracy was certainly never explained to them by the public education system, the mass media, nor even by their own trade unions. To do that is the proper job of revolutionaries -- to dispel the illusions that the working class has in bourgeois parliamentary politics and the reformist "left".
What should be condemned is the actions of allegedly revolutionary organizations which do the opposite -- which, rather than combatting people's illusions about the existing social order, pander to them and thereby re-enforce them, in the hope of making quick gains in popularity by saying what everybody else is saying. That is the very definition of political opportunism, and it always ends badly.
If I remember correctly, some guy who called himself "Lenin" might have had a few things to say about that.
quote:
any working class person the day after the election was walking a bit taller, having seen the bosses given a tonking. There is an obvious difference between being happy to see the back of the Tories and being 'Socialist Worker was "over the moon" for him.' I was on the Jubilee line electricians' picket line soon after and they were certainly over the moon. I suppose these backwards elements are to be condemned as well, Cloddy?
That's all very nice, but subsequent experience seems to confirm that the bosses were not, in any way, "given a tonking". The previous front(wo)men having been thoroughly discredited, and having thereby lost their utility, the bosses simply installed a new bunch, with a better PR campaign, who were able to advance the development of British fascism in ways the Tories could never have accomplished.
All of this could have been, and was, predicted by people and organizations familiar with the historical record over the last century of social democracy in general, and the British Labour Party in particular.
Workers who suffer from the misconception that the Labour Party represents their interests are not necessarily backward, nor should they be condemned. The fraudulent and destructive nature of social democracy was certainly never explained to them by the public education system, the mass media, nor even by their own trade unions. To do that is the proper job of revolutionaries -- to dispel the illusions that the working class has in bourgeois parliamentary politics and the reformist "left".
What should be condemned is the actions of allegedly revolutionary organizations which do the opposite -- which, rather than combatting people's illusions about the existing social order, pander to them and thereby re-enforce them, in the hope of making quick gains in popularity by saying what everybody else is saying. That is the very definition of political opportunism, and it always ends badly.
If I remember correctly, some guy who called himself "Lenin" might have had a few things to say about that.
The previous front(wo)men having been thoroughly discredited, and having thereby lost their utility, the bosses simply installed a new bunch, with a better PR campaign, who were able to advance the development of British fascism in ways the Tories could never have accomplished.
a) The Labour Party were not installed by the ruling class: they were elected, overwhelmingly by working class votes.
b) there is not a conscious effort underway to 'advance the development of British fascism'.
The rest of this is predictable ultra-left drivel, all the more ironic for coming from an organisation which treats the marxist literature as immutably true and beyond serious criticism. I expect you might even have the cheek to reference 'Left-wing Communism'.
The Labour Party were not installed by the ruling class: they were elected, overwhelmingly by working class votes.
Since the working class, properly understood, constitutes a large majority of the population, this statement is trivially true of any party that ever forms the government, not excepting Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives. If you'd like to carry this argument a little bit further, you can demonstrate that bourgeois democracy is necessarily an authentic expression of popular will. The real point is that the available electoral alternatives are thoroughly rigged by the ruling class, including installing their own people as leaders of allegedly oppositional parties, so that which one actually get the most votes is largely a matter of indifference for them. Witness the support offered to the Labour Party by various capitalist media outlets the last few elections. One bunch of parliamentary flunkies can always be substituted for another, so that the legitimacy of the system itself is not called into question.
there is not a conscious effort underway to 'advance the development of British fascism'.
Of course not. All the police state surveillance, censorship, secret trial, and internment legislation Blair and his gang have enacted under the utterly fraudulent Terror War pretext, has absolutely no connection with fascism. They're just trying to protect you from the bad guys.
predictable ultra-left drivel, all the more ironic for coming from an organisation which treats the marxist literature as immutably true and beyond serious criticism.
I don't know which organization you're referring to, but I assure you that I don't belong to it. I was at one time a member of an affiliate of your own organization. I could never get a satisfactory explanation as to why every election, we were expected to serve as cheerleaders for our own national branch of the Labour Lieutenants of Capital.
I expect you might even have the cheek to reference 'Left-wing Communism'.
I was thinking of doing so, but I figured the reference was obvious. Thanks for confirming that.
I think the long and short of it Milosevic, is that for most actual militants in the working class, the idea that you can have a revolution whilst most of their brothers and sisters are voting Tory is a joke.
And they're right about that, although often wrong in having illusions about prospects for change opened up by Labour government which do not involve activity of the class itself.
Overall the attitude is a sensible one readily understandable in a practical sense. If you were a militant in a workplace trying to organise your fellows, would you prefer that most were Tory voters, or most were Labour voters?
Its a king of catagory mistake to confuse the issue of whether voting changes the system with the issue of whether it matters which way workers vote (an index of their consiousness as Lenin I think put it). The argument that recognising this paradox in our literature is in some sense a 'contradiction' which sow's 'illusions' seems to me to rest on two kinds of mistake.
The first is a refusal to recognise that revolutionaries need to reflect on reality in order to change it. The second related point is that it makes a huge mistake about where such 'illusions' come from.
They don't come from small groups of revolutionaries arguing about slogans, or on the other hand, even the propagandists of the Labour Lieutenants of Capital. They come from workers experiance of reality. In other words their own confusion of who the best people are with how the system can be changed as outlined above.
Given that ultra-lefts and/or people who argue like yourself (not making any assumptions) share that confusion, its unlikely that they're best placed to sort this out. The SWP on the other hand places an understanding of that confusion in reality at the centre of its attempt to resolve that confusion.
Its also just true that there are more objective matters to consider. We do defend bourgoise democracy, not because of what is fake about it (ie voting can change the system) but because of its neccessary social basis: ie the existence of certain bourgoise freedom's which uncertainly trickle down in terms of possibilities for Socialist organisation (in this country the existence of a legal trade union movement for example).
In the end your argument is propagandist rather then good propaganda and fails to relate arguments to social reality.
Whats interesting as well, is that the ultraleftism charecteristic of this argument leads to all sorts of illusions in bourgois democracy itself (item: the belief that repression is always fascist never bourgoise democratic).
johng -- thanks for providing a serious reply, rather than insults.
I do of course agree, that for workers to have illusions in social democracy, is a relative advance over them having illusions in openly bourgeois parties.
The question, however, is whether it is appropriate and useful for revolutionaries, in the interest of increasing the level of class consciousness, to encourage such illusions in reformism. The alternative would be to acknowledge people's current opinions, and then explain why you do not necessarily share them. They may not immediately agree with you, but when they acquire more insight from further experience, they will remember who was straight with them, and who adapted to their relative ignorance.
hypothetical conversation:
SWP: Vote for Labour, but hold your nose!
Worker: That's what you told me last time, and I followed your advice. Absolutely nothing useful came of it. In fact, those bastards inflicted defeats on us that the bosses' party wouldn't have been able to, because we thought they were at least partly on our side. So thanks for nothing.
SWP: Well, of course we knew that would happen, but we wanted you to vote for them anyway. We thought it was important for developing your class consciousness. We figured you were too stupid to understand the whole story, so we encouraged you to believe things that we ourselves do not.
Worker: I see. So what lies are you now telling me, in the interest of developing my class consciousness? And at what point do you think I will be sufficiently enlightened to be able to handle the truth? How should I distinguish between statements which you really believe, and those you do not, but would like me to believe because you think it would be good for me?
We genuinely wanted to see the Tories ousted, as would any class consious worker. It was'nt a trick. We explained precisely why we wanted the Tories out and what voting Labour would achieve and what it very definately would not.
So your conversation is highly unlikely. I have never, no not once, found outside of left groups, the slightest bit of confusion about the SWP's position on this. Indeed anybody who has spent any length of time as a Trade Union activist, and engaged in debates from the question of the levy in the 1980's through to questions about disestablishing it today, will underestimate the very high level of consiousness amongst trade union activists around this discussion.
The picture of the ignorent and confused activist neccessary to sustain your imaginary dialogue is therefore quite at variance with reality, and precisely underestimates the extent to which this is a real discussion and not simply the outcome of 'false consiousness' of some kind.
You would need to explain to such a worker a) why were the Tories trying to break the Trade Union connection with Labour all through the 1980's, b) why has Tony Blair continued with this, and finally c) why, despite this, now is the time to take our funds elsewhere.
Simply declaiming about 'illusions' will get you nowhere in a debate which it is actually, as revolutionaries, our serious intention to win, not merely score points about. As with strikes, you have to deal with the issues and not be abstract about the question.
milosevic, on what basis do you believe the British bourgeoisie is turning toward fascism or has need of it at this time? Isn't Labour's 'War on Terror' getting the job done with far greater efficiency (and less overhead cost)?
The Terror War is the turn toward fascism. In the US, they're already building the concentration camps.
Surely this is all abundantly apparent by now, except perhaps to those who still insist that the Official Story of the American Reichstag Fire is true.
A long tradition of concentration camps and bourgoise democracy. There is no need to invoke fascism here. But bourgoise democracy in the end threatens itself. The principle of democracy is both internal to capitalism and at the same time limited by it.
Just seen where all this is coming from. The theses of fascism would be neccessary to sustain an account of 9/11 implicitly suggested by those who suggest that the main task of the left is to campaign for a 'truth commission'.
The numbers of people who would have to have been involved, and who some putative fuhrer would have to be sure of would suggest a totalitarian model possibly more stringent then that put foward by various cold war theorists about Stalin's Russia, or Hitlers Germany (or indeed, less dramatically, North Korea).
I don't think this is the case, largely because the US is a major power, which precisely because of its power, has less internally risky ways of getting things done. Of course the next stage is to suggest that I am 'naive' for not thinking that the US is 'totalitarian' in the sense of Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia.
Given that I don't think even these regimes were 'totalitarian' in the sense of a kind of 'termite society' devised by theorists of totalitarianism, and indeed that such societies leaked secrets all the time, had internal dynamics of elite competition etc, etc, it would be neccessary to posit a whole new kind of class society, which has never yet existed anywhere, for the kind of interpretation put foward by people who thought 9/11 was the equivilant of Hitler's 'Reichstag Fire' (an event which unlike 9/11 didn't need more then a few people to carry out).
I'm not persuaded of this, and I'm not persuaded by the overall analyses of how politics and society works (or rather the complete absence of such an analyses) suggested by those who argue that 9/11 was an inside job.
Partly because nothing much has happened in the last five years which challenged the framework of understanding of the world I already had.
johng: "Indeed anybody who has spent any length of time as a Trade Union activist, and engaged in debates ... will underestimate the very high level of consiousness amongst trade union activists around this discussion."
First, what on earth is this supposed to mean?
And is he referring to bourgeois consciousness or socialist consciousness?
First, where are concentration camps being built in America? As an American, I'm interested to know.
Second, if concentration camps = fascism, then Roosevelt was a fascist. If Roosevelt was a fascist, then the term has absolutely no meaning whatsoever.
Also, comrades across the pond: what's the story on 9/11 conspiracy theorists in England? They're a minor nuisance on the local left here, but I've no idea how these theories fare worldwide.
johng -- way to go, that was a pretty elaborate straw man you set up and knocked down there.
pauly -- here's your concentration camps. I'm sure you'll find out all about it when they take you there.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/
index...entration_camps
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/
...amps31jan06.htm
http://www.consortiumnews.com/20...06/
022106a.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/
0,2...,198456,00.html
http://portland.indymedia.org/en...09/
346165.shtml
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/...8/17360/
printer
Well if it was a straw man then presumably your not arguing that 9/11 was the equivilant of the Reichstag Fires. If you are, then it wasn't a strawman.
One deeply irritating thing about people who argue this stuff, is that they run around accusing people of not taking their argument seriously and then the minute you take the argument seriously, they lose interest in arguing.
The arguments therefore cannot really be taken in good faith.
Paulie pleased to see they're a minor irritation over the pond. I was depressed by a Cockburn article suggesting the whole movement had collapsed into this rubbish in the US.
Over here its completely marginal but not in the minds of some contributors on the Tomb.
Red Cloud,
As you have probably never broken breath to a trade unionist you'll never know will you?
'Also, comrades across the pond: what's the story on 9/11 conspiracy theorists in England? They're a minor nuisance on the local left here, but I've no idea how these theories fare worldwide.'
Good for you, pauly, I second johng. While the previous truthout hogs, recently sent to gulag or new pseudonym, pretend that an actual majority believes the '9/11 inside job theory,' it's blatantly false, quite as false as all their claims about everything are. In fact, their total delusional embrace of the 9/11 truthiness makes them inept on every single other subject as well. They can possibly tie their shoes, but they are not worth listening to on a single subject, whether art, class, race, religion, Muslims, the U.S., Chomsky, Hitchens, or anything. They have made concentration camps in their own minds for themselves.
The paid government shill appears!
They have made concentration camps in their own minds for themselves.
As opposed to the real ones that your masters are currently constructing.
re: SWP "over the moon" for Blair '97
johng: "As you have probably never broken breath to a trade unionist you'll never know will you?"
I'm sure that ignorant and politcally inexperienced students are blown away whenever SWP hacks start up about their 'influence' in the trade unions. Marxists however, understand that trade union consciousness does not, in and of itself, represent a break from bourgeois consciousness, and that socialist consciousness can only be brought to the workers "from without."
(As discussed earlier, nor is the SWP particuarly fussy about whether the "trade union" in question is part of the workers movement, or in fact represents the hired thugs of capital - cops, prison guards or security guards).
Notice also how the johng types never make the Marxist distinction between the rank and file and the pro-capitalist trade union bureaucracy (which Lenin, after DeLeon, dubbed "the labour lieutenants of capital"). When johng speaks of 'breaking wind with trade unionists' - it is these rotten elements with whom they are trading their influence (and flatulence).
Red Cloud,
1) have you ever spoken with a trade unionist or not? If so what did you talk about? Their bourgoise consciousness?
2) "the working class is instinctively and spontaniously Social Democratic" (Lenin: in them days Social Democratic meant Marxist).
3) One minute the SWP is accused of 'rank and filism', the next minute its accused of not making any distinctions between the rank and file and the trade union bureacracy (a terminology in British leftspeak practically invented by the SWP).
Its enough to make the head spin.
Anyway I'm happy. I'll stick with my bourgoise friends in the trade union movement. You can hang out with your 'objectively' proletarian mates denouncing them.
johng: "2) 'the working class is instinctively and spontaniously Social Democratic'"
Curious. Is there a source for this? I was unable to find it in a phrase search of Lenin in marxists.org.
Given up searching have you clotty?
http://www.marx.org/archive/leni...905/reorg/
i.htm
Thanks to anticomunista for the link.
Lenin is speaking not of trade unionism, but of the surging political radicalization of workers in the white heat of the 1905 Revolution, as part of a polemic against the abstentionist 'circle spirit' shown by some Bolsheviks and a refusal to open the party to mass recruitment of workers.
"Social-Democracy has established a name for itself, has created a trend and has built up cadres of Social-Democratic workers. And now that the heroic proletariat has proved by deeds its readiness to fight, and its ability to fight consistently and in a body for clearly-understood aims, to fight in a purely Social-Democratic spirit, it would be simply ridiculous to doubt that the workers who belong to our Party, or who will join it tomorrow at the invitation of the Central Committee, will be Social-Democrats in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. The working class is instinctively, spontaneously Social-Democratic, and more than ten years of work put in by Social-Democracy has done a great deal to transform this spontaneity into consciousness."
But of course the SWP fart-catcher presumably knew the context perfectly well before he posted it. Lenin's views on trade union consciousness were set out initially in 'What is to be done', from which the following is pertinent:
"Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses themselves in the process of their movement, the only choice is – either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course (for mankind has not created a “third” ideology, and, moreover, in a society torn by class antagonisms there can never be a non-class or an above-class ideology). Hence, to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology.
There is much talk of spontaneity. But the spontaneous development of the working-class movement leads to its subordination to bourgeois ideology, to its development along the lines of the Credo programme; for the spontaneous working-class movement is trade-unionism, is Nur-Gewerkschaftlerei, and trade unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie.
Hence, our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the working-class movement from this spontaneous, trade-unionist striving to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social Democracy."
Pink Mist effortlessly combines scholasticism, sectarianism, and a dogmatic refusal to understand the texts he is citing and their context. Because he treats the literature as holy texts in which everything is always-already given by an impeccably astute author, he cannot see when he contradicts himself.
It was not, is not, and cannot be true that socialist 'consciousness' can only be brought to workers 'from without', and Lenin knew this in 1905, as Pink Mist admits while trying to wriggle out of it, and Marx knew it when he wrote about the Paris Commune.
That Lenin altered his position, that he resiled dramatically from the position Pink Mist cites, is far too obvious for him to notice. Somewhat less obvious, and yet something that should have been noticed by this self-declared exegete, is that What Is To Be Done is an ephemeral text written in haste with hardly any significance at all in understanding Leninism. Its status owes itself almost entirely to Cold War Leninology. Lenin himself was always the most 'voluntarist' of marxists, the most enthusiastic about 'spontaneous' outburts of working class activity, always the least determinist of the revolutionary marxists. So far from encouraging the kind of condescending, professionalised coterie of narcissistically autodidactic intellectuals that Pink Mist is a part of, Lenin spent much of his time arguing that marxist theory was developed in working class self-activity, by intellectuals acting within and as part of the working class.
lenin, can you provide a link for that?
..............just kidding :)
Happy hols
Re: SWP "over the moon" for Blair '97
"Lenin spent much of his time arguing that marxist theory was developed in working class self-activity, by intellectuals acting within and as part of the working class blah blah blah"
Sweeping banalities from lenny - typical SWP tripe - "Leninism" meaning everything and nothing (and the opposite). No demarcations, no principle, nothing that might constrain the next twist of the political weathervane.
Funny how much the SWP has learned from the Stalin school...
Perhaps lenny or johng can offer some actual arguments. Is there no such thing as a trade union bureaucracy which identifies its interests primarily with those of the exploiters? Is the working class itself really "spontaneously" revolutionary and socialist? If so, what's holding up the overthrow of capital? And why would any "spontaneously revolutionary" worker swallow the SWP's line about "voting Labour" even once - let alone time after time as you expect them to?
not 'anonymous' but Red Cloud.
"Is the working class itself really "spontaneously" revolutionary and socialist? If so, what's holding up the overthrow of capital? And why would any "spontaneously revolutionary" worker swallow the SWP's line about "voting Labour" even once - let alone time after time as you expect them to?"
What an astonishing lack of a) politics and b) actual involvement with the working class.
Lenny: "It was not, is not, and cannot be true that socialist 'consciousness' can only be brought to workers 'from without', and Lenin knew this in 1905 ... and Marx knew it when he wrote about the Paris Commune."
Some back up for this?
"That Lenin altered his position, that he resiled dramatically from the position Pink Mist cites, is far too obvious for him to notice."
Ooooo he "Resiled" from it? And "dramatically" no less...
Evidence?
"What Is To Be Done is an ephemeral text written in haste with hardly any significance at all in understanding Leninism."
Says who, and on what basis?
Put up or shut up.
Beat you to it cloddy. I asked for the links 4 posts earlier.
Put up or shut up.
Red Cloud
Proof? Link? Where does it say thatin the Bible, whoops the Marxist bible?
Red Cloud if your unfamiliar with the very famous quotation (part of a polemic against conservative elements in the Bolsheviks during the 1905 revolution) its simply an indication of your narrow and falsified political education. Google it. "instinctively and spontaniously social democratic". He also quite frankly disowned parts of what is to be done claiming that he 'bent the stick too far'.
Probably he saw the mushrooming of Red Cloud types and given that he wanted a party of revolutionaries and not theologians, he indeed 'resiled'.
johng: "He also quite frankly disowned parts of what is to be done claiming that he 'bent the stick too far'."
More assertions, still no evidence.
More assertions, still no evidence.
Red Cloud
evidence? links?
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