90th Anniversary of the Passing of VI Lenin
- Thread starter ReindeerThistle
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Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
As far as "free" elections go, they're a bourgeois institution with bourgeois expectations built around it. They're not an objective descriptor of "the will of the people," and even if they were, there is no inherent value in that expression. So they get to have a say in who their leader is? The class in power cannot help but dictate the structure of society. Elect a bourgeois politician, they will pursue bourgeois interests. Even a socialist elected in a bourgeois system will still have to fight very hard from now pursuing the ruling class' interest. Look at Sanders, caucusing with the Democrats! Even if he does get to sneak some working-class rhetoric in there, he's obliged to pay homage to the Democrats' favorite "middle class" too.
So why is socialism any different? Well let me ask you what the purpose of bourgeois society is? What is its goal, where is it going? It's goal is its own perpetuity, its purpose is to reproduce capital (and the wealth) for the benefit of the bourgeois class. It is going nowhere except where the pursuit of profit takes it. Thus, as long as the bourgeois class controls the state, it controls society (because the state is the mediator between class antagonisms - it can always decide in favor of the bourgeoisie), and that is all that it needs.
But socialism is different. Socialism works toward something: communism, and the abolition of class antagonisms, privileges, and all forms of discrimination, bigotry, ostracization. It is the dramatic restructuring of society into something permanently capable of maintaining maximum freedom for everyone, and keeping everyone free from the domination of others.
Getting there is the challenge. Critics point to extant socialist states and say "oh look how disrespectful they are of human rights and liberal freedoms" and "look how underdeveloped they are," and so on. Well as I said, liberal freedoms are the enshrinement of liberal (bourgeois) society. There, they exist for their own sake, because they enable the perpetuation of private capital. But we understand them, like all things, to be means to an end: they don't exist for their own sake, they exist for our sake. If they prove to be more harm than good (like allowing free elections which will bring back capitalism: would you as an ex-slave allow any say in the re-institution of slavery???), then they are put on hold. Bourgeois society does this as well, don't be fooled. But it does it in protection of its dominant class: the small caste of highly-rich bankers and industrialists who rule the rest of us for their own benefit. Socialism does it for the protection of its dominant class: the great mass of workers (and sometimes peasants and intellectuals - a great many unique alliances in different countries have developed).
When socialism is not so hard-pressed, besieged on all sides by imperialists, always threatened with extinction and that return to subjugation, and the institutions which redistribute wealth can function more freely, then power in society will be able to flow downward. It is not something to be weighed "in equal measure" with capitalist societies; they are not equal, one is the acme of one system with all the strength which that position enjoys, one is the beginnings of another, fighting the uphill battle in the dark.
At heart, all communists are anarchists, don't forget that when judging the "motives" of communists. Of all the virtues, the communist possesses only one: that he struggles for communism. We will do what we have to to survive a return to capitalist wage-slavery. Any escaped slave would. The difference between us and Spartacus is that we don't just want to go home, we want to get rid of slavery everywhere, forever. And that requires sacrifices.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Problem there, mind, is that the soviets ceased to function as effective organs of working class political power by 1922 at the latest. And if it isn't about the workers' councils, if "all power to the soviets" turns out to be a convenient rallying-cry rather than a necessity, then what is it about?
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
The Bolsheviks were in a very different situation 1922 than they were in 1917. All power could go to the Soviets before the Civil War and before the failure of the European revolutions. But after those happened (or begun, rather), consolidation of an increasingly desperate position became more important, and what we refer to as "siege socialism" began. I agree with you; I personally don't think it can be referred to as socialism if the workers' councils are not functioning as organs of power. And for a long time they were pretty explicit that while they were on the socialist path, they were not socialist. Stalin didn't even refer to them beginning the socialist path until 1936, until then, during the 5-year plans, etc, they were state capitalist. Again, they admitted this; present-day Marxist-Leninists have forgotten it, and pretend everything was perfect and went according to plan (ironically, MLM's haven't).
This is why words are important. We have to be careful what we're saying and how we're saying it (not that you need any lecture on that, I'm just restating it). It's why, for all the problems I have with Trots, I think "deformed workers' state" is the best description of the USSR. I don't think it was capitalist, and it wasn't socialist, it was...somewhere in between. It had potential, which it was never able to fulfill. That's not a condemnation of Bolshevism or of communism, it's a statement of geopolitical fact. We can point to any number of early failed attempts at liberal democracy and say the same thing (Geneva, Venice, etc).
ReindeerThistle
Zimmerwald Left
While I agree with you about most of this post, I regret that you make such sweeping generalizations of Marxist-Leninists. Cuba is the epitome of a Marxist-Leninist model... the Cuban CP has never forgotten this... and did not follow the path of the USSR. Neither did China.
It was Fidel who said "One can call oneself an eagle without having a single feather... but only a revolutionary fighter can call oneself a Communist."
Most of those people you contend with on line, Cheezy, are no more M-L than a penquin is an albatross.
I am excluded, of course!
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