What I am trying to say here is that in each case they applied the tenets of marxism-leninism and won in their respective countries, and respective situations, and in some cases the theory came out during the contest and in some instances it came out after, BUT THAT THE UPDATING OF THE THEORY OF MARXIST REVOLUTION CAME OUT OF PRACTICE -- revolutionary practice -- not from careful study to find the best theory -- they hashed it out at the point of practice.
The other side of that coin is those who tried to update Marxism in the absence of a successful proletarian revolution. You get this "Well, it hasn't worked yet, so why do it?" is a paraphrase of a common sentiment, which is itself undialectical. I practice Marxism-Leninism in the United States and "it hasn't worked yet." either, but the theory I practice and the application of that theory is based in revolutionary struggle.
I hope this helps.
I just want to take the time to voice my semi-dissent with this opinion. I don't think that past experiences should dictate the course of future efforts. As I've said before, different people in different places and different times require different methods. Sure, there's a lot to be gained from looking at how things went in the past: we might gather, for example, that we need to be ready for a powerful counter-revolutionary resistance, and the possibility of foreign intervention on their behalf. There are certain lessons that are more broadly applicable, but imitation is uncalled for. Just because Marxist-Leninists have succeeded in revolutions where many others have not doesn't mean that Marxism-Leninism is the universal program for revolutionaries everywhere. You say that lack of success is not indicative of lack of future success; that's true. But past success is also not indicative future success; and the same goes for relevance. If I can make Marxist-Leninists realize that M-L is a period-based ideology, then I will consider myself to have accomplished something greatly benificial to our movement.
To be quite frank, it's dangerous to the revolutionary movement to cling hard to this circumstantial political program. A program, mind you, that didn't even govern the revolution that in turn created it. It's a fake program, retconned to give the illusion of continuity and purposeful action. It's only redeeming qualities were its [false] appearance of success, which gave it name credibility, and its nation-building program which earned it the backing of people motivated to modernize their countries economically and socially when the only other thing promising such growth was the imperialist capitalism that they had already seen the raw end of. I've already spoken about the lack of use in the West for the Vanguard before.
I don't say these things because I hate Marxist-Leninists, or because I want to despoil the names of Lenin, Stalin, or any Marxist-Leninists, but because I see a great danger to our movement posed by and ideology which is unnecessary and which naturally leads its followers to closed-mindedness with its message of timeless correctness. I see it everyday isolating the communist movement. We should not be building a
correct movement, we should be building a
mass movement. Miguel de Uanmuno quipped at the Francoists in Salamanca in 1936 "You will win, but you will not convince." The self-righteousness of dogmatic communists is actively driving people away from the movement, as the True Believers isolate themselves in a fortress of ideological correctness; they rest of the world is wrong, but what good does that do for the revolution? We are not merely philosophers, we are political actors. Philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways, but the point is to change it. Which comes back again to the Thurmon Arnold quote in my signature.
If I might quote Slavoj Zizek in
First as Tragedy, Then As Farce, to better illustrate my point:
In the good old days of Really Existing Socialism, a joke popular among dissidents was used to illustrate the futility of their protests. In the fifteenth century, when Russia was occupied by the Mongols, a peasant and his wife were walking along a dusty country road; a Mongol warrior on a horse stopped at their side and told the peasant he would now proceed to rape his wife, he then added: "But since there is a lot of dust on the ground,you must hold my testicles while I rape your wife, so that they will not get dirty!" Once the Mongol had done the deed and ridden away, the peasant started laughing and jumping with joy. His surprised wife asked: "How can you be jumping with joy when I was just brutally raped in your presence?" The farmer answered: "But I got him! His balls are covered with dust!" This sad joke reveals the predicament of the dissidents: they thought they were delaing serious blows to the party nomenklatura, but all they were doing was slightly soiling the nomenklatura's testicles, while the ruling class carried on raping the people...
Is today's critical Left not in a similar position?...Our Thesis 11 should be: in our societies, critical Leftists have hitherto only succeeded in soiling those in power, whereas the real point is to castrate them.
But how can we do this? We should learn from the failures of twentieth century Leftist politics. The task is not to conduct the castration in a direct climactic confrontation, but to undermine those in power with patient ideologico-critical work, so that although they are still in power, one all of a sudden notices that powers-that-be are afflicted with unnaturally high-pitched voices.
In 1922, when Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy, he wrote a short text defending it called "On Ascending a High Mountain. He uses the simile of a climber who has to return to the valley after a first failed attempt to reach a new mountain peak as a way of describing what it means to make a retreat in the revolutionary process. The question is: how does one undertake such a retreat without opportunistically betraying one's fidelity to the Cause? After enumerating both the achievements and failures of the Soviet state, Lenin concludes: "Communists who have no illusions, who do not give way to despondency, and who preserve their strength and flexibility to begin from the beginning' over and over again in approaching an extremely difficult task, are not doomed and in all probability will not perish."
I realize in all of the above there rests an equally strong critique of those communists who bloviate about The Revolution without engaging in any sort of action. I am not saying that they are going to accomplish anything, either. They are stuck in the same rut as Marxist-Leninists: they seek philosophy rather than opportunity, and so in the end they create philosophy rather than opportunity.
And so what I am saying is,
we have to find our own way, and we can do so by trial and error, and by careful reflection upon the lessons of the past that prove to be relevant today. We must be constantly interpreting and re-interpreting our situation, and our successes and failures, not through the jaundiced lens of the past, but through the timeless social science of Dialectical Materialism. We can no longer afford to rely upon past analyses of past societies in past situations in a vain effort to understand our present situation in our present society. Socialism is democracy, but it is not democracy of the dead.
On topic.
