My thought is if you go that far Right don't you wind up Left (which is where a Leninist would be?)
Since Bannon is now on the National Security Council I thought maybe understanding what an avowed Leninist is all about might be useful here.
Partial quote from below word button:
Leninism is the political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party and the achievement of a dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism.[1]
So, Bannon is about creating a revolutionary vanguard party regarding the Achievement of a dictatorship. This actually makes a lot of sense here because that is what Trump and Bannon Share: Creating a Dictatorship. So, likely Putin is a Leninist too and creating the U.S. into a puppet dictatorship would be his goal too.
So now you see the symmetry between Bannon, Trump and Putin. They all want to turn the U.S. into a puppet dictatorship run by Trump and overseen by Putin.
Begin quote from:
- Leninism is the political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party and the achievement of a dictatorship of the proletariat ...
- Leninism, principles expounded by Vladimir I. Lenin, who was the preeminent figure in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Whether Leninist concepts represented a ...
- Define Leninism: the political, economic, and social principles and policies advocated by Leninespecially : the theory and practice of communism…
- Marxism–Leninism is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of Marxism and Leninism, and seeks to establish socialist states and develop ...
Leninism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Functionally, the Leninist vanguard party was to provide the working class with the political consciousness (education and organisation) and revolutionary leadership necessary to depose capitalism in Imperial Russia.[1] After the October Revolution of 1917, Leninism was the dominant version of Marxism in Russia, and, in establishing soviet democracy, the Bolshevik régime suppressed Marxists who opposed the revolution, such as the Mensheviks and factions of the Socialist Revolutionary Party.[2] The Russian Civil War (1917–22) thus included left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks (1918–1924) that were suppressed in the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR), before incorporation to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1922.
Leninism was composed as and for revolutionary praxis, and originally was neither a rigorously proper philosophy nor a discrete political theory; after the Russian Revolution, in History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (1923), György Lukács developed and organised Lenin's pragmatic revolutionary practices and ideology into the formal philosophy of vanguard-party revolution (Leninism). As a political-science term, Leninism entered common usage in 1922, after infirmity ended Lenin's participation in governing the Russian Communist Party. Two years later, in July 1924, at the fifth congress of the Communist International, Grigory Zinoviev popularized the term Leninism to denote "vanguard-party revolution".
As a work of political science and philosophy, History and Class Consciousness illustrated Lenin's 1915 dictum about the commitment to the cause of the revolutionary man, and said of Lukács:
One cannot be a revolutionary Social–Democrat without participating, according to one's powers, in developing this theory [Marxism], and adapting it to changed conditions.
For five years, from 1917 to 1922, Leninism was the Russian application of Marxist economics and political philosophy, effected and realised by the Bolsheviks, the vanguard party who led the fight for the political independence of the working class. In the 1925–29 period, Joseph Stalin established Leninism as the official and only legitimate form of Marxism in Russia, by amalgamating the political philosophies as Marxism–Leninism, which then became the state ideology of the Soviet Union.
— Lenin and the Russian Revolution (1971) p. 35.[3]
Contents
Historical background
Part of the Politics series on Leninism Part of a series on Marxism
Moreover, because the industrialization was financed mostly with foreign capital, Imperial Russia did not possess a revolutionary bourgeoisie with political and economic influence upon the workers and the peasants (as occurred in the French Revolution, 1789). So, although Russia's political economy principally was agrarian and semi-feudal, the task of democratic revolution therefore fell to the urban, industrial working class, as the only social class capable of effecting land reform and democratization, in view that the Russian propertied classes would attempt to suppress any revolution, in town and country. In April 1917, Lenin published the April Theses, the political strategy of the October Revolution (7–8 November 1917), which proposed that the Russian revolution was not an isolated national event, but a fundamentally international event—the first world socialist revolution. Thus, Lenin's practical application of Marxism and working-class urban revolution to the social, political, and economic conditions of the agrarian peasant society that was Tsarist Russia sparked the "revolutionary nationalism of the poor" to depose the absolute monarchy of the three-hundred-year Romanov dynasty (1613–1917).[4]
Imperialism
In the course of developing the Russian application of Marxism, the pamphlet Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) presented Lenin's analysis of an economic development predicted by Karl Marx: that capitalism would become a global financial system, wherein advanced industrial countries export financial capital to their colonial countries, to finance the exploitation of their natural resources and the labour of the native populations. Such superexploitation of the poor (undeveloped) countries allows the wealthy (developed) countries to maintain some homeland workers politically content with a slightly higher standard of living, and so ensure peaceful labour–capital relations in the capitalist homeland. (see: labour aristocracy, globalization) Hence, a proletarian revolution of workers and peasants could not occur in the developed capitalist countries, while the imperialist global-finance system remained intact; thus an underdeveloped country would feature the first proletarian revolution; and, in the early 20th century, Imperial Russia was the politically weakest country in the capitalist global-finance system.[5] In the United States of Europe Slogan (1915), Lenin said:
Workers of the world, unite!—Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence the victory of socialism is possible, first in several, or even in one capitalist country taken separately. The victorious proletariat of that country, having expropriated the capitalists and organised its own socialist production, would stand up against the rest of the world, the capitalist world.
— Collected Works, vol. 18, p. 232.[6]The more powerful enemy can be vanquished only by exerting the utmost effort, and by the most thorough, careful, attentive, skilful and obligatory use of any, even the smallest, rift between the enemies, any conflict of interests among the bourgeoisie of the various countries and among the various groups or types of bourgeoisie within the various countries, and also by taking advantage of any, even the smallest, opportunity of winning a mass ally, even though this ally is temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional. Those who do not understand this reveal a failure to understand even the smallest grain of Marxism, of modern scientific socialism in general. Those who have not proved in practice, over a fairly considerable period of time and in fairly varied political situations, their ability to apply this truth in practice have not yet learned to help the revolutionary class in its struggle to emancipate all toiling humanity from the exploiters. And this applies equally to the period before and after the proletariat has won political power.
— Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920)[7]Leninist theory
Part of a series on Marxism–Leninism The vanguard party
In Chapter II: "Proletarians and Communists" of The Communist Manifesto (1848), Engels and Marx presented the idea of the vanguard party as solely qualified to politically lead the proletariat in revolution:
The Communists, therefore, are, on the one hand, practically the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.
Hence, the purpose of the Leninist vanguard party is to establish a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat; supported by the working class, the vanguard party would lead the revolution to depose the incumbent Tsarist government, and then transfer power of government to the working class, which change of ruling class—from bourgeoisie to proletariat—makes possible the full development of socialism.[8] In the pamphlet What is to be Done? (1902), Lenin proposed that a revolutionary vanguard party, mostly recruited from the working class, should lead the political campaign, because it was the only way that the proletariat could successfully achieve a revolution; unlike the economist campaign of trade-union-struggle advocated by other socialist political parties; and later by the anarcho-syndicalists. Like Karl Marx, Lenin distinguished between the aspects of a revolution, the "economic campaign" (labour strikes for increased wages and work concessions), which featured diffused plural leadership; and the "political campaign" (socialist changes to society), which required the decisive revolutionary leadership of the Bolshevik vanguard party.
- Democratic centralism
Of course, the application of this principle in practice will sometimes give rise to disputes and misunderstandings; but only on the basis of this principle can all disputes and all misunderstandings be settled honourably for the Party.... The principle of democratic centralism and autonomy for local Party organisations implies universal and full freedom to criticise, so long as this does not disturb the unity of a definite action; it rules out all criticism which disrupts or makes difficult the unity of an action decided on by the Party.[9]
Full, inner-party democratic debate was Bolshevik Party practice under Lenin, even after the banning of party factions in 1921. Although a guiding influence in policy, Lenin did not exercise absolute power, and continually debated and discussed to have his point of view accepted. Under Stalin, the inner-party practice of democratic free debate did not continue after the death of Lenin in 1924.
- Revolution
Dictatorship of the proletariat
Main article: Dictatorship of the proletariatThis article is part of a series on the
politics and government of
the Soviet Union
...the dictatorship of the proletariat—i.e. the organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of crushing the oppressors.... An immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the rich:... and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, for the exploiters and oppressors of the people—this is the change which democracy undergoes during the 'transition' from capitalism to communism.[13]
Soviet constitutionalism was the collective government form of the Russian dictatorship of the proletariat, the opposite of the government form of the dictatorship of capital (privately owned means of production) practised in bourgeois democracies. In the soviet political system, the (Leninist) vanguard party would be one of many political parties competing for elected power.[1][11][14] Nevertheless, the circumstances of the Red vs. White Russian Civil War, and terrorism by the opposing political parties, and in aid of the White Armies' counter-revolution, led to the Bolshevik government banning other parties; thus, the vanguard party became the sole, legal political party in Russia. Lenin did not regard such political suppression as philosophically inherent to the dictatorship of the proletariat; yet the Stalinists retrospectively claimed that such factional suppression was original to Leninism.[15][16][17]
Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people—this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism.
— Lenin, The State and Revolution. Collected Works, Vol. 25, pp.461–462.[18]Economics
Soviet democracy nationalised industry and established a foreign-trade monopoly to allow the productive co-ordination of the national economy, and so prevent Russian national industries from competing against each other. To feed the populaces of town and country, Lenin instituted War Communism (1918–21) as a necessary condition—adequate supplies of food and weapons—for fighting the Russian Civil War (1917–23).[14] Later, in March 1921, he established the New Economic Policy (NEP, 1921–29), which allowed measures of private commerce, internal free trade, and replaced grain requisitions with an agricultural tax, under the management of State banks. The purpose of the NEP was to resolve food-shortage riots among the peasantry, and allowed measures of private enterprise, wherein the profit motive encouraged the peasants to harvest the crops required to feed the people of town and country; and to economically re-establish the urban working class, who had lost many men (workers) to the counter-revolutionary Civil War.[19][20] With the NEP, the socialist nationalisation of the economy could then be developed to industrialise Russia, strengthen the working class, and raise standards of living; thus the NEP would advance socialism against capitalism. Lenin regarded the appearance of new socialist states in the developed countries as necessary to the strengthening Russia's economy, and the eventual development of socialism. In that, he was encouraged by the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Italian insurrection and general strikes of 1920, and industrial unrest in Britain, France, and the U.S.
National self-determination
Lenin recognized and accepted the existence of nationalism among oppressed peoples, advocated their national rights to self-determination, and opposed the ethnic chauvinism of "Greater Russia" because such ethnocentrism was a cultural obstacle to establishing the proletarian dictatorship in the territories of the deposed Tsarist Russian Empire (1721–1917).[21][22] In The Right of Nations to Self-determination (1914), Lenin said:
We fight against the privileges and violence of the oppressor nation, and do not in any way condone strivings for privileges on the part of the oppressed nation.... The bourgeois nationalism of any oppressed nation has a general democratic content that is directed against oppression, and it is this content that we unconditionally support. At the same time, we strictly distinguish it from the tendency towards national exclusiveness.... Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot.[23]
The internationalist philosophies of Bolshevism and of Marxism are based upon class struggle transcending nationalism, ethnocentrism, and religion, which are intellectual obstacles to class consciousness, because the bourgeois ruling classes manipulated said cultural status quo to politically divide the proletarian working classes. To overcome the political barrier of nationalism, Lenin said it was necessary to acknowledge the existence of nationalism among oppressed peoples, and to guarantee their national independence, as the right of secession; and that, based upon national self-determination, it was natural for socialist states to transcend nationalism and form a federation.[24] In The Question of Nationalities, or "Autonomisation" (1923), Lenin said:
. . . nothing holds up the development and strengthening of proletarian class solidarity so much as national injustice; "offended" nationals are not sensitive to anything, so much as to the feeling of equality, and the violation of this equality, if only through negligence or jest—to the violation of that equality by their proletarian comrades.[25]
Socialist culture
The role of the Marxist vanguard party was to politically educate the workers and peasants to dispel the societal false consciousness of religion and nationalism that constitute the cultural status quo taught by the bourgeoisie to the proletariat to facilitate their economic exploitation of peasant and worker. Influenced by Lenin, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party stated that the development of the socialist workers' culture should not be 'hamstrung from above', and opposed the Proletkult (1917–25) organisational control of the national culture.[26]
Leninism after 1924
- Lenin vs. Stalin
To that end followed proposals reducing the administrative powers of Party posts, in order to reduce bureaucratic influence upon the policies of the Communist Party. Lenin advised Trotsky to emphasize Stalin's recent bureaucratic alignment in such matters (e.g. undermining the anti-bureaucratic Workers' and Peasants' Inspection), and argued to depose Stalin as General Secretary. Despite advice to refuse "any rotten compromise", Trotsky did not heed Lenin's advice, and General Secretary Stalin retained power over the Communist Party and the bureaucracy of the soviet government.[17]
- Trotskyism vs. Stalinism
In the course of instituting government policy, Stalin promoted the doctrine of Socialism in One Country (adopted 1925), wherein the USSR would establish socialism upon Russia's economic foundations (and support socialist revolutions elsewhere). Conversely, Trotsky held that socialism in one country would economically constrain the industrial development of the USSR, and thus required assistance from the new socialist countries that had arisen in the developed world, which was essential for maintaining Soviet democracy, in 1924 much undermined by civil war and counter-revolution. Furthermore, Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution proposed that socialist revolutions in underdeveloped countries would go further towards dismantling feudal régimes, and establish socialist democracies that would not pass through a capitalist stage of development and government. Hence, revolutionary workers should politically ally with peasant political organisations, but not with capitalist political parties. In contrast, Stalin and allies proposed that alliances with capitalist political parties were essential to realising a revolution where Communists were too few; said Stalinist practice failed, especially in the Northern Expedition portion of the Chinese Revolution (1925–1927), wherein it resulted in the right-wing Kuomintang's massacre of the Chinese Communist Party; nonetheless, despite the failure, Stalin's policy of mixed-ideology political alliances, became Comintern policy.
- The Oppositionists
During the 1920s and the 1930s, Stalin fought and defeated the political influence of Leon Trotsky and of the Trotskyists in Russia, by means of slander, anti-Semitism, programmed censorship, expulsions, exile (internal and external), and imprisonment. The anti–Trotsky campaign culminated in the executions (official and unofficial) of the Moscow Trials (1936–38), which were part of the Great Purge of Old Bolsheviks (who had led the Revolution).[17][33] Once established as ruler of the USSR, General Secretary Stalin re-titled the official Socialism in One Country doctrine as "Marxism-Leninism", to establish ideologic continuity with Leninism, whilst opponents continued calling it "Stalinism".
Philosophic successors
In political practice, Leninism (vanguard-party revolution), despite its origin as Communist revolutionary praxis, was adopted throughout the political spectrum.
- In China, the Communist Party of China was organised as a Leninist vanguard party, based upon Maoism (Mao Zedong Thought), the Chinese practical application of Marxism-Leninism, that is Socialism with Chinese characteristics.[34]
- In Singapore, the People's Action Party (PAP) was organised Leninist political party featuring internal democracy. The PAP initiated single-party dominance in the government and popular politics of Singapore.[35]
Criticism
In The Nationalities Question in the Russian Revolution (1918), Rosa Luxemburg criticized the Bolsheviks and their policies for: the suppression of the All Russian Constituent Assembly (January 1918); the partitioning of the feudal estates to the peasant communes; and the right of self-determination of every national people of the Russias. As a Marxist, Luxemburg said that the strategic (geopolitical) mistakes of the Bolsheviks would create great dangers for the Russian Revolution, such as the bureaucratisation that would arise to administrate the over-sized country that was Bolshevik Russia.[37] In defence of the expedients of revolutionary practice, in "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder, Lenin criticised the political and ideologic points of anti–Bolshevik critics who claimed ideologically correct stances that were to the left of Lenin.
In Marxist philosophy, the term Left communism identifies a range of the Communist political perspectives that are the left-wing among Communists. Left communism criticizes the political ideas that the Bolshevik Party practiced at certain periods of their history as a revolutionary vanguard party. Ideologically, the Left communist perspective is presented as more authentically Marxist and oriented to the proletariat, than the Leninist ideology of the Communist International, at their first (1919) and second (1920) congresses. Proponents of Left communism include Amadeo Bordiga, Herman Gorter, Antonie Pannekoek, Otto Rühle, Sylvia Pankhurst, and Paul Mattick.[38]
The public intellectuals Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago, 1973) and Noam Chomsky ("The Soviet Union Versus Socialism", 1986) each has said that Stalinism was not an ideological deviation from Lenin's policies, but a logical extension of Leninism. The resulting soviet model of Communism in Russia featured a political system that organised labour by collectivization and enforced the law with a police state, continually supported with a totalitarian political ideology.[39][40]
The "call-up of 1937" was very loquacious, and having access to the press and radio created the "legend of 1937", a legend consisting of two points: 1) If they arrested people at all under the Soviet government, it was only in 1937, and it is necessary to speak out and be indignant only about 1937; 2) In 1937 they were the only ones arrested. Here's what they write: "That terrible year when they arrested the most devout Communist executives: Secretaries of the Central Committees of the Union Republics, Secretaries of the Provincial Party Committees, Chairmen of the Provincial Executive Committees; all the commanders of the military districts, marshals and generals; provincial prosecutors; Secretaries of District Party Committees. . ."
At the very beginning of our book, we gave a conspectus of the'waves pouring into the Archipelago [labour camps] during the two decades up to 1937. How long all that dragged on! And how many millions there were! But the future call-up of 1937 didn't bat an eye and found it all normal. . . .
And for a long time after, as they became convinced of the irrevocability of their fate, they sighed and groaned, "If only Lenin were alive, this would never have happened!" What did they mean by this? Was it not precisely this that had happened to the others before them?— Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, Vol. 2, p. 328See also
- An equal value of products for an equal value of labor
- Anti-Leninism
- Democratic centralism
- He who does not work neither shall he eat
- Lenin's national policy
- New Economic Policy
- The State and Revolution (1917)
References
- The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought Third Edition (1999) pp. 476–477.
- Noam Chomsky (Spring–Summer 1986). "The Soviet Union Versus Socialism". Our Generation.
Further reading
- Key works by Lenin
- The Development of Capitalism in Russia, 1899
- What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement, 1902
- The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, 1913
- The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, 1914
- Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1917
- The State and Revolution, 1917
- The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution (The "April Theses"), 1917
- "Left-Wing" Childishness and the Petty Bourgois Mentality, 1918
- Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, 1920
- "Last Testament" Letters to the Congress, 1923–24
- Histories
- Isaac Deutscher. The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879–1921, 1954
- Isaac Deutscher. The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky 1921–1929, 1959
- Moshe Lewin. Lenin's Last Struggle, 1969
- Edward Hallett Carr. The Russian Revolution From Lenin to Stalin: 1917–1929, 1979
- Other authors
- Paul Blackledge.What was Done an extended review of Lars Lih's Lenin Rediscovered from International Socialism
- Sebastian Budgen, Stathis Kouvelakis, Slavoj Žižek (eds). Lenin Reloaded: Toward a Politics of Truth. Durham: Duke University Press. 2007. ISBN 978-0822339410.
- Marcel Liebman. Leninism Under Lenin. The Merlin Press. 1980. ISBN 0-85036-261-X
- Roy Medvedev. Leninism and Western Socialism. Verso Books. 1981. ISBN 0-86091-739-8
- Neil Harding. Leninism. Duke University Press. 1996. ISBN 0-8223-1867-9
- Joseph Stalin. Foundations of Leninism. University Press of the Pacific. 2001. ISBN 0-89875-212-4
- CLR James. Notes on Dialectics: Hegel, Marx, Lenin. Pluto Press. 2005. ISBN 0-7453-2491-6
- Edmund Wilson. To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History. Phoenix Press. 2004. ISBN 0-7538-1800-0
- Non-Leninist Marxism: Writings on the Workers Councils (texts by Gorter, Pannekoek, Pankhurst and Rühle), Red and Black Publishers, St Petersburg, Florida, 2007. ISBN 978-0-9791813-6-8
- Paul Le Blanc. Lenin and the Revolutionary Party. Humanities Press International, Inc. 1990. ISBN 0-391-03604-1.
- A. James Gregor. The Faces of Janus. Yale University Press. 2000. ISBN 0-300-10602-5.
External links
Works by Vladimir Lenin:
- What is to be Done?
- Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
- The State and Revolution
- The Lenin Archive at Marxists.org
- First Conference of the Communist International
- Marcel Liebman on Lenin and democracy
- An excerpt on Leninism and State Capitalism from the work of Noam Chomsky
- Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy by Rosa Luxemburg
- Lenin's Philosophy by Karl Korsch
- Cyber Leninism
- Leninist Ebooks
- Lenin as a Philosopher by Anton Pannekoek
- The Lenin Legend by Paul Mattick
- Dead Labor: Marx and Lenin Reconsidered by Paul Craig Roberts
No comments:
Post a Comment