Bob Gould
A few weeks ago, Cathal McLennan asked Ozleft to put up 30 Questions and answers on the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, an article written in 1962 by Ernest Germain (Mandel) that was reproduced in Australia as a small pamphlet by Nick Origlass’s socialist group.
Part II of a Critique of Doug Lorimer’s article, The Bolshevik Party and “Zinovievism”: Comments on a Caricature of Leninism, in Links (No. 24, pp. 96-112), and a few suggestions as to what an organisation drawing the useful lessons of Lenin’s activity, experience and writings, might look like in modern conditions. How we might possibly get there from the present situation of a proliferation of Marxist sects. Some further incidents and events from Bolshevik history that undermine Lorimer’s retrospective centralist schema about “Leninism”
The year 1905 saw the first encounter between Leninism and revolution. Until 1905 Lenin had been concerned with working out the theory and everyday practice of the instrument of the revolution, the vanguard Party. He had elaborated its structural requirements and operational methods. He had developed some of his most important, concepts — the necessity of Party centralisation, the discipline by which it must be ruled, and the role of the Party in guiding the masses and organising them into cadres in order to counteract the defects of a spontaneity which he had forcefully stressed. Finally, Lenin had stressed, especially in What Is to Be Done? the prime importance of a party of professional revolutionaries constituting, as it were, a political and military order capable of both struggling against police repression and providing a bulwark against opportunism. These ideas represented the first systematic and coherent conception of an elitist Party having the task of directing the activity of the proletariat.
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Extracts from Lenin: A Biography, by Robert Service
Letters from Lenin to Inessa Armand
Extracts from Bride of the Revolution:
Krupskaya and Lenin, by Robert H. McNeal
Inessa Armand, by Bertram D. Wolfe
Bob Gould
I am a relatively late convert to internet technology. Some months ago when I hooked up to the net, I also hooked up to four leftist discussion groups, Marxmail, the Socialist Register List, Leftist Trainspotters and the Australian-based Green Left Discussion List.
A.J. Polan
[From Lenin and the End of Politics, A.J. Polan, Methuen, London, 1984]
Bob Gould
This extract from A.J. Polan’s book, Lenin and and the End of Politics, contains a lucid and explanatory discussion of Lenin’s theory of imperialism and the associated question of the role of an “aristocracy of labour” in the development of reformism in the labour movement in Europe and the US.
This extract is of value for its overview of the issues and because the notes provide a useful coverage of the literature on this question.
Bob Gould
The discussion in Marxmail on strategy and tactics in the labour movement is revealing and useful and has gone in a number of directions. There are three broad strands of opinion in conflict, and the historical context is important, because all three strands, including my own, appeal to the authority of Lenin in support of their current tactical views.
V.I. Lenin
Lenin published this short article in June 1913. Although it is brief and its prediction about the liberal labor party making way for a socialist labor party has not eventuated 90 years on, the article has influenced Marxist discussion on the Australian Labor Party.
