Mark Wrote: I'm slowly re-reading what Lenin wrote about members and leadership, particularly looking for the notion of a "narrow leadership" directing masses of party members.
In Lenin's What Is To Be Done Book IV The Primitiveness of the Economist and the Organization of Revolutionaries, Lenin attacks arguments presented in Rabocheye Dyelo, a newspaper of the then popular Russian Social Democratic movement. According to Lenin it is impossible to create political revolution by centralization of all the functions of opposition through an all the eggs in one basket approach: Lenin continues the conversation by isolating the different tasks of training revolutionaries, maintaining worker circles, and creating a public facing social democratic mass front. The training of professional revolutionaries cannot be done in the frontward facing mass movement precisely because the former work is concerned with illegal conspiracy and the latter is concerned with harnessing the spontaneity of public dissent into a mass front concerned with raising class consciousness. I think the confusion comes from later interpretations of Leninism that impose an either/ or dichotomy on a both/and situation. The need for economic transformation and the task of promoting a political revolution are different questions and invariably comrades either assume the latter to the detriment of the former or attempt to accomplish the latter through gradual application of the former. "The “economic struggle against the employers and the government” does not at all require an all-Russia centralized organization, and hence this struggle can never give rise to such an organization as will combine, in one general assault, all the manifestations of political opposition, protest, and indignation, an organization that will consist of professional revolutionaries and be led by the real political leaders of the entire people." Tom Wrote: Marxist Organization seems to me an oxymoron. Marx was ambiguous -- if not ambivalent -- on the question of organization. I think for good reason. He viewed organization as a consequence of class consciousness, not as a prerequisite. Marx's participation in the most consequential organization of his lifetime, the International Association of Working Men, was fortuitous. Maybe what people mean when they speak of Marxist Organization is Leninist Organization, with the implication that Lenin's ideas were a "continuation" of Marx's. Marx was both an economist and a professional revolutionary so in Marxist theory there is the necessary ambivalence of both the frontward facing task and the underground task. Marx leaned into the former role as an intellectual leader and was constrained from making prescriptions for several reasons. The class consciousness argument definitely, but if we remember Marx had to do Journalism on the side to sustain himself. His writings were enough to get him kicked out of Brussels and If he was associated with making openly seditious arguments in favor of directly overthrowing the ruling class he would've likely been subject to even harsher political repression. Great discussion! Cheers, Ben -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#39607): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/39607 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/116549413/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
