On Thu, 11 Dec 1997, Ricardo Duchesne wrote:
> No, What Is to Be Done? is Lenin's most original political text;
> indeed it is the foundation of Bolshevism: the working class
> movement does not have a revolutionary consciousness of its own; left
> to itself, such movement will never develop beyond trade-union
> consciousness. A marxist consciousness can only be brought
> from the outside by a centralized party.
"Centralized" party. I thought it was a party of "democratic
centralism", not the Stalinist distortion.
> What worries marxists about this text is that Lenin is right.
> Luxemburg is wrong. A centralized party, like the Bolshevik Party,
> which claims to have a "true" understanding of the interests of the
> working class, is a must. The workers themselves are incapable of
> marxist consciousness, incapable of knowing their "real" interests.
I don't think Lenin thought the workers as "incapable" as described
above. Maybe it is correct that spending 8-12 hours a day in a factory
burns one's energy up, but...
Paul
