{"id":2946,"date":"2020-04-22T12:32:02","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T17:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/?p=2946"},"modified":"2021-11-18T13:56:44","modified_gmt":"2021-11-18T18:56:44","slug":"lenin-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/?p=2946","title":{"rendered":"Lenin at 150 (audio and video recordings)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"450\" height=\"253\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/01z8Mzz2IY4\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"40\" src=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/embed\/lenin-at-150-4-22-20\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" mozallowfullscreen=\"true\" webkitallowfullscreen=\"true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"310\" height=\"160\" src=\"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/vilenin1870-1970.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2947\" srcset=\"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/vilenin1870-1970.jpg 310w, https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/vilenin1870-1970-300x155.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 310px) 100vw, 310px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Lenin today <\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chris Cutrone <\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Presented at a Platypus teach-in on the 150th anniversary of Lenin\u2019s birth, April 22, 2020. Video recording available online at: &lt;https:\/\/youtu.be\/01z8Mzz2IY4&gt;. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>ON THE OCCASION OF THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF LENIN\u2019S BIRTH, I\nwould like to approach Lenin\u2019s meaning today by critically examining an essay\nwritten by the liberal political philosopher Ralph Miliband on the occasion of\nLenin\u2019s 100th birthday in 1970<a href=\"#_edn1\">[1]<\/a>\n\u2014 which was the year of my own birth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reason for using Miliband\u2019s essay to frame my discussion\nof Lenin\u2019s legacy is that the DSA Democratic Socialists of America magazine <em>Jacobin<\/em> republished Miliband, who is\nperhaps their most important theoretical inspiration, in 2018 as a belated\ntreatment of the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917 \u2014 or\nperhaps as a way of marking the centenary of the ill-fated German Revolution of\n1918, which failed as a socialist revolution but is usually regarded as a\nsuccessful democratic revolution, issuing in the Weimar Republic under the\nleadership of the SPD Social-Democratic Party of Germany. There is a wound in\nthe apparent conflict between the desiderata of socialism and democracy, in\nwhich the Russian tradition associated with Lenin is opposed to and by the\nGerman tradition associated with social democracy, or, alternatively,\n\u201cdemocratic socialism,\u201d by contrast with the supposedly undemocratic socialism\nof Lenin, however justified or not by \u201cRussian conditions.\u201d The German model\nseems to stand for conditions more appropriate to advanced capitalist and\nliberal democratic countries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ralph Miliband is most famously noted for his perspective of\n\u201cparliamentary socialism\u201d But this was not simply positive for Miliband but\ncritical, namely, critical of the Labour Party in the U.K. \u2014 It must be noted\nthat Miliband\u2019s sons are important leaders in the Labour Party today, among its\nmost prominent neoliberal figures. Preceding his book on parliamentary\nsocialism, Miliband wrote a critical essay in 1960, \u201cThe sickness of\nLabourism,\u201d written for the very first issue of the newly minted <em>New Left Review<\/em> in 1960, in the\naftermath of Labour\u2019s dismal election failure in 1959, Miliband\u2019s criticism of which\nof course the DSA\/<em>Jacobin<\/em> cannot\ndigest let alone assimilate. The DSA\/<em>Jacobin<\/em>\nfall well below even a liberal such as Miliband \u2014 and not only because the U.S.\nDemocratic Party is something less than the U.K. Labour Party, either in\ncomposition or organization. Miliband\u2019s perspective thus figures for the DSA\/<em>Jacobin<\/em> in a specifically symptomatic\nway, as an indication of limits and, we must admit, ultimate failure, for\ninstance demonstrated by the recent fate of the Bernie Sanders Campaign as an\nattempted \u201celectoral road\u201d to \u201csocialism,\u201d this year as well as back in 2016 \u2014 the\nlatter\u2019s failure leading to the explosion in growth of the DSA itself. Neither\nLabour\u2019s aspiration to socialism, whether back in the 1960s or more recently\nunder Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s leadership, nor the DSA\u2019s has come to any kind of even\nminimal fruition. Thus the specter \u2014 the haunting memory \u2014 of Lenin presents\nitself for our consideration today: How does Lenin hold out the promise of\nsocialism? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Previously, I have written on several occasions on Lenin.<a href=\"#_edn2\">[2]<\/a>\nSo I am tasked to say something today that I haven\u2019t already said before. First\nof all, I want to address the elephant in the room (or is it the 800lb\ngorilla?), which is Stalinism, the apparent fate of supposed \u201cLeninism\u201d \u2014 which\nis also a demonstrated failure, however it is recalled today in its own\npeculiar way by the penchant for neo-Stalinism that seems to be an act of\ndefiance, <em>\u00e9pater la bourgeoisie <\/em>[shock\nthe bourgeoisie], on the part of young (or not so young) Bohemian \u201cLeftists,\u201d\nin their deeply disappointed bitterness and antipathy towards the political\nstatus quo. \u201cLeninism\u201d means a certain antinomian nihilism \u2014 against which\nLenin himself was deeply opposed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An irony of history is that Lenin\u2019s legacy has succumbed to\nthe very thing against which he defined himself and from which his Marxism\nsharply departed, namely Narodnism, the Romantic rage of the supposedly\n\u201crevolutionary\u201d intelligentsia, who claimed \u2014 understood themselves \u2014 to\nidentify with the oppressed and exploited masses, but really for whom the\nlatter were just a sentimental image rather than a reality. Lenin would be\nextremely unhappy at what he \u2014 and indeed what revolution itself, let alone\n\u201csocialism\u201d \u2014 has come to symbolize today. Lenin was the very opposite of a Mao\nor a Che or Fidel. And he was also the opposite of Stalin. How so? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The three figures, Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky, form the\nheart of the issue of the Russian Revolution and its momentous effect on the\n20th century, still reverberating today. Trotsky disputed Stalin and the Soviet\nUnion\u2019s claim to the memory of Lenin, writing, in \u201cStalinism and Bolshevism\u201d on\nthe 20th anniversary of the Russian Revolution in 1937, that Stalinism was the\n\u201cantithesis\u201d of Bolshevism<a href=\"#_edn3\">[3]<\/a>\n\u2014 a loaded word, demanding specifically a <em>dialectical<\/em>\napproach to the problem. What did Lenin and Trotsky have in common as Marxists from\nwhich Stalin differed? Stalin\u2019s policy of \u201csocialism in one country\u201d was the\nfatal compromise of not only the Russian Revolution, but of Marxism, and indeed\nof the very movement of proletarian socialism itself. Trotsky considered\nStalinism to be the opportunist adaptation of Marxism to the failure of the\nworld socialist revolution \u2014 the limiting of the revolution to Russia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This verdict by Trotsky was not affected by the spread of\n\u201cCommunism\u201d after WWII to Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Vietnam, and, later,\nCuba. Each was an independent ostensibly \u201csocialist\u201d state \u2014 and by this very fact\nalone represented the betrayal of socialism. Their conflicts, antagonism and\ncompetition, including wars both \u201chot\u201d and \u201ccold,\u201d for instance the alliance of\nMao\u2019s China with the United States against Soviet Russia and the Warsaw Pact,\ndemonstrated the lie of their supposed \u201csocialism.\u201d Of course each side\njustified this by reference to the supposed capitulation to global imperialism\nby the other side. But the point is that all these states were part of the\nworld capitalist status quo. It was that unshaken status quo that fatally\ncompromised the ostensibly \u201csocialist\u201d aspirations of these national\nrevolutions. Suffice it to say that Lenin would not have considered the outcome\nof the Russian Revolution or any subsequently that have sought to follow in its\nfootsteps to be socialism \u2014 at all. Lenin would not have considered any of them\nto represent the true Marxist \u201cdictatorship of the proletariat,\u201d either. For Lenin,\nas for Marxism more generally, the dictatorship of the proletariat (never mind\nsocialism) required the preponderant power over global capitalism world-wide,\nthat is, victory in the core capitalist countries. This of course has never yet\nhappened. So its correctness is an open question. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In his 1970 Lenin centenary essay, Miliband chose to address\nLenin\u2019s pamphlet on <em>State and Revolution<\/em>,\nan obvious choice to get at the heart of the issue of Lenin\u2019s Stalinist legacy.\nBut Miliband shares a great deal of assumptions with Stalinism. For one, the\nnational-state framing of the question of socialism. But more importantly,\nMiliband like Stalinism elides the non-identity of the state and society, of\npolitical and social power, and hence of political and social revolution. Miliband\ncalls this the problem of \u201cauthority.\u201d In this is evoked not only the\nliberal-democratic but also the anarchist critique of not merely Leninism but\nMarxism itself. Miliband acknowledges that indeed the problem touched on by\nLenin on revolution and the state goes to the heart of Marxism, namely, to the\nissue of the Marxist perspective on the necessity of the dictatorship of the\nproletariat, which Marx considered his only real and essential original\ncontribution to socialism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1917, Lenin was accused of \u201cassuming the vacant throne of\nBakunin\u201d in calling for \u201call power to the soviets [workers and soldiers\ncouncils].\u201d \u2014 Indeed, Miliband\u2019s choice of Lenin\u2019s writings, <em>The State and Revolution<\/em>, written in the\nyear of the 1917 Russian Revolution, is considered Lenin\u2019s most anarchist or at\nleast libertarian text. Lenin\u2019s critics accused him of regressing to\npre-Marxian socialism and neglecting the developed Marxist political\nperspective on socialist revolution as the majority action by the working\nclass, reverting instead to putschism or falling back on minority political\naction. This is not merely due to the minority numbers of the industrial\nworking class in majority peasant Russia but also and especially the minority\nstatus of Lenin\u2019s Bolshevik Communist Party, as opposed to the majority\nsocialists of Socialist Revolutionaries and Menshevik Social Democrats, as well\nas of non-party socialists such as anarchist currents of various tendencies,\nsome of whom were indeed critical of the anarchist legacy of Bakunin himself.\nBakunin is infamous for his idea of the \u201cinvisible dictatorship\u201d of conscious\nrevolutionaries coordinating the otherwise spontaneous action of the masses to\nsuccess \u2014 apparently repeating the early history of the \u201crevolutionary\nconspiracy\u201d of Blanqui in the era of the Revolution of 1848. But what was and\nwhy did Bakunin hold his perspective on the supposed \u201cinvisible dictatorship\u201d? Marxism\nconsidered it the corollary \u2014 the complementary \u201copposite\u201d \u2014 of the Bonapartist\ncapitalist state, with its paranoiac Orwellian character of subordinating\nsociety through society\u2019s own complicity in the inevitable authoritarianism \u2014 the\nblind social compulsion \u2014 of capitalism, to which everyone was subject, and in\nwhich both and neither everyone\u2019s and no one\u2019s interests are truly represented.\nBakunin\u2019s \u201cinvisible dictatorship\u201d was not meant to dominate but facilitate the\nself-emancipation of the people themselves. \u2014 So was Lenin\u2019s \u2014 Marxism\u2019s \u2014 political\nparty for socialist revolution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lenin has of course been accused of the opposite tendency from anarchism, namely of being a Lassallean or \u201cstate\u201d socialist. Lenin\u2019s <em>The State and Revolution<\/em> drew most heavily on Marx\u2019s <em>Critique of the Gotha Programme<\/em>, attacking the Lassalleanism of the programme of the new Social-Democratic Party of Germany at its founding in 1875. So this raises the question of the specific role of the political party for Marxism: Does it lead inevitably to statism? The history of ostensible \u201cLeninism\u201d in Stalinism seems to demonstrate so. The antinomical contrary interpretations of Lenin \u2014 libertarian vs. authoritarian, statist vs. anarchist, liberal vs. democratic \u2014 are not due to some inconsistency or <em>aporia<\/em> in Lenin or in Marxism itself \u2014 as Miliband for one thought \u2014 but are rather due to the contradictory nature of capitalism itself, which affects the way its political tasks appear, calling for opposed solutions. The question is Marxism\u2019s self-consciousness of this phenomenon \u2014 Lenin\u2019s awareness and consciously deliberate political pursuit of socialism under such contradictory conditions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The history of Marxism regarding rival currents in socialism\nrepresented by Lassalle and Bakunin must be addressed in terms of how Marxism\nthought it overcame the dispute between social and political action \u2014 between\nanarchism and statism \u2014 as a phenomenon of antinomies of capitalism, namely,\nthe need for both political and social action to overcome the contradiction of\ncapitalist production in society. This was the necessary role of the mass\npolitical party for socialism, to link the required social and political\naction. Such mediation was not meant to temper or alleviate the contradiction\nbetween political and social action \u2014 between statism and anarchism \u2014 but\nrather to embody and in certain respects exacerbate the contradiction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marxism was not some reconciled synthesis of anarchism and\nstatism, a happy medium between the two, but rather actively took up \u2014 \u201csublated\u201d\nso to speak \u2014 the contradiction between them as a practical task, regarding the\nconflict in the socialist movement as an expression of the contradiction of\ncapitalism, from which socialism was of course not free. There is not a\nquestion of abstract principles \u2014 supposed libertarian vs. authoritarian\nsocialism \u2014 but rather the real movement of history in capitalism in which\nsocialism is inextricably bound up. Positively: Lenin called for overcoming\ncapitalism on the basis of capitalism itself, which also means from within the\nself-contradiction of socialism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lenin stands accused of Blanquism. The 19th century\nsocialist Louis Auguste Blanqui gets a bad rap for his perspective of\n\u201crevolutionary conspiracy\u201d to overthrow the state. For Blanqui, such\nrevolutionary political action was not itself meant to achieve socialism, but\nrather to clear the way for the people themselves to achieve socialism through\ntheir social action freed from domination by the capitalist state. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Miliband is at best what Marx\/ism would have considered a \u201cpetit\nbourgeois socialist.\u201d But really he was a liberal, albeit under 20th century\nconditions of advanced late capitalism. What does this mean? It is about the\nattitude towards the capitalist state. The predecessor to Bakunin, Proudhon,\nthe inventor of \u201canarchism\u201d per se, was coldly neutral towards the Revolution\nof 1848, but afterwards oriented positively towards the post-1848 President of\nthe 2nd Republic, Louis Bonaparte, especially after his <em>coup d\u2019\u00e9tat<\/em> establishing the 2nd Empire. This is because Proudhon,\nwhile hostile to the state as such, still considered the Bonapartist state a\npotential temporary ally against the capitalist bourgeoisie. Proudhon\u2019s\napparent opposite, the \u201cstatist socialist\u201d Ferdinand Lassalle had a similar\npositive orientation towards the eventual first Chancellor of the Prussian\nEmpire Kaiserreich, Bismarck, as an ally against the capitalist bourgeoisie \u2014 Bismarck\nwho infamously said that the results of the 1848 Revolution demonstrated that\nnot popular assemblies but rather \u201cblood and iron\u201d would solve the pressing\npolitical issues of the day. In this was recapitulated the old post-Renaissance\nalliance of the emergent bourgeoisie \u2014 the new free city-states \u2014 with the\nAbsolutist Monarchy against the feudal aristocracy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 20th century social-democratic welfare state is the\ninheritor of such Bonapartism in the capitalist state \u2014 Bismarckism, etc. For\ninstance, Efraim Carlebach has written of the late 19th century Fabian\nsocialist enthusiasm for Bismarck from which the U.K. Labour Party historically\noriginated<a href=\"#_edn4\">[4]<\/a>\n\u2014 the Labour Party replaced and inherited the role of the Liberal Party in the\nU.K., which had represented the working class, especially its organization in\nlabor unions. The Labour Party arose in the period of Progressivism \u2014 progressive\nliberalism \u2014 and progressive liberals around the world, such as for instance\nTheodore Roosevelt in the U.S., were inspired by Wilhelmine Germany that was\nfounded by Bismarck, specifically Bismarck as the founder of the welfare state.\nBismarck\u2019s welfare state provisions were made long before the socialists were\nany kind of real political threat. The welfare state has always been a police\nmeasure and not a compromise with the working class. Indeed socialists\nhistorically rejected the welfare state \u2014 this hostility only changed in the\n1930s, with the Stalinist adoption of the People\u2019s Front against fascism and\nits positive orientation towards progressive liberal democracy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pre-WWI Wilhelmine Germany was considered at the time progressive\nand indeed liberal, part of the greater era\u2019s progressive liberal development\nof capitalism \u2014 which was opposed by contemporary socialists under Marxist\nleadership. But by conflating state and society in the category of \u201cauthority,\u201d\nfurther obscured by the question of \u201cdemocracy,\u201d Miliband expresses the\nliquidation of Marxism into statism \u2014 Miliband assumes the Bonapartism of the\ncapitalist state, regarding the difference of socialism as one of mere policy,\nfor instance the policies pursued by the state that supposedly serve one group \u2014\nsay, capitalists or workers \u2014 over others. This expresses a tension \u2014 indeed\ncontradiction \u2014 between liberalism and democracy. This contradiction is often\nmistaken for that of liberalism versus socialism, as for instance by the\npost-20th century \u201cLeft\u201d going back to the 1930s Stalinist era of the Communist\nParty\u2019s alliance with progressive liberals in support of FDR\u2019s New Deal, whose\nhistory is expressed today by DSA\/<em>Jacobin<\/em>.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Lenin, by contrast, the issue of politics \u2014 and hence of\nproletarian socialism \u2014 is not of what is being done, but rather of who is\ndoing it. The criterion of socialism for Marxism such as Lenin\u2019s is the\nactivity of the working class \u2014 or lack thereof. The socialist revolution and\nthe political regime of the dictatorship of the proletariat was not for Lenin the\nachievement of socialism but rather its mere precondition, opening the door to\nthe self-transformation of society beyond capitalism led by the \u2014 \u201cdictatorship,\u201d\nor social preponderance, preponderance of social power \u2014 of the working class.\nWithout this, it is inevitable that the state serves rather not the interests\nof the capitalists as a social group but rather the imperatives of capital,\nwhich is different. For Lenin, the necessary dictatorship of the proletariat was\nthe highest form of capitalism \u2014 meaning capitalism brought to highest level of\npolitics and hence of potentially working through its social\nself-contradictions \u2014 and not yet socialism \u2014 meaning not yet even the\novercoming of capitalism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By equating the capitalist welfare state with socialism,\nwith the only remaining criterion the democratic self-governance of the working\nclass, Miliband by contrast elided the crucial Marxist distinction between the\ndictatorship of the proletariat and socialism. For Miliband, what made the\nstate socialist or not was the degree of supposed \u201cworkers\u2019 democracy.\u201d \u2014 In\nthis way, Miliband serves very well to articulate the current <em>Jacobin<\/em>\/DSA identification of its\npolitical goals with \u201cdemocratic socialism.\u201d But, like Miliband, <em>Jacobin<\/em>\/DSA falls prey to the issue of\nthe policies pursued by the state as the criterion of socialism, however\nwithout Miliband\u2019s recognition of the difference between (social-democratic\nwelfare state) policies pursued by capitalist politicians vs. by the working\nclass itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lenin pursued the political and social power \u2014 the social\nand political revolution \u2014 of the working class as not the ultimate goal but\nrather the \u201cnext necessary step\u201d in the history of capitalism leading \u2014 hopefully\n\u2014 to its self-overcoming in socialism. As a Marxist, Lenin was very sober and\nclear-eyed \u2014 unsentimental \u2014 about the actual political and social tasks of the\nstruggle for socialism \u2014 what they were and what they were not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In harking back to the manifest impasse of the mid-20th\ncentury capitalist welfare state registered by Miliband, however through\nidentifying this with the alleged limits of Lenin\u2019s and greater Marxism\u2019s\nconsciousness of the problem, but without proper recognition of its true nature\nin capitalism, those such as <em>Jacobin<\/em>\/DSA\nactively obfuscate, bury and forget, not Marxism such as Lenin\u2019s, or the goal\nof socialism, but rather the actual problem of capitalism they are trying to\nconfront, obscuring it still further. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The \u201cLeft\u201d today such as DSA\/<em>Jacobin<\/em> wants the restoration of pre-neoliberal progressive\ncapitalism, for instance the pre-neoliberal politics of the U.K. Labour Party \u2014\nor indeed simply the pre-neoliberal Democrats. Their misuse of the label\n\u201csocialism\u201d and abuse of \u201cMarxism,\u201d including even the memory of Lenin and their\nbandying about of the word \u201crevolution,\u201d is overwrought and in the service of\nprogressive capitalism. This is an utter travesty of socialism, Marxism, and\nthe memory of Lenin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the 150th anniversary of Lenin\u2019s birth, we owe him at\nleast the thought that what he consciously recognized and actually pursued as a\nMarxist be remembered properly and not falsified \u2014 and certainly not in the\ninterest of seeking, by sharp contrast to Lenin, the \u201cdemocratic\u201d legitimation\nof capitalism, which even liberals such as Ralph Miliband acknowledged to be a\ndeep problem afflicting contemporary society and its supposed \u201cwelfare\u201d state. By\nreckoning with what Marxists such as Lenin understood as the real problem and\nactual political tasks of capitalism, there is yet hope that we will resume the\ntrue socialist pursuit of actually overcoming it. | <strong>P <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Postscript: On <em>Jacobin<\/em>\u2019s defense of Miliband contra Lenin\n<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Longtime DSA member and Publisher and Editor of <em>Jacobin<\/em> magazine Bhaskar Sunkara\nresponded to my critique of Ralph Miliband by interviewing Leo Panitch of the <em>Socialist Register<\/em> on <em>Jacobin<\/em>\u2019s YouTube broadcast <em>Stay at Home<\/em> #29 of April 27, 2020.<a href=\"#_edn5\">[5]<\/a>\nSunkara has previously stated that rather than a follower of Lenin or Kautsky,\nhe is a follower of Miliband. Sunkara and Panitch were eager to defend Miliband\u2019s\nsocialist <em>bona fides <\/em>against my\ncalling him a liberal, but what they argued confirmed my understanding of\nMiliband as a liberal and not a socialist let alone a Marxist. The issue is\nindeed one of the state and revolution. It is not, as Panitch asserted in the\ninterview, a matter of political \u201cpluralism\u201d in socialism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Panitch, who claims Miliband as an important mentor figure,\nspoke at a Platypus public forum panel discussion in Halifax in January 2015 on\nthe meaning of political party for the Left, and observed in his prepared\nopening remarks that in the 50 years between 1870 and 1920 \u2014 Lenin\u2019s\ntime \u2014\nthere took place the first and as yet only time in history when the subaltern\nhave organized themselves as a political force.<a href=\"#_edn6\">[6]<\/a>\nIn his interview with Sunkara on Miliband, Panitch now claims that Lenin\u2019s strategy\n\u2014\nwhich was that of 2nd International Marxism as a whole, for instance by Karl Kautsky,\nRosa Luxemburg, Eugene Debs et al \u2014of replacing the capitalist state with\nthe organizations of the working class that had been built up by the socialist\npolitical party before the revolution, was invalidated by the historical\nexperience of the 20th century. Instead, according to Panitch, the existing liberal\ndemocratic capitalist state was to provide the means to achieve socialism. This\nis because it is supposedly no longer a state of capitalists but rather one\ncommitted to capitalism: committed to capital accumulation. But Marxism always\nconsidered it to be so: Bonapartist management of capitalism in political liberal\ndemocracy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Panitch claims that Miliband\u2019s critique of the U.K. Labour\nParty was in its Fabian dogma of \u201ceducating the ruling class in socialism\nthrough the state,\u201d whereas socialists would instead \u201ceducate the working class\nin socialism through the state.\u201d But Lenin and other Marxists considered the\nessential education of the working class in the necessity of socialism to take\nplace through its \u201cclass struggle\u201d under capitalism \u2014 its struggle as a class to\nconstitute itself as a revolutionary force \u2014 in which it built its civil\nsocial organizations and political parties aiming to take political and social \u2014\nstate \u2014\npower. Panitch condemns Lenin for his allegedly violent vision of the overthrow\nof the capitalist state and replacing it with a revolutionary workers state \u2014\nthe infamous \u201cdictatorship of the proletariat\u201d always envisioned by Marxism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thus Panitch condemns the Marxist perspective on proletarian socialist revolution per se. But the question for Lenin and other Marxists was not revolution as a strategy \u2014 they were not dogmatic \u201crevolutionists\u201d as opposed to reformists \u2014 but rather the inevitability of capitalist crisis and hence the inevitability of political and social revolution. The only question was whether and how the working class would have the political means to turn the revolution of inevitable capitalist crisis into potential political and social revolution leading to socialism. By abandoning this Marxist perspective on revolution \u2014 which Miliband himself importantly did not rule out \u2014 Panitch and Sunkara along with <em>Jacobin<\/em>\/DSA do indeed articulate a liberal democratic and not proletarian socialist let alone Marxist politics. | <strong>P<\/strong> <br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref1\">[1]<\/a> \u201cLenin\u2019s <em>The State and Revolution<\/em>,\u201d <em>Jacobin<\/em> (August 2018), available online at: &lt;<a aria-label=\"https:\/\/www.jacobinmag.com\/2018\/08\/lenin-state-and-revolution-miliband (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.jacobinmag.com\/2018\/08\/lenin-state-and-revolution-miliband\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/www.jacobinmag.com\/2018\/08\/lenin-state-and-revolution-miliband<\/a>&gt;. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref2\">[2]<\/a> See my: \u201cThe Decline of the Left in the 20th Century: Toward a Theory of Historical Regression: 1917,\u201d <em>Platypus Review<\/em> #17 (November 2009), available online at: &lt;<a aria-label=\"https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2009\/11\/18\/the-decline-of-the-left-in-the-20th-century-1917\/ (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2009\/11\/18\/the-decline-of-the-left-in-the-20th-century-1917\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2009\/11\/18\/the-decline-of-the-left-in-the-20th-century-1917\/<\/a>&gt;; \u201cLenin\u2019s liberalism,\u201d <em>PR<\/em> #36 (June 2011), available online at: &lt;<a aria-label=\"https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2011\/06\/01\/lenins-liberalism\/ (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2011\/06\/01\/lenins-liberalism\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2011\/06\/01\/lenins-liberalism\/<\/a>&gt;; \u201cLenin\u2019s politics,\u201d <em>PR<\/em> #40 (October 2011), available online at: &lt;<a aria-label=\"https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2011\/09\/25\/lenins-politics\/ (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2011\/09\/25\/lenins-politics\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2011\/09\/25\/lenins-politics\/<\/a>&gt;; \u201cThe relevance of Lenin today,\u201d <em>PR<\/em> #48 (July\u2013August 2012), available online at: &lt;<a aria-label=\"https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2012\/07\/01\/the-relevance-of-lenin-today\/ (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2012\/07\/01\/the-relevance-of-lenin-today\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2012\/07\/01\/the-relevance-of-lenin-today\/<\/a>&gt;; and \u201c1917\u20132017,\u201d <em>PR<\/em> #99 (September 2017), available online at: &lt;<a aria-label=\"https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2017\/08\/29\/1917-2017\/ (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2017\/08\/29\/1917-2017\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2017\/08\/29\/1917-2017\/<\/a>&gt;. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref3\">[3]<\/a> Available online at: &lt;<a aria-label=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/trotsky\/1937\/08\/stalinism.htm (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/trotsky\/1937\/08\/stalinism.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/trotsky\/1937\/08\/stalinism.htm<\/a>&gt;. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref4\">[4]<\/a> \u201cLabour once more,\u201d <em>Platypus Review<\/em> #123 (February 2020), available online at: &lt;<a aria-label=\"https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2020\/02\/01\/labour-once-more\/ (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2020\/02\/01\/labour-once-more\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2020\/02\/01\/labour-once-more\/<\/a>&gt;. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref5\">[5]<\/a> Watch at: &lt;<a aria-label=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/oBJR3xfmgA4 (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/oBJR3xfmgA4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/oBJR3xfmgA4<\/a>&gt;. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref6\">[6]<\/a> Transcript published in <em>Platypus Review<\/em> #74 (March 2015), available online at: &lt;<a aria-label=\"https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2015\/03\/01\/political-party-left-2\/ (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2015\/03\/01\/political-party-left-2\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2015\/03\/01\/political-party-left-2\/<\/a>&gt;. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lenin today Chris Cutrone Presented at a Platypus teach-in on the 150th anniversary of Lenin\u2019s birth, April 22, 2020. Video recording available online at: &lt;https:\/\/youtu.be\/01z8Mzz2IY4&gt;. ON THE OCCASION OF THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF LENIN\u2019S BIRTH, I would like to approach Lenin\u2019s meaning today by critically examining an essay written by the liberal political philosopher Ralph [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[45,35,16,23,43],"class_list":["post-2946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presentations","tag-45","tag-lenin","tag-marxism","tag-neoliberalism","tag-trump-era"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2946"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2978,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946\/revisions\/2978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}