By enthusiastically supporting neoliberal genocidaires in bourgeois elections.
Leninism does not ignore the flaws of bourgeois electoralism. Lenin wrote a whole book called “Left Communism: an Infantile Disorder” which is precisely about people refusing to participate in the existing political system.
It is with the utmost contempt—and the utmost levity—that the German “Left” Communists reply to this question in the negative. Their arguments? In the passage quoted above we read:
“. . . All reversion to parliamentary forms of struggle, which have become historically and politically obsolete, must be emphatically rejected. . . .”
This is said with ridiculous pretentiousness, and is patently wrong. “Reversion” to parliamentarianism, forsooth! Perhaps there is already a Soviet republic in Germany? It does not look like it! How, then, can one speak of “reversion”? Is this not an empty phrase?
Parliamentarianism has become “historically obsolete”. That is true in the propaganda sense. However, everybody knows that this is still a far cry from overcoming it in practice. Capitalism could have been declared—and with full justice—to be “historically obsolete” many decades ago, but that does not at all remove the need for a very long and very persistent struggle on the basis of capitalism. Parliamentarianism is “historically obsolete” from the standpoint of world history, i.e., the era of bourgeois parliamentarianism is over, and the era of the proletarian dictatorship has begun. That is incontestable. But world history is counted in decades. Ten or twenty years earlier or later makes no difference when measured with the yardstick of world history; from the standpoint of world history it is a trifle that cannot be considered even approximately. But for that very reason, it is a glaring theoretical error to apply the yardstick of world history to practical politics.
However, what he argued for was not entryism into liberal parties, but rather using the elections to build a Marxist party that could control it’s message and use the opportunity to organize and build power outside of the electoral structure.
Lenin didn’t live in America. If you try to use Russian electoral tactics in America, you’ll fail. It’s like trying to send the fleet to broadside Houston. Adapt your strategies to the terrain. You can’t just pretend that the USA is Russia.
Does drag think that Russia under the Tsar was more democratic than the US today?
In any case, my position on voting third party is not because of what Lenin wrote, I merely wanted to clarify that Lenin’s stance was not consistent with how drag characterized Leninism. I’m voting third party based on my own assessment of the situation, and I was a third party voter before ever encountering Lenin.
Drag thinks the precise opposite. That the parties Lenin discussed weren’t electoral parties. The meaning of the word party back then isn’t the same as now. Nowadays parties compete in electoralism. Organisations like Extinction Rebellion or the Proud Boys, which operate outside the electoral system, are not what we would call parties today. And yet Lenin’s “parties” are more similar to XR than to the Greens. Drag thinks you’ve been misled by a bad translation from the English of a century ago to the English of today.
Drag 100% agrees with the strategy of creating socialist organisations outside of the government. Creating socialist organisations inside the government is more complicated. It’s good in most places, but not in America. And it isn’t what Lenin told you to do.
We Bolsheviks participated in the most counterrevolutionary parliaments, and experience has shown that this participation was not only useful but indispensable to the party of the revolutionary proletariat, after the first bourgeois revolution in Russia (1905), so as to pave the way for the second bourgeois revolution (February 1917), and then for the socialist revolution (October 1917).
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Third, the “Left” Communists have a great deal to say in praise of us Bolsheviks. One sometimes feels like telling them to praise us less and to try to get a better knowledge of the Bolsheviks’ tactics. We took part in the elections to the Constituent Assembly, the Russian bourgeois parliament in September–November 1917. Were our tactics correct or not? If not, then this should be clearly stated and proved, for it is necessary in evolving the correct tactics for international communism. If they were correct, then certain conclusions must be drawn. Of course, there can be no question of placing conditions in Russia on a par with conditions in Western Europe. But as regards the particular question of the meaning of the concept that “parliamentarianism has become politically obsolete”, due account should be taken of our experience, for unless concrete experience is taken into account such concepts very easily turn into empty phrases. In September–November 1917, did we, the Russian Bolsheviks, not have more right than any Western Communists to consider that parliamentarianism was politically obsolete in Russia? Of course we did, for the point is not whether bourgeois parliaments have existed for a long time or a short time, but how far the masses of the working people are prepared (ideologically, politically and practically) to accept the Soviet system and to dissolve the bourgeois-democratic parliament (or allow it to be dissolved). It is an absolutely incontestable and fully established historical fact that, in September–November 1917, the urban working class and the soldiers and peasants of Russia were, because of a number of special conditions, exceptionally well prepared to accept the Soviet system and to disband the most democratic of bourgeois parliaments. Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks did not boycott the Constituent Assembly, but took part in the elections both before and after the proletariat conquered political power. That these elections yielded exceedingly valuable (and to the proletariat, highly useful) political results has, I make bold to hope, been proved by me in the above-mentioned article, which analyses in detail the returns of the elections to the Constituent Assembly in Russia.
The conclusion which follows from this is absolutely incontrovertible: it has been proved that, far from causing harm to the revolutionary proletariat, participation in a bourgeois-democratic parliament, even a few weeks before the victory of a Soviet republic and even after such a victory, actually helps that proletariat to prove to the backward masses why such parliaments deserve to be done away with; it facilitates their successful dissolution, and helps to make bourgeois parliamentarianism “politically obsolete”. To ignore this experience, while at the same time claiming affiliation to the Communist International, which must work out its tactics internationally (not as narrow or exclusively national tactics, but as international tactics), means committing a gross error and actually abandoning internationalism in deed, while recognising it in word.
Does drag have any basis for what drag just claimed, that the parties Lenin discussed were not parties that participated in electoral processes? Or did drag just make it up, in direct contradiction to what Lenin actually said, which I already cited to drag?
Drag Googled “politics in tsarist Russia”, went to Wikipedia and read it was a monarchy. Drag read about one of the socialist parties and saw no mention of votes or seats.
Drag didn’t see any blue on your comment. You hid it inside a spoiler. Drag didn’t notice the drop down and thought it was a heading. Don’t hide things you want drag to read.
When I post paragraphs of theory, I put it behind a spoiler out of courtesy to people who might feel that it’s spamming up the thread. That doesn’t mean drag should ignore it when drag is uninformed about the subject matter and I’m providing drag information about it.
The fact that Russia was a monarchy does not preclude the existence of representative bodies. The Duma was first established in 1905, in response to a revolution that year. This is really basic stuff.
Drag just doesn’t think Russian history is very important. Drag spends more time learning about new world indigenous politics, culture, and metaphysics. If you want to learn about communism, don’t go to Russia. Go to Australia. Australians did it for 60,000 years, and Russians couldn’t even manage to do it for 1. Drag is reading Kayanerenko;wa: The Great Law Of Peace, about the politics of the Haudenosaunee people.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/twinrabbit-stolen-anarchy Here is a transcript of a youtube video about how Marx, Engels, and the rest of those white men culturally appropriated communism from Turtle Islanders. Drag values the work they have done trying to bring about communism, but drag prefers firsthand wisdom over secondhand. Drag thinks reading Lenin is a waste of time when you could be reading the philosophy of people who have lived in actual communist societies.
Drag is free to say that reading Lenin is a waste of time, but don’t then try to tell me I’m wrong about Lenin when drag doesn’t know very basic things about Lenin’s positions or conditions.
By enthusiastically supporting neoliberal genocidaires in bourgeois elections.
Leninism does not ignore the flaws of bourgeois electoralism. Lenin wrote a whole book called “Left Communism: an Infantile Disorder” which is precisely about people refusing to participate in the existing political system.
Theory
Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?
It is with the utmost contempt—and the utmost levity—that the German “Left” Communists reply to this question in the negative. Their arguments? In the passage quoted above we read:
This is said with ridiculous pretentiousness, and is patently wrong. “Reversion” to parliamentarianism, forsooth! Perhaps there is already a Soviet republic in Germany? It does not look like it! How, then, can one speak of “reversion”? Is this not an empty phrase?
Parliamentarianism has become “historically obsolete”. That is true in the propaganda sense. However, everybody knows that this is still a far cry from overcoming it in practice. Capitalism could have been declared—and with full justice—to be “historically obsolete” many decades ago, but that does not at all remove the need for a very long and very persistent struggle on the basis of capitalism. Parliamentarianism is “historically obsolete” from the standpoint of world history, i.e., the era of bourgeois parliamentarianism is over, and the era of the proletarian dictatorship has begun. That is incontestable. But world history is counted in decades. Ten or twenty years earlier or later makes no difference when measured with the yardstick of world history; from the standpoint of world history it is a trifle that cannot be considered even approximately. But for that very reason, it is a glaring theoretical error to apply the yardstick of world history to practical politics.
However, what he argued for was not entryism into liberal parties, but rather using the elections to build a Marxist party that could control it’s message and use the opportunity to organize and build power outside of the electoral structure.
Lenin didn’t live in America. If you try to use Russian electoral tactics in America, you’ll fail. It’s like trying to send the fleet to broadside Houston. Adapt your strategies to the terrain. You can’t just pretend that the USA is Russia.
Does drag think that Russia under the Tsar was more democratic than the US today?
In any case, my position on voting third party is not because of what Lenin wrote, I merely wanted to clarify that Lenin’s stance was not consistent with how drag characterized Leninism. I’m voting third party based on my own assessment of the situation, and I was a third party voter before ever encountering Lenin.
Drag thinks the precise opposite. That the parties Lenin discussed weren’t electoral parties. The meaning of the word party back then isn’t the same as now. Nowadays parties compete in electoralism. Organisations like Extinction Rebellion or the Proud Boys, which operate outside the electoral system, are not what we would call parties today. And yet Lenin’s “parties” are more similar to XR than to the Greens. Drag thinks you’ve been misled by a bad translation from the English of a century ago to the English of today.
Drag 100% agrees with the strategy of creating socialist organisations outside of the government. Creating socialist organisations inside the government is more complicated. It’s good in most places, but not in America. And it isn’t what Lenin told you to do.
I don’t think drag read what I cited, so I will link it again. Literally the title says, “Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?” which he answers in the affirmative.
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Does drag have any basis for what drag just claimed, that the parties Lenin discussed were not parties that participated in electoral processes? Or did drag just make it up, in direct contradiction to what Lenin actually said, which I already cited to drag?
Drag Googled “politics in tsarist Russia”, went to Wikipedia and read it was a monarchy. Drag read about one of the socialist parties and saw no mention of votes or seats.
Drag didn’t see any blue on your comment. You hid it inside a spoiler. Drag didn’t notice the drop down and thought it was a heading. Don’t hide things you want drag to read.
When I post paragraphs of theory, I put it behind a spoiler out of courtesy to people who might feel that it’s spamming up the thread. That doesn’t mean drag should ignore it when drag is uninformed about the subject matter and I’m providing drag information about it.
The fact that Russia was a monarchy does not preclude the existence of representative bodies. The Duma was first established in 1905, in response to a revolution that year. This is really basic stuff.
Drag just doesn’t think Russian history is very important. Drag spends more time learning about new world indigenous politics, culture, and metaphysics. If you want to learn about communism, don’t go to Russia. Go to Australia. Australians did it for 60,000 years, and Russians couldn’t even manage to do it for 1. Drag is reading Kayanerenko;wa: The Great Law Of Peace, about the politics of the Haudenosaunee people.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/twinrabbit-stolen-anarchy Here is a transcript of a youtube video about how Marx, Engels, and the rest of those white men culturally appropriated communism from Turtle Islanders. Drag values the work they have done trying to bring about communism, but drag prefers firsthand wisdom over secondhand. Drag thinks reading Lenin is a waste of time when you could be reading the philosophy of people who have lived in actual communist societies.
Drag is free to say that reading Lenin is a waste of time, but don’t then try to tell me I’m wrong about Lenin when drag doesn’t know very basic things about Lenin’s positions or conditions.