Why do we not have more respect for Lenin as a Marxist theorist on this board? His writings on the State and Imperialism are just as good and build upon Marxism just as much as anything written by Luxemburg, Gramsci, Bordiga, Debord, Althusser, etc. Is it simply because he was not an academic? Is it because in action he did things that weren't quite what he theorized in his books and pamphlets?
Specifically what I'm referring to is:
Granted these two points are basically just a doubling down on and elaboration on things which Marx and Engels already said, but this is precisely what I mean when I say Lenin is an important theorist. In his political theory he becomes an invaluable teacher of Marxism as such and not just his own particular brand of it. The State and Revolution contains very little in descriptions of the system which would be called "Leninism" and is mostly a 'connecting of the dots' if you will of the words of Marx and Engels to give a general outline of Marxist theory (it's also a wonderful denunciation of social democracy that still is relevant today when thinking of the neo-succdem parties which are springing up all over Europe but that's another thread)
The main points which are specifically Leninist in nature which i think are important are:
I agree with you The thing is that for historical reasons ,Lenin is not liked in anarchist or leftcom groups Although Lenin himself gave credit to anarchists, and explained that were searching the goal every communist should seek, just did not agree with the process they purposed. So as such many here actually despise his works without even reading them.
William Fisher
Because his actions conflicted with S&R.
Noah White
Lenin is absolutely based I think only dumb Anarkids who don't read hate him
Ryder Wright
Because some faggot Leninists want to ban everyone else who doesnt follow their opinion. Doesnt make me want to read him.
Asher Richardson
idk if you came from r/anarchism or r/socialism but either way you have to go back
I feel this is correct. However, i've noticed that since I first started posting on Holla Forums while the anarkiddie sector seems to be louder and more critical of anything Marxist than ever their numbers as such are dwindling and they are mostly Bookchinites now (which is essentially just Marxism with an anarchist face).
I also don't think that Marxism-Leninism as such is necessarily the way to go. I agree with Zizek's assessment of Lenin in that many of his ideas and theory should be revisited and applied today but should themselves be built upon to formulate new theory which, while inspired by M-L thought isn't necessarily an attempt made by parties such as Worker's World or the PSL in America and many others throughout the world to simply lift word for word what Lenin said, and to a lesser extent the actual governance of the leaders of the USSR after Lenin, and try to implant it upon the 21st Century Western countries. IMO this is akin to trying to fit a square into a circle
How so? I'm not trying to be ornery I simply don't know much about Lenin's particular actions as leader. I know much more about what came after Lenin died such as Stalin's rule and the later days of the USSR
Caleb Green
Most leftcoms have a very positive view of Lenin (in fact, they commonly know him better than MLs), he's just not some infallible idol.
Jeremiah Perez
THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM BEGINS WITH THE FIGHT AGAINST BOLSHEVISM
SMASH LENINISM, FOR FREEDOM AND COMMUNISM
Ryder Thomas
I now you probably be tired of seeing it as a meme, but refering to your analysis of a new way to implemet Lenin ideas, actually cockhostt is wahat he does in "Towards a New Socialism", he rejects ML theories, but still works with Lenin's ideas to state how socialism should be implemented nowadays, on a soci-economic perspetive I mean. If you are wondering abouy how this "Leninist" revolution , should take place Cockshostt is not you man though.
Tyler Powell
I feel I'm more in this camp, but with the USSR in general. I feel that the USSR obviously wasn't perfect, and particularly during and after Stalin it became somewhat of an autocracy, but that the majority of the claims against the USSR, mostly by the Western capitalist countries, were either embellished misrepresentations taken out of context or outright lies. For instance, people continue to claim that Stalin himself personally oversaw and planned the murder of more people than Hitler during the Holocaust and that the gulag system was exactly the same thing as death camps in Nazi Germany but this simply isn't true. Of course innocent people went to the gulags often but it's been proven that a majority of victims were capitalist infiltrators or reactionaries of some kind who existed solely to destroy the USSR
My point here isn't to try and make Stalin out to be a god who did no wrong the way tankies do, I acknowledge that he allowed his paranoia to get the better of him and committed several reprehensible acts and made many bad decisions because of it which hurt the proletariat. I also acknowledge that the USSR after Lenin was essentially just a more radical version of the welfare capitalism being practiced by the social democratic countries (which is why when Stalin criticized Tito on the basis of practicing social democracy it was laughable).
My point is merely that the failure of the USSR is used 1) to exist forever from the Right and from liberals to associate communism and socialism as such as evil and anti-progress 2) to achieve socialism from the Left to accuse the USSR and then Leninism or any theory which follows from Leninism as being doomed to failure and "authoritarian" or "autocratic" and should be dispelled with in favor of either left-liberal reforms or impotent anarchism
Jaxon Sullivan
Here is your respone this is what I'm refering by leftcoms (although I now not all are as autistic as this one)
Michael Perry
NEP and taking power away from soviets are the major ones. I'm sure garunteedbutthurt.png will be posted soon to explain part of it.
Anarchists are still the plurality and Communalism is ancom called something else. Anarchists either (1)haven't read Lenin and assume his actions as leader match theory (2)read Lenin and appreciate it or (3)read Lenin and disregard him for not following his own theory.
Most leftcoms like lenin but are critical of some of his positions and actions. Bordiga himself was basically a leninist (and identified as such from memory).
Landon Watson
Indeed, leftcoms are still coms. You can have respect for Lenin himself while thinking the USSR was hot garbage. It mostly went to shit when Stalin came to power anyway.
Michael Richardson
Im refering to leftcoms in leftypol, like this one
Actually I have purchased a collection of Brodiga's work to read it this summer But atke into account Brodiga is not the only leftcoms (and for what I understand they are not by any means homogeneous in their thougth)
Jace Cruz
Personally it seems unfair to base opinions regarding left communism on posts from spergmasters on an imageboard, then again I'm just learning about it too.
Luis Parker
Yeah you are correct comrade
Hudson Reyes
...
Henry Russell
People are literally scared of reading Lenin because they want to sit around all day complaining about shit but can't stand the idea of revolution.
Isaac Wright
Because Anachrocucks believe we can have a society without hierarchy which is like a society without laws.
Did I say "like"? I meant is.
Hudson Baker
You clearly haven't read Lenin or even Marx.
Sebastian Ross
Nice meme, but end of the day, Lenin enforced the law no matter how much talk he gave about not needing it. And I don't have to co-sign anarchism to be a communist.
Anthony Murphy
wasn't lenin a bald manlet? sorry can't respect those.
Wyatt Powell
bukharin >>> lenin
Brody Hughes
Lenin and Marx used examples of tribal society as a stateless, classless society. They specifically argued that they were stateless and classless even though they had hierarchy and authority. The M-L definition of a state is not any kind of actual organization, it's an organization for the purpose of suppressing one class by another.
Gabriel Diaz
Yes you do. If you want a permanent state you are not a communist. If you want classes you are not a communist.
Oliver Sullivan
Lennin founded a state designed to last in perpetuity. Communism only requires state absolution in the purist of technical terminology, and as far as I am concerned such a system is not implementable.
Jaxson Hughes
The same reason nobody talks about Stalin as a great Marxist thinker. He was neither Marxist nor a thinker.
Ian James
It's not a fallacy, it's the definition of communism. If you are not aiming for a stateless, classless, moneyless society you are not a communist in any way shape or form.
Likewise if you weren't born in, have no ethnic or cultural connection to, or lived in Scotland you are indeed not a true Scotsman by any imaginable definition.
No he didn't, Lenin along with everyone else involved in the October revolution and subsequent developments founded a state designed to last until it was no longer necessary. I advise you actually read Lenin.
Then you don't think communism is actually achievable.
Ian Hughes
Tell that to Lennin and tell him why he was "wrong" about the communism he helped to achieve.
Which is ostensibly the same as a state existing in perpetuity, for a state will always be necessary to maintain communism. Lennin did write speculations on life after the need of a state were to hypothetically no longer be necessary but never took steps to implement a means of dismantling the state. I suggest you take a closer read at what his actual philosophies were.
Anarcho-communism (anachro-anything, really) is not a tenable state for a society. State communism is a totally possible, though.
Wyatt James
Lol no, there's a sizable difference between Bordiga's and Trotsky's positions on a range of issues you fucking sperg. And Bordiga did hold that the USSR was capitalist (and so did fucking Lenin for that matter), Trotsky on the other hand held that it was a "transitional society" in decay, a position very different from Bordiga's.
Christian Smith
Lenin did not believe he had "helped create communism" you fucking dolt, but rather than they had created a kind of state capitalism made to work in the interests of the proletariat until the revolution could be spread globally.
Unfortunately, the introduction of state capitalism with us is not proceeding as quickly as we would like it. For example, so far we have not had a single important concession, and without foreign capital to help develop our economy, the latter’s quick rehabilitation is inconceivable. marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/nov/14b.htm
It's very clear that you've never read either Marx or Lenin, if you had you would understand that "state communism" is an oxymoron.
Andrew Baker
Marx and Lenin both recognized that communism would be gradual. These days we call early-stage communism "socialism," as if there is a hard distinction between the two, but the truth is that they described a gradual transition to full communism. Read about the bourgeois right of individuals (IE unequal pay for unequal work), Lenin was emphatic that this was proof that remnants of capitalism would live in early-stage communism. "State communism" is just socialism, it's not a hard distinction.
Oliver Gomez
When Lenin died the NEP was barely finished and the vast majority of the population still belonged to the peasantry in addition to the large peasant middle class that existed in the country. I have yet to see a Bordigist who could tell me why Stalin was an evil sdade gabitalist and why Lenin was worth supporting at the same time. Didn't Stalin push Lenin's policies far beyond where he was prepared to go at the time by abolishing all property in land and socializing the peasants into collective farms? Didn't Stalin go the furthest of any Soviet leader into restricting market relations to their absolute limit and expanding the dominance of central planning to a massive degree? It's completely inconsistent to pose as a Leninist while being an anti-Stalinists as the Bordigists do.
The Bordigists really trip over themselves here while castigating Stalin for saying that the fact that the law of value existed in the USSR wasn't the worst thing in the world. Leftcoms of all stripes are prone to go on about the law of value; the first myth is the notion that it only exists under capitalism but as Engels pointed out:
Does capitalism follow the logic of the law of value? Yes and No. Commodities are sold for money, notably at their price-of-production, they are not free as we might imagine they could be in the highest stage of communism, and it is not the producer who sells them but the capitalist. This is an important distinction because in older modes of production when peasants did work for each other as Engels points out they would calculate how much time and expense it would take to get something done themselves, they were very conscious of the fact they could be ripped off in the realm of trade. They paid for each other's labor-time but were keen to see that they got the full-value of their work and were compensated fairly; merchants, and usurer's especially, were generally seen as cheaters and swindlers for this reason.
Engels was keen to show in that work the history of how the peasant and artisan was slowly expropriated and alienated from his work and the value he creates and how society came to except the state of affairs where prices became embodied as abstract exchange-value without regard to the labor-time (beyond the labor that is paid) that went into producing it.
Additionally, when the capitalist goes to sell his commodity there is the obvious distinction between what a commodity costs for the capitalist to produce a commodity and maintain his enterprise (cost-price) and his price of production (cost-price+profit). Thus the law of value under capitalism mainly functions for the capitalist who expropriates from the worker the fruit of his surplus labor-time; Engels emphasized the fact that the law of value could function under non-exploitative circumstances like mutual exchange among peasants, therefore, it is erroneous to associate the law of value with capitalism and exploitation simply because lov and exploitation also exist under capitalism. To further complicate things commodity prices are not rational under capitalism but only function through disequilibrium, as Marx noted, sometimes the price of commodities rise above their price of production and capitalists yield a super-profit (usually during a recession) at other times commodity prices fall and the profit rate falls below the expected average, falls to zero, or even goes negative and the labor embodied in said commodities is negated partially or completely.
Thus the law of value under capitalism does not The description of the particular movement of the law of value under capitalism doesn't match the law of value in any case.
Dominic Ramirez
*law of value under capitalism doesn't match the reality of Soviet political economy in any case.
Thomas Roberts
He was familiar with the state-capitalist thesis but didn't propound it openly because he hoped to return to power one day in the USSR. Their political positions and orientations were very similar even if they weren't identical; another similarity, they were both useful tools and idiots for the fascist-capitalist offensive.
Since workers weren't going to follow their pet theories given the immense achievements and popularity of the Soviet Union among the masses they pretended to be Leninists in order to better deceive the working class. The working class would not have taken them seriously and for the most part still doesn't if they hadn't chosen to put on the cloak of Leninism in order to fight it under the guise of anti-Stalinism.
Asher James
Both positions are wrong:
>The question arises: what elements predominate? Clearly in a small-peasant country, the petty-bourgeois element predominates and it must predominate, for the great majority of those working the land are small commodity producers. The shell of our state capitalism (grain monopoly, state controlled entrepreneurs and traders, bourgeois co-operators) is pierced now in one place, now in another by profiteers, the chief object of profiteering being grain.
It seems pretty clear that Lenin believed there was a socialist element of the Soviet economy existing in the USSR. Knowing him it was probably the nationalized industry that was seized by the proletariat and run according to state-plan. Notice he didn't include the national industry in his description of state-capitalism but grain monopolies, private public partnerships etc. Though he does defend state-capitalism against the private capitalism of the petty-bourgeoisie…
Because this board is filled with ancoms and leftcoms spooked by the gorillionz meme and who come up with every excuse to discard 70+ years of realpolitik because it wasn't their special snowflake flavour(tm) of 'socialism'
Bentley Morris
I don't dislike Lenin. My problem lies with leninists who use his writings to justify everything that happened in the USSR.
Justin Sullivan
You know that just making up numbers like "gorillionz" won't convince people or make your side of the argument any more attractive, especially if they have other problems with the USSR too. Not every critique of the Soviet Union is a utilitarian one.
Liam Ross
Not true for leftcoms, Lenin is actually one of very few people of the Second International period with salvageable ideas, see no further than Bordiga and friends.
Elijah Reyes
The concept of the vanguard party was always destined to descend into tyranny. Socialism must come from the grassroots up or it will never be successful.
Chase Diaz
t. Vanguardists
Caleb Nguyen
Better to just have everyone do whatever they want with no organization, that really works out for military conflict situations, just look at how the anarchists in catalonia won the rev- oh wait
Parker Flores
Ah yes, let's defend our selves against the organized military might of the imperial countries with fucking haphazard people's militias.
Sebastian Butler
Oh you mean after Stalin betrayed them?
Isaac Jackson
I'm not sure why they need to be haphazard, they can be well trained and disciplined while still performing non-combat tasks. Total wars in the past have always been fought with conscripts, the idea that we need a special strata of soldiers that do no work aside from training a fighting is idiotic, and will lead to a situation the majority of people are disempowered, relying on an alienated state apparatus for protection, which would recreate the conditions necessary for the emergence of class rule. A small subset may need to be exclusively combat orientated but the overwhelming majority of the population needs to be armed, trained and mobilised to avoid the degeneration of the revolution.
Blake White
Should be: able to be mobilised
Sage for correction
Brandon Nguyen
council communists dislike him, borgidists are generally positive about him,
Adam Morris
History shows they tend to be unreliable and often uncontrollable. They're good for fucking up supply lines and infrastructure behind enemy lines. They're not good at direct combat however.
Warfare has changed. The total annihilating wars of the past are over. Warfare is now conducted by a small, highly specialized and skill team of professionals. Grunts nor gun-totting militia members will seriously cut it.
In the end, it's ridiculous to believe you could successfully defend yourself, much less spread the revolution, without a state.
Cameron Harris
Re-read my post: Without the workers enforcing their own rule directly, the revolution is over before it has begun. There being a small subset of specialised soldiers doesn't necessarily contradict this, but total dependency on them certainly does.
Kevin Diaz
I agree with you OP, I think we need a Leninism which is removed from its distortions both in Trotskyism and Marxism-Leninism. Leninism is a very consistent application of Marxism in the context of a proletarian takeover. However, this seems to be a rare stance and I don't see kany peiple advocating it. Are there contemporary Leninists who aren't Trotskyist in disguise?
Logan King
I'm something of a councilist and I have respect for Lenin, even though I think the critiques of him from councilists are often pretty good. Some of Lenin is good, and some of it is bad. I disagree with Lenin in trying to generalize a carbon copy the russian experience and the tactics of russian movement to the rest of of Europe. April Theses and State and Revolution are fucking dope theory, with the single exception of the fetichization of a vaugely defined centralism in the latter. Lenin the theorist I find more sympathetic than Lenin the statesman. The general character of the DotP as seen in these two works is something I can get behind, but I feel that Lenin betrayed his own ideas.
Cameron James
Left communism is arguably defined by disagreeing with Lenin on the right of nations to self-determination and Parliamentary abstentionism, so I don't think its really true to speak of non-Leninist leftcoms as "not true" leftcoms. Of course some leftcoms take the "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" approach, which is fine, but doesn't mean that those that disagree with Lenin on more than those points aren't leftcoms.
