[Marxism] Anarchism versus Bolshevism

[Graham M.]

Dear Bhaskar,
                     Thank you for your comments.  I entirely agree with
your remarks about the importance of Lenin's 'The State and Revolution'.
As I mentioned in the message posted earlier today, I researched and wrote
an Honours dissertation on this pamphlet back in the mid-1980s.   I believe
now that I had then too simplistic a view of Lenin's positions on and
understanding of the transitional apparatus required for the achievement of
socialism.   If I were writing that dissertation today, I think I would want
to look into the Comintern debates on the 'workers and farmers' government'
in the early 1920s, and examine Lenin's contributions to these discussions.

I wrote in the message posted earlier today that I approved of a
'libertarian' reading of Lenin.   But the fact is that I now believe Lenin's
prescription for revolutionary change, and his polemics against reformist
and centrist writers, have been too often construed in terms of a simple
focus on 'destroying the existing bourgeois state machine', and replacing it
with a proletarian regime.   We do now have much historical experience since
the Russian Revolution to draw on, and I would say that the contributions of
other Marxist writers since Lenin have been important.   I would put in a
plug here for the writings on the Cuban Revolution by Joseph Hansen,
published under the title 'Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution: the Marxist
View'.   Hansen's writings develop an analysis extending from the ideas of
Lenin and the early Comintern Congresses of a socialist transformation in a
Third World context.

With best regards,

Graham Milner

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bhaskar Sunkara" <bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com>
To: "Graham Milner" <gkmilner at v-app.com.au>
Sent: Saturday, February 14, 2009 9:16 AM
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Anarchism versus Bolshevism


> Well written.  One thing I do think that Lenin contributed negatively-- or
> at least inaccurately, was his view that the bourgeois of his era was
> completely reactionary, like the aristocracy of the 18th century.  The
> dynamic power of market forces to raise production in Brazil, India and
> China have proven otherwise-- the ability of the state to harness
capital's
> natural tendencies was understated (re-read chapter 10 of Das Kapital).
>  Also in his essay "Imperialism" he didnt predict the development of the
> welfare state and overestimated how much of the first world's wealth and
the
> third world's poverty was based upon the hyper-exploitation of the 3rd
> world.
>
> I understand his views from his the standpoint of 1916.
>
> As for "State and Revolution" it is a masterpiece.  The along with the
> Erfuft Program (Kautsky) most important document of Marxist theory
> post-Marx.
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