Lenin in his own words
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Clarification : Third world did not mean under developed countries , it meant countries that were not aligned with the Soviet Union or the USA, but the ironic thing is that Cuba and others countries were aligned with either ones. It is different to the Three world theory created by Mao Tse Tung, it is so reactionary that some Maoist said that it was not created by Mao, but the Albanian said that the basic principles of Maoism was the ground to create that theory even if Mao did not create it
We can say that Leninism and Maoism are only applicable to third world countries where agrarian production is the prevailing mode of production. The talk should mention Lenin concept of Cartel, Trust, and financial capital. Imperialism was also an argument or pretext used by Stalin on the Foundation of Leninism by saying that Marx belong to the epoch where imperialism did not exist and the Leninism belong to the epoch of imperialism and anti imperialist revolution, but that is contradiction because capitalism have been expanding itself since the very beginning
‘We shouldn’t be too Eurocentric and appreciate that humanity could have taken many different courses, as it often did so.
I have always been interested in pre-capitalist developments such as the peasant revolts that used religion as its language. What if they had prevailed?’
Alan – what ‘different courses’ are you referring to? Some believe that the so-called peasant revolts (at least in this country) were precursors of the bourgeois revolutions that were to follow. Most of the leaders were of ‘the middling sort’ and we shouldn’t imagine them as all impoverished peasants. If this is the case then, in the long term, they did prevail.
‘I’m sorry I bothered to give Alan my summary.’
TM – why? I found it an interesting debate. I don’t like the term ‘Eurocentric’ because it implies cultural bias or even racism. But historical facts are facts – would you call the belief that our species had its origin in Africa a form of ‘Afro-centrism’?Yes Wez, it was Europe which spread capitalism globally.
There is a vast difference between the European travellers of the 13th and 14th centuries in Asia and the conquering Europeans from the 16th c. onwards. The former were humble learners, the latter plunderers and thugs.
As for the Peasant Revolt, it is my understanding that the bourgeoisie was afraid of the peasants and their utopian communism, and pointedly refused to assist them. But this means a new topic.
1381 Peasants Revolt
Taborites are one group
I know Engels replied to the Thomas Munzter situation but more could have been said
The Diggers and Ranters of the English Revolution
Alan – I don’t see how the Peasant’s Revolt or the Diggers of the English Revolution represent ‘different courses (of history)’ potential or otherwise since the first was primarily a revolt against the poll tax led by the better off peasantry and the Diggers were utopian socialists that had no chance of succeeding under bourgeois rule. A brief look at the Taborites (of whom I know little) would suggest they were a pre reformation group like the Lollard Movement in this country whose cause would be furthered by the Lutheran Reformation which would, in turn, lead to the formation of nation states and the Protestant ideology which would fuel the Bourgeois revolutions. In none of these cases do I see the potential for instigating a change in the course of history but rather a necessary element within the course it took.
Thomas – I’m not aware that the bourgeoisie even existed as a coherent class in 1381 – but, as you say, we need a different thread to progress that discussion.
That is the reason why we should become a World Socialist Party to move away from our Eurocentric mentality into a real world mentality. In the internet there are several members of the SPGB/WSM who are spreading the socialist party case thru different groups in Africa, Middle East, Australia, and the Americas. Some left wings groups like the ICC they have correspondents
in many parts of the worldPS: Is there anything scientifically called Anglo-Saxon, French or German blood ?
https://libcom.org/discussion/lenin-acknowledging-intentional-implementation-state-capitalism-ussr
Lenin acknowledging the intentional implementation of State Capitalism in the USSR
Submitted by Harrison on March 23, 2011As with most libcommers I’ve known about theories of State Capitalism for a long time, but I would like to share something I was introduced to through a long chat about Marx with an SPGB member, and which I have researched further as i’m doing an a-level coursework piece related to this:
Lenin himself desired, promoted and acknowledged the State Capitalist nature of the Soviet Union, although this was largely confined to intra-party debate and private letters. The destruction of council democracy and the introduction of ‘War Communism’ was the point at which the Bolsheviks introduced it to Russia, and it was consolidated by the ‘New Economic Policy’.
This is in direct contrast to latter-day leninists and trots claims of the USSR under Lenin and Trotsky as genuinely socialist.
MS reference took us back to a very long exchange and surprising (or not so surprising) there was a link in it to this discussion.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/refugee-literature/ch05.htm
It is clear that communal ownership in Russia is long past its period of florescence and, to all appearances, is moving towards its disintegration. Nevertheless, the possibility undeniably exists of raising this form of society to a higher one, if it should last until the circumstances are ripe for that, and if it shows itself capable of developing in such manner that the peasants no longer cultivate the land separately, but collectively;…of raising it to this higher form without it being necessary for the Russian peasants to go through the intermediate stage of bourgeois small holdings. This, however, can only happen if, before the complete break-up of communal ownership, a proletarian revolution is successfully carried out in Western Europe, creating for the Russian peasant the preconditions requisite for such a transition, particularly the material things he needs, if only to carry through the revolution, necessarily connected therewith, of his whole agricultural system.
Hopefully we aren’t making the mistake of trying to fit square pegs in round holes since M/E made it quite clear that they mostly restricted themselves to an analysis of western Europe and only touched on different form of social organisation such as oriental despotism.
Engels too commented later in life about communal ownership
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/01/russia.htm“common ownership of land is a form of ownership which was, in fact, common to all peoples at a certain stage of development. It prevailed among the Germans, Celts, Indians — in short, all the Indo-European peoples in primeval times; it still exists in India, was only recently suppressed by force in Ireland and Scotland, and, though it is dying out, still occurs here and there in Germany today… Chernyshevsky, too, sees in the Russian peasant commune a means of progressing from the existing form of society to a new stage of development, higher than both the Russian commune on the one hand, and West European capitalist society with its class antagonisms on the other. And he sees a mark of superiority in the fact that Russia possesses this means, whereas the West does not…Now, if in the West the resolution of the contradictions by a reorganisation of society is conditional on the conversion of all the means of production, hence of the land too, into the common property of society, how does the already, or rather still, existing common property in Russia relate to this common property in the West, which still has to be created? Can it not serve as a point of departure for a national campaign which, skipping the entire capitalist period, will convert Russian peasant communism straight into modern socialist common ownership of the means of production by enriching it with all the technical achievements of the capitalist era? Or, to use the words with which Marx sums up the views of Chernyshevsky in a letter to be quoted below: “Should Russia first destroy the rural commune, as demanded by the liberals, in order to go over to the capitalist system, or can it on the contrary acquire all the fruits of this system, without suffering its torments, by developing its own historical conditions?” The very way in which the question is posed indicates the direction in which the answer should be sought. The Russian commune has existed for hundreds of years without ever providing the impetus for the development of a higher form of common ownership out of itself; no more so than in the case of the German Mark system, the Celtic clans, the Indian and other communes with primitive, communistic institutions. In the course of time, under the influence of commodity production surrounding them, or arising in their own midst and gradually pervading them, and of the exchange between individual families and individual persons, they all lost more and more of their communistic character and dissolved into communities of mutually independent landowners. So if the question of whether the Russian commune will enjoy a different and better fate may be raised at all, then this is not through any fault of its own, but solely due to the fact that it has survived in a European country in a relatively vigorous form into an age when not only commodity production as such, but even its highest and ultimate form, capitalist production, has come into conflict in Western Europe with the productive forces it has created itself; when it is proving incapable of continuing to direct these forces; and when it is foundering on these innate contradictions and the class conflicts that go along with them. It is quite evident from this alone that the initiative for any possible transformation of the Russian commune along these lines cannot come from the commune itself, but only from the industrial proletarians of the West. The victory of the West European proletariat over the bourgeoisie, and, linked to this, the replacement of capitalist production by socially managed production — that is the necessary precondition for raising the Russian commune to the same level. The fact is: at no time or place has the agrarian communism that arose out of gentile society developed anything of its own accord but its own disintegration…”
From a reading of those two articles i think M/E recognised that the Mir was not the feudalism of Christopher Hill’s English village but a precurser – the earlier Highland clan type – but that because of new traditions of land distribution were losing its primitive communism character and becoming a peasant family ownership and was now facing encroachment from capitalism. As always M/E are describing things that they knew were already in flux, transforming into another entity…
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