Peoples History of the Russian Revolution

[jondwhite]

SWP print a put-down review of A People's History of the Russian Revolution here

http://socialistreview.org.uk/425/peoples-history-russian-revolution

[LBird]

From jondwhite's link to the SWP's Socialist Review:

Socialist Review wrote:

The argument is about whether Lenin and the Bolsheviks operated in the tradition set by the then largest socialist party, the German Social Democrats, or were a “party of the new type” — a more tightly knit organisation that brought together the most class conscious members of the working class…. Neil … provides no alternative way forward apart from the vague “Only the masses in struggle can create a party of revolution.” Hear, hear to that; but how many times have we seen the “masses in struggle” only for it to all end in tears, or seen left parties such as Syriza in Greece promise to challenge the tyranny of capitalism, only for it to end in disillusion. What has, time and again, been lacking is a revolutionary party “of the new type”, steeled in class struggle and able to point the way forward — just as Lenin and the Bolsheviks did at critical points.

This 'debate' is all guff – the pretence that there are two types of "workers' party".Both the SPD and the RSDLP (ie. both the 'reformists' and the 'revolutionaries') are Religious Materialists, following Engels, and both pay only lip service to the 'working class' – they both despair of "masses in struggle", who themselves consciously build themselves as a class force, and who themselves reject any so-called 'party' of 'specialists' who know better than the 'masses in struggle'.Of course, I put the SPGB in this 'specialist' category, too.'What has, time and again, been lacking' is not a 'party', but a self-developed 'mass in struggle'.No so-called "workers' party" has ever set out to do as the class tells it, and to regard the 'party' as the learner in this process, not the teacher.Whilst 'parties' believe that the 'party' builds 'reality', and so the party can claim to 'know reality' before the 'masses in struggle' have actually even begun to build their world, they will continue to disregard Marx on this issue, and so undermine any attempt to build class consciousness.

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

Religious Materialists, following Engels, and both pay only lip service to the 'working class' – they both despair of "masses in struggle", who themselves consciously build themselves as a class force, and who themselves reject any so-called 'party' of 'specialists' who know better than the 'masses in struggle'.Of course, I put the SPGB in this 'specialist' category, too.

  

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