"Disarmament rhetoric of theorists like Kautsky belies their inherent opportunism, according to Lenin. Cries for disarmament and a pacifist politics instantly excludes one from being a socialist, according to him."
Lenin's vanguardist perspective is itself an opportunistic take on Marxism. Lenin and the Bolsheviks used violence to take control of the material means of production. But the cost of this violence was paid by the people of the fifteen nations that were subsumed under a proletarian dictatorship culminating in a society shackled by bureaucracy and supported by a specialized armed militia. Rosa Luxemburg had this to say about Lenin in Die Neue Zeit:
“The establishment of centralization in the Social Democracy on the basis of blind obedience, to the very smallest detail, to a central authority, in all matters of party organization and activity; a central authority which does all the thinking, attends to everything and decides everything; a central authority isolating the centre of the party from the surrounding revolutionary milieu-as demanded by Lenin-appears to us as an attempt to transfer mechanically the organizational principles of Blanquist conspiratory workmen’s circles to the Social Democratic mass movement. (p.488, 489.)
“Lenin’s ideas are calculated principally to promote control of party activity and not its development, to foster the limitation rather than the growth, the strangulation rather than the solidarity and expansion of the movement.” (p.492.)
This was how Lenin was characterized at the beginning of his career in which he went on to become a dictator par excellence.
Understanding Marx's conception in a relevant manner involves relating world events to the theory we read in class, not just imbibing a particular interpretation of Marx as performed by Lenin, Trotsky, or any single individual or ideology. Thus, recognizing the fact that the US imposes its military power across the world in the same of spreading peace should not prevent one from recognizing the uniformity with which individual and oligarchic dictatorships replace revolutions of the right and the left.
Yes, this is my ideological grounding speaking. I don't like dictatorship at all, and I much prefer the dictatorship of organizations and structures to the dictatorship of individuals. The apparently diffuse leadership of the corporations serves to assuage my revolutionary tendencies even as I look beyond castigating entire nations and religions (as if I were referring to a single individual). The appeal for civility is not so much an attempt to bashfully cover the unpardonable sins that are committed by the dominant classes as much as it is a request that we try not to leave one set of reified beliefs and for another. In the market of ideologies we must be careful customers and hear the appeals of all vendors not to make the appropriate purchase but, to copy what we see is good in their designs and replicate them in our own versions of ideologies. That is at least somewhat original and involves more thinking than learning the stated principles of the learned saints of any -ism by rote and taking such principles to heart without filtering them through our mind.
Human society is not equal nor free, but there are degrees of freedom perceived by individuals and groups based on their ideologies and the ideologies that dominate their environments. Reading Marx's conception well cannot only mean that one aligns with the point of view that the proletariat can emancipate themselves only through violent revolution. I do not see the point to employing physically violent means to secure independence of any sort because:
(a) I am a member of the petty bourgeois and find myself unable and unwilling to do much more than discuss the desire to do something about the inequality that exists around me while I eat pizzas and drink Coke. I do not see the point to engaging in violent revolution when I in fact benefit under the status quo. Under the circumstances, my chances at enacting change are higher if I work at change within the system, rather than pointing at holes in the state's rhetoric or trying to kill people. Of course pointing holes in state rhetoric remains an effective way to garner experience and expertise that might eventually catapult the researcher into the realm of policy making and is a valid way of remaining in the system, drinking Coke, and venting against the capitalists. But that is not violent revolution. It may still help the proletariat some day in some way, or at least that remains my fervent hope.
(b) Perhaps even more importantly, I ought to be in the fields fighting the war with the farmers and other oppressed if fighting a war makes sense to me. I can understand well why people take to arms. Understanding their reasons makes me want to attack the causes of their troubles. If it is disease, then I should provide medicine, if shelter is the question then I should build homes, if my people are dying of hunger then I should strive to feed them. I can understand how and why the starving, the impoverished, and the needy use violence to express and to take what they need and/or want. But I see no point in participating in such violence when there is so much constructive work to be done.
We can deconstruct the dominant narratives till kingdom come and split hairs over the legitimacy of violence in revolution but it matters not a whit till our efforts serve to help the lives that are lost everyday. We stand on the shoulders of Marx and Lenin and try to see a non-utopian reality they envisioned for the earth while ignoring the futility of the legitimate violence perpetrated by states and sundry revolutionaries in a world that is pleading for construction. The reality, the ideologies, and the different ideological constructions of reality abound around us. I think I speak for all when I say that we are interested in removing the inequalities that are common across these constructed realities. Not just deconstruction, and certainly not destruction.
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