Left Communism and Bolshevism

Is this a sort of experiment? Coming out as gay is less embarassing than coming out as a Left communist, so you are just seeing how it goes down.

Dev

well most left communists didn't break from bolshevism to very late on, the heritage that Bordigists and groups like the ICC claim is one that stems from internal opposition factions within the Bolsheviks, workers opposition etc.

Because Left Communists see themselves as being in the Bolshevik tradition. They called themselves 'Left Communists' because they saw themselves as being on the left of the Bolshevik Third International.

The sensible ones of course did then break fully with Bolshevism and adopted the term Council Communist as they no longer wished to be seen as the left wing of Bolshevism.

The not so sensible ones that still use the term Left Communist in many ways aren't much different from the Trotskyists - they may have broken with the politics of the Third International but this is not because they reject Bolsehvism. No, it's because they see themselves as being the true Bolsheviks and all other tendencies as deviations from Bolshevism.

The groups that describe themselves as 'Left Communist' in modern Britain are certainly thoroughly Bolshevik.

I know some people do use 'left communist' to describe all sorts of Marxist groups to the left of Trotskyism but I don't think this is the correct usage of the term.

Ned,

I don't want to argue about semantics, but words are important. You yourself said

I think that maybe you should define what you mean by 'Bolshevisim'. To our group the 'Left Communist' tradition means the rejection of parliamentarianism, and Social democracy, the rejection of any form of nationalism, and the rejection of the trade unions. In fact, the positions that the KAPD, the left communists in Germany, stood for. We don't like the term council communism as it has echoes of the anti-organisationalism that people like Pannekoek later fell into.

You tell me what you think that Bolshevism is, and I will tell you if I am one.

Devrim

I think the term left communist has to do with heritage and traditon. It originally refered to those left currents of the IIIrd International who fought against its opportunism and degeneration, and who were expelled for that fight. This included many currents, but the Italian left is the one that influences the bigger groups the most today.

All left communists began as Bolsheviks and some later rejected that.

Bolshevism as I see it is priamarily about some basic beliefs in the organisation of revolutionaries, the party. It's not about romanticising Lenin. I certainly believe the ICC is correct in not demonizing Lenin either.

I really enjoyed the articles the ICC has written on how they can acknowledge inspiration from Lenin and Trotsky (and the same is true of luxembourg, bordiga, etc.) yet actually anaylzing how "leninism" and "trotskyism" were creations of stalin's counter-revolution.

yeah, Trotsky's writings on taylorism and militarism of labour should inspire us all.

You idiot! Don't mention a pension, or revol is gonna go into his rant about people who have pensions are idiots because capitalism is going to collapse when the oil runs out.

The key questions for us surely have little to do with people's romantic attachments to this or that thinker in the past. If people want to believe that they are the historic continuity flowing on from Lenin, then that's fine - foolish, but fine. It's the same with Bakunin or Marx or whoever. A strange thing for communists to do, but not my problem.

The real issues revolve around what people see as the role of political organisation and what the form of proletarian dictatorship would be. Central to this is the question of whether there is a function for a party before and after the revolution and its relationship to the proletarian dictatorship or state. To my mind there are very clear lines to be drawn around these issues.

..should the ICC be...

patronised?

're-educated'?

absorbed?

dissolved?

all of the above?...

is that's what's happening here?

where their bizarre paranoias and anachronistic politics are being ritually dissected, and they are 'allowed' the opportunity for the 'self-critique' they so desperately desire/deserve? Is the Libcom playing confessor/commissar to a flock of delusional twerps?

this is so exciting

Ranks somewhere with Bakunin writing on italian republicanism

On the connection between Bolshevism and left communism with the Russian left communists this is obvious because nearly all of them came out of the Bolshevik party. But the issue also needs to be raised at the level of political positions. What made Bolshevism a distinctive current after the 1903 split with the Mensheviks was its insistence on the need for a distinct and centralised organisation of revolutionaries, formed around a clear programme. On this point they moved beyond the social democratic conception of the party as a mass organisation of workers. And this is one of the principal reasons why the original left communists in the Third International – the KAPD in Germany and the Communist Party of Italy – identified with them so strongly in the early years of the revolutionary wave. Gorter’s definition of the party as a nucleus of communists “hard as steel, clear as glass” is certainly inspired by the Bolshevik conception.

It is possible to make many criticisms of the Bolshevik model of organisation, of Lenin’s mistakes on class consciousness and all the rest. But they nonetheless made an enormous advance towards a conception of the proletarian political organisation that was entirely appropriate for the new epoch of directly revolutionary struggles opening up in the 1900s. This was the crucial element missing from many of the polemics written against Lenin and the Bolsheviks at the time, not least by Trotsky and Luxemburg.

We’ve done a series of articles on the birth of Bolshevism quite recently. I will send the references later.

Knightrose wrote:

I agree this is an important issue, could you elaborate on this comment...what your conception of the role of a revolutionary party?

paddy

thats the same position as the ICC are you sure you don't wanna change it now.