Oh, what a surprise. You’re falling back on the classic liberal, “you’re secretly a Russian bot/Trump supporter” line. All of you liberals sound the same
You’re the one who started assigning labels based on your own bias. If we’re assigning labels based on actions then, no, it’s not a classic line. I am independently observing the fact that your behaviors are indistinguishable from theirs. You are the one who opened that line of logic, it is only reasonable to hold you to it.
If you can accept that I am not a liberal, just simply a leftist focused on effective methods, then I can accept that you are not a fascist, just simply a leftist tragically confused by ineffective methods. Otherwise, we are at an impasse. Either we take each other at our word, or we talk past each other with accusations.
My arguments that you are a liberal come from two primary points: first off, by pointing out all the little things you’re constantly saying that reveal your true beliefs. For example, downplaying the Gazan genocide, Harris’ active role in it, and the violent suppression of protests as merely, “telling Palestinians to wait their turn.”
Which would be insightful if it was accurate. Never downplayed Gaza, merely compared the two reactions to demonstrate a functional difference. Gaza is being genocided. Democrats have a bad stance, but MAGA is worse. Neither of us have to power to change policy directly, so I did the best I could with my vote: chose bad over worse. That’s not endorsement of the Democratic stance, it’s an attempt at rejecting the MAGA one
If you were a leftist, you would be intensely critical of systemic violence, seeking to call it out even, or especially when it’s being casually accepted or being kept out of sight and out of mind.
Which is a thing I do, to the people perpetuating systemic violence. Complaining about policy to other people equally impotent to change policy isn’t leftism, it’s just ineffective. Calling out actions to those who lack the power to affect those actions does not reduce those actions.
Instead, you seek to downplay it, to keep it out of sight and out of mind. Why?
Again, I didn’t do that so your permission is fundamentally wrong.
The second thing I’ve done is to show how your stated positions are indistinguishable from liberalism. This is very different from what you’re doing when you lazily attempt to turn it around on me.
False. Thereb is direct evidence of bad actors trying to split the view by bemoaning the flaws of Democrats, while remaining suspiciously silent about MAGA. Thus, your similar actions are indistinguishable from these fascist enablers. This is not different in any way.
Otherwise, I will simply say that the fact that I voted for PSL rather than a fascist candidate such as Trump or Harris demonstrates that I’m not a fascist.
So you claim. Yet your continue to engage in actions that help fascists. Curious.
Of course, just as there are all sorts of little things you say that are constantly revealing that you’re a liberal, there are all sorts of little things that make the idea of me being a fascist incredibly implausible. For example, the fact that I’ve read leftist theory and can cite it to support my positions.
Hey, me too.
Fascists are famously anti-intellectual (as are liberals, to a slightly lesser extent) and don’t even read their own theory.
And here you are revolting against intellectualism to push a counterproductive action. The evidence is stacking.
I know you haven’t read theory because, well, none of you have.
Fascists are famously more dependent on labels, name-calling, and baseless prejudice than engaging with the content of the argument (note, you still have yet to engage with the argument, you just keep shouting the thought terminating “liberal”). Yet more evidence.
Someday, perhaps, I’ll encounter someone arguing your positions who actually knows whose intellectual tradition they’re inheriting and has actually read the works of people like Bernstein, and who can therefore actually defend their positions from an informed perspective. But that day is certainly not today.
Wrong again.
Where you, and everyone like you, get your ideas is not from actual study but from passive absorbtion of the dominant, bourgeois ideology of the status quo.
Would you like to support that claim, or is this just more fascist thought-terminating cliche? Don’t bother, I can guess.
Such shallow ideas cannot withstand actual scrutiny, and so you have this toolkit of tactics to avoid having them scrutinized, such as dismissing anyone who attempts to as an other,
Sounds like someone’s telling on themselves.
I’ll note, of course, that you haven’t answered any of my questions this conversation.
Which ones? I’ll happily do so now if I managed to overlook anything resembling a coherent question in your fash-enabling rhetoric.
Liberals were still winning Illinois when the left was virtually non-existent, so if you want to take credit for it, it only works if you accept that you are a liberal.
Again, very wrong. I am a leftist, a real leftist. I care more about implementing leftist policy than online cred. I endorse actions that help the left, like putting the lesser evil in office when good had no chance of winning, in order to make the conditions for meaningful leftist action more favorable. Note I did not favorable, I said more favorable. I do not like the Democrats. I simply recognize that, of the two parties that stand a chance of winning the general election for the near future, they are the less antagonistic.
Otherwise, it’s clear that your strategy, at least in the conditions of my state, is completely useless and has zero chance of accomplishing anything.
Yet it risks nothing. Your strategy risks regimes like the current one, the one responsible for all the rebuild of the Democrats and many, many more. Or do we not care about systemic violence when it hurts your side?
If I were a fascist trying to act in silly ways, I’d simply say what you’re saying.
Why would a fascist say to vote effectively against fascists? A fascist would want to identify the biggest threat to their hegemony (in this case the only other party capable of winning a presidential race) and discourage people from voting for them. Oh, that seems familiar. Who was doing that again?
It is impossible for you to be a politically competent leftist, dating what you say. No leftist who made your suggestions could be considered politically competent. Any politically competent person who made those suggestions is obviously trying to help the fascists. Leftists voting third party in general elections hurts leftists, and helps fascists.
So, you really have two options:
Are you really a leftist, you just don’t understand politics or elections at all?
Are you politically literate, therefore definitely a fascist, since that’s the only rational motivation for your suggestions?
Or, will you admit that you might be wrong, that leftist infighting is counterproductive, that leftist theory has been written by many parties with differing views on implementation, that different motivations can result in certain similar behaviors, and that maybe dialectic is better than ineffective idealism.
My bet is you keep cosplaying, but there is a chance you choose truth.
You think I’m a pompous liberal dickhead. I think you’re a sincere idiot who’s helping the left shoot itself in the foot.
We both want the left to win. Our ideas of how that happens differs. So long as we’re at each other’s throats instead of arm in arm against the real enemy, they win.
Can we please cut this bourgeois ideological crap and get back to materialist dialectics?
Can we please cut this bourgeois ideological crap and get back to materialist dialectics?
Do you think that’s what you’re doing?
From skimming your comment, I believe you said you could cite theory to back up your “vote blue no matter who” position. So please do so. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone do this, it’s always just, “it’s obvious” while shutting down any closer examination. Because it is just passively absorbed, unexamined, ruling class ideology.
the era of bourgeois parliamentarianism is over, and the era of the proletarian dictatorship has begun. That is incontestable. But world history is counted in decades. Ten or twenty years earlier or later makes no difference when measured with the yardstick of world history; from the standpoint of world history it is a trifle that cannot be considered even approximately. But for that very reason, it is a glaring theoretical error to apply the yardstick of world history to practical politics.
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but—and that is the whole point—we must not regard what is obsolete to us as something obsolete to a class, to the masses. Here again we find that the “Lefts” do not know how to reason, do not know how to act as the party of a class, as the party of the masses.
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You are in duty bound to call their bourgeois-democratic and parliamentary prejudices what they are—prejudices. But at the same time you must soberly follow the actual state of the class-consciousness and preparedness of the entire class (not only of its communist vanguard), and of all the working people (not only of their advanced elements).
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Whilst you lack the strength to do away with bourgeois parliaments and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work within them because it is there that you will still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the conditions of rural life; otherwise you risk turning into nothing but windbags.
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The conclusion which follows from this is absolutely incontrovertible: it has been proved that, far from causing harm to the revolutionary proletariat, participation in a bourgeois-democratic parliament, even a few weeks before the victory of a Soviet republic and even after such a victory, actually helps that proletariat to prove to the backward masses why such parliaments deserve to be done away with; it facilitates their successful dissolution, and helps to make bourgeois parliamentarianism “politically obsolete”.
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Certainly, without a revolutionary mood among the masses, and without conditions facilitating the growth of this mood, revolutionary tactics will never develop into action.
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revolutionary tactics cannot be built on a revolutionary mood alone. Tactics must be based on a sober and strictly objective appraisal of all the class forces in a particular state (and of the states that surround it, and of all states the world over) as well as of the experience of revolutionary movements. It is very easy to show one’s “revolutionary” temper merely by hurling abuse at parliamentary opportunism, or merely by repudiating participation in parliaments; its very ease, however, cannot turn this into a solution of a difficult, a very difficult, problem.
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To attempt to “circumvent” this difficulty by “skipping” the arduous job of utilising reactionary parliaments for revolutionary purposes is absolutely childish.
Sounds like exactly what I’m on about. Voting is a useful tool, use it intelligently.
So, you don’t have any theory to support your position, and have instead chosen to take bits of mine out of context to pretend they mean something completely different.
Yes, Lenin argued for participation in bourgeois parliaments… in a revolutionary communist party. Which the Democratic Party is very much not.
The German “Lefts” complain of bad “leaders” in their party, give way to despair, and even arrive at a ridiculous “negation” of “leaders”. But in conditions in which it is often necessary to hide “leaders” underground, the evolution of good “leaders”, reliable, tested and authoritative, is a very difficult matter; these difficulties cannot be successfully overcome without combining legal and illegal work, and without testing the “leaders”, among other ways, in parliaments. Criticism—the most keen, ruthless and uncompromising criticism—should be directed, not against parliamentarianism or parliamentary activities, but against those leaders who are unable—and still more against those who are unwilling—to utilise parliamentary elections and the parliamentary rostrum in a revolutionary and communist manner. Only such criticism—combined, of course, with the dismissal of incapable leaders and their replacement by capable ones—will constitute useful and fruitful revolutionary work that will simultaneously train the “leaders” to be worthy of the working class and of all working people, and train the masses to be able properly to understand the political situation and the often very complicated and intricate tasks that spring from that situation.
Huh! So, if we were to pretend that he’s talking about something like the Democratic party, then in that case he says we should direct “the most keen, ruthless, and uncompromising criticism” at any leader in said party that is unwilling to use their position “in a revolutionary and communist manner,” and that they should “of course” be dismissed and replaced. It is impossible to read these words in good faith and think that he’s supporting your “blue no matter who” position.
Lenin’s position was, as his positions often were, nuanced, striking a balance between competing ideas. In this case, he is fiercely critical of both complete absentation of the left communists and anarchists, and of opportunism and tailism of the social democrats. You’ve chosen to focus singularly on his criticism of absentation (which tbf is something he focuses on here), as if abstaining from the election was my position, which it isn’t. My position is participation in bourgeois parliaments through a revolutionary communist party with the aim of prioritizing non-electoral strategies, i.e. the thing that he very clearly and explicitly argues for in place of absentation.
So, you don’t have any theory to support your position, and have instead chosen to take bits of mine out of context to pretend they mean something completely different
Yours? Our theory, comrade. And I’m not a chapter-and-verse kinda guy. That’s not very Marxist. Marxism is explicitly founded upon the Hegelian dialectic: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. I don’t read theory to prop up my views with the authority of century-old quotations. I read theory to analyze the argument, and synthesize it into my general worldview. Good ideas aren’t good because you like the person that said them, they stand up by the virtue of their reasoning.
Heck, this might have been the exact thing I read to bring me to this particular position. Who knows, I read a lot.
And not sure how I could’ve taken anything out of context, I literally copied and pasted direct quotes.
Yes, Lenin argued for participation in bourgeois parliaments… in a revolutionary communist party. Which the Democratic Party is very much not.
That’s not what this piece says though. If you want to make that point, you should have used a piece that supports it. This piece very specifically says, in what I consider the most crucial words of the whole thing:
you must soberly follow the actual state of the class-consciousness and preparedness of the entire class (not only of its communist vanguard)
The American people do not have the class consciousness or preparedness to support a revolutionary communist party. A sober evaluation of the actual state demonstrates that quite clearly.
Criticism—the most keen, ruthless and uncompromising criticism—should be directed, not against parliamentarianism or parliamentary activities, but against those leaders who are unable—and still more against those who are unwilling—to utilise parliamentary elections and the parliamentary rostrum in a revolutionary and communist manner. Only such criticism—combined, of course, with the dismissal of incapable leaders and their replacement by capable ones—will constitute useful and fruitful revolutionary work that will simultaneously train the “leaders” to be worthy of the working class and of all working people, and train the masses to be able properly to understand the political situation and the often very complicated and intricate tasks that spring from that situation.
Huh! So, if we were to pretend that he’s talking about something like the Democratic party, then in that case he says we should direct “the most keen, ruthless, and uncompromising criticism” at any leader in said party that is unwilling to use their position “in a revolutionary and communist manner,” and that they should “of course” be dismissed and replaced.
Of course! Direct your criticisms to the leaders of the Democratic party, not my parliamentary activities. Note, however, that he doesn’t say that trying to dismiss and replace them is somehow valuable in itself, and you’d really need to massage the context to endorse doing so when it results in an even more uncommunist replacement.
Lenin’s position was, as his positions often were, nuanced, striking a balance between competing ideas.
An admirable twit and true to the Hegelian influence.
You’ve chosen to focus singularly on his criticism of absentation (which tbf is something he focuses on here), as if abstaining from the election was my position, which it isn’t. My position is participation in bourgeois parliaments through a revolutionary communist party with the aim of prioritizing non-electoral strategies, i.e. the thing that he very clearly and explicitly argues for in place of absentation.
Then you probably should have chosen a different tract. This one is pretty clear: don’t delude yourself with your ideologies, don’t judge the whole population by the communist vanguard, suit your actions to your circumstances.
Until, by a sober evaluation, we can say that the American people have the class-consciousness and preparedness for a revolutionary communist party, trying to force one at the expense of greater losses is not suitable.
And not sure how I could’ve taken anything out of context, I literally copied and pasted direct quotes.
You’ve never heard of proof-texting?
The American people do not have the class consciousness or preparedness to support a revolutionary communist party. A sober evaluation of the actual state demonstrates that quite clearly.
This is literally the exact opposite of his position. You’re saying that you shouldn’t run as a communist until the proletariat is sufficiently radicalized, when Lenin is saying that you should run as a communist specifically in order to radicalize the proletariat when they are not radicalized. His whole argument is that it is because the proletariat is not radicalized that participation in bourgeois politics is worthwhile.
Winning elections is not the point, the point is promoting the message, and if you happen to win a couple elections along the way and get a few representatives in, cool, that can be useful, but that always takes a backseat to other priorities:
action by the masses, a big strike, for instance, is more important than parliamentary activity at all times, and not only during a revolution or in a revolutionary situation.
Lenin even makes reference to still persuing a revolutionary communist party, not only when it is not electorally viable, but when it is actually illegal:
But in conditions in which it is often necessary to hide “leaders” underground, the evolution of good “leaders”, reliable, tested and authoritative, is a very difficult matter...
The part immediately proceeding what you quoted reads:
You must not sink to the level of the masses, to the level of the backward strata of the class. That is incontestable. You must tell them the bitter truth. You are duty bound tocall their bourgeois-democratic and parliamentary prejudices what they are—prejudices.
The position that you are arguing for, that communists should adopt reactionary/liberal stances to appease or ingratiate ourselves to a reactionary/liberal population, is known as tailism. The person who coined that term is the same person who wrote this text, Lenin, and he coined it while harshly criticizing it, it is absolutely not his position by any stretch of the imagination. We must “follow the actual state of class-consciousness” only in the sense that we must be aware of it, and plan around it, not in the sense of following their lead. Being aware that most people are not prepared for armed revolution, he says, we should participate in bourgeois electoralism because that is the spectacle they are invested in, and the way in which we should participate is as part of a revolutionary communist party uncompromisingly “telling them the bitter truth” and ultimately trying to turn people away from such processes altogether.
Note, however, that he doesn’t say that trying to dismiss and replace them is somehow valuable in itself, and you’d really need to massage the context to endorse doing so when it results in an even more uncommunist replacement.
Naturally, if a party can not or will not replace a leader within the party who refuses to persues the supposed revolutionary communist goals of the party, then you should consider whether the party is actually committed to those goals or whether it’s time to start a new party or move to another one that does. Obviously, if replacing an anti-communist leader means someone even more anti-communist will lead the party, then you are not in a communist party and it is time to leave.
He is very clearly talking about leaders within the party, who are always within the party’s power to replace, with whoever they choose, relatively effortlessly. The situation you describe is a contradiction, you’ve already messed up if you’re choosing the lesser evil anticommunist to lead your party or if you can only “try” to replace an anti-communist leader, and obviously this has nothing to do with “voting Democrat to stop the Republicans” as you’re attempting to project onto it, since it’s in the context of internal workings of a revolutionary communist party, not a competition between two bourgeois parties.
Until, by a sober evaluation, we can say that the American people have the class-consciousness and preparedness for a revolutionary communist party, trying to force one at the expense of greater losses is not suitable.
And you genuinely, truly believe that that is consistent with Vladimir Lenin’s position in this text?
Again, I don’t really prop my arguments up on the reputation of long dead men, the whole prospect feels pretty cringey and authoritarian just in principle. I don’t see why you would want to base contemporary political strategy on the ideals of a man who died 100 years ago, in a very different country with different material conditions.
You know what Lenin had to say about furthering communism under the threat of fascism? Nothing! He died before fascism became a thing, or Fox News, or Facebook algorithm pipelines. He had no way of conceptualizing the scope of propaganda in the modern world.
Why is he sacrosanct when developing strategy? His USSR never even got to the communist part. It lasted 70 years before being divided up by oligarchs into even more egregious capitalism. Not only are his ideas outdated, they apparently weren’t all that resilient either.
You’re the one who started assigning labels based on your own bias. If we’re assigning labels based on actions then, no, it’s not a classic line. I am independently observing the fact that your behaviors are indistinguishable from theirs. You are the one who opened that line of logic, it is only reasonable to hold you to it.
If you can accept that I am not a liberal, just simply a leftist focused on effective methods, then I can accept that you are not a fascist, just simply a leftist tragically confused by ineffective methods. Otherwise, we are at an impasse. Either we take each other at our word, or we talk past each other with accusations.
Which would be insightful if it was accurate. Never downplayed Gaza, merely compared the two reactions to demonstrate a functional difference. Gaza is being genocided. Democrats have a bad stance, but MAGA is worse. Neither of us have to power to change policy directly, so I did the best I could with my vote: chose bad over worse. That’s not endorsement of the Democratic stance, it’s an attempt at rejecting the MAGA one
Which is a thing I do, to the people perpetuating systemic violence. Complaining about policy to other people equally impotent to change policy isn’t leftism, it’s just ineffective. Calling out actions to those who lack the power to affect those actions does not reduce those actions.
Again, I didn’t do that so your permission is fundamentally wrong.
False. Thereb is direct evidence of bad actors trying to split the view by bemoaning the flaws of Democrats, while remaining suspiciously silent about MAGA. Thus, your similar actions are indistinguishable from these fascist enablers. This is not different in any way.
So you claim. Yet your continue to engage in actions that help fascists. Curious.
Hey, me too.
And here you are revolting against intellectualism to push a counterproductive action. The evidence is stacking.
Fascists are famously more dependent on labels, name-calling, and baseless prejudice than engaging with the content of the argument (note, you still have yet to engage with the argument, you just keep shouting the thought terminating “liberal”). Yet more evidence.
Wrong again.
Would you like to support that claim, or is this just more fascist thought-terminating cliche? Don’t bother, I can guess.
Sounds like someone’s telling on themselves.
Which ones? I’ll happily do so now if I managed to overlook anything resembling a coherent question in your fash-enabling rhetoric.
Again, very wrong. I am a leftist, a real leftist. I care more about implementing leftist policy than online cred. I endorse actions that help the left, like putting the lesser evil in office when good had no chance of winning, in order to make the conditions for meaningful leftist action more favorable. Note I did not favorable, I said more favorable. I do not like the Democrats. I simply recognize that, of the two parties that stand a chance of winning the general election for the near future, they are the less antagonistic.
Yet it risks nothing. Your strategy risks regimes like the current one, the one responsible for all the rebuild of the Democrats and many, many more. Or do we not care about systemic violence when it hurts your side?
Why would a fascist say to vote effectively against fascists? A fascist would want to identify the biggest threat to their hegemony (in this case the only other party capable of winning a presidential race) and discourage people from voting for them. Oh, that seems familiar. Who was doing that again?
It is impossible for you to be a politically competent leftist, dating what you say. No leftist who made your suggestions could be considered politically competent. Any politically competent person who made those suggestions is obviously trying to help the fascists. Leftists voting third party in general elections hurts leftists, and helps fascists.
So, you really have two options:
Are you really a leftist, you just don’t understand politics or elections at all?
Are you politically literate, therefore definitely a fascist, since that’s the only rational motivation for your suggestions?
Or, will you admit that you might be wrong, that leftist infighting is counterproductive, that leftist theory has been written by many parties with differing views on implementation, that different motivations can result in certain similar behaviors, and that maybe dialectic is better than ineffective idealism.
My bet is you keep cosplaying, but there is a chance you choose truth.
tl;dr.
You think I’m a pompous liberal dickhead. I think you’re a sincere idiot who’s helping the left shoot itself in the foot.
We both want the left to win. Our ideas of how that happens differs. So long as we’re at each other’s throats instead of arm in arm against the real enemy, they win.
Can we please cut this bourgeois ideological crap and get back to materialist dialectics?
Do you think that’s what you’re doing?
From skimming your comment, I believe you said you could cite theory to back up your “vote blue no matter who” position. So please do so. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone do this, it’s always just, “it’s obvious” while shutting down any closer examination. Because it is just passively absorbed, unexamined, ruling class ideology.
For the record, my position is largely inspired by Lenin’s “Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?”
Ooh, there are some good bits in there:
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Sounds like exactly what I’m on about. Voting is a useful tool, use it intelligently.
So, you don’t have any theory to support your position, and have instead chosen to take bits of mine out of context to pretend they mean something completely different.
Yes, Lenin argued for participation in bourgeois parliaments… in a revolutionary communist party. Which the Democratic Party is very much not.
Huh! So, if we were to pretend that he’s talking about something like the Democratic party, then in that case he says we should direct “the most keen, ruthless, and uncompromising criticism” at any leader in said party that is unwilling to use their position “in a revolutionary and communist manner,” and that they should “of course” be dismissed and replaced. It is impossible to read these words in good faith and think that he’s supporting your “blue no matter who” position.
Lenin’s position was, as his positions often were, nuanced, striking a balance between competing ideas. In this case, he is fiercely critical of both complete absentation of the left communists and anarchists, and of opportunism and tailism of the social democrats. You’ve chosen to focus singularly on his criticism of absentation (which tbf is something he focuses on here), as if abstaining from the election was my position, which it isn’t. My position is participation in bourgeois parliaments through a revolutionary communist party with the aim of prioritizing non-electoral strategies, i.e. the thing that he very clearly and explicitly argues for in place of absentation.
Yours? Our theory, comrade. And I’m not a chapter-and-verse kinda guy. That’s not very Marxist. Marxism is explicitly founded upon the Hegelian dialectic: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. I don’t read theory to prop up my views with the authority of century-old quotations. I read theory to analyze the argument, and synthesize it into my general worldview. Good ideas aren’t good because you like the person that said them, they stand up by the virtue of their reasoning.
Heck, this might have been the exact thing I read to bring me to this particular position. Who knows, I read a lot.
And not sure how I could’ve taken anything out of context, I literally copied and pasted direct quotes.
That’s not what this piece says though. If you want to make that point, you should have used a piece that supports it. This piece very specifically says, in what I consider the most crucial words of the whole thing:
The American people do not have the class consciousness or preparedness to support a revolutionary communist party. A sober evaluation of the actual state demonstrates that quite clearly.
Of course! Direct your criticisms to the leaders of the Democratic party, not my parliamentary activities. Note, however, that he doesn’t say that trying to dismiss and replace them is somehow valuable in itself, and you’d really need to massage the context to endorse doing so when it results in an even more uncommunist replacement.
An admirable twit and true to the Hegelian influence.
Then you probably should have chosen a different tract. This one is pretty clear: don’t delude yourself with your ideologies, don’t judge the whole population by the communist vanguard, suit your actions to your circumstances.
Until, by a sober evaluation, we can say that the American people have the class-consciousness and preparedness for a revolutionary communist party, trying to force one at the expense of greater losses is not suitable.
You’ve never heard of proof-texting?
This is literally the exact opposite of his position. You’re saying that you shouldn’t run as a communist until the proletariat is sufficiently radicalized, when Lenin is saying that you should run as a communist specifically in order to radicalize the proletariat when they are not radicalized. His whole argument is that it is because the proletariat is not radicalized that participation in bourgeois politics is worthwhile.
Winning elections is not the point, the point is promoting the message, and if you happen to win a couple elections along the way and get a few representatives in, cool, that can be useful, but that always takes a backseat to other priorities:
action by the masses, a big strike, for instance, is more important than parliamentary activity at all times, and not only during a revolution or in a revolutionary situation.Lenin even makes reference to still persuing a revolutionary communist party, not only when it is not electorally viable, but when it is actually illegal:
But in conditions in which it is often necessary to hide “leaders” underground, the evolution of good “leaders”, reliable, tested and authoritative, is a very difficult matter...The part immediately proceeding what you quoted reads:
You must not sink to the level of the masses, to the level of the backward strata of the class. That is incontestable. You must tell them the bitter truth. You are duty bound to call their bourgeois-democratic and parliamentary prejudices what they are—prejudices.The position that you are arguing for, that communists should adopt reactionary/liberal stances to appease or ingratiate ourselves to a reactionary/liberal population, is known as tailism. The person who coined that term is the same person who wrote this text, Lenin, and he coined it while harshly criticizing it, it is absolutely not his position by any stretch of the imagination. We must “follow the actual state of class-consciousness” only in the sense that we must be aware of it, and plan around it, not in the sense of following their lead. Being aware that most people are not prepared for armed revolution, he says, we should participate in bourgeois electoralism because that is the spectacle they are invested in, and the way in which we should participate is as part of a revolutionary communist party uncompromisingly “telling them the bitter truth” and ultimately trying to turn people away from such processes altogether.
Naturally, if a party can not or will not replace a leader within the party who refuses to persues the supposed revolutionary communist goals of the party, then you should consider whether the party is actually committed to those goals or whether it’s time to start a new party or move to another one that does. Obviously, if replacing an anti-communist leader means someone even more anti-communist will lead the party, then you are not in a communist party and it is time to leave.
He is very clearly talking about leaders within the party, who are always within the party’s power to replace, with whoever they choose, relatively effortlessly. The situation you describe is a contradiction, you’ve already messed up if you’re choosing the lesser evil anticommunist to lead your party or if you can only “try” to replace an anti-communist leader, and obviously this has nothing to do with “voting Democrat to stop the Republicans” as you’re attempting to project onto it, since it’s in the context of internal workings of a revolutionary communist party, not a competition between two bourgeois parties.
And you genuinely, truly believe that that is consistent with Vladimir Lenin’s position in this text?
I weep for our education system.
Again, I don’t really prop my arguments up on the reputation of long dead men, the whole prospect feels pretty cringey and authoritarian just in principle. I don’t see why you would want to base contemporary political strategy on the ideals of a man who died 100 years ago, in a very different country with different material conditions.
You know what Lenin had to say about furthering communism under the threat of fascism? Nothing! He died before fascism became a thing, or Fox News, or Facebook algorithm pipelines. He had no way of conceptualizing the scope of propaganda in the modern world.
Why is he sacrosanct when developing strategy? His USSR never even got to the communist part. It lasted 70 years before being divided up by oligarchs into even more egregious capitalism. Not only are his ideas outdated, they apparently weren’t all that resilient either.