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Lenin and the Bolshevik Party: A revolutionary collective

Le Blanc, Paul
http://links.org.au/lenin-bolshevik-party-revolutionary-collective

Publisher:  LINKS
Date Written:  10/07/2018
Year Published:  2018  
Resource Type:  Article

The Russian Revolution of 1917 clearly reveals the complexities of Bolshevism – Lenin's party – as a revolutionary collective.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

One set of complexities involves the organizational conceptions that animated Bolshevism, involving democratic centralism, an interplay of democracy and cohesion, as well as an interplay of centralized leadership and relative local, on-the-ground autonomy. Another involves the pulls and tugs of the diverse and vibrant personalities among the Bolsheviks – particularly at the leadership level. Experienced and articulate individuals powerfully influencing the thinking and actions of a layer involving hundreds and thousands of Bolshevik activists, who in turn influenced the thinking and actions of thousands and millions of workers, sailors, soldiers, peasants, intellectuals, and others. Yet another sub-set of complexities involves the employment of a relatively complex ideology (Marxism), which in itself is open to divergent interpretations, and which can be applied in different and sometimes contradictory ways to political, social and economic realities that are themselves complex and ever-changing. There is also a complexity in the ongoing tension between those leaders engaged in developing and adapting Marxist theory on the one hand, and the practical on-the-ground organizers on the other – and among these practical organizers we can perceive tensions between those whose primary focus is to maintain the organizational structures and cohesion of Bolshevism, and others whose primary focus is to influence and lead mass struggles and mass movements. We could go on and on with this – defining further complexities within each of the complexities.


The point is that we cannot really understand the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 with conventional but simplistic conceptualizations which focus on a Heroic Lenin (or an Evil Genius Lenin) leading an abstract entity – The Party, or Party-and-Soviets – to take political power. There is no doubt that Lenin’s role in history merits a focused study of who he was, and what he thought and wrote and said and did. But Lenin cannot be understood as the personification of the Bolshevik party. What he thought and wrote and said and did cannot be comprehended if we abstract these things, and the man himself, from those who were his comrades. If we fail to understand Bolshevism as a revolutionary collective that was an integral part of a broader working-class movement, and as a vibrant and complex living entity, we will not be able to comprehend the actualities either of Lenin or of the Russian Revolution.


This comes into better focus if we engage with some of the historical specifics. Let us start with "the Word" – Marxist theory and analysis as developed by the Bolsheviks – before we move on to the Flesh and the Bone (the personalities and the structure) of the Bolshevik party.

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