Mark Phillips: The American Question

The Third International tended to mythologize the history and practice of the Bolshevik group. They taught the world a vision of "Leninism" which was at best distorting, at worst self-serving for the Russian faction which controlled the TI machinery.

These distortions are a primary source of later day confusion. But, they're not the only source. The Russian revolutionary movement had a strong tendency to hyper-intellectualize, which is itself a pretty hyper-intellectualized way of saying, make things sound more complicated than they actually were. They had a real proclivity for using ten dollar words when cheaper words would have been fine, for instance, "proclivity" instead of "habit". Their language sometimes has a bad influence on our ability to understand them, separated by our cultural differences and the 100 years of hyper-violent history since their time.

For example. Bolsheviks didn't talk about death, they said "liquidation". The Tsar and his family weren't executed, they were liquidated, as were tens of thousands of Communists captured by counterrevolutionary Whites during the civil war. Trotsky wrote in his mid-'30s diary, "I feel liquidation coming on." You have to watch out for words like this. A capitalist firm which is going bankrupt will liquidate holdings. What exactly is implied by liquidation of the kulaks?

Bolsheviks in power didn't use state apparatus arbitrarily for purposes of repression. They took "administrative measures". In his Testament, when Lenin criticizes Trotsky for "showing excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work", he's not calling Trotsky a bureaucrat, he's calling him an authoritarian. This is important for understanding Lenin's own commitment to democracy, and his views of when and how "administrative measures" are legit.

Probably the worst, that is the most historically destructive ten dollar phrase in the Bolshevik lexicon was "Dictatorship of the proletariat". Hal Draper wrote a whole book demonstrating the evolution and the meaning of that particular piece of weirdness. It just means "government by working people". There's no other voodoo beyond that. Specifically, there's nothing dictatorial about it, necessarily. But go figure. Nowadays you have to read Draper's book to understand that.

"Leninist norms", "vanguard party", "democratic centralism", "professional revolutionaries". The net effect of all this silliness is to make it appear to outsiders -- that'll be us -- that there's something really complicated going on here which you have to be deep to understand. As if the Bolshies were some kind of privileged fount of specialized knowledge and expertise which is complicated and maybe a bit esoteric, and which you have to study, study, study to cotton onto. When in fact their ideas are extraordinarily down-to-earth. It's hard to imagine a more sensible fellow than Lenin, really, when it comes down to it. Maybe Marx.

In bringing this up, I have three points.

First, Lenin's organizational and political practice is simpler and more sensible than the TI made it out to be.

Second, contemporary sectarian grouplets claiming to be "Leninist" probably aren't.

Third, use of private language can lead to more than mere misunderstanding. Even when people are being strictly honest it can become self-reinforcing in a cultlike way, limiting the questions that can be asked and the answers which can be given. When people aren't being strictly honest it can contribute to profound intellectual and moral blackmail. I vote we all knock it off.