YOUR article 'A political revolution is needed in Poland' contained more than the usual number of Leninist falsifications. You claim that 'in no theoretical document of Marx, Engels, Lenin or Trotsky and in no programmatic document of the Third International under Lenin (sic!) did... defence of the one-party system appear'.
Lenin first: 'Yes, it is a dictatorship of one party! This is what : we stand for, and we shall not shift from that position... 1919, in Collected Works, Vol. 29, p 535). Next, Trotsky: '...we are the only party in the country, and in the period of the dictatorship it could not be otherwise' ("The New Course', 22 December 1923, in The Challenge of the Left Opposition, p.78).
Even when driven into opposition by Stalin, Trotsky did not yield on this point, insisting on "the Leninist principle, inviolable for every Bolshevik, that the dictatorship is and can be realised through the dictatorship of the party, and that 'the dictatorship of the proletariat demands at its very core a single proletarian party': (The Plat, form of the Left Opposition, 1927, pp. 62, 111).
As late as 1937, we find Trotsky still defending the objective necessity' of 'the revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party' ('Dictatorship and Revolution', 23 October 1937, in Writings 1936-1937, p. 513).
The same concepts of party dictatorship are discernible in basic documents of the pre-Stalinist Comintern. 'Political power cannot be seized, organised and operated except through a political party', IN your 28 August issue in the 'Around the World' column you have a little piece on the United States which deserves a comment.
The piece describes the victory of Gerald Carlson in a Republican Party primary in Michigan, pointing out that Carison is a member of the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch Society, and It concludes: With S0 Or. allies like that the prospect of Ronald Reagan becoming the next president gets more frightening every day.
You could have easily written a piece about Tom Metzger winning the Domocratic Porty's Congressional primary in San Diego, California. Metzger is an open member of the KKK and is running a campaign he ' (31 July, Martin Luther King pulls a KKK burning cross out of his lawn that individual candidates rather than ruling class interests determine policies of the number one imperialist power.
I am reminded of a letter I saw in a newspaper here in 1965, after the Johnsoninsisted the 'Theses on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution' (July 1920). 'Only if there is such a disciplined organisation of the working class elite (sic!) is it possible to surmount all the difficulties confronting the workers' dictatorship on the mortherefore to 'take in tow' the Soviets, thereby making nonsense of Lenin's cynical slogan issued before the October Revolution of 'all power to the Soviets'. And was it not the same Lenin who told the Ninth Congress of the Bolshevik Party in March 1920 that 'the will of a class may sometimes be carried out by a dictator, who sometimes does more alone and is frequently more necessary' (CW, Vol. 30, p.
Marx's admirable axiom that 'the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves': Yet I quote: "The thesis that the emancipation of the proletariat can only be accomplished by the proletariat itself must be modified, either in theory or in practice, to mean that it is the revolutionary party's task to emancipate the proletariat and to establish the workers' state on behalf of the proletariat - first in the latter's name and then, in certain historical situations, against outlines what he terms the 'dialectic between the vanguard and the Bureaucracy which, I see, you are advertising. Your comments please.
Goldwater race, when Johnson ran and won on a 'peace platform against the 'war monger' The letter extolled the virtues of the US democratic process.
The writer stated: "They told me that if I that the Trotsky be.
Was it that the diclabour movement, but this has proved difficult. the venue, (4) the day's events.
NAC Steering Committee.
I voted for Goldwater and sure enough we have a half a million troops in Vietnam.
Finally, regarding the electoral preferences of to accept the theory - a totally idealist one from the viewpoint of historical materialism -that the dictatorship of the proletariat can only be expressed through a regime of workers councils. This theory, common among state capitalists and anarchists, would put the destruction of the Russian revolution somewhere in 1918! Indeed, to be very strict, was there ever a socialist revolution in Russia at all?
Or again, let's take the quote that Blick has dug up from the Comintern that 'Political power cannot be seized, organised and operated except through a political party. Only the most biased reading of that quote could suggest that it was meant a: anything other than an emphasis on the need A PLANNING group, open to all women, has been meeting to organise a broad-based event which would attract as many women as possible who would support a festival for women's rights -against Tory attacks. We decided it was importan to have as wide a sponsorship as possible from women's organisations, unions, campaigns and the At the national planning meeting of the National Abortion Campaign in July the aims and motiva However there were disagreements over the date suggested (7 March - International Women's Day Women's Day (which will be 7 March next year) is traditionally the day for women-only marches and events and NAC therefore will not sponsor the festival on that date and proposes that either (1) the date be changed or (2) the festival' is made women-only, in which case sponsorship would be The planning group definitely wants to organise a festival for womens rights against Tory attacks this decision of NAC has been reiterated by other groups and individuals in the women's movement, it is essential that the date of this festival and whether it is women-only should be rediscussed and finally decided at a planning meeting from 2pm to 6pm on October 4 at the intensive English School, 21 Star Street, London W2.
It is essential that all women supporting this festival are involved in making the final decisions. The agenda for the day will be: (1) the date of the festival, (2) whether it should be women-only, (3)
THE PLANNING GROUP (with agreement the KKK has, , in fact, been part of the Democratic Party, not the Republican Party.
WILL REISSNER, New York for a revolutionary party to prepare for the seizure of power.
But why is it that if you have a revolutionary party then you cannot also have soviets? If you say the two are mutually exclusive, then you end up with an anarchist theory of opposition ic poltical parties as such. The workers should just wait around for the soviets to arise!
Robin Blick has managed to find some quotes in which Lenin appears to say that the Bolsheviks stand for one party dictatorship as such. For every one of these, you can find dozens which say the precise opposite.
The danger of selec tive quotation is best highlighted by his cita tion from Mandel. In fact this is a proof reading error! In the first edition of the pamphlet (we'll Last year the Nationa send a photocopy to Blick on request), the sentence reads: "The thesis that the eman cipation of the pro letariat can only be ac: complished by the pro letariat itself must not be moditied..
The quotation as it stands is so obviously in contradiction to the whole of the rest of the pamphlet that it is difficult to see how Blick could genuinely have taken this to be Mande real position Perhaps the fact that Robin Blick's experience of Trotskyism' has been that of the Healy/Lambert school has led him to believe that Trotskyism serious ly stands for the libera tion of the working class 'on behalf of the workins class or even against it'. Rest assured com rade Blick, that is not our view. —EDS banned. you soon.
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