Revolutionary Socialism

1
Revolutionary Socialism
2
Overview

• Leninism and the Vanguard Party
• Trotsky and the Permanent Revolution
• Mao and Third World Revolutions

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Marxist-Leninist Countries at height of Cold War
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Revolutionary Socialism

• V.I. Lenin(1870-1924)
• Leader of the Russian revolution of 1917, the
  first successful Marxist revolution in the world

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Revolutionary Socialism

• Argued no need to revise the theory of
  scientific Marxism to conform to new facts
• Rather, we need to use the theory to explain new
  facts
• Marx and Engels saw communism as a global
  struggle, and Lenin sought to apply their
  analysis to global capitalism

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Revolutionary Socialism

• Capitalism has morphed into Imperialism, as Marx
  and Engels predicted it would
• It has survived because it has managed to buy
  off its own worker class

at the expense of the poorer countries in the
world
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The Vanguard Party

• Capitalism has evolved into Imperialism, a stage
  at which capitalist countries conquer and
  exploit lesser developed countries
• This exploitation allowscapitalists to bribe
  theirown proletariat

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Revolutionary Socialism

• Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for
  domination and not for freedom, the exploitation
  of an increasing number of small or weak nations
  by a handful of the richest or most powerful
  nations-- all these have given birth to those
  distinctive characteristics of imperialism which
  compel us to define it as a parasitic or decaying
  capitalism.
• -- Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

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Revolutionary Socialism

• Its the decaying stage, in the sense that
  imperialism can only work for so long
• The Bourgeoisie will quickly run out of poor
  countries to exploit
• When the world is fully divided up, the
  contradictions of capitalism buried by imperial
  conquest will return to the forefront

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Revolutionary Socialism

• When the world is divided up, the richest
  countries will either have to fight each other
  for control and to conquer the poorer areas

Or...
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Revolutionary Socialism

• The class struggle will play out first as
  national struggles in the poorer countries
• Loss of the colonies will then mean return of the
  class struggle at home in the capitalist
  countries

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Revolutionary Socialism
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The Vanguard Party

• Lenins Argument
• Because the revolutionary class has been
  distracted, we need to begin the revolution on
  the periphery of the capitalist states
• The working class, though, in the peripheral
  states is not yet fully developed, in most areas
  it is pre-capitalist

Therefore
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The Vanguard Party

• At this point, we wish to state only that the
  role of vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by
  a party that is guided by the most advanced
  theory.
• -- Lenin, What is to be Done?

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The Vanguard Party

• The history of all countries shows
  that the working class, exclusively by its
  own effort, is able to develop only trade
  union consciousness, i.e., the
  conviction that it is necessary to combine
  in unions, fight the employers, and strive
  to compel the government to pass necessary labour
  legislation, etc.
• -- What is to be Done?

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The Vanguard Party

• Working-class consciousness cannot be genuine
  political consciousness unless the workers are
  trained to respond to all cases of tyranny,
  oppression, violence, and abuse, no matter what
  class is affected unless they are trained,
  moreover, to respond from a Social-Democratic
  point of view and no other.

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The Vanguard Party

• The only way we can get the working class to move
  beyond the trade union mentality is if we have
  a political party that speaks on its behalf and
  acts in its interest

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The Vanguard Party

• Class political consciousness can be brought to
  the workers only from without, that is, only from
  outside the economic struggle, from outside the
  sphere of relations between workers and
  employers.
• -- What is to be Done?

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The Vanguard Party

• The role of the Communist Party then, is to act
  as a revolutionary force to develop the class
  consciousness of the working class
• As a revolutionary force, the party will then
  fight for the interests of the working class
• The revolution will begin in the periphery and
  spread, creating a crisis within capitalism and
  raising the class-consciousness of the
  proletariat in capitalist countries

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The Vanguard Party

• And the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e.,
  the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed
  as the ruling class for the purpose of
  suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely
  in an expansion of democracy

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The Vanguard Party

• the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a
  series of restrictions on the freedom of the
  oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We
  must suppress them in order to free humanity from
  wage slavery, their resistance must be crushed by
  force.

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The Vanguard Party

• Democracy for the vast majority of the people,
  and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from
  democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of
  the people-- this is the change democracy
  undergoes during the transition from capitalism
  to communism.

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The Permanent Revolution

• For this to occur, though, the vanguard party
  needs to organize and engage on an international
  scale
• The party needs to build alliances across
  national borders

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The Permanent Revolution

• With regard to countries with a belated
  bourgeois development, especially the colonial
  and semi-colonial countriesthe complete and
  genuine solution of their tasks of achieving
  democracy and national emancipation is
  conceivable only through the dictatorship of the
  proletariat as the leader of the subjugated
  nation, above all of its peasant masses. --
  Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution

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The Permanent Revolution

• Ally of Lenins during Russian Revolution (1917)
• Initially served as Foreign Minister for the
  USSR, but eventually became head of the military
  and navy (1918-1920)
• After Lenins death (1924) he loses an intraparty
  power struggle to Stalin

• Leon Trotsky (1879-1940)

• Josef Stalin (1878-1953)

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The Permanent Revolution

• Leaves Russia and ends up in Mexico where he
  continues his writing and political activities on
  behalf of the 4th International
• Convicted in abstentia (1936) in show trial of
  conspiring to kill Stalin
• Assassinated by Soviet agent in Mexico City (ice
  pick to head while he was reading in his study)

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The Permanent Revolution

• Insofar as capitalism has created a world
  market, a world division of labor, and world
  productive forces, it has also prepared the world
  economy as a whole for socialist transformation.
  
• -- Permanent Revolution

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The Permanent Revolution

• The dictatorship of the proletariat which has
  risen to power as the leader of the democratic
  revolution is inevitably and very quickly
  confronted with tasks, the fulfillment of which
  is bound up with deep inroads into the rights of
  bourgeois property. The democratic revolution
  grows over directly into the socialist revolution
  and thereby becomes a permanent revolution.

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The Permanent Revolution

• Capitalism needed to introduce the ideas of
  liberty and democracy in order to protect private
  property
• But in treating private property relations as a
  natural right, rather than a social construct,
  capitalism perverts the true meaning of
  democracy and liberty

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The Permanent Revolution

• If we want true freedom and democracy, then we
  need to substitute the dictatorship of the
  bourgeoisie with the dictatorship of the
  proletariat.

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Maoism

• If we are going to have true democracy,
• and
• If true democracy requires a roughly equal
  distribution of wealth,
• and
• If a roughly equal distribution wealth requires
  the abolition of private property,
• then
• We need a revolution, because democracy is
  unlikely to get things done on the necessary
  scale.

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Maoism

• The enemy will not perish of himself. Neither
  the Chinese reactionaries nor the aggressive
  forces of U.S. imperialism in China will step
  down from the stage of history of their own
  accord.

So violent revolution is necessary, and
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Maoism

• Mao Zedong(1893-1976)
• Leader of the Chinese Communist Party and the
  Chinese Revolution
• Came to power in 1949, led China until his death
  in 1976

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Maoism

• If there is to be revolution, there must be a
  revolutionary party. Without a revolutionary
  party, without a party built on the
  Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory and in the
  Marxist-Leninist revolutionary style, it is
  impossible to lead the working class and the
  broad masses of the people in defeating
  imperialism and its running dogs.

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Maoism

• Maos idea was that out on the periphery, where
  there is no real industrial working class, the
  vanguard party can lead the peasant class to
  topple regimes which support imperialist
  countries or the imperialists themselves

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Maoism

• A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing
  an essay, or painting a picture, or doing
  embroidery it cannot be so refined, so leisurely
  and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous,
  restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an
  insurrection, an act of violence by which one
  class overthrows another.

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Maoism

• Every Communist must grasp the truth,
  Political power grows out of the barrel of a
  gun."

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Maoism

• So the struggle for democracy then begins with
  the peasant and working classes of the lesser
  developed countries, in the form of national
  liberationmovements initially.

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Maoism

• But as the revolutionary parties of the world
  succeed in linking up, the communist revolution
  will eventually come to the industrialized west

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Maoism

• Capital will have no where left to run, no place
  to exploit
• Without that escape valve, capitalists can no
  longer buy off their own working class

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Maoism

• The proletariat in the industrialized countries
  will become increasingly radicalized and
  increasingly class conscious

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Maoism

• And at that point the communist revolution will
  triumph and the dictatorship of the proletariat
  begin
• Democracy and freedom will reign!