"Lenin’s vanguard did not, in the end, organise the working class as a ruling subject. It organised the labour of the working class. It took the real pressures of war, collapse, and counter-revolution and answered them with a party that claimed a special right to know the class’s interests “from without” (Lenin, 1902). Once that claim is fused to state power, “soviet power” stops meaning the self-government of workers and starts meaning the administration of workers through production targets, labour discipline, emergency decrees, and the policing of dissent in the name of the class (Lenin, 1921; Goldman, 1923). What follows is not the withering of the state into popular control, but the hardening of a party-state that directs accumulation on behalf of the workers from above (Lenin, 1917a; Luxemburg, 1918). That is why the vanguard can seize the state and reorganise production, but cannot abolish itself: it becomes the self-sustaining manager of the productive forces and real working power threatens that organisational structure (Marx, 1875; Trotsky, 1930). This was a reprieve from private capital, and did not represent a break from the social relation of capital because the working class remained an object abstracted from their own labour." - excerpt from my upcoming essay; Lenin's Vanguard: A Marxist critique
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"Lenin’s vanguard did not, in the end, organise the working class as a ruling subject. It organised the labour of the working class. It took the real pressures of war, collapse, and counter-revolution and answered them with a party that claimed a special right to know the class’s interests “from without” (Lenin, 1902). Once that claim is fused to state power, “soviet power” stops meaning the self-government of workers and starts meaning the administration of workers through production targets, labour discipline, emergency decrees, and the policing of dissent in the name of the class (Lenin, 1921; Goldman, 1923). What follows is not the withering of the state into popular control, but the hardening of a party-state that directs accumulation on behalf of the workers from above (Lenin, 1917a; Luxemburg, 1918). That is why the vanguard can seize the state and reorganise production, but cannot abolish itself: it becomes the self-sustaining manager of the productive forces and real working power threatens that organisational structure (Marx, 1875; Trotsky, 1930). This was a reprieve from private capital, and did not represent a break from the social relation of capital because the working class remained an object abstracted from their own labour." - excerpt from my upcoming essay; Lenin's Vanguard: A Marxist critique
1 week ago (edited) | [YT] | 12