Thanks for your comment. The “contact” is somehow initiated at your end; I do not see how I can make a correction.

That poses a certain challenge to those of us who would like to respond to these ideas. On Facebook David McNally shared John’s post of Mike’s response. Because I could see that Eric is following the discussion on that Facebook page, I posted the following there and would like to share it here as well.

Eric it might help advance the discussion you would clarify something. You urge “folks on the other side,” (which I believe includes me) “will take up my challenge to make a positive case for the relevance of dual power/smashing the state in the context of a capitalist democracy.”

Is it your view that Lenin was wrong when he argued against Kautsky, about the need to smash the old state apparatus?

Lenin’s argument I am referring to was made prior to the October 1917 revolution. He was not then challenging Kautsky specifically on the situation in Russia. He was challenging what he considered Kautsky’s revision of Marx’s views *in general* about the need to smash the old state apparatus in *any country* (including Germany which I believe would have qualified as an example of the “capitalist democracy” you refer to.”

I refer to Lenin’s “State and Revolution,” written prior to the proletariat’s seizure of power in Russia. Chapter VI is titled, “The Vulgarisation of Marxism by Opportunists.” It has two subsections that refer directly to Lenin’s differences with Kautsky. The one I am specifically referring to is: “3. Kautsky’s Controversy with Pannekoek.”

Apologies for the length of this citation but the context is important. The original debate occurred in the German publication Neue Zeit in 1912 and assumed the idea that a mass general strike might pose the question of workers power.

Lenin begins by citing Kautsky:

“Its object [the object of the mass strike],” Kautsky continues, “cannot be to destroy the state power; its only object can be to make the government compliant on some specific question, or to replace a government hostile to the proletariat by one willing to meet it half­way [entgegenkommende]… But never, under no circumstances can it [that is, the proletarian victory over a hostile government] lead to the destruction of the state power; it can lead only to a certain shifting [verschiebung] of the balance of forces within the state power…. The aim of our political struggle remains, as in the past, the conquest of state power by winning a majority in parliament and by raising parliament to the ranks of master of the government.” (pp.726, 727, 732)

Lenin himself goes on to write:

“This is nothing but the purest and most vulgar opportunism: repudiating revolution in deeds, while accepting it in words. Kautsky’ s thoughts go no further than a ‘government… willing to meet the proletariat half­way’—a step backward to philistinism compared with 1847, when the Communist Manifesto proclaimed ‘the organization of the proletariat as the ruling class’.

“Kautsky will have to achieve his beloved ‘unity’ with the Scheidmanns, Plekhanovs, and Vanderveldes, all of whom agree to fight for a government ‘willing to meet the proletariat half­way’.

“We, however, shall break with these traitors to socialism, and we shall fight for the complete destruction of the old state machine, in order that the armed proletariat itself may become the government. These are two vastly different things.

“Kautsky will have to enjoy the pleasant company of the Legiens and Davids, Plekhanovs, Potresovs, Tseretelis, and Chernovs, who are quite willing to work for the ‘shifting of the balance of forces within the state power’, for ‘winning a majority in parliament’, and ‘raising parliament to the ranks of master of the government’. A most worthy object, which is wholly acceptable to the opportunists and which keeps everything within the bounds of the bourgeois parliamentary republic.

“We, however, shall break with the opportunists; and the entire class­ conscious proletariat will be with us in the fight—not to ‘shift the balance of forces’, but to overthrow the bourgeoisie, to destroy bourgeois parliamentarism, for a democratic republic after the type of the Commune, or a republic of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, for the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”

I understand that you disagree with folks you refer to as modern day “Leninists.” I am trying to clarify whether you also counterpose your conclusions to Lenin’s.

Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership faced a Civil War to defend Soviet power. Kautsky’s approach — in practice — would have led to the defeat of Soviet power and to counterrevolution.

I also shared there the link to Lenin’s most important answer to Kautsky’s theories:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/

Why we might ask, in November 1918 as the civil war to defend Soviet power was beginning to break out in earnest, did Lenin — clearly preoccupied with other life and death challenges facing the world’s first successful socialist revolution — devote the time and energy to this polemic with Kautsky? The answer is simple. His view was that Kautsky was NOT right. Although Lenin too had an opinion on “Why you should care.”

A single point for now to add to Mike’s excellent arguments. The heart of the difference between Lenin and the Bolsheviks on the one hand and Kautsky on the other, was not “insurrectionary strategy” (as Mike has made clear) but rather what attitude toward Soviet power. Nor was Lenin less of a supporter of genuine democracy than Kautsky.

As Lenin explained clearly:

“Incidentally, the Soviets represent an immensely higher form and type of democracy just because, by uniting and drawing the mass of workers and peasants into political life, they serve as a most sensitive barometer, the one closest to the ‘people’ (in the sense in which Marx, in 1871, spoke of a real people’s revolution), of the growth and development of the political, class maturity of the people. The Soviet Constitution was not drawn up according to some ‘plan’; it was not drawn up in a study, and was not foisted on the working people by bourgeois lawyers. No, this Constitution grew up in the course of the development of the class struggle in proportion as class antagonisms matured. The very facts which Kautsky himself has to admit prove this.”

I am afraid that Blanc has Marx confused with Blanqui because what he describes above is Blanquism pure and simple. Louis Auguste Blanqui was a 19th century socialist who was a fearless opponent of both the bourgeoisie and the landed gentry but, unlike Marx, did not believe in mass action. He was an advocate of small, armed groups acting on behalf of the working class, a strategy that became known as Blanquism.

Insurrection is a loaded term, especially when applied to October, 1917. Keep in mind that there was zero barricade fighting in the weeks prior to the assault on the Winter Palace. Of course, the Mensheviks described the seizure of power as a coup since they considered the Constituent Assembly as the proper vehicle of working class struggle rather than the Soviets. Clearly, the logic of Blanc’s neo-Kautskyism would be to look back at the orientation to the Soviets rather than the Constituent Assembly as an act that legitimized the “old nineteenth century model of barricade street fighting”.

https://louisproyect.org/2019/04/03/down-with-neo-kautskyism/