Comments on: Revolutionary strategy and the electoral road https://johnriddell.com/2019/04/13/revolutionary-strategy-and-the-electoral-road/ MARXIST ESSAYS AND COMMENTARY Mon, 01 Jul 2019 16:59:10 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.1.10 By: Elena Zeledon https://johnriddell.com/2019/04/13/revolutionary-strategy-and-the-electoral-road/#comment-12727 Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:20:25 +0000 https://johnriddell.com/?p=5293#comment-12727 In reply to geoff1954.

Notice NOT ONE WORD on US imperialism. NOT ONE. Blanc is just another US-centric reformist hiding out in the Vampire Castle. For revolutionaries, anti-imperialism is not just an after thought, but the center of their socialist politics.

]]> By: Jacob Richter https://johnriddell.com/2019/04/13/revolutionary-strategy-and-the-electoral-road/#comment-12675 Sun, 14 Apr 2019 23:42:28 +0000 https://johnriddell.com/?p=5293#comment-12675 My full criticism of Eric Blanc’s article, Post-Insurrectionary Strategy, can be found here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/ba6s16/postinsurrectionary_strategy/

Another comrade, Donald Parkinson, has written an article in response to Eric Blanc:

https://cosmonaut.blog/2019/04/13/revolution-or-the-democratic-road-to-socialism-a-reply-to-eric-blanc/

]]> By: geoff1954 https://johnriddell.com/2019/04/13/revolutionary-strategy-and-the-electoral-road/#comment-12657 Sat, 13 Apr 2019 18:29:25 +0000 https://johnriddell.com/?p=5293#comment-12657 I agree with Mike Taber that it would advance the discussion if we can all agree to state clearly what perspective we are for and what alternate perspectives we reject. In an effort to contribute to that process I have called to Eric’s attention — as well as all who are following this discussion — that Lenin did exactly this in his polemics with Kautsky, most importantly, “State and Revolution,” and “Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky.”

In both works Lenin argues that working people need to understand the class nature of the state. He explains the ways in which a capitalist state — including those with forms of bourgeois democracy — is fundamentally undemocratic, while, as Mike has also pointed out, the victory of Soviet power in 1917 was a deeply democratic event.

On Facebook Eric has just posted this statement by the “Bread and Roses” caucus of DSA, which I believe Eric urges others to join. The statement, which outlines in more detail Eric’s current views on how socialists should make use of elections today in the U.S. among other issues, offers further insight into the political strategy he favors.

It is not the road of Marx, Engels or Lenin. Nor is it the road of the Cuban Revolution. In and of itself that does not make Eric’s views wrong. But it would help if he made clear that he is proposing a course that is based on the perspective Kautsky adopted later in his life, that the revolutionary movement rejected for excellent reasons.

Again the differences on the lessons to be drawn from the victory of the Russian Revolution and the first four congresses of the Communist International, were most definitely NOT only theoretical ones.

https://breadandrosesdsa.org/tasks/?fbclid=IwAR1btx4S3xSJxA9fp89DRLa13XFDQsdwFqoFAPVdnSmg6sUNXPa1slVOnCc

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