Title says it all. Martov's hysteria and swampification of the menshevik wing pushed it into an opportunistic alliance with the counterrevolutionary forces. But this does not invalidate menshevik tactics. These are informed by the pre-2nd Int'l German SPD. The kernel of menshevik policy really is in the membership rules. Leninism/bolshevism opts out for professional revolutionaries, financial and organizational support while menshevism opts for financial or organizational support. But bolshevik tactics were suited for a, say, Russian autocracy or Yugoslavian monarchofascism, or Mongolia even; not in 'democratic' western European states. The Brussels/London congress demarcated the tactics for the 'west' (democracies) and 'east' (autocracies).
Which brings me to the main point. Menshevik tactics seem to be historically good when there is actual political and organizational freedom and when they are used with genuine anti-imperialist sentiment.
>the PKI (Indonesian communist party) did not consider itself subordinate to any foreign party.⁷ By then, it was the third-largest communist party in the world—after those of China and the Soviet Union—and the largest outside them. Its strategy of nonviolent, grassroots engagement had yielded considerable success. The party counted over three million official members. Organizations affiliated with the PKI—including SOBSI (Central All-Indonesian Workers Association), LEKRA (People’s Cultural Institute), BTI (Barisan Tani Indonesia), Pemuda Rakyat (People’s Youth), and Gerwani (Women’s Movement)—had an estimated combined membership of at least twenty million.
>Altogether, nearly a quarter of Indonesia’s population of one hundred million was connected to the PKI, and nearly a third of adult registered voters were affiliated with the party.⁸ The PKI operated openly and extensively throughout the country. However, at the national level, its influence over policy was almost entirely dependent on President Sukarno.
Okay, there's the immediate critique also. But I think that we should reevaluate menshevik contribution to the communist movement. Maybe instead of underground tactics we actually start building a genuine popular communist lead anti-imperialist movement. After all, Martov and Arkadieev were two organizers that shifted the RSDLP from circle organizing to factory agitation.
>>2285102it's understandable. i'm not dismissive of lenin or stalin and their contributions, which are massive and in part universally applicable, but i think that we tend to forget that historically, communist organization and tactics are not linearly progressive and are informed by actual history 'on the ground'. it makes little sense today to continue some historical process that is already over (in particular, i'm critical of the people gravitating towards 'sovietism' as an one-size-fits-all solution to socialist construction and organization - even contemporary attempts to 'force' sovietism like in bavaria and hungary were doomed to fail because there never was a bavarian/hungarian 1905. to test out soviet organization; serbian students are organizing in soviet fashion for half a year already, and that was only possible because they had some 10+ years of testing these ideas).
organizationally and theoretically, i find myself repeating this, we are in the 1880s. there is spontaneous labor organizing and spontaneous antiimperialist struggle going on. these are interlinked, but instead of being 'asymptotically close' they are each going their own way, sometimes intersecting. there are outbursts of left terrorism and direct action is becoming more common. while we can operate legally, we have to get everyone involved in the struggle and once the communist movement is inevitably made illegal, we will have thousands of contacts and people on the ground for mobilization. does this make sense? i have no organization and must theorize.
>>2285112>we are in the 1880sWho do you mean by "we?"
You are wrong. Proletarian is better off than ever. Proletarian was fucked in 1880.
>>2285113we, dumb dumb, those who think about the movement.
1880s = disorganization, lack of clarity, sponaneous action, transition from circle organizing to party building, many competing organizations, lack of coordination, class struggle transitioning from the sphere of ideas and intellectuals to practical worker organization
>>2285115please. read the op.
>After all, Martov and Arkadieev were two organizers that shifted the RSDLP from circle organizing to factory agitation.if you do not know why this was important for the entire movement then you need to read the first few chapters of the history of the all-union party again.
>>2285116>history of the all-union party againWrong. The relevant chapters are basically shitting on menshevik and explaining how everything they did, even before split, was wrong. When any menshevik is named, it is to explain why they were a dumbass—why menshevik wrong and why boleshevik was correct.
>shifted the RSDLP from circle organizing to factory agitation.wow they passed out pamphlets. big deal. the mensheviks were libtards. "factory agitation" was not menshevik, but bolshevik innovation. The St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, which Lenin formed in i895 and which started mass agitation among the workers and led mass strikes, marked a new stage — the transition to mass agitation among the workers and the union of Marxism with the working-class movement. The St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class was the rudiment of a revolutionary proletarian party in Russia. The formation of the St. Petersburg League of Struggle was followed by the formation of Marxist organizations in all the principal industrial centres as well as in the border regions.
>>2285100The problem with the mensheviks was fundamental: they weren't a working class party, but a party of petit bourgeois and labor aristocracy. This is reflected in their policies but more importantly, the results of their activity.
You can see this very clearly in today's western "leftism" since they never properly made the distinction: these people will push for liberalism time after time, failure after failure, and swallow all CIA propaganda ever made to be approachable to their idea of the "average person" (petit bourgeois lickspittle) - in reality they agree with it themselves, though, that's just their excuse when called out. Labor aristocracy has a very distinct "leftist" bias in the west and a very distinct liberal bias in eastern europe. It shows very clearly in areas where they are allowed to speak, such as media and science. That's because the working class in western countries never even came close enough to power for its enemies to realize that they are its enemies.
You are not even Marxist if you deny the historical role of the working class, and that's what every menshevik and "leftist" organization always does in practice.
In Russia, Yugoslavia, China, the communists only won because they were riding off the successes of democratic revolutions. February Revolution, unification of China, post-Axis liberation 1945 Yugoslav elections (if you're confused about China's case, the revolution in 1911 overthrew the Qing but due to warlords splitting control of China it was not completed until the communists unified China, the communists if Wikipedia didn't lie to me were initially part of the "left-wing" of the democratic revolutionary KMT party).
Bolshevik tactics are thus historically vindicated in winning the overwhelming support of people across class lines. But they evidently require a democratic revolution to "hijack".
It's rather interesting to contrast Lenin and Mao. Mao on multiple occasions while speaking to Japanese delegations, in response to them apologizing for Japan invading China, replied that on the contrary, it was Japanese imperialism that unified China, for it was Japan's invasion that gave the warlords reason to ally against their common enemy. By contrast, Lenin is often cited for advocating for revolutionary defeatism (and thus would seemingly follow a reasoning similar to Mao), except Lenin never held revolutionary defeatism as a principle, once the tsar was gone he made it clear that it was a matter of tactics all along and that it no longer held true with the republic (and it turns out, Marx and Engels themselves called for "defense of the fatherland"). Mao's forces, meanwhile as you know, played the KMT like a fiddle, and the rest was history.
>>2341669I'd uncritically simp for China if they didn't call state capitalism "socialism". But as far as my dives into multitudes of tomes of theory go, China is in fact, doing the historically progressive thing, that being that state capitalism is more advanced in relation to liberal capitalism. Of course, many capitalist states nowadays, inevitably, practice some form of state control, but not like China (and Vietnam). The future is looking more and more state capitalist. To use an Engels phrasing: "and that, too, is progress".
I'm not a Dengist though, I don't actually believe Xi is totally going to implement real socialism in 2050, because I don't believe in "socialism in one country" in the first place.
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