successes and failures of Leninism

I'd like to put forth some serious views of the successes and failures of
revolutionary movements and "what is to be done" today.

The question of why Marxist-Leninist (seize the state) revolutionary 
movements have
failed is an important issue as has recently been pointed out.

It is true, that these movements in the Americas, Africa, Asia, had 
international
ties of support and vital aid from the USSR & Cuba, and China, and that 
without this
support, they would have had a more difficult time emerging.  I think it is 
also true
that the key reasons these movements failed is because of US counter 
forces.  Thus I
agree that one should not underestimate the systemic effects they had 
world-wide.

However, I think the key question is not their international dimensions of 
their
emergence and failure per se, but rather the emergence and failures of 
their goals.
That is, although these movements had international links, their aims and 
actual
practice was not world-wide revolution.  They were not Trots in practice.   
The aim
of the post W.W.II movements was to seize state power and effect national 
reforms
along the lines of the USSR, China, Cuba.  The first half of the revolution 
was over
once state power was obtained.  The second half of the revolution was a 
drawn out
process of national reforms.  This is the Leninist model -- "Okay 
gentlemen, we shall
now proceed to build socialism" in Russia (and later in neighbors occupied 
by the Red
Army in 1945).

One key reason that there were not more revolutionary movements thereafter, 
including
in other core areas, was that the USSR in 1921, at the Congress of the 
Peoples of the
East in Baku, adopted, as a model for all communist struggles around the 
world, the
idea of building socialism in one country and GAVE up the international 
struggle for
supporting and creating a revolutionary movement in Western Europe, Germany 
above
all.  At the same time, the new strategy was to aid national-liberation 
movements
that would become pro-USSR.  The reasons for this dramatic change in 
practice were
practical:  the USSR might well have been crushed by the West (and in fact 
had been
invaded in 1917) if it did not "play the game."

The backsliding continued:  a year later, Soviet Russia agreed to resumed 
systemic
diplomatic and economic relations with Western Europe.  In 1933 the USSR 
joined the
League of Nations, became an ally of the West against fascism, and in 1943, 
dissolved
the Comitern.  From then onward, the USSR helped some revolutionary 
movements, but
not with near as much support as it could have.  As we know, for instance, 
Mao was
urged by the USSR to compromise, and had to break away to pursue its 
strategy of
seizing the state by force.  But once the CCP did, it more or less followed 
the same
pattern as the USSR with regard to not getting too deeply involved with 
revolutionary
movements.  Instead, most of their energies were spent on building 
socialism in one
country -- their country.   It is quite true that the cold-war strategy was 
a
deliberate attempt to block the internalization of revolutions, but this 
strategy was
conducted by both the USSR, China, as well as the leading core countries.

Thus, we should turn to the success, in fact failure, of the states that 
succeed in
gaining state power.  First, let me state for the record that just because 
one
criticizes the Leninist paradigm, others cannot assume that the critic is
anti-Marxist, or whatever.  I'm not arguing, as some have wrongly assumed, 
that
Leninism should never have been attempted.  Mao's record, as dismal as it 
is, shows
nonetheless that conditions improved for most peasants in China.  I'm 
arguing that we
must recognize the limits of this paradigm in a world-system precisely 
because, as a
recent contributor has noted, capitalism is becoming "more and more 
overwhelming,
more and more oppressive and more and more aggressive."  Those international
constraints indeed have become even stronger.   But is this not all the 
more reason
not to adopt a "seize the state" strategy AS A GOAL?

What happened is that the goal of industrializing and "development" was 
elevated
above the goal of democracy and equality within those countries.  Was a 
dictatorship
of the party, in the name of the workers, really necessary because of 
international
constraints.  I don't think so.  Anyone who proposes today to build a 
non-democratic
movement in the name of the "vanguard" will not be taken seriously (not 
that anyone
on this list has made this suggestion).

Let me clarify more.  It is not only true that the movements that tried to 
size state
power failed because of international constraints, but it is also true that 
the
movements that DID succeed failed for the same reasons.  International 
constraints --
the power of the core countries and their monopoly on the most profitable 
activities
of the world-economy -- are constraints which make national 
developmentalism, whether
socialist or bourgeois, impossible.  Yes, conditions can and were improved. 
 But look
also at the costs in lives in the USSR and China's numerous famines.

An in the end, they did not catch up to the core (itself a highly 
questionable goal).
Look at Russia today.  Look at China, which, because it has given up state 
socialism,
has given up "socialism in one country" and the international struggle of 
its own
workers, and welcomes international investment and capitalist growth opens. 
  In my
travels through China, I was amazed to see rapid industrialization, ruin of 
workers,
including growing child prostitution, massive unemployment, unstoppable 
corruption,
environmental destruction on an unprecedented scale, and so on.  In short, 
China has
become another industrializing periphery because building socialism in one 
country
doesn't work.  In other words, a movement that takes as its goal national
development, cannot succeed against the core countries, in part because 
they become
dependent on the core countries via the international division of labor.

We need a new strategy.  It must be global.  It must be fully democratic and
transparent.  It must not be a bureaucratic, centralized organization. It 
must not
proclaim to be the vanguard and to speak on behalf of anyone, but should be 
a
coalition of people and groups speaking for themselves.   I think we should 
consider
the idea and organizational strategy of "poor peoples of all countries 
unite."

Another key question is HOW do we transform the system?