Book Review from the November 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard
A Rebel’s Guide to Lenin. Ian Birchall. Bookmarks. £2.
This is an odd, 58-page top-pocket-size pamphlet. Odd because it is written in very simple language and seems to be aimed at schoolkids who might be influenced by anarchist ideas.
Thus, Birchall tells us, “Lenin’s goal was the same as the anarchists’, but he recognised that the path it would be complex”. Yes indeed, by means of the dictatorship of a vanguard party which would last for years and which would, supposedly, in time give up its power and privilege and abolish the state.
Birchall quotes from ex-anarchists who came over to the Bolsheviks such as Alfred Rosmer and Victor Serge and tells us that Lenin “spent hours discussing with anarchists such as Emma Goodman from the US and Makhno from Ukraine” and argued that “the syndicalist idea of an ‘organised minority’ of the most militant workers and the Bolshevik idea of the party were the same thing”.
This may have worked in the aftermath of the first world war and the Russian revolution to temporarily win over a number of anarchists and syndicalists, but it is hard to see it working today to get any budding anarchists to join the SWP.
Adam Buick
No comments:
Post a Comment