Discussion: Building a revolutionary workers' party - the Bolshevik experience, Dec. 9th

The meeting on class, government, and current
government attacks on our rights went very well.  I had
hoped that more people would come, but five people
participated.  This might have been the
best discussion the group has had so far, covering
current news, such as the Military Commissions
Act and a local petition campaign, as well as the nature of
revolution, class dictatorship, etc.  We could
have discussed how State and Revolution and civil liberty struggles 

relate more deeply, and the election, but I think
we touched on most of the key issues.  We also watched
most of the Predatory Class War episode of Bill
Manson's Freeing the Mind (I think that is the title),
a program on The Peoples Channel in Chapel Hill.

 

The next meeting will be Saturday, December 9th, 4:30-6pm in

the downstairs conference room of the Chapel Hill Public Library. 

For the next reading I suggest the Strategy and
Tactics, The Party, and Style in Work sections of
Stalin's The Foundations of Leninism (online at
www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/FL24.html).  This should
expain some basics about how a revolutionary working
class party works, at least in the case of the Russian
Revolution.  Foundations of Leninism is a major work by Stalin, 

written in 1924, after Lenin's death, and
before the open struggle of various factions for
leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union began.

As I've said, I think Stalin was a revolutionary
Marxist.  We could discuss any critiques of Stalin at
the meeting also, or the text as a historic document,
though it is not only historical.  If you're skeptical and want to see

where I am coming from, you could look at the introduction to
Bruce Franklin's The Essential Stalin (which probably
also includes the reading, and is available online at

www.btinternet.com/~fountain/stalin/index.html), a basic overview

of the anti-revisionist view of Stalin (harikumar.brinkster.net/paper/march2003/myth&reality.html ),
the true origin of and reason behind the Stalin cult of
personality ( harikumar.brinkster.net/paper/march2003/cultindividual.html),
another article on the USSR under Stalin's leadership,
also discussing the level of democracy ( www.allianceML.com/PAPER/JULY2005/ALLIANCE.htm),
professor Grover Furr's page ( www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/politics.html#STALIN),
and there is a lot at www.plp.org, though with a quick
search I only found the reprint of a relatively well-known defense of Stalin by Ludo Martens.  

 

The March 2003 Alliance! issue should be available at the SURGE
Library in Carrboro, if you want to see a hardcopy,
and the summer 2005 issue is still available at
Internationalist Books.  

 

My plan for the first three meetings of 2007 is to discuss self-determination and

nationalism through the writings of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin in January, war, probably

by having speakers on the Iraq resistance and discussing how Americans should

relate to it, and finally, What is Socialism?, which I want to be interactive, but

I haven't thought of something specific for March yet. 

Bill is hosting a separate discussion, Fascism or Humanism?, in the Chapel Hill library

conference room, December 3rd at 1pm. We should discuss fascism at a future meeting.

Also, two weeks ago was the anniversary of the October
Socialist Revolution led by the Bolsheviks in 1917 (in
October by an old calendar, but in November by the
modern calendar).