[Movements against militarism are, of course, risky, in…]

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Movements against militarism are, of course, risky, in terms of defence. But the choice has to be made. If Czechoslovakia in 1968 had slipped out of Kremlin control, this would have been a huge blow to the strategic interests of the USSR. In military terms the invasion was entirely justified.

Nor should comrade Richardsun be too naive about Poland's Solidarity movement. The weakening of the bureaucratic state in Poland would have led to all manner of political forces hostile to socialism taking the political stage. Socialists would have faced a hard political struggle to reassert a working class orientation at the head of the anti-bureaucratic movement.

The movement for political revolution is a movement pointed at the heart of the Soviet Union's strategy of defence and the administrative hegemony of socialist ideology.

Only a genuinely democratic workers' movement, however, can achieve the international and national class unity needed to defeat the new war drive. So the risks must be taken.

This is not to say that everything the unofficial peace movements say and do must be approved of. But we should want, welcome and fight for the growth of anti-militarist and independent peace movements in the East and make every attempt to draw them into the elaboration of a coherent peace strategy in which actions in the East bolster actions in the West and vice versa.

By seeking practical collaboration of this sort, we will be able to have an influence on the political thinking of these oppositional currents which we would forfeit if we spat in the face of the urgent human need for a free and peaceful social environment which they express.

COLIN MEADE Surbiton GARTH Frankland's letters on imperialism conjure up the image of a person floundering in quicksand: the more he struggles to extricate himself from the awful logic of his position, the worse that position becomes.

He claims that his positions ism are quite clear and in line "on the struggle against imperialwith the standard position held by Marxists since 1917 and Indeed, his ideas are becoming increasingly clear, but the "standard position" that they are "in line" with is that held by Stalinists since 1927 and before.

in U acquiescing in it more 'socialist' than the Stalinist regime.

Conversely, the RWL is foolish to compare the USSR with the USA, the world's foremost imperialist power. A truer comparison is with India, or even with Balkanised semi-colonial Latin America. Which of these countries offers its workers even what the USSR does?

Things should be given their right names. The USSR is not a socialist country, but it is a workers' state. It is not a workers' paradise, but the workers have made real gains there as compared to the alternative, which is dependent, not imperialist, capitalist Society. Britain, France, the USA and so on, are not "advanced capitalist" but imperialist countries. Reynolds position is not Trotskyist bui Menshevist. It is a capitulation to "Democratic" imperialism.

Comradely, MIKE MACNAIR Oxford anarchists at the time.

A review of that pamphlet can in no sense, however, be regarded as a substitute for a rounded assessment of Lenin's ambiguous legacy. No such consideration can be meaningful without some engagement with the view students of the subject, whether it be anti-Leninists such as Leonard Shapiro, or those of a more sympathetic stripe such as Marcel Liebman and Neil Harding.

At least they have attempted to confront the central dilemma that faces revolutionary socialists - did Lenin lay the foundations for Stalinism and, if so, in what ways was this relationship expressed!

To dismiss that question by referring to Lenin's last struggle (Moshe Lewin's phrase) against the growing bureaucratisation of thè early Soviet state is superficial. Opponents of Leninism, such as Shapiro, long recognised Lenin's efforts to contain the burgeoning bureaucratism through the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, but have regarded that as a despairing rearguard effort to limit the inevitable consequences of his own earlier policies.

In other words, the growing process of bureaucratisation was the inevitable and logical culmination of Lenin's concept of the party, the consequences of which he recognised too late in the day.

Tu discuss that point of view Marx No-one denies that it sometimes permissible for revolutionaries to fight alongside the national bourgeoisie - in a struggle against imperialism when what the national bourgeoisie are fighting for advances the interests of the working class and coincides with some specific aspect of the working class socialist programme (most obviously and usually, the struggle for national self determination).

That was Lenin's position and it was Trotsky's. That is why Lenin advocated defence of the Kerensky government against Kornilov and why Trotsky advocated fighting. alongside the Kuomintang against the Japanese invasion of China in the '30s. It is why revolutionaries gave support to Nasser when he nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956.

It is why revolutionaries : in Arge...na would fight alongside Alfonsin against an attempt by the Argentine military to overthrow his elected government (even if the military leaders put forward 'anti-imperialist aims of reconquering the 'Malvinas' as the programme of their coup). out of hand is to betray an unserious attitude towards the most contentious issue facing revolutionary socialists.

Clive's views are entirely in accord with the tradition of the Trotskyist movement of avoidance of discussion of this thorny question. Aside from the occasional essay by Mandel, there is little sign that Trotskyists are even aware of the debate that has ensued on Leninism and there is even less proof of their willingness to seriously engage in that debate.

Obviously it is not possible to attempt a systematic analysis of the issues involved in a letter to a weekly socialist newspaper. I will therefore only indicate two of the many questions which still require the most thorough discussion if we are to achieve a proper evaluation of Leninism and its relevance today.

Question one: did Lenin even conceive of the Bolsheviks submitting to the will of a democratically elected Constituent Assembly? It is often argued by Lenin's uncritical adherents that by the time the Assembly actually met in late 1917 it had become historically redundant, reflecting a stage of the revolution that had already been overtaken by events.

But, even if we accept that contention, we are left with little proof that he would have accepIt is why the Bolsheviks did not ally, with Kerensky against German imperialism.

And it is why it was wrong for Argentine revolutionaries to ally with the Galtieri regime in its drive to annex the Falklands.

Even when the national bourgeoisie is leading struggles which coincide with the interests of the working class revolutionaries' support can only be conditional. "for specific and limited tasks under certain conditions, the proletariat and peasantry can -without making any concessions in their own demands - wage a struggle jointly with sections of the 'national' bourgeoisie against the imperialist enemy" , as it was put in a 1979 document, "The Transitional Programme in Today's Class Struggle'.

In Garth's letters, the independent analysis of when and why we should sometimes ally with sections of the bourgeoisie is entirely jettisoned. It seems that he would always support the bourgeoisie of sufficiently underdeveloped state, whenever it came into any conflict with an imperialist state regardless of the specific issues and conditions involved.

The 1979 document quoted above had something to say about that kind of approach: "But it is wrong to seek to extend such temporary alliances to the level of a long-term political bloc, in which the independent programme and struggles of the working class and poor peasants are subordinated to the political demands of the 'demccratic' bourgeoisie in the name of an anti-imperialist front'."

No wonder councillor Garth thinks that "the question of a popular or united front is obviously irrelevant under these circumstances"! I rest my case.

JIM DENHAM, Birmingham. ted the existence of any Assembly that rejected the monopolistic role of the Bolsheviks.

Plekhanov, then on the same side as Lenin, at the 1903 Congress of the RSDLP, summed it up neatly: "If, in an outburst of revolutionary enthusiasm, the people should elect a very good 3316 parliament ... it would suit us to try and make that a Long Parliament: but if the elections turned out badly for us, we should have to try lo disperse the resulting parliament not after two years but, if possible, after two weeks. ' It was a view from which Lenin did not dissent.

Clive tells us that 'Lenin's life was devoted to creating genuine working class democracies." That may well have 3316 been Lenin's subjective intention, but was not the whole logic of the kind of party he sought to build pointing in the opposie direction?

Question two: did Lenin ever believe in a plurality of political parties? Did he conceive of the Bolsheviks ever sharing power with even other socialist parties? Perhaps Clive will indicate to us some evidence pointing in that direction?

There is plenty of evidence to the contrary both in his practice and in his political statements, e.g. "Yes. it is a dictatorship of one party! This is what we stand for, and we shall not shift from that position. "(July 1919).

Nor did Trotsky break from that position until 1936 when, under pressure from Victor Serge and others, he finally endorsed the demand for a plurality of Soviet parties.

Serge was painfully aware of the contradictory nature of the must contentious subject of the epoch. "It is often said that 'the germ of all Stalinism was in Bolshevism at the beginning" • Well, I have no objection. Only, Bolshevism contained many other germs - a mass of other germs - and those who lived through the enthusiasm of the first years of the victorious revolution ought not to forget it. To judge living man by the death germs which the autopsy reveals in a corpse - and which he may have carried in him since birth - is this very sensible.

Serge knew at first hand the positive side of Leninism -the devotion to Marxist analysis, the revolutionary elan, the seltsacrifice, the unyielding striving for working class power which are the hallmarks of revolutionary socialism at its best. There was, moreover, the recognition of the need for and the application of a discipline essential to summoning all the strength of the proletariat at decisive points to beat down the forces of capital.

In coexistence with this there was a jacobinical spirit which contained within it the seeds of self-destruction, exemplified in the decisions of the 10th Congress, the use of the Cheka to impose a Bolshevik dictatorship against other socialist organisations, the refusal to accept the demand of the Kronstadters for •'free Soviets"

These and other negative features must be subsumed within any attempted characterisation of Leninism. A faithful portrayal can ony be painted in Cromwellian style, "warts and all"

It is one of the crucial weaknesses of post-war Trotskyism that it has refused to recognise that the finest service it can perform for Leninism is to continually subject that history to the most searching scrutiny.

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Socialist Organiser no.167 February 23 1984 Page 14 al