Trump’s Victory Calls For Amputation – Democratic Necrosis Is To Blame
By Phillip Kovalchik, Red Spectre Writer
The Mensheviks’ main argument is the Black-Hundred danger. The first and fundamental flaw in this argument is that the Black-Hundred danger cannot be combated by Cadet tactics and a Cadet policy. The essence of this policy lies in reconciliation with tsarism, that is, with the Black-Hundred danger. The first Duma sufficiently demonstrated that the Cadets do not combat the Black-Hundred danger, but make incredibly despicable speeches about the innocence and blamelessness of the monarch, the known leader of the Black Hundreds. Therefore, by helping to elect Cadets to the Duma, the Mensheviks are not only failing to combat the Black-Hundred danger, but are hoodwinking the people, are obscuring the real significance of the Black-Hundred danger. Combating the Black-Hundred danger by helping to elect the Cadets to the Duma is like combating pogroms by means of the speech delivered by the lackey Rodichev: “It is presumption to hold the monarch responsible for the pogrom.”
The second flaw in this stock argument is that it means that the Social-Democrats [P.K.: Back then, until the October revolution, it was standard for communists to refer to themselves as Social Democrats, which used to mean a different thing than today] tacitly surrender hegemony in the democratic struggle to the Cadets. In the event of a split vote that secures the victory of a Black Hundred, why should we be blamed for not having voted for the Cadet, and not the Cadets for not having voted for us?
“We are in a minority,” answer the Mensheviks, in a spirit of Christian humility. “The Cadets are more numerous. You cannot expect the Cadets to declare themselves revolutionaries.”
Yes! But that is no reason why Social-Democrats should declare themselves Cadets. The SocialDemocrats have not had, and could riot have had, a majority over the bourgeois democrats anywhere in the world where the outcome of the bourgeois revolution was indecisive. But everywhere, in all countries, the first independent entry of the Social-Democrats in an election campaign has been met by the howling and barking of the liberals, accusing the socialists of wanting to let the Black Hundreds in.
We are therefore quite undisturbed by the usual Menshevik cries that the Bolsheviks are letting the Black Hundreds in. All liberals have shouted this to all socialists. By refusing to fight the Cadets you are leaving under the ideological influence of the Cadets masses of proletarians and semi proletarians who are capable of following the lead of the Social-Democrats.[4] Now or later, unless you cease to be socialists, you will have to fight independently, in spite of the Black-Hundred danger. And it is easier and more necessary to take the right step now than it will be later on. In the elections to the Third Duma (if it is convoked after the Second Duma) it will be even more difficult for you to dissolve the bloc with the Cadets, you will be still more entangled in unnatural relations with the betrayers of the revolution. But the real Black-Hundred danger, we repeat, lies not in the Black Hundreds obtaining seats in the Duma, but in pogroms and military courts; and you are making it more difficult for the people to fight this real danger by putting Cadet blinkers on their eyes. "
- Lenin, Blocs With the Cadets, [Phillip Kovalchik: Brackets mine]
There is not a thing that comes to mind … and I’ve been part of most of the decisions that have had impact
- Harris, The View Interview
So you reduce the Black-Hundred danger to the danger of a Black-Hundred victory in elections faked by the government! Cannot you understand, gentlemen, that by putting the question in this way, you are admitting that the government is already victorious, and that the cause of liberty, which you prate about so much, is already lost? You yourselves do not see, and you are preventing the masses of the people from seeing, the real Black-Hundred danger, which is manifested not in the voting, but in the definition of the conditions of voting (the Senate interpretations and the impending repeal of the electoral law of December 11), in the nullification of the results of voting (the dissolution of the Duma). You are entirely adopting the vulgar liberal point of view and are concentrating your minds—and the minds of the mass of the people whom you are misleading—on a struggle within the limits of a fake law which is being still further faked. You fail to see the BlackHundred danger in the form of the possible arrest of all the electors. You throw away that which depends on you, and wholly on you, which is at any rate a lasting and substantial asset to the revolution, namely: the development of the revolutionary spirit of the masses by consistent agitation. On the other hand, what you are chasing after depends not on you, but on the artifices of Stolypin, on a new Senate interpretation, on further violations of the electoral law by the police. Consequently, you are fighting the “Black-Hundred danger” in exactly the same way as the French bourgeois republicans are fighting the monarchist danger; namely, by strengthening monarchist institutions and the monarchist constitution within the republic. For, by instilling into the minds of the people the idea that the Black-Hundred danger is the danger of an increased Black-Hundred vote, you are perpetuating the ignorance of the most backward masses as to the real source and real nature of the Black-Hundred danger.
-Lenin, When You Hear the Judgement of a Fool...
`What is this nature from the economic point of view? It is the fact that the liberals are a party of the bourgeoisie, which is afraid of the movement of the peasant masses, and still more of the workers’ movement, for this movement is capable of limiting (at present, in the immediate future, without changing the capitalist system as a whole) the extent and forms of the bourgeoisie’s economic privileges. And the economic privilege of the bourgeoisie is ownership of capital, an ownership which in Russia yields twice or three times as much profit as in Europe.
To uphold this “Russian” superprofit, it is necessary to prevent the third camp from gaining independence.
For example, the bourgeoisie can rule quite well even if the working day is eight hours. In fact, its rule will then be fuller, purer, wider and freer than with a ten- or eleven-hour day. But the dialectics of the class struggle are such that, unless there is an extreme need, unless it is the last remedy, the bourgeoisie will never replace the tranquil, habitual, profitable (from an Oblomov point of view) ten-hour day by an eight-hour one.
What we have said about an eight-hour day applies to the upper chamber, to landlordism and many other things.
The bourgeoisie will not relinquish the tranquil, convenient, profitable, old-Russian forms of exploitation to replace them only by European, only by democratic forms (for democracy, let it be said without offence to the ardent heroes of Zavety, is also a form of bourgeois rule); it will not do so, we say, unless there is an extreme need, and unless it is the last remedy.
This need can arise only from the movement of the masses achieving a certain system and strength. And the bourgeoisie, which upholds its economic interests, is fighting against this movement, that is to say, against the independence of the third camp.
What is the class nature of liberalism from the political point of view? It is fear of the movement of these same social elements, for that movement is capable of undermining political privileges which the bourgeoisie values. Liberalism dreads democracy more than reaction. This was proved in 1905, 1906 and 1907.
-Lenin, A Talk on “Cadet-Eating”