POLI 364 Chapter : Organizational Questions for Russian Social Democracy
9 Feb 2012
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Document Summary
The problem now is not how to wage a revolution, but how to ensure that the coming revolution is socialist democratic in nature. Challenges that are unique to russian socialists: lack of capitalism. Autocracy has created a veiled bourgeoisie, which is problematic, as it is the bourgeoisie that instills in the working class the rudiments of political solidarity (83). Therefore, russian proletarian are still atomised (alienated), and russian socialists must work to forge them into a class organization: lack of liberal democracy. Number two above must be achieved, but without the benefit of the formal guarantees commonly found under a bourgeois-democratic setup (84). It is true that soc dem has a tendency towards centralism, due to its striving to unite the proletariat across all other lines of identity. Lenin"s approach is very similar to the blanquist. Independent action of the masses as the engine of revolution, but rather his group of elites.
