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conditions; by force of arms he did what he meant to do, and
this is the definition, is it not, of revolution? Or is it really? Wasn't
this just a case of inter-bourgeois strife, just spectacle played
around the shifting techniques of exploitation.

And so it is that every year some downhearted group, lost in the
desert, must turn to Lenin's writings for inspiration, so that they can
cut through the mess that surrounds them, so that they can start
again from the source. But there is no determinate connection
between Lenin's dullard writing and his Machiavellian genius for
political action. There is no example of Leninism that is not simple
Garibaldism, or Robespierreism, no example that does not finish
up in nationalism , does not end with lesser Lenins like Gerry
Adams or Nelson Mandela, Carlos, the RAF and E. Germany and
Syria, anybody for the heroic PLO against the fascist Jewish state?

In the Russian Revolution we see two movements, one the
spontaneous abandonment of war and the nation, the dropping of
weapons and the seizing of land and factories; the other the re-
territorialization of the existent Russian revolutionary movement
onto the model of 1789 via an ideology that fetishizes state power
as a neutral, objective technique. Lenin belongs in world history
books because he was deployed by Germany as a weapon in the
Great War, without that aid he would be another Herzen, so what
can he say to us now?

For Monsieur Dupont, Lenin is as far away in time as Robespierre,
whereas we find Marx modern. This is because Marx failed, that
is, he remains human, he did not merge himself with an existent
political power, did not link into the carousel of ruling class forms.
Hegel observed that falsity is a moment in truth, the ideas of Marx
did not coincide with reality and therefore were in error and so fix
themselves to truth because thy negated actual conditions. In the
same way, we are not so harsh of pro-Leninists like Luxembourg,
Gramsci or Lukacs, who railed in the manner of Marx, and not that
of Lenin. They were quite wrong in their attempt to fuse their
theories with Bolshevik practice, and so, regardless of their intent,
and even in their affirmation of falsity, we can uncover some
viable negation, something useful. The actions of Lenin on the