Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemLenin's conception of the party: organisational expression of an interventionist Marxism( 1999-06)The relationship between party organisation, class consciousness and workers’ struggle has been a basic issue in Marxism since its foundation, and particularly since the rise of revisionism at the end of the last century. To the very limited that a “mainstream” literature on Lenin sought to locate him within the Marxist tradition that tradition was identified with a determinist interpretation of Marx developed by the revisionists and centrists. This approach has been countered by a generally sympathetic view of Lenin’s comments on party organisation, argued by a recent set of “critics” of the “mainstream” view. Yet despite their wish to make a comprehensive critique of the “mainstream”, most of the critics have failed to do so due a residual element of determinism in their understanding of the relation between workers’ struggle and the development of class consciousness.This thesis seeks to complete the critique of the “mainstream” through establishing the role of conscious intervention in realising the material possibilities for workers’ struggle. It does so through a case study of the labour movement in St. Petersburg between the “Emancipation” of 1861 and the “Stolypin Coup” of 3/6/1907. A pivotal point in the development of this movement was “Bloody Sunday” (9/1/1905), and the thesis is structured around that moment to show what changes, as well as what does not change, in the role of conscious intervention in periods of mass struggle relative to times of more limited protest.