Let's read this and figure it out, seems important comrades.
Marx tells us that "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."
With the recent sensationalist adventurist actions, let us try to use Lenin to better understand the pitfalls of adventurism even as we perhaps try to break with the tradition that weighs upon us. Are there areas in Lenin's critique we might perhaps discard or re-evaluate in the West in the 21st century? Where is he still vindicated/correct? How might we incorporate Lenin's work into our own organizing/praxis around the historical events that are happening.
To close let's remember the line from Marx right before the banger above:
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
Let us grasp these circumstances, comrades, and perhaps better understand this moment.
Already we're popping off. I'll be editing this OP with some cliffs notes/selected passages for discussion, but continue the conversation below!
Remember, keep it 
but I really like @AmericaDelendaEst@hexbear.net's contributions so far, and want everyone to keep it friendly, comradely, and cool. Folks with short attention spans or hyper focus - as far as I can tell the only section that matters is Section 1 - you can ignore Section 2. Comrades more familiar with the text are welcome to correct me on this point.
OK, here's some reading notes on Section 1 of the essay. I can't take care of section 2, but Lenin says it's just about their agrarian program, so unless someone's read this before and has some choice quotes, we'll call it there. Please use these notes to generate further discussion, point me to important areas I've missed, etc.
I will try to keep an eye on this thread - let's just keep it comradley, but I'm going to give a pretty long leash because I actually think @Chronicon@hexbear.net's suggestive argument re: "thought terminating cliche" is valid and we should really try to work through what is to be done with adventurism. Let's respond to/converse with Lenin's arguments and maybe we'll create a new dialectical synthesis.
Also, we're featured on the front page. 
Spoilering my reading notes just so the OP doesn't become so huge we can't read it.
The historical moment
I'll admit, I really suck at this element - I'm not as familiar with Russian/Soviet history as I should be. As such, the events that Lenin's talking about here are perhaps not as graspable for me. However, what I can gather is the SR published some leaflet and Lenin is posting against it. The grand tradition of posting, through Marx, Luther, and all the way back to Augustine and even the Greeks. Preserving in your argument the dogshit arguments of your opponents. So let's thank Lenin for giving us the slop. In 200 years, CTH will be remembered for preserving Weird Rod for the masses.
Anyway, the SR movement, according to Lenin, argues the following:
- Socialism should split and evolve? Schisim is cool, actually
These are, first, the split between the revolutionary Social-Democrats and the opportunists, who are raising their heads under the banner of the “criticism of Marxism.”
- Terrorism (what we now call adventurism) is actually growing in sympathy and we should embrace it
Secondly, Balmashov’s assassination of Sipyagin and the new swing towards terrorism in the sentiments of some revolutionaries.
- The peasants are revolting and so we have to somehow address it!?
Thirdly and mainly, the latest movement among the peasantry, which has compelled such that are accustomed to sit between two stools and have no programme whatever to come out post factum with some semblance of a programme.
So Lenin quickly discards point 1:
There is no need, of course, to engage in a serious analysis of this theory of deviation from socialism (in the event of disputes proper).
Based. We love a poster foliks.
So, what of Terrorism (Adventurism):
In their defence of terrorism, which the experience of the Russian revolutionary movement has so clearly proved to be ineffective, the Socialist-Revolutionaries are talking themselves blue in the face in asseverating that they recognise terrorism only in conjunction with work among the masses, and that therefore the arguments used by the Russian Social-Democrats to refute the efficacy of this method of struggle (and which have indeed been refuted for a long time to come) do not apply to them.
So, again, here's the historical context that I'm less familiar with. But again, the coalition always fractures and Lenin's clearly throwing his hat in the ring to try and keep his part of the coalition together. This will take a strong argument against the adventurists.
If anyone wants to give us more cool context, I'd love it. Because really, this is where I just am fairly adrift.
On to the stuff that I have a better sense for
Adventurism - why is it bad?
The first thing that strikes the eye is the words: “we advocate terrorism, not in place of work among the masses, but precisely for and simultaneously with that work.”
So, the SR seems to suggest the general line - that OBVIOUSLY adventurism isn't a replacement for mass movement, you gotta do that too.
However, Lenin has none of it. He really is a poster here - I'm going to just quote this banger for us:
But just read the whole leaflet and you will see that the protestation in bold type takes the name of the masses in vain. The day “when the working people will emerge from the shadows” and “the mighty popular wave will shatter the iron gates to smithereens”—“alas!” (literally, “alas!”) “is still a long way off, and it is frightful to think of the future toll of victims!” Do not these words “alas, still a long way off” reflect an utter failure to under stand the mass movement and a lack of faith in it? Is not this argument meant as a deliberate sneer at the fact that the working people are already beginning to rise? And, finally, even if this trite argument were just as well-founded as it is actually stuff and nonsense, what would emerge from it in particularly bold relief would be the inefficacy of terrorism, for without the working people all bombs are power less, patently powerless.
Taking the name of the masses in vain is such a burn. Also it's something we should all strive to avoid (i.e. don't speak for the masses). What I gather is that Lenin's arguing there that the chauvinistic attitude towards the proletariat is a real issue with the SR - basically their position is the working class will never rise up so we should do adventurism since organizing won't actually ever happen in our lifetime ("alas, still a long way off"). This undermines and also delegitimizes the mass movement. Lenin closes with a key argument: without the working people all bombs are powerless. Real power comes from the movement.
But this is just the beginning. The real thing is yet to come. “Whom are we to strike down?” asks the party of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and replies: the ministers, and not the tsar, for “the tsar will not allow matters to go to extremes” (!! How did they find that out??), and besides “it is also easier” (this is literally what they say!): “No minister can ensconce himself in a palace as in a fortress.” And this argument concludes with the following piece of reasoning, which deserves to be immortalised as a model of the “theory” of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. “Against the crowd the autocracy has its soldiers; against the revolutionary organisations its secret and uniformed police; but what will save it...” (what kind of “it” is this? The autocracy? The author has unwittingly identified the autocracy with a target in the person of a minister whom it is easier to strike down!) "... from individuals or small groups that are ceaselessly, and even in ignorance of one another [!!], preparing for attack, and are attacking? No force will be of avail against elusiveness.
There's a half-baked argument for opsec here, but I think Lenin makes it clear how futile individual adventurist actions are - the fact they are not willing to go after the Tsar/head of state also speaks to their half-baked ideas here.
Closing out his critique of the idea:
The Socialist-Revolutionaries, however, conclude: “Shoot, elusive individual, for the knot of people, alas, is still a long way off, and besides there are soldiers against the knot.” This really defies all reason, gentlemen!
So by my reading, part of Lenin's critique is adventurism is a very shitty cope. The SR's believe history won't happen in their lifetime, so you may as well just go ham and kill people.
The theoretical aspect of the argument
OK, so why (on a less strategic, more theoretical level) is Adventurism bad? I Think this really gets to it: it's counter to the socialist/communistic spirit.
Nor does the leaflet eschew the theory of excitative terrorism. “Each time a hero engages in single combat, this arouses in us all a spirit of struggle and courage,” we are told. But we know from the past and see in the present that only new forms of the mass movement or the awakening of new sections of the masses to independent struggle really rouses a spirit of struggle and courage in all. Single combat however, inasmuch as it remains single combat waged by the Balmashovs, has the immediate effect of simply creating a short-lived sensation, while indirectly it even leads to apathy and passive waiting for the next bout. We are further assured that “every flash of terrorism lights up the mind,” which, unfortunately, we have not noticed to be the case with the terrorism-preaching party of the Socialist-Revolutionaries.
So is Adventurism basically a kind of great man theory? "Single combat" versus a real movement can be contained. I think this is really the key - perhaps also why activities like throwing soup on a painting are not actually effective. They may create "short-lived sensation" but the damage in apathy and waiting for the next spectacle is key.
I wonder how much the "medieval" is on Lenin's mind here as well - like, duels and such were spectacles for the masses in the period, so is it that adventurism substitutes spectacle for revolutionary fervor? I'm not 100% on this, but it's something to consider as well.
We are presented with the theory of big work and petty work. “Let not those who have greater strength, greater opportunities and resolution rest content with petty [!] work; let them find and devote themselves to a big cause—the propaganda of terrorism among the masses [!l, the preparation of the intricate... [the theory of elusiveness is already forgotten!]... terrorist ventures." How amazingly clever this is in all truth: to sacrifice the Life of a revolutionary for the sake of wreaking vengeance on the scoundrel Sipyagin, who is then replaced by the scoundrel Plehve—that is big work.
Yeah, this clarifies that a real issue here is the "great man theory of history" - SR's and adventurists are trying to give people who aren't content to do the work of organizing (petty work) and instead do some majestic deed (adventurism). Lenin of course suggests the system can cope with this as well (a new CEO will be chosen).
This very point is explained in No. 8 of Revolutsionnaya Rossiya, which declares that “it is easy to write and speak” of armed demonstrations “as a matter of the vague and distant future,” “but up till now all this talk has been merely of a theoretical nature.” How well we know this Language of people who are free of the constraint of firm socialist convictions, of the burdensome experience of each and every kind of popular movement! They confuse immediately tangible and sensational results with practicalness. To them the demand to adhere steadfastly to the class standpoint and to maintain the mass nature of the movement is “vague” “theorising.”
I think really Lenin is just trying to flip the script - the most important thing here is the mass movement, everything else is secondary. Adventurists would have it otherwise - let's do adventurism first, and then ???? maybe the movement will catch up? It's a kind of accelerationism by force it seems.
Demonstrations begin— and blood thirsty words, talk about the beginning of the end, flow from the lips of such people. The demonstrations halt— their hands drop helplessly, and before they have had time to wear out a pair of boots they are already shouting: “The people, alas, are still a long way off....” Some new outrage is perpetrated by the tsar’s henchmen—and they demand to be shown a “definite” measure that would serve as an exhaustive reply to that particular outrage, a measure that would bring about an immediate “transference of strength,” and they proudly promise this transference! These people do not understand that this very promise to “transfer” strength constitutes political adventurism, and that their adventurism stems from their lack of principle.
This feels very important, and I'm still working through it. So, is it that adventurists are not willing to actually stay in the movement (they're followers that espouse a vanguardism?)? Is it that they are selling out the mass demonstrations/movement too quickly? I'm really interested in this one - can someone help me though, I'm missing something I feel in the last bit (what is the "promise to "transfer" strength?).
The Social-Democrats will always warn against adventurism and ruthlessly expose illusions which inevitably end in complete disappointment. We must bear in mind that a revolutionary party is worthy of its name only when it quides [sic.] in deed the movement of a revolutionary class.
Real dank shit here. What do we think it means to "quide" in deed the movement of a revolutionary class?
We must bear in mind that any popular movement assumes an infinite variety of forms, is constantly developing new forms and discarding the old, and effecting modifications or new combinations of old and new forms. It is our duty to participate actively in this process of working out means and methods of struggle.
Fucking love to see dialectical materialism. Dominant/residual/emergent - Raymond Williams's terms - matter in understanding the historical unfolding of life. And of course, we can actively struggle and deploy dominant/residual/emergent forms of action. Is there something in recent events that distinguishes it from the residual adventurism of the 20th century? How do we change our approach from Lenin's?
Without in the least denying violence and terrorism in principle, we demanded work for the preparation of such forms of violence as were calculated to bring about the direct participation of the masses and which guaranteed that participation.
I think this is such an important distinction. We can't say "no violence" but rather that it must be directed, intended, and wielded. So how do we do this in this case?
Anyone who really carries on his revolutionary work in conjunction with the class struggle of the proletariat very well knows, sees and feels what vast numbers of immediate and direct demands of the proletariat (and of the sections of the people capable of supporting the latter) remain unsatisfied. He knows that in very many places, throughout vast areas, the working people are literally straining to go into action, and that their ardour runs to waste because of the scarcity of literature and leadership, the lack of forces and means in the revolutionary organisations.
This feels like it's important to recognize. The adventurism we've seen IS A SYMPTOM OF REAL THINGS. We want to build solidarity so that we can help the people fucked by the system actually wield their power, rather than simply see a champion. I think that's the real important thing - rather than having 100 flowers of CEO assassins bloom, we instead want people to come together to topple the whole system.
On the one hand, the revolutionary ardour of the insufficiently enlightened and unorganised crowd runs to waste. On the other hand, shots fired by the “elusive individuals” who are losing faith in the possibility of marching in formation and working hand in hand with the masses also end in smoke.
But things can still be put to rights, comrades! Loss of faith in a real cause is the rare exception rather than the rule. The urge to commit terrorist acts is a passing mood. Then let the Social-Democrats close their ranks, and we shall fuse the militant organisation of revolutionaries and the mass heroism of the Russian proletariat into a single whole!
That's the end of section 1 and I think the most relevant portion. Please discuss - How do we avoid this double bind that Lenin notes. We don't want to let the "revolutionary ardour" we see now go to waste - what is to be done?___
weird to me how every time anyone does anything cool we have to get told scolded that actually doing cool things is useless
extra irony when the most ardent scolders tell me that they won't be satisfied unless it inspires hundreds of copycats, something that they are literally arguing against in that same moment by going off on how useless the action was
I wish they hadn't deleted your post, so I'm forced to post it here instead:
I want people who are reflexively against adventurism to evaluate how Palestine Action fits on the adventurism-not adventurism scale. Because from my eyes, what they do (breaking into factories to smash drones and smashing windows of bank offices) fit into the exact profile of what adventurism is. They have no real mass support because they're not wasting time trying to build a mass movement among citizens of the imperial core. They are trying to stop the genocide in Palestine within the imperial core by any means necessary, and their analysis has determined that the weakness of the Zionists lies at the site of production and distribution of weapons. Palestine Action even chooses to discard opsec, and the fruits of this is that there's at least one copycat org in Canada that broke into a Canadian drone factory. So there you go, propaganda of the deed, more classic adventurist shit.
You can throw all the books and history lessons at me, and I'll response with this simple question: after more than a year of the Zionists genociding Palestinians with a shit-eating grin live on social media, how many millions of pounds have Western orgs doing things the right wayTM cost the Zionists? Because Palestine Action et al has already costed the Zionists millions of pounds of damage in terms of broken equipment, destroyed drones, canceled leases, and canceled military contracts. Outside of those Greek dockworkers who refused to ship weapons to the Zionist entity and the fundraiser people here held to donate to Palestinian gofundmes, the grand total contribution the nonadventurist left has done to help Palestinians is a big fat fucking zero. One smashed drone is worth more than every single protest and Palestine Action has smashed much more than a single drone.
As for the case of that CEO being served the people's sentence, it will amount to little if he's purely acting as an individual. But if he's a part of a clandestine terror cell that specifically focuses on dispensing the people's justice on high profile targets as a part of their praxis, it could be very effective if that formation is cognizant enough to know when they have to transition into a mass org with an aboveground component.
Adventurism specifically entails taking it upon yourself to antagonize the bourgeois state. Bombings, assassinations, and sabotage in lieu of organizing. Palestine Action is organized. There is a whole cadre making decisions, and these decisions are grounded by their ties with a large collection of other organizations building around the same political goals as part of a broad movement. When Palestine Action commits these pickets and acts of sabotage, it is not a lone wolf deciding by themselves to take some extreme course of action without any preparation for what happens the day after. If that were the case, they would quickly be apprehended, disappeared into a dark hole, and forgotten.
deleted by creator
I love Palestine Action. I think the factory shutdowns are different than the bank offices. As the rate of profit falls and capital accumulation continues, fixed capital gets so expensive and vulnerable. If you, for instance, burn down a factory, you have obliterated several lifetimes of labor in one go. It's not using the power of the working class, but you still have a force multiplier. And companies can only bounce back from so much capital loss. The bank offices, I don't know. Barclays didn't actually need any of those offices to do business. I think that is just sort of brute force bird-dogging where eventually the company does a cost-benefit analysis, I've seen PETA do similar things against fur sellers. But I think that both of these things are different than the classical adventurism Lenin was arguing against, doming random tsarist officials or healthcare CEOs, because people are expendable to capitalism and capital is not!
I can't do a full post right now (I lied, kinda did a full post), but I do think there's a distinction here. As you note - doming a CEO on its own will amount to little (the being part of a cell feels like wishcasting, but
) Yet, the work of Palestine Action has had real effects that are more tenuous with the united CEO. And I think this gets to the difference - I wouldn't call Palestine Action (or our friendly 
ALF members) adventurism in the same way.
So what's the difference?
I think in part, we're dealing with directed sabotage versus adventurism. Destroying drones is sabatoge. The equivalent action for the united adventurist might be breaking into united's offices and switching every claim to approved and then destroying the servers. Or wiping all the hard drives at the Department of Education so they can't collect student debt. These sorts of actions put a system into retreat mode (i.e. United has to expend energy to repair the damage) in a way "classical adventurism" (i.e. doming someone) doesn't - at least not as easily.
So when someone at the ALF frees a bunch of monkeys from a lab - this doesn't "solve" animal cruelty. Indeed, this is still the limit of small cell actions and what I'm calling "sabotage" - without a mass movement, nothing happens (and I think the animal rights comrades are a good index of this limit!). However, "sabotage" at least has the effect of slowing down some state apparatus. Does it stop the damage? No. And again - the comrades at Palestine Action have reduced the damage Israel does, but it hasn't stopped the killing (just like ecoterrorists haven't shifted things on climate change or animal rights). Partially, this is due to the smashing/crackdown on the burgeoning mass movement against Israel in the imperial core. The effective resistance is in retreat, so if anything all PA is doing is playing for time. Playing for time can be valuable, but it's also not the real strategy.
This gets back to why we have to resist the siren song of adventurism. Even a program of "sabotage" cannot (absent the mass movement) really change things. It can, however, force a temporary retreat by these systems that we can then (with real organizations) fill in.
To return to the hypothetical (and why adventurism feels good but isn't as good) - somehow setting every claim in united's system to approved and taking credit would be far better revolutionary praxis - it would materially change people's lives and perhaps even build revolutionary fervor in a way just capping this guy (which is what Lenin's talking about primarily) really can't without tons of effort on the part of real orgs. And again, the work the real orgs do in response is the actual praxis.
Reread what you wrote a few times. "weird to me how everytime anyone" "anyONE" "ONE". The reason that adventurism is bad is that it doesn't represent that actions of any movement and will not become a movement. You don't even know that the assassin was even vaguely left leaning. Assassinating the CEO of United Healthcare didn't hurt United Healthcare or capitalism. Their stock price went up. They'll just appoint a new guy and move on like nothing happened. It is going to be entirely ineffective.
I remember a previous time that adventurism was being discussed on Hexbear was the hammer attack against Paul Pelosi by some baby talking groyper. Did that lead to any sort of actual movement? No. Did it make any politicians decide to stop doing insider trading? No. Why would it?
In the work linked in the OP, (I'm sure you read it already, right?), Lenin describes the assassination of a Russian politician Dmitry Sipyagin during the times of Tsarist rule. Lenin says no person believed that the assassination would lead to any greater action on part of the masses. He says that the assassin is completely out of touch from the working class.
To defeat capitalism, you have to organize the working class to abolish the capitalist class. Adventurism does not organize the working class, therefore it can not end capitalism.
Never said it would
It sure as shit affected the CEO of United Healthcare
Yes Im sure the new guy will have 0 feelings about his predecessor being gunned down
Why would the next CEO be afraid? Is the same assassin going to kill the next UHC CEO? Will the same assassin also kill a 2nd replacement CEO? There is no movement. There is only one guy. Capitalists are not afraid of one guy. You don't even know if that one assassin is politically educated, he might just be a disgruntled person who was affected materially.
You yourself said that you keep being told that adventurism is ineffective. If you disagree where then are the fruits of previous adventurisms? You are self defeating.
Why the fuck would they start hiring more bodyguards and shit, as was suggested would happen, if they're not afraid, dawg? Hiring more security because they already feel so safe?
Yes they're having their shills put out all their crybaby "murder is wrong don't envy us poor billionaires" literally the day it happened because they're not afraid
Literally only by nerds who think Lenin is the pope of materialism and everything he said is a divine truth of reality
where's the austro hungarian empire
I want to believe this so bad, but the Civility Police know no shame so I don't know.
I think this gets to the real meat of the issue - yes, adventurist actions can have effects. However, absent a real movement those effects don't "do" anything. Thus, we can't build around or encourage it, because it doesn't actually serve our side. It simply opens up spaces of contingency (which can also be done by demonstrations - Bevins hits on this in If We Burn.
So on the one hand, yes, the party line of "Adventurism does nothing" isn't exactly correct. Reading the Lenin, I think it's more about the fact that we can't count on adventurism to do things that are beneficial to us. The only way we grasp our future is to organize the working class, and while we can't encourage adventurism (again, violence organized by a revolutionary party is no longer adventurism), we can work forward from it, but that forward movement isn't "more adventurism". The act on its own does nothing - only when we carry its meaning forward does it gain purchase. However, that applies to any action - it's not unique to adventurist violence. Adventurism happens just like police crackdowns or strike happens. However, our job isn't doing adventurism - it's working towards the active change of society. Adventurism might change things just as a company going under or CEO dying might change things. However, a revolutionary party of the working class can change things, and I think that's the most important reason why this matters - we can't encourage adventurism.
In some ways it feels to me similar to the "no ethical consumption" struggle sessions/debates. You're welcome to hold individual beliefs/actions that try to resist capitalism's predations. But even the most "ethical under capitalism" person is just coping with the evil system. If buying coffee from Chiapas makes me forget the real exploitation in the system, then I've fucked up. It's all in the response to the action (does funding the comrades in Chiapas remind me of our interconnected struggle and get me fired up? then maybe it's good!). However, no matter what, these things won't "change" the system in a real way.
I would make the argument that it has (with a big caveat coming). This one act has practically done as much as the entire Bernie Sanders presidential campaign to bring the subject of health extortion back into the mainstream (though notably, without any program of action to subscribe to). And it has left the politicians and pundits completely isolated as they clutch their pearls over an event EVERYONE is celebrating. It has also demonstrated that the security forces are NOT nearly as omnipotent or omnipresent as they would like us to believe.
The main reason it was so impactful is because for whatever reason, these acts of retribution are exceedingly rare in the US. If this were to become a weekly occurrence, it would quickly become apparent how futile it is in actually changing things. But as an isolated event, it has raised the concept of social murder (even if not spoken in those terms) in every home and workplace in America.
Wait is my link broken comrade? If so PM me and I'll edit.
I think their heart is in the right place, but it can be too much yeah, I think people learned "adventurism doesn't work" and intentionally or not, wield the phrase as a thought terminating cliche, rather than explaining why it won't work. I hope this reading group will lead to a better understanding of adventurism. Its not that it isn't cool or good or that we can't celebrate it, it just shouldn't be the primary focus or expected to deliver revolutionary results on its own
Which I can agree with
That's what I'm getting out of this text as well.
It's adventurism when only you do it, it's revolution when you and all your homies do it at the same time
Unironically yes.
That was definitely not meant as ironic, I just phrased it in a goofy way
I mean, the issue is it can't actually do so. As soon as we get one or two more copycats, the targets will harden, and without a mass movement behind it, it won't matter.
I WANT this to matter, that's why as interesting as adventurism is, we can't build a movement around it. We must instead grasp the moment and bend it to our will!
I fundamentally disagree. This is another thing that annoys me about people saying "it has no effect," CEOs being forced into hiding or armored and armed entourages, made to fear for their lives? That is an effect. A good one, imo, let them live in terror.
I mean yeah, I'm not saying let's start the stochastic terrorism party, i'm just saying it works. Or at least worked this time since most people seem supportive and the guy, you know, killed the guy he wanted to
Wasted vote. Republicans already have than angle locked down
lol
This outcome also gives comrades with good opsec inroads into those armed entourages; thus expanding their attack surface when they're expecting to minimize it. Gotta agree with ADE-- this only looks like a good thing from the outset.
Another thing that's annoying me, people being all THIS WAS USELESS the day after it happened. Like jfc people, time has to progress before you can make a statement like that, and what Im seeing NOW- shitloads of redditors who are generally "oh no violence is wrong" cheering about it- isn't exactly useless. Literally the prime sentiment to take advantage of TO ORGANIZE, but no, all im hearing is "this was useless, we need to organize INSTEAD" like it has to be some either or thing
I think the "this time" caveat is very important. Especially if this creates some change, then yes, adventurism can prompt change.
But, I don't think adventurism is the best avenue for change. Indeed, all actions in the world can prompt change/transformation -- that's like, ontologically true. Just as a company changing prices prompts change/creates effects. This isn't a determinism/teleological argument, since how we address/cope with that change is ultimately what matters.
And I think that's why it's important to critique adventurism. Because it IS cool, but it's not a fucking movement and the only thing to do after it is to guide people to real revolutionary action, which is organizing/mass movement.
Furthermore, the real movement can't sully its hands with adventurism. We can acknowledge it as a symptom of a broken/evil system. We can even say that the world is better without the CEO. But we can't actually start defending it as praxis, because either
OR
I'm still working through the Lenin ATM - I'll post my reading notes once I finish section 1 - but I feel like he's right that there's a real pleasure in it that can sap revolutionary fervor.
I think that we can totally "use" adventurists in the same way we "use" the predations of the ruling class. But we can't ally with them in a "true" sense nor can we build a movement "around" it. Our movement responds to it (just as it responds to all conditions), and part of that response can be "it's cool." In the next breath, we should reply "But wouldn't forcing every insurance company to dissolve be cooler," especially since United will just replace their CEO. I don't mind CEO's living in fear, but that in itself will not yield real structural change.
BTW comrade - please read the Lenin and participate - I want your input here. Let's critique Lenin together, because while I think generally he's right, I think we live in different conditions and I want to have a salient understanding of how to approach this kind of stuff going into the next 4+ years. I think you're actually generally right that this guy might have done a "good" adventurism, but we still need to qualify/theorize what that is and how we (as socialists broadly - including our anarchist comrades
) work within/around/through it.
Its only adventurism if you get caught. Getting away with it is important. If you get caught you've failed.
Otherwise, it's just sparkling propaganda of the deed.
the scolding is integral to marx-leninism. the single-minded focus on achieving the revolution through rigorous theory and action keeps them on track, but also makes them respond with venom to -- in their mind -- unwarranted displays of radical emotion.
I mean I don't think it's unwarranted
Lenin literally argued here we should recognize how people are straining to act (and this is I think the useful thing we can recognize in the moment - adventurist actions can allow us to see that "ardour" as Lenin puts it.
Yet, I think he's still right that a program of adventurism (absent organization and real revolutionary force) is doomed to fail
As other comrades have noted - it's not that we don't recognize the role of violence (hell, there are many arguments that violence is wrought on the people through these very institutions!). Anyone who has read Fanon understands violence plays a role in decolonial and revolutionary struggle.
Yet that violence MUST be directed and used strategically in concert with comrades and an organization. It's not the emotion is unwarranted as you put it - Lenin recognizes the real anger of the populace. It's that individual adventurism is not an effective revolutionary program and we don't want our comrades to waste their fervor, ardor, energy, and lives, especially if they're in a position where they have class consciousness and realize that only through organizing is lasting material change going to be delivered on a mass level.
And that doesn't mean we can't use this kind of thing to radicalize people. But instead of merely doming another CEO, we want our comrades to get together to effect change where we won't need the evil of this system in the first place.
This is where we diverge I think, because to an anarchist, a "program of adventurism" is clearly a contradiction in terms. The wise might observe, perhaps correctly, that just getting a gun and fixing a problem will have a number of unintended consequences, bring increased recriminations from power, get you put in a cell or strapped to a table, turn the people away from their destiny or whatever, and maybe we ought to spend a chapter of a book or 10 minutes of a meeting elaborating upon just how foolish it is to want, and the end result is that your program, historically in the US at least, is one of inaction, waiting for the material conditions to be other than what they are so that socialism can finally be a realistic and rational enterprise.
If it were merely a question of strategy, I think any scholar of military tactics will agree that there is a time and a place attack, but the issue I take is with the attitude, where discovering that time and place by experience and practice is relegated to science fiction.
I think this impoverishes the action of forming unions, working in orgs towards material change, and the other forms of action that can direct and channel that violence.
However in terms of revolutionary action, you're definitely right and I do think that this is something to grapple with (as based as Debs was, for instance, did his moment need a Lenin).
Still if anything the movement is more disorganized right now and this is why I think Lenin's fundamental argument - we cannot advocate for adventurism because it puts the cart before the horse - is correct. If anything comes from this moment it will be due to organizing and drawing on radical fervor that was already there. Catalyzed perhaps by events, but any event can catalyze revolutionary fervor into action - an adventurist assassination is not any different from a murder of an innocent man by police. Both can outrage/inspire/galvanize the population. Neither, on their own, changes anything. Hell, even the protests after George Floyd died barely made a dent. The fervor for change is clearly there, but no amount of random assassinations will get us there.
This is again the important difference. We don't condemn action by cadres as adventurism in the same way (we can, perhaps, critique their tactics - I think throwing soup on paintings has done nothing for the climate movement, for instance), but this isn't the same as calling out adventurism as such.
I think part of it is all violence should be collective (and maybe this is, perhaps, engaging in prefigurative politics in the way Bevins criticizes in If We Burn, so maybe we should be less precious about it), and I think Lenin's comments about single combat remaining Single are so important.
If this exec had been lynched by a mob of people fucked over by the system, I think the outcome would be more productive, we'd have seen actual "people's justice", and perhaps even more motivation for change in/of/to the system.
As it is, we can push, but the work is hard and long, as opposed to the short joy of adventurist actions.
hm this is a neat connection. From If We Burn or you? I'd never thought about demands for collective action as prefigurative politics.
Bevins critiques the prefigurative politics of the anarchists over the 2010s (i.e. demands for decentralization and consensus in protest movements allowed for them to be coopted by right wing freaks). So that is him.
The connection to collective action re violence is just some speculation/thinking on my part.