June 12, 2009:
The Third International mythologized the history and practice of the Bolshevik group. They taught the world a distorted vision of "Leninism" which was self-serving for the Russian faction which controlled the TI machinery.
While these distortions are a primary source of later day confusion, they're not the only source. All currents of the Russian revolutionary movement had a strong tendency to highfalutin lingo, that is, using hyper-intellectualized language to make things sound more complicated than they actually were. They had a real proclivity for using ten dollar words when cheaper words would have been fine, for instance, "proclivity" instead of "habit". Their exaggerated language often has a bad influence on our ability to follow along, accentuated by cultural differences and the 100 years of hyper-violent history in between.
For example:
Bolsheviks didn't talk about death, they said "liquidation". The Tsar and his family weren't executed, they were liquidated, as were tens of thousands of Communists captured by counterrevolutionaries during the civil war. Trotsky wrote in his mid-'30s diary, "I feel liquidation coming on." You have to watch out for words like this. A capitalist firm which is going bankrupt will liquidate holdings. What exactly is implied by liquidation of the kulaks?
Bolsheviks in power didn't use state apparatus arbitrarily for purposes of repression. They took "administrative measures". This usage goes back to the Tsar's arbitrary governance, where "administrative exile" meant extra-judicial banishment to Siberia. In his Testament, when Lenin criticizes Trotsky for "showing excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work", he's not calling Trotsky a bureaucrat, he's calling him an authoritarian. This is important for understanding Lenin's own commitment to democracy, and his views of when and how "administrative measures" are legit.
There's "Dictatorship of the proletariat", o'course. Hal Draper wrote a whole book demonstrating the evolution and the meaning of that particular piece of weirdness. It just means "government by working people". There's no other voodoo beyond that. Specifically, there's nothing dictatorial about it, necessarily. But good luck. Nowadays you have to read Draper's book to understand that.
"Democratic centralism" instead of "majority rules". "Leninist norms", "vanguard party", "professional revolutionaries". The net effect of all this silliness is to make it appear to later generations that there's something really complicated going on here which you have to be deep to understand. As if the Bolshies were some kind of privileged fount of specialized knowledge and expertise which is complicated and maybe a bit esoteric, and which you have to study, study, study to cotton onto. When in fact their ideas are extraordinarily down-to-earth.
In bringing this up, I have three points.
First, Bolshevik organizational and political practice is simpler and more sensible than the TI made it out to be.
Second, contemporary sectarian grouplets claiming to be "Leninist" aren't.
Third, use of private language is inherently cult-like. Even when its users are strictly honest, it limits the questions that can be asked and the answers which can be given. When people aren't being strictly honest it can contribute to profound intellectual and moral blackmail. I vote we all knock it off.