spent some time going over Lenin’s critique, “Left Communism, an Infantile Disorder” today.

i don’t necessary buy into the full story of the October revolution that he sets out, but i do think he makes some good points.

most of the agreement i have with that text is about being flexible with one’s tactics—not in the sense of ‘the ends justify the means’, because they don’t. i think one of the good things about the successful revolutions of the past is that tactics were not confused with strategy—elevating one to the other leads to disastrous results.

strategy is your overall plan for the war, tactics is the concept of how you go about winning the individual battles of the war to topple capitalism and bring about communism. thinking you can win a war with just the scope of a battle doesn’t work!