How do we make sure a Dictatorship isn't permanent?

[The Man]

Let's say in some future revolution that the Communist Party of Revleftville is the Vanguard of the Revolution. Once the revolution is complete, how will we make sure that the Vanguard Party doesn't stay in power and go against the Worker's Councils?

[Savage]

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat only exists during capitalism, without capital there is no working class, nor is there any other class for a dichotomy to exist between.

[RATM-Eubie]

Dont establish one at all....
We all know how a dictatorship turns out....

[BIG BROTHER]

Well what some folks like me would argue is that, we don't envision the role and functioning of a Vanguard party.

The vanguard party as me a Trotskyist practices it is a group of revolutionaries who work together in order to bring the proletariat and oppressed people to victory. We would be the ones helping and encouraging the creation of organs of power for the proletariat and fighting against reformist leaders and capitalists.

We don't see ourselves as a party that would temporarily dictate socialism to the people.

[Tjis]

The only way to do so is to never grab power in the first place.
If the revolution puts only part of the working class in power then we are in big trouble. Such a thing would mean that the material circumstances of those newly in power (lets call them bureaucrats) are different from the workers who remain powerless. At first, while these bureaucrats pass legislation for the betterment of the working class, this might seem to work out, but there will come a point where the interests of the newly formed bureaucratic class are opposed to those of the workers. At that point the bureaucrats no longer work for the workers, but against them.

Anyway, the goal of a revolution should not be just making things better for workers. The goals should be the emancipation and eventual dissolution of the working class, meaning the working class must take control of society, not just in name but by directly controlling the means of production and by establishing bottom-up democratic organs to manage them. No enlightened vanguard can do it for them.

[Le Socialiste]

Don't create one in the first place. The dictatorship of the proletariat has, historically, done little in the way of furthering the movement for revolutionary socialism through the necessary channels of workers' democracy. While the vanguard may create a nation-wide system of workers' and peoples' councils, committees, and unions, the potential remains for just one influential member within the Central Government to call for their dissolution. A true dictatorship of the proletariat would be one in which the masses hold direct rule over the general proceedings of governance - not some centralized body of vanguardists. Of course, there will be those who lead the movement, but it's these individual's duty to submit to the authority of the revolutionized masses. A truly conscious society, raised up from the ruins of a capitalistic, bourgeois 'democracy', can just as easily oversee and direct their common needs as a revolutionary government.

The problem lies in the "when". "When" will the dictatorship no longer be needed? "When" may the people gain direct control? "When" depends on those at the top; as such, I fear that "when" would not be coming any time soon. In these instances, the dictatorship isn't temporary - it becomes permanent.

[Savage]

the working class must take control of society, not just in name but by directly controlling the means of production and by establishing bottom-up democratic organs to manage them.
This is a fairly accurate definition of the DOTP for a lot of us.

[bcbm]

a well armed populace

[BIG BROTHER]

A problem I see frequently on this threads is folks who have a twisted picture of what is meant by dictatorship of the proletariat and vanguard party.

So to set the record straight

Vanguard party = basically a group of revolutionaries who organize with the purpose of overthrowing capitalism via revolution, establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and build a socialist, later on communist society

Dictatorship of the proletariat = workers and oppressed people are in control of the means of production, work on a democratic bottom up manner and use their institutions and organizations to spread the revolution and defend it from capitalists, while at the same time building a classless society which will make the state force obsolete.

[The Man]

I have a another question. Once the Dictatorship of the Proletariat process was complete and the USSR was formed. Why did Lenin still stay in power, and not give power to the councils?

[Le Socialiste]

A problem I see frequently on this threads is folks who have a twisted picture of what is meant by dictatorship of the proletariat and vanguard party.

So to set the record straight

Vanguard party = basically a group of revolutionaries who organize with the purpose of overthrowing capitalism via revolution, establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and build a socialist, later on communist society

Dictatorship of the proletariat = workers and oppressed people are in control of the means of production, work on a democratic bottom up manner and use their institutions and organizations to spread the revolution and defend it from capitalists, while at the same time building a classless society which will make the state force obsolete.


Thanks for clearing that up. I tend to mix the two up myself, so...:rolleyes:

[Le Socialiste]

I have a another question. Once the Dictatorship of the Proletariat process was complete and the USSR was formed. Why did Lenin still stay in power, and not give power to the councils?

I tend to be of the opinion that he did so out of the belief that it was the role of the vanguard to impose order and quell any potential pro-imperialist/pro-capitalist uprisings. I mean, just look at the civil war following the revolution, not to mention the large number of Allied forces that attempted to intervene (including America). That said, I do think Lenin held something of an authoritarian outlook on the way a revolution was meant to move forward. I also believe he decided to take the opportunistic road and assumed the leadership simply because he could.

Given all that, my understanding of the matter is limited only to what I have read and studied about Lenin's theories and the initial stages of the revolution (which admittedly isn't much). If anybody has a clearer understanding, please point out any mistakes I might have made.

[BIG BROTHER]

I have a another question. Once the Dictatorship of the Proletariat process was complete and the USSR was formed. Why did Lenin still stay in power, and not give power to the councils?

It did not really work like that my friend.

After the revolution there was you could argue a dictatorship of the proletariat and the Soviets had taken all the power.

However among other different factors, the civil war in Russia, destroyed the most militant and radical proletariats, Soviets disapeared as people fled to the country side, and the Bolshevik party basically took over the administration of things that would otherwise be run by Soviets.

As this happened a burocratic caste rose in Russia, so while the white army was eventually defeated now the working class faced a war against the burocracy. Both, Trotsky, Lenin, the left Oposition and numerous other revolutionaries fought against it but were ultimately defeated.

[Savage]

I have a another question. Once the Dictatorship of the Proletariat process was complete and the USSR was formed. Why did Lenin still stay in power, and not give power to the councils?
I don't think that the DOTP is something that can be 'completed', it is the process of dismantling the bourgeois state on a world scale, once this happens the proletariat no longer exists. The quest for power by the soviets in the Russian revolution created a 'Dual Power' situation in between the February and October Revolutions, after that (based on my marginal knowledge of the period) the soviets maintained control, however due to the inherent consequences of the revolutions isolation and the counter-revolution, their authority slowly decreased until around 1919 or so when the proletariat was once again separated from the conditions of production. By the end of the Civil War, there was no option for the soviets, I'm sure Lenin would have granted power to them if such a thing was possible.

[Jose Gracchus]

The dictatorship of the proletariat was never consolidated in the former Russian Empire. After all, the vast majority of the population was the peasantry and rural proletariat, and poorly consolidated into the politics and organization of the revolutionary democracy.

Lenin and Trotsky and their ultra-vanguardist controlling faction in the Bolshevik party helped crush the soviet power, especially culminating in the opposition, strike movements in Moscow and Petrograd in 1920-1921, ultimately being realized in the violet repression of the Kronstadt soviet.

[Dimmu]

By not creating one. We can debate as much as we like, but power corrupts. History has proven that every state no matter how democratic its is always ends up having a command over the rest of the population.

[Robespierre Richard]

Make its mandate be its own destruction.

Unless you're into bourgeois parliamentarianism there is no need for any sort of national, federal, or world government in advanced socialism.

[RATM-Eubie]

I have a another question. Once the Dictatorship of the Proletariat process was complete and the USSR was formed. Why did Lenin still stay in power, and not give power to the councils?

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat was never complete in the USSR. It became the Dictatorship on the Proletariat.

[dernier combat]

I have a another question. Once the Dictatorship of the Proletariat process was complete and the USSR was formed. Why did Lenin still stay in power, and not give power to the councils?
The very idea that Lenin was in power in the first place should shed some light on the fact that the DoTP which existed to some degree during the initial stages of the revolution had to be destroyed in order for a man and his vanguard to accumulate so much power. An individual or ruling clique cannot oversee the "completion" of the "DoTP process".

Although the outbreak of the Russian civil war should provide some clues as to why he stayed in power (namely to help lead the Bolsheviks and their Red Army during the crisis and defend the gains made by the new Soviet state). I don't think Lenin ever intended to give power back to the soviets (which would have involved a surrender of the industries which the Bolsheviks maintained control over), nor was there much of a possibility of the workers retaking control of the administration of things after the civil war which left their country in ruins (as big brother mentioned).

[BankHeist]

Let's say in some future revolution that the Communist Party of Revleftville is the Vanguard of the Revolution. Once the revolution is complete, how will we make sure that the Vanguard Party doesn't stay in power and go against the Worker's Councils?

By never having a dictator or vanguard parties in the first place, of course.

Workers must determine their own fate.

[Gorilla]

Let's say in some future revolution that the Communist Party of Revleftville is the Vanguard of the Revolution. Once the revolution is complete, how will we make sure that the Vanguard Party doesn't stay in power and go against the Worker's Councils?

Don't have the revolution in a country that's lived under the most absolutist monarchy on earth for a thousand years.

[Obs]

Don't have the revolution...
get out

[syndicat]

It's simple: Don't create a dictatorship to begin with. If a hierarchical party-state apparatus is set up, the personnel in it will want to preserve their power. No dominating class gives up its power voluntarily.

[Q]

The level of miseducation on Revleft never ceases to astound me, seeing so many wrongfooted posts. But I guess this is what Learning is for...

The dictatorship of the proletariat is about the working class being the ruling class. As a ruling class, it negates itself as a class, which in itself is a requirement for communist classless society and, as such, an end to the dotp.

A vanguard party is not, as some have suggested, a party of exclusively revolutionaries, this would be a sect. It is the party of the vanguard. The vanguard of the working class to be more precise, those layers that are politically aware, willing to organise, the leaders-on-the-ground that matter in every class fight.

Working class liberation can only happen through its own action, emancipation, organisation. A proper vanguard party strives to reach out to the whole class, by building up a movement of alternative proletarian culture (as opposed to the ruling class capitalist culture), with the primary function of politicising every aspect of proletarian life to educate and organise it as a collective entity that is aware of its own historic mission to change society, leave the dark age of class society behind and begin the real history of humanity as a free species.

[Gorilla]

get out

That's my point, comrade!

[sanpal]

Well said but...



The dictatorship of the proletariat is about the working class being the ruling class. As a ruling class, it negates itself as a class, which in itself is a requirement for communist classless society and, as such, an end to the dotp.


It's not enough for the proletariat nothing but being the ruling class to negate itself as a class. The DotP, having capitalist mode of production in its economy i.e. the state / traditional capitalist sector(s) of economy, will keep the working class for a while, till the working class disappear with the proletarian state withering away. "... negates itself as a class..." it is necessary for it to organize in practice the non-market sector of economy with elements of communist relations within of which emancipation of the working class will come about and where the proletariat will cease to be proletariat. Spreading the communist sector on the whole society through the time will lead the society from the lower phase of communism (the organizing of the first communist sector in the DotP period) to the higher phase of communism.

[Jose Gracchus]

The level of miseducation on Revleft never ceases to astound me, seeing so many wrongfooted posts. But I guess this is what Learning is for...

The dictatorship of the proletariat is about the working class being the ruling class. As a ruling class, it negates itself as a class, which in itself is a requirement for communist classless society and, as such, an end to the dotp.

A vanguard party is not, as some have suggested, a party of exclusively revolutionaries, this would be a sect. It is the party of the vanguard. The vanguard of the working class to be more precise, those layers that are politically aware, willing to organise, the leaders-on-the-ground that matter in every class fight.

Working class liberation can only happen through its own action, emancipation, organisation. A proper vanguard party strives to reach out to the whole class, by building up a movement of alternative proletarian culture (as opposed to the ruling class capitalist culture), with the primary function of politicising every aspect of proletarian life to educate and organise it as a collective entity that is aware of its own historic mission to change society, leave the dark age of class society behind and begin the real history of humanity as a free species.

This is nice and academic and high on theoretical abstraction. Unfortunately, as a "really existing" social formation in "really existing" history of labor struggles and the revolutionary left, the vanguard theory and ideology has consistently acted as a cover and justifying mythology for sects and authoritarian ruling organizations. "Really existing" vanguardism and democratic centralism invariably produces single-party closed societies where it succeeds, universally within the developing and underdeveloped economies. In the West, it invariably produces sects and even abusive political cults.

You need to deal with this by explaining how a functional real world vanguardism would escape these dynamics, not by emptily repeating the abstract reasoning proffered for why a vanguard party is necessary. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, et al all said the same: their parties were all, or rapidly became, power structures around a ruling clique whose politics were limited virtually entirely to authoritarian mobilization of an exploited and submissive working class, and palace intrigues among party-state operatives.

In practice, your rhetoric has just been a distraction from what the empirical qualities of all self-declared vanguard parties have been. Sure, it is nice in theory. I may even support the idea of a vanguard as an abstract concept of militant, conscious workers. But in the final analysis, taken through, it has been nothing of what you've discussed. Certainly that won't stop people from chasing the dream of someday having a vanguard party that doesn't stand above and talk down to the working class (and later, beating them with "the workers' stick"). You haven't dealt with the real world ramifications and feedback on this concept in any substantive way.

[Die Neue Zeit]

That the comrade is "high on theoretical abstraction" is appropriate for the Learning forum.

He's referring to "vanguard" as something other than either minoritarian "vanguard" parties or an "abstract concept of militant, conscious workers."

[Jose Gracchus]

Oh come on, its Leninst boilerplate. I have heard it dozens of times. Everytime anyone complains about historical and real self-declared "vanguard parties" - the empirical entity known as "vanguard party" - we get some boilerplate about "well, according to Leninist rhetoric, its supposed to be by definition an ultra-democratic formation, representing the working class..." Well that's all fine and dandy. How about a Leninist supporting that rhetoric and theory grapple meaningfully with its substantive failures and shortcomings in attempted execution, rather than just waving them off and pretending "oh well, uh it was material factors/wrong lines/wrong dudes". All of which fails to make a real materialist analysis of the historical empirical vanguard parties, their nature, their relations to the working class and working class politics, and actually achieves some kind of substantive synthesis from that that might be credible.

All hitherto "vanguard parties" have been complete failures (as I described above), even according to the definition of them offered by the proponent of them. They haven't lived up even to their own asserted standards or definitional characteristics. This requires a serious approach, not repeating something Leninists have said for a century.

[BIG BROTHER]

Oh come on, its Leninst boilerplate. I have heard it dozens of times. Everytime anyone complains about historical and real self-declared "vanguard parties" - the empirical entity known as "vanguard party" - we get some boilerplate about "well, according to Leninist rhetoric, its supposed to be by definition an ultra-democratic formation, representing the working class..." Well that's all fine and dandy. How about a Leninist supporting that rhetoric and theory grapple meaningfully with its substantive failures and shortcomings in attempted execution, rather than just waving them off and pretending "oh well, uh it was material factors/wrong lines/wrong dudes". All of which fails to make a real materialist analysis of the historical empirical vanguard parties, their nature, their relations to the working class and working class politics, and actually achieves some kind of substantive synthesis from that that might be credible.

All hitherto "vanguard parties" have been complete failures (as I described above), even according to the definition of them offered by the proponent of them. They haven't lived up even to their own asserted standards or definitional characteristics. This requires a serious approach, not repeating something Leninists have said for a century.

Actually it was a Vanguard Party the one that had the world's first successful Socialist Revolution...something which the Anarchists failed at.....

The rise of those regimes with "vanguard" parties is not Leninism but the negation of it. The Bolshevik Party degenerated due to the isolation of the revolution, and the backwardness of Russia. This bureaucratic caste then set up its own "Vanguard Parties" which were used to promote the interests of the bureaucracy not the working class.

Had Germany, Italy, etc had Vanguard Parties, perhaps then we wouldn't be living in capitalism as the most industrial advanced nations could have United with Russia in the proletarian revolution.

[Jose Gracchus]

Wrong. The degeneration began even before the isolation was obviously definitive and complete, well before the end of the 1917-1921 revolutionary period. The party's "really existing" vanguardism obviously contributed to this. I've posted endlessly on this topic, and cited my sources in detail, usually with quotes. You can use the search function. I recommend Simon Pirani's The Russian Revolution in Retreat as a definitive account of the relations between labor and the RCP as early as 1920. Isolation nailed the coffin, but the ultra-vanguardist ruling faction in the party had already began taking socialism off life support. Kronstadt, as well as the Petrograd and Moscow workers' oppositional and strike movements, were utterly crushed to preserve totally top-down authoritarian political relations and to exclude workers' participation. It really began as early as mid-1918 and certainly was on its way by 1919. By the banning of factions, the Bolsheviks had ceased to be an authentic workers' party.

[manic expression]

I have a another question. Once the Dictatorship of the Proletariat process was complete and the USSR was formed. Why did Lenin still stay in power, and not give power to the councils?
Lenin was elected by the Congress of the Soviets. His power in that regard was drawn fully from the councils, which were made the central pillar of the Soviet state. That was part of the process of the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

[Jose Gracchus]

Except when Lenin's party overthrew them when the workers voted the wrong way for them a year later. :rolleyes: Councils are real useful, alright, when you have a choice, noble worker, of RCP party rule, or....RCP party rule! And don't worry about having ideas among yourselves in the soviets, since the RCP Central Committee and other party bodies will decide everything the Sovnarkom does regardless of what the soviets do.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Oh come on, its Leninst boilerplate. I have heard it dozens of times. Everytime anyone complains about historical and real self-declared "vanguard parties" - the empirical entity known as "vanguard party" - we get some boilerplate about "well, according to Leninist rhetoric, its supposed to be by definition an ultra-democratic formation, representing the working class..." Well that's all fine and dandy. How about a Leninist supporting that rhetoric and theory grapple meaningfully with its substantive failures and shortcomings in attempted execution, rather than just waving them off and pretending "oh well, uh it was material factors/wrong lines/wrong dudes". All of which fails to make a real materialist analysis of the historical empirical vanguard parties, their nature, their relations to the working class and working class politics, and actually achieves some kind of substantive synthesis from that that might be credible.

All hitherto "vanguard parties" have been complete failures (as I described above), even according to the definition of them offered by the proponent of them. They haven't lived up even to their own asserted standards or definitional characteristics. This requires a serious approach, not repeating something Leninists have said for a century.

They didn't repeat the SPD/USPD model, which you know and "I know you know" that this was what Comrade Q was referring to. :confused:

[manic expression]

Except when Lenin's party overthrew them when the workers voted the wrong way for them a year later. :rolleyes: Councils are real useful, alright, when you have a choice, noble worker, of RCP party rule, or....RCP party rule! And don't worry about having ideas among yourselves in the soviets, since the RCP Central Committee and other party bodies will decide everything the Sovnarkom does regardless of what the soviets do.
Exactly which "overthrow" are you talking about? And why bring up the RCP? Oh, right, it's because you don't really care about history and would rather sling mud at revolutionaries. Got it.

[Jose Gracchus]

I think the SPD/USPD model is better thought out, but both were failures themselves. And if Q means that, he should be sure to distinguish a more lucid concept of 'vanguard party' he may have or not have with the dime-a-dozen cheap vanguardist boilerplate bandied about by everyone from Trots to Hoxhaists to Maoists to Zinovievites...as you put it, in Learning. Clarity and precision helps everybody, especially the precociously learning.

[Jose Gracchus]

Exactly which "overthrow" are you talking about?

The Menshevik Internationalists (not the same as the Menshevik Defensists who walked out of the Second Congress of Soviets, before you go there) won in several soviets in 1918, as well as some Left SRs (and no, not all LSRs were terrorists - the Petrograd organization had nothing to do with the Moscow terrorism). The Bolsheviks thuggishly couped the soviets they had just seized power in name of.

DNZ, for whatever differences I have with his vanguard/partyist politics, at least acknowledges what the Bolshevik party actually did in the Revolution, such as their coups and their civil war with the peasantry which Trotskyists paper over with "permanent revolution".


And why bring up the RCP? Oh, right, it's because you don't really care about history and would rather sling mud at revolutionaries. Got it.

I don't know, gee golly, maybe because the RCP is the acronym for the Russian Communist Party? Maybe you've heard of it? But I forgot, I'm the clueless one in the historical realm. Gotchya. :rolleyes:

[Die Neue Zeit]

He confused the Bolsheviks with the Avakianites.

[Jose Gracchus]

Well, I suppose I had better say "RCP(b)" [Russian Communist Party (bolshevik)] so people don't confuse it with the cult. Still, I'd prefer if people had more familiarity with the Russian party (despite its myriad name changes) than the French exile's official fan club.

It was Russian Social Democratic Labor Party [RSDLP] -> Russian Social Democratic Party (bolshevik) [RSDLP(b)] -> Russian Communist Party (bolshevik) [RCP(b)] -> All-Union Communist Party (bolshevik) [AUCP(b)] -> Communist Party of the Soviet Union [CPSU].

We lefties sure do love our acronyms.

[manic expression]

The Menshevik Internationalists (not the same as the Menshevik Defensists who walked out of the Second Congress of Soviets, before you go there) won in several soviets in 1918, as well as some Left SRs (and no, not all LSRs were terrorists - the Petrograd organization had nothing to do with the Moscow terrorism). The Bolsheviks thuggishly couped the soviets they had just seized power in name of.

DNZ, for whatever differences I have with his vanguard/partyist politics, at least acknowledges what the Bolshevik party actually did in the Revolution, such as their coups and their civil war with the peasantry which Trotskyists paper over with "permanent revolution".
The Bolsheviks formed a coalition government with the Left SRs, but this came to an end after the Left SRs left the government in protest of Brest-Litovsk. The Bolsheviks didn't push them out or make a coup, but by the actions of other organizations they were essentially left as the only group standing in support of the revolution.

And the only civil war was the one started by the Whites...which the Reds won in order to liberate the workers and peasants from reactionary terror. Nothing to paper over there except the necessary and progressive achievements of revolutionaries.


I don't know, gee golly, maybe because the RCP is the acronym for the Russian Communist Party? Maybe you've heard of it? But I forgot, I'm the clueless one in the historical realm. Gotchya. :rolleyes:Of course you meant RSDLP or RCP(b)...I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on it.

[Jose Gracchus]

The Bolsheviks formed a coalition government with the Left SRs, but this came to an end after the Left SRs left the government in protest of Brest-Litovsk. The Bolsheviks didn't push them out or make a coup, but by the actions of other organizations they were essentially left as the only group standing in support of the revolution.

The Bolsheviks totally shut their coalition partners out of the peace negotiations, so I hardly blame them. After some Left SRs in Moscow resorted to terrorism, the Bolsheviks repressed the entire Left SR party across the entire nation. Furthermore with the Committees of the Village Poor, another poorly-conceived attempt at inciting class war amongst the peasantry (that Lenin abandoned), they needlessly antagonized their coalition partners.

In any case, it is an indisputable fact that the Bolsheviks repeatedly dissolved soviets that failed to produce Bolshevik majorities - ones that produced both Left SR and Menshevik Internationalist ones. We've had whole threads on this topic before.


And the only civil war was the one started by the Whites...which the Reds won in order to liberate the workers and peasants from reactionary terror. Nothing to paper over there except the necessary and progressive achievements of revolutionaries.

I'm paraphrasing one of Trotsky's more fevered moments, literally. In any case, is this why Leninists' first grasp for excuses in the degeneration of the Revolution and their repressions at Kronstadt were because they had become infested with peasant elements? Or why the 1918 Soviet Constitution deliberately and massively disenfranchised peasants of all classes, and rural proletarians? The extremely unpopular forced requisition policies, I suppose were adopted with the support of the peasantry? Class war between the poor peasantry and middle peasantry was an unmitigated disaster: hence Lenin's retreat from in in 1919 and total reversal with the NEP in 1921.

I'm sure you'll have excuses for the repressions of Kronstadt, as well as the "really existing" workers in Moscow and Petrograd in 1921.


Of course you meant RSDLP or RCP(b)...I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on it.

How could I possibly mean that Bob Avakian's post-70s cult was in a position of power in the Soviet state in 1918? I'll overlook your sarcasm. I've read many history books on the Revolution, and it is hardly unheard of to refer to the Communists as the RKP or RCP.

[manic expression]

The Bolsheviks totally shut their coalition partners out of the peace negotiations, so I hardly blame them. After some Left SRs in Moscow resorted to terrorism, the Bolsheviks repressed the entire Left SR party across the entire nation. Furthermore with the Committees of the Village Poor, another poorly-conceived attempt at inciting class war amongst the peasantry (that Lenin abandoned), they needlessly antagonized their coalition partners.

In any case, it is an indisputable fact that the Bolsheviks repeatedly dissolved soviets that failed to produce Bolshevik majorities - ones that produced both Left SR and Menshevik Internationalist ones. We've had whole threads on this topic before.
The Left SRs weren't part of negotiations because they were carried out under special circumstances. Lenin was practically "shut out" of them as well...his instructions to the delegation were neglected. More importantly, though, you clearly admit that the Left SRs engaged in anti-Soviet terrorism and put themselves in opposition to the Soviet state. What other reasonable choice did the Bolsheviks have aside from the one they took? You claim the Bolsheviks were the antagonists when you simultaneously concede that the Left SRs were committing terrorism in Moscow. Your own refutation is implicit in your arguments.

On the dissolution of Soviets, you have still danced around the fact that Lenin was elected by the Congress of the Soviets, and the actions of the Bolsheviks were endorsed by that very same body.


I'm paraphrasing one of Trotsky's more fevered moments, literally. In any case, is this why Leninists' first grasp for excuses in the degeneration of the Revolution and their repressions at Kronstadt were because they had become infested with peasant elements? Or why the 1918 Soviet Constitution deliberately and massively disenfranchised peasants of all classes, and rural proletarians? The extremely unpopular forced requisition policies, I suppose were adopted with the support of the peasantry? Class war between the poor peasantry and middle peasantry was an unmitigated disaster: hence Lenin's retreat from in in 1919 and total reversal with the NEP in 1921.

I'm sure you'll have excuses for the repressions of Kronstadt, as well as the "really existing" workers in Moscow and Petrograd in 1921.
No excuses are necessary for the defeat of a counterrevolutionary rebellion. Only the mere recognition that the mutineers were acting against the interests of the workers and the Revolution. What else can we term an armed uprising against the Soviets in such a strategically vital area? Like with the Left SR's, the Bolsheviks were unfortunately left with one real option in order to defend the interests of the workers.

The issue of the peasantry is hardly as simplistic as you would like to believe. The Bolsheviks had to grapple with the fact that the proletariat was small and the former Russian Empire was still a society based overwhelmingly on agriculture, not industry. Such a contradictory situation would inevitably lead to difficulties, but none of that shows anything but a commitment to trying different means to uplift the workers and peasants. We can clearly see that within a few generations, the policies adopted by the revolutionaries bore fruit as the Soviet Union became a modern and industrial worker state.


How could I possibly mean that Bob Avakian's post-70s cult was in a position of power in the Soviet state in 1918? I'll overlook your sarcasm. I've read many history books on the Revolution, and it is hardly unheard of to refer to the Communists as the RKP or RCP.
Like I said, I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt here.

[RATM-Eubie]

It never works!
Never proceed on the idea!

[TC]

The term "dictatorship of the proletariat" and for that matter "dictatorship of the bourgeois" do not refer to ordinary language meanings of the term "dictatorship" - to unelected, unaccountable governments with power concentrated in single individuals.

Instead they refer to states which enforce the property interests of one class against all other classes - these states are experienced as dictatorial or despotic by those of other classes because they deprive others of state power and property. "Despotic inroads on the rights of property" are experienced as despotic by those who have private property - and once private property is eliminated - by definition there can be no further incursions against it.

Dictatorship is then by definition (again given the special usage of the term used by Marx) possible only in a class stratified society. Its not a question of when it abolishes itself because it will no longer exist according to the Marxist use of the word once it has completed its objectives: the abolition of all class distinctions and total community of property.

A communist society - which is to say a post-socialist, post-scarcity, classless society - would have no state in the sense of no organization to express class power through the monopoly of the use of organized coercive force. This is not however to say that it would necessarily have no government administration, or even a hierarchical or centralized government administration, or even the absence of legal enforcement or police. We can't predict what form of social organization a classless society will take. Any attempt to do so is just mystical prophecy - you cannot reasonably project what an unprecedented society would look like.

[syndicat]

On the dissolution of Soviets, you have still danced around the fact that Lenin was elected by the Congress of the Soviets, and the actions of the Bolsheviks were endorsed by that very same body.



electing a leader to office is not what working class power is. there are plenty of cases where workers have voted for politicians to run states, but workers remain subordinate and exploited in social production.

the Bolsheviks attained a temporary majority in the Congress of Worker & Soldier Deputies in Oct 1917, after the right-mensheviks and right-SRs walked out. But that congress represented only a minority of the population. 80 percent of the population were peasants and the bolsheviks were a minority in the peasant congress. that's why they were forced into a coalition government with the Left SRs, who were the dominant party in the peasant congress in Nov 1917.

but once the Bolsheviks got that congress to allow them to set up the Council of People's Commissars, they started ruling top down and ruling by decree...not even sending decisions back to the nominal legislature for approval, within a few months of gaining state power. They set up a top-down Red Army to replace the workers militias, run by thousands of tsarist officers, created top-down a statist central planning body, opposed workers taking over collective management of workplaces. In short, a hierarchical state bureaucratic apparatus was being created.

As to the soviets at the local level, the first new elections after the fall of 1917 were in the spring of 1918. And the bolsheviks lost their majorities in many cities...but refused to give up local state power. in many cases they overthrew the soviet with military power and ruled thru a Revolutionary Military Committee.

the justification for this sprung from the vanguard party theory. if the key thing is that "the right people" with the "right ideas" (organized in the party) are in charge, then this becomes a rationale to toss out worker democracy.

[Jose Gracchus]

The Left SRs weren't part of negotiations because they were carried out under special circumstances. Lenin was practically "shut out" of them as well...his instructions to the delegation were neglected. More importantly, though, you clearly admit that the Left SRs engaged in anti-Soviet terrorism and put themselves in opposition to the Soviet state. What other reasonable choice did the Bolsheviks have aside from the one they took? You claim the Bolsheviks were the antagonists when you simultaneously concede that the Left SRs were committing terrorism in Moscow. Your own refutation is implicit in your arguments.

The Left SR terrorism was limited to a Moscow cell of the party, not the national organization. The Bolsheviks used this pretext to repress the whole party, which included militant revolutionary workers and peasants.

Left SRs were allowed to swear allegiance to the Soviet state and were allowed some political freedom...until they won in several regional soviets and the Bolsheviks outright repressed each and every victory won by workers' and peasants' own means of representation when it did not suit them.


On the dissolution of Soviets, you have still danced around the fact that Lenin was elected by the Congress of the Soviets, and the actions of the Bolsheviks were endorsed by that very same body.

So the soviets are a one-way street, which are permitted to anoint the workers' party and its leader once, and one time only, after which they are to have no role at all? What good is election if you cannot replace your prior choices? Furthermore, workers' and peasants' endorsed October as the instrument toward an all-socialist government, and radical unions like Vizkel, as well as principled Bolsheviks who resigned from government positions, attempted to force Lenin and Trotsky and the ultra-vanguardists to make good on their word. They were unsuccessful.


No excuses are necessary for the defeat of a counterrevolutionary rebellion. Only the mere recognition that the mutineers were acting against the interests of the workers and the Revolution.

Who gets to decide that? The "actually existing" workers and peasants who wanted free elections to soviets? The Kronstaders did not rebel immediately, they tried to form a plenary assembly of delegates with striking workers in Petrograd and discuss a petition to the government. Their emissaries - unarmed - were arrested by the CheKa. The Bolsheviks fought not for workers' interests, but for their own political monopoly, which was taken a priori to be legitimate and unchallengeable by the "actually existing" revolutionary workers and peasants.

There's no evidence for this fantastic claim that political work by workers' and sailors' at a naval base would magically allow an instant successful resumption of the Civil War on the part of the Entente and the Whites. The Bolshevik government itself apparently did not think this was a plausible excuse, which is why they made up preposterous lies that the Kronstadters (who were merely defend themselves from the hysterical reaction by the government to their proposals to set up a plenary assembly of delegates with striking factories by workers' and soldiers' - in the manner of 1917 - to discuss the situation, at no point requiring that the Bolshevik government be violently overthrown or the party repressed) were under the leadership of a White General. Of course, modern Leninists back away from this claim and carefully do not acknowledge that it was the central claim by the government at the time.


What else can we term an armed uprising against the Soviets in such a strategically vital area? Like with the Left SR's, the Bolsheviks were unfortunately left with one real option in order to defend the interests of the workers.

They didn't shoot first as I pointed out above. The Kronstadt rebellion was in solidarity with revolutionary workers in Petrograd, and in Petrograd and Moscow much effort was made by workers to revive soviet democracy. The Bolshevik leadership repressed it, and quashed its own factions who showed excessive empathy toward real workers and peasants. Having lost their support, the Bolshevik leadership ratified NEP, which was far to the right of the Kronstadt program, in order to shore up support from specialists, merchants, rich peasants, and capitalist foriegn powers. Funny how these groups got measured compromise while workers' and peasants' circulating petitions get categorically repressed. Maybe that was because the latter were an existential threat to the Bolshevik leadership's now solidified notion that they had an a priori unchecked right to rule which the revolutionary workers' and peasants' they purportedly represented the "vanguard" of had no role at all. How principled.

There's a reason I scorned the boilerplate definition of vanguard offered by Q. Because by that definition - never followed in practice - the Bolsheviks very quickly ceased to represent any vanguard of the working class. In fact, the vanguard of the working class in 1921 was represented both inside and outside the Communist Party, but was completely excluded from representation in its functional leadership in party and state. It was in non-party loyal opposition groups in Kronstadt, Petrograd, and Moscow (The Russian Revolution in Retreat by Simon Pirani is the canonical text on the topic, very thoroughly researched using Cheka archives), and in party opposition factions like the Group of Democratic Centralism and the Workers' Opposition. The ultra-vanguardist leadership repressed the extra-party vanguard, and suppressed the intra-party vanguard represented in the minority factions. Of course, Lenin had repeatedly broken the good faith of party discipline in his squealing threats to resign in 1917, but as usual - what's good for the goose is not good for the gander.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't sanctify Lenin and the Bolshevik government via its one-time-only endorsement by the soviets, ignore all the context of that event, claim the party was built on the most advanced, organized, political conscious strata of the working class, and then proceed to totally repress and block any means by those strata to produce outcomes in legitimate expressions of workers' power - like the soviets - when you don't like it. Yeah the Bolshevik government after October was legitimate due to the soviets. By the end of 1918, it had ceased to be so by the exact same logic. And that was before the Civil War proper and Entente intervention really even began.


The issue of the peasantry is hardly as simplistic as you would like to believe. The Bolsheviks had to grapple with the fact that the proletariat was small and the former Russian Empire was still a society based overwhelmingly on agriculture, not industry. Such a contradictory situation would inevitably lead to difficulties, but none of that shows anything but a commitment to trying different means to uplift the workers and peasants. We can clearly see that within a few generations, the policies adopted by the revolutionaries bore fruit as the Soviet Union became a modern and industrial worker state.

:lol: So it doesn't matter what the actual workers and peasants think or say? Anything is justifiable because the party leadership knows it is right and got its one-time-only soviet-endorsement?

It "isn't so simple"? Well indulge me. Why is it that even non-party delegates and organizations of workers' and peasants' (Pirani) were repressed? Why is it that rural soviets deserved a pittance of the representation due to the urban soviets? I had no idea construction of modern industry is the sine qua non of workers' power, thereby justifying any and all atrocities against actually existing revolutionary workers and peasants.

[Die Rote Fahne]

By not having a literal dictatorship...

[Jose Gracchus]

Incidentally, I agree with syndicat's deeper analysis of the flawed conceptions behind the Bolshevik concept of political rule and its antagonism toward economic self-management. My argument is simply to show even by the Bolsheviks' own purported principles of being based on the vanguard, and support via soviets, their leadership, at least, were incorrigible hypocrites who, for whatever reason (even if compelled by material conditions, ideology, personalities, etc.) betrayed their own every last principle. Even if negative outcomes were unavoidable or materially-imposed in the Russian Revolution, we should not repeat the post-revolution degenerate leadership's self-justifying rhetoric.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Left SRs were allowed to swear allegiance to the Soviet state and were allowed some political freedom...until they won in several regional soviets and the Bolsheviks outright repressed each and every victory won by workers' and peasants' own means of representation when it did not suit them.

So the soviets are a one-way street, which are permitted to anoint the workers' party and its leader once, and one time only, after which they are to have no role at all? What good is election if you cannot replace your prior choices? Furthermore, workers' and peasants' endorsed October as the instrument toward an all-socialist government, and radical unions like Vizkel, as well as principled Bolsheviks who resigned from government positions, attempted to force Lenin and Trotsky and the ultra-vanguardists to make good on their word. They were unsuccessful.

You raised a good point months ago about some proposal combining the more progressive features of the Constituent Assembly, the workers' and soldiers' soviets, and the peasants' soviets into a larger body more like the French National Assembly.

At the time I was reserved about it, but perhaps I missed the point: Is there indeed a role for a working-class-only "constituent assembly" that plays an explicitly one-time role? The worker-class party-movement can win majority political support there and through other avenues before seizing power, then once the constitutional order is established, use its majority there to disband that body without the need for coups d'etat?

[Jose Gracchus]

The mention was from Rex Wade's Russian Revolution, 1917. He was short on specifics, I am afraid. The minority Bolshevik proposals called for an analogy with the French Revolutionary National Convention, which became dominated by the Jacobins via its Committees of Public Safety and General Security, not the French National Assembly.

Presumably this meant some kind of revolutionary constituent assembly with the power to invoke revolutionary government throughout the emergency (as the French Convention did) while also being charged with writing a final constitution for the state. The proposal definitely involved a combination of the Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies with the Congress of Peasants' Deputies. I don't know if the bourgeois were to be allowed any seats via party list a la the Constituent Assembly. Possibly they imagined a Convention elected by all three bodies, or simply combining them.

[Savage]

It's simple: Don't create a dictatorship to begin with. If a hierarchical party-state apparatus is set up, the personnel in it will want to preserve their power. No dominating class gives up its power voluntarily.
You are ignorant towards people that consider the DOTP to be in fact separate from the state, the state being the antagonism between the expropriated capitalist class and the proletarian class which monopolizes society via workers councils'. For some people, the DOTP is not the state, (and the state is not a party state) the role of the party is that of a revolutionary organization which raises class consciousness, it does not lead the proletariat or take power in their favor, just like anarchist organizations. The Proletariat does not 'give up' their power through the councils because when their task is complete they are no longer the proletariat, there is no state, no commodity production etc.

[Nehru]

The real question is, Is it a dictatorship if the majority is in control? If the minority is in control, is it a democracy even if we have elections all the time?

[Obs]

The real question is, Is it a dictatorship if the majority is in control??

Yes. The majority is clearly enacting a dictatorship over the minority in this case, and only through the elimination of class society do we eliminate dictatorship - this is, in part, the function of the dictatorship of the proletariat - to enact a transitory stage of society in which the working class eliminates the antagonistic class relations through collectivisation of production.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The mention was from Rex Wade's Russian Revolution, 1917. He was short on specifics, I am afraid. The minority Bolshevik proposals called for an analogy with the French Revolutionary National Convention, which became dominated by the Jacobins via its Committees of Public Safety and General Security, not the French National Assembly.

Presumably this meant some kind of revolutionary constituent assembly with the power to invoke revolutionary government throughout the emergency (as the French Convention did) while also being charged with writing a final constitution for the state. The proposal definitely involved a combination of the Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies with the Congress of Peasants' Deputies. I don't know if the bourgeois were to be allowed any seats via party list a la the Constituent Assembly. Possibly they imagined a Convention elected by all three bodies, or simply combining them.

I'm sure an "ultra-"party-movement perspective would mean a revolutionary convention of its own Citizens, a one-time combination of party congress, party conference, representation of party councils in that mix, and an undefined party-movement assembly from the Citizens. ;)