Three questions about the Bolsheviks

[727Goon]

Heres some shit that really wasnt getting answered in the last thread:
1) If it was a true workers state, why the fuck were there armed party guards in the factories?
2) If it was a true workers democracy why didnt the workers have the right to strike?
3) How was it a true workers democracy when the Bolsheviks only got something like a quarter of the popular vote?

[OhYesIdid]

Sigh...a commonplace answer would be "the conditions you describe are a result of evil stalinist treason and state capitalism and a corruption of marxism. [Maoist addendum: Revisionism at work!]." Judging from your picture, though, I suppose you'd prefer the other standard answer: "LIES!" followed by "it was necessary, anyway. They were at war!"

However, this is still a controversial issue and I suggest you keep researching until you can come up with a clear picture. As I understand it, all three answers are a little bit right.

[727Goon]

I mean the bolshevik regime was basically barracks capitalism. [email protected] bro

[#FF0000]

1) If it was a true workers state, why the fuck were there armed party guards in the factories?

I don't know about this. When did this happen? Talking about Stalin/post-civil war?


2) If it was a true workers democracy why didnt the workers have the right to strike?
I don't think people say the USSR had anything that could be called "worker's democracy".


3) How was it a true workers democracy when the Bolsheviks only got something like a quarter of the popular vote?My history here's shaky but I'm p. sure most people ended up supporting the Bolsheviks because of the continuing war against Germany, which the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries were for.

[727Goon]

Well party guards were mentioned in the Kronstadt program and I dont think they just made it up to fuck with future generations. And I know it wasn't a workers democracy, I'm just trying to figure out how authoritarians rationalize it as a workers state. And pretty much everything I've read said that the bolsheviks were second and only got 25 percent of the vote.

[#FF0000]

And pretty much everything I've read said that the bolsheviks were second and only got 25 percent of the vote.

Yeah, in the election. They had tons more support later on, I think.

[727Goon]

Eh

[Jose Gracchus]

He must be talking about the elections to the Constituent Assembly, a bourgeois constitutional convention elected by party-list, in 1918. The Second Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, a congress of workers' and soldiers' councils, had a narrow Bolshevik and pro-October (Left SR, anarchist, SR maximalist; what Rex Wade called the "radical left bloc") majority. The Second Congress of Peasants' Deputies (a seperate body) was narrowly elected to a Left SR majority (with some Bolsheviks with them), this was the basis of the Left SR minority position in the Sovnarkom. This was despite the fact that the peasants were 80% or more of the population. The Bolsheviks strongest support was among the soldiers in units closer to Moscow and the like.

The CA vote was tainted by the fact that the party lists drawn up did not reflect the SR split, and the old list had been controlled by the SR leadership which mostly lined up on the side of the Right SRs subsequently, despite the explosion in popularity of the Left SRs.