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Prostitute

12th March 2012, 04:34

What is your opinion on Kronstadt?

Blake's Baby

12th March 2012, 09:07

daft punk

12th March 2012, 09:11

Mutiny by newly recruited peasant sailors at a critical time. They took over an important fortress guarding the capital city. They were told to disarm. They did not. They had to be forcibly disarmed. Much of that forcible disarming came from within the fortress itself, by workers and sailors. The mutiny played into the hands of the whites and foreign powers. It was counter-revolutionary, an attempt at a coup even. see this article
http://www.marxist.com/kronstadt-trotsky-was-right.htm
contains a link to Trotsky's article on the subject.

Kronstadt: Trotsky was right! New material from Soviet archives confirms the Bolsheviks' position (http://www.marxist.com/kronstadt-trotsky-was-right.htm)

"In the proclamations of the Kronstadt sailors we see the words that refer to "the men of the White guards that are leading the rebels ". These were not mere words. The real command over the rebels was concentrated not in the Kronstadt soviet, as some naive individuals may think, but in the so-called "Court for the Defence of Kronstadt Fortress". One of its leaders was rear-admiral S.H. Dmitriev (who was executed after the fortress fall), the other was general A. H. Koslovsky, who escaped to Finland. Both of these senior officers were very far from having any kind of sympathy for Socialism "with Bolsheviks" or "without Bolsheviks". There is also much talk about S. M. Petrechenko - the sailor and anti-Bolshevik leader. What is really interesting is to note that in 1927 this man was recruited by Stalin's GPU and he was one of Stalin's agent until 1944 when he was arrested by the Finnish authorities. The following year he died in a Finnish concentration camp."

daft punk

12th March 2012, 09:20

"The following day, 1 March, at a mass meeting of sailors and soldiers in the town of Kronstadt some 15,000 people met to hear two high ranking Bolshevik officials, Kalinin and Kuzmin, sent from nearby Petrograd to attempt to appease the revolt. Zinoviev, in charge of the negotiations, did not get to Kronstadt because his physical safety was threatened.
The atmosphere was such that there was in fact little basis for constructive discussion or negotiation. The meeting degenerated, with the speakers literally unable to finish even a sentence without interruption and heckling, whistling and catcalls.
The programme was put to a vote, and only the two Bolshevik delegates and Vasiliev, the leader of the Kronstadt branch of the Bolsheviks, voted against it. All others voted for it, including recently recruited peasant members of the party.
Kalinin left the island. Kuzmin stayed to address a meeting the next day, already scheduled as the occasion for the re-election of delegates to the Kronstadt Soviet. Some 300 delegates were in attendance. The meeting was full of irregularities, including a sailors' guard at the doors and the denial of party members' usual role in chairing the proceedings.
Kuzmin and Vasiliev addressed the meeting, and tried once again to explain the conditions which threatened the revolution within and without. They implored the rebels to retreat. If they did not, they were warned the Bolsheviks would repress them militarily.
Amidst heckling and jeering the two spokesmen and a Communist official named Korshonov, whose jurisdiction included directorship of the two battleships which acted as headquarters for the rebel sailors' organising, were immediately arrested and removed from the hall."
http://www.marxisme.dk/arkiv/bakan/90-krons.htm

"Two weeks after the Kronstadt rebellion the ice was due to melt, at which time the sailors' control of the ships would give them the strategic and military basis to overthrow the Bolshevik government. Holding out until the ice melted was identified as critical in the memorandum, after which point counter-revolution would be secured."

Devrim

12th March 2012, 11:15

I thought this thread on Kronstadt was pretty good and dealt with a lots of the lies put out by modern day apologists pretty well: http://www.revleft.com/vb/kronstadt-t80959/index.html

Devrim

l'EnfermÃ©

12th March 2012, 11:24

Counter-revolutionary. There is nothing to add to Trotsky's Hue and Cry Over Kronstadt
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/01/kronstadt.htm

A “People’s Front” of Denouncers

The campaign around Kronstadt is being carried on with undiminished vigor in certain circles. One would think that the Kronstadt revolt occurred not seventeen years ago, but only yesterday. Participating in the campaign with equal zeal and under one and the same slogan are Anarchists, Russian Mensheviks, left Social Democrats of the London Bureau, individual blunderers, Miliukov’s paper, and, on occasion, the big capitalist press. A “People’s Front” of its own kind!
Only yesterday I happened across the following lines in a Mexican weekly which is both reactionary Catholic and “democratic”: “Trotsky ordered the shooting of 1,500 (?) Kronstadt sailors, these purest of the pure. His policy when in power differed in no way from the present policy of Stalin.” As is known, the left Anarchists draw the same conclusion. When for the first time in the press I briefly answered the questions of Wendelin Thomas, member of the New York Commission of Inquiry, the Russian Mensheviks’ paper immediately came to the defense of the Kronstadt sailors and ... of Wendelin Thomas. Miliukov’s paper came forward in the same spirit. The Anarchists attacked me with still greater vigor. All these authorities claim that my answer was completely worthless. This unanimity is all the more remarkable since the Anarchists defend, in the symbol of Kronstadt, genuine anti-state communism; the Mensheviks, at the time of the Kronstadt uprising, stood openly for the restoration of capitalism; and Miliukov stands for capitalism even now.
How can the Kronstadt uprising cause such heartburn to Anarchists, Mensheviks, and “liberal” counter-revolutionists, all at the same time? The answer is simple: all these groupings are interested in compromising the only genuinely revolutionary current, which has never repudiated its banner, has not compromised with its enemies, and alone represents the future. It is because of this that among the belated denouncers of my Kronstadt “crime” there are so many former revolutionists or semi-revolutionists, people who have lost their program and their principles and who find it necessary to divert attention from the degradation of the Second International or the perfidy of the Spanish Anarchists. As yet, the Stalinists cannot openly join this campaign around Kronstadt but even they, of course, rub their hands with pleasure; for the blows are directed against “Trotskyism,” against revolutionary Marxism, against the Fourth International!
Why in particular has this variegated fraternity seized precisely upon Kronstadt? During the years of the revolution we clashed not a few times with the Cossacks, the peasants, even with certain layers of workers (certain groups of workers from the Urals organized a volunteer regiment in the army of Kolchak!). The antagonism between the workers as consumers and the peasants as producers and sellers of bread lay, in the main, at the root of these conflicts. Under the pressure of need and deprivation, the workers themselves were episodically divided into hostile camps, depending upon stronger or weaker ties with the village. The Red Army also found itself under the influence of the countryside. During the years of the civil war it was necessary more than once to disarm discontented regiments. The introduction of the “New Economic Policy” (NEP) attenuated the friction but far from eliminated it. On the contrary, it paved the way for the rebirth of kulaks [wealthy peasants] and led, at the beginning of this decade, to the renewal of civil war in the village. The Kronstadt uprising was only an episode in the history of the relations between the proletarian city and the petty-bourgeois village. It is possible to understand this episode only in connection with the general course of the development of the class struggle during the revolution.
Kronstadt differed from a long series of other petty-bourgeois movements and uprisings only by its greater external effect. The problem here involved a maritime fortress under Petrograd itself. During the uprising proclamations were issued and radio broadcasts were made. The Social Revolutionaries and the Anarchists, hurrying from Petrograd, adorned the uprising with “noble” phrases and gestures. All this left traces in print. With the aid of these “documentary” materials (i.e., false labels), it is not hard to construct a legend about Kronstadt, all the more exalted since in 1917 the name Kronstadt was surrounded by a revolutionary halo. Not idly does the Mexican magazine quoted above ironically call the Kronstadt sailors the “purest of the pure.”
The play upon the revolutionary authority of Kronstadt is one of the distinguishing features of this truly charlatan campaign. Anarchists, Mensheviks, liberals, reactionaries try to present the matter as if at the beginning of 1921 the Bolsheviks turned their, weapons on those very Kronstadt sailors who guaranteed the victory of the October insurrection. Here is the point of departure for all the subsequent falsehoods. Whoever wishes to unravel these lies should first of all read the article by Comrade J.G. Wright in the New International (February 1938). My problem is another one: I wish to describe the character of the Kronstadt uprising from a more general point of view.

Social and Political Groupings in Kronstadt

A revolution is “made” directly by a minority. The success of a revolution is possible, however, only where this minority finds more or less support, or at least friendly neutrality, on the part of the majority. The shift in different stages of the revolution, like the transition from revolution to counterrevolution, is directly determined by changing political relations between the minority and the majority, between the vanguard and the class.
Among the Kronstadt sailors there were three political layers: the proletarian revolutionists, some with a serious past and training; the intermediate majority, mainly peasant in origin; and finally, the reactionaries, sons of kulaks, shopkeepers, and priests. In czarist times, order on battleships and in the fortress could be maintained only so long as the officers, acting through the reactionary sections of the petty officers and sailors, subjected the broad intermediate layer to their influence or terror, thus isolating the revolutionists, mainly the machinists, the gunners, and the electricians, i.e., predominantly the city workers.
The course of the uprising on the battleship Potemkin in 1905 was based entirely on the relations among these three layers, i.e., on the struggle between proletarian and petty-bourgeois reactionary extremes for influence upon the more numerous middle peasant layer. Whoever has not understood this problem, which runs through the whole revolutionary movement in the fleet, had best be silent about the problems of the Russian revolution in general. For it was entirely, and to a great degree still is, a struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie for influence upon the peasantry. During the Soviet period the bourgeoisie has appeared principally in the guise of kulaks (i.e., the top stratum of the petty bourgeoisie), the “socialist” intelligentsia, and now in the form of the “Communist” bureaucracy. Such is the basic mechanism of the revolution in all its stages. In the fleet it assumed a more centralized, and therefore more dramatic expression.
The political composition of the Kronstadt Soviet reflected the composition of the garrison and the crews. The leadership of the soviets as early as the summer of 1917 belonged to the Bolshevik Party, which rested on the better sections of the sailors and included in its ranks many revolutionists from the underground movement who had been liberated from the hard-labor prisons. But I seem to recall that even in the days of the October insurrection the Bolsheviks constituted less than one-half of the Kronstadt Soviet. The majority consisted of SRs and Anarchists. There were no Mensheviks at all in Kronstadt. The Menshevik Party hated Kronstadt. The official SRs, incidentally, had no better attitude toward it. The Kronstadt SRs quickly went over into opposition to Kerensky and formed one of the shock brigades of the so-called “left” SRs. They based themselves on the peasant part of the fleet and of the shore garrison. As for the Anarchists, they were the most motley group. Among them were real revolutionists, like Zhuk and Zhelezniakov, but these were the elements most closely linked to the Bolsheviks. Most of the Kronstadt “Anarchists” represented the city petty bourgeoisie and stood upon a lower revolutionary level than the SRs. The president of the soviet was a non-party man, “sympathetic to the Anarchists,” and in essence a peaceful petty clerk who had been formerly subservient to the czarist authorities and was now subservient ... to the revolution. The complete absence of Mensheviks, the “left” character of the SRs, and the Anarchist hue of the petty bourgeois were due to the sharpness of the revolutionary struggle in the fleet and the dominating influence of the proletarian sections of the sailors.

Changes During the Years of Civil War

This social and political characterization of Kronstadt which, if desired, could be substantiated and illustrated by many facts and documents, is already sufficient to illuminate the upheavals which occurred in Kronstadt during the years of the civil war and as a result of which its physiognomy changed beyond recognition. Precisely about this important aspect of the question, the belated accusers say not one word, partly out of ignorance, partly out of malevolence.
Yes, Kronstadt wrote a heroic page in the history of the revolution. But the civil war began a systematic depopulation of Kronstadt and of the whole Baltic fleet. As early as the days of the October uprising, detachments of Kronstadt sailors were being sent to help Moscow. Other detachments were then sent to the Don, to the Ukraine, to requisition bread and organize the local power. It seemed at first as if Kronstadt were inexhaustible. From different fronts I sent dozens of telegrams about the mobilization of new “reliable” detachments from among the Petersburg workers and the Baltic sailors. But beginning as early as 1918, and in any case not later than 1919, the fronts began to complain that the new contingents of “Kronstadters” were unsatisfactory, exacting, undisciplined, unreliable in battle, and doing more harm than good. After the liquidation of Yudenich (in the winter of 1919), the Baltic fleet and the Kronstadt garrison were denuded of all revolutionary forces. All the elements among them that were of any use at all were thrown against Denikin in the south. If in 1917-18 the Kronstadt sailor stood considerably higher than the average level of the Red Army and formed the framework of its first detachments as well as the framework of the Soviet regime in many districts, those sailors who remained in “peaceful” Kronstadt until the beginning of 1921, not fitting in on any of the fronts of the civil war, stood by this time on a level considerably lower, in general, than the average level of the Red Army, and included a great percentage of completely demoralized elements, wearing showy bell-bottom pants and sporty haircuts.
Demoralization based on hunger and speculation had in general greatly increased by the end of the civil war. The so-called “sack-carriers” (petty speculators) had become a social blight, threatening to stifle the revolution. Precisely in Kronstadt where the garrison did nothing and had everything it needed, the demoralization assumed particularly great dimensions. When conditions became very critical in hungry Petrograd the Political Bureau more than once discussed the possibility of securing an “internal loan” from Kronstadt, where a quantity of old provisions still remained. But delegates of the Petrograd workers answered: “You will get nothing from them by kindness. They speculate in cloth, coal, and bread. At present in Kronstadt every kind of riffraff has raised its head.” That was the real situation. It was not like the sugar-sweet idealizations after the event.
It must further be added that former sailors from Latvia and Estonia who feared they would be sent to the front and were preparing to cross into their new bourgeois fatherlands, Latvia and Estonia, had joined the Baltic fleet as “volunteers.” These elements were in essence hostile to the Soviet authority and displayed this hostility fully in the days of the Kronstadt uprising ... Besides these there were many thousands of Latvian workers, mainly former farm laborers, who showed unexampled heroism on all fronts of the civil war. We must not, therefore, tar the Latvian workers and the “Kronstadters” with the same brush. We must recognize social and political differences.

The Social Roots of the Uprising

The problem of a serious student consists in defining, on the basis of the objective circumstances, the social and political character of the Kronstadt mutiny and its place in the development of the revolution. Without this, “criticism” is reduced to sentimental lamentation of the pacifist kind in the spirit of Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, and their latest imitators. These gentlefolk do not have the slightest understanding of the criteria and methods of scientific research. They quote the proclamations of the insurgents like pious preachers quoting Holy Scriptures. They complain, moreover, that I do not take into consideration the “documents,” i.e., the gospel of Makhno and the other apostles. To take documents “into consideration” does not mean to take them at their face value. Marx has said that it is impossible to judge either parties or peoples by what they say about themselves. The characteristics of a party are determined considerably more by its social composition, its past, its relation to different classes and strata, than by its oral and written declarations, especially during a critical moment of civil war. If, for example, we began to take as pure gold the innumerable proclamations of Negrin, Companys, Garcia Oliver, and Company, we would have to recognize these gentlemen as fervent friends of socialism. But in reality they are its perfidious enemies.
In 1917-18 the revolutionary workers led the peasant masses, not only of the fleet but of the entire country. The peasants seized and divided the land most often under the leadership of the soldiers and sailors arriving in their home districts. Requisitions of bread had only begun and were mainly from the landlords and kulaks at that. The peasants reconciled themselves to requisitions as a temporary evil. But the civil war dragged on for three years. The city gave practically nothing to the village and took almost everything from it, chiefly for the needs of war. The peasants approved of the “Bolsheviks” but became increasingly hostile to the “Communists.” If in the preceding period the workers had led the peasants forward, the peasants now dragged the workers back. Only because of this change in mood could the Whites partially attract the peasants, and even the half-peasants-half-workers, of the Urals to their side. This mood, i.e., hostility to the city, nourished the movement of Makhno, who seized and looted trains marked for the factories, the plants, and the Red Army, tore up railroad tracks, shot Communists, etc. Of course, Makhno called this the Anarchist struggle with the “state.” In reality, this was a struggle of the infuriated petty property owner against the proletarian dictatorship. A similar movement arose in a number of other districts, especially in Tambovsky, under the banner of “Social Revolutionaries.” Finally, in different parts of the country so-called “Green” peasant detachments were active. They did not want to recognize either the Reds or the Whites and shunned the city parties. The “Greens” sometimes met the Whites and received severe blows from them, but they did not, of course, get any mercy from the Reds. Just as the petty bourgeoisie is ground economically between the millstones of big capital and the proletariat, so the peasant partisan detachments were pulverized between the Red Army and the White.
Only an entirely superficial person can see in Makhno’s bands or in the Kronstadt revolt a struggle between the abstract principles of Anarchism and “state socialism.” Actually these movements were convulsions of the peasant petty bourgeoisie which desired, of course, to liberate itself from capital but which at the same time did not consent to subordinate itself to the dictatorship of the proletariat. The petty bourgeoisie does not know concretely what it wants, and by virtue of its position cannot know. That is why it so readily covered the confusion of its demands and hopes, now with the Anarchist banner, now with the populist, now simply with the “Green.” Counterposing itself to the proletariat, it tried, flying all these banners, to turn the wheel of the revolution backwards.

The Counter-revolutionary Character of the Kronstadt Mutiny

There were, of course, no impassable bulkheads dividing the different social and political layers of Kronstadt. There were still at Kronstadt a certain number of qualified workers and technicians to take care of the machinery. But even they were identified by a method of negative selection as politically unreliable and of little use for the civil war. Some “leaders” of the uprising came from among these elements. However, this completely natural and inevitable circumstance, to which some accusers triumphantly point, does not change by one iota the anti-proletarian character of the revolt. Unless we are to deceive ourselves with pretentious slogans, false labels, etc., we shall see that the Kronstadt uprising was nothing but an armed reaction of the petty bourgeoisie against the hardships of social revolution and the severity of the proletarian dictatorship.
That was exactly the significance of the Kronstadt slogan, “Soviets without Communists,” which was immediately seized upon, not only by the SRs but by the bourgeois liberals as well. As a rather far-sighted representative of capital, Professor Miliukov understood that to free the soviets from the leadership of the Bolsheviks would have meant within a short time to demolish the soviets themselves. The experience of the Russian soviets during the period of Menshevik and SR domination and, even more clearly, the experience of the German and Austrian soviets under the domination of the Social Democrats, proved this. Social Revolutionary-Anarchist soviets could serve only as a bridge from the proletarian dictatorship to capitalist restoration. They could play no other role, regardless of the “ideas” of their participants. The Kronstadt uprising thus had a counter-revolutionary character.
From the class point of view, which – without offense to the honorable eclectics – remains the basic criterion not only for politics but for history, it is extremely important to contrast the behavior of Kronstadt to that of Petrograd in those critical days. The whole leading stratum of the workers had also been drawn out of Petrograd. Hunger and cold reigned in the deserted capital, perhaps even more fiercely than in Moscow. A heroic and tragic period! All were hungry and irritable. All were dissatisfied. In the factories there was dull discontent. Underground organizers sent by the SRs and the White officers tried to link the military uprising with the movement of the discontented workers.
The Kronstadt paper wrote about barricades in Petrograd, about thousands being killed. The press of the whole world proclaimed the same thing. Actually the precise opposite occurred. The Kronstadt uprising did not attract the Petrograd workers. It repelled them. The stratification proceeded along class lines. The workers immediately felt that the Kronstadt mutineers stood on the opposite side of the barricades – and they supported the Soviet power. The political isolation of Kronstadt was the cause of its internal uncertainty and its military defeat.

The NEP and the Kronstadt Uprising

Victor Serge, who, it would seem, is trying to manufacture a sort of synthesis of anarchism, POUMism, and Marxism, has intervened very unfortunately in the polemic about Kronstadt. In his opinion, the introduction of the NEP one year earlier could have averted the Kronstadt uprising. Let us admit that. But advice like this is very easy to give after the event. It is true, as Victor Serge remembers, that I had proposed the transition to the NEP as early as 1920. But I was not at all sure in advance of its success. It was no secret to me that the remedy could prove to be more dangerous than the malady itself. When I met opposition from the leaders of the party, I did not appeal to the ranks, in order to avoid mobilizing the petty bourgeoisie against the workers. The experience of the ensuing twelve months was required to convince the party of the need for the new course. But the remarkable thing is that it was precisely the Anarchists all over the world who looked upon the NEP as ... a betrayal of communism. But now the advocates of the Anarchists denounce us for not having introduced the NEP a year earlier.
In 1921 Lenin more than once openly acknowledged that the party’s obstinate defense of the methods of Military Communism had become a great mistake. But does this change matters? Whatever the immediate or remote causes of the Kronstadt rebellion, it was in its very essence a mortal danger to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Simply because it had been guilty of a political error, should the proletarian revolution really have committed suicide to punish itself?
Or perhaps it would have been sufficient to inform the Kronstadt sailors of the NEP decrees to pacify them? Illusion! The insurgents did not have a conscious program and they could not have had one because of the very nature of the petty bourgeoisie. They themselves did not clearly understand that what their fathers and brothers needed first of all was free trade. They were discontented and confused but they saw no way out. The more conscious, i.e., the rightist elements, acting behind the scenes, wanted the restoration of the bourgeois regime. But they did not say so out loud. The “left” wing wanted the liquidation of discipline, “free soviets,” and better rations. The regime of the NEP could only gradually pacify the peasant, and, after him, the discontented sections of the army and the fleet. But for this time and experience were needed.
Most puerile of all is the argument that there was no uprising, that the sailors had made no threats, that they “only” seized the fortress and the battleships. It would seem that the Bolsheviks marched with bared chests across the ice against the fortress only because of their evil characters, their inclination to provoke conflicts artificially, their hatred of the Kronstadt sailors, or their hatred of the Anarchist doctrine (about which absolutely no one, we may say in passing, bothered in those days). Is this not childish prattle? Bound neither to time nor place, the dilettante critics try (seventeen years later!) to suggest that everything would have ended in general satisfaction if only the revolution had left the insurgent sailors alone. Unfortunately, the world counterrevolution would in no case have left them alone. The logic of the struggle would have given predominance in the fortress to the extremists, that is, to the most counterrevolutionary elements. The need for supplies would have made the fortress directly dependent upon the foreign bourgeoisie and their agents, the White emigres. All the necessary preparations toward this end were already being made. Under similar circumstances only people like the Spanish Anarchists or POUMists would have waited passively, hoping for a happy outcome. The Bolsheviks, fortunately, belonged to a different school. They considered it their duty to extinguish the fire as soon as it started, thereby reducing to a minimum the number of victims.

The “Kronstadters” without a Fortress

In essence, the venerable critics are opponents of the dictatorship of the proletariat and by that token are opponents of the revolution. In this lies the whole secret. It is true that some of them recognize the revolution and the dictatorship – in words. But this does not help matters. They wish for a revolution which will not lead to dictatorship or for a dictatorship which will get along without the use of force. Of course, this would be a very “pleasant” dictatorship. It requires, however, a few trifles: an equal and, moreover, an extremely high, development of the toiling masses. But in such conditions the dictatorship would in general be unnecessary. Some Anarchists, who are really liberal pedagogues, hope that in a hundred or a thousand years the toilers will have attained so high a level of development that coercion will prove unnecessary. Naturally, if capitalism could lead to such a development, there would be no reason for overthrowing capitalism. There would be no need either for violent revolution or for the dictatorship which is an inevitable consequence of revolutionary victory. However, the decaying capitalism of our day leaves little room for humanitarian-pacifist illusions.
The working class, not to speak of the semiproletarian masses, is not homogeneous, either socially or politically. The class struggle produces a vanguard that absorbs the best elements of the class. A revolution is possible when the vanguard is able to lead the majority of the proletariat. But this does not at all mean that the internal contradictions among the toilers disappear. At the moment of the highest peak of the revolution they are of course attenuated, but only to appear later at a new stage in all their sharpness. Such is the course of the revolution as a whole. Such was the course of Kronstadt. When parlor pinks try to mark out a different route for the October Revolution, after the event, we can only respectfully ask them to show us exactly where and when their great principles were confirmed in practice, at least partially, at least in tendency? Where are the signs that lead us to expect the triumph of these principles in the future? We shall of course never get an answer.
A revolution has its own laws. Long ago we formulated those “lessons of October” which have not only a Russian but an international significance. No one else has even tried to suggest any other “lessons.” The Spanish revolution is negative confirmation of the “lessons of October.” And the severe critics are silent or equivocal. The Spanish government of the “People’s Front” stifles the socialist revolution and shoots revolutionists. The Anarchists participate in this government, or, when they are driven out, continue to support the executioners. And their foreign allies and lawyers occupy themselves meanwhile with a defense ... of the Kronstadt mutiny against the harsh Bolsheviks. A shameful travesty!
The present disputes around Kronstadt revolve around the same class axis as the Kronstadt uprising itself, in which the reactionary sections of the sailors tried to overthrow the proletarian dictatorship. Conscious of their impotence on the arena of present-day revolutionary politics, the petty-bourgeois blunderers and eclectics try to use the old Kronstadt episode for the struggle against the Fourth International, that is, against the party of the proletarian revolution. These latter-day “Kronstadters” will also be crushed – true, without the use of arms since, fortunately, they do not have a fortress.
January 15, 1938

Brosip Tito

12th March 2012, 18:14

The demands of the sailors should have been debated within the workers' councils, and then voted on.

Brosa Luxemburg

12th March 2012, 18:30

Well, there are already several threads about Kronstadt on the boards; but, at the risk of provoking a storm of condemnation from the Troskyists and Marxist-Leninists (a risk I'm obviously prepared to take)...

Kronstadt was an attempt to overcome the degeneration of the Russian revolution and the integration of the Bolsheviks into the Soviet state. Not a White Guard plot. Not a French plot. Not even an Anarchist plot. Its suppression marks a very bad turn for the revolution.

I completely agree with this version of events. The Kronstadt sailors were called upon by Lenin to help win the October Revolution and were called upon again by the Bolsheviks to defend the revolution during the Civil War. After the Civil War, when the sailors felt that the Bolsheviks could now build genuine socialist structures, they saw the Bolshevik leadership increase bureaucratic and authoritarian structures up instead and round up dissidents in peacetime. The revolt was a revolt to put in place genuine socialist institutions and socialist democracy.

daft punk

12th March 2012, 19:01

The demands of the sailors should have been debated within the workers' councils, and then voted on.
Next time you are a passenger in a car and someone steps out in front of you, make sure to hold a debate on whether the driver should apply the brakes or not.

Blake's Baby

12th March 2012, 19:32

daft punk

12th March 2012, 19:40

Better idea yet, get the driver to kill him then make up lies about it, then get hordes of other people for another 80 years to run around shouting 'woot! woot! we killed the bastard that stepped out in front of the car, if we hadn't he would have killed us all!'.

Or how about, kill the driver. When the car crashes, tell everyone the driver was to blame. Then get hoards of people to run round shouting woot woot. Tell everyone that if the driver hadnt been killed, the crash would have even even worse. The claim that the crash was an example of ideal driving under the given conditions, encircled by hostile road users.

Grenzer

12th March 2012, 19:44

OP: The search function exists for a reason, use it. There is a new discussion on Kronstadt every few months, if not more frequently. There have been several good discussions in the past, but most boil down to self-validating Leninist circle jerks.

I am always wary of newcomers asking about Kronstadt, since starting a discussion on Kronstadt was (correctly) listed on the Encyclopedia Dramatica as an effective way to troll revleft.

GoddessCleoLover

12th March 2012, 19:50

Aw, c'mon Grenzer, a troll? His S/N is Prostitute, an "inspired" choice for a revolutionary leftist. If it wasn't for my deep affection for Antonio Gramsci and Rosa Luxemberg I might well have chose "Prostitute" for my S/N. It is also interesting to note that originating this thread was Prostitute's first RevLeft post.

Blake's Baby

12th March 2012, 19:55

To be fair to the OP, the first 6 replies were pretty reasonable given the question.

When people stop answering the question ('what is your opinion of Kronstadt') and start answering 'what is your opinion of the post above yours' is where the trouble starts.

ColonelCossack

12th March 2012, 20:01

I have a feeling the OP is a troll.

Start a thread titled "Kronstadt" and watch the fun unfold.

That an a hunch... 1 post? And it's a relatively specific question... no introduction etc...

At least noone's been feeding them.

GoddessCleoLover

12th March 2012, 20:04

The OP may be honest, but why would someone registering at RevLeft choose Prostitute as a S/N?

Blake's Baby

12th March 2012, 20:06

Why not? Prostitution's just a job, a more honest one than most. At least prostitutes don't pretend they not getting fucked for money.

But, you may be right. One post as a detonation then run off and watch... perhaps we have a merry prankster, either way, does it matter?

NewLeft

12th March 2012, 20:11

I am not sure if it's sincere, I mean they even put an exclamation mark at the end.

GoddessCleoLover

12th March 2012, 20:14

daft punk

12th March 2012, 20:28

I dont think we should be attacking newbies in their first thread.

GoddessCleoLover

12th March 2012, 20:33

Intended more as a heads up rather than attack. The OP can always demonstrate his bona fides through his posts.

daft punk

12th March 2012, 20:53

Assuming for the sake of argument that the Kronstadt events were such a threat to the Soviet state as to justify repression, to my mind the centralization and extinguishment of internal democracy within the RCP (b) that followed the successful quelling of the rebellion was about the worst possible response. By doing so the Bolsheviks clearly established that the future of their party lay with centralization that lead to dictatorship rather then internal party democracy, and since the the party in effect ruled the Union led to a dictatorial regime.

Can you show us what you mean exactly?

Prostitute

12th March 2012, 20:56

Go sailors crush Lenin Ok thank u for responding

GoddessCleoLover

12th March 2012, 20:57

Brosip Tito

12th March 2012, 21:28

Next time you are a passenger in a car and someone steps out in front of you, make sure to hold a debate on whether the driver should apply the brakes or not.Maybe try: "Next time you are about to go on a road trip, make sure you hold a debate on where you are going instead of forcing the passengers to go where YOU want to".

The sailors had these demands prior to their uprising, many besides the sailors as well. They likely wouldn't have had their uprising had their demands been heard, debated on, and democratically voted on by the workers councils.

I respect Trotsky and his works. Don't fall into the trap of propping him up as some superior infallible being, like the Stalinites do to their Mustached Jesus.

l'EnfermÃ©

12th March 2012, 22:30

Next time you are a passenger in a car and someone steps out in front of you, make sure to hold a debate on whether the driver should apply the brakes or not.
Hahhahaha, great one.

Brosip Tito

12th March 2012, 22:45

Hahhahaha, great one.If it were accurate.

Brosa Luxemburg

12th March 2012, 22:51

GoddessCleoLover

12th March 2012, 22:59

Anti-Capitalist; Either proof of an intent to impose a dictatorship or a watershed opportunity having secured Petrograd's safety to make some type of move toward democracy at least within the Party. Although the Soviet regime faced rebellions in the hinterlands after Kronstadt, IMO it is fair to say that following Kronstadt the Soviet government was basically secure from overthrow. The Bolsheviks moved toward different economic policies after Kronstadt, what came to be called NEP and I believe Trotsky referred to as "free trade". I want to be clear that I do hold Trotsky primarily responsible for not advocating more party democracy in 1921-1922 as Lenin was then in charge and the factions policy was his (although based on the 1922 party congress Trotsky did not seem to be an advocate for internal party democracy either).

Blake's Baby

12th March 2012, 23:21

Good point Blake's Baby.

Having lived with Kronstadt as a controversy since the 70s I have come to conclude it is a very complicated issue, and one of the things that makes it very difficult to resolve are the varying factual assertions asserted by the opposing sides.

Assuming for the sake of argument that the Kronstadt events were such a threat to the Soviet state as to justify repression, to my mind the centralization and extinguishment of internal democracy within the RCP (b) that followed the successful quelling of the rebellion was about the worst possible response. By doing so the Bolsheviks clearly established that the future of their party lay with centralization that lead to dictatorship rather then internal party democracy, and since the the party in effect ruled the Union led to a dictatorial regime.

Well, as I wasn't a Trotskyist for very long, I don't have the baggage. I'm happy to follow Serge (who of course was a supporter of Trotsky, if a critical one) and the Anarchists. And of course, the Left Communists who came to see the Kronstadt events in very much the same way you've just outlined. The Bordigist position came to be that it would have been better to have handed it over to the counter-revolution than to have become the counter-revolution by suppressing it.

Of course, the Bordigists had the luxury of hindsight, knowing that it wasn't the counter-revolution. The question I suppose is, did Lenin and Trotsky know that too? Or did they act in good faith? The Anarchist position of course is that they knew they were suppressing the genuine revolution. The Council Communists believe that too. The sin of authoritarian Second Internationalism, bourgeois Marxist state socialism, come home to roost.

I think it's more complicated. I think they knew what they were doing, but didn't think they saw any choice. Serge I think is right about that; if the Kronstadt rising led to a general purge of the Bolsheviks then the situation may have destabilised enough for the Civil War to re-ignite which could have led to a general massacre of all revolutionaries in a counter-revolutionary bloodbath.

As it was, the Bolsheviks presided over the massacre, and the course was set towards the counter-revolution manifesting itself inside the Bolshevik Party and the Russian state. Kronstadt led to the horrors of Stalinism as surely as midnight follows sunset.

So to avoid the possibility of a generalised massacre, the Bolsheviks launched a local massacre. Which in turn hastened the death of the revolution and the grotesque situation where a monstrous new state emerged to enslave the working class in a way previously unimaginable; while at the same time calling itself 'socialist', poisoning that word (and 'communist'; and 'revolutionary') for generations to come.

We're still living with that legacy now; because for some who claim the heritage of marxism, the massacre of Kronstadt was the correct policy that a workers' state should carry out against counter-revolutionary elements. For others who claim the heritage of marxism, the massacre of Kronstadt was one one of the defining moments of the degeneration of the Bolsheviks, and a sign that entire notion of a revolutionary party siezing and running a 'workers' state' is so much counter-revolutionary garbage.

Ostrinski

12th March 2012, 23:35

I'm torn on the issue. There are compelling arguments on both sides. In the end though I'd say I side with the Kronstadters.

GoddessCleoLover

12th March 2012, 23:53

Just want to reiterate that the RCP (b) instituted an economic program in the wake of Kronstadt designed to placate popular unrest. OTOH in the wake of Kronstadt there was no concomitant move in the political sphere. To the contrary, a ban on factions was maintained and Stalin was appointed Gensek with wide powers over the party apparatus. This is what led to the party becoming dictatorial.

Brosa Luxemburg

13th March 2012, 00:00

Dogs On Acid

13th March 2012, 01:38

Is Kronstadt even worth discussing anymore? Sure, it's history, but the left is never going to find any common ground on the subject.

A Marxist Historian

13th March 2012, 01:42

A Marxist Historian

13th March 2012, 01:53

Yeah, and the idea that the sailors were secret counter-revolutionaries is ridiculous! They helped Lenin seize state power in the October Revolution and risked their lives for the revolution in the Civil War when the Bolshevik's called on them. I also hold Trotsky responsible too. He also crushed the Kronstadt sailors!

Not the same sailors, all the revolutionaries in the Baltic Fleet had left long ago for active battle fronts, leaving behind the sailors least interested in revolution and most interested in staying safe and sound and polishing their boots while the rest of the country was at war, plus a lot of brand new peasant recruits.

But we have indeed beaten the issue to death over and over again on other threads, I don't think anyone has anything new to say, other than Daft Punk's link to his organization's website, which is a nice addon to the link to the article on the Spartacist website, which I hereby repost yet again.

None of the Kronstadt fans here have ever managed any sort of serious critique of the revelations from Soviet archives described therein which, IMHO, make any attempt to claim that Kronstadt was anything other than a counterrevolution ridiculous.

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/esp/59/kronstadt.html

Hell, even Paul Avrich's classic account, by far the best work on Kronstadt in English, and written by the most pro-anarchist major Soviet historian I know of, admitted that the Whites were involved in Kronstadt.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

13th March 2012, 01:56

Is Kronstadt even worth discussing anymore? Sure, it's history, but the left is never going to find any common ground on the subject.

We have beaten the issue to death, but since "the left" never has before found common ground on any serious issue, and never will, so what?

The point of political discussion on Revleft, IMHO, is not to find some sort of mythical "common ground," but to help people understand which leftists are really revolutionaries and which are not, and will be on the wrong side of the barricades when the revolution comes. As has always happened in all revolutions.

-M.H.-

Le Socialiste

13th March 2012, 08:01

Kronstadt (and everything that resulted from it) represented a divergent shift in priorities and focus within the revolution: the Bolsheviks, the rank-and-file of the military, and the working-class were on what can only be described as a single path prior to its splitting in two. The Kronstadt uprising was one of the final battles for a decentralized soviet democracy, or at least a reflection of those aspirations. The Bolsheviks were turning to the state to exercise their authority, implementing policies and regulations that did away with what was previously a dual-power structure (the state vs. workers', soldiers', and peasants' soviets). The civil war offered the perfect pretext for the dismantlement of these power structures and their reestablishment as organs subject to the needs of the state; coupled with social and financial devastation, the regimentation and militarization of labor, and the New Economic Policy (NEP) - which came a bit later - the Bolsheviks found themselves coming into direct conflict with the interests of the proletariat.

The social factors fed directly into the political and economic, to the point in which the Russian people felt that the future promised by the immediate gains of the revolution had been betrayed. Many no longer saw the Bolsheviks as allies fighting in the people's interest, and discontent was at a breaking point (especially where the effects of War Communism and dictatorship were most acutely felt). Kronstadt was the result of this anger. It sought to right the ship that they thought had been run aground by the Bolsheviks. By openly confronting the Bolsheviks, the rebels threw themselves against an organization that had been busy merging its party apparatus with that of the state - to the point in which they were indistinguishable. This was no longer a question of ideology or principle, but a matter of soviet power vs. state power. We all know how that ended.

Devrim

13th March 2012, 09:20

Not the same sailors, all the revolutionaries in the Baltic Fleet had left long ago for active battle fronts, leaving behind the sailors least interested in revolution and most interested in staying safe and sound and polishing their boots while the rest of the country was at war, plus a lot of brand new peasant recruits.

This was dealt with in the thread I previously linked to:

RP, despite not arguing that the sailors were ‘tsarist[s], priest[s], or other expected counter-revolutionary’, still puts forward the idea that ‘However, the fact is that the sailors at Kronstadt in 1921 were not the same sailors who were stationed there during the October Revolution’. This seems to go along with all of the other lies that were circulated by the RCP(B) at the time, but has like the rest been thoroughly refuted.

In [I]‘Kronstadt, 1917-1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy’ , the academic, Israel Getzler, who had access to previous unavailable Soviet Military sources analysed much of the data about Kronstadt. On the two major battleships the Petropavlovsk, where the revolt started, and the Sevastopol, over 90% of sailore for whom the data is available had joined the navy either before or during the revolution.

“... that the veteran politicized Red sailor still predominated at Kronstadt at the end of 1920 is borne out by the hard statistical data available regarding the crews of the two major battleships, the Petropavlovsk and the Sevastopol, both renowned since 1917 for their revolutionary zeal and Bolshevik allegiance. Of 2,028 sailors whose years of enlistment are known, no less than 1,904 or 93.9% were recruited into the navy before and during the 1917 revolution, the largest group, 1,195, having joined in the years 1914-16. Only some 137 sailors or 6.8% were recruited in the years 1918-21, including three who were conscripted in 1921, and they were the only ones who had not been there during the 1917 revolution. As for the sailors of the Baltic Fleet in general (and that included the Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol), of those serving on 1 January 1921 at least 75.5% are likely to have been drafted into the fleet before 1918. Over 80% were drawn from Great Russian areas (mainly central Russia and the Volga area), some 10% from the Ukraine, and 9% from Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Poland.
...
Nor, as has so often been claimed, did new recruits, some 400 of whom Yasinsky had interviewed, arrive in numbers large enough to dilute or even 'demoralize' Kronstadt's Red sailors. As Evan Mawdsley has found, 'only 1,313 of a planned total of 10,384 recruits had arrived' by 1 December 1920 and even they seem to have been stationed in the barracks of the Second Baltic Crew in Petrograd.”

Hell, even Paul Avrich's classic account, by far the best work on Kronstadt in English, and written by the most pro-anarchist major Soviet historian I know of, admitted that the Whites were involved in Kronstadt.

Well no he doesn't actually.

Devrim

l'EnfermÃ©

13th March 2012, 09:25

daft punk

13th March 2012, 09:26

Off the top of my head, we can start with the decision at the 1921 Party Congress to outlaw factions and the appointment of Stalin as Gensek the following year. The 1922 Party Congress ought to have resulted in an easing of the faction ban rather than increasing the "discipline" by appointing Stalin to the secretariat. I can understand undertaking centralizing policies during the civil war, but following the quelling of the Kronstadt rebellion the party chose economic liberalization but ignored the need for democracy within the party.

From what I can gather Lenin had reservations about Stalin being General Secretary, but it was seen as an administrative job, not a political one, and so a bit of a non-job. I think it was proposed by Zinoviev.

The banned factions because the trade union debate was getting out of hand. Yes this should have eased off in 1922. In 1923 Lenin was out action and Trotsky wrote the New Course calling for more democracy.

The fact is that the bureaucracy, the counter-revolution, the wealthy, the kulaks and NEPmen, these were all on the ascendency and Stalin stepped up a chief volunteer to lead them, and he just managed to get a majority thanks to Bukharin, and for a while, Zinoviev and Kamenev.

In 1922 Lenin spoke out against red tape and bureaucracy bigtime at the congress. Also when dying he wrote that Stalin should be removed.

So, a few bits of bad luck mixed with the isolation of the revolution in a backward country.

At the end of the 1922 congress Lenin said:

"The first difference that strikes one in comparing this Congress with the preceding one is the greater solidarity, the greater unanimity and greater organisational unity that have been displayed. Only a small part of one of the sections of the opposition that existed at the last Congress has placed itself outside the Party.
On the trade union question and on the New Economic Policy no disagreements, or hardly any disagreements, have been revealed in our Party.
The radically and fundamentally “new” achievement of this Congress is that it has provided vivid proof that our enemies are wrong in constantly reiterating that our Party is becoming senile and is losing its flexibility of mind and body.
No. We have not lost this flexibility.
When the objective state of affairs in Russia, and all over the world, called for an advance, for a supremely bold, swift and determined onslaught on the enemy, we made that onslaught. If necessary, we shall do it again and again.
By that we raised our revolution to a height hitherto unparalleled in the world. No power on earth, no matter how much evil, hardship and suffering it may yet cause millions and hundreds of millions of people, can annul the major gains of our revolution, for these are no longer our but historic gains.
But when in the spring of 1921 it turned out that the vanguard of the revolution was in danger of becoming isolated from the masses of the people, from the masses of the peasants, whom it must skilfully lead forward, we unanimously and firmly decided to retreat. And on the whole, during the past year we retreated in good revolutionary order.
The proletarian revolutions maturing in all advanced countries of the world will be unable to solve their problems unless they combine the ability to fight heroically and to attack with the ability to retreat in good revolutionary order. The experience of the second period of our struggle, i.e., the experience of retreat, will in the future probably be just as useful to the workers of at least some countries, as the experience of the first period of our revolution, i.e., the experience of bold attack, will undoubtedly prove useful to the workers of all countries.
Now we have decided to halt the retreat.
This means that the entire object of our policy must be formulated in a new way.
The central feature of the situation now is that the vanguard must not shirk the work of educating itself, of remoulding itself, must not be afraid of frankly admitting that it is not sufficiently trained and lacks the necessary skill. The main thing now is to advance as an immeasurably wider and larger mass, and only together with the peasantry, proving to them by deeds, in practice, by experience, that we are learning, and that we shall learn to assist them, to lead them forward. In the present international situation, in the present state of the productive forces of Russia, this problem can be solved only very slowly, cautiously, in a business-like way, and by testing a thousand times in a practical way every step that is taken.
If voices are raised in our Party against this extremely slow and extremely cautious progress, these voices will be isolated ones.
The Party as a whole has understood—and will now prove by deeds that it has understood—that at the present time its work must be organised exactly along these lines, and since we have understood it, we shall achieve our goal.
I declare the Eleventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party closed."

l'EnfermÃ©

13th March 2012, 09:30

This was dealt with in the thread I previously linked to:

Well no he doesn't actually.

Devrim
Israel Getzler? Israeli historian? It's a matter of fact that the vast majority of the pro-Bolshevik sailors and soldiers volunteered to join the Red Army, and most of them actually died during the Civil War and the Foreign Intervention. I think we're above believing fabricated statistics written by Israeli Historians...the same Israeli Historians that call the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that started in 1947 and resulted in almost a million Palestinians being expelled from Palestine under bayonets a "National Liberation" war.

daft punk

13th March 2012, 09:43

Maybe try: "Next time you are about to go on a road trip, make sure you hold a debate on where you are going instead of forcing the passengers to go where YOU want to".

The sailors had these demands prior to their uprising, many besides the sailors as well. They likely wouldn't have had their uprising had their demands been heard, debated on, and democratically voted on by the workers councils.

I respect Trotsky and his works. Don't fall into the trap of propping him up as some superior infallible being, like the Stalinites do to their Mustached Jesus.

All I can say is read the articles posted or linked above. I dont think Trotsky had much choice. He sent 2 delegates to talk to the rebels. They were heckled, unable to speak, and arrested. He warned the rebels that they would be attacked if they didnt disarm.

You need to bear in mind that the Workers Opposition joined in the attack, joined the Reds on the ice. That much of the quelling of the mutiny came from within. And so on. I dont wanna repeat what has been said.

Regarding your point about listening to their demands, They talked about more democracy, but at the meeting the Bolshevik representatives were not allowed to speak! All communists at the meeting were arrested! There was no election of the rebels Provisional Revolutionary Committee.

"Once the mutiny was under way, over 300 Communists were imprisoned; hundreds more fled. Agranov pointed out: “The repression carried out by the PRC against those Communists who remained faithful to the communist revolution fully refutes the supposedly peaceful intentions of the rebels. Virtually all the minutes of the PRC sessions indicate that the struggle against the Communists still at large, and against those still in prison, remained an unrelenting focus of their attention. At the last phase, they even resorted to threats of field courts martial, in spite of their declared repeal of the death penalty.”
— Agranov, Report to Cheka Presidium, 5 April 1921; reprinted in Kronstadt Tragedy

It was the commandant of the prison, none other than an anarchist named Stanislav Shustov, who proposed shooting the leading Communists. In his report to the 25 March 1921 session of the Petrograd Soviet, fleet commissar Kuzmin described how the threat of mass executions was nearly carried out. Early on the morning of March 18, Shustov set up a machine gun outside the cell, which contained 23 prisoners. He was prevented from slaughtering the Communists only by the advance of the Red Army across the ice.

A Program of Counterrevolution

As Lenin noted, “There was very little that was clear, definite and fully shaped” about the Kronstadt demands (“The Tax in Kind,” 21 April 1921). They included new elections to the soviets; no restrictions on the anarchist and left socialist parties; no controls on trade-union or peasant organizations; freeing Menshevik and SR prisoners and those arrested in recent rural and urban unrest; equalization of rations; and pivotally, the demand to “grant the peasants full freedom of action on all land as they wish, and the right to own cattle, which they should tend to themselves, i.e., without the use of hired labour” (March 1 Resolution; reprinted in Kronstadt Tragedy). Had this petty-bourgeois program of unrestricted trade and opposition to any economic planning actually been carried out, it would have rapidly generated a new capitalist class from among the most successful peasants, artisans and enterprise managers and opened the door to a return of the old capitalists and the imperialists.
The program was carefully crafted with the peasant prejudices of the sailors in mind."

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/esp/59/kronstadt.html

see link for a detailed analysis from the Sparts.

daft punk

13th March 2012, 09:45

Hahhahaha, great one.

I was paraphrasing Trotsky who famously said if you are on a runaway train you dont stop to ask all the passengers if think the driver should apply the brake.

daft punk

13th March 2012, 09:55

l'EnfermÃ©

13th March 2012, 10:20

Actually, Trotsky wasn't behind Kronstadt(again, that's a myth invented by ex-Trotskyites in the 30s to slander Trotsky).
http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/07/kronstadt2.htm

I personally did not participate in the least in the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion, nor in the repressions following the suppression.

daft punk

13th March 2012, 10:34

Well, as I wasn't a Trotskyist for very long, I don't have the baggage knowledge.

fyp

I'm happy to follow Serge (who of course was a supporter of Trotsky, if a critical one) and the Anarchists. And of course, the Left Communists who came to see the Kronstadt events in very much the same way you've just outlined. The Bordigist position came to be that it would have been better to have handed it over to the counter-revolution than to have become the counter-revolution by suppressing it.

Of course, the Bordigists had the luxury of hindsight, knowing that it wasn't the counter-revolution.

It was a counterrevolution, or could have been, see all the evidence above. The rebels were led by the Provisional Revolutionary Committee!

The question I suppose is, did Lenin and Trotsky know that too? Or did they act in good faith? The Anarchist position of course is that they knew they were suppressing the genuine revolution. The Council Communists believe that too. The sin of authoritarian Second Internationalism, bourgeois Marxist state socialism, come home to roost.

I think it's more complicated. I think they knew what they were doing, but didn't think they saw any choice. Serge I think is right about that; if the Kronstadt rising led to a general purge of the Bolsheviks then the situation may have destabilised enough for the Civil War to re-ignite which could have led to a general massacre of all revolutionaries in a counter-revolutionary bloodbath.

Ah, this makes sense

As it was, the Bolsheviks presided over the massacre, and the course was set towards the counter-revolution manifesting itself inside the Bolshevik Party and the Russian state. Kronstadt led to the horrors of Stalinism as surely as midnight follows sunset.

Massacre? The Reds lost more than the counter-revolutionaries. According to Serge 500 were executed in the days after the mutiny was squashed. I doubt it was officially sanctioned, these things happen. Thousands were wounded and captured or fled to Finland.

Kronstadt did not at all lead to Stalinism. Krostadt was just one incident at the end of the civil war.
Stalinism arose because the revolution was isolated in a backward country. The communists were losing to the bureaucrats and the wealthy. Stalin simply took the side of the bureaucrats and the wealthy and fought against communism.

So to avoid the possibility of a generalised massacre, the Bolsheviks launched a local massacre.

er, ok

Which in turn hastened the death of the revolution and the grotesque situation where a monstrous new state emerged to enslave the working class in a way previously unimaginable; while at the same time calling itself 'socialist', poisoning that word (and 'communist'; and 'revolutionary') for generations to come.

The monstrous state emerged around 1926-7 as Stalin consolidated his rule. I don't think Kronstadt had much to do with it at all, it was really a fairly minor event at the end of a civil war.

We're still living with that legacy now; because for some who claim the heritage of marxism, the massacre of Kronstadt was the correct policy that a workers' state should carry out against counter-revolutionary elements. For others who claim the heritage of marxism, the massacre of Kronstadt was one one of the defining moments of the degeneration of the Bolsheviks, and a sign that entire notion of a revolutionary party siezing and running a 'workers' state' is so much counter-revolutionary garbage.

I cant work out if you think the mutiny had to be suppressed or not, you sorta give both sides.

You admit they had to suppress it, and then claim it was a defining moment in the degeneration of the regime. The revolution did not degenerate immediately after Kronstadt.

If they hadn't suppressed it, the end result would have been a White victory, backed by the British, with the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Bolsheviks and others on the left.

Devrim

13th March 2012, 10:39

Israel Getzler? Israeli historian? It's a matter of fact that the vast majority of the pro-Bolshevik sailors and soldiers volunteered to join the Red Army, and most of them actually died during the Civil War and the Foreign Intervention. I think we're above believing fabricated statistics written by Israeli Historians...the same Israeli Historians that call the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that started in 1947 and resulted in almost a million Palestinians being expelled from Palestine under bayonets a "National Liberation" war.

This would be the same Israel Getzler, who, according to the Guardian's obituary:

In 1971 Getzler's commitment to Zionism drew him to Israel, where he became a professor at the Hebrew University (http://www.huji.ac.il/huji/eng/). His new homeland had been his lifelong dream, but he came to deplore how it dominated and discriminated against Palestinians through its occupation of the West Bank. He raged against the settlement policies of both the Labour party and Menachem Begin's Likud.He marched in anti-settler demonstrations until well into his 80s and was a keen supporter of the Peace Now movement.

As for the charge of fabricated statistics, well, it is a little pathetic.

Devrim

Devrim

13th March 2012, 10:41

Actually, Trotsky wasn't behind Kronstadt(again, that's a myth invented by ex-Trotskyites in the 30s to slander Trotsky).
http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/07/kronstadt2.htm

Something that is often brought up by Trotskyists today when making excuses for Trotsky. Trotsky did actually sign the order to attack, but more importantly, was at least more honest than these sort of apologists in that he admitted political responsibility for it.

Devrim

l'EnfermÃ©

13th March 2012, 11:01

Something that is often brought up by Trotskyists today when making excuses for Trotsky. Trotsky did actually sign the order to attack, but more importantly, was at least more honest than these sort of apologists in that he admitted political responsibility for it.

Devrim
Trotskyists today don't need to make excuses for Trotsky. He has done nothing wrong and explained Kronstadt right here. (http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/01/kronstadt.htm) As for Israel Getzler, he takes the side of Martov and the Mensheviks. His words are worthless.

And yeah, he's still a Zionist...which means he's for Settler Colonialism in Palestine, except the West Bank, because you don't want the Palestinians to be too angry at you...they might revolt and take back their country. I know his type of Zionist.

And about fabricated statistics, it's still a damn well-known fact that the sailors of the Baltic fleet were some of the first volunteers to join the Red Army. And since most of them died...either way, the sailors that raised the flag of the White Guards in Kronstadt were mostly freshly-recruited peasants from the Ukraine.

Devrim

13th March 2012, 11:14

And about fabricated statistics, it's still a damn well-known fact that the sailors of the Baltic fleet were some of the first volunteers to join the Red Army. And since most of them died...either way, the sailors that raised the flag of the White Guards in Kronstadt were mostly freshly-recruited peasants from the Ukraine.

No, it is not a 'well known fact'. It was a smear, put out by the Bolshevik Party to justify their actions, which has been consistently denied ever since 1921. The actual data, from the records of the fleet, seems to suggest otherwise.

Devrim

l'EnfermÃ©

13th March 2012, 11:22

No, it is not a 'well known fact'. It was a smear, put out by the Bolshevik Party to justify their actions, which has been consistently denied ever since 1921. The actual data, from the records of the fleet, seems to suggest otherwise.

Devrim
The Bolsheviks crushed numerous other counter-revolutionary rebellions, Kronstadt being no different. They didn't need to justify their actions, history has done that for them.

Socialists couldn't care less about any fabricated data coming from Menshevik-supporting Zionists. Especially from one whose family was forced into slave labour in one of Stalin's camps. The man has an agenda.

And what of the infinite "smears" of the Anarchists(except those genuine revolutionaries that were affiliated with the Bolsheviks), Ultra-Lefts, Social-Democrats and other reactionaries? These smears, it seems, you ignore.

Blake's Baby

13th March 2012, 11:40

fyp...

Quiet DP, adults are talking.

It was a counterrevolution, or could have been, see all the evidence above. The rebels were led by the Provisional Revolutionary Committee!..

Ah, yes. Actually, no it wasn't the counter-revolution, the suppression of Kronstadt was the counter-revolution.

...
Massacre? The Reds lost more than the counter-revolutionaries. According to Serge 500 were executed in the days after the mutiny was squashed. I doubt it was officially sanctioned, these things happen. Thousands were wounded and captured or fled to Finland.

Kronstadt did not at all lead to Stalinism. Krostadt was just one incident at the end of the civil war...

Civil War ended 3 months before. Kronstadt was a response to strikes in Petrograd. Go read some history.

...
Stalinism arose because the revolution was isolated in a backward country...

No, the revolution degenerated because the revolution was isolated ('backwardness' has nothing to do wiht it, unless you believe socialism in one country is possible if that country's industrialised). The revolution began degenerating as soon as it occurred. By 1921 there were many signs that things had gone and were going wrong. Stalinism arose on the defeated revolution. Stalin didn't murder the revolution, it was already dead. He was just the gravedigger.

... The communists were losing to the bureaucrats and the wealthy. Stalin simply took the side of the bureaucrats and the wealthy and fought against communism.

er, ok

The monstrous state emerged around 1926-7 as Stalin consolidated his rule. I don't think Kronstadt had much to do with it at all, it was really a fairly minor event at the end of a civil war...

It was a fundamental event demonstrating the degeneration of the revolution. The Civil War was already over. There were no serious actions in European Russia after Wrangel's retreat in November 1920.

...

I cant work out if you think the mutiny had to be suppressed or not, you sorta give both sides...

What? You mean I try to take a nuanced approach and don't just parrot some shit that someone else said and jump up and down shouting 'Trotsky was right! Trotsky was always right! Lalalalalala you counter-revolutionaries!'?

Perhaps that's because I'm an adult that is capable of appreciating that simplistic answers to complex problems rarely lead anywhere fruitful. I'd advise that you try it, but sadly feel it's likely that the call will fall on deaf ears, deaf eyes, deaf fingers and a deaf brain.

You admit they had to suppress it, and then claim it was a defining moment in the degeneration of the regime...

I don't 'admit they had to suppress it' at all. I said 'if' and 'may'; if it was the counter-revolution - which it wasn't - and it was successful and led to a purging of the Bolsheviks (another if, but a moot one), it may have resulted in a general massacre of revolutionaries (again, moot, but only a possibility). And I also said that I thought that Trotsky and Lenin believed they had no choice, I didn't say I thought they had no choice.

So, no, I don't 'admit they had to suppress it' at all.

...The revolution did not degenerate immediately after Kronstadt...

You're right, it had been degenerating since 1917. By 1921, the revolution in Russia was in a mess. Worldwide it was still possible to rescue the attempt in Russia but not in Russia itself. Revolution must be international. Had the revolution in 1921 in Germany succeeded (or even better the revolution in 1918-19) then the course of the revolution in Russia could have been hauled back towards something positive; but by 1921 the dynamic in Russia itself was moving in the wrong direction. The Soviets were dead; the Party was the sole arbiter policy, The working class had disappeared as a political force. Kronstadt was pretty much the last gasp of the revolution in Russia.

Outside of Russia, after 1921, things were increasingly desperate. Even until 1927, perhaps, the the degenerated 'revolution' in Russia could have been saved had the world revolution not spluttered out. But the Shanghai Commune was the last act of the world revolution.

...If they hadn't suppressed it, the end result would have been a White victory, backed by the British, with the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Bolsheviks and others on the left.

Not true. Because it wasn't the counter-Revolution. Anyway, it was the French, wasn't it?

As it was, the end result was a victory for the forces of counter-revolution in the Russian state. Stalinism, the 'defence of the revolution against the proletariat' and the consolidation of the terror machinery against the working class, was the result.

Sasha

13th March 2012, 11:48

just so you know all, the OP was a trolling sockpuppet, they have been taken care off....

Thirsty Crow

13th March 2012, 12:51

Aw, c'mon Grenzer, a troll?
There was this website where info on how to troll this forum had been posted, and one of the classic stunts is to post either what do you think of Kronstadt without offering any opinion (a one-liner just like OP) or to start with an opinion alongside inflammatory rhetoric. Either way, I think it's clear that OP represents a troll attempt, and you can see that from the shitstorm cause every single time this gets mentioned.

And with regard to the question itself, I'd say just this: it's incredible how trots are capable of falsifying history. Instead of a materialist analysis of the formation of the Soviet party-state structure, which in its basic mechanisms was in place in 1921, we get the cult of personality - what else would you call a view which stresses the historical period during which Trotsky definitely lost his struggle against Stalin?

And get your story straight boys and girls, was it Great Britain or France? Or it doesn't matter at all since, lacking all the necessary evidence, the outcome was predetermined because the sole working class force was to be located in the Party?

Brosip Tito

13th March 2012, 12:59

Kronstadt called for "Soviets without Bolsheviks" - i.e bourg. democracy with all the communists excluded(As everyone besides the Bolsheviks has abandoned Socialism by now)...this was the cry of the SRs, Mensheviks and even the Provisional Government in 1917 "Democracy, but kill all the Communists first".

Kronstadt was an attempted petit-bourgeois military coup(whose leader, according to Soviet Archives, was actually recruited by Stalin in 1928 and worked as a Soviet spy until he died in a Finnish concentration camp). The Kronstadt putschists were told to capitulate, they didn't, and since this was Kronstadt, i.e the most important naval base in Russia, which France and Great Britain wanted to occupy(if they did occupy it, Petrograd would have fell just like that), so it was stormed.

Before you portray Kronstadt take note of this: It's a myth. It wasn't even supported by most of it's participants. The old revolutionaries of 1917,the few that remained(most volunteered to join the Red Army and most of those died on different fronts), actually clashed with the new peasants recruited from the Ukraine. Some ships in Kronstadt declared neutrality, others actually attacked the rebels. Soviet archives actually show that many sailors and soldiers tried to move over to the side of the Bolsheviks. They were terrorized and intimidated by their commanders not to.

Another thing is that during the storming of Kronstadt, the workers of town actually attacked the putschists before most of the Red Army arrived and liberated Kronstadt from the White Guards even before the Red Army.

More facts: Former Prime-Minister and Finance Minister Kokovzev transferred 220,000 Francs to the rebels. The Russian-Asian bank transferred 200,000.

Kronstadt is a myth. This myth wasn't even invented in the 20s, it was actually invented in the 30s as slander by ex-Trotsksyists like Max Eastman(later turned into a vicious anti-Communist) and Victor Serge. Actually, this is what Victor Serge had to say about Kronstadt before he turned coats:

"The popular counter-revolution translated the demand for freely-elected soviets into one for 'soviets without Communists.' If the Bolshevik dictatorship fell, it was only a short step to chaos, and through chaos to a peasant rising, the massacre of the Communists, the return of the émigrés, and in the end, through the sheer force of events, another dictatorship, this time anti-proletarian. Dispatches from Stockholm and Tallinn testified that the émigrés had these very perspectives in mind: dispatches which, incidentally, strengthened the Bolshevik leaders' intention of subduing Kronstadt speedily and at whatever cost. We were not reasoning in the abstract. We knew that in European Russia alone there were at least 50 centres of peasant insurrection. To the south of Moscow, in the region of Tambov, Antonov, the Right Social Revolutionary school teacher, who proclaimed the abolition of the Soviet system and the re-establishment of the Constituent Assembly, had under his command a superbly organised peasant army, numbering several tens of thousands. He had conducted negotiations with the Whites. (Tukhachevsky suppressed this Vendée around the middle of 1921.)"
Just so you, and everyone else is aware, their demands were:

Immediate new elections (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections) to the Soviets; the present Soviets no longer express the wishes of the workers and peasants. The new elections should be held by secret ballot, and should be preceded by free electoral propaganda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_campaign) for all workers and peasants before the elections.
Freedom of speech (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech) and of the press for workers and peasants, for the Anarchists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism), and for the Left Socialist parties.
The right of assembly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_assembly), and freedom for trade union (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_union) and peasant associations.
The organisation, at the latest on 10 March 1921, of a Conference of non-Party workers, soldiers and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt and the Petrograd District.
The liberation of all political prisoners of the Socialist parties, and of all imprisoned (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison) workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors belonging to working class and peasant organisations.
The election of a commission to look into the dossiers of all those detained in prisons and concentration camps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camp).
The abolition of all political sections in the armed forces; no political party should have privileges for the propagation of its ideas, or receive State subsidies to this end. In place of the political section, various cultural groups should be set up, deriving resources from the State.
The immediate abolition of the militia detachments set up between towns and countryside.
The equalisation of rations for all workers, except those engaged in dangerous or unhealthy jobs.
The abolition of Party combat detachments in all military groups; the abolition of Party guards in factories and enterprises. If guards are required, they should be nominated, taking into account the views of the workers.
The granting to the peasants of freedom of action on their own soil, and of the right to own cattle, provided they look after them themselves and do not employ hired labour.
We request that all military units and officer trainee groups associate themselves with this resolution.
We demand that the Press give proper publicity to this resolution.
We demand the institution of mobile workers' control groups.
We demand that handicraft production be authorised, provided it does not utilise wage labour. - wikipedia

Ostrinski

13th March 2012, 13:25

Things stayed relatively peaceful this time.

daft punk

13th March 2012, 16:10

Ah, yes. Actually, no it wasn't the counter-revolution, the suppression of Kronstadt was the counter-revolution.

This is a really stupid thing to say. I'm not even gonna bother with a long reply. The Bolsheviks were in the middle of an attempted socialist revolution, so anyone threatening that was gonna lead to a White massacre of Bolsheviks, a bloody political and social counter-revolution.

Civil War ended 3 months before. Kronstadt was a response to strikes in Petrograd. Go read some history.

3 whole months. And the civil war stopped all of a sudden, all in one go.

wikipedia:
"The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a multi-party war that occurred..."

Ok so it's only wiki but look, it puts that date 2 years after you. Makes you think eh? Well, maybe not you. Ok so most sources say 1921. This book says 1922

http://www.ospreypublishing.com/images/books/covers/mainpageimages/9781846032714-th2.jpg

In wiki's article on Kronstadt it says:
"By 1921 the Bolsheviks were winning the Russian Civil War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_War_in_Russia)" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion#cite_note-Morcombe.2C_Smith_2010._p._165-0)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion

The fact is, and I'm not gonna get bogged down in a debate on when the civil war ended, that the Kronstadt attempted counter-revolution would have, if successful, immediately reignited the war.

No, the revolution degenerated because the revolution was isolated ('backwardness' has nothing to do wiht it, unless you believe socialism in one country is possible if that country's industrialised). The revolution began degenerating as soon as it occurred. By 1921 there were many signs that things had gone and were going wrong. Stalinism arose on the defeated revolution. Stalin didn't murder the revolution, it was already dead. He was just the gravedigger.

Hopeless post. Hopelessly lost. You are also saying the exact opposite of some other so-called left coms.

Here is the Marxist view - socialism in one country is not possible, and socialism in a backward country is not possible either, so socialism in a backward isolated country is doubly impossible. To say being backward has nothing to do with it means you have ZERO knowledge of Marxism. This is the most basic Marxist ABC.

Marx:

"this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced"
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm

Actually the bit in brackets is kinda a hint towards Trotsky's Permanent Revolution theory. Nevertheless, Marx, Engels and Lenin all assumed the revolution would start in advanced countries. The bit in brackets does not override the great difficulties the Bolsheviks faced.

You fail to grasp the very basics. In an advanced country most people are workers. In a backward country most people are peasants. Marx said the peasants are reactionary. He said the workers would create socialism. So therefore obviously is is most likely in an advanced country.

Now, you claim the revolution began degenerating straight away. Support or retract. How many countries get a democratic vote on war tactics as happened in Russia in 1918?

Explain why you think Engels said

"Spain is such a backward country industrially that there can be no question there of immediate complete emancipation of the working class."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/bakunin/index.htm

It was a fundamental event demonstrating the degeneration of the revolution. The Civil War was already over. There were no serious actions in European Russia after Wrangel's retreat in November 1920.

Cant be arsed. You have all the info. You are just being obstinate. There war clearly a real danger and very much so a perceived one.

Do you thing the Bolsheviks attacked Kronstadt for the fun of it?

There was still a clear danger of a White victory, meaning the massacre of all Bolsheviks and those on the left. Read the frigging literature.

What? You mean I try to take a nuanced approach and don't just parrot some shit that someone else said and jump up and down shouting 'Trotsky was right! Trotsky was always right! Lalalalalala you counter-revolutionaries!'?

Perhaps that's because I'm an adult that is capable of appreciating that simplistic answers to complex problems rarely lead anywhere fruitful. I'd advise that you try it, but sadly feel it's likely that the call will fall on deaf ears, deaf eyes, deaf fingers and a deaf brain.

oh the irony

I don't 'admit they had to suppress it' at all. I said 'if' and 'may'; if it was the counter-revolution - which it wasn't - and it was successful and led to a purging of the Bolsheviks (another if, but a moot one), it may have resulted in a general massacre of revolutionaries (again, moot, but only a possibility). And I also said that I thought that Trotsky and Lenin believed they had no choice, I didn't say I thought they had no choice.

Even if they only believed they had no choice, they were doing it to save the revolution.

So, no, I don't 'admit they had to suppress it' at all.

They had to make a decision in 1921. History proves them right. Almost 100 years later you still cant make your mind up. Do you think you would make a good revolutionary leader?

You're right, it had been degenerating since 1917.

Dont fucking twist my words.

By 1921, the revolution in Russia was in a mess. Worldwide it was still possible to rescue the attempt in Russia but not in Russia itself. Revolution must be international.

Really? I never knew that.

Had the revolution in 1921 in Germany succeeded (or even better the revolution in 1918-19)

lol! 1921!

then the course of the revolution in Russia could have been hauled back towards something positive;

This is amazing stuff

but by 1921 the dynamic in Russia itself was moving in the wrong direction. The Soviets were dead; the Party was the sole arbiter policy, The working class had disappeared as a political force. Kronstadt was pretty much the last gasp of the revolution in Russia.

ludicrous

Outside of Russia, after 1921, things were increasingly desperate. Even until 1927, perhaps, the the degenerated 'revolution'

cant believe I am reading this

in Russia could have been saved had the world revolution not spluttered out. But the Shanghai Commune was the last act of the world revolution.

Yes, thanks to Stalin the Chinese revolution was wrecked, and that made things very difficult for the LO, despite the fact that it proved them right.

So, now you say that had revolution spread, it could have been saved in Russia. Therefore Russia, the spark, would have been validated. The Russian revolution, or 'revolution, or counter-revolution, as you call it, would have led to world revolution.

Amazing!

Originally Posted by daft punk http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2384057#post2384057)
"...If they hadn't suppressed it, the end result would have been a White victory, backed by the British, with the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Bolsheviks and others on the left. "
Not true. Because it wasn't the counter-Revolution. Anyway, it was the French, wasn't it?

As it was, the end result was a victory for the forces of counter-revolution in the Russian state. Stalinism, the 'defence of the revolution against the proletariat' and the consolidation of the terror machinery against the working class, was the result.

a victory for the forces of counter-revolution, which, if it had succeeded in spreading, would have led to world revolution, according to you. This is unbelievably stupid. I don't get the impression you are really trying to understand this at all.

Post what you want but I am through with this. Why don't you try reading the links posted? There is ample evidence that allowing this mutiny to continue after the ice melted would have jeopardised the whole revolution.

According to you the best revolutionaries in the world suddenly became counter-revolutionaries for no reason immediately after the revolution. You offer no logical reason and no evidence, and simply spout typical bourgeois/anarchist/Stalinist propaganda. Lies.

Blake's Baby

13th March 2012, 21:59

... (some windbaggery)...

According to you the best revolutionaries in the world suddenly became counter-revolutionaries for no reason immediately after the revolution. You offer no logical reason and no evidence, and simply spout typical bourgeois/anarchist/Stalinist propaganda. Lies.

You realise it's you and the Stalinists that are allied over this, don't you? Yet another cozy and crazy Trotskyist/Stalinist love-fest. I don't know what 'typical' bourgeois propaganda you read, but I very much doubt any of it clasims that the problem with Russia in the 1920s was that there wasn't enough revolution. I'd be interested in anything you could provide that would prove me wrong there.

According to me some of the best revolutionaries in the world, over the course of several years, made some very serious mistakes. Not 'suddenly', not 'for no reason', not 'immediately. But, revolutions not being a matter of will or moustaches, nor indeed the actions of great men on the world stage, Lenin and Trotsky were compelled by their own logic and decisions, as well as the world situation.

The revolution was degenerating; it could have been rescued by a revolution in Germany, like a patient comatose on a table who is given a shock from a defibrillator. It might even have ben rescued if the Shanghai Commune had not been massacred by the KMT; that event condemned the revolution permanently, as there were, metaphorically at least, no defibrillators left. Just because the revolutionary wave internationally didn't subside until 1927 (perhaps to extend that analogy the echoes took 10 years to subside) that doesn't mean everything in Russia was cozy until then. It wasn't.

Russia was in a mess. The economy was shattered, the civil war had killed, wounded and displaced millions, the soviets were a shell of what they had been. The party was strengthening its control over every aspect of society. The revolution by 1921 was going in reverse.

And what are the lessons of this?

For you the lessons are "Nothing; Trotsky was never wrong, we do it all exactly the same, only next time we stop Stalin."

For those of that can think, one lesson would be that the party cannot sieze control of the state. That is the task of the working class as a whole, organised through its own organs - the workers' councils.

l'EnfermÃ©

13th March 2012, 23:17

An attempted military coup is a revolution, and it's suppression is counter-revolutionary! You learn new things on Revleft everyday.

Blake's Baby

13th March 2012, 23:57

I'm glad you learn things Borz, that after all is the point.

But you are still in the dark about the nature of the Kronstadt Commune I see.

Can I suggest that actually read the Kronstadt Isvestia? Or the demands that the Commune made?

GoddessCleoLover

14th March 2012, 01:16

Искра

14th March 2012, 01:29

http://libcom.org/library/kronstadt-izvestia

Archive of the publication of the Kronstadt rebels, who fought to protect the gains of the Russian Revolution from the new Bolshevik authoritarianism.

Izvestia of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Sailors, Soldiers and Workers of the town of Kronstadt - Issues 1-14, March 3-March 16, 1921.
Originally edited by Anatoli Lamanov (http://libcom.org/history/lamanov-anatoli-nikolaevich-1889-1921).
Sometimes spelled: Isvestiia, Isvestia, Izvestia, Izvestiia, Isvestiya]
Translated by Scott Zenkatsu Parker and edited by Mary Huey (http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Emhuey/)

Just to contribute to this discussion.

Also, Getlzer, Izrael: Kronstadt 1917-1921 (http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?9zuem4z8r1801em)

Thirsty Crow

14th March 2012, 13:24

An attempted military coup is a revolution, and it's suppression is counter-revolutionary! You learn new things on Revleft everyday.
Attempted military coup?
What do you know, tommorrow we'll have attempted UFO and alien invasion starting with Kronstadt.

daft punk

14th March 2012, 14:39

You realise it's you and the Stalinists that are allied over this, don't you? Yet another cozy and crazy Trotskyist/Stalinist love-fest. I don't know what 'typical' bourgeois propaganda you read, but I very much doubt any of it clasims that the problem with Russia in the 1920s was that there wasn't enough revolution. I'd be interested in anything you could provide that would prove me wrong there.

You left coms, the Stalinists, and the bourgeois all say the same thing - that Stalinism was a logical continuation of Bolshevism.

Not sure what you mean by not enough revolution, either you or another left com recently was saying the revolution in Russia was premature. I think it was a different one. You just want the Bolsheviks to hand power to a few stirred up peasants and their counter-revolutionary puppet masters.

According to me some of the best revolutionaries in the world, over the course of several years, made some very serious mistakes. Not 'suddenly', not 'for no reason', not 'immediately. But, revolutions not being a matter of will or moustaches, nor indeed the actions of great men on the world stage, Lenin and Trotsky were compelled by their own logic and decisions, as well as the world situation.

The revolution was degenerating; it could have been rescued by a revolution in Germany, like a patient comatose on a table who is given a shock from a defibrillator. It might even have ben rescued if the Shanghai Commune had not been massacred by the KMT; that event condemned the revolution permanently, as there were, metaphorically at least, no defibrillators left. Just because the revolutionary wave internationally didn't subside until 1927 (perhaps to extend that analogy the echoes took 10 years to subside) that doesn't mean everything in Russia was cozy until then. It wasn't.

Russia was in a mess. The economy was shattered, the civil war had killed, wounded and displaced millions, the soviets were a shell of what they had been. The party was strengthening its control over every aspect of society. The revolution by 1921 was going in reverse.

And what are the lessons of this?

For you the lessons are "Nothing; Trotsky was never wrong, we do it all exactly the same, only next time we stop Stalin."

For those of that can think, one lesson would be that the party cannot sieze control of the state. That is the task of the working class as a whole, organised through its own organs - the workers' councils.

Well Russia was governed by the workers councils, and it was the Petrograd soviet which took hold of the state initially. So I don't know what you're complaining about. The revolution was degenerating mainly because it was a backward country. A successful revolution in China could have provided a morale boost, and aided the Left Opposition. A German revolution could have provided material support and expertise.

Better to try and fail than do nothing.

I'm glad you learn things Borz, that after all is the point.

But you are still in the dark about the nature of the Kronstadt Commune I see.

Can I suggest that actually read the Kronstadt Isvestia? Or the demands that the Commune made?
I suggest you read all the links that have been provided. They demolish your case.

daft punk

14th March 2012, 14:56

DaftPunk; Thanks for the link to Lenin's speeches at the 1922 Eleventh Party Congress. First on the positive side, the speeches are definitely worth reading and Lenin explains most issues at least to my satisfaction. OTOH the seems to be thread running throughout those speeches that emphasize party unanimity and see the RCP (b) as a unitary, almost chain-of-command type organization. With the advantage of hindsight revolutionaries of today ought to see the dangers inherent in the "military" approach to party structure. Lenin was basically silenced by a stroke following the Eleventh Party Congress. By 1923 Trotsky was becoming actively opposed to this dictatorial trend in the RCP (b). To her great credit, Rosa Luxemburg foresaw these potential dangers back in 1918. Some posters question the efficacy of revisiting these historical issues, but I believe like Santayana that those who fail to learn from history are likely to repeat the errors of the past.

Hard to say, even in hindsight. 1921-2 was a very difficult time. Lenin was worried that too much public disunity would damage the morale of the masses and that could lead to counter-revolution. The party still had plenty of debate, but by 1922 there wasn't much disunity, it didn't have to be forced, everyone was more or less agreed on everything. Rosa Luxemburg had a point, but then again she was late in organising the German CP. Also she did say the Bolsheviks couldn't be expected to do things any differently anyway. I think you have to bear in mind that the civil war and war communism had only just ended. Lenin did what he could, he said he wanted Stalin removed. Unfortunately that happened. Even Lenin's wife was a bit slow to realise the terrible stuff that was about to happen during the period after he died. She eventually joined the Left Opposition but Stalin had power pretty quickly, he was working on it flat out.

The real bottom line is that the revolution was degenerating due to being isolated in a backward country, and Stalin was more than happy to enthusiastically personify (ie lead) that process. Every attack on Trotsky was counter-revolution attacking revolution. Plus he was an evil fucker.

Blake's Baby

14th March 2012, 21:09

You left coms, the Stalinists, and the bourgeois all say the same thing - that Stalinism was a logical continuation of Bolshevism.

Not sure what you mean by not enough revolution, either you or another left com recently was saying the revolution in Russia was premature. I think it was a different one...

You better be fucking sure it was a different one. Doesn't sound like a Left Communist position at all. Are you going to name names, link to the post maybe? Or shall just believe you that someone claiming to be a Left Comm was opposed to the Russian revolution?

...
You just want the Bolsheviks to hand power to a few stirred up peasants and their counter-revolutionary puppet masters...

It would be boring if it wasn't so horribly offensive.

...
Well Russia was governed by the workers councils, and it was the Petrograd soviet which took hold of the state initially. So I don't know what you're complaining about...

Then you're a fucking moron. It was goverened by the workers' councils until 1919, after which it was governewd by the Bolshevik Party. The workers' councils were dead by 1921. Hence, Kronstadt.

...The revolution was degenerating mainly because it was a backward country...

Stalinist! Menshevik!

You reckon in an advanced country (don't bother to look at the statistics about how Russia was the 5th largest economy in the world, had the biggest factories in the world, 40 years of heavy investment etc etc) the revolution could have reached socialism? You reckon that in Russia only a bourgeois revolution was possible, or that socialism was only possible through rapid industrialisation?

The revolution degenerated because it was isolated. At least take that from what Trotsky wrote.

... A successful revolution in China could have provided a morale boost, and aided the Left Opposition. A German revolution could have provided material support and expertise.

Better to try and fail than do nothing...

Blimey, some sense at last. All that I agree with. I even think that the Left Opposition was the best hope for rejuvinating the party at that point (the Workers' Group having been purged of course, and the old Workers' Opposition being a bit unclear on the trade union question... no idea what the remains of the Deciests were doing, were they mostly in the LO?)

But while Lenin and trotsky were trying and failing, and indeed the working class of the world was trying and failing, voiced were telling them that their failures were successes. Among those voices were Lenin's and Trotsky's.

...
I suggest you read all the links that have been provided. They demolish your case.

Convinced you did they? Or, whisper who dares, did you already believe it, without the 'convincing' evidence?

Not sure I regard you as a reliable witness.

Grenzer

14th March 2012, 21:24

The real bottom line is that the revolution was degenerating due to being isolated in a backward country, and Stalin was more than happy to enthusiastically personify (ie lead) that process.

I would mostly agree with this statement except about the backward part. Any isolated revolution whether it's in a heavily industrialized country or an under-industrialized country is going to fail. I also think it's important to note that the process of degeneration and counter revolution didn't begin under Stalin, but earlier while Lenin was alive. The end of soviet power, consolidation of party rule, and the NEP were all counter-revolutionary moves. The NEP in particular is a pretty blatant move back towards capitalism.
Don't get me wrong, the NEP was needed after the ravages of war communism; but that still doesn't make it anything other than counter-revolutionary. The material conditions for the survival of socialism just didn't exist. Perhaps if the revolution had spread, other socialist powers could have put pressure on Russia and reversed the flow of degeneration and counter revolution, but this did not happen. Isn't this one of Trotsky's own ideas?

A Marxist Historian

15th March 2012, 00:12

You better be fucking sure it was a different one. Doesn't sound like a Left Communist position at all. Are you going to name names, link to the post maybe? Or shall just believe you that someone claiming to be a Left Comm was opposed to the Russian revolution?

It would be boring if it wasn't so horribly offensive.

Then you're a fucking moron. It was goverened by the workers' councils until 1919, after which it was governewd by the Bolshevik Party. The workers' councils were dead by 1921. Hence, Kronstadt.

Stalinist! Menshevik!

You reckon in an advanced country (don't bother to look at the statistics about how Russia was the 5th largest economy in the world, had the biggest factories in the world, 40 years of heavy investment etc etc) the revolution could have reached socialism? You reckon that in Russia only a bourgeois revolution was possible, or that socialism was only possible through rapid industrialisation?

The revolution degenerated because it was isolated. At least take that from what Trotsky wrote.

Blimey, some sense at last. All that I agree with. I even think that the Left Opposition was the best hope for rejuvinating the party at that point (the Workers' Group having been purged of course, and the old Workers' Opposition being a bit unclear on the trade union question... no idea what the remains of the Deciests were doing, were they mostly in the LO?)

But while Lenin and trotsky were trying and failing, and indeed the working class of the world was trying and failing, voiced were telling them that their failures were successes. Among those voices were Lenin's and Trotsky's.

Convinced you did they? Or, whisper who dares, did you already believe it, without the 'convincing' evidence?

Not sure I regard you as a reliable witness.

This is more a question than anything else. Your line of argument seems rather "Bordigist," as far as I understand Bordiga's ideas. Do you consider yourself in that tradition, or another form of "left communism," Gorter/Pannekoek or what have you?

And if you do, what do you make of the fact that Bordiga supported the suppression of the Kronstadt uprising, even as late as 1960? Did some Internet research, and that is what I found out.

http://www.troploin.fr/textes/16-a-contribution-to-the-critique-of-political-autonomy?start=11

As for the Decemists, they indeed were part of the Left Opposition, splitting from it in 1928 on the question of whether it was time to call for a new Communist Party or continue to work as an opposition even outside the party, which was Trotsky's position until Hitler came to power.

Bordiga and the Bordigists initially agreed with Trotsky not Osinsky on this, and split with the Trotskyists a year or two later, on different grounds.

The Workers Opposition leaders were also involved in the United Opposition for a while, but left as early as late 1926 I think.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

15th March 2012, 00:18

http://libcom.org/library/kronstadt-izvestia

Just to contribute to this discussion.

Also, Getlzer, Izrael: Kronstadt 1917-1921 (http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?9zuem4z8r1801em)

Getzler is more or less a Menshevik, most famous for his bio of Martov. The book was written before the opening of the Soviet archives, and is essentially out of date, now that all the facts are available. So not to be taken seriously on factual questions, e.g. social composition of the Kronstadt sailors and so forth.

The Kronstadt Izvestia, alas, is an example of Stalin's motto that paper will take anything printed on it. Propaganda for the uprising, not what the uprising was all about.

-M.H.-

Devrim

15th March 2012, 11:26

Getzler is more or less a Menshevik, most famous for his bio of Martov. The book was written before the opening of the Soviet archives, and is essentially out of date, now that all the facts are available. So not to be taken seriously on factual questions, e.g. social composition of the Kronstadt sailors and so forth.

I think that it was published in 2002, and draws on the archives, which were opened in the 1990s.

Devrim

daft punk

15th March 2012, 14:52

"Not sure what you mean by not enough revolution, either you or another left com recently was saying the revolution in Russia was premature. I think it was a different one... "

You better be fucking sure it was a different one. Doesn't sound like a Left Communist position at all. Are you going to name names, link to the post maybe? Or shall just believe you that someone claiming to be a Left Comm was opposed to the Russian revolution?

Dont ever accuse me of being a liar.

This theory, which Trotsky called "the theory of the permanent revolution", latching on to a phrase used by Marx in one of his articles on the abortive German bourgeois revolution of 1848–9, was absurd in that it implied that socialism could be on the agenda in economically backward Russia.

"You just want the Bolsheviks to hand power to a few stirred up peasants and their counter-revolutionary puppet masters... "

It would be boring if it wasn't so horribly offensive.

You dont like it when the reality is starkly posed do you? It was meant, not to offend as such, but to get you to see the reality of what conceding all these demands would mean in practice. Read the Sparts article!

Then you're a fucking moron. It was goverened by the workers' councils until 1919, after which it was governewd by the Bolshevik Party. The workers' councils were dead by 1921. Hence, Kronstadt.

It was a civil war. The Left SRs walked out of the 1918 congress of soviets to join the enemy, they walked out of government. Other parties were involved in sabotage too. Their best people joined the Bolsheviks and the Red Army. It wasn't the Bolshevik's fault. Kronstadt didnt happen because of that anyway. You need to think like a Marxist. Look for the social and economic roots:

"Only an entirely superficial person can see in Makhno’s bands or in the Kronstadt revolt a struggle between the abstract principles of Anarchism and “state socialism.” Actually these movements were convulsions of the peasant petty bourgeoisie which desired, of course, to liberate itself from capital but which at the same time did not consent to subordinate itself to the dictatorship of the proletariat. The petty bourgeoisie does not know concretely what it wants, and by virtue of its position cannot know. That is why it so readily covered the confusion of its demands and hopes, now with the Anarchist banner, now with the populist, now simply with the “Green.” Counterposing itself to the proletariat, it tried, flying all these banners, to turn the wheel of the revolution backwards."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/01/kronstadt.htm

"Originally Posted by daft punk http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2385041#post2385041)
...The revolution was degenerating mainly because it was a backward country... "

Stalinist! Menshevik!

Why are you shouting random words that have no relation to the discussion? Are you calling me these two things? Such an accusation would be more ludicrous than winner of the most ridiculous thing anyone could say competition.

You reckon in an advanced country (don't bother to look at the statistics about how Russia was the 5th largest economy in the world, had the biggest factories in the world, 40 years of heavy investment etc etc) the revolution could have reached socialism? You reckon that in Russia only a bourgeois revolution was possible, or that socialism was only possible through rapid industrialisation?

The revolution degenerated because it was isolated. At least take that from what Trotsky wrote.

Dear god, give me strength. The revolution degenerated because of two factors, it was isolated and it was backward. You are wrong to quote meaningless stuff like it was the 5th biggest economy in the world. China is the 2nd biggest economy in the world today. Are you telling me China is more advanced than Britain or Japan? And yet China ranks 68th in the world in literacy, a terrible result for a former 'socialist' country. 75% of Chinese live in rural areas, and their income is only a third of that of the urban areas. And this is now, after 50 years of 'socialism'! You talk about 40 years of investment in Russia, yet it wasnt that much earlier that feudalism had been formally abolished!

The fact is that socialism can only be built by educated workers, and In Russia the working class was less that 10% of the population.

To ignore the severe difficulties they faced from being a backward country is truly astonishing.

Blimey, some sense at last. All that I agree with. I even think that the Left Opposition was the best hope for rejuvinating the party at that point (the Workers' Group having been purged of course, and the old Workers' Opposition being a bit unclear on the trade union question... no idea what the remains of the Deciests were doing, were they mostly in the LO?)

Yes

But while Lenin and trotsky were trying and failing, and indeed the working class of the world was trying and failing, voiced were telling them that their failures were successes. Among those voices were Lenin's and Trotsky's.

What? Lenin and Trotsky were telling who their failures were successes? The workers and peasants? Support please. Lenin and Trotsky were very honest.

Convinced you did they? Or, whisper who dares, did you already believe it, without the 'convincing' evidence?

Not sure I regard you as a reliable witness.

Serge was convinced at the time and he was originally an anarchist. Read the articles, otherwise you are just guessing. There are just 3 articles to read. Also bear in mind the Workers Opposition went straight from getting ''banned' in the Trade Union debates to fighting with the Red Army against the mutineers in defence of the revolution.

"The “Kronstadters” without a Fortress

In essence, the venerable critics are opponents of the dictatorship of the proletariat and by that token are opponents of the revolution. In this lies the whole secret. It is true that some of them recognize the revolution and the dictatorship – in words. But this does not help matters. They wish for a revolution which will not lead to dictatorship or for a dictatorship which will get along without the use of force. Of course, this would be a very “pleasant” dictatorship. It requires, however, a few trifles: an equal and, moreover, an extremely high, development of the toiling masses. But in such conditions the dictatorship would in general be unnecessary. Some Anarchists, who are really liberal pedagogues, hope that in a hundred or a thousand years the toilers will have attained so high a level of development that coercion will prove unnecessary. Naturally, if capitalism could lead to such a development, there would be no reason for overthrowing capitalism. There would be no need either for violent revolution or for the dictatorship which is an inevitable consequence of revolutionary victory. However, the decaying capitalism of our day leaves little room for humanitarian-pacifist illusions.
The working class, not to speak of the semiproletarian masses, is not homogeneous, either socially or politically. The class struggle produces a vanguard that absorbs the best elements of the class. A revolution is possible when the vanguard is able to lead the majority of the proletariat. But this does not at all mean that the internal contradictions among the toilers disappear. At the moment of the highest peak of the revolution they are of course attenuated, but only to appear later at a new stage in all their sharpness. Such is the course of the revolution as a whole. Such was the course of Kronstadt. When parlor pinks try to mark out a different route for the October Revolution, after the event, we can only respectfully ask them to show us exactly where and when their great principles were confirmed in practice, at least partially, at least in tendency? Where are the signs that lead us to expect the triumph of these principles in the future? We shall of course never get an answer.
A revolution has its own laws. Long ago we formulated those “lessons of October” which have not only a Russian but an international significance. No one else has even tried to suggest any other “lessons.” The Spanish revolution is negative confirmation of the “lessons of October.” And the severe critics are silent or equivocal. The Spanish government of the “People’s Front” stifles the socialist revolution and shoots revolutionists. The Anarchists participate in this government, or, when they are driven out, continue to support the executioners. And their foreign allies and lawyers occupy themselves meanwhile with a defense ... of the Kronstadt mutiny against the harsh Bolsheviks. A shameful travesty!
The present disputes around Kronstadt revolve around the same class axis as the Kronstadt uprising itself, in which the reactionary sections of the sailors tried to overthrow the proletarian dictatorship. Conscious of their impotence on the arena of present-day revolutionary politics, the petty-bourgeois blunderers and eclectics try to use the old Kronstadt episode for the struggle against the Fourth International, that is, against the party of the proletarian revolution. These latter-day “Kronstadters” will also be crushed – true, without the use of arms since, fortunately, they do not have a fortress."
January 15, 1938

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/01/kronstadt.htm

o well this is ok I guess

15th March 2012, 14:57

Man speaking of Kronstadt I found the coolest thing/worst thing I've ever read while browsing PD: Trotskyist poetry

We fight the sea at Kronstadt
Across the frozen, hostile, misted sea
To Kronstadt, to attack entrenched White Guards
Manning the garrison there, mysteriously
All-powerful, where once we could command,
Talking now to our own as we talked before:
Workers’ control, soviet power (with no
Bolsheviks!), peasant rights—echoing the roar
From the countryside: impossible demands!
What could we do? Abandon the fort commanding
Petrograd? Call it off? Surrender? Give up
The workers’ power, looming chaos notwithstanding?
No: we would take a stronger, firmer grip,
And fight to bridle History run amok!
We marched to conquer fortress Kronstadt;
Beating them as we beat the other Whites
(Who did not sound like us) wreaked bloody spite.
We marched to conquer Fortress Kronstadt:
Under their guns across the ice-clad sea
Went Congress delegate and soldier elite;
Their cannon smashed the ice on which we stood;
The abyss opened under us; ice closed
Above white-sheathed warriors splashed with blood:
The ghostly camouflage, pale cloaks like clouds
We wore, did duty too for billowing shrouds.
After, when our bodies were reclaimed from the sacrifice,
The red still showed, frozen, in long coffins of ice.

bricolage

15th March 2012, 14:57

The fact is that socialism can only be built by educated workers
my god your elitism is astounding. any workers are capable of fighting for their own interest, they can and do on a daily basis. I long for the day they consign you to the dustbin of history.

daft punk

15th March 2012, 15:19

Originally Posted by daft punk http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2385928#post2385928)
"The fact is that socialism can only be built by educated workers"

my god your elitism is astounding. any workers are capable of fighting for their own interest, they can and do on a daily basis. I long for the day they consign you to the dustbin of history.

I am assuming that you are not a Marxist. This is ABC stuff:

Marx and Engels spell out that only the working class can lead socialism:

"The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history."

"The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable. "
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007

Lenin pounds home the backwardness of his own team (read the link for the full story):

"Have the 4,700 Communists (nearly a whole army division, and all of them the very best) come under the influence of an alien culture? True, there may be the impression that the vanquished have a high level of culture. But that is not the case at all. Their culture is miserable, insignificant, but it is still at a higher level than ours. Miserable and low as it is, it is higher than that of our responsible Communist administrators, for the latter lack administrative ability. Communists who are put at the head of departments—and sometimes artful saboteurs deliberately put them in these positions in order to use them as a shield—are often fooled. This is a very unpleasant admission to make, or, at any rate, not a very pleasant one; but I think we must admit it, for at present this is the salient problem. I think that this is the political lesson of the past year; and it is around this that the struggle will rage in 1922."

"I remember that in the article he wrote on the anniversary of the Red Army Comrade Trotsky said: “A year of tuition.” This slogan applies equally to the Party and to the working class. During this period we have rallied around us a vast number of heroic people who have undoubtedly made the turn in world history permanent. But this does not justify our failure to understand that we now have ahead of us a “year of tuition”."

Lenin

Eleventh Congress Of The R.C.P.(B.)[1] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm#fw01)

March 27-April 2, 1922

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm

bolded, mostly my emphasis

bricolage

15th March 2012, 15:27

"The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history."
Being an 'uneducated' worker is quite different from being a peasant.

And posting example of Lenin's snobbery isn't really going to get you anywhere.

daft punk

15th March 2012, 15:36

Being an 'uneducated' worker is quite different from being a peasant.

And posting example of Lenin's snobbery isn't really going to get you anywhere.

read the link please, to save yourself the embarrassment of posting from complete ignorance in the future. This is Lenin's speech to open 1922 Congress, important stuff, there is no snobbery.

This is a crucial speech in which Lenin nails the biggest problems they face - the battle against the bureaucracy and red tape. 5 years later the bureaucracy was the pillar on which Stalinism was built, precisely because Russia was isolated and backward.

"Their culture is miserable, insignificant, but it is still at a higher level than ours."
How exactly is it snobbery anyway, to say that your opponent's culture (by this he means education basically) is higher than your own side? Please spell out exactly how you manage to work this out.

bricolage

15th March 2012, 15:40

read the link please, to save yourself the embarrassment of posting from complete ignorance in the future. This is Lenin's speech to open 1922 Congress, important stuff, there is no snobbery.

"Their culture is miserable, insignificant, but it is still at a higher level than ours."
How exactly is it snobbery anyway, to say that your opponent's culture (by this he means education basically) is higher than your own side? Please spell out exactly how you manage to work this out.
because he's still calling it miserable and insignificant just interspersing it with some self-deprication. 'our' culture isn't really a culture at all just a economic class of bureaucrats, the 'miserable' and 'insignificant' culture would be generalised against all of the 'uneducated' elements.
maybe you could explain how 'uneducated' workers are actually peasants and by virtue of not having read trotsky no longer sell their labour power. maybe you should think about this 'to save yourself the embarrassment of posting from complete ignorance in the future'.

daft punk

15th March 2012, 15:51

Originally Posted by daft punk http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2385952#post2385952)
"read the link please, to save yourself the embarrassment of posting from complete ignorance in the future. This is Lenin's speech to open 1922 Congress, important stuff, there is no snobbery.

"Their culture is miserable, insignificant, but it is still at a higher level than ours."
How exactly is it snobbery anyway, to say that your opponent's culture (by this he means education basically) is higher than your own side? Please spell out exactly how you manage to work this out. "

because he's still calling it miserable and insignificant just interspersing it with some self-deprication. 'our' culture isn't really a culture at all just a economic class of bureaucrats, the 'miserable' and 'insignificant' culture would be generalised against all of the 'uneducated' elements.

Read the link and you will understand. The 'miserable and insignificant' culture is the bureaucracy inherited from the old regime. These are the middle class specialists, administrators and so on, people who know how to run a country and an economy. He is saying that the bureaucrats are running rings around the communists, because they have more knowledge.

"If we take Moscow with its 4,700 Communists in responsible positions, and if we take that huge bureaucratic machine, that gigantic heap, we must ask: who is directing whom? I doubt very much whether it can truthfully be said that the Communists are directing that heap. To tell the truth they are not directing, they are being directed."

You have to read the full speech to understand it properly.

maybe you could explain how 'uneducated' workers are actually peasants and by virtue of not having read trotsky no longer sell their labour power. maybe you should think about this 'to save yourself the embarrassment of posting from complete ignorance in the future'.

I never said uneducated workers are peasants so why are you saying that. As for the rest, no idea wft you are on about.

I said socialism is built by educated workers and I showed that Marx, Engels and Lenin (plus Trotsky) believed that, for good reason.

Can I ask what is you political ideology? Obviously not Marxist.

bricolage

15th March 2012, 17:04

He is saying that the bureaucrats are running rings around the communists, because they have more knowledge.
more knowledge of bureaucracy yes, no knowledge of class struggle.
the lesson is fight on the latter, not the former.

I never said uneducated workers are peasants so why are you saying that. As for the rest, no idea wft you are on about.
you said only 'educated workers' can create socialism to which I quite rightly called you an elitist, you then responded with this quote:
"The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history."

which merely says that workers, not other classes, will fight for socialism and says nothing about 'education'

I said socialism is built by educated workers and I showed that Marx, Engels and Lenin (plus Trotsky) believed that, for good reason.
you haven't actually, you showed that Marx said only the working class can build socialism but you haven't yet pointed to where he talked about 'educated' workers. probably because he didn't.

A Marxist Historian

15th March 2012, 20:47

I think that it was published in 2002, and draws on the archives, which were opened in the 1990s.

Devrim

Well, some of 'em, but before the publication of all the relevant documents, over 2,000 pages worth, by the post-Soviet research team funded by the Russian government, Yeltsin in fact, who was rather horrified by what they found, not what he'd wanted to have out there at all.

-M.H.-

Blake's Baby

15th March 2012, 21:39

Dont ever accuse me of being a liar...

I didn't. I asked if you thought I should believe you. You know, like you believe everything you read?

So, are you going to link to the post whgere some Left Communist said that the Russian revolution was premature?

...

You dont like it when the reality is starkly posed do you? It was meant, not to offend as such, but to get you to see the reality of what conceding all these demands would mean in practice. Read the Sparts article!...

I didn't mean it offensive to me, I think it's offensive to the people Totsky had murdererd. Killing people and then telling lies about them is a pretty shit thing to do.

...
It was a civil war. The Left SRs walked out of the 1918 congress of soviets to join the enemy, they walked out of government. Other parties were involved in sabotage too. Their best people joined the Bolsheviks and the Red Army. It wasn't the Bolshevik's fault. Kronstadt didnt happen because of that anyway. You need to think like a Marxist. Look for the social and economic roots:

"Only an entirely superficial person can see in Makhno’s bands or in the Kronstadt revolt a struggle between the abstract principles of Anarchism and “state socialism.” Actually these movements were convulsions of the peasant petty bourgeoisie which desired, of course, to liberate itself from capital but which at the same time did not consent to subordinate itself to the dictatorship of the proletariat. The petty bourgeoisie does not know concretely what it wants, and by virtue of its position cannot know. That is why it so readily covered the confusion of its demands and hopes, now with the Anarchist banner, now with the populist, now simply with the “Green.” Counterposing itself to the proletariat, it tried, flying all these banners, to turn the wheel of the revolution backwards."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/01/kronstadt.htm

Why are you shouting random words that have no relation to the discussion? Are you calling me these two things? Such an accusation would be more ludicrous than winner of the most ridiculous thing anyone could say competition...

If you believe that Russia have become socialist if it had been more advanced you're either a Stalinsit or a Menshevik, or both... but not neither.

If you don't believe that Russia could have become socialist (on account of being isolated and all) then the development of Russia is not an issue.

...
Dear god, give me strength. The revolution degenerated because of two factors, it was isolated and it was backward. You are wrong to quote meaningless stuff like it was the 5th biggest economy in the world. China is the 2nd biggest economy in the world today. Are you telling me China is more advanced than Britain or Japan? And yet China ranks 68th in the world in literacy, a terrible result for a former 'socialist' country. 75% of Chinese live in rural areas, and their income is only a third of that of the urban areas. And this is now, after 50 years of 'socialism'! You talk about 40 years of investment in Russia, yet it wasnt that much earlier that feudalism had been formally abolished!

The fact is that socialism can only be built by educated workers, and In Russia the working class was less that 10% of the population...

The fact is, no matter how educated the workers, socialism cannot be built in one country. Therefore, conditions in Russia were not as important as conditions internationally (when guess what, the proletariat was still in a minority, shock horror).

...To ignore the severe difficulties they faced from being a backward country is truly astonishing...

Only if you believe it's possible to build socialism in one country.

...
Yes

What? Lenin and Trotsky were telling who their failures were successes? The workers and peasants? Support please. Lenin and Trotsky were very honest...

How do you know?

Anyway, I wasn't impeaching their honesty. I was saying that they were wrong. Honestly wrong if you like. Of course, I know Trotsky lied about Makhno but that's a totally different argument. But wrong nevertheless.

Wrong (especially Trotsky) time and time again. Wrong about Kronstadt (and wrong to go back and justify himself); wrong about the militarisation of labour, wrong about the trade union debate (not that the other groups inside the Bolshevik party were any clearer... a whole load of wrongs disagreeing with each other that time). Wrong about the French turn, wrong about England being ripe for revolution, wrong about loads of things.

Don't take that as knocking Trotsky please. Nothing ventured and all that. Mistakes help us learn and so on, and in an unprecidented situation making mistakes is inevitable.

But what Trotskyism (note, here I'm talking about Trotskyism not Trotsky) does is take those mistakes and make them into theory. For instance the degenerated workers's state. Fine, if in 1919 you could call the Soviet Republic a 'workers' state', then a 'degenerated workers' state' is maybe OK as a description for the Soviet Union in let's say 1921.

But by say 1927 it wasn't fine, it was an error to call the USSR a 'degenerated workers' state', by 1936 it was verging on 'objectively counter-revolutionary' to call the USSR a 'degenerated workers' state' and by 1945 I'd say it wasn't just objectively counter-revolutionary it was a crime against the proletariat to call it a 'degenerated workers' state'. It was a brutal imperialist capitalist state and had been for years. And Trotsky helped build that brutal imperialist capitalist state, whether or not he knew it, and Kronstatdt was part of that process.

Devrim

15th March 2012, 23:17

Well, some of 'em, but before the publication of all the relevant documents, over 2,000 pages worth, by the post-Soviet research team funded by the Russian government, Yeltsin in fact, who was rather horrified by what they found, not what he'd wanted to have out there at all.-

Yeltsin was in office until 1999, so all documents published under his direction could have easily been consulted whilst writing a book published in 2002.

Devrim

Lev Bronsteinovich

15th March 2012, 23:20

more knowledge of bureaucracy yes, no knowledge of class struggle.
the lesson is fight on the latter, not the former.

you said only 'educated workers' can create socialism to which I quite rightly called you an elitist, you then responded with this quote:
"The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history."

which merely says that workers, not other classes, will fight for socialism and says nothing about 'education'

you haven't actually, you showed that Marx said only the working class can build socialism but you haven't yet pointed to where he talked about 'educated' workers. probably because he didn't.

You are sounding a bit like Rick Santorum here. The point is that socialism can only be built upon the highest level of bourgeois culture, including science and industry. This is not elitist, it is logical -- it is what Marx, Lenin and Trotsky all said.

There is nothing magical about the proletariat. They simply are the class that has it both in their direct material interest and in their power to bring about socialism. It is not some kind of moral category -- it is about the relationship of the proletariat to the means of production.

bricolage

16th March 2012, 01:23

You are sounding a bit like Rick Santorum here.
eh?

There is nothing magical about the proletariat. They simply are the class that has it both in their direct material interest and in their power to bring about socialism. It is not some kind of moral category -- it is about the relationship of the proletariat to the means of production.
i've never said otherwise, what I've debated is that this relationship (and the material interest to do away with it) is in any way determined by 'education'.

A Marxist Historian

16th March 2012, 01:38

Yeltsin was in office until 1999, so all documents published under his direction could have easily been consulted whilst writing a book published in 2002.

Devrim

Getzler's book on Kronstadt, it turns out, was published in 1983!

http://www.amazon.com/Kronstadt-1917-1921-Democracy-Cambridge-Post-Soviet/dp/052124479X

It was republished in 2002, but as part of the same series, with not a word changed, even the cover looks exactly the same. You will note that the Amazon description of the 2002 edition is absolutely indistinguishable from the 1983 edition. Not even a new intro!

http://www.amazon.com/Kronstadt-1917-1921-Democracy-Cambridge-Post-Soviet/dp/0521894425

The Kronstadt Tragedy, the huge documentary compilation I am discussing, was indeed published in 1999 --and the material in it was "studiously ignored" by Getzler, as the Spartacists put it, as it did not fit his falsified picture.

For a full description of Getzler's dishonest and unscholarly reaction to the publication of these materials, whose very existence is ignored in the 2002 edition of his book, see

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/esp/59/kronstadt.html

-M.H.-

daft punk

16th March 2012, 12:07

So, are you going to link to the post whgere some Left Communist said that the Russian revolution was premature?

I just did in my reply, Robbo's post.

I didn't mean it offensive to me, I think it's offensive to the people Totsky had murdererd. Killing people and then telling lies about them is a pretty shit thing to do.

Trotsky neither murdered anyone nor told lies about them, why are you saying such things? A mutiny was suppressed after being warned to disarm. The revolutionaries had to suppress counter-revolution.

Read the article and stop wasting my time repeating the same silly lines.

If you believe that Russia have become socialist if it had been more advanced you're either a Stalinsit or a Menshevik, or both... but not neither.

If you don't believe that Russia could have become socialist (on account of being isolated and all) then the development of Russia is not an issue.

The fact is, no matter how educated the workers, socialism cannot be built in one country. Therefore, conditions in Russia were not as important as conditions internationally (when guess what, the proletariat was still in a minority, shock horror).

Only if you believe it's possible to build socialism in one country.

This rubbish is childish, not serious debate. I have dealt with your point comprehensively.

"What? Lenin and Trotsky were telling who their failures were successes? The workers and peasants? Support please. Lenin and Trotsky were very honest... "
How do you know?

Because it is obvious from their writings, they try to give an honest assessment at all times, pointing out the pros and cons, the dangers as well as trying to stay positive and so on. If you bothered to actually read any of their stuff instead of just repeat heresay you would know.

Anyway, I wasn't impeaching their honesty. I was saying that they were wrong. Honestly wrong if you like. Of course, I know Trotsky lied about Makhno but that's a totally different argument. But wrong nevertheless.

support

Wrong (especially Trotsky) time and time again. Wrong about Kronstadt (and wrong to go back and justify himself); wrong about the militarisation of labour, wrong about the trade union debate (not that the other groups inside the Bolshevik party were any clearer... a whole load of wrongs disagreeing with each other that time). Wrong about the French turn, wrong about England being ripe for revolution, wrong about loads of things.

You have no idea what you are talking about. You dont even know the basics of Marxism. You haven't even read the Communist Maifesto, evidently, where Marx and Engels talk about "establishment of industrial armies". You know virtually nothing about these issues. Trotsky's militarisation of labour idea was probably wrong at the time, but he proposed it for good reasons and it wasnt a particularly big deal.

Don't take that as knocking Trotsky please. Nothing ventured and all that. Mistakes help us learn and so on, and in an unprecidented situation making mistakes is inevitable.

Can I remind you that Trotsky was the only person who ever led a revolution which was aimed to achieve socialism, and for the first few years succeeded.

But what Trotskyism (note, here I'm talking about Trotskyism not Trotsky) does is take those mistakes and make them into theory. For instance the degenerated workers's state. Fine, if in 1919 you could call the Soviet Republic a 'workers' state', then a 'degenerated workers' state' is maybe OK as a description for the Soviet Union in let's say 1921.

But by say 1927 it wasn't fine, it was an error to call the USSR a 'degenerated workers' state', by 1936 it was verging on 'objectively counter-revolutionary' to call the USSR a 'degenerated workers' state' and by 1945 I'd say it wasn't just objectively counter-revolutionary it was a crime against the proletariat to call it a 'degenerated workers' state'. It was a brutal imperialist capitalist state and had been for years. And Trotsky helped build that brutal imperialist capitalist state, whether or not he knew it, and Kronstatdt was part of that process.

All it means is that the economy was publicly owned. Get that into your skull ffs.

Blake's Baby

16th March 2012, 22:25

I just did in my reply, Robbo's post...

Do you know why I didn't see that? Because I actually thought you knoew what you were talking about.

Robbo is not a Left Communist. So when you said there was a Left Communist who said the the revolution was premature, and I scoffed at the notion and said it didn't sound like the position of a Left Communist, then asked you to link to the post where a Left Communist said that and you linked to a post by someone who isn't a Left Communuist and then said you had done... well.

Maybe you could go and study the history of the SPGB. Also known as the Socialist Party.

Then maybe you could go and study the Communist Left.

Or even, maybe, ask questions.

...
Trotsky neither murdered anyone nor told lies about them, why are you saying such things? A mutiny was suppressed after being warned to disarm. The revolutionaries had to suppress counter-revolution.

Read the article and stop wasting my time repeating the same silly lines...

You don't read anything anyone else puts in front of you, why should I?

I said Trotsky HAD them murderered. He didn't do it himself, silly. Can't see him volunteering to go across the ice, no leave that to the 'loyal' Workers Opposition, and just to make sure we'll put a Cheka detatchment behind them to make sure no-one turns back.

...

This rubbish is childish, not serious debate. I have dealt with your point comprehensively...

Comprehensively squirmed and failed to answer.

If it is impossible to build socialism in one country, developed or underdeveloped, why is the state of Russia's development of any concern? Had Russia been super-developed it still couldn't have acheived socialism.

If you believe that the situation in Russia was unripe because of underdevelopment, you're a Menshevik; if you believe that Russia could industrialise its way to socialism, you're a Stalinsit.

Go on, I know it's hard for some Trotskyists, caught between Stalinism and Social Democracy, but go on, think for a moment. Think about what the phrase 'world revolution' actually means. Consider that what was established in Russia was not what Lenin and Trotsky originally had in mind. That gives you the necessary tools to consider that you don't actually have to support every decision they made (you know, even the bad ones).

...

Because it is obvious from their writings, they try to give an honest assessment at all times, pointing out the pros and cons, the dangers as well as trying to stay positive and so on. If you bothered to actually read any of their stuff instead of just repeat heresay you would know.

support

You have no idea what you are talking about. You dont even know the basics of Marxism. You haven't even read the Communist Maifesto, evidently, where Marx and Engels talk about "establishment of industrial armies". You know virtually nothing about these issues. Trotsky's militarisation of labour idea was probably wrong at the time, but he proposed it for good reasons and it wasnt a particularly big deal.

...

An admission that Trotsky might sometimes made mistakes is a start.

But claiming I've never read the Manifesto is... somewhat ludicrous.

...
Can I remind you that Trotsky was the only person who ever led a revolution which was aimed to achieve socialism, and for the first few years succeeded...

'Succeeded in aiming'? That's about right. 'First few years'? That's about right too. See, it's not difficult, we can reach political agreement.

...
All it means is that the economy was publicly owned. Get that into your skull ffs.

Yeah...

And some of us don't see that as being anything to be happy about.

Omsk

16th March 2012, 22:27

Trotsky neither murdered anyone nor told lies about them

He lied about how Stalin poisoned Lenin,remember,we talked about this,but you decided to ignore me and stick with your cultish approach.He lied about a number of things regarding Stalin.

daft punk

17th March 2012, 11:26

Do you know why I didn't see that? Because I actually thought you knoew what you were talking about.

Robbo is not a Left Communist. So when you said there was a Left Communist who said the the revolution was premature, and I scoffed at the notion and said it didn't sound like the position of a Left Communist, then asked you to link to the post where a Left Communist said that and you linked to a post by someone who isn't a Left Communuist and then said you had done... well.

Maybe you could go and study the history of the SPGB. Also known as the Socialist Party.

Then maybe you could go and study the Communist Left.

Or even, maybe, ask questions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Party_of_Great_Britain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossibilism
Part of a series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Left_communism) on Left communism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_communism)

"Left Communists see themselves to the left of Leninists (whom they tend to see as 'left of capital', not socialists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism)), anarchist communists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism) (some of whom they consider internationalist socialists) as well as some other revolutionary socialist tendencies (for example De Leonists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Leonism), who they tend to see as being internationalist socialists only in limited instances)."

http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/i/m.htm
http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/e.htm#sectarianism
http://www.marxists.org/archive/#left-communism
http://www.marxists.org/subject/spgb/index.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_left_communists

etc.

anyway, who cares. Just because you dont include them doesnt mean you have to talk to me like an idiot.

You don't read anything anyone else puts in front of you, why should I?

I said Trotsky HAD them murderered. He didn't do it himself, silly. Can't see him volunteering to go across the ice, no leave that to the 'loyal' Workers Opposition, and just to make sure we'll put a Cheka detatchment behind them to make sure no-one turns back.

Ah, so you think I thought you thought Trotsky single handedly put down the mutiny and the thousands of Reds who crawled across the ice was just a dream. Interesting how your mind works.

Anyway, to the facts:

"The truth of the matter is that I personally did not participate in the least in the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion, nor in the repressions following the suppression. In my eyes this very fact is of no political significance. I was a member of the government, I considered the quelling of the rebellion necessary and therefore bear responsibility for the suppression. Only within these limits have I replied to criticism up to now. But when moralists begin to annoy me personally, accusing me of exceeding cruelty not called forth by circumstance, I consider that I have a right to say: “Messrs, moralists, you are lying a bit.” The rebellion broke out during my stay in the Urals. From the Urals I came directly to Moscow for the 10th Congress of the party. The decision to suppress the rebellion by military force, if the fortress could not be induced to surrender, first by peace negotiations, then through an ultimatum – this general decision was adopted with my direct participation. But after the decision was taken, I continued to remain in Moscow and took no part, direct or indirect, in the military operations. Concerning the subsequent repressions, they were completely the affair of the Cheka.
How did it happen that I did not go personally to Kronstadt? The reason was of a political nature. The rebellion broke out during the discussion on the so-called “trade union” question. The political work in Kronstadt was wholly in the hands of the Petrograd committee, at the head of which stood Zinoviev. The same Zinoviev was the chief, most untiring and passionate leader in the struggle against me in the discussion."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/07/kronstadt2.htm

Comprehensively squirmed and failed to answer.

If it is impossible to build socialism in one country, developed or underdeveloped, why is the state of Russia's development of any concern? Had Russia been super-developed it still couldn't have acheived socialism.

If you believe that the situation in Russia was unripe because of underdevelopment, you're a Menshevik; if you believe that Russia could industrialise its way to socialism, you're a Stalinsit.

Go on, I know it's hard for some Trotskyists, caught between Stalinism and Social Democracy, but go on, think for a moment. Think about what the phrase 'world revolution' actually means. Consider that what was established in Russia was not what Lenin and Trotsky originally had in mind. That gives you the necessary tools to consider that you don't actually have to support every decision they made (you know, even the bad ones).

Your simplistic formula is a gross travesty if you call yourself a Marxist, which I'm not actually sure about.

Yes socialism is impossible in one country. But socialism is much easier in an advanced country, and much harder in a backward one. This is basic Marxist ABC. So, an advanced country couldnt ever be 100% socialist on it's own, because the economy is global, and because it would be under attack from other countries. But at least it had the material base Marx wrote so much about, and most importantly, most of the population are educated workers. So it could move much quicker towards socialism. A backward country has hardly any working class, period. So obviously things are much more difficult. I dont see why you cant grasp this basic point.

Marx:
"this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced"
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm

So the need for the revolution to be international wasnt just for the above reasons, but was to get assistance in "this development of productive forces" to avoid the "old filthy business" being reproduced.

Marx described the peasants as reactionary. Well in a backward country like Russia, the vast majority of the population are peasants and therefore reactionary, and therefore no interested in socialism, so of course the backwardness of a country is important. A revolution happens when it can, and when it does it has to achieve what it can, move as close towards socialism as possible, and try to spread to other countries, especially advanced ones who can provide the necessary development of productive forces.

Stalin actually did that, but the key thing is the development of the productive forces did not come with any desire by Stalin for socialism, the regime had degenerated in the 1920s when the conditions were backward.

See if you can understand the above because if not you have zero chance of understanding any of this. This is the most basic aspect of Marxism.

The problems they faced were the extreme backwardness of the economy. It was backward to start with, and even further devastated by WW1 and the civil war.

This is what a typical Russian looked like

http://img3.photographersdirect.com/img/262/wm/pd2794958.jpg

and many didn't even have a horse. No horse, no tools, nothing. Socialism is built by industrial workers, not by peasants. Before 1917 the Bolsheviks were stagists, which is a simplistic version of Marxism, believing the Russia was only capable of a bourgeois revolution. This was standard Marxist belief, for obvious reasons. A peasant cannot build socialism. He must be led by the urban workers. But in Russia there were very few urban workers.

"Approximately 110 million people lived in Russia in 1900, 97 million of which were peasant farmers, three million were industrial workers, about a million made up the aristocracy and half a million or so were from the professional classes. Russia was socially and economically backward in contrast to the other Great Powers, although it was beginning to undergo rapid industrialisation in the cities as it attempted to catch up with the USA, Germany, Great Britain, France and Japan. The vast majority of Russians were peasant farmers who lived an almost medieval existence of dependence upon the soil and the local aristocracy. By 1900 the peasantry was growing rapidly and there was a hunger for land that was predominantly in the hands of the aristocracy. "
http://www.johndclare.net/Russ1_redruth.htm

An admission that Trotsky might sometimes made mistakes is a start.

But claiming I've never read the Manifesto is... somewhat ludicrous.

The manifesto says all sorts of stuff in agreement with what I am saying and contrary to what you are saying. It says capitalism creates the working class who become the revolutionaries, and that the peasants are reactionary. So clearly socialist revolution in a backward country could only succeed with material help from advanced ones.

Think of a piece of kindling. You cant run a boiler just using kindling, but it is enough to light the fire. But then you need supplies of wood or coal for a proper fire. Russia could be a catalyst, the spark.

read it again
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/

'Succeeded in aiming'? That's about right. 'First few years'? That's about right too. See, it's not difficult, we can reach political agreement.

ah, some progress

"All it means is that the economy was publicly owned."
Yeah...

And some of us don't see that as being anything to be happy about.

To make a cake you need an egg and some flour. If you only have the flour it is not a cake, it is not half a cake, but it is half of what you need, it is progress on nothing, it is a start.

In the phrase "degenerated workers state", "workers state" means a publicly owned planned economy. Russia had that, the "flour". It did not have workers democracy so it was missing the "egg". This lack of an egg is represented by the word "degenerated." In fact the Stalinists built a special egg barrier around what they had, with Trotsky on the outside trying to chuck eggs over. The Stalinists did not want a cake.

Blake's Baby

17th March 2012, 12:54

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Party_of_Great_Britain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossibilism
Part of a series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Left_communism) on Left communism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_communism)

"Left Communists see themselves to the left of Leninists (whom they tend to see as 'left of capital', not socialists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism)), anarchist communists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism) (some of whom they consider internationalist socialists) as well as some other revolutionary socialist tendencies (for example De Leonists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Leonism), who they tend to see as being internationalist socialists only in limited instances)."

http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/i/m.htm
http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/e.htm#sectarianism
http://www.marxists.org/archive/#left-communism
http://www.marxists.org/subject/spgb/index.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_left_communists

etc.

anyway, who cares. Just because you dont include them doesnt mean you have to talk to me like an idiot...

Contrariwise, just because you don't know what you're talking about, doen't mean everyone else should have to try to divine your meaning.

Left Communists and the Impossiblists of the SPGB are not the same thing. Therefore, when you confuse one with the other (as you did in the Cornish comrade's thread when you seemed to think I was an SPGBer) the problem is yours, not ours. I'm sure you would be quick to correct me if I thought you were a Spart or Schachtmanite or some other tendency you weren't part of. If you're gonna lump people together and confuse the positions of one group for another, you have to expect to be picked up on it.

...Ah, so you think I thought you thought Trotsky single handedly put down the mutiny and the thousands of Reds who crawled across the ice was just a dream. Interesting how your mind works...

Well, obviously you're right my mind is very interesting.

You claimed I'd said Trotsky murdered the Kronstadters. I didn't. I said he had them murdered (and then told lies about them).

...
Your simplistic formula is a gross travesty if you call yourself a Marxist, which I'm not actually sure about...

I'm not particularly bothered about what you do or don't think about what I believe, but any learning process is useful so I'll let you work it out for yourself instead of just giving you an answer.

...Yes socialism is impossible in one country. But socialism is much easier in an advanced country, and much harder in a backward one...

No, to quote something wise someone said (yes, alright, it was you, only a sentence ago) "socialism is impossible in one country". Therefore it's impossible if the country is economically backward, it's impossible if the country is economically advanced. Had the revolution taken place in America, or Britain, or Germany, or Japan, or France, or Italy, or China, or Australia, or anywhere else, it would not have been able to acheive socialism if it was isolated. Therefore, backwardness is not an issue.

Backward country? = no socialism.
Advanced country? = no socialism.

...
This is basic Marxist ABC. So, an advanced country couldnt ever be 100% socialist on it's own, because the economy is global, and because it would be under attack from other countries. But at least it had the material base Marx wrote so much about, and most importantly, most of the population are educated workers. So it could move much quicker towards socialism...

Not without a world revolution it couldn't. It might be able to stave off the degeneration a little longer - frankly, we don't know, because we've never been able to run the comparison. But it can't 'advance towards socialism' because socialism isn't an additive process, it's not about p[utting more and more socialist features into capitalism until one day you go 'hey yesterday we were 49.9% socialist, today we're 50.1% soicialist, woo-hoo we've done it'. Socialism involves the revolutionary suppression of capitalism and the state worldwide. What existed in Russia was far from socialism; it wasn't even really the dictatorship of the proletariat after 1919, which itself takes place in a capitalist economy. So, not even the final stage of capitalism in Russia.

... A backward country has hardly any working class, period. So obviously things are much more difficult. I dont see why you cant grasp this basic point...

Well, it's possible to think of very backward working classes... a large but uneducated but still proletarian sector. So I'm unsure as to whether I accept that point even as philosophical idea. As to 'difficult', difficualt to do what? Even a large and advanced and educated working class can't build socialism in one country, so what exactly is 'difficult' for a small or uneducated working class?

If you mean, it's more difficult for a small and/or uneducated working class to excercise the dictatorship of the proletariat, I might agree. But the dictatorship of the proletariat isn't socialism. It's capitalism.

...Marx:
"this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced"
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm

...

Absolutely.

And the development of productive forces in the world was sufficient for the Russian revolution - because it wasn't a national revolution, it was part of the world revolution, it wasn't aimed at setting up Russia as a 'red bastion', it wasn't a bourgeois revolution aimed at devloping Russian capitalism. In other words, Lenin and Trotsky were right in 1917. That's what I believe anyway, you may disagree of course (as do the SPGB - important point of difference between SPGBers and Left Communists).

...So the need for the revolution to be international wasnt just for the above reasons, but was to get assistance in "this development of productive forces" to avoid the "old filthy business" being reproduced. ..

Don't understand why what you've said here is any different from what Marx said that I (and Trotsky) agree with - that the revolution is (not needs to be) international, for those reasons.

...Marx described the peasants as reactionary. Well in a backward country like Russia, the vast majority of the population are peasants and therefore reactionary, and therefore no interested in socialism, so of course the backwardness of a country is important...

Not really. Important if the task in the country is to build socialism, but as it isn't, that doesn't come into it. In 1917, the majority of the world's population were not proletarians, so how would the revolution worldwide have been inb a significantly different situation from the proletariat in Russia, if the determining criterion is numerical relationship of peasants to proletarians?

What you seem not to realise is that assuming that relative weight of proletraians to peasants, on either a local or global scale, is the determining factor in degeneration, means that Marx was wrong in the quote you just provided, Trotsky was wrong to theorise permanent revolution, and Lenin was wrong in the April Theses. Now, while there's no phlosophical problem with claiming that they're all wrong (we're not relifgious after all, we don't think these people are spouting the word of god) I think it behoves you to explain why you think they're wrong.

... A revolution happens when it can, and when it does it has to achieve what it can, move as close towards socialism as possible, and try to spread to other countries, especially advanced ones who can provide the necessary development of productive forces...

OK. I think here we have a real disagreement. I don't believe that a 'revolution' happens 'where it can'.

1 - if it's a local event aimed at replacing the ruling class with another ruling class it's a coup not a revolution.

2 - if it's a real revolution it is part of a worldwide movement - the international proletariat makes revolutions, as Marx makes clear in the quote you excerpted and I emboldened.

The proletariat can fail to make a revolution, or it can have local successes because of local conditions (this is where the essential truth of the 'weakest link' theory lies - the condition of capitalism in different parts of the world is different) and other local failures - if we compare Russia to Germany then obviously the revolution in Russia was more successful initially than the revolution in Germany. But as socialism isn't an additive process (this is reformism by the back door) it's a revolutionary process a single territory cannot 'move close to socialism'. It can only hold on and help the working class in other areas to launch their own revolutionary attempts. That 'holding on' process is going in reverse; isolated, there is inevitable decline.

...Stalin actually did that, but the key thing is the development of the productive forces did not come with any desire by Stalin for socialism, the regime had degenerated in the 1920s when the conditions were backward.

See if you can understand the above because if not you have zero chance of understanding any of this. This is the most basic aspect of Marxism. ..

Wait, what? The most basic aspect of Marxism is something that conrtadicts what Marx said, and that Lenin and Trotsky didn't agree with? Nice definition of 'Marxism' you have there.

... The problems they faced were the extreme backwardness of the economy. It was backward to start with, and even further devastated by WW1 and the civil war.

This is what a typical Russian looked like

http://img3.photographersdirect.com/img/262/wm/pd2794958.jpg

and many didn't even have a horse. No horse, no tools, nothing. Socialism is built by industrial workers, not by peasants. Before 1917 the Bolsheviks were stagists, which is a simplistic version of Marxism, believing the Russia was only capable of a bourgeois revolution. This was standard Marxist belief, for obvious reasons. A peasant cannot build socialism. He must be led by the urban workers. But in Russia there were very few urban workers.

"Approximately 110 million people lived in Russia in 1900, 97 million of which were peasant farmers, three million were industrial workers, about a million made up the aristocracy and half a million or so were from the professional classes. Russia was socially and economically backward in contrast to the other Great Powers, although it was beginning to undergo rapid industrialisation in the cities as it attempted to catch up with the USA, Germany, Great Britain, France and Japan. The vast majority of Russians were peasant farmers who lived an almost medieval existence of dependence upon the soil and the local aristocracy. By 1900 the peasantry was growing rapidly and there was a hunger for land that was predominantly in the hands of the aristocracy. "
http://www.johndclare.net/Russ1_redruth.htm

...

And without a world revolution the ratio of peasants to workers in a single territory is totally irrelevant, unless you believe that socialism is possible in one country (ie you're a Stalinist), or if you believe that everywhere needs to be developed before there is a national revolution (ie you're a Menshevik) or you believe that it's possible under the right conditions to add your way to socialsm (ie you're a Reformist). As I'm none of those things but it seems to me you're advocating all of them, it's over to you.

...
The manifesto says all sorts of stuff in agreement with what I am saying and contrary to what you are saying. It says capitalism creates the working class who become the revolutionaries, and that the peasants are reactionary. So clearly socialist revolution in a backward country could only succeed with material help from advanced ones...

A socialist revolution in an advanced country can only succeed with material help from all other countries. Have you any idea how much western 'advanced' economies import? How is a revolution in Britain going to work now if the British workers have no shoes and no bread and no parts for the transport network and all the busses fall to bits?

... Think of a piece of kindling. You cant run a boiler just using kindling, but it is enough to light the fire. But then you need supplies of wood or coal for a proper fire. Russia could be a catalyst, the spark...

Agreed. But you don't get sparks unless there's something hot somewhere, and that's the world revolution. The revolution in Russia was the symptom not the cause of the international revolutionary wave, though events in Russia were certainly a catalyst to further developments around the world.

...

read it again
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/

ah, some progress...

Indeed. As Trotsky said to Lenin.

...
To make a cake you need an egg and some flour. If you only have the flour it is not a cake, it is not half a cake, but it is half of what you need, it is progress on nothing, it is a start.

In the phrase "degenerated workers state", "workers state" means a publicly owned planned economy. Russia had that, the "flour". It did not have workers democracy so it was missing the "egg". This lack of an egg is represented by the word "degenerated." In fact the Stalinists built a special egg barrier around what they had, with Trotsky on the outside trying to chuck eggs over. The Stalinists did not want a cake.

To make a revolution, and to make it successful, you need it to happen wordwide. You cannot have a revolution in one country that does anything other than stagnate, go into reverse, and succumb to counter-revolution.

It can't go forward. It can't develop 'national socialism'. So that's out. Its progress has been blocked through its isolation and it can't deepen stuck in one country - not even an advanced one.

Unfortunately for the Trotskyists, it can't just stay in a kind of static frozen indeterminate state, it's not Schrodinger's Revolution, the revolutionary cat is either thriving (and escaping from the box) or dying and not escaping. There is no quantum revolution where for 70 years it just exists marking time until the world catches up. Rosa realised this in 1918. It's a travesty that the Trotskyists are still pedalling this absurd dogma that was out of date 90 years ago.

daft punk

17th March 2012, 16:07

Contrariwise, just because you don't know what you're talking about, doen't mean everyone else should have to try to divine your meaning.

Left Communists and the Impossiblists of the SPGB are not the same thing. Therefore, when you confuse one with the other (as you did in the Cornish comrade's thread when you seemed to think I was an SPGBer) the problem is yours, not ours. I'm sure you would be quick to correct me if I thought you were a Spart or Schachtmanite or some other tendency you weren't part of. If you're gonna lump people together and confuse the positions of one group for another, you have to expect to be picked up on it.

Not all Left Coms are the same either. Even Trotsky's wife sometimes gets labelled as a left com. The fact is that some people would classify SPGB as left com because they share some of the beliefs of other left coms. I didnt lump them together, I asked a question. Obviously you and Robbo are at two extremes on the backward thing, he thinks Russia was too backward for socialism, you think it's not relevant. The correct view is neither one extreme nor the other.

Well, obviously you're right my mind is very interesting.

You claimed I'd said Trotsky murdered the Kronstadters. I didn't. I said he had them murdered (and then told lies about them).

this is really stupid, please stop

I'm not particularly bothered about what you do or don't think about what I believe, but any learning process is useful so I'll let you work it out for yourself instead of just giving you an answer.

lol

No, to quote something wise someone said (yes, alright, it was you, only a sentence ago) "socialism is impossible in one country". Therefore it's impossible if the country is economically backward, it's impossible if the country is economically advanced. Had the revolution taken place in America, or Britain, or Germany, or Japan, or France, or Italy, or China, or Australia, or anywhere else, it would not have been able to acheive socialism if it was isolated. Therefore, backwardness is not an issue.

Backward country? = no socialism.
Advanced country? = no socialism.

You can repeat your simplistic garbage til you are blue in the face, it doesn't mean you will ever get off the starting block to understanding any of this, you have nailed your foot to it.

Can I ask, do you consider yourself a Marxist?

Not without a world revolution it couldn't. It might be able to stave off the degeneration a little longer - frankly, we don't know, because we've never been able to run the comparison. But it can't 'advance towards socialism' because socialism isn't an additive process, it's not about p[utting more and more socialist features into capitalism until one day you go 'hey yesterday we were 49.9% socialist, today we're 50.1% soicialist, woo-hoo we've done it'. Socialism involves the revolutionary suppression of capitalism and the state worldwide. What existed in Russia was far from socialism; it wasn't even really the dictatorship of the proletariat after 1919, which itself takes place in a capitalist economy. So, not even the final stage of capitalism in Russia.

So according to you socialism will never happen, because to happen it has to miraculously start simultaneously in all the countries of the world.

You should think about doing some reading, Marx for example, the basics of Marxism. Tell me, if socialism isn't an additive process what is it? A miracle? A miraculous overnight transformation? Of course you need a revolution, and they had that.

Originally Posted by daft punk http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2387859#post2387859)
"... A backward country has hardly any working class, period. So obviously things are much more difficult. I dont see why you cant grasp this basic point... "

Well, it's possible to think of very backward working classes... a large but uneducated but still proletarian sector. So I'm unsure as to whether I accept that point even as philosophical idea.

No it isnt. The working class are generally educated. At least most are literate and numerate.

As to 'difficult', difficualt to do what?

To run the country. Please read Lenin's speech to Congress in 1922. Read this and then you will know what you need to know:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm

He talks about what is needed so that the communist workers can run the economy.

Even a large and advanced and educated working class can't build socialism in one country, so what exactly is 'difficult' for a small or uneducated working class?

I thought I already explained. According to Marx, only the working class can build socialism. In Russia only about 5% of the population was working class, therefore you only have 5% of the population to build socialism. The other 95% are mostly backward peasants who will only go along whith the revolution while the workers lead, and only for so long. Read On Cooperation by Lenin.

If you mean, it's more difficult for a small and/or uneducated working class to excercise the dictatorship of the proletariat, I might agree.

No. I mean run an economy. Even the workers didnt know how to do it, let alone the peasants. Because of this the Bolsheviks had to use the old bureaucracy of the Tsar. This privileged elite was not very interested in socialism. They later became Stalin's base.

But the dictatorship of the proletariat isn't socialism. It's capitalism.

ridiculous
The dictatorship of the proletariat is capitalism? Do you not see how absurd this sounds? The proletariat overthrow the rule of the capitalist class to get.....no change. Great. Nationalising the economy means nothing, the workers in power means nothing. What does mean anything?

"
Originally Posted by daft punk http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2387859#post2387859)
...Marx:
"this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced""
Absolutely.

And the development of productive forces in the world was sufficient for the Russian revolution - because it wasn't a national revolution, it was part of the world revolution, it wasn't aimed at setting up Russia as a 'red bastion', it wasn't a bourgeois revolution aimed at devloping Russian capitalism. In other words, Lenin and Trotsky were right in 1917. That's what I believe anyway, you may disagree of course (as do the SPGB - important point of difference between SPGBers and Left Communists).

Yes you are right, and I am surprised you picked up on that bit in brackets, but that is correct. But the point still stands that backward conditions lead to the old filthy business and isolated or not, Russia was backward and therefore faced greater problems than if they were advanced.

Suppose there was no world war or civil war, and Russia had an advanced economy. At least they would have the material base for socialism. At least there wouldn't be millions of hungry people. You have to understand that conditions in Russia were very grim. In fact the size of the working class actually shrank as workers were killed by Germans or the Whites, or went back to the fields. To build socialism you have to have the people on board, and to get that you have to feed them and offer advances such as electricity, consumer goods and so on.

Dont mix up the Permanent Revolution and the bit in brackets with the terrible circumstances in Russia. Even if revolution had started in advanced countries who were prepared to help Russia, it would still be a struggle in such a backward place. The revolution went downhill because it was isolated and because it was backward. Both are important.

Why do you think it has to be international? For advanced countries it is so the economy can be global and so they dont get attacked. If it wasnt for fear of attack you could just about have socialism in one country. But for backward countries the need for international backup is also to help get the material conditions - industry, for socialism. The material basis for socialism is the creation of industry and an educated urban working class who are capable of running the industry.

Originally Posted by daft punk http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2387859#post2387859)
"...So the need for the revolution to be international wasnt just for the above reasons, but was to get assistance in "this development of productive forces" to avoid the "old filthy business" being reproduced. .. "

Don't understand why what you've said here is any different from what Marx said that I (and Trotsky) agree with - that the revolution is (not needs to be) international, for those reasons.

see above

Originally Posted by daft punk http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2387859#post2387859)
"...Marx described the peasants as reactionary. Well in a backward country like Russia, the vast majority of the population are peasants and therefore reactionary, and therefore no interested in socialism, so of course the backwardness of a country is important... "
Not really. Important if the task in the country is to build socialism, but as it isn't, that doesn't come into it.
what? They were aiming for world socialism.

In 1917, the majority of the world's population were not proletarians, so how would the revolution worldwide have been inb a significantly different situation from the proletariat in Russia, if the determining criterion is numerical relationship of peasants to proletarians?

There were a lot more in Britain, France, Holland, Germany, America etc.

What you seem not to realise is that assuming that relative weight of proletraians to peasants, on either a local or global scale, is the determining factor in degeneration, means that Marx was wrong in the quote you just provided, Trotsky was wrong to theorise permanent revolution, and Lenin was wrong in the April Theses. Now, while there's no phlosophical problem with claiming that they're all wrong (we're not relifgious after all, we don't think these people are spouting the word of god) I think it behoves you to explain why you think they're wrong.

Rubbish. Marx described the peasants as reactionary. If 90% of the population are peasants, 90% are reactionary, and that has to be a big hurdle just on it's own. And that was just one problem.

Yes Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky all believed that the world was ready and it had to be international. And if it had spread to advanced countries it could have succeeded. But dont ignore the difficulties. Dont ignore the fact that 95% of the population were reactionary, according to Marx, as if that makes no difference.

Trotsky, 1906:

"The proletariat in power will stand before the peasants as the class which has emancipated it."

"Left to its own resources, the working class of Russia will inevitably be crushed by the counter-revolution the moment the peasantry turns its back on it. It will have no alternative but to link the fate of its political rule, and, hence, the fate of the whole Russian revolution, with the fate of the socialist revolution in Europe."
Permanent Revolution

Trotsky's position was always that socialism in Russia could only happen with material assistance from advanced countries.

OK. I think here we have a real disagreement. I don't believe that a 'revolution' happens 'where it can'.

1 - if it's a local event aimed at replacing the ruling class with another ruling class it's a coup not a revolution.

2 - if it's a real revolution it is part of a worldwide movement - the international proletariat makes revolutions, as Marx makes clear in the quote you excerpted and I emboldened.

The proletariat can fail to make a revolution, or it can have local successes because of local conditions (this is where the essential truth of the 'weakest link' theory lies - the condition of capitalism in different parts of the world is different) and other local failures - if we compare Russia to Germany then obviously the revolution in Russia was more successful initially than the revolution in Germany. But as socialism isn't an additive process (this is reformism by the back door) it's a revolutionary process a single territory cannot 'move close to socialism'. It can only hold on and help the working class in other areas to launch their own revolutionary attempts. That 'holding on' process is going in reverse; isolated, there is inevitable decline.

And holding on is much more difficult in a backward and devastated country. However I disagree, they can and did take steps in the direction of socialism, even Stalin did though for entirely the wrong reasons, and in doing so for his own reasons killed off the other necessary ingredient, workers democracy.

Originally Posted by daft punk http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2387859#post2387859)
"...Stalin actually did that, but the key thing is the development of the productive forces did not come with any desire by Stalin for socialism, the regime had degenerated in the 1920s when the conditions were backward.

See if you can understand the above because if not you have zero chance of understanding any of this. This is the most basic aspect of Marxism. .. "

Wait, what? The most basic aspect of Marxism is something that conrtadicts what Marx said, and that Lenin and Trotsky didn't agree with? Nice definition of 'Marxism' you have there.

Wtf are you on about here? Nothing I have said contradicts anything of the sort.

You need to understand that up to 1917, only Trotsky thought a socialist revolution could happen in Russia. All the other Marxists thought Russia was too backward, that any revolution that happened there would be a bourgeois one, and that the socialist revolution would start in more advanced countries.

Trotsky:

"The superficially paradoxical fact that the first victim to suffer for the sins of the world-system was the bourgeoisie of a backward country, is in reality quite according to the laws of things."

"We have attributed the October revolution in the last analysis not to the fact of Russia’s backwardness, but to the law of combined development. The historical dialectic knows neither naked backwardness nor chemically pure progressiveness. It is all a question of concrete correlations. The present-day history of mankind is full of “paradoxes,” not so colossal as the arising of a proletarian dictatorship in a backward country, but of similar historic type. "
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch50.htm

And without a world revolution the ratio of peasants to workers in a single territory is totally irrelevant, unless you believe that socialism is possible in one country (ie you're a Stalinist), or if you believe that everywhere needs to be developed before there is a national revolution (ie you're a Menshevik) or you believe that it's possible under the right conditions to add your way to socialsm (ie you're a Reformist). As I'm none of those things but it seems to me you're advocating all of them, it's over to you.

pmsl! Yes I am a Stalinist, a Menshevist and a reformist. Not. Nobody is saying the international bit is not important. I am simply asking to to bear in mind the terrible backward conditions, the poverty, the small working class, the reliance on the Tsar's bureaucrats etc. If you read Trotsky and Lenin you will see this throughout all their work.

Trotsky:

"What part of his earlier views did Lenin revise in his April theses? He did not for a moment renounce either the doctrine of the international character of the socialist revolution, or the idea that the transfer to the socialist road could be realised in backward Russia only with the direct co-operation of the west. But Lenin did here for the first time declare that the Russian proletariat, owing to the very backwardness of the national conditions, might come to power before the proletariat of the advanced countries."

"During approximately the same days Trotsky wrote: “The contradiction in the situation of a workers’ government in a backward country with the peasant population an overwhelming majority can find its solution only on an international scale, in the arena of the world revolution of the proletariat.” "
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch50.htm

Trotsky:
"The Causes of October What questions does the October Revolution raise in the mind of a thinking man?

Why and how did this revolution take place? More correctly, why did the proletarian revolution conquer in one of the most backward countries in Europe?"

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/11/oct.htm

I can find you hundreds of quotes like this, all saying the same thing - that Marxists did not really think of socialism starting with revolutions in backwards countries, the basic assumption being that it would be either less likely or more difficult.

Trotsky:
"The fact that the proletariat reached power for the first time in such a backward country as the former Tsarist Russia seems mysterious only at a first glance; in reality it is fully in accord with historical law."
same link

A socialist revolution in an advanced country can only succeed with material help from all other countries. Have you any idea how much western 'advanced' economies import? How is a revolution in Britain going to work now if the British workers have no shoes and no bread and no parts for the transport network and all the busses fall to bits?

lol. Things have changed in the last 40 years. Britain was a manufacturing powerhouse up to the Thatcher era. However what we do have to some extent still is a lot of expertise, although poor countries are learning all that stuff. An Indian company now owns the remnants of British Steel.

Agreed. But you don't get sparks unless there's something hot somewhere, and that's the world revolution. The revolution in Russia was the symptom not the cause of the international revolutionary wave, though events in Russia were certainly a catalyst to further developments around the world.

cant argue with that. Good, my arms are aching from typing.

To make a revolution, and to make it successful, you need it to happen wordwide. You cannot have a revolution in one country that does anything other than stagnate, go into reverse, and succumb to counter-revolution.

It can't go forward. It can't develop 'national socialism'. So that's out. Its progress has been blocked through its isolation and it can't deepen stuck in one country - not even an advanced one.

Unfortunately for the Trotskyists, it can't just stay in a kind of static frozen indeterminate state, it's not Schrodinger's Revolution, the revolutionary cat is either thriving (and escaping from the box) or dying and not escaping. There is no quantum revolution where for 70 years it just exists marking time until the world catches up. Rosa realised this in 1918. It's a travesty that the Trotskyists are still pedalling this absurd dogma that was out of date 90 years ago.

But it could have clung on in the period 1923-8, and then perhaps Germany, Britain and China could have maybe joined up, if it had survived to 1936, Spain and France could have joined.

The Bolsheviks made the best of things but unfortunately their revolution was isolated. In a backward country.

read In Defence of October, a short speech, link above I think, for why the Russian revolution happened.

Blake's Baby

19th March 2012, 11:11

But you think it clung on until 1991. Not until 1928. After all, Left Comms think it clung on until around then - just about.

On the world-historic scale: adoption of Socialism in One Country by the CI is seen by some as the definitive end of the progressive dynamic. Suppression of the Shanghai Commune is seen by some as marking the end of the progressive dynamic. So the period of around 1927-8 is seen by many Left Comms as marking the end of the period when the SU could be 'rescued' by an extension of the world revolution. After that, it was definitively lost as a gain for the working class, for most Left Communists.

In Russia itself: the last confused proletarian currents leaving (or being expelled from) the CPSU is seen by some as the end of the progressive dynamic (yes, that means for some Left Communists that the CPSU ceased to be a proletarian organisation when the Trotskyists were expelled, because we regard Troskyism between 1924-1941 as being a proletarian current, if a confused one). So again, the period 1924-8 is seen as the time when the counter-revolution comes to triumph in Russia.

So, if in general the Left Comms see Russia as having succumbed finally to the counter-revolution between 1924-8, and indeed the revolutionary wave as having ended then too (not that these facts are unrelated of course), how is that any different to your notion that it could have 'hung on' until 1928 (I disagree, I think it could only have hung on until 1927 but the difference is small to say the least)?

Because it seems to me that what you're saying is that there was no proletarian content in the SU after 1928 and therefore I can't see why its defence was seen as a necessary task for the working class. Which is what the major plank of contention between Trotskyism and Left Communism is. Why would Trotskyism support the SU after 1928 if it had no proletarian content, as you imply?