Wall Street & Bolshevism

[Comrade #138672]

According to some people, the Bolsheviks were funded by Wall Street bankers. They are trying to establish a link between Bolshevism and Wall Street.

They gave me these two references:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=7GhPsJCXPqY

http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/bolshevik_revolution/

What do Communists have to say about this? Is it just the same old anti-Semitic conspiracy theory propaganda? Or is there some truth to their statements, which they, of course, bend and distort, so that it serves their interests?

[Ostrinski]

We'd be wasting our time if we made the decision to dish out energy in the purpose of responding to every dumbfuck says something scandalous or sensational on the internet.

It only becomes a problem when people start to actually listen to these folks, and or if this becomes a broader trend in professional academia wherein the former result would come to fruition.

[Comrade #138672]

We'd be wasting our time if we made the decision to dish out energy in the purpose of responding to every dumbfuck says something scandalous or sensational on the internet.Well, somebody took the time to write a whole book about it. I keep hearing about this argument from libertarians and 'Anarchists'. I've been given the book twice now. Apparently it has gained some popularity. So that's why I think it deserves at least a little bit of attention from us.

[Questionable]

"Reformed Theology"

I think that answers your question.

[Comrade #138672]

"Reformed Theology"

I think that answers your question.To be honest, I have never heard about that before. Can you tell me more about it and how it relates to this subject?

[Questionable]

To be honest, I have never heard about that before. Can you tell me more about it and how it relates to this subject?

Well the website hosting that book appears to be another extremist Christian end-is-nigh website asking America to leave their Liberal-Marxist-Islamist ways and repent to the Almighty God.

I know it's not exactly a critical rebuttal of the book but the people pushing this book should not be ignored. It's like asking for a rebuttal to one of the countless Neo-nazi websites that claim the Ukrainian famine was a genocide against white people.

[hetz]

I've heard of that before, that there were some American bankers and such who sent some money to the Bolsheviks.
Is there a reliable source on this?

[Jason]

How would sending money to Bolsheviks benefit Wall Street? This seems to be a no brainer. :rolleyes:

Yeah, I want to send money to people dedicated to nationalizing my industries. :(

[Red Banana]

How would sending money to Bolsheviks benefit Wall Street? This seems to be a no brainer. :rolleyes:

Yeah, I want to send money to people dedicated to nationalizing my industries. :(

Maybe they thought they could get a little in return for it. Foreign capitalists/states often give aid to a new regime after it takes power regardless of whatever their politics are to preserve their interests in a country.

Whether or not that was the case with Russia, I don't know, but I would guess that it wasn't.

[Questionable]

Maybe they thought they could get a little in return for it. Foreign capitalists/states often give aid to a new regime after it takes power regardless of whatever their politics are to preserve their interests in a country.

Whether or not that was the case with Russia, I don't know, but I would guess that it wasn't.

Whatever their initial intentions were I think the fact that billions of dollars went towards creating bulwarks against communism during the Cold War pretty much proves that things didn't go quite as planned.

[Red Commissar]

This is a lite version of zog conspiracy theories. The basic gist was Jewish bankers bankrolled Lenin and co. in order to make it easier for them to rule the world or some nonsense like that, because they could create enough division and chaos to swoop in and force their agenda on Europe and soon the world.

Sutton, the guy who wrote this book basically took this position but took out the overtly anti-Semitic bullshit by claiming that US financiers and industrial interests as awhole wanted to essentially remove Tsarist Russia as a competitor and transform it into a slave state where they could do as they wished. In between the Soviet Union in the east, the rise of Fascism in Europe, and the introduction of varying degrees Keynesian policies in western liberal democracies, he claimed a small group of elites were plotting to force collectivization on the masses by making them dependent on them. All of this apparently falls back on the fear the Soviet Union was causing, giving them a pretext to assert policy in anti-communist endeavors.

He attempts to prove this by showing that some western firms were instrumental in establishing the industrial base of the Soviet Union. This is true- the Soviet government contracted the aid of some industrial experts and bought machinery from factories about the be closed. Most of us have seen an effect of this recently with the Koch brothers, whose father had made his fortune helping the Soviet Union explore natural gas and oil in the country.

Sutton however asks his readers to take a leap of faith with him that these events were intentionally done by a group of shadowy industrialists and bankers to advance their plot to centralize global economies and collectivize everything. That's the second time I've used the word "collectivize", so you should get the point now that Sutton was a pissed off liberal who feared for his precious free markets when some countries began to introduce regulations. Of course to him, no true lover of the FREE MARKET would willing do this, but insidious corporate bastards who wanted no competition and easy money (CORPORATE SOCIALISM as the kiddos scream).

So that all gets wrapped up into a far reaching global conspiracy that started with the Russian Revolution, and will presumably end in a dystopian, collectivist nightmare like something that Ayn Rand probably had night terrors over.

But again, there is no proof that this happened at all. The line of reasoning (if you can call it that) is that basically because the Soviets took this aid, that it was planned from the beginning and was part of a plot. How that is the case is never explained, the book just assumes that because these interactions occurred that there is no possible reason otherwise that a capitalist would interact with the Bolsheviks.

The guys who read this are the same who've been eating up books about the need to return to the gold standard, ending central banking, and other stuff rooted in classical economics that there's a need to return to the fundamentals of free market before it's too late. The problem is that these guys intersect with anti-corporate jargon because these guys, in their idealized economy, corporations could not possibly exist if there was real competition with no interference from the government. It's in this way they've been picking up otherwise good intentioned people by making them think capitalism is the solution to... capitalism?

The thing that they miss here is something that has been discussed before with critiques of capitalism. Capitalism as it developed tended towards centralization of production and distribution, as well as the tightening of monetary policy (which is apparently seen as "collectivization" by Randroids, lolbertarians, angry "classical liberals" and other people from the peanut gallery). Sutton and other liberal idealists claim that the only reason why this has happened is because capitalism was corrupted by these greedy elites with their collectivist NWO aspirations, not, as others saw as the natural tendency for capitalism to develop in such a direction.

You may find people who believe in this, but we tend to be in circles outside the normal political realm to begin with. At the end of the day no one really took Sutton's claims seriously, a fact that he attributes to 'persecution' from these devious elite presumably.

No discussion over class. No discussion over ownership of means of production. No discussion over the state. Just a dumb conspiracy theory.

[Jason]

The whole anti-semitism thing has a "devil made me do it" ring to it. Ultimately, it's just a big excuse.