Deformed vs Degenerate Workers State?

[Malesori]

What is the precise theoretical and analytical difference between the "Deformed Workers State" and the "Degenerated Workers State"?

[Blake's Baby]

One was once a workers' state that the bureaucracy then took over. (ie the Soviet Union) The other was a state that was taken over and re-organised by the former (eg East Germany). Blowed if I can remember which was which, they're both state-capitalist dictatorships as far as I'm concerned.

[Devrim]

One was once a workers' state that the bureaucracy then took over. (ie the Soviet Union) The other was a state that was taken over and re-organised by the former (eg East Germany). Blowed if I can remember which was which, they're both state-capitalist dictatorships as far as I'm concerned.

Degenerated is the USSR and deformed is East Germany.

Devrim

[kashkin]

I have never really understood the difference in practice though.

[LOLseph Stalin]

I have never really understood the difference in practice though.

In practice there's really not too much difference. Both are degraded bureaucratic states.

[Buck]

If you are a Marxist this concept is completely and utterly ridiculous, not to mention being anti Marxist. First you claim that workers have a state. Workers have no state except the one imposed on them, example: USSR under Lenin and Trotsky administration; red terror, political suppression, eliminating the soviets, prisions forced work camps, anti unionize, wage labor, capital accumulation, exploitation, Kronstadt, secret police, elite rule, vanguardism, etc. Workers have not state. Also Trotsky is making the complete and utterly unmarxist assumption that capitalist distribution relations (the privileges of the Stalinist bureaucracy) could exist on the basis of socialist production relations. Marx, by contrast, had concluded, from a study of past and present societies, that the mode of distribution was entirely determined by the mode of production. Thus the existence of privileged distribution relations in Russia should itself have been sufficient proof that Russia had nothing to do with socialism.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Bolsheviks-Leninists do not claim that the Soviet Union was socialist in the sense of having advanced to the lower stages of the communist society. As for the rest of your post, it is amusing to see you accuse people of not being Marxists when you ignore the necessity of a transitional stage (argued for in the Critique of the Gotha Programme and obvious to anyone who does not think metaphysically) and the existence of a state to suppress the remnants of the oppressing classes and groups during the transitional period (obvious from the Marxist theory of state as the instrument of class dictatorship).

[Buck]

What Trotsky was saying is that the Russian revolution had established a "Workers State" in Russia (whatever that might be) and that this represented a gain for the working class both of Russia and of the whole world. His view that Russia under Stalin was a Workers State, not a perfect one, certainly, but a Workers State nevertheless, was set out in his book The Revolution Betrayed first published in 1936. He claimed that Russia is a "degenerate Workers State" in which a bureaucracy had usurped political power from the working class but without changing the social basis (nationalization and planning). This view is so absurd as to be hardly worth considering seriously: how could the adjective "workers" be applied to a regime where workers could be sent to a labor camp for turning up late for work and shot for going on strike?
The Russian revolution, he argued, had been a capture of political power by the working class; under Lenin (and, of course, Trotsky) Russia had been developing towards socialism (state capitalism); the coming to power of Stalin represented the usurpation of political power in Russia by a bureaucracy but had left unchanged the social basis established by the Bolsheviks in 1917 — the state ownership and planning which Trotsky had always regarded as being in some way 'socialist'. For him, Russia was a 'degenerate Workers' State' in a period of transition between capitalism and socialism.
You appear to be mixing Leninist concepts with Marxist theory. The idea of a transitional society called ‘socialism’ was made famous by Lenin, though others such as William Morris also accepted the idea. In Lenin’s Political Thought (1981), Neil Harding claims that in 1917 Lenin made ‘no clear delineation’ between socialism and communism. But in fact Lenin did write in State and Revolution (1917) of a ‘scientific distinction’ between socialism and communism:

‘What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the “first”, or lower, phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production become common property, the word “communism” is also applicable here, providing we do not forget that this is not complete communism.’

The first sentence of this quote is simply untrue and Lenin probably knew it was. Marx and Engels used the terms socialism and communism interchangeably to refer to the post-revolutionary society of common ownership of the means of production. It is true that in his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) Marx wrote of a transition between a lower phase of communism and a higher phase of communism. Marx held that, because of the low level of economic development (in 1875), individual consumption would have to be rationed, possibly by the use of labour-time vouchers (similar to those advocated by Robert Owen). But in the higher phase of communism, when the forces of production had developed sufficiently, it would be according to need. It is important to realise, however, that in both phases of socialism/communism there would be no state or money economy. Lenin, on the other hand, said that socialism (or the first phase of communism) is a transitional society between capitalism and full communism, in which there is both a state and money economy. According to Lenin: ‘It follows that under communism there remains for a time not only bourgeois right, but even the bourgeois state, without the bourgeoisie!’
The concept of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ has a central place in Leninist thought. The phrase was used by Marx and Engels to mean the working class conquest of political power. In State and Revolution (1917), however, Lenin wrote of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat under the guidance of the party’. The Leninist theory of the vanguard party leads inevitably to the dictatorship over the proletariat.
This is relevant because Trotsky was a follower of Lenin, and thus believed in concepts like vanguardism, which is again, anti-marxist.
In What Is To Be Done? (1902) Lenin said: ‘the history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness’. Lenin argued that socialist consciousness had to be brought to the working class by professional revolutionaries, drawn from the petty bourgeoisie, and organised as a vanguard party. But in 1879 Marx and Engels issued a circular in which they declared:

‘When the International was formed we expressly formulated the battle cry: The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois.’
This also relevant in demonstrating that the Russian Revolution was not of a Marxist/socialist nature.
In State and Revolution (1917) Lenin said that his ‘prime task is to re-establish what Marx really taught on the subject of the state’. Lenin argued that socialism is a transitional society between capitalism and full communism, in which ‘there still remains the need for a state… For the state to wither away completely, complete communism is necessary’. Moreover, Lenin claimed that according to Marx work and wages would be guided by the ‘socialist principle’ (though in fact it comes from St Paul): ‘He who does not work shall not eat.’ (Sometimes this is reformulated as: ‘to each according to his work’.) Marx and Engels used no such ‘principle’; they made no such distinction between socialism and communism. Lenin in fact did not re-establish Marx’s position but substantially distorted it to suit the situation in which the Bolsheviks found themselves. When Stalin announced the doctrine of ‘Socialism in One Country’ (i.e. State Capitalism in Russia) he was drawing on an idea implicit in Lenin’s writings.

In State and Revolution, Lenin gave special emphasis to the concept of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. This phrase was sometimes used by Marx and Engels and meant working class conquest of power, which (unlike Lenin) they did not confuse with a socialist society. Engels had cited the Paris Commune of 1871 as an example of the dictatorship of the proletariat, though Marx in his writings on this subject did not mention this as an example, since for him it meant conquest of state power, which the Commune was not. Nevertheless, the Commune impressed itself upon Marx and Engels for its ultra-democratic features - non-hierarchical, the use of revocable delegates, etc. Lenin, on the other hand, tended to identify democracy with a state ruled by a vanguard party. When the Bolsheviks actually gained power they centralized political power more and more in the hands of the Communist Party.
I have said nothing un-marxist in the previous post. The whole purpose of the conquest of the state is not to oppress other classes, and differently not to oppress the working class, as seen in Russia against "counter revolutionaries", which lasted for the entirety of the USSR. The purpose is to put working classes in power to then dismantle the capitalist state and its institutions, not to create a "socialist" transitional stage as proposed by Trotsky and Lenin. Trotsky completely ignored this fact and thus justified brutal repression. They To say that Marx/Engels would have declared the USSR to be an example of the "rule of the proletariat" would be a dubious proposition at best. The country wasn't ripe for any socialist revolution, but a capitalist one, to over throw the Feudal system. Lenin, knowing this, referred to the USSR as State Capitalist, and tried to foster this development with the New Economic Program. The Russia "Revolution" was more a coup, with a minority vanguard seizing absolute control of the country, against the wish of the vast majority. You cannot force or bring socialism to workers, if they dont want it, as proposed by Lenin, but not Marx/Engels. The country was not ripe for socialism, with 80% of the population being peasants, completely uneducated about socialism, nor was the material condition of society ready for socialism.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

What Trotsky was saying is that the Russian revolution had established a "Workers State" in Russia (whatever that might be) and that this represented a gain for the working class both of Russia and of the whole world. His view that Russia under Stalin was a Workers State, not a perfect one, certainly, but a Workers State nevertheless, was set out in his book The Revolution Betrayed first published in 1936. He claimed that Russia is a "degenerate Workers State" in which a bureaucracy had usurped political power from the working class but without changing the social basis (nationalization and planning). This view is so absurd as to be hardly worth considering seriously: how could the adjective "workers" be applied to a regime where workers could be sent to a labor camp for turning up late for work and shot for going on strike?

In the same way in which the adjective "bourgeois" can be applied to a regime where individual bourgeoisie could be shot for displeasing the emperor. What is relevant is not the security or comfort of individual members of a class, but the material basis of society.

And, of course, repression is necessary if the proletariat is to organise itself as the ruling class. A dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible without repression; repression and terror against the remnants of the exploiting classes, repression against those that violate labour discipline etc. etc.


You appear to be mixing Leninist concepts with Marxist theory. The idea of a transitional society called ‘socialism’ was made famous by Lenin, though others such as William Morris also accepted the idea. In Lenin’s Political Thought (1981), Neil Harding claims that in 1917 Lenin made ‘no clear delineation’ between socialism and communism. But in fact Lenin did write in State and Revolution (1917) of a ‘scientific distinction’ between socialism and communism:

‘What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the “first”, or lower, phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production become common property, the word “communism” is also applicable here, providing we do not forget that this is not complete communism.’

The first sentence of this quote is simply untrue and Lenin probably knew it was. Marx and Engels used the terms socialism and communism interchangeably to refer to the post-revolutionary society of common ownership of the means of production.

The phrase "what is usually called socialism" is not identical to the phrase "what Marx and Engels called socialism"; as you might have noticed, Marxist theory and the socialist movement developed considerably in the interval between the works of Marx and Engels and "The State and the Revolution".


It is true that in his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) Marx wrote of a transition between a lower phase of communism and a higher phase of communism. Marx held that, because of the low level of economic development (in 1875), individual consumption would have to be rationed, possibly by the use of labour-time vouchers (similar to those advocated by Robert Owen).

Permit me an extended quotation from the Critique of the Gotha Programme:



What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values.

Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.

Hence, equal right here is still in principle -- bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case.

In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor.

But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only -- for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.

But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

Underdevelopment of the means of production is, of course, an important factor in the necessity of a transitional stage in which the distribution of products is strictly regulated. But it is not the only factor - the social relations that capitalism engenders and that can not be abolished at a stroke of a parliamentary pen are also relevant.


But in the higher phase of communism, when the forces of production had developed sufficiently, it would be according to need. It is important to realise, however, that in both phases of socialism/communism there would be no state or money economy.

Given that labour certificates are money, stripped of its fetishistic form, it is clear that Marx thinks that money will continue to exist in the lower stages of the communist society. As for the state, only a public power similar to the bourgeois state can enforce strict accounting and labour discipline in these lower stages.


The concept of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ has a central place in Leninist thought. The phrase was used by Marx and Engels to mean the working class conquest of political power.

This is simply not the case. Again, permit me to quote from the Critique of the Gotha Programme:


Nevertheless, the different states of the different civilized countries, in spite or their motley diversity of form, all have this in common: that they are based on modern bourgeois society, only one more or less capitalistically developed. They have, therefore, also certain essential characteristics in common. In this sense, it is possible to speak of the "present-day state" in contrast with the future, in which its present root, bourgeois society, will have died off.

The question then arises: What transformation will the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions? This question can only be answered scientifically, and one does not get a flea-hop nearer to the problem by a thousand-fold combination of the word 'people' with the word 'state'.


Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.


In What Is To Be Done? (1902) Lenin said: ‘the history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness’. Lenin argued that socialist consciousness had to be brought to the working class by professional revolutionaries, drawn from the petty bourgeoisie, and organised as a vanguard party. But in 1879 Marx and Engels issued a circular in which they declared:

‘When the International was formed we expressly formulated the battle cry: The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois.’

In "What is to be Done", Lenin talks about the origins of Marxist theory. Marx and Engels, on the other hand, talk about the political emancipation of the labouring classes, guided by Marxist theory. Apples and oranges and so on.

All of this, however, amounts to little more than finger exercise. Marxism is not a religion and the works of Marx and Engels are not the holy scripture. Do you have an actual scientific argument against Leninist theory or practice?

[Buck]

So lenin and Trotsky are some holy scripture? He argues for an elite group of individuals to rule over society, and you don't see a problem with this? I quote Marx because a that is the entire bias for Marxism, mug in the same way you point to a text by Lenin. So we should just ignore what ever people have to say on a subject? Why then follow what Trotsky said about "deformed" states or what ever, because that would then be a religion. So how to you take the theories of other people, like from Lenin, Marx, or Trotsky? You just don't? But I see that you call your self a Leninist, does that not make you a follower of Lenin, thus taking from what he said and wrote? So following the teachings of darwin, ensitien or marx makes me "religious"? The quote from Marx explians Marx's writings on this subject of leaders and vanguardism. In not one writing of Marxist theory can you find he advocating elite rule. You see we are people and we learn from others. I learn from Marx and his theories. This quotation demonstrated the Marxist view on leadership and vanguardism, to which Marxist should be opposed. If someone can lead you into something, someone can just as easily lead you out. Also this vanguard view is entirely utopian, believing that some altruistic members of the bourgeois can come and lead the stupid mass. Also it sets up a dictatorship, not of a class, but over the class. That's exactly what has happened in every single "communist" revolution, with a tiny minority taking power and then justifying oppressing by leading the people to some "holy land of communism". Vanguardism is undemocratic and creates tyranny. This is not a Marxist idea. Marxism is about liberation of the workers, not the enlightend leaders will "save our souls", rescue us and guide us, much like every system of society today. Anyone who has read Marx can understand this, and no that doesn't make me religious any more than reading Darwin and applying the theory of evolution. How does quoting Lenin in some book of his any different? Leninism is his idea, so his opinion on the subject matters as much as Marx's opinion on the subject matters because his opinion is the subject and the theory. Also Marx never suggested the creation of a transitional society, any understanding of Marxist theory will provid proof of this. He said that the workers should organize and take control of the state to destroy the state not to create as Lenin suggests, which formed the bias of socialism in one country, a transitional society where there is a state. Also labor vouchers are not money, they do not circulate or accumulate. Marx and Engels also changed their mind about this subject as the only reason these were thought up of was to combat real shortages that they believed to have existed in the 1800s, which is not at all applicable to today's society were we produce enough food to give ever person on the planet 4500 cals a day. I am also dumbfounded that you fail to see how vanguardism is a dictatorship, creating the cliamte for dictators like Lenin, Stalin, Mao etc., by eliminating opposition, centralizing all power to a few "enlightend" people, and suppressing the will of the people to the will of these "enlighten" few, who know best

[Buck]

So then what do you classify the base of a "workers" state? I say that it has a capitalist mode of production, thus making it state capitalist, despite what ever you want to call it and how are reforms like welfare and nationalization any step to socialism? It never "degenerated" it was a fuedal society that spawned a bogureois revolution to capitalism, failing in line with the materialistic concept of history as put by Karl Marx. But in calling it a workers state, what do you classify as the base, the mode of production? Surely not socialism. The entire USSR was based on a capitalist mode of production with wage labor, capital accumulation, monetary calculation etc, all under a monopoly by the state, not individual capitalist.

[Buck]

And Lenin in this, eliminated all opposition, suppressed the workers, and centralized all power in the hands of the communit party, and you say that no, vanguardism is beneficial to the revolution and doesn't lead to a dictatorship, when it is a dictatorship. The atmosphere created by Lenin allowed a Stalin to appear. Even Lenin himself was a Stalin, having his own secret police, killing millions of innocents, oh I'm sorry, counter revolutionaries, and eliminating the power of the soviets and unions, by putting them under his control.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

So lenin and Trotsky are some holy scripture?

No. Trotsky, in particular, had made quite a few mistakes. The quality of Lenin's writing is perhaps more consistent, but his works should be read critically as well.


He argues for an elite group of individuals to rule over society, and you don't see a problem with this?

Where does "he" - it isn't at all clear if you're referring to Lenin or to Trotsky - argue for that?


I quote Marx because a that is the entire bias for Marxism, mug in the same way you point to a text by Lenin. So we should just ignore what ever people have to say on a subject?

Not at all. But simply quoting Marx, without argument, is not enough.


Why then follow what Trotsky said about "deformed" states or what ever, because that would then be a religion.

It would be religious to accept the theory because Trotsky did; I accept it because I think it accurately describes the social realities in the Soviet Union. Nor do I accept everything that Trotsky wrote on the subject; I think the degeneration took place much earlier than Trotsky supposes, that the distinction between the deformed and degenerate workers' states is not important, and that there had existed an embryo of the new bourgeois class in the Soviet Union, that had come close to changing the mode of production in the sixties.


So following the teachings of darwin, ensitien or marx makes me "religious"?

If you follow their exact "teachings", it might, since evolutionary biology, the special and general theories of relativity and Marxism have developed since their work.


The quote from Marx explians Marx's writings on this subject of leaders and vanguardism. In not one writing of Marxist theory can you find he advocating elite rule.

Nor have Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao ever advocated "elite rule".


You see we are people and we learn from others. I learn from Marx and his theories. This quotation demonstrated the Marxist view on leadership and vanguardism, to which Marxist should be opposed.

What quotation?


If someone can lead you into something, someone can just as easily lead you out. Also this vanguard view is entirely utopian, believing that some altruistic members of the bourgeois can come and lead the stupid mass.

Have you even read anything by Lenin? The vanguard party - a concept that is implicit in Marx and that was emphasised by Kautsky against the fetishisation of workers' spontaneity by elements that would eventually become the Left Communists - is composed of class-conscious layers of the proletariat.

You seem to be referring the Lenin's historical observation, mentioned in "What is to be Done" and elsewhere, that the founders of Marxist theory were not all proletarians. But this has nothing to do with the vanguard party, nor did Lenin argue for a party of the petite bourgeoisie. In fact, he regularly denounced attempts to dissolve the proletarian basis of the RSDRP.


Also Marx never suggested the creation of a transitional society, any understanding of Marxist theory will provid proof of this.

I cited several paragraphs from the "Critique of the Gotha Programme" in my previous post in which Marx discusses the transitional stages.


Also labor vouchers are not money, they do not circulate or accumulate.

Individual labour certificates do not circulate, but the labour value does. Also, why should the certificates not accumulate?


Marx and Engels also changed their mind about this subject as the only reason these were thought up of was to combat real shortages that they believed to have existed in the 1800s[...]

Surely you can provide a source for that claim.


[W]hich is not at all applicable to today's society were we produce enough food to give ever person on the planet 4500 cals a day.

Food is not the only product. Also, the figure is somewhat suspect - it might be possible to give everyone 4500 kcal per day by feeding them just sugar, but few people would choose that.


I am also dumbfounded that you fail to see how vanguardism is a dictatorship, creating the cliamte for dictators like Lenin, Stalin, Mao etc., by eliminating opposition, centralizing all power to a few "enlightend" people, and suppressing the will of the people to the will of these "enlighten" few, who know best

This is hilarious. Lenin was such a dictator that motions that he sponsored were regularly defeated at the Central Committee, and he had to threaten to resign in order to get the Brest-Litovsk peace passed. Stalin also resigned most of his positions later in life, proving beyond the shadow of doubt that he was an enormous dictator. And Mao? The slogan of "smashing the headquarters" is of course the programme of dictatorship.


So then what do you classify the base of a "workers" state? I say that it has a capitalist mode of production, thus making it state capitalist, despite what ever you want to call it and how are reforms like welfare and nationalization any step to socialism? It never "degenerated" it was a fuedal society that spawned a bogureois revolution to capitalism, failing in line with the materialistic concept of history as put by Karl Marx. But in calling it a workers state, what do you classify as the base, the mode of production? Surely not socialism. The entire USSR was based on a capitalist mode of production with wage labor, capital accumulation, monetary calculation etc, all under a monopoly by the state, not individual capitalist.

Russia was indeed state capitalist in the sense that the state preformed the functions usually preformed by the bourgeoisie. Yet this is a necessary transitional form, unless you think socialism can be constructed with a snap of someone's fingers. As for the class basis of society, what other classes existed in Russia besides the proletariat, the remnants of the urban petite bourgeoisie, and the peasants? There was certainly no capitalist class.


And Lenin in this, eliminated all opposition, suppressed the workers, and centralized all power in the hands of the communit party, and you say that no, vanguardism is beneficial to the revolution and doesn't lead to a dictatorship, when it is a dictatorship. The atmosphere created by Lenin allowed a Stalin to appear. Even Lenin himself was a Stalin, having his own secret police, killing millions of innocents, oh I'm sorry, counter revolutionaries, and eliminating the power of the soviets and unions, by putting them under his control.

So people were killed in the middle of the civil war. How surprising. Also, you miss the point of the Bolshevik-Leninist criticism of Stalin; it does not matter, to us, that people were killed while Stalin was the Secretary General or Chairman of the Soviet of Ministers. What we disagree with is the policy of the ComIntern, the pace of the construction of the planned economy, and the theory of socialism in one country. That is all.

[Blake's Baby]

So then what do you classify the base of a "workers" state? I say that it has a capitalist mode of production, thus making it state capitalist, despite what ever you want to call it and how are reforms like welfare and nationalization any step to socialism? It never "degenerated" it was a fuedal society that spawned a bogureois revolution to capitalism, failing in line with the materialistic concept of history as put by Karl Marx...

Really. I can't let this stand. Are you an SPGBer, Buck (it's OK, I notice from 'World Socialist Movement' that you are)? I've been arguing this with the SPGB for more than 10 years on and off and it's just not true. Russia was the 5th biggest economy in the world in 1913, the Putilov Works was the biggest factory in the world in 1917, Russia had the some of the biggest and newest factories ever seen in 1913, and the proletariat in Russia was bigger than in some countries of Western Europe. In a massive sea of peasants, yes, but the country was no more 'feudal' than Britain or Germany (which also had imperial monarchs, and in Germany's case had never had a 'bourgeois' revolution either) or France or the USA (which also had large 'peasant' ie independent agricultural producer sectors). Russia had been heavily capitalised from the 1880s and indeed one can date the beginnings of the process of capitalist development under the auspices of the absolutist state to the time of Peter the Great.

Capitalism is a global system. The foundation of the SPGB itself in 1904 was predicated on the development of world capitalism to the point where socialist society was a possibility. If the 'Russian Revolution' was a capitalist revolution against feudalism, what did the SPGB think it was doing 13 years before? Shouldn't it have realised that capitalism wasn't 'obsolete' and had to dispose of feudalism first? You can't have it both ways. You can't claim capitalism was obsolete in 1904, but somehow magically became 'un-obsolete' in 1917 when the SPGB noticed Russia still had a Tsar and decided that feudalism needed tidying up.


But in calling it a workers state, what do you classify as the base, the mode of production? Surely not socialism. The entire USSR was based on a capitalist mode of production with wage labor, capital accumulation, monetary calculation etc, all under a monopoly by the state, not individual capitalist.

It was state capitalism. Russia pioneered state capitalism. Not in the 1920s; in the 1880s.

[Buck]

So did the monarchy king geogre the 5 when he was prevented from continuing war. It didn't make him an less of a dictator. Look at hitler there was still the restakage during his regin, it doesn't matter that there is a "democratic body", Lenin was still a dictator. The coup in 1917 demonstrates this, he didn't have majority support, when the vast majority wanted the party of socialist revolutionaries. Just because the have the largest factory doesn't make them industrialized, when the vast majority 80% of the country were peasants who didn't know socialism, with the populace being vastly poor, there were workers, capitalist and aristocracy, where most of the wealth went to, but this wealth didn't reach the vast majority of peasants or workers. Lenin's coup wasn't based upon build socialism but "peace, land and bread", and "all power to the soviets", which he would latter eliminate. The civil war demonstrates this discontent as not just foreign bodies fought, but the Russian people as well, but even still, the vast majority didn't participate in the coup or the war. You know North korea has the larget flag pole in the world, but this doesnt mean that they have huge flags every where or that And yes we do have enough food to feed the entire planet, and its not jut sugar.
But the revolution/coup did lead to the end of feudalism and create the majority working class that Russia has today, although standards of living have fallen off since the fall of the USSR.
You want me to quote? I thought that quoting just proved that I was "religious" as the quote I provided was sufficient proof to discredit the idea of vanguardism as a Marxist concept, and to show that a Marxist cannot accept this? Why does it matter if it is in fucking writing or not(which it is). Why would two Marxist, Marx and Engels, use this line to describe the most important institution to them, the working mans international, if this line was of no importance to Marxism. Also you fail to prove how vanguardism is not utopian, and how it doesn't lead to a dictatorship. Don't give me that bull shit that Mao, Stalin, and Lenin weren't dictators, for they clearly were, in eliminating all opposition, centralizing all power in their hands and suppressing the working class with secret police, people's armies, and forced labor camps. This you could argue was to be done to "counter revolutionaries", which didn't make much sense, 20, 30 years after the actual revolution took place, sense most of those killed or sent to labor camps were workers. Workers had it better under private capitalism than state capitalism when this happened, because at least they could go on strike and not fear persecution, (although in the red scares this wasnt the case).
There were no class in the USSR?! Are you kindling? There were workers who had to earn a wage to obtain sustenance, who didn't own what they produced. And then there was the nomenklature, who hold the equivalent capitalist positions. They were in the state who owned the means of production, who could then pass on there title, money and stockbonds to their children. They are no different then capitalist in other countries.

[Buck]

Look I know I'm not going to change your mind, not are you going to change my own mind. Nor are any of us going to admit it on this form. But I will keep disagreeing with you if you keep insisting on arguing for Lenin and the USSR, for some reason, when it was Lenin himself who argued that it wasnt what the west had to learn from Russia, but what Russia had to learn from the west. Why? Because Russia was a poor underdeveloped country, with the vast majority of the population being starving peasants who could read or write there names. But this changed when Lenin and Stalin came, both men managed to industrialize the country into a super power, dramatically rising the standards of living. But is this a case for Stalinism or Leninism? I think not. You could look at Nazi Germany and why that did for Germans, it dramatically increased standards of living. Is that an argument for Facism? Or Mao for that matter, who brought millions out of poverty. Is that an argument for Maoism? None of these are really Marxist tendencies or are worker revolutions in the sense that they were carried out by a minority of workers to change the base of society from feudalistic relations to capitalist relations. Yes there was a minority working class, just as there was a minority working class in France in 1789. Would you then say that France was capitalist in 1749?

[Buck]

I think that what we can all gather from the original inquiry of this post, is that the current and past "communist" states were not and are not desirable places to live. Thus you view them as "degenerate". And this seems to be all the "communist" states. So how do you suppose we move on with the revolution? The same thing? Have elite altruistic leaders lead the "stupid" masses into socialism, while retaining a state, which would seem to indicate socialism in one country, as seen by all previous "socialist" revolutions. None of them seem to be "dictatorships(Marx preferred to use rule latter on as Blanqui, started to use this term, as he was also for vanguardism) by the proletariat", but more "dictatorship over the proletariat", by the glorious dear leaders the "vanguard". Hell, i think song the international puts it best when it says "there are no supreme saviours, nether god, nor caeser, nor tribune". If I try to give evidence against it, you ether ignore it or using an ad hominem, dismiss it as me being "religious".

[Buck]

Sorry about any spelling or grammar, as I am on an iPhone and the spell check changes the names of things like Marx to mark. It's a struggle

[Buck]

If I was to use quotes, you'll simply dismiss then as me being religious as you have done before, despite the evidence given by me, to Marx on vanguardism, which he despised. So his approval would be a dobious proposition at best. If I gave any facts on how we can feed the world with the amount of food we can produce, you'll probably say that I lying, the source is capitalist propaganda or something, so I don't see the point, if you are just going to use ad hominems against me.

[Buck]

It's about the fundamentals of the vavildoty of the argument not the fucking fact that I'm quoting him.
I'm proving a point by demonstrating that vanguardism is not Marxist by quoting Marx, a prominent Marxist. I don't think his a "god" he even changed his own opinions about things like the theory of permanent revolution or lower stage communism (labor vouchers). These ideas are not practical in today's society where 2% of the population of the USA can feed 1/3 of the worlds population, hence scarcity is absent so is the need for labor voucher. Marx hated the state and rightfully so. It is an instrument of oppression, so. Like Marx, I agree it should be overthrown. The theory of permanent revolution has been demonstrated to be false, the revolutions of 1848, failed to change rapidly from fuedalism, to capitalism, then to Socialism, as marx had thought. He quickly abandoned the idea. He never said that there should be "two stages", this is a Leninist thought. I don't agree with it because its not necessary. Plus it just creates another ruling class to be other thrown, as vanguardism leads to. I'm not for vanguardism, and nether is Marx, because its undemocratic. Do we really have to go back to the Middle Ages to say why the people should be able to rule and chose their own destiny? the people should have control and lead themselves, not some elite, enlightened intellectuals, as proposed by Lenin, Plato, Freud, Keynes, Hitler etc. Why is vanguardism ever acceptable? What makes it so good?

[hashem]

What is the precise theoretical and analytical difference between the "Deformed Workers State" and the "Degenerated Workers State"?

nothing. they are both phrases which Trotskyists use to conceal the nature of bourgeoisie states.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

This might sound petty, but I am finding it extremely difficult to follow your posts. Please consider breaking them up into paragraph and quoting the parts of my post you are responding to.


So did the monarchy king geogre the 5 when he was prevented from continuing war. It didn't make him an less of a dictator.

In fact, George V was not a dictator, as the term is commonly used. He was a constitutional monarch with broad, but limited powers.


Look at hitler there was still the restakage during his regin, it doesn't matter that there is a "democratic body", Lenin was still a dictator.

The Reichstag was a rubber-stamp body, unlike the Congress of Soviets. The Congress and the Central Executive Committee could overrule the Central Committee of the RKP(b), as they did concerning the dissolution of the Menshevik group.


The coup in 1917 demonstrates this, he didn't have majority support, when the vast majority wanted the party of socialist revolutionaries.

The Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries split just before October, with the Left Esers favouring an end to the imperialist war, and the Right following a social-chauvinist line. The majority of the peasantry supported the Left Esers, but the election lists did not record the split and so most of their votes went to Right Eser candidates. The situation in the peasant soviets, where the Right SR presence was negligible, is more clear.

The Left Esers were part of the coalition government with the Bolsheviks until certain adventurist members of the PLSR central committee tried to drag Russia back into the imperialist war, by blowing the German ambassador up and so on. This disturbance is generously called the "Left Eser Uprising" by certain commentators, particularly those anarchists and left communists have been able to convince themselves that the PLSR were anarchists or leftcoms, but in fact most of the Left Esers did not support these actions, and the party split into numerous groups (Popular Communists etc.), most of which merged with the RKP(b).


Lenin's coup wasn't based upon build socialism but "peace, land and bread", and "all power to the soviets", which he would latter eliminate.

First of all, the October Revolution was started by a vote of the Petrograd Soviet and was ratified by the subsequent Second Congress of Soviets. Calling it a "coup" is extremely disingenuous.

Second, slogans are one thing, the programme is another. The programme of the RSDRP(ck), the April Theses and so on, mention socialism.

Third, Lenin did not "eliminate the soviets", nor did the Russian Soviet Republic. The soviets remained, but their role changed due to the destruction of the best elements of the Russian proletariat in the war and the subsequent economic devastation.


The civil war demonstrates this discontent as not just foreign bodies fought, but the Russian people as well, but even still, the vast majority didn't participate in the coup or the war.

The civil war demonstrates the discontent of the Black Hundreds, of the former imperial officers, of Progressists, Nationalists, Kadets, Mensheviks and Esers, of landowners and Cossacks. Nothing more. Whenever the Whites tried to recruit a people's army, that army defected to the Bolsheviks (the history of the People's Army of the KomUch is particularly hilarious).


do have enough food to feed the entire planet, and its not jut sugar.

And what about other commodities? And even if there existed an abundance of every type of product, scarcity is simply one of the reasons for the strict regulation of consumption in the lower phases of the communist society - this is evident in the quote from the "Critique of the Gotha Programme", and should also be evident to anyone that does not expect communist labour discipline and a communist relation to work to simply spontaneously appear in the proletariat.


You want me to quote? I thought that quoting just proved that I was "religious" [...]

Then you though wrong. What is religious is quoting instead of offering an argument. Obviously quoting Marx on the relation of labour certificates to scarcity is relevant if Marx's opinion on the subject is in dispute.


[...]as the quote I provided was sufficient proof to discredit the idea of vanguardism as a Marxist concept, and to show that a Marxist cannot accept this?

What quote?


Why does it matter if it is in fucking writing or not(which it is). Why would two Marxist, Marx and Engels, use this line to describe the most important institution to them, the working mans international, if this line was of no importance to Marxism.

What line? The statement that the proletariat must liberate itself? But this has precisely nothing with vanguardism; the vanguard is the vanguard of the proletarian class.


Also you fail to prove how vanguardism is not utopian, and how it doesn't lead to a dictatorship.

Vanguardism can not be utopian - it refers to a position on the tasks of the proletarian party. The concept of "utopianism" is simply not applicable in this case. And the most successful proletarian party was indeed organised in a vanguard manner.


Don't give me that bull shit that Mao, Stalin, and Lenin weren't dictators, for they clearly were, in eliminating all opposition, centralizing all power in their hands and suppressing the working class with secret police, people's armies, and forced labor camps.

Again, you don't seem to be that acquainted with the actual historical situation. There were several opposition groups during Lenin's lifetime, neither was "eliminated", all were outvoted, and the demands of most (prominently of the Workers' Opposition - including the demand for an extensive purge of the party) were taken into account.


This you could argue was to be done to "counter revolutionaries", which didn't make much sense, 20, 30 years after the actual revolution took place, sense most of those killed or sent to labor camps were workers.

Almost as if the majority of the population was comprised of workers.


Workers had it better under private capitalism than state capitalism when this happened, because at least they could go on strike and not fear persecution, (although in the red scares this wasnt the case).

They wouldn't have feared anything when the police and the army massacred them as they did in the Lena gold fields.


There were no class in the USSR?! Are you kindling? There were workers who had to earn a wage to obtain sustenance, who didn't own what they produced. And then there was the nomenklature, who hold the equivalent capitalist positions. They were in the state who owned the means of production, who could then pass on there title, money and stockbonds to their children. They are no different then capitalist in other countries.

Managerial positions were not hereditary in the Soviet Union, not even during the proto-capitalist upsurge in the sixties, stocks were not introduced until the capitalist reforms of the nineties and so on.


Look I know I'm not going to change your mind, not are you going to change my own mind. Nor are any of us going to admit it on this form.

Speak for yourself. I am open to constructive argument, but thus far all I have heard is selective quoting of Marx and reliance on bourgeois propaganda on how evil the Soviet Union was.


But I will keep disagreeing with you if you keep insisting on arguing for Lenin and the USSR, for some reason, when it was Lenin himself who argued that it wasnt what the west had to learn from Russia, but what Russia had to learn from the west.

In terms of labour discipline, organisation of production etc. None of this means that the historical data about the first successful proletarian revolution should be ignored.


Why? Because Russia was a poor underdeveloped country, with the vast majority of the population being starving peasants who could read or write there names.

Russia also had an extremely conscious and militant working class, with an extensive experience in struggle against the bourgeois state and a limited experience with workers' democracy. Why focus on the confused peasantry and not on the militant workers?


But this changed when Lenin and Stalin came, both men managed to industrialize the country into a super power, dramatically rising the standards of living. But is this a case for Stalinism or Leninism? I think not. You could look at Nazi Germany and why that did for Germans, it dramatically increased standards of living. Is that an argument for Facism? Or Mao for that matter, who brought millions out of poverty. Is that an argument for Maoism?

Who are you arguing against, exactly? Some imagined Fordo-tankie? You don't seem to be addressing anything I wrote.


None of these are really Marxist tendencies or are worker revolutions in the sense that they were carried out by a minority of workers to change the base of society from feudalistic relations to capitalist relations. Yes there was a minority working class, just as there was a minority working class in France in 1789. Would you then say that France was capitalist in 1749?

The great bourgeois French revolution was led by the bourgeoisie; the great socialist October revolution by the proletariat. The proletariat did not, at that stage, form the majority of the population, but what of it? We are socialists, and not vulgar democrats.


I think that what we can all gather from the original inquiry of this post, is that the current and past "communist" states were not and are not desirable places to live. Thus you view them as "degenerate".

No. Workers' states are degenerate if the bureaucratic deformation present in them prevents the exercise of full, all-round proletarian democracy. Whether they're "desirable places to live" is irrelevant - I would certainly rank Democratic Germany and Cuba as very desirable places to live.


So how do you suppose we move on with the revolution? The same thing? Have elite altruistic leaders lead the "stupid" masses into socialism, while retaining a state, which would seem to indicate socialism in one country, as seen by all previous "socialist" revolutions. None of them seem to be "dictatorships(Marx preferred to use rule latter on as Blanqui, started to use this term, as he was also for vanguardism) by the proletariat", but more "dictatorship over the proletariat", by the glorious dear leaders the "vanguard".

Blanqui was for conspiracy, and not for a vanguard of conscious workers. At this point, I can only recommend that you familiarise yourself with actual Leninist texts on the vanguard party, and not Espie distortions.


Hell, i think song the international puts it best when it says "there are no supreme saviours, nether god, nor caeser, nor tribune". If I try to give evidence against it, you ether ignore it or using an ad hominem, dismiss it as me being "religious".

Pointing out a fallacious method of argumentation is not arguing ad hominem. But, by all means, try to find a single line in Marx that talks against the vanguard party. Thus far, you have only been able to find arguments against some Oweno-Blanquism that exists only in ultraleft nightmares, and that has precisely nothing to do with Leninism.


I'm proving a point by demonstrating that vanguardism is not Marxist by quoting Marx, a prominent Marxist.

But not the only or the last Marxist. Again, Marxism is a scientific theory that develops as our understanding of the material conditions deepens. Marx's corpus contains some glaring flaws - such as the lack of a good theory of imperialism. But the really amusing thing is, you have thus far not been able to find a single quote by Marx that speaks against the vanguard party.


Marx hated the state and rightfully so. It is an instrument of oppression, so. Like Marx, I agree it should be overthrown.

Again, revolutionary socialists do not base themselves on emotion, but on the immediate and long-term tasks of proletarian emancipation. These tasks necessitate the continued existence of the state, since the whiteguards will not shoot themselves. If this offends you, I'm sorry, but that is not an argument against the transitional state.


The theory of permanent revolution has been demonstrated to be false, the revolutions of 1848, failed to change rapidly from fuedalism, to capitalism, then to Socialism, as marx had thought.

First, the revolutions of 1848 were not global, they did not even extend to the entire continent of Europe. Second, Marx could not predict, based on the theoretical tools he possessed at the time, a new form of capitalism, finance and late imperial capital.


He never said that there should be "two stages", this is a Leninist thought.

Lenin must have written the paragraphs I quoted from "the Critique of the Gotha Programme" as well.


I don't agree with it because its not necessary. Plus it just creates another ruling class to be other thrown, as vanguardism leads to. I'm not for vanguardism, and nether is Marx, because its undemocratic. Do we really have to go back to the Middle Ages to say why the people should be able to rule and chose their own destiny? the people should have control and lead themselves, not some elite, enlightened intellectuals, as proposed by Lenin, Plato, Freud, Keynes, Hitler etc. Why is vanguardism ever acceptable? What makes it so good?

Have you ever actually read Lenin? Or do you get your information about Lenin and Leninism from the bourgeoisie and from the ultralefts?

[Buck]

Also if I remember correctly, there is one small little line in the communist manifesto that says"working people of the world unite", not "representatives of the property owning class unite and lead the working class to socialism"

[Buck]

Yes but the two stages that Marx was referring to where the lower stage communism(with labor vouchers) and upper stage communism(without labor vouchers). Also the "rule is the proletariat", in Marx and Engels view was NOT a transitional society but a transitional period, after the revolution to destroy the state, not lenin's two stage, where there is socialism with government, class, money and communism, in the original Marxist mean. Trotsky did suggest that Russia in 1917 was socialist, hence the degenerate part. He even suggested that it skipped capitalism

[Buck]

There is so much surplus that we destroy commodities, like food, or other goods. Farmers are paid not to make Certain products. Vanguardism is not a Marxist concept, hence Lenin who said "The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness" thus justifying "educated representatives of the propertied classes", the intellectuals or "revolutionary socialist intellectuals" to rule and lead the working class. Perhaps you should read lenin

[Buck]

The vanguardism is not the working class, but of representatives of the capitalist class, which is utopian. This is the thinking of men like Robert Owen, who Marx critizes in the manifesto, because of this utopian idea of the capitalist class working against their interests to create a communist society, being altruistic, with no concern for there own interests. It creates class because you put capitalist representatives in power to lead and essentially rule the working class. And no, in 1917, 80% of Russians were peasants. Lenin eliminated the power of the workers! This should demonstrate this idealistic notion of capitalists leading workers. He also punished workers who wanted higher wages, under the state capitalist system in place. In addition to eliminating all opposition and centralizing the power of the Bolsheviks party. As to the class thing, did not the "mangers" own factories, as it was owned by the government, the "managers", and did they not pass on to their children, their ownership? Did workers not worker for wages, and not own what they produce? The ruling bureaucracy in Russia only exercises a de facto class monopoly over the means of production. Thus their share appears only to a small extent in the forms of rent, interest and profit: they get it in other ways, particularly as bloated salaries, pensions and prizes. towards the end of feudalism the ruling ideology condemned interest and profit, by which they meant only rent. So in Russia where the ruling ideology condemns unearned income, the surplus value is camouflaged as "earned income".

[Buck]

Sorry about not quoting.

[Buck]

so the gulags, the coercion of the soviets and the unions, the kronstadt rebellion, the red terror, the secret police etc are examples of capitalist propaganda?

[Buck]

i called it a coup, because the vast majority didn't want it, they voted for and preferred the SRs, with 77% voting against the Bolsheviks.

[Buck]

Dictatorship, by Marx and Engels meant the working class conquest of political power. In State and Revolution, however, Lenin wrote of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat under the guidance of the party’. And by defining Lenin as a dictator I used this definition: a country, government, or the form of government in which absolute power is exercised by a dictator, with absolute, imperious, or overbearing power or control, by said dictator. While there might have been the "loyal opposition", he initiated the revolution to eliminate the influence of the other parties in governance, putting all power in the hands of the elite vanguard. He then proceed to purge all dissidents, while some many have been "counter revolutionaries", the workers at kronstadt weren't, they were basically striking workers, who wanted food, and more worker control, which Lenin had effectively eliminated, nor the thousands of workers tortured or killed by the secret police, or who were sent to forced labor camps. This is not propaganda, it is history. While you might say it was justified for the "revolution", Russia was capitalist, workers were still exploited, the capitalists in the country still accumulated capita etc... The "revolution" never degenerated, it allowed feudalism to end, since the vast majority (80%), where still peasants at the time of the revolution, and capital wasnt in the abundance necessary for a socialist revolution.
Marx did say in the gotha program:
“Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Note that this is a political transition period, not a transitional society. For Marx this period was not that between the establishment of the common ownership of the means of production and the time when the principle “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” could be implemented. Rather it is the period during which the working class would be using state power to bring the means of production into common ownership. In other words, the transition period is a political form between the capture of political power by the working class within capitalist society and the eventual establishment of socialism, a period during which the working class has replaced the capitalist class as the ruling class, i.e. as the controller of state power. The end of this transition period is the establishment of a classless society based on the common ownership and democratic control by the whole of society of the means of production, with the consequent disappearance of the coercive state, of the system of working for wages, of the production of goods for sale on a market with a view to profit, indeed, of buying and selling, money and the market altogether. This transition period is after the capture of political power by the working class and before the actual establishment of the common ownership of the means of production.
We must also note that Marx and Engels didn't think socialism to be possible given the conditions of Europe in the 1850's, hence the labor vouchers. So their estimate for the length of this transitional society doesn't apply to today where the vast majority of the earths population has become proletariat in addition to producing and abundance of food, commodities etc... This is a political transition period, NOT a new society.

[Taters]

Holy shit, have you ever posted on a forum before?! You don't make a new post every time you want to add something, you edit your post! Also, make PARAGRAPHS, and use QUOTES if you want to respond directly to something.

[Geiseric]

so the gulags, the coercion of the soviets and the unions, the kronstadt rebellion, the red terror, the secret police etc are examples of capitalist propaganda?

Most of the red terror from 1918 to 1921 were intended for getting actual counter revolutionaries, but examples like the movie Dr. Zhaivago sadly occured, which i'm not trying to defend at all.

If they didn't crush Kronstadt, regardless of what the Kronstadters politics were, the revolution as a whole would of been crushed from an army waiting to invade from Finland. Besides the fact Petrichenko had connections with the Entente and was a former SR, and joined the bolsheviks months after the revolution happened.

The secret police gained political power as the state bureaucracy centered around Stalin realized their mutual self interest, which i'm also not trying to defend.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Also if I remember correctly, there is one small little line in the communist manifesto that says"working people of the world unite", not "representatives of the property owning class unite and lead the working class to socialism"

Once again: have you actually read "What Is To Be Done"? Are you familiar with its historical context? Since you have chosen to focus on one single sentence, which you have completely misinterpreted, I doubt it.

Here is the "notorious" sentence in its proper context:

«In the previous chapter we pointed out how universally absorbed the educated youth of Russia was in the theories of Marxism in the middle of the nineties. In the same period the strikes that followed the famous St. Petersburg industrial war of 1896 assumed a similar general character. Their spread over the whole of Russia clearly showed the depth of the newly awakening popular movement, and if we are to speak of the “spontaneous element” then, of course, it is this strike movement which, first and foremost, must be regarded as spontaneous. But there is spontaneity and spontaneity. Strikes occurred in Russia in the seventies and sixties (and even in the first half of the nineteenth century), and they were accompanied by the “spontaneous” destruction of machinery, etc. Compared with these “revolts”, the strikes of the nineties might even be described as “conscious”, to such an extent do they mark the progress which the working-class movement made in that period. This shows that the “spontaneous element”, in essence, represents nothing more nor less than. consciousness in an embryonic form. Even the primitive revolts expressed the awakening of consciousness to a certain extent. The workers were losing their age-long faith in the permanence of the system which oppressed them and began... I shall not say to understand, but to sense the necessity for collective resistance, definitely abandoning their slavish submission to the authorities. But this was, nevertheless, more in the nature of outbursts of desperation and vengeance than of struggle. The strikes of the nineties revealed far greater flashes of consciousness; definite demands were advanced, the strike was carefully timed, known cases and instances in other places were discussed, etc. The revolts were simply the resistance of the oppressed, whereas the systematic strikes represented the class struggle in embryo, but only in embryo. Taken by themselves, these strikes were simply trade union struggles, not yet Social Democratic struggles. They marked the awakening antagonisms between workers and employers; but the workers, were not, and could not be, conscious of the irreconcilable antagonism of their interests to the whole of the modern political and social system, i.e., theirs was not yet Social-Democratic consciousness. In this sense, the strikes of the nineties, despite the enormous progress they represented as compared with the “revolts”, remained a purely spontaneous movement.

We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia. In the period under discussion, the middle nineties, this doctrine not only represented the completely formulated programme of the Emancipation of Labour group, but had already won over to its side the majority of the revolutionary youth in Russia.

Hence, we had both the spontaneous awakening of the working masses, their awakening to conscious life and conscious struggle, and a revolutionary youth, armed with Social-Democratic theory and straining towards the workers. In this connection it is particularly important to state the oft-forgotten (and comparatively little-known) fact that, although the early Social-Democrats of that period zealously carried on economic agitation (being guided in this activity by the truly useful indications contained in the pamphlet On Agitation, then still in manuscript), they did not regard this as their sole task. On the contrary, from the very beginning they set for Russian Social-Democracy the most far-reaching historical tasks, in general, and the task of overthrowing the autocracy, in particular. Thus, towards the end of 1895, the St. Petersburg group of Social-Democrats, which founded the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, prepared the first issue of a newspaper called Rabocheye Dyelo. This issue was ready to go to press when it was seized by the gendarmes, on the night of December 8, 1895, in a raid on the house of one of the members of the group, Anatoly Alexeyevich Vaneyey, so that the first edition of Rabocheye Dyelo was not destined to see the light of day. The leading article in this issue (which perhaps thirty years hence some Russkaya Starina will unearth in the archives of the Department of Police) outlined the historical tasks of the working class in Russia and placed the achievement of political liberty at their head. The issue also contained an article entitled “What Are Our Ministers Thinking About?” which dealt with the crushing of the elementary education committees by the police. In addition, there was some correspondence from St. Petersburg, and from other parts of Russia (e.g., a letter on the massacre of the workers in Yaroslavl Gubernia). This, “first effort”, if we are not mistaken, of the Russian Social-Democrats of the nineties was not a purely local, or less still, “Economic”, newspaper, but one that aimed to unite the strike movement with the revolutionary movement against the autocracy, and to win over to the side of Social-Democracy all who were oppressed by the policy of reactionary obscurantism. No one in the slightest degree acquainted with the state of the movement at that period could doubt that such a paper would have met with warm response among the workers of the capital and the revolutionary intelligentsia and would have had a wide circulation. The failure of the enterprise merely showed that the Social-Democrats of that period were unable to meet the immediate requirements of the time owing to their lack of revolutionary experience and practical training. This must be said, too, with regard to the S. Peterburgsky Rabochy Listok and particularly with regard to Rabochaya Gazeta and the Manifesto of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, founded in the spring of 1898. Of course, we would not dream of blaming the Social Democrats of that time for this unpreparedness. But in order to profit from the experience of that movement, and to draw practical lessons from it, we must thoroughly understand the causes and significance of this or that shortcoming. It is therefore highly important to establish the fact that a part (perhaps even a majority) of the Social-Democrats, active in the period of 1895-98, justly considered it possible even then, at the very beginning of the “spontaneous” movement, to come forward with a most extensive programme and a militant tactical line. Lack of training of the majority of the revolutionaries, an entirely natural phenomenon, could not have roused any particular fears. Once the tasks were correctly defined, once the energy existed for repeated attempts to fulfil them, temporary failures represented only part misfortune. Revolutionary experience and organisational skill are things that can be acquired, provided the desire is there to acquire them, provided the shortcomings are recognised, which in revolutionary activity is more than half-way towards their removal.»

Here, "social-democracy" refers to consistent Marxism, to the policies of the parties such as the Social-Democratic Labour Party of Russia, of Austria, of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany. The term would acquire its present connotations only after the First World War.

Here is how Lenin would assess the class basis of certain trends in the Party, in 1914:

«The facts have shown that, between them, the theory of Marxism and the practical experience of the mass working-class movement have killed liquidationism, which is a bourgeois and anti-workers’ trend. It is sufficient to recall how, in a single month, March 1914, Severnaya Rabochaya Gazeta vilified the “illegal press” (issue of March 13), and demonstrations (Mr. Gorsky in the issue of April 11), and how Bulkin, in perfect imitation of the liberals, vilified the “underground” (Nasha Zarya No. 3), how the notorious L. M., on behalf of the editors of Nasha Zarya, fully supported Bulkin on this point and argued the case for “building a legal workers’ party”—it is sufficient to recall all this to understand why the attitude of the class-conscious workers towards liquidationism cannot be anything else than that of ruthless condemnation and complete boycott of the liquidators.

But here a very important question crops up: How did this trend arise historically?

It arose in the course of the twenty years’ history of Marxism’s ties with the mass working-class movement in Russia. Up to 1894–95 there were no such ties. The Emancipation of Labour group only laid the theoretical foundations for the Social-Democratic movement and took the first step towards the working-class movement.

It was only the propaganda of 1894–95 and the strikes of 1895–96 that established firm and inseverable ties between Social-Democracy and the mass working-class movement. And immediately an ideological struggle commenced between the two trends of Marxism: the struggle between the Economists and the consistent Marxists or (later) Iskrists (1895–1902), the struggle between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks (1903–08), and the struggle between the liquidators and the Marxists (1908–14).
Economism and liquidationism are two different forms of the same petty-bourgeois, intellectualist opportunism that has existed for twenty years. That there is a personal as well as ideological connection between all these forms of opportunism is an undoubted fact. It is sufficient to mention the name of the leader of the Economists, A. Martynov, who subsequently became a Menshevik and is now a liquidator. It is sufficient to call a witness like G. V. Plekhanov, who, on very many points, stood close to the Mensheviks, but nevertheless openly admitted that the Mensheviks absorbed intellectualist opportunist elements into their ranks, and that the liquidators continued the errors of Economism and were disrupters of the workers’ party.

People who (like the liquidators and Trotsky) ignore or falsify this twenty years’ history of the ideological struggle in the working-class movement do tremendous harm to the workers.

A worker who takes an anythingarian attitude towards the history of his own movement cannot be considered class-conscious. Of all the capitalist countries, Russia is one of the most backward and most petty bourgeois. That is why the mass working-class movement gave rise to a petty-bourgeois, opportunist wing in that movement, not by chance, but inevitably.

The progress made during these twenty years in ridding the working-class movement of the influence of the bourgeoisie, of the influence of Economism and of liquidationism, has been tremendous. For the first time, a real, proletarian foundation for a real Marxist party is being securely laid. It is generally admitted, even the opponents of the Pravdists are compelled to admit—the facts compel them to admit it!—that among class-conscious workers the Pravdists constitute the overwhelming majority. What the Marxist “plenum” of January 1910 recognised theoretically (that liquidationism is “bourgeois influence on the proletariat”), the class-conscious workers have been putting into practice during the past four years; they have secured practical recognition of it by weakening the liquidators, by removing them from office, by reducing liquidationism to a group of legal, opportunist publicists standing outside the mass working-class movement.

During this twenty-year-old conflict of ideas the working-class movement in Russia has been growing in scope and strength and steadily maturing. It has defeated Economism; the flower of the class-conscious proletariat have sided with the Iskrists. At every decisive stage in the revolution they have left the Mensheviks in the minority: even Levitsky himself has had to admit that the masses of the workers sided with the Bolsheviks.

And, finally, it has now defeated liquidationism and, as a result, has taken the correct road of the broad struggle—illumined by Marxist theory and summed up in uncurtailed slogans—of the advanced class for the advanced historical aims of mankind.»

Clearly, then, Lenin never called for the RSDRP to be a "vanguard" of the middle strata and of the intelligentsia, and in fact consistently fought petite-bourgeois trends in the party - economism, liquidationism, Menshevism, the August Block and so on.

The vanguard party is the revolutionary Marxist party formed by the most class-conscious layers of the proletariat - its vanguard. The historical observations contained in the "notorious" sentence concern the initial adoption of Marxist theory by the proletariat. You conflate the two, possibly because you are not familiar with the theory, and imagine that Lenin had called for a "vanguard" of the petite bourgeoisie.


Also the "rule is the proletariat", in Marx and Engels view was NOT a transitional society but a transitional period, after the revolution to destroy the state[...]

There is no real difference, unless you imagine that the transitional period will be over in days or weeks.


Trotsky did suggest that Russia in 1917 was socialist, hence the degenerate part. He even suggested that it skipped capitalism

Trotsky (and Lenin) called Russia a "workers' state"; this does not mean that Russia was socialist, however. Nor did Russia "skip" capitalism. Capitalist elements figured prominently in Russian society before the revolution, though they were admixed with remnants of the feudal order and the state autocracy (hence the common description of Russia as semi-feudal).


There is so much surplus that we destroy commodities, like food, or other goods.

There is a substantial surplus of food, true, particularly in the European Union where state policy favours the kulaks who are paid to produce food that will be stored or destroyed, but what other commodities are produced as abundantly as food?


And no, in 1917, 80% of Russians were peasants. Lenin eliminated the power of the workers!

I don't see how these two sentences are logically connected. Perhaps you did not mean to suggest that they were, but you really should break up your posts into paragraphs.


He also punished workers who wanted higher wages, under the state capitalist system in place.

As you might have notices, Russia was in the middle of a civil war at that point, and most of the available resources were expended for the defense of the republic, as per the democratic decisions of the VTsIK and so on.


In addition to eliminating all opposition and centralizing the power of the Bolsheviks party.

Again, any substantial opposition to Lenin's line was outvoted, both in the Central Committee and in the VTsIK. Amusingly enough, parts of that opposition - the Military Opposition in particular - would have centralised more power in the RKP(b).


As to the class thing, did not the "mangers" own factories, as it was owned by the government, the "managers", and did they not pass on to their children, their ownership?

In a word, no.

I have no idea where you got this notion that managerial positions were hereditary - this was not the case even during the periods of Soviet history where the economy came the closest to individual capitalism. A source would be nice.

Nor are economic units owned by their managers and executives; while these positions might have broad powers, they can be dismissed by the owner, the state in the case of the Soviet Union, at any point.


so the gulags, the coercion of the soviets and the unions, the kronstadt rebellion, the red terror, the secret police etc are examples of capitalist propaganda?

Not really; with the possible exception of "the coercion of the soviets". "Possible", because I have no idea what you're referring to. The Red Terror, "secret" police, internment camps and prisons were a necessary part of the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as was the destruction of the Eser Kronstadt uprising.


i called it a coup, because the vast majority didn't want it, they voted for and preferred the SRs, with 77% voting against the Bolsheviks.

Please, answer this honestly: did you even read my previous post? If not, no hard feelings, but I really don't feel like dissecting these walls of text you post and correcting you if you have no intention of reading my responses.

Once again, the majority of the peasants voted for the Left fucking Socialist fucking Revolutionaries, who were the coalition partners of the Bolsheviks and who were mostly absorbed into the RKP(b).

And even if they hadn't, what of it? We are not vulgar democrats, seeking the approval of "the entire people". We are for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and if this means trampling over certain layers of the petite bourgeoisie, so be it.


And by defining Lenin as a dictator I used this definition: a country, government, or the form of government in which absolute power is exercised by a dictator, with absolute, imperious, or overbearing power or control, by said dictator.

The definition is rather vague; it seems to include many if not all high functionaries. The term "dictator" is commonly used to refer to individuals who can determine state policy by fiat; Lenin could not.


While there might have been the "loyal opposition", he initiated the revolution to eliminate the influence of the other parties in governance, putting all power in the hands of the elite vanguard.

Lenin did not "initiate the revolution". The Petrograd soviet did. Nor was the intention to "eliminate the influence of the other parties in governance", but to overthrow the unelected, militarist and cryptotsarist Provisional Government, to end Russian participation in the imperialist war and so on.

It always amuses me how the ultraleft sides with the Provisional Government against the elected Petrograd soviet (and, in passing, slights the soviet by suggesting its actions were dictated by one man).


While you might say it was justified for the "revolution", Russia was capitalist, workers were still exploited, the capitalists in the country still accumulated capita etc...

What capitalists? During the NEP period, certain small proprietors were tolerated, but these were eliminated during the transition to the planned economy. But with the exception of these small proprietors and the owners of concessions, the functions of the individual capitalists were subsumed by the state.

And this state capitalism was overseen by the most democratic republic the circumstances would permit, and was conceived of as a transitional form that would develop into socialism as the conditions allowed. To someone that thinks in a metaphysical manner, of course, "A is A", "capitalism is capitalism", but those that proclaim themselves to be historical and dialectical materialists need to appreciate the progressive nature of state capitalism in Russia.


The "revolution" never degenerated, it allowed feudalism to end, since the vast majority (80%), where still peasants at the time of the revolution, and capital wasnt in the abundance necessary for a socialist revolution.

States do not exist in isolation; this international interdependence was more prominent in the First World War than it had been when Marx was alive, and it is more prominent today than it has ever been. When assessing the material conditions, one needs to take this international factor into account.