Stalin's failure and Rosa Luxemburg

[Evo2]

Hello Comrades

Simple question

Wouldn't the USSR have been more successful if it had been run according to Rosa's theories instead of how Stalin ran the USSR that is with more democracy instead of a system that crushed dissent?



Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of "justice" but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when "freedom" becomes a special privilege.(...)But socialist democracy is not something which begins only in the promised land after the foundations of socialist economy are created; it does not come as some sort of Christmas present for the worthy people who, in the interim, have loyally supported a handful of socialist dictators. Socialist democracy begins simultaneously with the beginnings of the destruction of class rule and of the construction of socialism."


"The whole mass of the people must take part in it. Otherwise, socialism will be decreed from behind a few official desks by a dozen intellectuals.

Public control is indispensably necessary. Otherwise the exchange of experiences remains only with the closed circle of the officials of the new regime. Corruption becomes inevitable. (Lenin’s words, Bulletin No.29) Socialism in life demands a complete spiritual transformation in the masses degraded by centuries of bourgeois rule. Social instincts in place of egotistical ones, mass initiative in place of inertia, idealism which conquers all suffering, etc., etc. No one knows this better, describes it more penetratingly; repeats it more stubbornly than Lenin. But he is completely mistaken in the means he employs. Decree, dictatorial force of the factory overseer, draconian penalties, rule by terror – all these things are but palliatives. The only way to a rebirth is the school of public life itself, the most unlimited, the broadest democracy and public opinion. It is rule by terror which demoralizes."


Would this have also avoided Communism being saddled with ideas of suppression and mass murder?


Also ...


"Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule. Among them, in reality only a dozen outstanding heads do the leading and an elite of the working class is invited from time to time to meetings where they are to applaud the speeches of the leaders, and to approve proposed resolutions unanimously – at bottom, then, a clique affair – a dictatorship, to be sure, not the dictatorship of the proletariat but only the dictatorship of a handful of politicians, that is a dictatorship in the bourgeois sense, in the sense of the rule of the Jacobins (the postponement of the Soviet Congress from three-month periods to six-month periods!) Yes, we can go even further: such conditions must inevitably cause a brutalization of public life: attempted assassinations, shooting of hostages, etc."


Isnt this what happened in the soviet union?

[Remus Bleys]

No. Those demands are like not signing the brest-litovsk treaty. In theory it was great, and but if applied, it would have destroyed the gains october had brought, but sooner.

[Evo2]

And what gains was that?

[Remus Bleys]

And what gains was that?
Everyone - from Gorter to Luxemburg - acknowledges the gains of October. That being proletarian political power, gains in feminism, freedom from the rule of Tsars and Bourgeois, minority rights. Soviet Power. The worker militias. Proletariat Nature of the Red Army.
These were all lost of course.

[Evo2]

For a while yes, until it fell into homophobic irrationality and anti-democratic practices

I agree that the circumstances that the Bolsheviks were under meant that temporary measures were needed to be implemented to ensure the survival of the revolution. However these measures were taken from necessity to policy, and so a deadly bureaucracy formed.

[Evo2]

And I would still say that if the USSR had taken note of this


"Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule. Among them, in reality only a dozen outstanding heads do the leading and an elite of the working class is invited from time to time to meetings where they are to applaud the speeches of the leaders, and to approve proposed resolutions unanimously – at bottom, then, a clique affair – a dictatorship, to be sure, not the dictatorship of the proletariat but only the dictatorship of a handful of politicians, that is a dictatorship in the bourgeois sense, in the sense of the rule of the Jacobins (the postponement of the Soviet Congress from three-month periods to six-month periods!) Yes, we can go even further: such conditions must inevitably cause a brutalization of public life: attempted assassinations, shooting of hostages, etc."


And had more democratic workers control in production, after WW2, then the USSR would have had a better chance or surviving and would have been more socialist in nature.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Everyone - from Gorter to Luxemburg - acknowledges the gains of October. That being proletarian political power, gains in feminism, freedom from the rule of Tsars and Bourgeois, minority rights. Soviet Power. The worker militias. Proletariat Nature of the Red Army.
These were all lost of course.

I think the issue is that perpetuating that alienation between the vanguard party and the working masses contributed to the decay of the USSR once the civil war was won, even if they were "necessary" for its survival during the civil war. Thus, it could come to be that within 20 years of Lenin dying, the ruling clique of the USSR around Stalin could decide to commit collective punishment against ethnic groups that they didn't like, driving the very workers they supposedly represented into exile based on racial and linguistic distinctions, without any input from the working class. Working class agency was lost, the public face of the state revolved around the "Great Man" and not the proletariat, and the actual machinery of power was held by a small bureaucratic, intelligence and military elite.

I agree that Lenin and Trotsky took those acts out of necessity, but the problem is that it did undermine undermine Soviet rule to raise the machines of political power above the input of the people.



And had more democratic workers control in production, after WW2, then the USSR would have had a better chance or surviving and would have been more socialist in nature.

Once the USSR had won WW2, it already had a massive bureaucratic and military class - why would they just cede power to the workers? The damage had already been done to working class rule and a real popular model of democratic centralism in the USSR before the start of WW2, let alone after it.