Critiques of Lenin

[Redistribute the Rep]

Let's hear them

It can be on anything: his theories, philosophy, specific political actions, tastes in poetry, whatever

[RedWorker]

Authorizing and ordering executions?

[Sinister Intents]

The theory of the vanguard party is inherently elitist, though vanguard can be defined a couple ways I suppose, though I'm particularly getting back into his stuff, so perhaps later in time I'll add further!

[consuming negativity]

He tried to "give history a push" and ended up making communism synonymous with state capitalism, Stalinism, and general asshattery.

He was so interested in doing good for the people that he ended up destroying his own experiment by taking it away from the people out of fear that it would be ruined.

[RedWorker]

He tried to "give history a push" and ended up making communism synonymous with state capitalism, Stalinism, and general asshattery.

He was so interested in doing good for the people that he ended up destroying his own experiment by taking it away from the people out of fear that it would be ruined.

This isn't a real analysis. I don't think you can just blame stuff on Lenin like that. And the failure of the Russian Revolution was down to material reasons.

[motion denied]

This (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/10thcong/ch04.htm).

The suppression of the tendencies inside the Party in 1921 and the dismissal of opposition as syndicalism deviation or syndicalist nonsense. The proletarian base progressively lost its self-determination, not to mention the perpetuation of one man management (specialists), causing inertia among the workers. By the end of his life he begged for a proletarian majority in the CC to "Improve our administrative machinery". Too late. I'm not putting it all on Vladmir though.

Inb4 self-management brainrot :/

[consuming negativity]

This isn't a real analysis. I don't think you can just blame stuff on Lenin like that. And the failure of the Russian Revolution was down to material reasons.

Never said otherwise.

[G4b3n]

Democratic Centralism is a cancer that strips socialism of its objectives and takes power out of the hands of the workers to the point where they only retain power in rhetoric. There is virtually no way to assure that the base of the hierarchy is even considered in their decision making, the figureheads of the party can construct their decisions before even bother to listen to the people that actually matter.

Personally, I like the sound of Leninist theory (except for the aforementioned aspects), however, it simply sounds a lot more worker friendly in rhetoric than it actually is in practice.

[motion denied]

Paresh Chattopadhyay's effort to criticize Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin is also appreciated, here (http://books.google.com.br/books?id=MvidbYEqt8gC&pg=PA219&lpg=PA219&dq=chattopadhyay+trotsky+lenin+bukharin&source=bl&ots=34GQF3pRUw&sig=qHvVHt9_w4Q4Km962Foxnu0HXo4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=QwJgVJvPM4SngwTpwYPgDg&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=chattopadhyay%20trotsky%20lenin%20bukharin&f=false). Eg, notion of 'social ownership' simply as an opposition of private ownership (also property relations subsuming relations of production).

[Illegalitarian]

The violent suppression of anarchists and other communists in order to maintain Bolshevik hegemony is definitely problematic, but the failure of the revolution ultimately arose from the material conditions of the day, it had nothing to do with Lenin himself.

World revolution did not bud as Lenin and his allies thought it would so Russia was left alone with its pants down. It had no where to go but violent retraction at that point

[Sinister Intents]

Thought dear old Emma's work My Disillusionment In Russia fit well here:

This is the afterword:

MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA

By Emma Goldman, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company; 1924

CHAPTER XII

AFTERWORD

NON-BOLSHEVIK Socialist critics of the Russian failure contend that the Revolution could not have succeeded in Russia because industrial conditions had not reached the necessary climax in that country. They point to Marx, who taught that a social revolu tion is possible only in countries with a highly developed industrial system and its attendant social antagonisms. They therefore claim that the Russian Revolution could not be a social revolution, and that historically it had to evolve along constitutional, democratic lines, comple mented by a growing industry, in order to ripen the country economically for the basic change.

This orthodox Marxian view leaves an important factor out of consideration-a factor perhaps more vital to the possibility and success of a social revolution than-even the industrial element. That is the psychology of the masses at a given period. Why is there, for instance, no social revolution in the United States, France, or even in Germany? Surely these countries have reached the industrial development set by Marx as the culminating stage. The truth is that industrial development and sharp social contrasts are of themselves by no means sufficient to give birth to a new society or to call forth a social revolution. The necessary social consciousness, the required mass psychology is missing in such countries as the United States and the others mentioned. That explains why no social revolution has taken place there.

In this regard Russia had the advantage of other more industrialized and "civilized" lands. it is true that Russia was not as advanced industrially as her Western neighbours. But the Russian mass psychology, inspired and intensified by the February Revolution, was ripening at so fast a pace that within a few months the people were ready for such ultra-revolutionary slogans as "All power to the Soviets" and "The land to the peasants, the factories to the workers."

The significance of these slogans should not be under-estimated. Expressing in a large degree the instinctive and semi-conscious will of the people, they yet signified the complete social, economic, and industrial reorganization of Russia. What country in Europe or America is prepared to interpret such revolutionary mottoes into life? Yet in Russia, in the months of June and July, 1917, these slogans became popular and were enthusiastically and actively taken up, in. the form of direct action, by the bulk of the industrial and agrarian population of more than 150 millions. That was sufficient proof of the "ripeness" of the Russian people for the social revolution.

As to economic "preparedness" in the] Marxian sense, it must not be forgotten that Russia is preëminently an agrarian country. Marx's dictum presupposes the industrialization of the peasant and farmer population in every highly developed society, as a step toward social fitness for revolution. But events in Russia, in 1917, demonstrated that revolution does not await this process of industrialization and-what is more important-cannot be made to wait. The Russian peasants began to expropriate the landlords and the workers took possession of the factories without taking cognizance of Marxian dicta. This popular action, by virtue of its own logic, ushered in the social revolution in Russia, upsetting all Marxian calculations. The psychology of the Slav proved stronger than socialdemocratic theories.

That psychology involved the passionate yearning for liberty nurtured by a century of revolutionary agitation among all classes of society. The Russian people had fortunately remained politically unsophisticated and untouched by the corruption and confusion created among the proletariat of other countries by "democratic" liberty and self-government. The Russian remained, in this sense, natural and simple, unfamiliar with the subtleties of politics, of parliamentary trickery, and legal makeshifts. On the other hand, his primitive sense of justice and right was strong and vital, without the disintegrating finesse of pseudo-civilization. He knew what he wanted and he did not wait for "historic inevitability" to bring it to him: he employed direct action. The Revolution to him was a fact of life, not a mere theory for discussion.

Thus the social revolution took place in Russia in spite of the industrial backwardness of the country. But to make the Revolution was not enough. It was necessary for it to advance and broaden, to develop into economic and social reconstruction. That phase of the Revolution necessitated fullest play of personal initiative and collective effort. The development and success of the Revolution depended on the broadest exercise of the creative genius of the people, on the coöperation of the intellectual and manual proletariat. Common interest is the leit motif of all revolutionary endeavour, especially on its constructive side. This spirit of mutual purpose and solidarity swept Russia with a mighty wave in the first days of the OctoberNovember Revolution. Inherent in that enthusiasm were forces that could have moved mountains if intelligently guided by exclusive consideration for the well-being of the whole people. The medium for such effective guidance was on hand: the labour organizations and the coöperatives with which Russia was covered as with a network of bridges combining the city with the country; the Soviets which sprang into being responsive to the needs of the Russian people; and, finally, the intelligentsia whose traditions for a century expressed heroic devotion to the cause of Russia's emancipation.

But such a development was by no means within the programme of the Bolsheviki. For several months following October they suffered the popular forces to manifest themselves, the people carrying the Revolution into ever-widening channels. But as soon as the Communist Party felt itself sufficiently strong in the government saddle, it began to limit the scope of popular activity. All the succeeding acts of the Bolsheviki, all their following policies, changes of policies, their compromises and retreats, their methods of suppression and persecution, their terrorism and extermination of all other political views-all were but the means to an end: the retaining of the State power in the hands of the Communist Party. Indeed, the Bolsheviki themselves (in Russia) made no secret of it. The Communist Party, they contended, is the advance guard of the proletariat, and the dictatorship must rest in its hands. Alas, the Bolsheviki reckoned without their host-without the peasantry, whom neither the razvyoriska, the Tcheka, nor the wholesale shooting could persuade to support the Bolshevik réime. The peasantry became the rock upon which the bestlaid plans and schemes of Lenin were wrecked. But Lenin, a nimble acrobat, was skilled in performing within the narrowest margin. The new economic policy was introduced just in time to ward off the disaster which was slowly but surely overtaking the whole Communist edifice.

II The "new economic policy" came as a surprise and a shock to most Communists. They saw in it a reversal of everything that their Party had been proclaiming-a reversal of Communism itself. In protest some of the oldest members of the Party, men who had faced danger and persecution under the old régime while Lenin and Trotsky lived abroad in safety, left the Communist Party embittered and disappointed. The leaders then declared a lockout. They ordered the clearing of the Party ranks of all " doubtful " elements. Everybody suspected of an independent attitude and those who did not accept the new economic policy as the last word in revolutionary wisdom were expelled. Among them were Communists who for years had rendered most devoted service. Some of them, hurt to the quick by the unjust and brutal procedure, and shaken to their depths by the collapse of what they held most high, even resorted to suicide. But the smooth sailing of Lenin's new gospel had to be assured, the gospel of the sanctity of private property and the freedom of cutthroat competition erected upon the ruins of four years of revolution.

However, Communist indignation over the new economic policy merely indicated the confusion of mind on the part of Lenin's opponents. What else but mental confusion could approve of the numerous acrobatic political stunts of Lenin and yet grow indignant at the final somersault, its logical culmination? The trouble with the devout Communists was that they clung to the Immaculate Conception of the Communist State which by the aid of the Revolution was to redeem the world. But most of the leading Communists never entertained such a delusion. Least of all Lenin.

During my first interview I received the impression that he was a shrewd politician who knew exactly what he was about and that he would stop at nothing to achieve his ends. After hearing him speak on several occasions and reading his works I became convinced that Lenin had very little concern in the Revolution and that Communism to him was a very remote thing. The centralized political State was Lenin's deity, to which everything else was to be sacrificed. Someone said that Lenin would sacrifice the Revolution to save Russia. Lenin's policies, however, have proven that he was willing to sacrifice both the Revolution and the country, or at least part of the latter, in order to realize his political scheme with what was left of Russia.

Lenin was the most pliable politician in history. He could be an ultra-revolutionary, a compromiser and conservative at the same time. When like a mighty wave the cry swept over Russia, "All power to the Soviets! " Lenin swam with the tide. When the peasants took possession of the land and the workers of the factories, Lenin not only approved of those direct methods but went further. He issued the famous motto, "Rob the robbers," a slogan which served to confuse the minds of the people and caused untold injury to revolutionary idealism. Never before did any real revolutionist interpret social expropriation as the transfer of wealth from one set of individuals to another. Yet that was exactly what Lenin's slogan meant. The indiscriminate and irresponsible raids, the accumulation of the wealth of the former bourgeoisie by the new Soviet bureaucracy, the chicanery practised toward those whose only crime was their former status, were all the results of Lenin's "Rob the robbers" policy. The whole subsequent history of the Revolution is a kaleidoscope of Lenin's compromises and betrayal of his own slogans.

Bolshevik acts and methods since the October days may seem to contradict the new economic policy. But in reality they are links in the chain which was to forge the all-powerful, centralized Government with State Capitalism as its economic expression. Lenin possessed clarity of vision and an iron will. He knew how to make his comrades in Russia and outside of it believe that his scheme was true Socialism and his methods the revolution. No wonder that Lenin felt such contempt for his flock, which he never hesitated to fling into their faces. "Only fools can believe that Communism is possible in Russia now," was Lenin's reply to the opponents of the new economic policy.

As a matter of fact, Lenin was right. True Communism was never attempted in Russia, unless one considers thirty-three categories of pay, different food rations, privileges to some and indifference to the great mass as Communism.

In the early period of the Revolution it was comparatively easy for the Communist Party to possess itself of power. All the revolutionary elements, carried away by the ultrarevolutionary promises of the Bolsheviki, helped the latter to power. Once in possession of the State the Communists began their process of elimination. All the political parties and groups which refused to submit to the new dictatorship had to go. First the Anarchists and Left Social Revolutionists, then the Mensheviki and other opponents from the Right, and finally everybody who dared aspire to, an opinion of his own. Similar was the fate of all independent organizations. They were either subordinated to the needs of the new State or destroyed altogether, as were the Soviets, the trade unions and the coöperatives-three great factors for the realization of the hopes of the Revolution.

The Soviets first manifested themselves in the revolution of 1905 They played an important part during that brief but significant period. Though the revolution was crushed, the Soviet idea remained rooted in the minds and hearts of the Russian masses. At the first dawn which illuminated Russia in February, 1917, the Soviets revived again and came into bloom in a very short time. To the people the Soviets by no means represented a curtailment of the spirit of the Revolution. On the contrary, the Revolution was to find its highest, freest practical expression through the Soviets. That was why the Soviets so spontaneously and rapidly spread throughout Russia. The Bolsheviki realized the significance of the popular trend and joined the cry. But once in control of the Government the Communists saw that the Soviets threatened the supremacy of the State. At the same time they could not destroy them arbitrarily without undermining their own prestige at home and abroad as the sponsors of the Soviet system. They began to shear them gradually of their powers and finally to subordinate them to their own needs.

The Russian trade unions were much more amenable to emasculation. Numerically and in point of revolutionary fibre they were still in their childhood. By declaring adherence to the trade unions obligatory the Russian labour organizations gained in physical stature, but mentally they remained in the infant stage. The Communist State became the wet nurse of the trade unions. In return, the organizations served as the flunkeys of the State. "A school for Communism," said Lenin in the famous controversy on the functions of the trade unions. Quite right. But an antiquated school where the spirit of the child is fettered and crushed. Nowhere in the world are labour organizations as subservient to the will and the dictates of the State as they are in Bolshevik Russia.

The fate of the coöperatives is too well known to require elucidation. The coöperatives were the most essential link between the city and the country. Their value to the Revolution as a popular and successful medium of exchange and distribution and to the reconstruction of Russia was incalculable. The Bolsheviki transformed them into cogs of the Government machine and thereby destroyed their usefulness and efficiency.

III It is now clear why the Russian Revolution, as conducted by the Communist Party, was a failure. The political power of the Party, organized and centralized in the State, sought to maintain itself by all means at hand. The central authorities attempted to force the activities of the people into forms corresponding with the purposes of the Party. The sole aim of the latter was to strengthen the State and monopolize all economical, political, and social acitivities-even all cultural manifestations. The Revolution had an entirely different object, and in itsvery character it was the negation of authority and centralization. It strove to open everlarger fields for proletarian expression and to multiply the phases of individual and collective effort. The aims and tendencies. of the Revolution were diametrically opposed to those of the ruling political party.

Just as diametrically opposed were the methods of the Revolution and of the State. Those of the former were inspired by the spirit of the Revolution itself: that is to say, by emancipation from all oppressive and limiting forces; in short; by libertarian principles. The methods of the State, on the contrary--of the Bolshevik State as of every government--were based on coercion, which in the course of things necessarily developed into systematic violence, oppression, and terrorism. Thus two opposing tendencies struggled for supremacy: the Bolshevik State against the Revolution. That struggle was a life-and-death struggle. The two tendencies, contradictory in aims and methods, could not work harmoniously: the triumph of the State meant the defeat of the Revolution.

It would be an error to assume that the failure of the Revolution was due entirely to the character of the Bolsheviki. Fundamentally, it was the result of the principles and methods of Bolshevism. It was the authoritarian spirit and principles of the State which stifled the libertarian and liberating aspirations. Were any other political party in control of the government in Russia the result would have been essentially the same. It is not so much the Bolsheviki who killed the Russian Revolution as the Bolshevik idea. It was Marxism, however modified; in short, fanatical governmentalism. Only this understanding of the underlying forces that crushed the Revolution can- present the true lesson of that world-stirring event. The Russian Revolution reflects on a small scale the centuryold struggle of the libertarian principle against the authoritarian. For what is progress if not the more general acceptance of the principles of liberty as against those of coercion? The Russian Revolution was a libertarian step defeated by the Bolshevik State, by the temporary victory of the reactionary, the governmental idea.

That victory was due to a number of causes. Most of them have already been dealt with in the preceding chapters. The main cause, however, was not the industrial backwardness of Russia, as claimed by many writers on the subject. That cause was cultural which, though giving the Russian people certain advantages over their more sophisticated neighbours, also had some fatal disadvantages. The Russian was "culturally backward" in the sense of being unspoiled by political and parliamentary corruption. On- the other hand, that very condition involved, inexperience in the political game and a naive faith in the miraculous power of the party that talked the loudest and made the most promises. This faith in the power of government served to enslave the Russian people to the Communist Party even before the great masses realized that the yoke had been put around their necks.

The libertarian principle was strong in the initial days of the Revolution, the need for free expression all-absorbing. But when the first wave of enthusiasm receded into the ebb of everyday prosaic life, a firm conviction was needed to keep the fires of liberty burning. There was only a comparative handful in the great vastness of Russia to keep those fires lit-the Anarchists, whose number was small and whose efforts, absolutely suppressed under the Tsar, had had no time to bear fruit. The Russian people, to some extent instinctive Anarchists, were yet too unfamiliar with true libertarian principles and methods to apply them effectively to life. Most of the Russian Anarchists themselves were unfortunately still in the meshes of limited group activities and of individualistic endeavour as against the more important social and collective efforts. The Anarchists, the future unbiased historian will admit, have played a very important rôle in the Russian Revolution-a rôle far more significant and fruitful than their comparatively small number would have led one to expect. Yet honesty and sincerity compel me to state that their work would have been of infinitely greater practical value had they been better organized and equipped to guide the released energies of the people toward the reorganization of life on a libertarian foundation.

But the failure of the Anarchists in the Russian Revolution-in the sense just indicated does by no means argue the defeat of the libertarian idea. On the contrary, the Russian Revolution has demonstrated beyond doubt that the State idea, State Socialism, in all its manifestations (economic, political, social, educational) is entirely and hopelessly bankrupt. Never before in all history has authority, government, the State, proved so inherently static, reactionary, and even counter-revolutionary in effect. In short, the very antithesis of revolution.

It remains true, as it has through all progress, that only the libertarian spirit and method can bring man a step further in his eternal striving for the better, finer, and freer life. Applied to the great social upheavals known as revolutions, this tendency is as potent as in the ordinary evolutionary process. The authoritarian method has been a failure all through history and now it has again failed in the Russian Revolution. So far human ingenuity has discovered no other principle except the libertarian, for man has indeed uttered the highest wisdom when he said that liberty is the mother of order, not its daughter. All political tenets and parties notwithstanding, no revolution can be truly and permanently successful unless it puts its emphatic veto upon all tyranny and centralization, and determinedly strives to make the revolution a real revaluation of all economic, social, and cultural values. Not mere substitution of one political party for another in the control of the Government, not the masking of autocracy by proletarian slogans, not the dictatorship of a new class over an old one, not political scene shifting of any kind, but the complete reversal of all these authoritarian principles will alone serve the revolution.

In the economic field this transformation must be in the hands of the industrial masses: the latter have the choice between an industrial State and anarcho-syndicalism. In the case of the former the menace to the constructive development of the new social structure would be as great as from the political State. It would become a dead weight upon the growth of the new forms of life. For that very reason syndicalism (or industrialism) alone is not, as its exponents claim, sufficient unto itself. It is only when the libertarian spirit permeates the economic organizations of the workers that the manifold creative energies of the people can manifest themselves. and the revolution be safeguarded and defended. Only free initiative and popular participation in the affairs of the revolution can prevent the terrible blunders committed in Russia. For instance, with fuel only a hundred versts [about sixty-six miles] from Petrograd there would have been no necessity for that city to suffer from cold had the workers' economic organizations of Petrograd been free to exercise their initiative for the common good. The peasants of the Ukraina would not have been hampered in the cultivation of their land had they had access to the farm implements stacked up in the warehouses of Kharkov and other industrial centres awaiting orders from Moscow for their distribution. These are characteristic examples of Bolshevik governmentalism and centralization, which should serve as a warning to the workers of Europe and America of the destructive effects of Statism.

The industrial power of the masses, expressed through their libertarian associations--Anarchosyndicalism--is alone able to organize successfully the economic life and carry on production. On the other hand, the coöperatives, working in harmony with the industrial bodies, serve as the distributing and exchange media between city and country, and at the same time link in fraternal bond the industrial and agrarian masses. A common tie of mutual service and aid is created which is the strongest bulwark of the revolution-far more effective then compulsory labour, the Red Army, or terrorism. In that way alone can revolution act as a leaven to quicken the development of new social forms and inspire the masses to greater achievements.

But libertarian. industrial organizations and the coöperatives are not the only media in the interplay of the complex phases of social life. There are the cultural forces Which, though closely related to the economic activities, have yet their own functions to perform. In Russia the Communist State became the sole arbiter of all the needs of the social body. The result, as already described, was complete cultural stagnation and the paralysis of all creative endeavour. If such a débâcle is to be avoided in the future, the cultural forces, while remaining rooted in the economic soil, must yet retain independent scope and freedom of expression. Not adher- ence to the dominant political party but devotion to the revolution, knowledge, ability, and-above all-the creative impulse should be the criterion' of fitness for cultural work. In Russia this was made impossible almost from the beginning of the October Revolution, by the violent separation of the intelligentsia and the masses. It is true that the original offender in this case was the intelligentsia, especially the technical intelligentsia, which in Russia tenaciously clung -as it does in other countries-to the coat-tails of the bourgeoisie. This element, unable to comprehend the significance of revolutionary events, strove to stem the tide by wholesale' sabotage. But in Russia there was also another kind of intelligentsia--one with a glorious revolutionary past of a hundred years. That part of the intelligentsia kept faith with the people, though it could not unreservedly accept the new dictatorship. The fatal error of the Bolsheviki was that they made no distinction between the two elements. They met sabotage with wholesale terror against the intelligentsia as a class, and inaugurated a campaign of hatred more intensive than the persecution of the bourgeoisieitself--a method which created an abyss between the intelligentsia and the proletariat and reareda barrier against constructive work.

Lenin was the first to realize that criminal blunder. He pointed out that it was a grave error to lead the workers to believe that they could build up the industries and engage in cultural work without the aid and coöperation of the intelligentsia. The proletariat had neither the knowledge nor the training for the task, and the intelligentsia had to be restored in the direction of the industrial life. But the recognition of one error never safeguarded Lenin and his Party from immediately committing another. The technical intelligentsia was called back on terms which added disintegration to the antagonism against the régime.

While the workers continued to starve, engineers, industrial experts, and technicians received high salaries, special privileges, and the best rations. They became the pampered employees of the State and the new slave drivers of the masses. The latter, fed for years on the fallacious teachings that muscle alone is necessary for a successful revolution and that only physical labour is productive, and incited by the campaign of hatred which stamped every intellectual a counter-revolutionist and speculator, could not make peace with those they had been taught to scorn and distrust.

Unfortunately Russia is not the only country where this proletarian attitude against the intelligentsia prevails. Everywhere political demagogues play upon the ignorance of the masses, teach them that education and culture are bourgeois prejudices, that the workers can do without them, and that they alone are able to rebuild society. The Russian Revolution has made it very clear that both brain and muscle are indispensable to the work of social regeneration. Intellectual and physical labour are as closely related in the social body as brain and hand in the human organism. One cannot function without the other.

It is true that most intellectuals consider themselves a class apart from and superior to the workers, but social conditions everywhere are fast demolishing the high pedestal of the intelligentsia. They are made to see that they, too, are proletarians, even more dependent upon the economic master than the manual worker. Unlike the physicial proletarian, who can pick up his tools and tramp the world in search of a change from a galling situation, the intellectual proletarians have their roots more firmly in their particular social environment and cannot so easily change their occupation or mode of living. It is therefore of utmost importance to bring home to the workers the rapid proletarization of the intellectuals and the common tie thus created between them. If the Western world is to profit by the lessons of Russia, the demagogic flattery of the masses and blind antagonism toward the intelligentsia must cease. That does not mean, however, that the toilers should depend entirely upon the intellectual element. On the contrary, the masses must begin right now to prepare and equip themselves for the great task the revolution will put upon them. They should acquire the knowledge and technical skill necessary for managing and directing the intricate mechanism of the industrial and social structure of their respective countries. But even at best the workers will need the coöperation of the professional and cultural elements. Similarly the latter must realize that their true interests are identical with those of the masses. Once the two social forces learn to blend into one harmonious whole, the tragic aspects of the Russian Revolution would to a great extent be eliminated. No one would be shot because he "once acquired an education." The scientist, the engineer, the specialist, the investigator, the educator, and the creative artist, as well as the carpenter, machinist, and the rest, are all part and parcel of the collective force which is to shape the revolution into the great architect of the new social edifice. Not hatred, but unity; not antagonism, but fellowship; not shooting, but sympathy-that is the lesson of the great Russian débâcle for the intelligentsia as well as the workers. All must learn the value of mutual aid and libertarian coöperation, Yet each must be able to remain independent in his own sphere and in harmony with the best he can yield to society. Only in that way will productive labour and educational and cultural endeavour express themselves in. ever newer and richer forms. That is to me the all-embracing and vital moral taught by the Russian Revolution.

IV In the previous pages I have tried to point out why Bolshevik principles, methods, and tactics failed, and that similar principles and methods applied in any other country, even of the highest industrial development, must also fail. I have further shown that it is not only Bolshevism that failed, but Marxism itself. That is to say, the STATE IDEA, the authoritarian principle, has been proven bankrupt by the experience of the Russian Revolution. If I were to sum up my *hole argument in one sentence I should say: The inherent tendency of the State is to concentrate, to narrow, and monopolize all social activities; the nature of revolution is, on the contrary, to grow, to broaden, and disseminate itself in ever-wider circles. In other words, the State is institutional and static; revolution is fluent, dynamic. These two tendencies are incompatible and mutually destructive. The State idea killed the Russian Revolution and it must have the same result in all other revolutions, unless the libertarian idea prevail.

Yet I go much further. It is not only Bolshevism, Marxism, and Governmentalism which are fatal to revolution as well as to all vital human progress. The main cause of the defeat of the Russian Revolution lies much deeper. It is to be found in the whole Socialist conception of revolution itself.

The dominant, almost general, idea of revolution--particuIarly the Socialist idea-is that revolution is a violent change of social conditions through which one social class, the working class, becomes dominant over another class, the capitalist class. It is the conception of a purely physical change, and as such it involves only political scene shifting and institutional rearrangements. Bourgeois dictatorship is replaced by the "dictatorship of the proletariat "--or by that of its "advance guard," the Communist Party; Lenin takes the seat of the Romanovs, the Imperial Cabinet is rechristened Soviet of People's Commissars, Trotsky is appointed Minister of War, and a labourer becomes the Military Governor General of Moscow. That is, in essence, the Bolshevik conception of revolution, as translated into actual practice. And with a few minor alterations it is also the idea of revolution held by all other Socialist parties.

This conception is inherently and fatally false. Revolution is indeed a violent process. But if it is to result only in a change of dictatorship, in a shifting of names and political personalities, then it is hardly worth while. It is surely not worth all the struggle and sacrifice, the stupendous loss in human life and cultural values that result from every revolution. If such a revolution were even to bring greater social well being (which has not been the case in Russia) then it would also not be worth the terrific price paid: mere improvement can be brought about without bloody revolution. It is not palliatives or reforms that are the real aim and purpose of revolution, as I conceive it.

In my opinion--a thousandfold strengthened by the Russian experience--the great mission of revolution, of the SOCIAL REVOLUTION, is a fundamental transvaluation of values. A transvaluation not only of social, but also of human' values. The latter are even preëminent, for they are the basis of all social values. Our institutions and conditions rest upon deep-seated ideas. To change those conditions and at the' same time leave the underlying ideas and values intact means only a superficial transformation,' one that cannot be permanent or bring real betterment. It is a change of form only, not of substance, as so tragically proven by Russia.

It is at once the great failure and the great tragedy of the Russian Revolution that it attempted (in the leadership of the ruling political party) to change only institutions and conditions while ignoring entirely the human and social values involved in the Revolution. Worse yet, in its mad passion for power, the Communist State even sought to strengthen and deepen the very ideas and conceptions which the Revolution had come to destroy. It supported and encouraged all the worst anti-social qualities and systematically destroyed the already awakened conception of the new revolutionary values. The sense of justice and equality, the love of liberty and of human brotherhood-these fundamentals of the real regeneration of society-the Communist State suppressed to the point of extermination. Man's instinctive sense of equity was branded as weak sentimentality; human ,dignity and liberty became a bourgeois superstition; the sanctity of life, which is the very essence of social reconstruction, was condemned as anrevolutionary, almost counter-revolutionary. This fearful perversion of fundamental values bore within itself the seed of destruction. With the conception that the Revolution was only a means of securing political power, it was inevitable that all revolutionary values should be subordinated to the needs of the Socialist State; indeed, exploited to further the security of the newly acquired governmental power. Reasons of State," masked as the "interests of the Revolution and of the People," became the sole criterion of action, even of feeling. Violence, the tragic inevitability of revolutionary upheavals, became an established custom, a habit. and was presently enthroned as the most powerful and "ideal" institution. Did not Zinoviev himself canonize Dzerzhinsky, the head of the bloody Tcheka, as the "saint of the Revolution"? Were not the greatest public honours paid by the State to Uritsky, the founder and sadistic chief of the Petrograd Tcheka?

This perversion of the ethical values soon crystallized into the all-dominating slogan of the Communist Party: THE END JUSTIFIES ALL MEANS. Similarly in the past the Inquisition and the Jesuits adopted this motto and subordinated to it all morality. It avenged itself upon the Jesuits as it did upon the Russian Revolution. In the wake of this slogan followed lying, deceit, hypocrisy and treachery, murder, open and secret. It should be of utmost interest to students of social psychology that two movements as widely separated in time and ideas as Jesuitism and Bolshevism reached exactly similar results in the evolution of the principle. that the end justifies all means. The historic parallel, almost entirely ignored so far, contains a most important lesson for all coming revolutions and for the whole future of mankind.

There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another. This conception is a potent menace to social regeneration. All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical. From the day of my arrival in Russia I felt it, at first vaguely, then ever more consciously and clearly. The great and inspiring aims of the Revolution became so clouded with and obscured by the methods used by the ruling political power that it was hard to distinguish what was temporary means and what final purpose. Psychologically and socially the means necessarily influence and alter the aims. The whole history of man is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's methods of ethical concepts means to Sink into the depths of utter demoralization. In that lies the real tragedy of the Bolshevik philosophy as applied to the Russian Revolution. May this lesson not be in vain.

No revolution can ever succeed as a factor of liberation unless the MEANS used to further it be identical in spirit and tendency with the PURPOSES to be achieved. Revolution is the negation of the existing, a violent protest against man's inhumanity to man with all the thousand and one slaveries it involves. It is the destroyer of dominant values upon which a complex system of injustice, oppression, and wrong has been built up by ignorance and brutality. -It is the herald of NEW VALUES, ushering in a transformation of the basic relations of man to man, and of man to society. It is not a mere reformer, patching up some social evils; not a mere changer of forms and institutions; not only a re-distributor of social well-being. It is all that, yet more, much more. It is, first and foremost, the TRANSVALUATOR, the bearer of new values. It is the great TEACHER Of the NEW ETHICS, inspiring man with a new concept of life and its manifestations in social relationships. It is the mental and spiritual regenerator.

Its first ethical precept is the identity of means used and aims sought. The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well being. Unless this be the essential aim of revolution, violent social changes would have no justification. For external social alterations can be, and have been, accomplished by the normal processes of evolution. Revolution, on the contrary. signifies not mere external change, but internal, basic, fundamental change. That internal change of concepts and ideas, permeating ever-larger social strata, finally culminates in the violent upheaval known as revolution. Shall that climax reverse the process of transvaluation, turn against it, betray it? That is what happened in Russia. On the contrary, the revolution itself must quic- ken and further the process of which it is the cumulative expression; its main mission is to inspire it, to carry it to greater heights, give it fullest scope for expression. Only thus is revolution true to itself.

Applied in practice it means that the period of the actual revolution, the so-called transitory stage, must be the introduction, the prelude to the new social conditions. It is the threshold to the NEW LIFE, the new HOUSE OF MAN AND HUMANITY As such it must he of the spirit of the new life, harmonious with the construction of the new edifice.

To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical valuesthereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone. Witness the tragic condition of Russia. The methods of State centralization have paralysed individual initiative and effort;the tyranny of the dictatorship has cowed the people into slavish submission and all but extinguished the fires of liberty; organized terrorism has depraved and brutalized the masses and stifled every idealistic aspiration; institutionalized murder has cheapened human life,and all sense of the dignity of man and the value of life has been eliminated; coercion at everystep has made effort bitter, labour a punishment, has turned the whole of existence into a scheme of mutual deceit, and has revived the lowest and most brutal instincts of man. A sorry heritage to begin a new life of freedom and brotherhood.

It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. The means used to further the revolution must harmonize with its purposes. In short, the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be initiated with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitional period. The latter can serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life only if built of the same material as the life to be achieved. Revolution is the mirror of the coming day; it is the child that is to be the Man of To-morrow. THE END

[Illegalitarian]

Careful, Bolshevik repression of non-Bolshevik communist elements in the early USSR in order to maintain political hegemony is a dangerous opinion to hold around these parts

Old Emma was a secret agent of the Entente/White sympathizing/esser agenda, just like anyone else who opposed the Bolsheviks :laugh:

[Lord Testicles]

Careful, Bolshevik repression of non-Bolshevik communist elements in the early USSR in order to maintain political hegemony is a dangerous opinion to hold around these parts

Old Emma was a secret agent of the Entente/White sympathizing/esser agenda, just like anyone else who opposed the Bolsheviks :laugh:

How can you possibly oppose the Bolsheviks when what they created ended up being so good!?

[Sinister Intents]

How can you possibly opposed the Bolsheviks when what they created ended up being so good!?

Are you serious or not? I'm not good with subtlety or sarcasm all the time. The Bolshevik party most certainly benefited those at the higher echelons of the Soviet bureaucracy. The Soviets oppressed the workers, and who really knows what Lenin's intentions really were

[Illegalitarian]

He's joking.


I have a hard time believing that Lenin had honest intentions. Kropotkin characterized him as "a mad man, only wishful of sacrifice and slaughter", and I can definitely see how it would seem this way to someone living through that chaos at the time, but looking back I'm not sure if that's entirely right either.

I think once the German revolution didn't happen, he didn't have much of a choice but to concern himself with the protection of himself and his loyalists and abandoned all pretenses of communism. Revolution and revolutionary violence is about survival and perseverance, after all, and when it was clear that the global communist revolution wasn't there to protect it then became about protecting the national, bourgeois revolution.


He still served a useful, progressive function though, in the end. Russian Jacobins, purging feudalist social relations and bringing about the bourgeois the not-so-democratic revolution.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Whilst I don't necessarily agree with everything Lenin ended up advocating after October, I do realise that the largely impossible circumstances that the Bolsheviks found themselves in really gave them few options. It was pretty obvious Lenin was holding on for a European revolution that never appeared and the paths taken to crush counter-revolution ended up establishing the very tools that enabled what is essentially a stagnation of bureaucracy to more firmly establish itself. However, Victor Serge has a funny little anecdote in his Memoirs that I think fits the tone of this thread:


A Party committee asked me one day to make a speech before some sailors at the Fleet depot. "Why are you asking me to speak when any of you could do it, and better than me?” “Because you’re a runt; in these conditions they wont attack you; and also, your French accent will appeal to them." The soldiers and sailors often booed down Party speakers for whose benefit they had invented a comic ritual: the speakers would be sat in a wheelbarrow and taken around the camp to the accompaniment of jeering and whistling. Nothing happened to me. I was too skinny to be wheelbarrowed. The sailors heard me out in relative silence. On the walls of the depot, graffiti mocked Lenin and Trotsky: DRIED FISH AND SHITTY BREAD.

[The Feral Underclass]

And the failure of the Russian Revolution was down to material reasons.

Okay, I want you to provide me with reasons for why material conditions caused the following things:

Suppression of left-opposition dissent.
Refusal to institute mass participatory democracy.
The brutal suppression of the Makhnovshchina and Kronstadt.
Armed military detachments in factories.
Lack of democratic oversight of the military and security forces.
Bureaucratic and authoritarian centralised political structure.
The rise of Stalin and his consolidation of power.

[Per Levy]

my main critique of lenin is pretty much that 90 year old texts of him are being used by partys/groups/organisations to justify their opportunism, like still participating in bourgeois parliaments because lenin said it is a useful tool.

[Sharia Lawn]

I have a hard time believing that Lenin had honest intentions. Kropotkin characterized him as "a mad man, only wishful of sacrifice and slaughter", and I can definitely see how it would seem this way to someone living through that chaos at the time, but looking back I'm not sure if that's entirely right either.

Do all revolutionary Marxists foreground a single man's honesty in explaining the outcome of a massive social upheaval?

[Tim Cornelis]

Okay, I want you to provide me with reasons for why material conditions caused the following things:

Suppression of left-opposition dissent.
Refusal to institute mass participatory democracy.
The brutal suppression of the Makhnovshchina and Kronstadt.
Armed military detachments in factories.
Lack of democratic oversight of the military and security forces.
Bureaucratic and authoritarian centralised political structure.
The rise of Stalin and his consolidation of power.

These are very relevant questions. One of my pet peeves is when Marxists simply state 'material conditions' or 'dialectics' and nothing more as justification for something, and offer no arguments. And based on other posts of many, though not all, of these Marxists, it becomes clear that they don't have a full grasp of historical materialism, or an incomplete understanding of it. Such attitudes are really uncritical and unscientific.


Do all revolutionary Marxists foreground a single man's honesty in explaining the outcome of a massive social upheaval?

Illegalitarian is more of a Marxian anarchist.

[RedWorker]

Okay, I want you to provide me with reasons for why material conditions caused the following things:

The failure of the international revolution, the backward conditions in Russia, the working class being an impoverished minority, and so on, resulted in ideological deficiencies. As socialism clearly wasn't coming the Bolsheviks needed to change their positions around to make it look like there really were progress towards it. These ideological deficiencies later provided the basis for these problems. Surely authoritarian tendencies are also to blame, but to blame all these problems on Lenin personally (which is what the post I was replying to was doing) is an odd application of the great man theory.

[Tim Cornelis]

To be fair, the Feral Underclass asked to provide the reasons, which you did. But more stringent would be how those reasons caused the things on the list. You've not established a causal relationship.

[The Feral Underclass]

The failure of the international revolution, the backward conditions in Russia, the working class being an impoverished minority, and so on, resulted in ideological deficiencies.

Those conditions existed before the Bolsheviks took power and many of the things I listed were established within 12 months of them doing so. How do you explain those two inconsistencies in your argument?


As socialism clearly wasn't coming the Bolsheviks needed to change their positions around to make it look like there really were progress towards it. These ideological deficiencies later provided the basis for these problems.

So you want us to believe that the reason that "socialism wasn't coming" had nothing to do with the fact the Bolsheviks instituted unsocialist policies, but because the conditions that existed when they took power continued to exist afterwards? How does that make any sense? Your argument is basically: The Bolsheviks took power at a time when the conditions were a certain way in order to influence those conditions, but couldn't influence those conditions because the conditions were a certain way.

Your argument also relies on the fallacious proposition that the choices the Bolsheviks made in light of the problems they faced were the only choices available to them. Is it really your argument that because "socialism wasn't coming" the only option available to them was to violently repress socialists? Are you really saying that because the international revolution didn't come, the only choice available to the Bolsheviks was to brutally suppress the Ukrainian anarchist revolution? Are you really telling us that because the economic conditions that existed in Russia continued to exist after the took power, the only choice available to them was to refuse mass participatory democracy?

I'm sorry, but it's just supreme arrogance to expect anyone to buy what is so evidently a load of bullshit. The Bolsheviks made ideologically motivated choices. They could have made different ones, but they chose the ones they did because they wrongly believed they were right. It is absolutely absurd to suggest that the reasons for that were because of situations completely beyond them. This kind of nonsense borders on mysticism and should be flatly rejected as nothing but obsequious Bolshevist apologism.

[RedWorker]

So you want us to believe that the reason that "socialism wasn't coming" had nothing to do with the fact the Bolsheviks instituted unsocialist policies, but because the conditions that existed when they took power continued to exist afterwards?

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. Is it even possible to 'institute socialist policy'?


How does that make any sense? Your argument is basically: The Bolsheviks took power at a time when the conditions were a certain way in order to influence those conditions, but couldn't influence those conditions because the conditions were a certain way.

So it is possible to have socialism at any time? The conditions that exist don't determine whether it is possible or not? A political party decides the conditions?


Your argument also relies on the fallacious proposition that the choices the Bolsheviks made in light of the problems they faced were the only choices available to them. Is it really your argument that because "socialism wasn't coming" the only option available to them was to violently repress socialists? Are you really saying that because the international revolution didn't come, the only choice available to the Bolsheviks was to brutally suppress the Ukrainian anarchist revolution? Are you really telling us that because the economic conditions that existed in Russia continued to exist after the took power, the only choice available to them was to refuse mass participatory democracy?

No. What I'm saying is that the dire conditions provided for ideological deficiencies. These ideological deficiencies later provided the basis for the Bolsheviks to undertake authoritarian actions. Given a country with a massive peasantry and backward conditions, state capitalism was accepted by the Bolsheviks as the best possible choice, along with other ideological deviations. These deviations made the restoration of the bourgeois state make sense to them, and from then on their authoritarian actions started fitting like hand in glove in their thinking.

[The Feral Underclass]

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. Is it even possible to 'institute socialist policy'?

When a communist party seizes state power they are presented with a practical choice of how to organise themselves. Either you do what the Bolsheviks did or you work to implement policies more in line with what you actually believe, such as mandat impératif, which, incidentally, was what Marx advocated.


So it is possible to have socialism at any time? The conditions that exist don't determine whether it is possible or not? A political party decides the conditions?

I gave you a list of policies, not a definitive checklist for implementing socialism. Of course certain conditions have to be met for socialism to exist as a grand narrative. But there are choices that have to be made when it comes to political organising and you choose the ones that best reflect socialism or you don't. A political party doesn't decide conditions, but it decides how it relates to them.

And just for the record, you haven't responded to my specific argument.


No. What I'm saying is that the dire conditions provided for ideological deficiencies.

Yes I know that's what you're saying. My response to you is that doesn't make sense, nor is it a particularly satisfactory explanation all things considered. The argument has moved on from "I think material conditions made these things happen." I'm asking you to explain how that is possible.


These ideological deficiencies later provided the basis for the Bolsheviks to undertake authoritarian actions. Given a country with a massive peasantry and backward conditions, state capitalism was accepted by the Bolsheviks as the best possible choice, along with other ideological deviations. These deviations made the restoration of the bourgeois state make sense to them, and from then on their authoritarian actions started fitting like hand in glove in their thinking.

Yes yes, just repeating yourself isn't a substitute for substance. I have refuted your argument and asked for clarification. Are you going to provide it or not? Specifically I asked you to account for the two inconsistencies I mentioned.

[Sandy Becker]

What a great thread! For those of you who can't understand why Lenin believed in using repressive measures toward the non-Bolshevik opposition try reading some history. By 1920 most of the Mensheviks were openly for counterrevolution. The Left SRs had killed some leading Bolsheviks and almost precipitated a crisis in 1918 during negotiations on ending hostilities in WWI between the USSR.

Lest anyone doubt Lenin's commitment to international revolution, look at the resources poured into the Comintern by country whose existence was almost constantly threatened for several years after the revolution.

I am disappointed to find this kind of sentiment on a site call "Revleft." Maybe it should be called "Refleft"?:)

[Redistribute the Rep]

And what policies should have been implemented that would have resulted in socialism despite the failure or the revolution to spread internationally?

[The Feral Underclass]

And what policies should have been implemented that would have resulted in socialism despite the failure or the revolution to spread internationally?

You can't implement a policy and then socialism exists.

[Sinister Intents]

And what policies should have been implemented that would have resulted in socialism despite the failure or the revolution to spread internationally?

The anarchists should never have been persecuted and fuck policies

[Lord Testicles]

fuck policies

No.

[motion denied]

And what policies should have been implemented that would have resulted in socialism despite the failure or the revolution to spread internationally?

Ultimately nothing.

But I think this is kind of a cop-out, idk.

[Sinister Intents]

No.

Let me amend and say a state's policies

[Lord Testicles]

Let me amend and say a state's policies

What if the state's policy was "free healthcare and $50,000 for everybody"?

[G4b3n]

And what policies should have been implemented that would have resulted in socialism despite the failure or the revolution to spread internationally?

None, it was fucked. It was either Stalinism or social democracy and we all know how that went.

[Sinister Intents]

What if the state's policy was "free healthcare and $50,000 for everybody"?

What if the state's policy was to give every child a turtle? BTW I'm neutral on the DOtP idea, I still just in want the state smashed regardless of the promises it makes.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

None, it was fucked. It was either Stalinism or social democracy and we all know how that went.
I feel like that's a cop out. Everyone was starving (Zinoviev's nephew died of malnutrition etc), everyone was under the threat of the White counter-revolution (one of the regiments sent to suppress Kronstadt behaved erratically and when investigated it turned out that the officer in charge was a White sympathiser just waiting for his moment to strike etc) and the other groups on the left were hardly paragons of virtue (Evno Azev, one of the organisers of the SR's assassinations, was also an Okhrana spy, when Yudenich threatened Petrograd and the anarchists were armed by the bolsheviks they decided amongst themselves to occupy and defend the Pravda printing press and discovered amongst their number two White infiltrators who tried to destroy the printing press with hand grenades etc). So, what, give up? Doing anything is pointless?

The proletarian revolution happens and you find your organisation at its head but suddenly face counter-revolution from within, in the shape of the leftovers of the former regime, and also from without, in the shape of reactionary Generals and their armies. Imperialist intervention has seen your comrades in Baku and Finland as well as multiple other places massacred and the imperialist armies still linger on the borders, bayonets ready like the Prussians at the gates of Paris. Revolution threatens in Europe, a much more industrialised part of the world easily capable of supplying your own little segment of the world, but until then you've got barely anything at hand and even rationing fails to be organised properly as everyone has to rely on a black market system in order to sustain themselves. What do you do? What do you advocate doing?

The more I read about the situation, the more I find reason to critique the actions of the bolsheviks but at the same time I understand why they did what they did, what was going through their minds at the time. The words of Marx spring to mind, "To find a parallel for the conduct of Thiers and his bloodhounds we must go back to the times of Sulla and the two Triumvirates of Rome. The same wholesale slaughter in cold blood; the same disregard, in massacre, of age and sex, the same system of torturing prisoners; the same proscriptions, but this time of a whole class; the same savage hunt after concealed leaders, lest one might escape; the same denunciations of political and private enemies; the same indifference for the butchery of entire strangers to the feud." If they failed they faced death. I struggle to imagine an alternative path they could have taken that isn't just some fantasy given what the workers had available to them and what they were facing.

Their biggest mistake was instituting the Cheka, but without it could the assassins, the provocateurs and the social democrats destabilise the system, such as it was, from within? The second biggest mistake was militarising labour, but without it (instituted initially by the workers themselves) would they have been able to supply the red guard and beat back the White armies? Things like Kronstadt and the suppression of the Makhnovshchina are completely on the bolsheviks heads, true. Kalinin, who was met at the gates of Kronstadt with music, could have negotiated with those involved when they were still supportive, as such, of the soviet regime but instead he went in and lectured and insulted and prevented any possibility of reconciliation. In regards to Makhno, Lenin and Trotsky had a rough plan to secede part of the Ukraine as an autonomous territory of the Ukrainian peasant anarchists officially but decided instead on an opportunistic betrayal to secure the bread basket of the old Russian Empire. As for the rise of bureaucracy? Multiple times the bolsheviks tried to prevent the emergence of the bureaucracy but 'trying' and 'succeeding' are different things.

I'm not sure my rambling answers anything, really, but suffice to say I believe that Lenin and the bolsheviks found themselves victims, as much as heroes and criminals, of circumstance. When in a discussion with Gorky, Lenin asked much the same questions as I ask now "What do you want?... Is it possible to act humanely in a struggle of such unprecedented ferocity? Where is there any place for soft-heartedness or generosity? We are being blockaded by Europe, we are deprived of the help of the European proletariat, counter-revolution is creeping like a bear on us from every side. What do you want? Are we not right? Ought we not to struggle and resist? We are not a set of fools... What is your criterion for judging which blows are necessary and which are superfluous in a fight?" The Russian Revolution was doomed to failure but it was doomed to failure in 1914, when the social democrats capitulated to national chauvinism, not 1917 when the proletariat threw their weight behind the one revolutionary organisation who thought they were prepared to take on the role.

[Rafiq]

Okay, I want you to provide me with reasons for why material conditions caused the following things:

Suppression of left-opposition dissent.
Refusal to institute mass participatory democracy.
The brutal suppression of the Makhnovshchina and Kronstadt.
Armed military detachments in factories.
Lack of democratic oversight of the military and security forces.
Bureaucratic and authoritarian centralised political structure.
The rise of Stalin and his consolidation of power.

This is a rather schizophrenic association - while Bolshevik repression ultimately influenced the nature of Stalinist terror, they are in no way the same, and their prevalence existed in entirely different contexts.

It is not that "material conditions" as some kind of impersonal force forced the Bolsheviks to do this or that - but that existing conditions had implications for the decisions that the Bolsheviks made. It's fashionable to assume that the alleged "Left opposition" was a genuine force which pressed for worker's democracy in the face of Bolshevik dictatorship - but as any idiot would have known, prattling of "soviets without Bolsheviks" was simply phrase-mongering Left-revolutionaries and industrial anarchists espoused to ultimately guise their petty bourgeois trauma to the October revolution. To speak of "mass democracy" in the such times of crises is ridiculous: even the Makhnovschina had to take similar measures in order to sustain its survival. The proletariat as a whole can express its interests outside of the ballot box - it's easy to be dismissive and talk of a transfer of power to the Bolsheviks from the workers, but this is inconsistent when applied to other circumstances in the revolution. It makes absolutely no sense if we apraoch the Russian civil war as a whole. The fact of the matter is that the Bolsheviks carried out the interests of the industrial proletariat swiftly and mercilessly - if their interests were divorced from them, none of the party leaders would have put their necks on the line defending the revolution. Don't you understand that Lenin's April thesis was merely playing with chance? There were no predispositions to Bolshevik dictatorship - power was taken with great risk.

The Bolsheviks did not have qualms with the demands of the so called "Left" opposition - but the implications of those demands within their present conditions. The fight was not between freedom and dictatorship - but between survival and destruction. But even if we assume that the krodstat uprising was a true testament to the degeneracy of the October revolution, the standard narrative for Marxists is that the October revolution failed because of its inability to spread to advanced capitalist nations. By 1921, the year of the uprising, it had become apparent to the Bolshevik government as a result of the failed revolutions across Europe (Namely in Germany, Hungary and the failed military adventure in Poland) that they were to make do with their circumstances and continue on with the fight against those challenging the authority of the proletarian dictatorship.

And it just so happens that following the civil war, a great bulk of the same Russian proletariat that had made the revolution perished. All that was left was the proletarian dictatorship without the proletariat. The consolidation of power "by Stalin" (something that had not occurred until the mid to late thirties) was not inevitable in 1918, though it may have been likely in 1921 (but still not inevitable). The thermidorian reaction was also inevitable during the reign of Robespierre, that does not mean the efforts and deeds of the Jacobins were in vain, or were of sinister intent.

Anarchists celebrate being virgins of history, untested, celebrating the utterly inevitable nature of their immediate failure. Why was the Makhnovschina unable to equip itself with the strength to combat the Bolshevik centralized state? Why are your anarchists historically unable to sustain themselves militarily? I will tell you why: because anarchism ideologically takes comfort in the absence of the prospect of being victorious. Anarchists as yourself - the negative conscience of bourgeois society and ideology, can only look with horror at the destruction of the existing order.

[motion denied]

I love how you can remember some great passages from Serge's memoirs so easily, GiantMonkeyMan.

[Rafiq]

You can't implement a policy and then socialism exists.

Most anarchists recognize October 1917 as a genuine proletarian revolution. So logically, we would have to assume that your opposition to the Bolsheviks rests in the fact that you oppose the enacted policies thereafter (which apparently were enacted because of a hunger for power? Or the mystical powers of wielding authority).

If socialism cannot be enacted or strengthened through policies, then it cannot be hindered because of policies either. You either seize power as a socialist and proceed accordingly, or you do not.

[Rafiq]

If the bourgeoisie can rule through dictatorship, if centralized power can manifest their interests as a class without directly making all of the decisions (Even though at no point were workers completely divorced from Bolshevik politics), then the same must hold for the proletarian class.

Because class rule does not simply amount to direct democracy. Certainly, in the year 2014 democracy is an absolute necessity for any proletarian dictatorship. But in circumstances as experienced by the Bolsheviks wherin the predispositions toward proletarian dictatorship were not present by most demographically - to talk of "mass participatory democracy" is nonsense.

[The Feral Underclass]

Just so we're clear, I'm not an anarchist.

[Illegalitarian]

Do all revolutionary Marxists foreground a single man's honesty in explaining the outcome of a massive social upheaval?

That's what I did isn't it (no)



Rafiq, in the thread where we talked about the French revolution you rightfully brought up how that, in China and Russia alike, that the people were calling for action (terror) against counter-revolutionaries and that the action taken against these people (and sometimes, innocent people) was a 'from-below' action a lot like it was with the san-culottes and pretty much everyone else who wanted Revolution in France.

Could you speak more to that? I'm not the student of these revolutions as I am the French revolution, can you point to specific instances or documents that show how the "red terror" in places like Russia, Spain etc were a result of popular uprising and not the policy of some sort of vanguardist government?

This is all very interesting to me.



And it just so happens that following the civil war, a great bulk of the same Russian proletariat that had made the revolution perished. All that was left was the proletarian dictatorship without the proletariat. The consolidation of power "by Stalin" (something that had not occurred until the mid to late thirties) was not inevitable in 1918, though it may have been likely in 1921 (but still not inevitable). The thermidorian reaction was also inevitable during the reign of Robespierre, that does not mean the efforts and deeds of the Jacobins were in vain, or were of sinister intent.


I'm not so sure that the thermidorian reaction was inevitable, it seemed to be a direct consequence of the Jacobin government being too lenient on Girondin and Dantonist indulgents combined with Robespierre's lack of fast action against men like Carrier, Fouche and Tallien, though one could make the argument that when the Convention blocked The Law of 22 Pariel (sp?)'s implementation of the ability of the committee to purge its own members and members of the convention, it was then only a matter of time before the enemies of the Republic acted against it swiftly and subtly, unlike Stalin's consolidation of power.

The Russian and French revolutions sync up a lot, which is a testament to Marx's genius with regards to historical materialism and what that methodology can tell us, but I think that the shift of power into the hands of Stalin and his allies was likely more subtle and inevitable, though I don't know enough about it to say for sure.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Rafiq, in the thread where we talked about the French revolution you rightfully brought up how that, in China and Russia alike, that the people were calling for action against counter-revolutionaries and that the action taken against these people (and sometimes, innocent people) was a 'from-below' action a lot like it was with the san-culottes and pretty much everyone else who wanted Revolution in France.

Could you speak more to that? I'm not the student of these revolutions as I am the French revolution, can you point to specific instances or documents that show how the "red terror" in places like Russia, Spain etc were a result of popular uprising and not the policy of some sort of vanguardist government?

This is all very interesting to me.
When Volodarsky was murdered by the Social Revolutionaries, there was a drive within Petrograd by the workers to attack the SRs. You even had the CC holding back workers from attacking them, something which Lenin later believed was a mistake. You can find evidence of this here in a letter from Lenin to Zinoviev (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/jun/26gyz.htm). There was a similar response from workers and soldiers after Lenin got shot by Kaplan. There were other cases, such as the murders of the Kadets Shingarev and Kokoshkin, who were prisoners in hospital, by sailors in which the Red Guard just let them through, in which you basically see workers and Bolsheviks (who were, largely, workers themselves) enacting red terror against the components of the old regime. Much earlier, in the very beginning days of the revolution when the army cadets occupied their buildings in Petrograd and enacted raids against the institutions of the soviets, the sailors and workers used artillery to destroy the building and force the cadets to surrender and then the cadets got the shit beaten out of them as they were dragged to Peter-Paul prison. Really, the bolsheviks tried their best to prevent executions and murders up until the SR's assassination attempts. After that, thousands of bourgeois prisoners, reactionary officers who had been turned on by their troops, landowners and liberal politicians captured by workers, who had been held as hostages were executed.

[consuming negativity]

What if the state's policy was "free healthcare and $50,000 for everybody"?

"what if reality were different?"

what a meaningless question to ask

positing hypotheticals of shit that can't happen divorced from reality does not make a good point in the context of this thread

[Lord Testicles]

"what if reality were different?"

what a meaningless question to ask


It's almost as meaningless as the phrase "fuck policies"...

:rolleyes:

[consuming negativity]

It's almost as meaningless as the phrase "fuck policies"...

:rolleyes:

not really, no

[Lord Testicles]

not really, no

Okay, if you say so. :lol:

[Illegalitarian]

When Volodarsky was murdered by the Social Revolutionaries, there was a drive within Petrograd by the workers to attack the SRs. You even had the CC holding back workers from attacking them, something which Lenin later believed was a mistake. You can find evidence of this here in a letter from Lenin to Zinoviev (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/jun/26gyz.htm). There was a similar response from workers and soldiers after Lenin got shot by Kaplan. There were other cases, such as the murders of the Kadets Shingarev and Kokoshkin, who were prisoners in hospital, by sailors in which the Red Guard just let them through, in which you basically see workers and Bolsheviks (who were, largely, workers themselves) enacting red terror against the components of the old regime. Much earlier, in the very beginning days of the revolution when the army cadets occupied their buildings in Petrograd and enacted raids against the institutions of the soviets, the sailors and workers used artillery to destroy the building and force the cadets to surrender and then the cadets got the shit beaten out of them as they were dragged to Peter-Paul prison. Really, the bolsheviks tried their best to prevent executions and murders up until the SR's assassination attempts. After that, thousands of bourgeois prisoners, reactionary officers who had been turned on by their troops, landowners and liberal politicians captured by workers, who had been held as hostages were executed.

So it was the attacks on soviet politicians by their left-opposition that triggered much of the violence, then, that does make sense.

I'd be curious to know about similar events in civil war Spain and China as well.

[The Feral Underclass]

This is a rather schizophrenic association - while Bolshevik repression ultimately influenced the nature of Stalinist terror, they are in no way the same, and their prevalence existed in entirely different contexts.

It is not that "material conditions" as some kind of impersonal force forced the Bolsheviks to do this or that - but that existing conditions had implications for the decisions that the Bolsheviks made. It's fashionable to assume that the alleged "Left opposition" was a genuine force which pressed for worker's democracy in the face of Bolshevik dictatorship - but as any idiot would have known, prattling of "soviets without Bolsheviks" was simply phrase-mongering Left-revolutionaries and industrial anarchists espoused to ultimately guise their petty bourgeois trauma to the October revolution. To speak of "mass democracy" in the such times of crises is ridiculous: even the Makhnovschina had to take similar measures in order to sustain its survival. The proletariat as a whole can express its interests outside of the ballot box - it's easy to be dismissive and talk of a transfer of power to the Bolsheviks from the workers, but this is inconsistent when applied to other circumstances in the revolution. It makes absolutely no sense if we apraoch the Russian civil war as a whole. The fact of the matter is that the Bolsheviks carried out the interests of the industrial proletariat swiftly and mercilessly - if their interests were divorced from them, none of the party leaders would have put their necks on the line defending the revolution. Don't you understand that Lenin's April thesis was merely playing with chance? There were no predispositions to Bolshevik dictatorship - power was taken with great risk.

The Bolsheviks did not have qualms with the demands of the so called "Left" opposition - but the implications of those demands within their present conditions. The fight was not between freedom and dictatorship - but between survival and destruction. But even if we assume that the krodstat uprising was a true testament to the degeneracy of the October revolution, the standard narrative for Marxists is that the October revolution failed because of its inability to spread to advanced capitalist nations. By 1921, the year of the uprising, it had become apparent to the Bolshevik government as a result of the failed revolutions across Europe (Namely in Germany, Hungary and the failed military adventure in Poland) that they were to make do with their circumstances and continue on with the fight against those challenging the authority of the proletarian dictatorship.

And it just so happens that following the civil war, a great bulk of the same Russian proletariat that had made the revolution perished. All that was left was the proletarian dictatorship without the proletariat. The consolidation of power "by Stalin" (something that had not occurred until the mid to late thirties) was not inevitable in 1918, though it may have been likely in 1921 (but still not inevitable). The thermidorian reaction was also inevitable during the reign of Robespierre, that does not mean the efforts and deeds of the Jacobins were in vain, or were of sinister intent.

Anarchists celebrate being virgins of history, untested, celebrating the utterly inevitable nature of their immediate failure. Why was the Makhnovschina unable to equip itself with the strength to combat the Bolshevik centralized state? Why are your anarchists historically unable to sustain themselves militarily? I will tell you why: because anarchism ideologically takes comfort in the absence of the prospect of being victorious. Anarchists as yourself - the negative conscience of bourgeois society and ideology, can only look with horror at the destruction of the existing order.

Once again you hide meaning in incessant verbiage. Why are you so incapable of making your point in a single, simple paragraph? Some people might find it impressive, but I just find it incredibly tedious.

Am I to understand from this circumlocution that you're saying the choices the Bolsheviks made were the only choices that could be made? Well aside from that just being plain wrong, it seems to me that Bolsheviks very easily hide behind the idea of "crisis" as a justification for implementing their policies. This argument relies upon some mysterious -- and as yet unexplained -- belief that there exists a fundamental practical problem with introducing something like mandat impératif in times of conflict? You present this as an axiom, because superficially it appears logical, but without actually explaining the logic. And I want to understand the logic behind your argument that crisis negates democracy. Can you explain this?

And like I said, I'm not an anarchist. I'm not here to defend anarchists. But your persistent trite remarks and banal insults about anarchism, which characterise every interaction you have with me, is almost as boring as your writing style.


If socialism cannot be enacted or strengthened through policies, then it cannot be hindered because of policies either. You either seize power as a socialist and proceed accordingly, or you do not.

That doesn't really follow. I didn't say that policies couldn't affect the outcome of socialism, I said that it couldn't be enacted by one.

My argument has been essentially the same. You seize power and you proceed accordingly, but according to what? That is the focus of my intervention.

[Invader Zim]

What if the state's policy was "free healthcare and $50,000 for everybody"?

We'd have healthy people and a massively inflated cost of living.

[Rafiq]

Am I to understand from this circumlocution that you're saying the choices the Bolsheviks made were the only choices that could be made? Well aside from that just being plain wrong, it seems to me that Bolsheviks very easily hide behind the idea of "crisis" as a justification for implementing their policies. This argument relies upon some mysterious -- and as yet unexplained -- belief that there exists a fundamental practical problem with introducing something like mandat impératif in times of conflict? You present this as an axiom, because superficially it appears logical, but without actually explaining the logic. And I want to understand the logic behind your argument that crisis negates democracy. Can you explain this?

And like I said, I'm not an anarchist. I'm not here to defend anarchists. But your persistent trite remarks and banal insults about anarchism, which characterise every interaction you have with me, is almost as boring as your writing style.

For someone who claims not to identify as an anarchist, you sure are keen in deploying what could only ever in this context be described as anarchist phraseology. Forgive me, but I would expect the fact that being in a constant state of emergency, whereby your political power is far from being close to secure, where the next day could be the end of the proletarian dictatorship as such - would disallow the relative comfortable mechanisms of rule as experienced in the Paris commune. Though I must ask - while the October revolution may have failed (And no one could make the argument that this was the doing of the Bolsheviks - they did not control their circumstances at will and if they did, we would be living in Communism today), the Bolsehviks were successful in retaining their rule over the state and had either the victory in Poland been secured or the revolution in Germany succeeded, it is probable that the October revolution either would not have failed at all, or have lasted much longer.

The Paris Commune, and virtually every anarchist experiment ended in an absolute and miserable failure. Marx and Engels understood this well: No attempts were made at the militarization of labor, no attempts were made at the establishment of military discipline, efforts were focused on the establishment of refined political rule rather than military prowess: as Marx and Engels fervently understood and attributed to its failure. These ultimately led to the failures of both the Paris Commune and Anarchist Catalonia.

If there is anything we have learned from the 19th and 20th century, it is that in times of emergency there can be no talk of establishing the long-term mechanisms of proletarian dictatorship, regulation of everyday life affairs, when the proletarian dictatorship itself is insecure. History is not mystically on our side: We will not be rewarded for our "good deeds" in creating complex mechanisms of participatory democracy in times of emergency. Civil war and revolutionary crises demand a revolutionary Sparta - barracks Communism.

You regard this "conflict" as nothing more than a pleasant abstraction, the fact that you demand I "explain" somethign so obvious speaks volumes of your ignorance regarding this "conflcit" - this conflict did not exist in a vacuum, Feral, this conflict was not some isolated problem which simply existed among many. This conflict was the problem and ultimately while it would be ridiculous to claim that the decisions made were the only decisions - the decisions you seem to take qualm with were the only possible decisions. How do we know this? Because the Bolsheviks, since their inception were never interested or concerned with "holding power for themselves". Power is not this mystical object - power cannot be held for a day unless there are social forces behind your power. All of their decisions were made in the interests of the revolution and the revolution alone. Logically, if we assume that other choices could have been pursued, we must assume either the following:

1. That the Bolsheviks were of sinister intent, concerned only with wielding power - Why? Think: On an individual level, why would they want to hold power? power in these circumstances is a BURDEN - the Bolsheviks were never secure, the possibility of death was always imminent. Are we to be cynical, and assume they were in pursuit of luxury and wealth? And which Bolsheviks during these years lived so lavishly? What good is power in circumstances such as theirs? Or are we to beleive that they were trying to secure, or cared about the privileges of bureaucrats decades later?

or

2. That the Bolsheviks were of good intent, but made the wrong choices, because apparently War Communism sounds so much more ideally pleasant than "Mandat imperatif". Maybe you regard the Bolsheviks as closed-minded, maybe you regard them as idiots who could so easily have secured the power of the proletarian dictatorship. But as you yourself said, socialism cannot be enacted through policy. So make up your mind?

According to you, had the Bolsheviks established a "mandat imperatif" the revolution would have been saved - even though the mass disappearance of the Russian industrial proletariat would have happened either way and the Bolsheviks would have been forced to reside over a population which demographically was not in majority predisposed to Communist ideology: apparently, the problem was that they did not enact a "mandat imperatif" - because they're assholes? Even though the German revolution of 1919 absolutely and utterly failed, arguably for not adopting the same organizational or dictatorial prowess as that of the Bolsheviks - and world revolution wasn't going to happen? I don't understand, Feral. Maybe you should explain this reasoning to me.


My argument has been essentially the same. You seize power and you proceed accordingly, but according to what? That is the focus of my intervention.

According to the already dedication to the revolution and proletarian dictatorship. According to, and by merit of being a socialist in the first place. You cannot subtract will or perspective, interest from this argument. If the Bolsheviks acted in a way separable from the industrial proletariat whom they represented, why did they unless they were not socialists to begin with, but bad men who planned this from inception? Or, through the course of the October revolution, were they struck with the sudden realization that they could take advantage of the situation and become the new Tsars of Russia? None of this is consistent.

You cannot have these arguments in vacuums - everything must be consistent with everything else in such circumstances.

[The Feral Underclass]

For someone who claims not to identify as an anarchist, you sure are keen in deploying what could only ever in this context be described as anarchist phraseology. Forgive me, but I would expect the fact that being in a constant state of emergency, whereby your political power is far from being close to secure, where the next day could be the end of the proletarian dictatorship as such - would disallow the relative comfortable mechanisms of rule as experienced in the Paris commune. Though I must ask - while the October revolution may have failed (And no one could make the argument that this was the doing of the Bolsheviks - they did not control their circumstances at will and if they did, we would be living in Communism today), the Bolsehviks were successful in retaining their rule over the state and had either the victory in Poland been secured or the revolution in Germany succeeded, it is probable that the October revolution either would not have failed at all, or have lasted much longer.

The Paris Commune, and virtually every anarchist experiment ended in an absolute and miserable failure. Marx and Engels understood this well: No attempts were made at the militarization of labor, no attempts were made at the establishment of military discipline, efforts were focused on the establishment of refined political rule rather than military prowess: as Marx and Engels fervently understood and attributed to its failure. These ultimately led to the failures of both the Paris Commune and Anarchist Catalonia.

If there is anything we have learned from the 19th and 20th century, it is that in times of emergency there can be no talk of establishing the long-term mechanisms of proletarian dictatorship, regulation of everyday life affairs, when the proletarian dictatorship itself is insecure. History is not mystically on our side: We will not be rewarded for our "good deeds" in creating complex mechanisms of participatory democracy in times of emergency. Civil war and revolutionary crises demand a revolutionary Sparta - barracks Communism.

You regard this "conflict" as nothing more than a pleasant abstraction, the fact that you demand I "explain" somethign so obvious speaks volumes of your ignorance regarding this "conflcit" - this conflict did not exist in a vacuum, Feral, this conflict was not some isolated problem which simply existed among many. This conflict was the problem and ultimately while it would be ridiculous to claim that the decisions made were the only decisions - the decisions you seem to take qualm with were the only possible decisions. How do we know this? Because the Bolsheviks, since their inception were never interested or concerned with "holding power for themselves". Power is not this mystical object - power cannot be held for a day unless there are social forces behind your power. All of their decisions were made in the interests of the revolution and the revolution alone. Logically, if we assume that other choices could have been pursued, we must assume either the following:

1. That the Bolsheviks were of sinister intent, concerned only with wielding power - Why? Think: On an individual level, why would they want to hold power? power in these circumstances is a BURDEN - the Bolsheviks were never secure, the possibility of death was always imminent. Are we to be cynical, and assume they were in pursuit of luxury and wealth? And which Bolsheviks during these years lived so lavishly? What good is power in circumstances such as theirs? Or are we to beleive that they were trying to secure, or cared about the privileges of bureaucrats decades later?

or

2. That the Bolsheviks were of good intent, but made the wrong choices, because apparently War Communism sounds so much more ideally pleasant than "Mandat imperatif". Maybe you regard the Bolsheviks as closed-minded, maybe you regard them as idiots who could so easily have secured the power of the proletarian dictatorship. But as you yourself said, socialism cannot be enacted through policy. So make up your mind?

According to you, had the Bolsheviks established a "mandat imperatif" the revolution would have been saved - even though the mass disappearance of the Russian industrial proletariat would have happened either way and the Bolsheviks would have been forced to reside over a population which demographically was not in majority predisposed to Communist ideology: apparently, the problem was that they did not enact a "mandat imperatif" - because they're assholes? Even though the German revolution of 1919 absolutely and utterly failed, arguably for not adopting the same organizational or dictatorial prowess as that of the Bolsheviks - and world revolution wasn't going to happen? I don't understand, Feral. Maybe you should explain this reasoning to me.



According to the already dedication to the revolution and proletarian dictatorship. According to, and by merit of being a socialist in the first place. You cannot subtract will or perspective, interest from this argument. If the Bolsheviks acted in a way separable from the industrial proletariat whom they represented, why did they unless they were not socialists to begin with, but bad men who planned this from inception? Or, through the course of the October revolution, were they struck with the sudden realization that they could take advantage of the situation and become the new Tsars of Russia? None of this is consistent.

You cannot have these arguments in vacuums - everything must be consistent with everything else in such circumstances.

EDIT: Actually I'm goin to respond to some of your points.

[The Feral Underclass]

For someone who claims not to identify as an anarchist, you sure are keen in deploying what could only ever in this context be described as anarchist phraseology.

And you deploy what could only ever -- in any context -- be described as pompous, pretentious phraseology...So, you're call really.


Forgive me

You are completely unforgivable.


I would expect the fact that being in a constant state of emergency, whereby your political power is far from being close to secure, where the next day could be the end of the proletarian dictatorship as such - would disallow the relative comfortable mechanisms of rule as experienced in the Paris commune.

Why and how does that follow? Your argument is predicated on the false assumption that mandat impératif is less stable than minority rule.


Though I must ask - while the October revolution may have failed (And no one could make the argument that this was the doing of the Bolsheviks - they did not control their circumstances at will and if they did, we would be living in Communism today)

No, you're right, of course not. We could never blame the people responsible for the administration of political power for getting things wrong...:rolleyes:


The Paris Commune, and virtually every anarchist experiment ended in an absolute and miserable failure. Marx and Engels understood this well: No attempts were made at the militarization of labor, no attempts were made at the establishment of military discipline, efforts were focused on the establishment of refined political rule rather than military prowess

No attempts were made? That's your definitive assertion on this issue: That not one single attempt was made by the workers' councils and general staff to begin re-organising labour or implement discipline in Catalonia?




as Marx and Engels fervently understood and attributed to its failure. These ultimately led to the failures of both the Paris Commune and Anarchist Catalonia.

I see, so when the Bolshevik's get things wrong it's material conditions, but when anarchists get things wrong it's because they're obsessed with democracy?

In any case, mandat impératif hadn't been implemented in Catalonia. The rural collectivisation and the committees that administrated hadn't fully been developed. The downfall of Catalonia had nothing to do with the political processes that were under way. The anarchist militias disarmed themselves on the request of the government because they believed the government's promise to maintain what had been started in Catalonia. The reason for defeat in Catalonia was because the anarchists lost their political nerve. Those that refused and continued to fight were simply isolated and outnumbered.


If there is anything we have learned from the 19th and 20th century, it is that in times of emergency there can be no talk of establishing the long-term mechanisms of proletarian dictatorship, regulation of everyday life affairs, when the proletarian dictatorship itself is insecure. History is not mystically on our side: We will not be rewarded for our "good deeds" in creating complex mechanisms of participatory democracy in times of emergency. Civil war and revolutionary crises demand a revolutionary Sparta - barracks Communism.

How has the 19th and 20th century taught us that? Based on what history? The "regulation of everyday life affairs" can be done directly and democratically, even in times of crisis. There is no practical reason to claim otherwise.

The idea that working class people cannot manage their affairs and defend themselves at the same time is not based on history, except that which is revised by those who either seek political dominance or continued to be shrouded in bourgeois prejudice.

Your views are nothing but excuses.


You regard this "conflict" as nothing more than a pleasant abstraction, the fact that you demand I "explain" somethign so obvious speaks volumes of your ignorance regarding this "conflcit" - this conflict did not exist in a vacuum, Feral, this conflict was not some isolated problem which simply existed among many. This conflict was [I]the problem and ultimately while it would be ridiculous to claim that the decisions made were the only decisions - the decisions you seem to take qualm with were the only possible decisions. How do we know this? Because the Bolsheviks, since their inception were never interested or concerned with "holding power for themselves". Power is not this mystical object - power cannot be held for a day unless there are social forces behind your power. All of their decisions were made in the interests of the revolution and the revolution alone.

I have given no indication from what I have said that I think conflict is a "pleasant abstraction". You are just arrogantly trying to wrap up my criticism into some pseudo-intellectual strawman because it makes life easier for you.


1. That the Bolsheviks were of sinister intent, concerned only with wielding power - Why? Think: On an individual level, why would they want to hold power? power in these circumstances is a BURDEN - the Bolsheviks were never secure, the possibility of death was always imminent. Are we to be cynical, and assume they were in pursuit of luxury and wealth? And which Bolsheviks during these years lived so lavishly? What good is power in circumstances such as theirs? Or are we to beleive that they were trying to secure, or cared about the privileges of bureaucrats decades later?

or

2. That the Bolsheviks were of good intent, but made the wrong choices, because apparently War Communism sounds so much more ideally pleasant than "Mandat imperatif". Maybe you regard the Bolsheviks as closed-minded, maybe you regard them as idiots who could so easily have secured the power of the proletarian dictatorship. But as you yourself said, socialism cannot be enacted through policy. So make up your mind?

I don't think they had a "sinister intent" nor do I think they had a "good intent," I think that their intent was simply to establish any policy and action that maintained their minority rule, doing all that was pragmatically and instrumentally necessary to maintain it. That's what they believed was the best possible process for success. And they were right; what they did was a great way to defend minority rule. They did maintain minority power -- but for what? Ultimately the way they attempted to maintain power was the wrong way. They made decision that, while successfully defending the revolution, laid the ground work for seventy years of counter-revolution.

And for all your bluster, I still don't have an explanation for why it is such an absurd idea that something like mandat impératif can be implemented while simultaneously organising a ruthless defence.


According to you, had the Bolsheviks established a "mandat imperatif" the revolution would have been saved even though the mass disappearance of the Russian industrial proletariat would have happened either way and the Bolsheviks would have been forced to reside over a population which demographically was not in majority predisposed to Communist ideology

Actually that's not according to me. I have never said nor implied that implementing mandat impératif would have "saved" the revolution, because I have never made the argument that creating direct democratic control is the only thing you need to win a revolution. To win a revolution you need an organised, coherent and ruthless defence, but if you also want to create the necessary conditions to transition into a communist society, you have to begin the process of creating them, and you cannot do that if you are maintaining minority rule at all and any cost.


Even though the German revolution of 1919 absolutely and utterly failed, arguably for not adopting the same organizational or dictatorial prowess as that of the Bolsheviks - and world revolution wasn't going to happen? I don't understand, Feral. Maybe you should explain this reasoning to me.

The reasoning for what? You haven't really taken the time to actually understand the position I have, so what is it you want me to provide reasoning for? Your nonsense interpretation of my views? Well, I can't really explain the reasoning for a position I don't hold.


According to the already dedication to the revolution and proletarian dictatorship. According to, and by merit of being a socialist in the first place. You cannot subtract will or perspective, interest from this argument. If the Bolsheviks acted in a way separable from the industrial proletariat whom they represented, why did they unless they were not socialists to begin with, but bad men who planned this from inception? Or, through the course of the October revolution, were they struck with the sudden realization that they could take advantage of the situation and become the new Tsars of Russia? None of this is consistent.

:confused:

[Rafiq]

Is this what you call a discussion? Why are people unable to respond to my posts as a whole? Snip by snip, you are only fulfilling your ideological insecurities.


And you deploy what could only ever -- in any context -- be described as pompous, pretentious phraseology...So, you're call really.

What is this, a rap battle? I don't give a fucking shit about you're opinion, feral, frankly I don't give a fuck about you at all. The fact of the matter is that you fervently identify yourself as not an anarchist, and yet deploy distinctively anarchist phraseology. I don't care about your completely postmodern "hipster-leftist" bullshit.



Why and how does that follow? Your argument is predicated on the false assumption that mandat impératif is less stable than minority rule.

No, you're right, of course not. We could never blame the people responsible for the administration of political power for getting things wrong...:rolleyes:

No attempts were made? That's your definitive assertion on this issue: That not one single attempt was made by the workers' councils and general staff to begin re-organising labour or implement discipline in Catalonia?

[I just want to point out at this point that mandat impératif was something celebrated by Marx.]


Make up your mind, first you claim that socialism is not a matter of policy - then you go on to claim that the policies and actions of the Bolsheviks are ultimately what contributed to the failure of the October revolution. If you recognize the October revolution as a real revolution - of something that could have POSSIBLY become successful upon inception, you either conclude that the Bolsheviks were forced to make decisions in order to safeguard the revolution - or that their policies led to its ruin, but could otherwise have saved it. Frankly, an imperative mandate (What the FUCK is with this bullshit "mandat imperatif"? Speaking of pompous drivel, stop trying to make simple words mystifying) may have been plausible in circumstances similar to the Paris Commune, but there is no reason to believe that this would have trans-historical application, more specifically, application to the Russian condition. Speaking of Marx - the possibility of Communism in a place like Russia was already rather slim for him: He did speak of the possibility of transforming peasant communes, or their emancipatory potential, but not much else.

More laughably, the Bolsheviks did enact a kind of a meta-imperative mandate. Sustained by the industrial Russian proletariat, the Bolsheviks did not act "over" the Russian proletariat but bestowed upon themselves powers by which they acted on behalf of the Russian proletariat. This was infinitely more stable than this crypto-direct democracy bullshit - the difference of course being that there were various factions which claimed to represent the proletariat - with the Bolsheviks the only ones to act when push came to shove. There were enemies of the proletariat guised as representatives of the proletariat among the several factions during the October revolution. Likewise, the Bolsheviks were pressed into a situation of emergency in which fast, immediate decisions had to be held without elections, decisions which had to be made, actions which had to be taken which simply there was no time to elect popularly.

I point out Catalonia and the paris commune because it was precisely their inability to attempt to actually fortify the defenses of the proletarian dictatorship, in the name of "anarchist democracy" which led to their downfall. Why was anarchist Catalonia, for example, reliant upon the Spanish government to begin with? Why were there no independent, disciplined, militarily powerful mechanisms of proletarian political dictatorship to begin with? That's the fucking point. If you really think a "mandat imperatif" would have been more stable in such times as experienced by the Bolsheviks, you honestly don't know shit about the situation to begin with. I mean abstractly, it sounds nice - but it simply doesn't translate realistically, you don't know the scope, or magnitude of this emergency, you don't know the scope of its significance and all the niches wherin it resided. If this were a debate about fiction, or some kind of situational abstraction, you may be right. But this wasn't the case. I mean, yeah, go ahead and tell me that the so-called "proletarian military" system of discipline, which abolished ranks, was efficient.


I see, so when the Bolshevik's get things wrong it's material conditions, but when anarchists get things wrong it's because they're obsessed with democracy?

In any case, mandat impératif hadn't been implemented in Catalonia. The rural collectivisation and the committees that administrated hadn't fully been developed. The downfall of Catalonia had nothing to do with the political processes that were under way. The anarchist militias disarmed themselves on the request of the government because they believed the government's promise to maintain what had been started in Catalonia. The reason for defeat in Catalonia was because the anarchists lost their political nerve. Those that refused and continued to fight were simply isolated and outnumbered.


I never said "material conditions" as though it is some kind of mystical force which we allocate responsibility. I said the conditions faced by the Bolsheviks simply did not permit for a proletarian dictatorship to survive. If we are speaking concretely, the Bolsheviks didn't "fail" in the sense of keeping power. That's what we're talking about here in the first place - the actual ability to retain state power, or, ehem, excuse me, "communal power" or what have you. The bolsheviks were ruthlessly efficient in fighting off the enemies of the revolution. To this date, there are few examples of a military organization sprawled from nothingness as disciplined, as power and as efficient as the Red Army. The point of disagreement is that you attribute these mechanisms of defense to the fall of the revolution itself: I call this ignorant and infantile, and I rightfully point out that while there may be correlation between the strengthening of the defense of the proletarian dictatorship and the fall of the proletarian dictatorship itself, this does not imply any causation. The fact of the matter is that most of the same proletariat whom the Bolsheviks acted on behalf of perished during the civil war. Do you deny this? The fact of the matter is that the revolution did not spread, unlike what they had thought. They were forced to improvise.

Again, it's nice to think of things abstractly or existing in a vacuum, but it's not true.

Catalonia did not simply "trust" the government. They were dependent on a government which, apparently, possessed mechanisms external from the proletarian dictatorship. WHY did they believe them, or trust them? Frankly a real revolution, I would imagine, would retain proletarian independence. You will go on to say it was a necessity.

True, it was. But that's the whole fucking point to begin with: They had to trust an actual state with actual mechanisms of mass mobilization and organization in order to survive. They could not establish this themselves, as the Bolsheviks did.


How has the 19th and 20th century taught us that? Based on what history? The "regulation of everyday life affairs" can be done directly and democratically, even in times of crisis. There is no practical reason to claim otherwise.

The idea that working class people cannot manage their affairs and defend themselves at the same time is not based on history, except that which is revised by those who either seek political dominance or continued to be shrouded in bourgeois prejudice.


You simply don't know anything about the implications of times of emergency. Coinciding with structural organization, I do think that societies can be governed democratically. You're right, there is no reason to believe otherwise. Frankly, however, in times of proletarian dictatorhsip, in times of crises and emergency in a way comparable to the Bolsheviks, this is impossible. Self-managing their daily affairs could only ever work in times of peace - if you honestly think that direct democracy is a real possibility in times where the political rule of the proletariat itself is unstable, wherein the political foundations of a society composed of "self-regulation" are themselves being challenged, what a surprise you'd be in if you ever actually experience a real revolution. Times of military, political crises demand a proletarian Sparta compromised of a working class ready to sacrifice themselves at any given moment for the revolution - a barrack's Communism of military discipline.

I don't really give a shit about your accusations: the fact of the matter is that the only thing which reeks of Bourgeois ideology is the idea that the proletariat will not have to arm themselves with mechanisms of class dictatorship and class repression in order to fight a society composed of the same thing. You are no better than those who prattle of abstaining from violence: As a matter of fact, you're a hair away from being them. If you honestly think that the only means by which a proletarian dictatorship can survive is if the proletariat has to constantly concern themselves with individually regulating the mechanisms of their own defense, you truly do not believe a proletarian dictatorship can exist. If Communism for you is a matter of individual volunteerism, you truly do not believe in the possibility of Communism.

Nor can you, because ultimately, you are an adherent of bourgeois ideology which is distinct only cosmetically. Your "socialism" is an ideological insurance policy of the ruling class. Distinctively petty bourgeois in nature, your socialism relies on constantly being opposed to ruling ideas and the onslaught of capital. Without this, it could not survive independently.


I don't think they had a "sinister intent" nor do I think they had a "good intent," I think that their intent was simply to establish any policy and action that maintained their minority rule, doing all that was pragmatically and instrumentally necessary to maintain it. That's what they believed was the best possible process for success. And they were right; what they did was a great way to defend minority rule. They did maintain minority power -- but for what? Ultimately the way they attempted to maintain power was the wrong way. They made decision that, while successfully defending the revolution, laid the ground work for seventy years of counter-revolution.


So make up your mind, is socialism a matter of policy, or not? Frankly, it is true that the Bolsheviks practiced minority rule. At the same time, the Russian proletariat, demographically, was a minority. Everyone knows that even the revolutionary peasants regarded the Bolsheviks as too favorable to the industrial proletariat. The fact is, the Bolsheviks were a party for and of the Russian industrial proletariat. The latter were a demographic minority. If you truly want to espouse proletarian rhetoric, why are you willing to sacrifice the politically independent proletariat if it does not correspond to trans-class democracy? Sorry, but such conditions are never appealing. If may not look pretty, "minority rule", but these are the realities of the proletarian dictatorship: the fact that the proletariat is a majority in our countries is nothing short of convenience.

Following the revolution, most of this same proletariat had perished. The prospects of global revolution rather dim. So logically, events unfolded in the way they did. This has nothing to do with the Bolsheviks being "too dictatorial". Sure, the foundations of the proletarian dictatorship laid the foundations of Stalinist repression, but this was a MISCONSTRUCTION of these foundations. Fascism is built off of the carcass of the failed worker's movement, but it is in no way synonymous. There is no reason to believe that before 1919 the failure of the revolution was inevitable.


And for all your bluster, I still don't have an explanation for why it is such an absurd idea that something like mandat impératif can be implemented while simultaneously organising a ruthless defence.


It's common sense. Fast, swiftly implemented decisions are necessary in times of crises. Being that the bolsheviks already represented the Russian industrial proletariat, I fail to see what the problem is here.


you cannot do that if you are maintaining minority rule at all and any cost.


And this tells us nothing. If Russian anarchists represented the Russian industrial proletariat and were not muddied with the stench of the petty bourgeoisie, then they would also have to maintain "minority rule". Was the makhnovschina compromised of "majority rule" for people in Ukraine? I really don't know, but I'm willing to bet that answer is no.

[The Feral Underclass]

Is this what you call a discussion? Why are people unable to respond to my posts as a whole? Snip by snip, you are only fulfilling your ideological insecurities.



What is this, a rap battle? I don't give a fucking shit about you're opinion, feral, frankly I don't give a fuck about you at all. The fact of the matter is that you fervently identify yourself as not an anarchist, and yet deploy distinctively anarchist phraseology. I don't care about your completely postmodern "hipster-leftist" bullshit.




Make up your mind, first you claim that socialism is not a matter of policy - then you go on to claim that the policies and actions of the Bolsheviks are ultimately what contributed to the failure of the October revolution. If you recognize the October revolution as a real revolution - of something that could have POSSIBLY become successful upon inception, you either conclude that the Bolsheviks were forced to make decisions in order to safeguard the revolution - or that their policies led to its ruin, but could otherwise have saved it. Frankly, an imperative mandate (What the FUCK is with this bullshit "mandat imperatif"? Speaking of pompous drivel, stop trying to make simple words mystifying) may have been plausible in circumstances similar to the Paris Commune, but there is no reason to believe that this would have trans-historical application, more specifically, application to the Russian condition. Speaking of Marx - the possibility of Communism in a place like Russia was already rather slim for him: He did speak of the possibility of transforming peasant communes, or their emancipatory potential, but not much else.

More laughably, the Bolsheviks did enact a kind of a meta-imperative mandate. Sustained by the industrial Russian proletariat, the Bolsheviks did not act "over" the Russian proletariat but bestowed upon themselves powers by which they acted on behalf of the Russian proletariat. This was infinitely more stable than this crypto-direct democracy bullshit - the difference of course being that there were various factions which claimed to represent the proletariat - with the Bolsheviks the only ones to act when push came to shove. There were enemies of the proletariat guised as representatives of the proletariat among the several factions during the October revolution. Likewise, the Bolsheviks were pressed into a situation of emergency in which fast, immediate decisions had to be held without elections, decisions which had to be made, actions which had to be taken which simply there was no time to elect popularly.

I point out Catalonia and the paris commune because it was precisely their inability to attempt to actually fortify the defenses of the proletarian dictatorship, in the name of "anarchist democracy" which led to their downfall. Why was anarchist Catalonia, for example, reliant upon the Spanish government to begin with? Why were there no independent, disciplined, militarily powerful mechanisms of proletarian political dictatorship to begin with? That's the fucking point. If you really think a "mandat imperatif" would have been more stable in such times as experienced by the Bolsheviks, you honestly don't know shit about the situation to begin with. I mean abstractly, it sounds nice - but it simply doesn't translate realistically, you don't know the scope, or magnitude of this emergency, you don't know the scope of its significance and all the niches wherin it resided. If this were a debate about fiction, or some kind of situational abstraction, you may be right. But this wasn't the case. I mean, yeah, go ahead and tell me that the so-called "proletarian military" system of discipline, which abolished ranks, was efficient.



I never said "material conditions" as though it is some kind of mystical force which we allocate responsibility. I said the conditions faced by the Bolsheviks simply did not permit for a proletarian dictatorship to survive. If we are speaking concretely, the Bolsheviks didn't "fail" in the sense of keeping power. That's what we're talking about here in the first place - the actual ability to retain state power, or, ehem, excuse me, "communal power" or what have you. The bolsheviks were ruthlessly efficient in fighting off the enemies of the revolution. To this date, there are few examples of a military organization sprawled from nothingness as disciplined, as power and as efficient as the Red Army. The point of disagreement is that you attribute these mechanisms of defense to the fall of the revolution itself: I call this ignorant and infantile, and I rightfully point out that while there may be correlation between the strengthening of the defense of the proletarian dictatorship and the fall of the proletarian dictatorship itself, this does not imply any causation. The fact of the matter is that most of the same proletariat whom the Bolsheviks acted on behalf of perished during the civil war. Do you deny this? The fact of the matter is that the revolution did not spread, unlike what they had thought. They were forced to improvise.

Again, it's nice to think of things abstractly or existing in a vacuum, but it's not true.

Catalonia did not simply "trust" the government. They were dependent on a government which, apparently, possessed mechanisms external from the proletarian dictatorship. WHY did they believe them, or trust them? Frankly a real revolution, I would imagine, would retain proletarian independence. You will go on to say it was a necessity.

True, it was. But that's the whole fucking point to begin with: They had to trust an actual state with actual mechanisms of mass mobilization and organization in order to survive. They could not establish this themselves, as the Bolsheviks did.



You simply don't know anything about the implications of times of emergency. Coinciding with structural organization, I do think that societies can be governed democratically. You're right, there is no reason to believe otherwise. Frankly, however, in times of proletarian dictatorhsip, in times of crises and emergency in a way comparable to the Bolsheviks, this is impossible. Self-managing their daily affairs could only ever work in times of peace - if you honestly think that direct democracy is a real possibility in times where the political rule of the proletariat itself is unstable, wherein the political foundations of a society composed of "self-regulation" are themselves being challenged, what a surprise you'd be in if you ever actually experience a real revolution. Times of military, political crises demand a proletarian Sparta compromised of a working class ready to sacrifice themselves at any given moment for the revolution - a barrack's Communism of military discipline.

I don't really give a shit about your accusations: the fact of the matter is that the only thing which reeks of Bourgeois ideology is the idea that the proletariat will not have to arm themselves with mechanisms of class dictatorship and class repression in order to fight a society composed of the same thing. You are no better than those who prattle of abstaining from violence: As a matter of fact, you're a hair away from being them. If you honestly think that the only means by which a proletarian dictatorship can survive is if the proletariat has to constantly concern themselves with individually regulating the mechanisms of their own defense, you truly do not believe a proletarian dictatorship can exist. If Communism for you is a matter of individual volunteerism, you truly do not believe in the possibility of Communism.

Nor can you, because ultimately, you are an adherent of bourgeois ideology which is distinct only cosmetically. Your "socialism" is an ideological insurance policy of the ruling class. Distinctively petty bourgeois in nature, your socialism relies on constantly being opposed to ruling ideas and the onslaught of capital. Without this, it could not survive independently.



So make up your mind, is socialism a matter of policy, or not? Frankly, it is true that the Bolsheviks practiced minority rule. At the same time, the Russian proletariat, demographically, was a minority. Everyone knows that even the revolutionary peasants regarded the Bolsheviks as too favorable to the industrial proletariat. The fact is, the Bolsheviks were a party for and of the Russian industrial proletariat. The latter were a demographic minority. If you truly want to espouse proletarian rhetoric, why are you willing to sacrifice the politically independent proletariat if it does not correspond to trans-class democracy? Sorry, but such conditions are never appealing. If may not look pretty, "minority rule", but these are the realities of the proletarian dictatorship: the fact that the proletariat is a majority in our countries is nothing short of convenience.

Following the revolution, most of this same proletariat had perished. The prospects of global revolution rather dim. So logically, events unfolded in the way they did. This has nothing to do with the Bolsheviks being "too dictatorial". Sure, the foundations of the proletarian dictatorship laid the foundations of Stalinist repression, but this was a MISCONSTRUCTION of these foundations. Fascism is built off of the carcass of the failed worker's movement, but it is in no way synonymous. There is no reason to believe that before 1919 the failure of the revolution was inevitable.



It's common sense. Fast, swiftly implemented decisions are necessary in times of crises. Being that the bolsheviks already represented the Russian industrial proletariat, I fail to see what the problem is here.


And this tells us nothing. If Russian anarchists represented the Russian industrial proletariat and were not muddied with the stench of the petty bourgeoisie, then they would also have to maintain "minority rule". Was the makhnovschina compromised of "majority rule" for people in Ukraine? I really don't know, but I'm willing to bet that answer is no.

I read the first two quotes and then stopped.

I'm not going to continue reading an invective laden diatribe. I'd like to point out that it was you who spoke to me. If you don't care about my alleged "postmodern "hipster-leftist" bullshit," then it would probably be in your best interest to refrain from starting a conversation with me. Since you care so little about my opinion, I won't waste any more time giving it.

If for some reason you want to continue this discussion, I suggest you learn to be more concise. It is absolutely unfair to expect anyone to navigate through this tedium, just to understand you.

[Rafiq]

Truth does not care to be fair.

[The Feral Underclass]

Truth does not care to be fair.

But it should care about being readable.

[RedKobra]

Kronstadt and the crushing of the Makhnovshchina were two of the main reasons I began to have doubts about Trotsky. If I were in a generous mood I could possibly be convinced that the Bolsheviks were terrified of losing the strategic Gulf of Finland to the Whites but its a stretch.

I don't blame the Bolsheviks for thinking their choices were discipline or defeat, and to be honest I'm inclined to agree with them, had they not imposed their tyranny the country would have fallen to the imperial powers who would have ruled through some kind of vassal duke or something (and Lenin & the other Bolsheviks would have ended up with their heads on spikes). That doesn't make the Communist era any less of a failure as a revolution to emancipate the workers though.

The working class would have been crushed without the Bolsheviks, the revolution was crushed with the Bolsheviks, it just took a little longer, maybe a year or two. In reality it was a victory for the world Bourgousie. They managed to apply somewhat of a tornique around Russia, isolated the revolution and watched as the country turned blue.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

In reality it was a victory for the world Bourgousie. They managed to apply somewhat of a tornique around Russia, isolated the revolution and watched as the country turned blue.
I wouldn't call the Russian Revolution a 'victory' for the bourgeoisie, considering the amount of effort they went through to crush it completely - you had troops from all the ANZAC countries, Romania, Greece, Germany, France, the UK, the US, Japan and others all involved in trying to support the Whites and crush the revolution. The real victory of the bourgeoisie was the crushing of the revolutions in Germany, Italy, Hungary, China etc. I get what you're saying though.

[Comrade #138672]

But it should care about being readable.Why is it unreadable? I think it is perfectly readable and nicely elaborated. You should be thankful for that.

Anyway, only Marxists are in a position to criticize Lenin properly. Lenin was not infallible. Obviously he made mistakes. However, much of the anarchist critiques of Lenin make no sense at all, since they tend to miss the whole point of a revolution and class dictatorship entirely.

[The Feral Underclass]

Why is it unreadable?

You mean aside from the invective and the tedious repetition? It's about 1200 words too long.


However, much of the anarchist critiques of Lenin make no sense at all, since they tend to miss the whole point of a revolution and class dictatorship entirely.

I think there are many anarchists who don't understand the nature of revolution and "class" dictatorship, but then there are anarchists and others who have criticisms of Lenin who do understand those things. Since I'm fairly certain you don't have a particularly in-depth knowledge of those critiques, I would be careful making such firm pronouncements about what does and does not make sense.

[Comrade #138672]

You mean aside from the invective and the tedious repetition? It's about 1200 words too long.In other words, too long to read? Then how do you know that it is repetitive?




I think there are many anarchists who don't understand the nature of revolution and "class" dictatorship, but then there are anarchists and others who have criticisms of Lenin who do understand those things.I did admit the possibility of some anarchists being justifiably critical about Lenin in some respects. I was talking about the tendency of anarchism.


Since I'm fairly certain you don't have a particularly in-depth knowledge of those critiques, I would be careful making such firm pronouncements about what does and does not make sense.I have yet to hear an anarchist critique that makes sense from a Marxist and scientific point of view.

[The Feral Underclass]

In other words, too long to read? Then how do you know that it is repetitive?

Curiosity got the better of me, I regret to say. But the point is that it's needlessly verbose, rather than "too long". I don't mind long posts, I mind prolixity.


I did admit the possibility of some anarchists being justifiably critical about Lenin in some respects. I was talking about the tendency of anarchism.

Which tendency of anarchism would this be? There's about seven...


I have yet to hear an anarchist critique that makes sense from a Marxist and scientific point of view.

Lol.

[RedKobra]

Surely there can't be any doubt that the Leninist approach achieved something, as far as I'm aware, no revolution either before or since has managed to replicate; the successful resistance of counter-revolution from outside.

Whilst I would completely condemn what the Russian Revolution went on to become (centralised, authoritarian & counter to working-class emancipation) we have to understand that expectations of a Revolution in one place, at one time, involving one generation was complete naivety.

There would be no quickly won battle against the international bourgeoisie in any revolution anywhere at any time. In reality the generation that begins the struggle is not the generation that sees the free society because until the international bourgeoisie is completely and utterly shattered, exhausted and dispossessed there will be no peace, no respite and thus no perfect conditions for the establishment of a luxury like free and fair elections. And before I'm torn to pieces as some sort of anti-democrat, what I mean is that free and fair elections for every office of a society takes time, time for the revolutionary soldiers (which would be most of us) to transition from a war front to an intellectual front, for various platforms and alliances to be formed, for the candidates to impress upon the electorate their talents and virtues, for a sort of governance of those elections to take place, for the various levels of the social apparatus to integrate.etc etc

Managing a society that needs food, homes, clothes, work and of course provision for the sick, disabled, young and elderly is no small task & to dismiss this as something that can be achieved whilst making weapons, organizing a kind of piecemeal guerrilla war against the counter-revolutionaries seems to me to be very naive and verging on the complacent.

A often used accusation against the Bolsheviks is that they ran rough shod over the people, justifying the means by the ends. But a non-Bolshevik strategy would have done the same simply because without an infrastructure stepping in to fill the vacuum a great many who could not follow the Anarchistic, guerilla brigades as they moved stealthily about the country would have just starved, frozen to death or been massacred in their villages as the enemy advanced.

Something went badly wrong under the Bolsheviks, I wouldn't dispute that but to suggest an uncollectivised strategy would have resulted in victory or less death and destruction seems to be to wishful thinking.