Socialism as a Class Society

[redstar2000]

Socialism = capitalism (temporarily) without capitalists

How can this "outrageous" thing be said?

In a word, because it's true.

Why? Because in each and every one of the 20th century countries that called themselves "socialist", there were two groups of people who stood in a different relationship to the means of production -- which is the Marxist definition of class.

Most people, just like here, owned nothing but their labor-power...which they had to sell to an employer in order to remain alive.

Under "socialism", the only employer (with a few rare exceptions) was the state apparatus.

Now it's not as if the socialist state apparatus was utterly monolithic; under varying circumstances, different parts of the apparatus competed for labor with other parts of the apparatus...particularly during periods of rapid industrialization.

And another important difference was that some part of the state apparatus had to give you a job...even if it was "make-work" and socially useless.

So it was "better" than ordinary capitalism in the sense that the "ultimate threat" that hangs over every worker's head here -- homelessness and starvation -- did not exist. On the other hand, not having evidence of employment could result in imprisonment and compulsory (slave) labor...so the "whip" was always ready to hand if required.

Rationing of basic consumer goods (food, housing) also helped...the kind of absolute deprivation that yet afflicts modern capitalism was not a normal feature of "socialism".

But one very important thing was the same as we have here; there was an elite that managed and controlled the means of production according to their own interests. The vanguard party -- and especially its leading members -- had the power to make all substantive political and economic decisions for the entire society...without regard for the wishes of the working class or even the wishes of ordinary party members.

Indeed, a bloated repressive apparatus -- police, prisons, army, labor camps, etc. -- was a prominent feature of those regimes. Outright massacres were not common but not unknown...very much like modern capitalism. Prisons and labor camps were genuine hell-holes -- torture was either occasional or common, depending on which accounts you find most credible. An unknown but substantial number of people died from the poor conditions.

Thus, the party elite could impose its will (for a considerable period of time) without concerning itself with possible resistance from the working class.

Just as in capitalist countries, workers had a lengthy list of "legal rights"...and just as here, any attempt to exercise those rights risked imprisonment or death.

What was it actually like for the ordinary person to live under "socialism"?

Well, you got up every morning and went to work. The pace of your job, under most circumstances, was far less exhausting than under capitalism...and in some situations, it didn't even matter if you showed up at all. When you got off, there wasn't much to do...entertainment was a low priority under "socialism" and what little there was tended to be too expensive for ordinary people. If you could afford a bottle of booze (and found a state store that had some), you and your friends could drink yourselves into oblivion.

You spent a big part of your life dealing with shortages of basic consumer needs...and when you did find something desirable, you bought as much of it as you could -- bartering the items you didn't need with friends who had a surplus of things that you did need. The party elite in all of those countries had first crack at consumer necessities and ordinary people had to "make do" with whatever was left over.

The party elites did not live in the kind of obscene luxury characteristic of modern capitalism...it was probably more like what we would call "upper-middle-class". Even so, it was far above what the ordinary person in those countries lived like.

There was a surplus of political rhetoric, flag-waving, etc. -- mostly ignored by ordinary people since they knew they had no voice in "important matters".

Over time, the "revolution" became as meaningless as "the 4th of July" here...just so much background noise.

And that was true in the party elite as well...especially as their standard of living rose much faster than that of the ordinary person. As a proto-capitalist class, they had contact with the capitalist world and saw what real luxury was like. It was only a matter of time before they began to "want some of that" for themselves...a particularly pronounced trend among the sons and daughters of the elite. Towards the end, massive corruption became the norm...the USSR by 1990 most closely resembled Enron and met the same fate.

As the old generation of revolutionaries died off, the new elite shed their "socialism" like worn-out clothes...who cares what Stalin or Mao said compared to what Bill Gates says or what Alan Greenspan says or, hell, what Madonna says!

But what about "the transition to communist society" and "the withering away of the state"?

Hah! You might just as well ask what happened to the "Second Coming of Christ".

Communism was never "on the agenda" in any of those countries...nor was there ever any serious attempt to devolve state power to the working class itself. All there was, besides the red flags, was great leader worship, vulgar nationalism, intrigue, corruption...and economic development required for the emergence of modern capitalism.

In the modern imperialist world, Russia and China are now "players"...they've "made the cut".

Ok, what about a proletarian revolution in an advanced capitalist country? Would "socialism" turn out the same way?

If Marx was right, only a transitional state under the control of the working class itself would avoid the unhappy fate of 20th century "socialism". His view was that all state officials must be elected and recallable at all times...and must be compensated at the same rate that ordinary workers are compensated. At no time did he suggest that a particular "party" of "Marxists" should be in unlimited command of the proletarian state.

I'm personally not confident that even that would work; if there is a "political center of gravity" it will inevitably attract exactly the kind of people that you don't want to have "in charge" of anything...people who think they are "especially fit to rule others".

The rather unlikely quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson is appropriate here. The idea that most people are born with saddles on their backs while a few are born booted and spurred, ready to ride, is one that is "passing out of history".

If he did say that, he was being wildly optimistic...especially for a guy who owned slaves himself. Nevertheless, it is passing out of history, if all too slowly.

Let's speed it on its way.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[apathy maybe]

I understand what you are saying here. Of course under "socialism" (state run economy and what have you) there are "make-work" jobs. Of course the "state" is the only employer. (And the only producer). That is what "socialism" is all about. What you are thinking is that there has to be an authoritarian leadership (The Communist Party or the like). While in most solely socialist countries there have been non popularly elected governments, it doesn't mean that it always has to be so. To say it is, is like saying that all sheep have white wool, because you haven't seen a black sheep yet.


What you are missing is that you can have a socialist "state" based economy with a "democratic" government (a government "under the control of the working class itself"). There are a number of possibilities as to what kind of government as well. You could have random selection, referendum on most issues etc.

However, the average "worker" is always going to be left out of the political process on a large scale. Random selection will not pick everyone (or even a majority). And town hall meetings do not encompass countrywide issues. No matter what you do, someone at some point in time is going to have more power then someone else.

The only thing you can do; is make the difference in power as small as possible; and the length of time it is held, as small as feasible.


(As a side note, has anyone ever noticed that empires seem to collapse when the Emperor dies? What they need is democratic structures in place.)

[Vinny Rafarino]

Under "socialism", the only employer (with a few rare exceptions) was the state apparatus.


I don't wee what is wrong with this. A socialist government's responsibility is to provide basic social services like housing, food, healthcare and transportation to the people while distributing the surplus value of goods and commodities produced back to the people, effectively eliminating exploitation of labour.

Social services that are provided by the government are paid for by a heavy income tax of somewhere around 50 to 55 percent. The remaining portions of the workers income can be dedicated to purchasing whatever that individual wants over and above their basic needs.

It's pure Marxism in action and let me tell you, I would absolutely love to be able to use 45 to 50 percent of my wages on personal use. I have never in my life been able to spend 45 percent of my wages on personal items while still having my basic needs cared for.



So it was "better" than ordinary capitalism in the sense that the "ultimate threat" that hangs over every worker's head here -- homelessness and starvation -- did not exist. On the other hand, not having evidence of employment could result in imprisonment and compulsory (slave) labor...so the "whip" was always ready to hand if required.


It was indeed better, if the former ruling class did not step in after 40 years and begin re-introducing privitisation and capitalist greed to the state.

You must also consider that wages were lower as a larger portion of surplus value was needed to begin industrialisation in these states; not to mention the forced formation of the massive military forces that were needed to keep the capitalist counter revolutionaries from simply invading the new state.

In the modern era, it will not take very long to make sure that the standard of living is equal for all citizens of the state.


But one very important thing was the same as we have here; there was an elite that managed and controlled the means of production according to their own interests. The vanguard party -- and especially its leading members -- had the power to make all substantive political and economic decisions for the entire society...without regard for the wishes of the working class or even the wishes of ordinary party members.


Speaking strictly of pre '53 USSR, I cannot see where the vanguard party did anything but attempt to ensure that the next generation of soviets had an equal standard of living with those in the West.

As far as I know, I have never heard of any wealthy vanguard members pre 1953 in the USSR.

Post 1953, you are absolutely right, the Party betrayed the people.



Indeed, a bloated repressive apparatus -- police, prisons, army, labor camps, etc. -- was a prominent feature of those regimes. Outright massacres were not common but not unknown...very much like modern capitalism. Prisons and labor camps were genuine hell-holes -- torture was either occasional or common, depending on which accounts you find most credible. An unknown but substantial number of people died from the poor conditions.

I don't think the question is "how many" were killed or imprisoned but "who" were killed or imprisoned. As history has shown us in regard to the Communist movements of the past, once the party "let up" on counter revolutionaries, it was systematically destroyed from the inside out.


Thus, the party elite could impose its will (for a considerable period of time) without concerning itself with possible resistance from the working class.

And they certainly did after Stalin.


Well, you got up every morning and went to work. The pace of your job, under most circumstances, was far less exhausting than under capitalism...and in some situations, it didn't even matter if you showed up at all. When you got off, there wasn't much to do...entertainment was a low priority under "socialism" and what little there was tended to be too expensive for ordinary people. If you could afford a bottle of booze (and found a state store that had some), you and your friends could drink yourselves into oblivion.

You spent a big part of your life dealing with shortages of basic consumer needs...and when you did find something desirable, you bought as much of it as you could -- bartering the items you didn't need with friends who had a surplus of things that you did need. The party elite in all of those countries had first crack at consumer necessities and ordinary people had to "make do" with whatever was left over.

You are right, mistakes were made. Once the USSR was developed industrially, a much larger portion of surplus value should have been given to the workers. Unfortunately party revisionists and the constant threat from the west ensured to money did not find its way back to the worker.

In the future this mistake will not be made again.


Communism was never "on the agenda" in any of those countries...nor was there ever any serious attempt to devolve state power to the working class itself. All there was, besides the red flags, was great leader worship, vulgar nationalism, intrigue, corruption...and economic development required for the emergence of modern capitalism.

It was most certainly on the agenda however you must realise that it's impossible to create a communist society while the international market remains capitalist. Stalin initially tried to trade internationally using a marxist assessment of value with near disaterous results.

The country was forced to use international values on commodities to be able to actually trade with other States.

The only possible way this could happen is if the State itself had a plentiful supply of every natural resource it required to maintain its population within its own boundries. Have you ever seen this happen, without leading to socail and industrial stagnation?

If you are forced to import anything relevant for the country's survival you must abide by the international market.


If Marx was right, only a transitional state under the control of the working class itself would avoid the unhappy fate of 20th century "socialism". His view was that all state officials must be elected and recallable at all times...and must be compensated at the same rate that ordinary workers are compensated. At no time did he suggest that a particular "party" of "Marxists" should be in unlimited command of the proletarian state.



Well if it makes you happy then we can re-name the vanguar party to simply "representatives of the people who are in no way an actual decisive force"

We will then ignore the fact that those people will enevitably have to make decisions based on the will of the people, and ignore the fact that these people will be a representive union of delegates to the majority vote of the workers.

As far as I can tell, they would be a "party" of the people, just like the vanguard.

I suppsoe it's about trust with us old cats RS, you prefer to put you trust in millions of people to do the right thing, I prefer to put my trust in a few people to do the right thing.

I find that the fewer amount of people that must be watched the better.

At least it makes purges a hell of a lot easier! :lol:

[redstar2000]

It's pure Marxism in action and let me tell you, I would absolutely love to be able to use 45 to 50 percent of my wages on personal use. I have never in my life been able to spend 45 percent of my wages on personal items while still having my basic needs cared for.

By contemporary accounts, you'd do a lot more standing in line...although there'd be people willing to stand in line for you in exchange for some cash. I have no information on how trustworthy such folks would be.

But it's not "Marxism in action" though, pure or impure. It's simply a more "humane" and possibly less exploitative variant on what we have now.

How much more "humane" is highly controversial, of course.


In the modern era, it will not take very long to make sure that the standard of living is equal for all citizens of the state.

Well, one would certainly hope so...but there's no way to really know that ahead of time.


Speaking strictly of pre '53 USSR, I cannot see where the vanguard party did anything but attempt to ensure that the next generation of soviets had an equal standard of living with those in the West.

Perhaps those were their intentions -- we are not "mind readers" here.

But had that indeed been the case, one would think that Soviet planners would have devoted more investment to light industry and housing construction than they did.

Soviet agriculture likewise left much to be desired.


As far as I know, I have never heard of any wealthy vanguard members pre 1953 in the USSR.

As I noted, there was nothing like the obscene personal wealth seen under capitalism visible in the USSR, China, etc.

But there were, for example, special stores open only to party members in the USSR. You couldn't buy a mink coat or a Rolex (even a fake one)...but there was plenty of good food on the shelves and toilet paper was always in stock.


Post 1953, you are absolutely right, the Party betrayed the people.

Was it personal "villainy" that was at fault...or simply a reflection of class relations that had existed for more than a generation?


I don't think the question is "how many" were killed or imprisoned but "who" were killed or imprisoned. As history has shown us in regard to the Communist movements of the past, once the party "let up" on counter revolutionaries, it was systematically destroyed from the inside out.

I agree that the "debate" on "how many" is fruitless. But were those who were arrested, sent to the prisons and the labor camps, and who subsequently perished due to the harsh conditions "all" counter-revolutionaries?

That seems highly improbable to me.


It was most certainly on the agenda; however you must realise that it's impossible to create a communist society while the international market remains capitalist. Stalin initially tried to trade internationally using a marxist assessment of value with near disastrous results.

This is a contention worthy of more elaboration. To my knowledge, foreign trade played a very small role in the Soviet economy in the Stalin era.

When I discussed this question with American Maoists, I pointed out that if a society is actually progressing towards communism, it would show visible signs of that...most notably an obvious "withering away of the state apparatus".

Their response, and presumably yours as well, was that international political conditions did not "permit" the state to "wither away" or even visibly move in that direction.

Very well. But what assurances do we have that a socialist society would ever decide to begin dismantling its state apparatus? (Except in order to restore open capitalism, of course.)


The only possible way this could happen is if the State itself had a plentiful supply of every natural resource it required to maintain its population within its own boundaries. Have you ever seen this happen, without leading to social and industrial stagnation?

The argument that autarkies (entirely self-reliant economies) are "doomed" to social and industrial stagnation is not one that I'm equipped to dispute.

In principle, I don't see why that should necessarily be the case...but perhaps there are reasons of which I am not aware.


Well, if it makes you happy then we can re-name the vanguard party to simply "representatives of the people who are in no way an actual decisive force"

You jest...but such a change would, in my view, be a rather good idea. If conscious communists were to abandon the idea that "history" has "chosen them" to rule, they might become both better revolutionaries now and a good deal more trustworthy in post-capitalist society.


I suppose it's about trust with us old cats RS; you prefer to put your trust in millions of people to do the right thing, I prefer to put my trust in a few people to do the right thing.

Historically, trust in small numbers has not worked out very well.


I find that the fewer amount of people that must be watched the better.

Yes, it's easier to see when a despot fucks up...but it's also much harder to do anything about it.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[Vinny Rafarino]

By contemporary accounts, you'd do a lot more standing in line...although there'd be people willing to stand in line for you in exchange for some cash. I have no information on how trustworthy such folks would be

That possibility does indeed exist but it is also possible that distribution efforts would quickly be effective enough to eliminate the majority of "long food lines".


But it's not "Marxism in action" though, pure or impure

I disagree, as Marxism calls for a "socialist transition" with a heavy income tax and state ownership of sertain sectors, I believe this model to be right on time with Marxist ideology.


But had that indeed been the case, one would think that Soviet planners would have devoted more investment to light industry and housing construction than they did.

Soviet agriculture likewise left much to be desired.


Mistakes were indeed made, however I don't think those mistakes represent the belief that the majority of the party no longer was concerned with the welfare of the people.

As we both know, the times were very turbulent with many challenges facing the new new State.


But there were, for example, special stores open only to party members in the USSR. You couldn't buy a mink coat or a Rolex (even a fake one)...but there was plenty of good food on the shelves and toilet paper was always in stock.


A weakness of integrity among human behaviour would be a commonplace occurance in any post revolutionary society, socialist, anarchist or otherwise.

We can only attemt to limit it as much as we can.

With any luck, party members having good food and toilet roll while the masses sometimes do not will not be an issue in the future.


Was it personal "villainy" that was at fault...or simply a reflection of class relations that had existed for more than a generation?


More than likely it was a mixture of both. There is ample evidence to suggest corruption among specific party members as well as evidence to suggest to the "next" generation of communists still harboured feelings of "class envy" due to their relatively young ages under the last Czar.

Psychological wounds that are created while at a very young age have a tendency to manifest themselves later in life.


That seems highly improbable to me

It also seems highly improbable to me, it's a matter of what you personally consider to be "acceptable casualties".

I suppose it takes a relatively large amount of emotional detachment to be able to accept these unfortunate losses for, what you hope, is the good of the movement.


This is a contention worthy of more elaboration. To my knowledge, foreign trade played a very small role in the Soviet economy in the Stalin era.

I certainly did not live in the USSR during this time so I am not entirely sure on how important international trade was to the Soviet economy, I am simply making my assessment based on Stalin's description of the five year plans as written in his 1952 book "Economic Problems with Socialism in the USSR".



Very well. But what assurances do we have that a socialist society would ever decide to begin dismantling its state apparatus? (Except in order to restore open capitalism, of course.)


It's impossible to assure anything to anyone. As so so often say, "we are not mind readers".

All we can do is try.


You jest...but such a change would, in my view, be a rather good idea. If conscious communists were to abandon the idea that "history" has "chosen them" to rule, they might become both better revolutionaries now and a good deal more trustworthy in post-capitalist society.

Perhaps we are on to something here then, comrade. I completely agree that the stigma that the idea of the "vanguard" carries, no matter if it's true or not, is damaging to the movement.

I agree that if even one socialists interprets the word "vanguard" to mean they have been "chosen" to "rule" then it loses all value.



Historically, trust in small numbers has not worked out very well

Unfortunately neither has trust in the many.

[Raisa]

The thing about the socialist "state" is like you said, its pretty much like a bourgeois government with out a bourgeoisie. Because its STILL a class rule, and the rule of a class requires coercion and power against the opposing class. We have experianced this by the military and police forces of capitalist governments that primarily protect capitalism and capitalist rights. It is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

..And this socialist state is the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. After the revolution the tables have turned, and now the bourgeoisie is the opposing class.

The Dictatorship of the Proliteriat is what opens the doors for workers to rise up legitimately and for society to grow into once class, where there no longer needs to be a coercive state to impose class rule, because there is no opposing class. Its all the same class, so now there only needs to be an administrative democracy, but not a "state".

"I find that the fewer amount of people that must be watched the better.

At least it makes purges a hell of a lot easier! "

I agree with this statement. All the while people should be being educated in school on contiousness and that this is their revolution, and this should be a main lesson.

[RevolucioN NoW]

hmm interesting thread


I agree with this statement. All the while people should be being educated in school on contiousness and that this is their revolution, and this should be a main lesson.

I disagree with this statement based on the history of socialist states already mentioned.

There a small vanguard cemented itself in power on the premise (then correct) that most of the population were uneducated and needed to be taught how to be socialists.

I believe that there will be no need for a vanguard under this premise, as the working class is now rather well educated in the "West" and will be quite capable of running society for itself

The working class will already be "educated" on class consciousness, or there would have been no mass revolution to begin with.

[Karo de Perro]

No society can exist without a governmental apparatus to officiate the ebbs and tides of human tendencies,there must be a state in order to keep the big fish from swallowing up the little fish - plain and simple.

[RevolucioN NoW]

No society can exist without a governmental apparatus to officiate the ebbs and tides of human tendencies,there must be a state in order to keep the big fish from swallowing up the little fish - plain and simple.

The key motivation you have for keeping the state apparutus is so that the supposed "big fish", i would assume you mean capitalists or government officials themselves will not swallow the "little fish" i.e. the working class.

I'm not sure what you consider "communism" to mean but to me it means a classless society, there would be no "big or small fish", we would all be equal, no one would have any powers of coersion that a state would need to restrain.

As for the ebs and tides of society, a state actually works againsts these things, in the USSR there was an extreme lack of consumer goods, while battle tanks were produced on a massive scale.

Hardly satisfying the ebs and tides there.

[Misodoctakleidist]

redstar2000 makes a very good point about the vanguard being effectivly a ruling class, they have a quite substantialy different relationship to the means of production than that of the workers. Since the basis of Leninist theory is that the state will wither away without a class war to mediate, it begs the question; how this is possible when their idea of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" created an even more rigid class system than that prevailent in capitalism? Most Leninists wil claim that the vanguard act in the interests of the proletariat so they don't act like a different class, while this may be true (although it's highly debatable) of the original revolutionaries, when they die their replacements act as you'd expect based on the material conditions of society; they use their position of political supremacy to enrich them selves by introducing capitalism and selling off the state-owned companies to each other. This has happened with a remarkable (or perhaps not) consistency in Leninist states, the most obvious examples being the USSR and China.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by Karo de [email protected] 15 2004, 01:21 PM
plain and simple
Actually, it's not that plain and simple...


No society can exist without a governmental apparatus to officiate the ebbs and tides of human tendencies

Why? Societies existed for centuries without governments. The hunter gatherers, tribes and early civilisations all were without governments.


there must be a state in order to keep the big fish from swallowing up the little fish

What does this actually mean?

[Ziggy]

Why? Societies existed for centuries without governments. The hunter gatherers, tribes and early civilisations all were without governments
well in those situations it was often no more than 50 people living together or was a small closely knit community , and there was a government, most tribes had chieftans as far back as the neolithic age, probably before. To say they did not have a government is plain ignorant. Yes, they did not have a government the way you or me may think of government, but they did have a chief, elder, matriarch or some other kind of leader who would make decisions for the community.


What does this actually mean?
it means given the chance people that can might take advantage of others. there has to be some sort of order.

[antieverything]

And another important difference was that some part of the state apparatus had to give you a job...even if it was "make-work" and socially useless.
How is that a difference from modern capitalism? In the United States the government regularly provides make-work (though it is often socially useful from the elite's viewpoint). In the region of Texas I call home, the only work is found in prisons which exist to house non-violent prisoners of the drug war which is in turn meant to be a solution to inner-city and rural poverty (through the criminalization of poverty) or in some part of the military-industrial complex namely Pantex (a plant for dismantling nuclear weapons...formerly for the construction of them) and Bell Helicopter where they assemble the Ospery, an aircraft with an unparalleled ability to kill test pilots...in fact it is such a wonderful piece of machinery that congress has made it illegal for Bell's competitors to research a replacement!


So it was "better" than ordinary capitalism in the sense that the "ultimate threat" that hangs over every worker's head here -- homelessness and starvation -- did not exist. On the other hand, not having evidence of employment could result in imprisonment and compulsory (slave) labor...so the "whip" was always ready to hand if required.
Actually a large portion of starvation in the 20th century has happened in the "socialist" world...not to mention those third-world countries that tried to copy the socialist model.


Rationing of basic consumer goods (food, housing) also helped...the kind of absolute deprivation that yet afflicts modern capitalism was not a normal feature of "socialism".
Last I checked, absolute deprivation was rampant in the socialist world...remember old women hawking toothpaste on the street in Moscow?


But one very important thing was the same as we have here; there was an elite that managed and controlled the means of production according to their own interests. The vanguard party -- and especially its leading members -- had the power to make all substantive political and economic decisions for the entire society...without regard for the wishes of the working class or even the wishes of ordinary party members.
True enough.


The party elites did not live in the kind of obscene luxury characteristic of modern capitalism...it was probably more like what we would call "upper-middle-class". Even so, it was far above what the ordinary person in those countries lived like.
Well, perhaps...though Soviet party elites got to take trips to kooshy resorts on the coasts.


Anyhow, I don't have that much to complain about with this post. Still, my reaction to this is the same as my reaction to most of Redstar's posts, "so what?" I've never seen someone with such an incredible gift to make a rather obscure and unimportant argument take up a few pages!

[antieverything]

And Ziggy is right, every example of anti-authoritarian society in modern or ancient history isn't accurate. How can it be a society without authority when the women were property and men could decide whether or not a child was fit to live? Sounds like authority to me!

[Ziggy]

actually in the earliest of societies women were in charge, it was matriarchies galore! this also probably due to the fact that the earliest deities were women.

the problem is that there is always going to be classes in a socialist society, we may not like it but thats the fact of the matter. there will always be elitists and leaders out there and then there will be the rest of us. classes will only start to disapear in a communist society. to get to the point of there being no class distiction will take time, maybe even a generation or 2 till the sentiment is gone.

from reading these post it makes me think that socialism is only a bit better than capitalism. this "capitalism for the people" has the potential become a true communist state but it has just as much potential to stay where it is or ::shudder:: devolve back to capitalism

[antieverything]

Well, you'll often find this in women's studies classes or in female-empowerment literature but it simply isn't true. Usually the example is Greece even though the claim has no scientific evidence to back it up...according to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, "the consensus among modern anthropologists and sociologists is that a strictly matriarchal society never existed." Wiccans would have you believe a similar story, claiming that a gynocentric religion existed all over Europe since the first ice age...a story with no basis in fact meant to bring credibility to a movement started in the 1950s. In fact there is no archeaological or historical evidence that any society in history has ever worshipped a single goddess.

so, now you know ;) ...but that's beside the point...

[redstar2000]

Still, my reaction to this is the same as my reaction to most of Redstar's posts, "so what?" I've never seen someone with such an incredible gift to make a rather obscure and unimportant argument take up a few pages!

I'm glad to see that you appreciate my talent. Don't forget to pick up one of my t-shirts and a set of coffee mugs when they go on sale.

Thanks for your support. :lol:

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2004, 09:14 PM
well in those situations it was often no more than 50 people living together or was a small closely knit community , and there was a government, most tribes had chieftans as far
I don't class that as governance. Most of these tribe Chieftans had been around for many years and were respected and admired by their tribes. They made decisions for the collective good and their tribes freely and willingly submitted to their authority. If they chose not to, they could leave the tribe.

These Chieftans did not hold huge positions of wealth or power. They did not control every aspect of society and centralise it for the purpose of maintaining power. They were not responsable for the propogation of an exploitative economic system nor did they have class interest. They were warriors, farmers, mandated by their tribe to make decisions for them.


Yes, they did not have a government the way you or me may think of government, but they did have a chief, elder, matriarch or some other kind of leader who would make decisions for the community.

That is not a definition of government.


it means given the chance people that can might take advantage of others.

Why? What proof do you have that this is fact?


there has to be some sort of order.

I agree.

[synthesis]

I've never seen someone with such an incredible gift to make a rather obscure and unimportant argument take up a few pages!

I'm not sure how you can say that discussion of the role and/or existence of the Party (vanguard) is at all obscure or unimportant. I think that it is the most important question facing the left today.

[antieverything]

I wasn't aware such a discussion existed in the original post...all I saw were a bunch of obvious statements about the nature of communist regimes in the past. :huh:

[Guerrilla22]

I believe that the heads of the communist party in the USSR were the wealthy vangaurds, clearly they were in a class that was superior to that of the rest of the general population.

[sanpal]

Sorry that it is difficult to present quotation of Lenin but he has said that socialism is capitalism conversion to the public benefit of the proletariat. His assurance of public benefit of the proletariat was based on efficacy of Soviet power. Unfortunately Lenin's principle of democracy (proletarian democracy) in the USSR was violated and Soviet organs didn't work though they have existed.

[Daymare17]

There is an unbelieveable confusion here.

First of all there wasn't socialism in the USSR. Socialism means a society of complete democracy on the basis of a nationalised planned economy. Under socialism, First and foremost, it means that the means of production are developed to a level higher than the highest capitalism. Only on such a basis is it possible for the state, a special machine for the oppression of poor by rich, to dissolve into society. How you can call the barbaric regimes in Eastern Europe and China "socialist" is anyone's guess.

Comparing Lenin to Stalin is like comparing Thomas Jefferson to George W. Bush, or comparing Jesus Christ to the Roman Pope. Whoever uses the word "Leninist" to describe Stalinism in any of its forms (Maoist, Castroist etc.) is doing a colossal disservice to socialism. Between Leninism and Stalinism there is not only an ideological but a physical incompatibility. Otherwise how explain the fact that to triumph, the Stalinist bureaucracy had to physically annihilate Lenin's entire party and, in fact, anyone who had any connection to the October Revolution and could remember what it was like under Lenin? Between Leninism and Stalinism there is not just a bloody line but a whole river of blood. After the Purges of 1936-38, the "Communist" party of the USSR was not a Communist Party at all but simply an arm of the state. The Party was always right, and nobody could criticise the Party. The Party had unlimited powers and the tops had bourgeois lifestyles. This has absolutely nothing to do with Leninist party theory. Whoever says so is a dupe of bourgeois propaganda.

Under conditions prevailing in post-October Russia, it was impossible for the proletariat to maintain the Soviet Democracy. The state created by the working class, under unfavourable conditions, developed an interest separate and apart from the class which it represented and rose above it. The state bureaucrats had to resort to bloody violence and a totalitarian regime against the working class to maintain their privileged position. As an ideological covering for their rule, they called themselves "socialists", "communists", "Marxists" and "Leninists". But for anyone claiming themselves a leftist, to call such a regime "socialist" is a total scandal. It can only sow confusion and is an abhorrence. Only if the working class of the East Bloc had made a revolution and re-instituted workers' democracy as existed in the USSR under Lenin and Trotsky, it would be possible to speak of socialism.

[Misodoctakleidist]

Stalin wasn't greatly different to Lenin.

You speak as if Lenin's USSR was democratic, is that why he dissolved the parliment after failing to win a majority in the elections? The USSR was already a totalitarian regime before Stalin became the party leader, Stalin was a Leninist but neither were Marxists.

[Daymare17]

Stalin wasn't greatly different to Lenin.

You speak as if Lenin's USSR was democratic, is that why he dissolved the parliment after failing to win a majority in the elections? The USSR was already a totalitarian regime before Stalin became the party leader, Stalin was a Leninist but neither were Marxists.

I'm sorry to say so but you are just parroting common bourgeois slanders.

Peace, Bread and Land. That was the programme on which the Bolsheviks took the power. That was the programme which the Provisional Government could not satisfy. And still you continue to peddle the lame myth that this Provisional Government represented the will of the people.

How could the Bolsheviks seize the power, if they didn't have popular support? How could this party which totalled only 8,000 at the beginning of the revolution, defeat the entire state machine with the police, army and Cossacks?

It could seize the power because it had the full support of the working masses. Because the Provisional Government had discredited itself and had not fulfilled a single one of the needs of the Russian people. It did not give the land to the peasants. It did not make peace with Germany. All this, because it was a bourgeois government and the clerk of the capitalist class, not at all a "democratic" government.

Lenin's slogan was: "Patiently explain!", not "Stage a coup!". The votes for the Bolshevik candidates in the soviets steadily increased to the point where, by September they had won the majority in Petrograd, Moscow, Kiev, Odessa and all the major cities. At this point, the question of a transfer of power from the discredited Provisional Government, which represented only itself, to the soviets, the democratic organs of the mass of workers and soldiers (overwhelmingly peasants) was an imperative necessity. The growth of the Bolshevik Party in this period is something without precedent in the history of political parties. From only around 8,000 members in February, it grew to 177,000 by the Sixth Congress in July.

On the 28th October, Russkaya Volya, a main rightwing paper, wrote the following:

"What are the chances of Bolshevik success? It is difficult to answer that question, for their principal support is the É ignorance of the popular masses. They speculate on it, they work upon it by a demagogy which nothing can stop." As you see, at the time even the bourgeoisie accepted that the Bolsheviks had mass support.

After October the Soviet Union was invaded by 27 foreign armies, including German, Turkish, French, British, American, Japanese, Czechoslovak, Romanian forces. The old Russian army was in total shambles. Trotsky built the Red Army out of nothing and proceeded to beat back the enemy on all fronts by 1921. How could they have done this if they didn't have the popular support of the masses?

The Bolshevik Revolution was the most popular revolution in history. Whoever does not think so is a bourgeois dupe or a conscious falsifier.

[Misodoctakleidist]

When did i ever mention the provisional governemnt? I was talking about the election after the revolution.

Please don't lecture me on basic history, I studied the Russian revolution when i was 14.

From the 12th to the 14th Novermber 1917 there were elections held to a Constituent Assembly, the Socialist Revolutionaries won a majority. It met once before Lenin abolished it.

[Louis Pio]

From the 12th to the 14th Novermber 1917 there were elections held to a Constituent Assembly, the Socialist Revolutionaries won a majority. It met once before Lenin abolished it.


Yes and soviets should surely be viewed as more in in line with the people we build a revolution on the advanced workers.
A constituent assembly is just a part of bourgios democracy, and I take it you want it to go further than that.
The slogan of a constituent assembly was at that point even reactionary since the organs of workers power ie the soviets already existed. So what you are in fact saying are we should settle with the bourgios form of democracy.

[Daymare17]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21 2004, 02:01 PM
When did i ever mention the provisional governemnt? I was talking about the election after the revolution.

Please don't lecture me on basic history, I studied the Russian revolution when i was 14.

From the 12th to the 14th Novermber 1917 there were elections held to a Constituent Assembly, the Socialist Revolutionaries won a majority. It met once before Lenin abolished it.
Ok I'll just post a long quote since I'm kind of tired. From www.marxist.com/russiabook/part1.html

The myth of the Constituent Assembly

Among all the numerous legends put in circulation in order to portray the October Revolution in an unfavourable light, that of the Constituent Assembly is perhaps the most persistent. According to this, the Bolsheviks before the revolution had advocated a democratically elected parliament (Constituent Assembly), yet after the revolution they disbanded it. Since they were in a minority, the argument goes, they decided to dissolve the democratically elected parliament and resort to dictatorship. This argument overlooks a number of fundamental questions. In the first place, the demand for a Constituent Assembly - which undoubtedly played a progressive role in mobilising the masses, especially the peasantry, against the Tsarist autocracy - was only one of a series of revolutionary-democratic demands, and not necessarily the most important one. The masses were won over to the revolution on other demands, notably "Peace, Bread and Land". These, in turn, became a reality only because they were linked to another demand - all power to the soviets.

The February Revolution failed precisely because it was not capable of satisfying these most pressing needs of the population. The complete impotence of the Kerensky regime was not accidental. It reflected the reactionary character of the Russian bourgeoisie. The capitalist class of Russia was a very weak class, tied hand and foot to the landlords, and subordinate to world imperialism. Only the revolutionary transfer of power into the hands of the most resolutely revolutionary part of society, the working class, made possible the ending of the war and the distribution of land to the peasants. This was the function of the October Revolution.

The calling of elections to the Constituent Assembly the following year was almost in the nature of an afterthought. The Bolsheviks intended to use this to try to mobilise the majority of the peasantry and rouse them to political life. But above all from the standpoint of the peasantry, formal parliamentary democracy is worse than useless if it does not carry out policies that solve their most pressing needs. Under certain circumstances, the Constituent Assembly could have played a progressive role. But in practice, it became clear that this Constituent Assembly could only be an obstacle and a rallying point for the counter-revolution. Here, the slow moving mechanism of parliamentary elections lagged far behind the swift current of revolution. The real attitude of the peasantry was revealed in the civil war, when the right Social Revolutionaries (SRs) and most of the Mensheviks collaborated with the Whites.

At the time of the October Revolution, the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies represented all that was alive and dynamic in Russian society. The working class voted for the Bolsheviks in the soviets, which were much more democratic that any parliament. At the same time, the soldiers, of whom a big majority were peasants also voted overwhelmingly for the Bolsheviks:

[Damn, I can't copypaste tables. Go to http://www.marxist.com/russiabook/part1.html and search for 'Percentages']

These figures show, on the one hand, a growing polarisation between the classes, to the right (note the vote of the bourgeois Kadet party) and the left, and a collapse of the parties of the "centre", the Mensheviks and SRs. But the most striking feature is the sweeping victory of the Bolsheviks, who, from a mere 12 per cent in June were now an absolute majority. What this shows is that the Bolsheviks had the support of the overwhelming majority of the workers, and a sizeable section of the peasants also. In November 1917 the Menshevik leader Y.O. Martov himself had to admit that "almost the entire proletariat supports Lenin". (Quoted in Liebman, op. cit., p. 218.) Precisely on this basis, the Bolsheviks were able to overthrow the discredited Provisional Government and take power with a minimum of resistance. These facts alone give the lie to the myth of the October Revolution as a coup.

Thus, the democratic legitimacy of the October Revolution was clearly established. But this was not reflected in the elections to the Constituent Assembly, when the Bolsheviks only got 23.9 per cent of the votes (to which must be added the votes of the Left SRs):

[Two paragraphs further down from the previous table]

Despite this, the Bolsheviks remained firmly in power. Why? The right SRs had traditionally led the peasants, going back to the time of the Narodniks at the turn of the century. These middle class elements were the traditional village aristocracy - teachers, lawyers, and the "gentlemen who spoke well". During the first world war, many of them became army officers. At the time of the February Revolution, these democratic revolutionaries exercised a considerable influence among the peasant soldiers. Their vague and amorphous "revolutionism" corresponded to the first stirring of consciousness among the peasantry. But the tide of revolution flows fast. Soon after the February Revolution, the right SRs betrayed the peasantry by abandoning the programme of peace, and the revolutionary struggle for land.

Where could the peasants in uniform turn for support? Once awakened to political life, the peasant masses, specially the most active layer in the army whose experience of the war raised them to a higher level of understanding than their brothers in the villages, soon came to understand the need for a revolutionary overturn in order to conquer peace, bread and land. This could only be achieved by a revolutionary alliance with the proletariat. The realisation of this fact was registered in the Soviet elections by a sharp swing to the left. By the autumn of 1917, the old right SR leaders had lost their base among the soldiers, who went over in droves to the left SRs and their Bolshevik allies.

The elections to the Constituent Assembly were organised in a hurry after the revolution on the basis of electoral lists drawn up before October. The peasantry had not yet had time to understand the processes that were taking place. The split between the left and right SRs had not yet taken place. There was not time for the peasantry as a whole to grasp the meaning of the October Revolution and Soviet power, particularly in the vital fields of land reform and peace. The dynamics of a revolution cannot be easily translated into the cumbersome mechanism of parliamentarism. In the elections to the Constituent Assembly, the inert masses of the backward countryside was thrown into the balance. Weighed down by the ballast of a thousand years of slavery, the villages lagged behind the towns.

These right SRs were not the political representatives but the political exploiters of the peasantry. Implacably hostile to the October Revolution, they would have handed back power to the landlords and capitalists in the kind of democratic counter-revolution which robbed the German working class of power in November 1918. There were two mutually exclusive centres of power. The reactionaries rallied around the slogan: "All Power to the Constituent Assembly." Faced with this situation, the Bolsheviks, with the support of the Left SRs, did not hesitate to place the interests of the revolution before constitutional niceties. Basing themselves on the soviets, the Bolsheviks dissolved the Constituent Assembly. There was no resistance. This incident now causes an indignant reaction in some quarters. And yet, we are left with a self-evident contradiction. If the Constituent Assembly really represented the will of the masses, why did nobody defend it? Not a hand was raised in its defence, precisely because it was an unrepresentative anachronism. The reason for this was very well explained by the celebrated English historian of the Russian Revolution, E.H. Carr:

"The SRs had gone to the polls as a single party presenting one list of candidates. Its election manifesto had been full of lofty principles and aims but, though published on the day after the October Revolution, had been drafted before that event and failed to define the party attitude towards it. Now three days after the election the larger section of the party had made a coalition with the Bolsheviks, and formally split away from the other section which maintained its bitter feud against the Bolsheviks. The proportion between Right and Left SRs in the Constituent Assembly - 370 to 40 - was fortuitous. It was entirely different from the corresponding proportion in the membership of the peasants' congress, and did not necessarily represent the views of the electors on a vital point which had not been before them. 'The people,' said Lenin, 'voted for a party which no longer existed.' Reviewing the whole issue two years later Lenin found another argument which was more cogent than it appeared at first sight. He noted that in the large industrial cities the Bolsheviks had almost everywhere been ahead of the other parties. They secured an absolute majority in the two capitals taken together, the Kadets here being second and the SRs a poor third. But in matters of revolution the well-known principle applied: 'the town inevitably leads the country after it; the country inevitable follows the town.' The elections to the Constituent Assembly, if they did not register the victory of the Bolsheviks, had clearly pointed the way to it for those who had eyes to see." (E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, Vol. 1, pp. 121-2.)

This was admitted in so many words by Kerensky himself, who wrote the following in his memoirs: "The opening of the Constituent Assembly ended as a tragic farce. Nothing happened to give it the quality of a memorable final stand in defence of freedom." (Alexander Kerensky, The Kerensky Memoirs - Russia and History's Turning-Point, p. 470.)

[redstar2000]

How you can call the barbaric regimes in Eastern Europe and China "socialist" is anyone's guess.

1. It's what they called themselves.

2. Their "credentials" were universally accepted...or as close to universal as makes no difference.

3. Even Trotskyists of that era accepted the USSR as a "workers' state", albeit "deformed" by a "Stalinist bureaucracy". "Deformed socialism" is still socialism, right?

4. And Trotsky personally defended the USSR's invasion of Finland, did he not?


Comparing Lenin to Stalin is like comparing Thomas Jefferson to George W. Bush, or comparing Jesus Christ to the Roman Pope.

They all did have quite a lot in common.


Between Leninism and Stalinism there is not only an ideological but a physical incompatibility.

Oh? Is it time once more to blow the dust off Lenin's words? Very well.


When we are reproached with having established a dictatorship of one party...we say, "Yes, it is a dictatorship of one party! This is what we stand for and we shall not shift from that position." Our party aims to obtain political power for itself. There is not the least contradiction between soviet (i.e., socialist) democracy and the use of dictatorial power by a few persons.

If you are a Leninist, then this is what socialism means.


Under conditions prevailing in post-October Russia, it was impossible for the proletariat to maintain the Soviet Democracy.

They didn't even try.


But for anyone claiming themselves a leftist, to call such a regime "socialist" is a total scandal.

Some are scandalized easier than others, I suppose.


I'm sorry to say so but you are just parroting common bourgeois slanders.

No, you're not sorry. Your response is as old as Leninism itself; any criticism is always met with that response. Often it is valid; often it is not.


How could the Bolsheviks seize the power, if they didn't have popular support?

As it happens, I agree with you that the Bolsheviks did indeed have the support of a majority of the urban Russian proletariat and of many units in the army...especially those stationed in or near the cities.

But the Bolsheviks did not come to power as a consequence of the active rebellion of the proletariat; they simply staged a coup.

A popular coup is still a coup.


Lenin's slogan was: "Patiently explain!", not "Stage a coup!".

So what?


After October the Soviet Union was invaded by 27 foreign armies...

That number goes up every time I hear it! In another decade, it'll be at least a hundred. :lol:

The significant invasions were those of imperial Germany, Japan, France, Britain, and the United States.


The Bolshevik Revolution was the most popular revolution in history. Whoever does not think so is a bourgeois dupe or a conscious falsifier.

Nonsense. The February Russian Revolution, which was a genuinely massive popular uprising, was enormously more popular than the Bolshevik coup.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[antieverything]

:lol:

[Louis Pio]

Nonsense. The February Russian Revolution, which was a genuinely massive popular uprising, was enormously more popular than the Bolshevik coup.
'


And the question you overlooks is. Could the February revolution have solved anything. Wouldn't it have ended up with imperialism getting it's way.

You say you want a socialist revolution but you are not prepared to do what it takes.
The popular support for the february revolution would have gone away since it didn't change anything fundamentally, that would have paved the way for reaction.
A fact is that most of the proletariat supported the bolshevics, those are the people we build socailism on, not bakwards peasants.
What we are discussing here is whether or not one should do what it takes, to fall for bourgios propaganda about the constituent assembly is totally missing the point for anyone claiming to be socialist and wanting a revolution.

[Daymare17]

1. It's what they called themselves.

2. Their "credentials" were universally accepted...or as close to universal as makes no difference.

3. Even Trotskyists of that era accepted the USSR as a "workers' state", albeit "deformed" by a "Stalinist bureaucracy". "Deformed socialism" is still socialism, right?

You consider yourself a socialist, right? Not sure, but anyway if you call yourself a socialist, and call the East Bloc and China socialist, that implies you supported those countries and want that system of government.


4. And Trotsky personally defended the USSR's invasion of Finland, did he not?

Complicated case and I'm not going to go into it in detail here. Suffice to say that in a war, we support any country with a planned economy against any country with a capitalist economy. In the given case Finland was an accomplice of imperialism against the USSR, or rather an accomplice-in-becoming, as was shown during the "Continuation War". On a world scale we supported the USSR against fascist Germany despite Stalin's dictatorship. Logically we had to support the USSR against the German satelite despite the "democracy" of the latter. Look here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1940/1940-finnish.htm) for more detail.


They all did have quite a lot in common.

So does Anarchism and Marxism. So does Fascism and bourgeois democracy. So does everything in this world, but the point is that there is much, much, more that they do NOT have in common. This is an imperfect analogy, a tried and trusted method of all kinds of enemies of truth.


Oh? Is it time once more to blow the dust off Lenin's words? Very well.

QUOTE
When we are reproached with having established a dictatorship of one party...we say, "Yes, it is a dictatorship of one party! This is what we stand for and we shall not shift from that position." Our party aims to obtain political power for itself. There is not the least contradiction between soviet (i.e., socialist) democracy and the use of dictatorial power by a few persons.

If you are a Leninist, then this is what socialism means.

Did I ever say that Lenin and Trotsky were some kind of bubbly-sparkly, happy-land democrats? Not at all. If it seemed that way then I apologize for not wording myself clearly enough. Lenin and Trotsky were advocates of ruthless class dictatorship, with all the violations of individual freedom this necessarily implies. The difference between Leninism and Stalinism was that whereas the Leninist terror was directed in defence of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and all of its hangers-on, the Stalinist terror (although disguised precisely as the Leninist terror) was directed against the workers in defence of the privileged bureaucracy. Based on the comparison of similar aspects of different things of different origin and social basis, you find fundamental identity. As already stated, the imperfect analogy is the prized weapon of all kinds of liars, falsifiers and slanderers. I have another quote here which much better represents Lenin's attitude to terror than the one you picked out of context in your anarchist zeal to discredit Bolshevism:

"That in the history of revolutionary movements the dictatorship of individuals was very often the expression, the vehicle, the channel of the dictatorship of the revolutionary classes has been shown by the irrefutable experience of history. Undoubtedly, the dictatorship of individuals was compatible with bourgeois democracy. On this point, how ever, the bourgeois denigrators of the Soviet system, as well as their petty-bourgeois henchmen, always display sleight of hand: on the one hand, they declare the Soviet system to be something absurd, anarchistic and savage, and carefully pass over in silence all our historical examples and theoretical arguments which prove that the Soviets are a higher form of democracy, and what is more, the beginning of a socialist form of democracy; on the other hand, they demand of us a higher democracy than bourgeois democracy and say: personal dictatorship is absolutely incompatible with your, Bolshevik (i.e., not bourgeois, but socialist ), Soviet democracy.

"These are exceedingly poor arguments. If we are not anarchists, we must admit that the state, that is, coercion, is necessary for the transition from capitalism to socialism. The form of coercion is determined by the degree of development of the given revolutionary class, and also by special circumstances, such as, for example, the legacy of a long and reactionary war and the forms of resistance put up by the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie. There is, therefore, absolutely no contradiction in principle between Soviet (that is, socialist) democracy and the exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals. The difference between proletarian dictatorship and bourgeois dictatorship is that the former strikes at the exploiting minority in the interests of the exploited majority, and that it is exercised—also through individuals—not only by the working and exploited people, but also by organisations which are built in such a way as to rouse these people to history-making activity. (The Soviet organisations are organisations of this kind.)"

And again:

"Our aim is to draw the whole of the poor into the practical work of administration, and all steps that are taken in this direction—the more varied they are, the better—should be carefully recorded, studied, systematised, tested by wider experience and embodied in law. Our aim is to ensure that every toiler, having finished his eight hours’ “task” in productive labour, shall perform state duties without pay; the transition to this is particularly difficult, but this transition alone can guarantee the final consolidation of socialism. Naturally, the novelty and difficulty of the change lead to an abundance of steps being taken, as it were, gropingly, to an abundance of mistakes, vacillation—without this, any marked progress is impossible. The reason why the present position seems peculiar to many of those who would like to be regarded as socialists is that they have been accustomed to contrasting capitalism with socialism abstractly, and that they profoundly put between the two the word “leap” (some of them; recalling fragments of what they have read of Engels’s writings, still more profoundly add the phrase “leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom”[13]. The majority of these so-called socialists, who have “read in books” about socialism but who have never seriously thought over the matter, are unable to consider that by “leap” the teachers of socialism meant turning-points on a world historical scale, and that leaps of this kind extend over decades and even longer periods. Naturally, in such times, the notorious “intelligentsia” provides an infinite number of mourners of the dead. Some mourn over the Constituent Assembly, others mourn over bourgeois discipline, others again mourn over the capitalist system, still others mourn over the cultured landowner, and still others again mourn over imperialist Great Power policy, etc., etc." http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/mar/x03.htm

As is obvious repression was regarded as temporary (the dictatorship of the proletariat), as is the Marxist tradition. Being heavily influenced by anarchism you cannot see the need for repression and dictatorship after the revolution; or, you see it, but when it poses itself before you you do not recognize it. Granted the Stalinist bureaucrats of all kinds used exactly the same arguments in defence of their totalitarian rule. But one must be completely blind not to see the vast difference between the working-class rule of Lenin and that of Stalin, Mao or some other bureaucratic dictator. Lenin and Trotsky were completely ruthless defenders of the power of the working class; the Stalinist dictators were equally ruthless in their defence of the power and privileges of the bureaucratic caste.


They didn't even try.

I'm sorry but I can't make heads or tails of what this is supposed to mean. Please elaborate.


As it happens, I agree with you that the Bolsheviks did indeed have the support of a majority of the urban Russian proletariat and of many units in the army...especially those stationed in or near the cities.

But the Bolsheviks did not come to power as a consequence of the active rebellion of the proletariat; they simply staged a coup.

A popular coup is still a coup.

From the same book I linked to previously: "The claim that the October Revolution was only a coup is often justified by pointing to the relatively small numbers actually involved in the insurrection itself. This apparently profound argument does not resist the slightest scrutiny. In the first place, it confuses the armed insurrection with the revolution, that is to say, it confuses the part with the whole. In reality, the insurrection is only a part of the revolution - a very important part, it is true. Trotsky likens it to the crest of a wave. As a matter of fact, the amount of fighting that took place in Petrograd was very small. One can say that it was bloodless. The reason for this was that nine-tenths of the tasks were already accomplished beforehand, by winning over the decisive majority of the workers and soldiers. It was still necessary to use armed force to overcome the resistance of the old order. No ruling class has ever surrendered power without a fight. But resistance was minimal. The government collapsed like a house of cards, because nobody was prepared to defend it." www.marxist.com/russiabook/part1.html

The Bolsheviks did not respect the bourgeois parliament. Obviously you do. In this you follow in the heels of the German Social-Democrats who thought socialism would be introduced peacefully via the Reichstag. If the future of the world revolution is left to characters like yourself then we are in dire straits indeed.


That number goes up every time I hear it! In another decade, it'll be at least a hundred.

The significant invasions were those of imperial Germany, Japan, France, Britain, and the United States.

A pathetic evasion. You did not at all answer my main question: How could the Red Army defeat the imperialists, if it did not have the decisive backing not just of the workers but also the peasants. You will answer this question or you will stand exposed as, at best, a misled character; at worst, a conscious falsifier and a counter-revolutionary slanderer.


Nonsense. The February Russian Revolution, which was a genuinely massive popular uprising, was enormously more popular than the Bolshevik coup.

"As a corollary of the slanders against October, we have the attempt to paint the February Revolution in glowing colours. The "democratic" regime of Kerensky, it is alleged, would have led Russia into a glorious future of prosperity, if only the Bolsheviks had not spoilt it all. Alas! The idealisation of the February Revolution does not stand up to the least scrutiny. The February 1917 Revolution - which had overthrown the old Tsarist regime - had not solved one of the tasks of the national-democratic revolution: land reform, a democratic republic, the national question. It was not even capable of bringing about the most elementary demand of the masses - for an end to the imperialist slaughter and the conclusion of a democratic peace. In short, the Kerensky regime in the course of nine months gave ample proof of its total inability to meet the most basic needs of the Russian people. It was this fact, and this alone, which enabled the Bolsheviks to come to power with the support of the decisive majority of society.

Emerging from the ravages of the first world war, Tsarist Russia was a semi-colony particularly of France, Germany, and Britain. Russia produced less than 3 per cent of world industrial output. It could not compete on a world scale. For every hundred square kilometres of land, there were only 0.4 kilometres of rail track. Around 80 per cent of the population eked out a bare existence on the land, which was fragmented into millions of smallholdings. The Russian bourgeoisie had entered onto the stage of history too late. It had failed to carry out any of the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, that had been solved in Britain and France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the contrary, the Russian capitalists leaned on imperialism on the one hand and the Tsarist autocracy for support on the other. They were linked by a thousand threads to the old landlords and aristocrats. Horrified by the 1905 Revolution, the bourgeoisie had become more conservative and suspicious of the workers. They had no revolutionary role to play. "Whereas in the dawn of its history it was too unripe to accomplish a Reformation," states Trotsky, "when the time came for leading a revolution it was overripe." (Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, Vol. 1, p. 28.)

The only revolutionary class in Russia was the young, small, but highly concentrated proletariat. Arising from the law of uneven and combined development, a backward country assimilates the material and intellectual conquests of the advanced countries. It does not slavishly reproduce all the stages of the past, but skips over a whole series of intermediate stages. This gives rise to a contradictory development, where the most advanced features are superimposed upon extremely backward conditions. Foreign investment had meant the creation of highly advanced concentrated factories and industries in Russia. The peasants were uprooted, thrown into industry, and proletarianised over night. It fell to this youthful proletariat - which had none of the conservative traditions of its counterpart in the West - to take Russian society out of the impasse it faced. The attempt to counterpose the February regime to October has no foundation whatever. Had the Bolsheviks not taken power, the future that faced Russia was not one of prosperous capitalist democracy, but fascist barbarism under the jackboot of Kornilov or one of the other White generals. Such a development would have signified, not advance, but a terrible regression." www.marxist.com/russiabook/part1.html

If you are interested in learning about the Russian Revolution and not just in scoring cheap debating points then you will read this book: www.marxist.com/russiabook If you are unable to answer the arguments in it then you will adjust your own views accordingly, that is unless you are the worst kind of "revolutionary" poser.

[redstar2000]

And the question you overlook is: Could the February revolution have solved anything? Wouldn't it have ended up with imperialism getting it's way?

Who knows? "What if" is the historian's not-so-secret vice.

Had there been no Bolsheviks, would the soviets and factory committees continued to move in an ever more radical direction? I think there's a good chance they would have...and you probably think that wouldn't have happened.

But there's no way to tell "for sure".


You say you want a socialist revolution but you are not prepared to do what it takes.

Kiss your ass, presumably, or that of some other "great leader" wannabe.

You are correct. I am not prepared to do that.


What we are discussing here is whether or not one should do what it takes...

No, actually what is under discussion is what does it take to achieve a classless society.

My position is that a Leninist despotism is not a step in the right direction.


You consider yourself a socialist, right? Not sure, but anyway if you call yourself a socialist, and call the East Bloc and China socialist, that implies you supported those countries and want that system of government.

No, actually I consider myself a communist (kind of old-fashioned of me, I know :P).

But as such, I have little interest in "revolutions" that merely substitute a "better" form of class society for the one we have now...especially since experience has shown that these "better" class societies (socialism) more or less quickly devolve back into capitalism.

If that's the best that Leninism can do, who needs it?


Suffice to say that in a war, we support any country with a planned economy against any country with a capitalist economy.

At the present time, I believe Cuba is the 77th largest "planned economy" in the world today; the other 76 are huge multi-national corporations, of course.

Your "formula" is just nonsensical.


So does everything in this world, but the point is that there is much, much, more that they do NOT have in common. This is an imperfect analogy, a tried and trusted method of all kinds of enemies of truth.

An "enemy of truth", am I? What a "Stalinist" accusation! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. :lol:


Did I ever say that Lenin and Trotsky were some kind of bubbly-sparkly, happy-land democrats?

How about just admitting the truth...that Lenin and Trotsky were despots, just like Stalin and Mao.

Some despotisms are worse than others...and arguments can be made about which was which.

But it would be enormously refreshing if Leninists of all varieties would cease their phrase-mongering about "proletarian democracy"...none of them have any intentions whatsoever of establishing anything more "democratic" than what we have now.

The working class has no power under capitalism and will have no power under socialism.

That's history!


The difference between Leninism and Stalinism was that whereas the Leninist terror was directed in defence of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and all of its hangers-on, the Stalinist terror (although disguised precisely as the Leninist terror) was directed against the workers in defence of the privileged bureaucracy.

That's a muddle. Lenin's terror was directed against working class anarchists as early, if I'm not mistaken, as 1918. It was directed against the working class in Petrograd in 1921...prior to Kronstadt.

As to Stalin's terror, it seemed mostly to be directed against (1) dissident members of the Bolshevik party itself; (2) ex-Czarist military officers; and (3) the Kulaks. My impression, and I could be wrong, is that most working class people actually benefited from Stalin's despotism in significant ways. Of course they had no power...but there were many improvements in educational opportunities, medical care, etc. I surmise that very few workers were ever targeted by Stalin's secret police.


That in the history of revolutionary movements the dictatorship of individuals was very often the expression, the vehicle, the channel of the dictatorship of the revolutionary classes has been shown by the irrefutable experience of history. Undoubtedly, the dictatorship of individuals was compatible with bourgeois democracy.

Not exactly; Lenin is playing fast-and-loose with a complex historical process here and hoping no one will notice.

It was quite common for the rising bourgeoisie to choose despotism as a method of class rule...Napoleon III being the classic example. Nevertheless, no one considered that to be "compatible" with bourgeois democracy. The reason that bourgeois democracy exists is that the bourgeoisie learned from experience that despots are unreliable...once in power, they have a marked tendency to start stupid wars and then, even worse, lose them. This causes "unrest" among the proletariat with potentially catastrophic consequences.

Thus, bourgeois democracy...a clever device for giving the appearance of popular sovereignty while keeping real power in the hands of the bourgeoisie (as well as replacing high-level fuckups with a minimum of fuss).

Even the appearance of despotism is indeed incompatible with bourgeois democracy...it "gives away" a secret that must be kept if order is to be maintained.


...[Our critics] demand of us a higher democracy than bourgeois democracy and say: personal dictatorship is absolutely incompatible with your, Bolshevik (i.e., not bourgeois, but socialist), Soviet democracy.

Well, yeah. Only in the magic kingdom of "dialectics" can you claim that personal dictatorship is a "higher form of democracy"...and even then, only in words.

Hegel "proved dialectically" that the Prussian despotism was the "highest form of democracy".

Being no slouch at "dialectics", Lenin at least equaled Hegel's performance.


If we are not anarchists, we must admit that the state, that is, coercion, is necessary for the transition from capitalism to socialism.

More word-play! Revolutionary anarchists are not, as it happens, against "coercion" directed against the old ruling class.

They don't think it's a real good idea to set up a new state to coerce everybody.

They are right about that.


Our aim is to draw the whole of the poor into the practical work of administration...Our aim is to ensure that every toiler, having finished his eight hours’ "task" in productive labour, shall perform state duties without pay...

Wow, that's really great! :lol:

Spend eight hours at hard work and then, oh goody, be an errand-boy for some lard-ass behind a desk...without pay.

Golly, I can hardly wait! :lol: :lol: :lol:


As is obvious repression was regarded as temporary (the dictatorship of the proletariat), as is the Marxist tradition.

But it wasn't "temporary", was it?

And, by the way, I'm immune to "the aura effect". Dragging Marx's name into the discussion will no longer serve to "cover" the profoundly anti-communist nature of Leninist socialism.


Being heavily influenced by anarchism you cannot see the need for repression and dictatorship after the revolution; or, you see it, but when it poses itself before you you do not recognize it.

Bad guess. I've read very little of anarchist theory (which has always struck me as too idealist) and have always been biased towards Marx's historical materialist approach.

This means that I tend to concentrate on what actually happened and not the "dialectical" excuses offered in "justification" for the reprehensible.

I think Marx meant what the words literally say when he used the expression "dictatorship of the proletariat"...the rule of the whole class.

There is no "getting around that" with a load of obscurantist crap about some self-appointed elite ruling "in the name of" or "in the interests of" the proletariat.

Marx and Engels both called the Paris Commune the world's first "dictatorship of the proletariat"...and there was no vanguard party at all.


Granted the Stalinist bureaucrats of all kinds used exactly the same arguments in defence of their totalitarian rule.

Yes, they do, don't they? Why should we believe you instead of them?


But one must be completely blind not to see the vast difference between the working-class rule of Lenin and that of Stalin, Mao or some other bureaucratic dictator.

Some people tell me that I must be "completely blind" not to see the differences between Kerry and Bush.

I don't pay a lot of attention to them either.


Lenin and Trotsky were completely ruthless defenders of the power of the working class...

Your claim does not acquire additional credibility simply because you repeat it.

The quotes from Lenin show clearly where he really stood and there are similar quotes from Trotsky extant.


I'm sorry but I can't make heads or tails of what this is supposed to mean. Please elaborate.

It means that at the 10th Party Congress (1921) when the civil war was over, the Workers' Opposition offered a proposal to devolve some power back to the working class (through the trade unions). Mr. Lenin, Mr. Trotsky, and Mr. Stalin all agreed that this was an outrageous idea. Not only did they unite to defeat it but they changed the party rules to keep proposals like that from ever happening again! Not even the party membership was to have any decision-making power; policy differences were to be fought out only among the leadership.

Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin were declared enemies of real working class power.


The claim that the October Revolution was only a coup is often justified by pointing to the relatively small numbers actually involved in the insurrection itself. This apparently profound argument does not resist the slightest scrutiny...The government collapsed like a house of cards, because nobody was prepared to defend it.

What a pathetic response! It begins by asserting that it was "not a coup" and ends up admitting that it was a coup...while avoiding the use of the word.


The Bolsheviks did not respect the bourgeois parliament. Obviously you do.

Would you like to actually quote from any of my nearly 6,000 posts on this board where I have ever suggested any "respect" for bourgeois parliaments?

Good hunting! :lol:


If the future of the world revolution is left to characters like yourself then we are in dire straits indeed.

Better to be "in dire straits" than to wallow in the swamp of Leninist despotism.


How could the Red Army defeat the imperialists, if it did not have the decisive backing not just of the workers but also the peasants?

The peasantry saw the "Whites" as the greater enemy. The "Whites" made it clear from the beginning that they intended to restore the landed aristocracy and the serf-like conditions of the peasantry...something that even the most ignorant peasant realized had to be defeated, even if it meant supporting the Bolsheviks.


You will answer this question or you will stand exposed as, at best, a misled character; at worst, a conscious falsifier and a counter-revolutionary slanderer.

Well, I answered it. What do I "stand exposed as" now?


As a corollary of the slanders against October, we have the attempt to paint the February Revolution in glowing colours. The "democratic" regime of Kerensky, it is alleged, would have led Russia into a glorious future of prosperity, if only the Bolsheviks had not spoilt it all.

I have no idea who says things like that. I never have.

The February Revolution was a genuine mass uprising. It was not "led" or "organized" or "inspired" by any vanguard party. Millions of workers and tens of millions of peasants took an active part in the events.

It did succeed in the permanent overthrow of the Czar and the landed aristocracy. Following the events in Petrograd and other cities, the peasantry enthusiastically expropriated the land all by themselves. Not since 1789-93 had there been such a great bourgeois revolution.

And it could have gone even further; by the summer of 1917, there was wide-spread support for the idea of a proletarian revolution then and there...even among many rank-and-file Bolsheviks.

Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership managed (barely) to contain the rebelliousness of the proletariat. On their first opportunity to "lead the proletariat to victory", the Bolsheviks actually (and shamefully) capitulated to bourgeois "legality".

When the workers were already thinking "all power to the soviets", Lenin was "cooling them off" with his slogan: "down with the 10 capitalist ministers".


Had the Bolsheviks not taken power, the future that faced Russia was not one of prosperous capitalist democracy, but fascist barbarism under the jackboot of Kornilov or one of the other White generals.

Silly statement. Had the Bolsheviks "not taken power", there would either have been no civil war or it would have been a minor affair...why should the imperialist powers bother to intervene against a new bourgeois republic?

Without the support of the imperialists, the "Whites" could not have lasted even a year in the field...we know that because when that support was withdrawn, the "White" armies melted away.


...that is unless you are the worst kind of "revolutionary" poser.

I am indeed "the worst kind"...the kind that flatly rejects "argumentation" as a "substitute" for history itself.

If you ever develop Marxist aspirations, the first thing you'll have to learn is to begin with what actually happened.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[DaCuBaN]

As you can see children, Redstar2000 doesn't tolerate misguided idiots. :lol:

[Anti-Prophet]

Regardless of what happened in pre-industrial semi-feudal nations with an uneducated population (where all socialist revolutions took place), nothing proves that its impossible for the proletariat to be the ruling class (or only class) in a socialist state. The only thing we can learn from the 20th century socialist revolutions is how dangerous it is to skip an important part of social evolution (like trying to skip socialism and going from capitalism to communism). The USSR and China is a good example of how all attempts at socialism will look like in a feudal state, not a good example of how all attempts at socialism will look like.


As you can see children, Redstar2000 doesn't tolerate misguided idiots.

Right... because everyone in this forum is a "misguided idiot" if they don't agree with Redstar and his Redstarist followers. :rolleyes:

[Louis Pio]

Kiss your ass, presumably, or that of some other "great leader" wannabe.

You are correct. I am not prepared to do that.




Bla bla. Always nice to see how you hide behind arrogance I don't know why others fall for it. It's a nice smokescreen for you to use though, so you can still parade around as the great che-lives theoreticist.

Ok you are not prepared. You won't take action against counterrevolution. Still you claim this:
No, actually I consider myself a communist (kind of old-fashioned of me, I know ).

Hmm you must have a split personality.



Had there been no Bolsheviks, would the soviets and factory committees continued to move in an ever more radical direction? I think there's a good chance they would have...and you probably think that wouldn't have happened.


Or maybe they would have been impotent and paved the way for capitalist restoration. Alot of the soviets succes depended on the right slogans and actions.


My position is that a Leninist despotism is not a step in the right direction.


But your view on "leninist despotism" is quite funny. You fail to see the need for repression against any forms of threats. That will surely never accomplishe anything. You seem to be a case of the lamb placing itself in the mouth of the wolf.


But as such, I have little interest in "revolutions" that merely substitute a "better" form of class society for the one we have now...especially since experience has shown that these "better" class societies (socialism) more or less quickly devolve back into capitalism.


Quite a superficial analysis as one could expect from you.


At the present time, I believe Cuba is the 77th largest "planned economy" in the world today; the other 76 are huge multi-national corporations, of course.


Of course there's differences between a planned economy and the form that exists in companies. To claim otherwise is just lame and probably yet another one of your attempts to score cheap debating points. Capitalism don't fear the companies, they are the companies. Anyway it's true that the centralisation of the economy today makes it easier to build a planned economy.


But it would be enormously refreshing if Leninists of all varieties would cease their phrase-mongering about "proletarian democracy"...none of them have any intentions whatsoever of establishing anything more "democratic" than what we have now.


Ahh the all seeing Redstar...


That's a muddle. Lenin's terror was directed against working class anarchists as early, if I'm not mistaken, as 1918. It was directed against the working class in Petrograd in 1921...prior to Kronstadt.


And considering what had been going on previous, and later with Makhno also etc it is not hard to understand.

Anyway your post is to long for me to bother with after reading the first part of the smokescreen.

[redstar2000]

Regardless of what happened in pre-industrial semi-feudal nations with an uneducated population (where all socialist revolutions took place), nothing proves that it's impossible for the proletariat to be the ruling class (or only class) in a socialist state.

I quite agree. If you strip away all the pseudo-Marxist rhetoric, what happened in Russia and China were new forms of bourgeois revolutions...because the transition to capitalism was "on history's agenda" for those countries.

I am certainly willing to grant the possibility of a "socialist state" that "would" be under the control of the working class itself...the Paris Commune was such a "state".

But I'm reasonably certain that those who remain under the spell of the Leninist mystique will never be able to do it...to them, the one essential characteristic of "socialism" is that their party must be in command.

All Leninists of every variety agree on that; the "vanguard party" must "run the show", period.

Any state apparatus that they would establish anywhere would be a despotism...whether harsh or benevolent is another matter. After all, some folks would actually enjoy a benevolent despotism...especially if they were among the despots.

The argument against establishing a new state apparatus after the revolution is quite straightforward. Establishing a "political center of gravity" attracts precisely the kind of people that you don't want to have "in charge" of anything...people who enjoy giving orders. Such people are simply not to be trusted...they will transform themselves into a new (capitalist) ruling class faster than you can say "revisionist".


The only thing we can learn from the 20th century socialist revolutions is how dangerous it is to skip an important part of social evolution (like trying to skip socialism and going from capitalism to communism).

I have no idea of what you are referring to here. There was a brief period of what was called "war communism" in the USSR during the civil war period...but at best it was what Marx called "barracks communism" or "Prussian communism". The Bolshevik party and its state apparatus simply requisitioned (at gunpoint) whatever resources were available and, after a very generous cut for themselves, distributed whatever was left to the populace. After the civil war was over, Lenin began the open restoration of capitalism with the NEP and positively begged the foreign capitalists to return (they declined).

In China, Mao attempted to establish "super communes" in agriculture in which compensation to the peasantry would be extremely egalitarian...but the peasants were recalcitrant and the consequence was famine.

In neither of those brief experiments was there any intention of granting actual decision-making power to the people themselves, whether workers or peasants.

Assuming the best of intentions, the Leninist "stage-skipping" was not that between capitalism and communism but rather between semi-feudalism and socialism.

I might add that the dispute between Marxists and Leninists is not with regard to a period of transition between capitalism and communism; it is whether or not there should be an institutionalized state apparatus and consequent class society between those two stages of human history.

My position is that the "socialist state", after a while, becomes a new capitalist state...and this appears to be inevitable.

Therefore, we should not do that...if what we want is communism.


You won't take action against counter-revolution.

Once again, you make yet another astonishing assertion...contradicting hundreds of posts that I've made on this subject.

So I will make it clear once again: when it comes to the class enemy, I am in favor of whatever measures are needed to suppress it and ultimately abolish it.

What I am not in favor of is the suppression of the working class...not even "for its own good".


Or maybe [the soviets] would have been impotent and paved the way for capitalist restoration.

Maybe. As things turned out, capitalist restoration happened anyway.


But your view on "Leninist despotism" is quite funny. You fail to see the need for repression against any forms of threat. That will surely never accomplish anything. You seem to be a case of the lamb placing itself in the mouth of the wolf.

If the working class of any country accepts the imposition of a Leninist despotism in order to "save the revolution", the consequence is that the revolution is lost...no matter who is the nominal "winner".

I remind you that Lenin and the Bolsheviks won the civil war...and promptly began restoring capitalism.


Quite a superficial analysis as one could expect from you.

Well, at least I didn't let you down. :D


Ahh the all seeing Redstar...

Yep, that's me. :D


Anyway your post is too long for me to bother with after reading the first part of the smokescreen.

I understand...you never anticipated running up against someone who sees through all the Trotskyist crapola, did you?

It must have been a very disturbing experience for you. ;)

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[T_SP]

The working class has no power under capitalism and will have no power under socialism.

That's history!


That's so true!!!!! So what your saying is that the Vanguard or Revolutionary parties of today have learnt nothing from the failures of the past, HISTORY as you quite rightly say!
I know I wouldn't want to see the same happen again and isn't that what history is all about, the past, we must learn from it and move on.
I myself am part of a revolutionary party and if my party stops representing the working class I know I will not be a part of it anymore. For one our party is almost completely made up of working class people.

So here's the deal RS, how do you propose to bring about Communism straight from Capitalism? Go from Rule to nothing just like that! No counter revoultions, nothing? I can't see it! Help me out here just give me an overview. As yet I have not met an opposer of 'The Vanguard' who can come up with a feasible alternative, that is if they do come up with one.

[DaCuBaN]

Right... because everyone in this forum is a "misguided idiot" if they don't agree with Redstar and his Redstarist followers

Do you need some assistance in seperating those cheeks?
The phrase you will be hunting for here my little chickadee, is 'tongue in cheek'. :lol:

To be perfectly honest, if you'd spent even an iota perusing this forum, you'd have found that about the only thing RS and I agree on is that change is necessary. :rolleyes:

[Saint-Just]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17 2004, 07:50 AM
I believe that the heads of the communist party in the USSR were the wealthy vangaurds, clearly they were in a class that was superior to that of the rest of the general population.
Whether one is a revolutionary or not is decided by their ideas. I am middle-class, yet I have still become a communst, similarl to most people on this forum.


In China, Mao attempted to establish "super communes" in agriculture in which compensation to the peasantry would be extremely egalitarian...but the peasants were recalcitrant and the consequence was famine. ~redstar2000

What evidence is there that the peasants were recalcitrant? Did they prefer life under feudal warlords. If you are referring to the GLF, in what way were food shortages during the Great Leap Forward due to peasants rejecting socialist society? I thought it was the result of economic miscalculations.


to them, the one essential characteristic of "socialism" is that their party must be in command.

Where as, for you, the one essential characteristic of socialism is that there is no authority.

[Anti-Prophet]

The argument against establishing a new state apparatus after the revolution is quite straightforward. Establishing a "political center of gravity" attracts precisely the kind of people that you don't want to have "in charge" of anything...people who enjoy giving orders. Such people are simply not to be trusted...they will transform themselves into a new (capitalist) ruling class faster than you can say "revisionist".

The way i see it, having people who give orders is not a problem if its organized in a democratic way, meaning the people who receive the orders have a choice of who gives the orders and are not obligated to obey the orders. That goes for the vanguard party too. I don't think having a vanguard party is a bad thing as long as the working class can chose what party forms the vanguard and have the ability to disobey the vanguards orders. If the working class sees that their vanguard is becoming more and more out of touch with them, they should be able to find another vanguard that can relate to the working class or they can form a new vanguard party. Whether or not this is considered Leninism i don't know, nor do i care.


Assuming the best of intentions, the Leninist "stage-skipping" was not that between capitalism and communism but rather between semi-feudalism and socialism.

I agree. thats what i meant. The reason i added "like trying to skip socialism and going from capitalism to communism" is because we saw how dangerous it is to skip capitalism (in the USSR and China) and skipping socialism (like the anarchists and anarcho-communist wish to do... from what i understand) could be just as dangerous.


I might add that the dispute between Marxists and Leninists is not with regard to a period of transition between capitalism and communism; it is whether or not there should be an institutionalized state apparatus and consequent class society between those two stages of human history.

Marxists and Leninists don't dispute the need for a state during the transitional period (on page 58-59 of the manifesto Marx and Engles call for a centralization of the means of production in the hands of the state) but maybe they do dispute the need for a institutionalized state. I don't know what you mean by "institutionalized state" as opposed to just "state".

[redstar2000]

I myself am part of a revolutionary party and if my party stops representing the working class I know I will not be a part of it anymore. For one our party is almost completely made up of working class people.

You may be interested in the fact that historically speaking Leninist vanguards have been revolving doors. That is, the turn-over in membership has been simply enormous.

I saw an estimate once that suggested that the American Communist Party between 1936-1956 had more than one million people enter and leave!

There are probably many reasons for this, of course. Two that come immediately to mind are: (1) The party member is treated like an unpaid employee...expected to work at a furious pace indefinitely -- and people get worn out and leave; (2) The party member quickly learns that serious political decisions are the prerogative of the leadership -- the atmosphere is stifling and people get fed up and leave.

A third reason is more directly political; Leninist parties in the "west" have a long tradition of opportunism and cynical maneuver. When people find this out, they become disgusted and leave -- often going over to the class enemy. If you're expected to behave like a "rat", you may as well get paid for it.


So here's the deal, RS, how do you propose to bring about Communism straight from Capitalism?

Well, you understand that this is not yet a practical question. We are all a long way from proletarian revolution and the transition to communism.

But, drawing on the experience of past revolutions suggests a number of options.

1. That "state power" should be exercised by trade unions and larger federations of trade unions -- this is the syndicalist approach.

2. That authority should only exist in order to perform a useful function; that there is no "general decision-making authority for everybody" at all -- what Marx called "the administration of things".

3. That some form of collective authority will be put in place (workers' councils, workplace committees, etc.) and that these bodies or federations of these bodies will be the loci of decision-making.

And, who knows, by 2050 or 2100 entirely new forms might emerge...the proletariat has been quite innovative in the past.

Of course, none of this may seem "feasible" to you...but you should ask yourself how "feasible" the "Leninist blueprint" still is?

The modern proletariat is far removed from the Russian factory worker of 1917 (not to mention the Chinese peasant of 1949). Can you really expect ideas that appealed to those folks to have much or even any appeal now?

It's really something to think about.


What evidence is there that the peasants were recalcitrant? Did they prefer life under feudal warlords. If you are referring to the GLF, in what way were food shortages during the Great Leap Forward due to peasants rejecting socialist society? I thought it was the result of economic miscalculations.

Yes, the "economic miscalculation" was assuming that peasants could be turned into conscious communists.

The peasantry did not want to return to the rule of feudal warlords; what they wanted was what peasants almost always want -- private property in land and a free market to sell their surplus. When those things are denied them, they respond by working less...a lot less!

The result is famine.


Whereas, for you, the one essential characteristic of socialism is that there is no authority.

Certainly not yours! :lol:


The way I see it, having people who give orders is not a problem if it's organized in a democratic way, meaning the people who receive the orders have a choice of who gives the orders and are not obligated to obey the orders.

Well, I think you misunderstand the definition of an "order" -- it's a command backed by the threat or use of violence.

In class societies (like the USSR, China, etc.), you were ordered to do or refrain from doing certain things. Disobedience posed a clear-cut threat to your health if not your life.

It's easy enough to chuckle over the despot-wannabe and his "orders"...but when he's got a state apparatus and a whole bunch of uniformed thugs to back up his commands, then it ain't funny no more.


I don't know what you mean by "institutionalized state" as opposed to just "state".

The proletarian "state" as Marx said on many occasions, was a state that was passing out of existence even as it was established...no longer a "true state" in the "full sense of the word". Its only remaining purpose was to suppress the old bourgeoisie and clear away all the rubbish of the old order.

The Leninist "take" on this was entirely different: that the "socialist state" would exist "for a long time", would acquire all the characteristics of a modern centralized state, etc.

In other words, the Leninist state is institutionalized in the same exact sense as a bourgeois republic is institutionalized.

And like all the class-based states of history, it thinks itself immortal.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[Saint-Just]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24 2004, 04:02 AM
There are probably many reasons for this, of course. Two that come immediately to mind are: (1) The party member is treated like an unpaid employee...expected to work at a furious pace indefinitely -- and people get worn out and leave; (2) The party member quickly learns that serious political decisions are the prerogative of the leadership -- the atmosphere is stifling and people get fed up and leave.
Those are reasons you would leave. I think I would accept that if I join a party I might want to do something for our cause. And, I think I would also accept that the leaders might be making a lot of decisions.

[Daymare17]

I'm not going to apologise for the length of this reply. You brought it on yourself.


Who knows? "What if" is the historian's not-so-secret vice.

Had there been no Bolsheviks, would the soviets and factory committees continued to move in an ever more radical direction? I think there's a good chance they would have...and you probably think that wouldn't have happened.

But there's no way to tell "for sure".

And this comes from a self-proclaimed student of "Historical Materialism". What exactly this term might signify in the mind of this individual, is anyone's guess. Marxists can't predict historical processes with complete accuracy. But based on dialectic analysis of empiric historic data we are able to define certain historical laws, and ascertain the general tendencies at work in society. These laws are in their totality called "Historical Materialism". For instance, in 1916 Lenin and Bukharin inferred WWII and Fascism from monopoly capitalism. In 1936 Trotsky predicted that the Soviet bureaucrats, if left alone by imperialism and the working class, would turn themselves into capitalists to get the right of inheritance.

Let us collect some data from similar situations in history and try to extrapolate what might have happened had there been no Bolsheviks in 1917.

Germany 1918-19 - Workers' councils spring up all over Germany, but are hijacked by the Social Democrats. The SPD, wanting to preserve capitalism, betrays the workers, orders the Soviets to be shut down and a parliament put in their place. Leading Communists and worker militants are murdered by the "democratic" capitalist regime. The result is the Weimar Republic which pleases no section of the population and 15 years later comes to an inglorious end. With a correct and far-sighted leadership the workers could have taken power several times from 1918 to 1923, particularly in 1923 when conditions were exceptionally favourable for the KPD to make an insurrection. The productive forces of Germany could have been linked up with Soviet Russia, a decent living standard guaranteed to Soviet workers and the bureaucratic reaction in the USSR could have been halted in its tracks.

Spain 1930s - The Spanish workers, aroused to battle with the prospect of abolishing capitalism, are triply, quadruply, quintuply betrayed. Liberals, socialists, Stalinists, anarchists and POUM all unite in a "Popular Front" capitalist government committed to preserving bourgeois democracy. The heroic Spanish workers could have made ten revolutions but were betrayed by their own organisations. No amount of "spontaneity" could have saved them, only a genuine Marxist party with a correct programme and tactics.

France 1968 - French workers call the largest revolutionary general strike in history. De Gaulle pees his pants. The working class could easily have taken the power peacefully but didn't. Why? Because it was held back by its own organisations. Because there existed no revolutionary party capable of providing a class lead. Thanks to the strength of the proletariat, the French ruling class was unable to impose dictatorship, although they certainly would if they could.

Chile 1973 - Allende enters government with the backing of the revolutionary masses. The Communist Party, as usual, is desperate to make an alliance with the non-existent "progressive bourgeoisie". The Socialist Party, because of its inexperience, is tricked into the "People's Front" bourgeois government. Allende thinks socialism can be introduced with the help of the capitalist army. He takes no serious measures against it. What should the masses do? No matter how much you wish, the masses can't be victorious without a far-sighted leadership.

Iran 1979 - The workers overthrow the Shah, and the revolutionary movement is then hijacked by the mullahs. According to your scheme this could not possibly happen, seeing as the movement of the working class independent of any party or programme is precisely what is needed to bring it to power. Or perhaps the masses did not act decisively enough? But then you have just recognised the need for a party and a programme.

These examples could be multiplied at will. In fact the decisive part of the 20th century revolutions failed because of the lack of the subjective factor. Reality proves again and again the Leninist theorem: To the organised and centralised power of capital must be counterposed the organised and centralised power of labour. The entire history of the past 90 years is the history of a terrible and unneccessary slaughterfest that could not fail to scratch into the forehead of every revolutionary, with a sharp knife to boot, the obvious truth that the Revolution cannot succeed without a revolutionary Party consisting of steeled, determined and educated cadres, which must be prepared in advance and which cannot be improvised on the spot. However as is known the thickness of the skulls of some some wannabe "Communists" defies all logic.


No, actually I consider myself a communist (kind of old-fashioned of me, I know ).

But as such, I have little interest in "revolutions" that merely substitute a "better" form of class society for the one we have now...especially since experience has shown that these "better" class societies (socialism) more or less quickly devolve back into capitalism.

If that's the best that Leninism can do, who needs it?

The degeneration of the Soviet state is an extremely complicated question. Suffice to say that socialism can never be built in a backward country; no Marxist ever considered this until Stalin's theory was put forward in 1924. Stalin's theory in turn represented the pressures of the bureacracy which was raising itself above the masses precisely because of the backwardness of the country. If there had been a revolution in an advanced country everything would have been different. Trotsky made an analysis of Stalinism which is a treasure house of ideas. In 1936 he predicted that the bureaucrats would turn themselves into capitalists. Ted Grant continued the Trotskyist tradition after WWII and summed up the history of the USSR in his Russia Book. www.marxist.com/russiabook


At the present time, I believe Cuba is the 77th largest "planned economy" in the world today; the other 76 are huge multi-national corporations, of course.

Your "formula" is just nonsensical.

To make a planned economy, you round up all the multinationals and give them to the state, which is democratically controlled by the working class. When this process is repeated in all the advanced countries, you have socialism. Until it is, you have capitalism. When the process happens in a backward country, there is a chance for the state power slipping out of the hands of the working class, resulting in what we call Stalinism. The demand for state ownership is raised in the Manifesto of 1848. Quite astonishing and, in fact, criminal that a so-called "Communist" is totally ignorant on this matter - what do you think will be the new property form? Self-sufficient communes? Fair-trade capitalism?


That's a muddle. Lenin's terror was directed against working class anarchists as early, if I'm not mistaken, as 1918.

"One of the foulest slanders which is now aimed at Lenin and Trotsky is that Stalin's Purges were only the continuation of the Red Terror waged by the Bolsheviks after the Revolution. Apart from the fact that it is impossible to compare the monstrous methods used by Stalin with those employed by the embattled workers' government to defend itself against powerful and ruthless enemies, this argument overlooks the most important question: against whom was the terror waged and for what purpose? In the same hypocritical way, the Pharisees throw up their hands in horror at the Terror of the French Revolution. But unfortunately all history shows that a ruling class or caste does not normally give up its power and privileges without a fight.

From a revolutionary point of view, it is impossible to consider the question of violence in the abstract. Of course, every sane person abhors violence and will attempt to avoid it. But when one is attacked and in danger of being murdered, most people will fight to defend themselves. The revolutionary Terror, both in France and Russia, was a response to the violence of the reaction. Without the most energetic measures of self-defence the revolution in both cases would have been smothered in its own blood. How can one seriously condemn such measures of self defence of the revolution against those who wish to destroy it? The case is completely different with the violence of the counter-revolution. After Thermidor, terrible violence was directed against the Jacobins, but very little is said about this. The Pharisees pass over it in silence, or read us hypocritical morality lessons about the "Revolution devouring its own children" and so on. But the violence of the French Revolution in the period of its ascent was directed against the counter-revolution - aristocrats, priests, speculators and the like. The Thermidorian and Bonapartist terror was directed against the revolutionaries. There is a qualitative difference between the two. Not to see this is to understand nothing.

In 1922 the leaders of the SRs were put on trial charged with acts of terrorism against the leaders of the Soviet state. But there was absolutely nothing in common between this and Stalin's frame-ups. The first difference is that the SRs were guilty of the crimes they were charged with. They not only admitted them, but proudly proclaimed their actions. That is not surprising. Unlike the Russian Marxists who were always implacably opposed to individual terror, the SRs (both the Right and Left) were the inheritors of the traditions of the Narodnaya Volya party which openly espoused the method of terrorism. There was not the slightest doubt that they were responsible for the assassination of Bolshevik leaders like Uritsky and Volodarsky and the attempted assassination of Lenin. They did not have to be forced to confess, since they regarded their actions as correct and legitimate. In Tsarist times, they frequently handed themselves over to the authorities after perpetrating an assassination. There was yet another fundamental difference. Not only were the SR leaders allowed a legal defence, but they were able to employ lawyers from abroad, specifically the Belgian Social Democratic leader Emile Vandervelde, who was also a prominent lawyer. The crimes were punishable by death, but the sentences were suspended. None of the accused was executed (although some were later to be shot by Stalin). They were not required to renounce their views, let alone slander themselves in court."


It was directed against the working class in Petrograd in 1921... prior to Kronstadt.

I knew you would drag Kronstadt into this.

"A most serious situation arose when the naval garrison at Kronstadt mutinied. Many falsifications have been written about this event, which has been virtually turned into a myth. The purpose, as ever, is to discredit Lenin and Trotsky and show that Bolshevism and Stalinism are the same. Interestingly enough, the hue and cry over Kronstadt unites the bourgeois and Social Democratic opponents of October with anarchists and ultra-lefts. But these allegations bear no relation to the truth.

The first lie is to identify the Kronstadt mutineers of 1921 with the heroic Red sailors of 1917. They had nothing in common. The Kronstadt sailors of 1917 were workers and Bolsheviks. They played a vital role in the October Revolution, together with the workers of nearby Petrograd. But almost the entire Kronstadt garrison volunteered to fight in the ranks of the Red Army during the civil war. They were dispersed to different fronts, from whence most of them never returned. The Kronstadt garrison of 1921 was composed mainly of raw peasant levies from the Black Sea Fleet. A cursory glance at the surnames of the mutineers immediately shows that they were almost all Ukrainians.

Another lie concerns the role of Trotsky in the Kronstadt episode. Actually, he played no direct role, although as Commissar for War and a member of the Soviet government, he fully accepted political responsibility for this and other actions of the government. The seizure of the Kronstadt fortress by the mutineers placed the Soviet state in extreme danger. They had only just emerged from a bloody civil war. It is true that the negotiations with the garrison were badly handled by the Bolshevik negotiating delegation led by Kalinin, who inflamed an already serious situation. But once the mutineers had seized the most important naval base in Russia, there was no room for compromise.

The main fear was that Britain and France would use their navies to occupy Kronstadt, using the mutiny as a pretext. This would have placed Petrograd at their mercy, since whoever controlled Kronstadt controlled Petrograd. The only possible outcome was capitalist counter-revolution. That there were actual counter-revolutionary elements among the sailors was shown by the slogan "Soviets without Bolsheviks". The Bolsheviks were left with only one option. The fortress had to be retaken by force. These events occurred during the 10th Party Congress which interrupted its sessions to allow the delegates to participate in the attack. It is interesting to note that members of the Workers' Opposition, a semi-anarcho-syndicalist tendency present at the Congress, also joined the attacking forces. This nails yet another lie, which attempts to establish a clumsy amalgam between Kronstadt - anarchism - Workers' Opposition - three things that have absolutely nothing in common.

Victor Serge, who had many sympathies with anarchism, was implacably opposed to the Kronstadt mutineers, as the following passage shows:

"The popular counter-revolution translated the demand for freely-elected soviets into one for 'soviets without Communists.' If the Bolshevik dictatorship fell, it was only a short step to chaos, and through chaos to a peasant rising, the massacre of the Communists, the return of the émigrés, and in the end, through the sheer force of events, another dictatorship, this time anti-proletarian. Dispatches from Stockholm and Tallinn testified that the émigrés had these very perspectives in mind: dispatches which, incidentally, strengthened the Bolshevik leaders' intention of subduing Kronstadt speedily and at whatever cost. We were not reasoning in the abstract. We knew that in European Russia alone there were at least 50 centres of peasant insurrection. To the south of Moscow, in the region of Tambov, Antonov, the Right Social Revolutionary school teacher, who proclaimed the abolition of the Soviet system and the re-establishment of the Constituent Assembly, had under his command a superbly organised peasant army, numbering several tens of thousands. He had conducted negotiations with the Whites. (Tukhachevsky suppressed this Vendée around the middle of 1921.)" (Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901-1941, pp. 128-9.)"


As to Stalin's terror, it seemed mostly to be directed against (1) dissident members of the Bolshevik party itself; (2) ex-Czarist military officers; and (3) the Kulaks. My impression, and I could be wrong, is that most working class people actually benefited from Stalin's despotism in significant ways. Of course they had no power...but there were many improvements in educational opportunities, medical care, etc. I surmise that very few workers were ever targeted by Stalin's secret police.

No more stupid idea could be put forward than that the working class BENEFITED from Stalin's despotism. In order to slander Leninism, you actually whitewash Stalinism! Totalitarian despotism was allegedly helpful to Russia. This is based on some idiotic conception of "labour discipline". Stalin "taught the Russians the hard way". As if killing one tenth of the population and bludgeoning all individual initiative has ever helped a country's economy. Stalin's rule was a gigantic fetter on the productive forces which would have been increased much faster with a regime of workers' democracy. In fact, under Brezhnev Soviet economists calculated that half of GNP was wasted. All the advances of the planned economy without exception came in spite of the bureaucracy, not because of it. And in the end the bureaucracy strangled the planned economy.


Not exactly; Lenin is playing fast-and-loose with a complex historical process here and hoping no one will notice.

It was quite common for the rising bourgeoisie to choose despotism as a method of class rule...Napoleon III being the classic example. Nevertheless, no one considered that to be "compatible" with bourgeois democracy. The reason that bourgeois democracy exists is that the bourgeoisie learned from experience that despots are unreliable...once in power, they have a marked tendency to start stupid wars and then, even worse, lose them. This causes "unrest" among the proletariat with potentially catastrophic consequences.

Thus, bourgeois democracy...a clever device for giving the appearance of popular sovereignty while keeping real power in the hands of the bourgeoisie (as well as replacing high-level fuckups with a minimum of fuss).

Even the appearance of despotism is indeed incompatible with bourgeois democracy...it "gives away" a secret that must be kept if order is to be maintained.

The bourgeoisie did not have direct political power under Napoleon I or Cromwell, but that didn't prevent these rulers from carrying out the policies of the bourgeoisie quite efficiently now did it? And that is slightly beside the point - the USSR of Lenin's day had lots more workers' democracy than Napoleon's France had bourgeois democracy. They had to ban other parties only because the other parties were against Soviet Power per se and actually took to arms against the Soviet Power. There was full democracy in the Party until 1921, when the threat of peasant counter-revolution and the fear that the Party might break on class lines forced Lenin to ban factions as a temporary measure.


Well, yeah. Only in the magic kingdom of "dialectics" can you claim that personal dictatorship is a "higher form of democracy"...and even then, only in words.

Hegel "proved dialectically" that the Prussian despotism was the "highest form of democracy".

Being no slouch at "dialectics", Lenin at least equaled Hegel's performance.

The personal dictatorship of Lenin was a higher form of democracy because it defended social property, struck blows against the bourgeoisie and defended the workers' cause. An act of violence is permissible and even obligatory when directed against the class enemy in a civil war. Do you deny this?


More word-play! Revolutionary anarchists are not, as it happens, against "coercion" directed against the old ruling class.

They don't think it's a real good idea to set up a new state to coerce everybody.

They are right about that.

How can you have class coercion without a state?

Seriously, your whole argument is that the working class needs no party, needs no dictatorship to impose its dictatorship. I'm quite interested in learning how you would suppress the bourgeoisie, fight off the Whites and the imperialists, combat famine, organise a revolutionary International to spread the revolution, without a party!


Wow, that's really great!

Spend eight hours at hard work and then, oh goody, be an errand-boy for some lard-ass behind a desk...without pay.

Golly, I can hardly wait!

This is the way Lenin envisaged they would avoid having a separate ruling caste (lard-asses behind desks) crystallise itself. However there weren't enough literate workers so they had to recruit old bureaucrats and careerists of every description - lard-asses, resulting later in the degeneration of the Party and the USSR. How do you suggest the workers' state be run if not by the workers?


But it wasn't "temporary", was it?

You pigeonhole the Leninist terror with the Stalinist and thus you aid the bourgeois slanderers in the most contemptible way. If there had been rising living standards, if it had been possible to guarantee more or less "enough for all" then there would have been no need for terror from the bureaucracy. But as Marx put it in The German Ideology: “A development of the productive forces is the absolutely necessary practical premise [of Communism], because without it want is generalized, and with want the struggle for necessities begins again, and that means that all the old crap must revive.”


Bad guess. I've read very little of anarchist theory (which has always struck me as too idealist) and have always been biased towards Marx's historical materialist approach.

This means that I tend to concentrate on what actually happened and not the "dialectical" excuses offered in "justification" for the reprehensible.

I think Marx meant what the words literally say when he used the expression "dictatorship of the proletariat"...the rule of the whole class.

There is no "getting around that" with a load of obscurantist crap about some self-appointed elite ruling "in the name of" or "in the interests of" the proletariat.

Marx and Engels both called the Paris Commune the world's first "dictatorship of the proletariat"...and there was no vanguard party at all.

The Commune failed, did it not? Why? Essentially because it was too timid. It was weak on the counter-revolution and didn't even dare to nationalise the Bank of France. A bold leadership could have led the Commune to victory.


Yes, they do, don't they? Why should we believe you instead of them?

Mainly because I have the truth on my side and thus can back up my case.


Your claim does not acquire additional credibility simply because you repeat it.

The quotes from Lenin show clearly where he really stood and there are similar quotes from Trotsky extant.

I already answered this.


It means that at the 10th Party Congress (1921) when the civil war was over, the Workers' Opposition offered a proposal to devolve some power back to the working class (through the trade unions). Mr. Lenin, Mr. Trotsky, and Mr. Stalin all agreed that this was an outrageous idea. Not only did they unite to defeat it but they changed the party rules to keep proposals like that from ever happening again! Not even the party membership was to have any decision-making power; policy differences were to be fought out only among the leadership.

Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin were declared enemies of real working class power.

See the quotes by Victor Serge. It was an exceptional situation which required increased centralism to save the Soviet Government from counter-revolution. It was called for by the exceptionally bad world and national situation and was naturally set to be lifted as soon as some Western European country joined the Soviet family. Do you think they should rather have surrendered to counter-revolution? Because that was the alternative.


What a pathetic response! It begins by asserting that it was "not a coup" and ends up admitting that it was a coup...while avoiding the use of the word.

"Coup" in normal language (and in the usual language of detractors of Bolshevism) signifies the taking of power by a minority, against the democratic will of the people. This moving of the goal posts is quite instructive. It signifies a considerable retreat.

In fact Lenin wasn't unconditionally in favour of armed insurrection. Throughout 1917, he repeatedly issued the demand to the Menshevik and SR leaders that they break with the bourgeoisie and form a government based on the Soviets. That was the meaning of the slogan "All Power To The Soviets". At that time it was quite possible because the old state machine was smashed. It wouldn't have resulted in bloodshed. The Bolsheviks' struggle to power could have been reduced to a peaceful struggle for a majority in the soviets. However the reformists refused to break with capitalism and that's why the Bolsheviks were forced to resort to insurrection.


Would you like to actually quote from any of my nearly 6,000 posts on this board where I have ever suggested any "respect" for bourgeois parliaments?

Good hunting!

How about the one above this one? You denigrate the taking of power by a minority with the active backing of the majority, as a "coup". It implies that you are against this taking of power. If the working class is not allowed to take power through an insurrection by its Party against the bourgeois parliament, then you are precisely respecting the bourgeois parliament! Without organization, that is, without the trade unions and the Party, the working class is only raw material for exploitation. As Marx remarked, as the working class builds organizations of class struggle, it goes from being a class "in itself" to a class "for itself".


The peasantry saw the "Whites" as the greater enemy. The "Whites" made it clear from the beginning that they intended to restore the landed aristocracy and the serf-like conditions of the peasantry...something that even the most ignorant peasant realized had to be defeated, even if it meant supporting the Bolsheviks.

See? You just agreed that the Bolsheviks had majority support. Very well.


Well, I answered it. What do I "stand exposed as" now?

Someone who has just conceded my point.


I have no idea who says things like that. I never have.

The February Revolution was a genuine mass uprising. It was not "led" or "organized" or "inspired" by any vanguard party. Millions of workers and tens of millions of peasants took an active part in the events.

And what did it solve? Nothing. It merely posed the question of Soviet power.


It did succeed in the permanent overthrow of the Czar and the landed aristocracy.

Following the events in Petrograd and other cities, the peasantry enthusiastically expropriated the land all by themselves.

A filthy and stupid distortion. It is amazing how many bourgeois slanderers do not even have their facts right. First of all the landlords were not at all overthrown by the February Revolution. It was confined to the cities and the peasants hardly moved until some time later. You also try to make it out that the new government was in favour of peasant revolt. In fact only the Bolsheviks decisively settled the land question, which they did by decree on the day after taking power.

"The Minister of Agriculture was the Kadet Shingarev, a provincial doctor who had subsequently become a deputy in the Duma. His close associates in the party considered him an honest mediocrity or, as Nabokov expressed it, "a Russian provincial intellectual, designed on a small-town or county, rather than a national, scale.” The indefinite radicalism of his early years had long washed away, and the chief anxiety of Shingarev was to demonstrate his statesmanlike maturity to the possessing classes. Although the old Kadet program spoke of the "confiscation with just indemnity of the landed estates," none of the property owners took this program seriously especially now in the years of the war inflation. And Shingarev made it his chief task to delay the decision of the agrarian problem, deluding the peasants with the mirage of a Constituent Assembly which the Kadets did not want to summon. On the land question and the question of war, the February revolution was destined to break its neck. Shingarev helped all he could." (Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, book 1, ch. 10)


And it could have gone even further; by the summer of 1917, there was wide-spread support for the idea of a proletarian revolution then and there...even among many rank-and-file Bolsheviks.

Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership managed (barely) to contain the rebelliousness of the proletariat. On their first opportunity to "lead the proletariat to victory", the Bolsheviks actually (and shamefully) capitulated to bourgeois "legality".

The Bolsheviks learned quite alot from the 1905 revolution. Among other things they learned that one must avoid premature uprisings which lead to defeat. It is necessary to wait until the right movement, when the majority of the workers are in favour of taking the power and the ruling class is at its weakest. In Marxist lingo this deviation is called ultra-leftism. However as you effectively eschew revolutionary politics altogether I'm not surprised that this word is not in your vocabulary.

Only a total ignoramus could confuse the necessary and correct defensive stance of the summer with "capitulating to bourgeois legality". Did not this same party take the power a few months later?


When the workers were already thinking "all power to the soviets", Lenin was "cooling them off" with his slogan: "down with the 10 capitalist ministers".

The workers are not a unit. Different layers have different thoughts at different times. It is necessary to know how to formulate slogans that correspond to the present stage of consciousness. At that time all the workers did not have that consciousness, it is yet another distortion. The majority of the workers were looking to the Mensheviks and SRs.


Silly statement. Had the Bolsheviks "not taken power", there would either have been no civil war or it would have been a minor affair...why should the imperialist powers bother to intervene against a new bourgeois republic?

What do you think the Kornilov revolt was all about? Preserving the republic? Hmmm... let's see. How about: The bourgeoisie and the landlords do not particularly like revolting proletarians? Had there been no Bolsheviks then Kornilov would probably have entered Petrograd in the autumn and massacred to his heart's content with little resistance. A one-sided civil war is still a civil war.


Without the support of the imperialists, the "Whites" could not have lasted even a year in the field...we know that because when that support was withdrawn, the "White" armies melted away.

Yet more proof of the unprecedented popular support for the October Revolution.


Assuming the best of intentions, the Leninist "stage-skipping" was not that between capitalism and communism but rather between semi-feudalism and socialism.

It is amazing how much drivel and distortion you can fit into your head. Before 1917, not even Lenin considered possible a proletarian revolution in Russia. Only Trotsky did. Lenin came over to the permanent revolution after February. October was from the beginning carried out with an international perspective. Before 1924 nobody ever even considered the idea that socialism could be built in Russia alone. This idea was alien to Marxism and Leninism and reflected the pressures and aspirations of the privileged bureaucracy that was beginning to raise itself above the masses. I'll post a dozen or so quotes by Lenin proving his firm belief that Soviet Russia would collapse if the workers of Western Europe did not come to its aid.

24th January 1918:

"We are far from having completed even the transitional period from capitalism to socialism. We have never cherished the hope that we could finish it without the aid of the international proletariat. We never had any illusions on that scoreÉ The final victory of socialism in a single country is of course impossible. Our contingent of workers and peasants which is upholding Soviet power is one of the contingents of the great world army, which at present has been split by the world war, but which is striving for unityÉ We can now see clearly how far the development of the Revolution will go. The Russian began it - the German, the Frenchman and the Englishman will finish it, and socialism will be victorious." (LCW, Vol. 26, pp. 465-72.)

8th March 1918:

"The Congress considers the only reliable guarantee of the consolidation of the socialist revolution that has been victorious in Russia to be its conversion into a world working-class revolution." (LCW, from Resolution on War and Peace, Vol. 27. p. 119.)

23rd April 1918:

"We shall achieve final victory only when we succeed at last in conclusively smashing international imperialism, which relies on the tremendous strength of its equipment and discipline. But we shall achieve victory only together with all the workers of other countries, of the whole worldÉ" (LCW, Vol. 27, p. 231.)

14th May 1918:

"To wait until the working classes carry out a revolution on an international scale means that everyone will remain suspended in mid-airÉ It may begin with brilliant success in one country and then go through agonising periods, since final victory is only possible on a world scale, and only by the joint efforts of the workers of all countries." (LCW, Vol. 27, pp. 372-3.)

29th July 1918:

"We never harboured the illusion that the forces of the proletariat and the revolutionary people of any one country, however heroic and however organised and disciplined they might be, could overthrow international imperialism. That can be done only by the joint efforts of the workers of the worldÉ We never deceived ourselves into thinking this could be done by the efforts of one country alone. We knew that our efforts were inevitably leading to a worldwide revolution, and that the war begun by the imperialist governments could not be stopped by the efforts of those governments themselves. It can be stopped only by the efforts of all workers; and when we came to power, our task É was to retain that power, that torch of socialism, so that it might scatter as many sparks as possible to add to the growing flames of socialist revolution." (LCW, Vol. 28, pp. 24-5.)

8th November 1918:

"From the very beginning of the October Revolution, foreign policy and international relations have been the main question facing us. Not merely because from now on all the states of the world are being firmly linked by imperialism into one, dirty, bloody mass, but because the complete victory of the socialist revolution in one country alone is inconceivable and demands the most active co-operation of at least several advanced countries, which do not include RussiaÉ We have never been so near to world proletarian revolution as we are now. We have proved we were not mistaken in banking on world proletarian revolutionÉ Even if they crush one country, they can never crush the world proletarian revolution, they will only add fuel to the flames that will consume them all." (LCW, Vol. 28, pp. 151-64.)

20th November 1918:

"The transformation of our Russian Revolution into a socialist revolution was not a dubious venture but a necessity, for there was no other alternative: Anglo-French and American imperialism will inevitably destroy the independence and freedom of Russia if the world socialist revolution, world Bolshevism, does not triumph." (LCW, Vol. 28, p. 188.)

15th March 1919:

"Complete and final victory on a world scale cannot be achieved in Russia alone; it can be achieved only when the proletariat is victorious in at least all the advanced countries, or, at all events, in some of the largest of the advanced countries. Only then shall we be able to say with absolute confidence that the cause of the proletariat has triumphed, that our first objective - the overthrow of capitalism - has been achieved. We have achieved this objective in one country, and this confronts us with a second task. Since Soviet power has been established, since the bourgeoisie has been overthrown in one country, the second task in to wage the struggle on a world scale, on a different plane, the struggle of the proletarian state surrounded by capitalist states." (LCW, Vol. 29, pp. 151-64.)

5th December 1919:

"Both prior to October and during the October Revolution, we always said that we regard ourselves and can only regard ourselves as one of the contingents of the international proletarian armyÉ We always said that the victory of the socialist revolution therefore, can only be regarded as final when it becomes the victory of the proletariat in at least several advanced countries." (LCW, Vol. 30, pp. 207-8.)

20th November 1920:

"The Mensheviks assert that we are pledged to defeating the world bourgeoisie on our own. We have, however, always said that we are only a single link in the chain of the world revolution, and have never set ourselves the aim of achieving victory by our own means." (LCW, Vol. 31, p. 431.)

End of February 1922:

"But we have not finished building even the foundations of socialist economy and the hostile powers of moribund capitalism can still deprive us of that. We must clearly appreciate this and frankly admit it; for there is nothing more dangerous than illusionsÉ And there is absolutely nothing terrible É in admitting this bitter truth; for we have always urged and reiterated the elementary truth of Marxism - that the joint efforts of the workers of several advanced countries are needed for the victory of socialism." (LCW, Vol. 33, p. 206.)

I can't do anything else but link once more to "The Balance Sheet Of October", about which you flaunt your ignorance and disinterest. www.marxist.com/russiabook/part1.html


I might add that the dispute between Marxists and Leninists is not with regard to a period of transition between capitalism and communism; it is whether or not there should be an institutionalized state apparatus and consequent class society between those two stages of human history.

"Dispute between Marxists and Leninists"? Which Marxists would that be? The Social Democracy? May I ask, what international "Marxist" tendency do you represent, and what is its tradition? I suspect very much that it is the intern(et)ational Marxist tendency which lives inside redstar2000's revolutionary bottom.

As for your point, it is a pure invention. After the revolution there is a need for the state for two reasons, as Engels explained:

1. To put down the resistance of the bourgeoisie.
2. Because the new society cannot immediately guarantee enough for all.

"The scientific distinction between socialism and communism is clear. What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the "first", or lower, phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production becomes common property, the word "communism" is also applicable here, providing we do not forget that this is not complete communism. The great significance of Marx's explanations is that here, too, he consistently applies materialist dialectics, the theory of development, and regards communism as something which develops out of capitalism. Instead of scholastically invented, "concocted" definitions and fruitless disputes over words (What is socialism? What is communism?), Marx gives an analysis of what might be called the stages of the economic maturity of communism.

In its first phase, or first stage, communism cannot as yet be fully mature economically and entirely free from traditions or vestiges of capitalism. Hence the interesting phenomenon that communism in its first phase retains "the narrow horizon of bourgeois law". Of course, bourgeois law in regard to the distribution of consumer goods inevitably presupposes the existence of the bourgeois state, for law is nothing without an apparatus capable of enforcing the observance of the rules of law.

It follows that under communism there remains for a time not only bourgeois law, but even the bourgeois state, without the bourgeoisie!

This may sound like a paradox or simply a dialectical conundrum of which Marxism is often accused by people who have not taken the slightest trouble to study its extraordinarily profound content.

But in fact, remnants of the old, surviving in the new, confront us in life at every step, both in nature and in society. And Marx did not arbitrarily insert a scrap of "bourgeois" law into communism, but indicated what is economically and politically inevitable in a society emerging out of the womb of capitalism." http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/work...rev/ch05.htm#s2 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm#s2)

From 1928 on, the Communist Party was not a Communist Party but a political arm of the Soviet bureaucracy. It had been infiltrated and eaten out from within by the apparat. The Apparatus was in control of the Party, not the other way around as was Lenin's demand. Why do you think there was dissension in the CPSU in the 1920s anyway? Why do you think that the no.1 demand of the Trotskyist Left Opposition was the restoration of Party democracy? Was it just a "power struggle" between different layers of the "dictatorial Leninist Vanguard?"


The Bolshevik party and its state apparatus simply requisitioned (at gunpoint) whatever resources were available and, after a very generous cut for themselves, distributed whatever was left to the populace.

I'm afraid the film "Anastasia" by Fox is not a good source of objective historic knowledge.

"Under Lenin, the maximum wage differential was to be kept to a ratio of 1:4, which he honestly described as a "capitalist differential". This, however, was made necessary by the lack of skilled personnel needed to run industry and the state in a country where the cultural level of the masses was extremely low. As the dissident Soviet historian Roy Medvedev points out:

"The first Soviet wage scale established a ratio of 1:2.1 between the lowest and the highest earnings. At the beginning of 1919, the gap between the two extremes was narrowed even more and became 1:1.75. This lasted until the beginning of NEP in the autumn of 1921; with the approval of the Central Executive Committee and the Party Central Committee, the Council of People's Commissars passed a resolution that stated: 'When setting wage rates for workers with different qualifications - office staff, middle-range technicians and senior administrative personnel - all thought of equality must be abandoned.' The new wage scale contained broad differentials according to qualifications, and divided staff into four groups: apprentices, workers with varying degrees of skill, accountants and office workers, and administrative and technical staff. The ratio between the lowest level and the highest (the 17th category) was set at 1:8.

"The question of payment for employees of state administrative bodies was dealt with in a different way. In the first months after October, the minimum subsistence wage based on the exchange rate and the level of prices was calculated to be eight roubles a day; this was confirmed by a decree of the16th January 1918." (Medvedev, On Socialist Democracy, pp. 221.)

About the same time Lenin drafted a bill "On the Salaries of Senior Personnel and Officials", which was approved by the Council of People's Commissars with slight amendments. The text was as follows:

"Since it is considered necessary to adopt the most energetic measures to lower the salaries of officials in all state, communal, and private undertakings and institutions, without exception, the Council of People's Commissars decrees:

"1. There shall be a maximum limit to the salary of a People's Commissar of 500 roubles a month, with an allowance of 100 roubles for each child; the size of apartments is limited to one room per member of the family.

"2. All local Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies are asked to prepare and implement revolutionary measures for the special taxation of senior personnel.

"3. The Ministry of Finance and all individual Commissars shall make an immediate study of the accounts of ministries and shall reduce all excessively high salaries and pensions."

During the first months of Soviet rule the salary of a People's Commissar (including Lenin himself) was only twice the minimum subsistence wage for an ordinary citizen. Over the next years, prices and the value of the rouble often changed very rapidly and wages altered accordingly. At times the figures were quite astonishing - hundreds of thousands and millions of roubles. But even under these conditions Lenin made sure that the ratio between lowest and highest salaries in state organisations did not exceed the fixed limit - during his lifetime the differential apparently was never greater than 1:5. Of course, under conditions of backwardness, many exceptions had to be made which represented a retreat from the principles of the Paris Commune. In order to persuade the "bourgeois specialists" (spetsy) to work for the Soviet state, it was necessary to pay them very large salaries. Such measures were necessary until the working class could create its own intelligentsia. In addition, special "shockworker" rates were paid for certain categories of factory and office workers, and so on. Speaking at the Seventh Moscow Provincial Party Conference on the 29th October 1921, Lenin honestly explained this:

"Even at that time we had to retreat on a number of points. For example, in March and April 1918, the question was raised of remunerating specialists at rates that conformed, not to socialist, but to bourgeois relationships, i.e., at rates that corresponded, not to the difficulty or arduousness of the work performed, but to bourgeois customs and to the conditions of bourgeois society. Such exceptionally high - in the bourgeois manner - remuneration for specialists did not originally enter into the plans of the Soviet government, and even ran counter to a number of decrees issued at the end of 1917. But at the beginning of 1918 our party gave direct instructions to the effect that we must step back a bit on this point and agree to a 'compromise' (I employ the term then in use)." (LCW, Vol. 33, p. 88.)

However, such compromises did not apply to Communists. They were strictly forbidden to receive more than a skilled worker. Any income they received in excess of that figure had to be paid over to the Party. The chair of the Council of People's Deputies received 500 roubles, comparable to the earnings of a skilled worker. When the office manager of the Council of People's Deputies, V. D. Bonch-Bruevich paid Lenin too much in May 1918, he was given "a severe reprimand" by Lenin, who described the rise as "illegal". Due to the isolation of the revolution, and the need to employ bourgeois specialists and technicians the differential was increased for these workers - they could earn a wage 50 per cent more than that received by the members of the government. Lenin was to denounce this as a "bourgeois concession", which should be reduced as rapidly as possible.

In the words of Roy Medvedev: "With respect to Communists, even those who held the highest posts, Lenin demanded moderation. He showed concern for their health and food and living accommodations, but insisted that their salaries, his own included, be kept within certain limits. No luxuries were allowed." In April 1918, Lenin characterised the introduction of material incentives and differentials as "a step backwards on the part of our socialist, Soviet state power, which from the very outset proclaimed and pursued the policy of reducing high salaries to the level of the wages of the average worker". (LCW, Vol. 27, p. 249.) Medvedev continued: "In general, Lenin opposed both the equalisation of wages and excessively high salaries, especially for party members. This policy resulted in the so-called party maximum - a wage ceiling for all Communists. Lenin considered any excessive inequality in pay or living conditions 'a source of corruption within the party and a factor reducing the authority of Communists'." (Medvedev, Let History Judge, p. 841.)

There are many examples which show the living conditions of the leaders of the workers' state. Writing about the civil war period, Victor Serge recalls the living conditions of the deputy chief of the Cheka:

"All this time, Bakayev of the Cheka was going round with holes in his boots. In spite of my special rations as a government official, I would have died of hunger without the sordid manipulations of the black market, where we traded the petty possessions we had brought in from France. The eldest son of my friend Yonov, Zinoviev's brother-in-law, an Executive member of the Soviet and founder and director of the State Library, died of hunger before our very eyes. All this while we were looking after considerable stocks, and even riches, but on the State's behalf and under rigorous control. Our salaries were limited to the 'Communist maximum,' equal to the average wage of a skilled worker." (Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901-1941, p. 79.)

The English writer Arthur Ransome who was well acquainted with Russia and made several visits at this time, reports an extraordinary incident which he experienced first hand while on an official delegation with Radek and Larin to the town of Yaroslavl in 1921. The Yaroslavl prison was a notoriously bad place under Stalin. But the Bolsheviks took prison reform seriously and tried to improve the conditions of the prisoners. In conditions of terrible food shortages the food at the Yaroslavl prison was actually better than that available to the local soviet leadership!

"It so happens, Rostopchin explained, that the officer in charge of the prison feeding arrangements is a very energetic fellow, who had served in the old army in a similar capacity, and the meals served out to the prisoners are so much better than those produced in the Soviet headquarters, that the members of the Executive Committee make a practice of walking over to the prison to dine. They invited us to do the same. Larin did not feel up to the walk, so he remained in the Soviet House to eat an inferior meal, while Radek and I, with Rostopchin and three other members of the local committee walked round to the prison." (Arthur Ransome, The Crisis in Russia, p. 56.)

The housing space at the disposal of government ministers or commissars was also restricted to one room for each person in the household. Lenin's office was sparsely furnished with the bare essentials. According to Karl Idman, a member of the Finnish government who met Lenin in December 1917: "Lenin received us cordially, apologising for keeping us waiting. The room in which we found ourselves was divided into two by a board partitionÉ The room was in no way different from any of the other rooms in Smolny. It was as simple as all the rest. The walls were painted white, there was a wooden table and a few chairs." This policy was in stark contrast to the exorbitant privileges and luxurious life-styles of the masters of the Kremlin under Stalin and his successors. This is confirmed by Victor Serge:

"In the Kremlin he [Lenin] still occupied a small apartment built for a palace servant. In the recent winter he, like everyone else, had had no heating. When he went to the barber's he took his turn, thinking it unseemly for anyone to give way to him." (Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901-1941, p. 101.)

The same applied to Trotsky, who was, in effect, Lenin's second in command:

"During the first days of the Bolshevik revolt I used to go every morning to Smolny to get the latest news. Trotsky and his pretty little wife, who hardly ever spoke anything but French, lived in one room on the top floor. The room was partitioned off like a poor artist's attic studio. In one end were two cots and a cheap little dresser and in the other a desk and two or three cheap wooden chairs. There were no pictures, no comfort anywhere. Trotsky occupied this office all the time he was Minister of Foreign Affairs and many dignitaries found it necessary to call upon him thereÉ Outside the door two Red Guards kept constant watch. They looked rather menacing, but were really friendly. It was always possible to get an audience with Trotsky." (Louise Bryant, op. cit., p. 103.)

This was no exception. The Bolshevik leaders were always accessible and close to the masses. They walked in the streets with no escorts. Lenin was shot and seriously wounded by a Left SR assassin while doing just that. When one considers the luxurious conditions and privileges of the bureaucracy under Stalin and his successors, shut off from the Soviet population behind high walls, or rushing at great speed in huge limousines accompanied by armies of bodyguards, we see what a gulf separated the democratic regime of Lenin from what replaced it. And it is necessary to emphasise the point that Lenin even considered the relatively small differentials of that time to be unacceptable capitalist differentials which would gradually be reduced as society progressed towards socialism."


After the civil war was over, Lenin began the open restoration of capitalism with the NEP and positively begged the foreign capitalists to return (they declined).

Engels once said that there's no better way to make yourself look like an ass than talk about things that you know nothing about. This has seldom been so true as in your case. I said it once, but I'll say it again: The original plan of Lenin and Trotsky at the seizure of power was to spread the revolution to Western Europe as quickly as possible. Lenin even declared that all the Communists were ready to die, to sacrifice the Russian Revolution, in order to help the German Revolution succeed. Socialism could not be built in a peasant country like Russia. War Communism stretched the relations between the workers and the peasantry to the breaking point, as was shown in Kronstadt and the peasant insurrections. It was clear that a retreat in front of the growing petty bourgeois reaction had to be made. However Lenin honestly recognised it as a retreat, as a concession to peasant capitalism in order to save the Soviet regime. He was not trying to "reintroduce capitalism" as you think in your blind, stupid, reactionary fervor. On the contrary he recognised that the NEP would represent a great danger unless help came from the West. This was shown in the late 1920's, when Stalin's pro-kulak line allowed the kulaks to call a grain strike to try and bring down the Soviet Government. That would have ended in counter-revolution had the bureaucracy not fought back.

[DaCuBaN]

I'm not going to apologise for the length of this reply. You brought it on yourself

Well you bloody should! Other people had to read it too! :lol:

[choekiewoekie]

My g*d, a very interesting topic, but ohw......... i hope your seriously suggesting i am going to read all that? :o
Is there someone out there who is willing to read it and put a small explanation on the board? :blink:

[The Feral Underclass]

It is extremly long dude...maybe you can break down your argument in a more simpler way. I think the only person who has the patience to read it all is RS2K.

[redstar2000]

I'm not going to apologise for the length of this reply. You brought it on yourself.

On this board, people are as free to write as much or as little as they please.

However, you do seem to be under the impression that sheer word count constitutes refutation.


. But based on dialectic analysis of empiric historic data we are able to define certain historical laws, and ascertain the general tendencies at work in society. These laws are in their totality called "Historical Materialism". For instance, in 1916 Lenin and Bukharin inferred WWII and Fascism from monopoly capitalism. In 1936 Trotsky predicted that the Soviet bureaucrats, if left alone by imperialism and the working class, would turn themselves into capitalists to get the right of inheritance.

Leninists are always "making predictions"...now and then, by sheer chance, they get one right.

What about all the ones they got wrong?

"Dialectical" psychics are no different from any other kind...utterly fraudulent.


Let us collect some data from similar situations in history and try to extrapolate what might have happened had there been no Bolsheviks in 1917.

Let's not. You are simply guessing the possible outcome...someone else might guess a completely different outcome.

There's no way to verify any of those guesses.


In fact the decisive part of the 20th century revolutions failed because of the lack of the subjective factor.

You wish! You even hope!

What you can't do is prove!

We don't get to "re-run" history like a laboratory experiment with different variables. Only in your "dialectical" imagination would "things have turned out differently".

There have been hundreds of "Bolshevik" parties...Stalinist, Trotskyist, Maoist, etc.

And the result: one successful coup (Russia); one successful peasant insurrection (China); and two successful wars of national liberation (Yugoslavia and Vietnam).

None of which, I might add, involved any significant contribution by Trotskyists. (There were no "Trotskyists" in 1917...Trotsky's personal following joined the Bolsheviks.)


Reality proves again and again the Leninist theorem: To the organised and centralised power of capital must be counterposed the organised and centralised power of labour.

In three of the four successful Leninist endeavors, "labor" played little or no role at all.


...the obvious truth that the Revolution cannot succeed without a revolutionary Party consisting of steeled, determined and educated cadres, which must be prepared in advance and which cannot be improvised on the spot.

And with all that, you still couldn't win diddly-squat.


The degeneration of the Soviet state is an extremely complicated question.

It sure is...scrambling to find excuses for those "steeled, determined and educated cadre" transforming themselves into a new ruling class would give Einstein a headache.

Try "mass amnesia"...it's as credible as anything you have to offer.


Suffice to say that socialism can never be built in a backward country; no Marxist ever considered this until Stalin's theory was put forward in 1924.

Well, Lenin was a "Marxist"...according to you, anyway. Why did he even bother to build a "vanguard party" in a backward country like Russia? Why didn't he imitate Rosa Luxemburg (who came from a backward and Russian-occupied Poland) and move to Germany and work for proletarian revolution in that country?

The same question could be addressed to Trotsky and all the rest?

After all, Marxists "have no country", right? We should naturally gravitate towards the countries where the proletariat is the most advanced, should we not? Where proletarian revolution is a real possibility, right?

Oh, I know, there was "supposed" to be a revolution in western Europe...to bail out the USSR. "Dialectics" said so.

Whoops! There's one of those "great predictions" that wasn't worth a shit.


If there had been a revolution in an advanced country everything would have been different.

No doubt. And if wishes were horses, intellectual beggars would ride.


The demand for state ownership is raised in the Manifesto of 1848.

So it was. That was before Marx and Engels realized that nationalization was not, in and of itself, socialist.

That the bourgeoisie must be deprived of their property is uncontroversial. That simply centralizing it in the hands of a new state apparatus will result in an end to wage-slavery has been demonstrated to be untrue.


...what do you think will be the new property form?

Probably something akin to the present notion of trusteeship. If we are going to produce for use instead of for profit, then it would logically follow that the means of production would not be "owned" by anyone in particular, but would rather be entrusted to particular collectives of workers on the basis of what use they could put those productive means to. Should they perform poorly, they would be deprived of those means of production...which would then be entrusted to a new and hopefully more serious collective.


One of the foulest slanders which is now aimed at Lenin and Trotsky is that Stalin's Purges were only the continuation of the Red Terror waged by the Bolsheviks after the Revolution, blah, blah, blah.

When I remarked that Lenin's terror was directed against anarchists in 1918, your response is a bunch of abstract babble without specific reference prior to 1922!

Is that what Trotskyists consider a "principled discussion" these days?


I knew you would drag Kronstadt into this.

More of the same. I actually did not discuss Kronstadt at all...I was referring to the actions of Zinoviev suppressing strikes and even meetings of the Petrograd working class immediately prior to Kronstadt.

Your long-winded discourse on Kronstadt is totally irrelevant to the point I was making.


A cursory glance at the surnames of the [Kronstadt] mutineers immediately shows that they were almost all Ukrainians.

Yeah...those fucking Ukrainians! Makhnoist scum, no doubt!


It is true that the negotiations with the garrison were badly handled by the Bolshevik negotiating delegation led by Kalinin, who inflamed an already serious situation.

I guess Kalinin wasn't one of those "steeled, determined, and educated cadres". Just some dummy that Lenin pulled in off the street to handle this ticklish and "dialectical" task.


This would have placed Petrograd at their mercy, since whoever controlled Kronstadt controlled Petrograd.

Yes, and whoever controlled Petrograd controlled...um, Petrograd. It was not a "life and death" matter...especially since the central state apparatus had long since relocated to Moscow.


The only possible outcome was capitalist counter-revolution.

That was Lenin's excuse and you stoutly defend it.

I think it's absurd.


It is interesting to note that members of the Workers' Opposition, a semi-anarcho-syndicalist tendency present at the Congress, also joined the attacking forces.

Yeah, they weren't the brightest bulbs in the marquee either. Kollentai actually thought Lenin would support her resolution on the trade unions. (!)


Victor Serge, who had many sympathies with anarchism, was implacably opposed to the Kronstadt mutineers, as the following passage shows...

That's nice. It reminds me of how Stalinists will quote passages from anti-Stalinist works showing that "nevertheless" Stalin "did something good" on this occasion.

I'm not impressed.


No more stupid idea could be put forward than that the working class BENEFITED from Stalin's despotism.

Why? Do you deny that workers were given specialized training and educational opportunities that they did not have under the Czarist regime? Or access to modern health care? Or modern housing with indoor plumbing?

I think it's pretty well documented that the general standard-of-living of the working class in Stalin's Russia improved quite sharply over the previous era.


As if killing one tenth of the population and bludgeoning all individual initiative has ever helped a country's economy.

One tenth of the population? You keep a copy of The Black Book of Communism next to your toilet perhaps?

Setting aside the utterly fantastic, you again failed to respond to my point: that few workers were ever targeted by Stalin's purges.


There was full democracy in the Party until 1921, when the threat of peasant counter-revolution and the fear that the Party might break on class lines forced Lenin to ban factions as a temporary measure.

"Temporary"? If you read Lenin's speeches at the 10th Party Congress, I don't think you'll find any mention of the word "temporary".

And the defeat of the Workers' Opposition proposal -- to place all economic matters under the direct control of the trade unions -- meant that the workers were to have no power at all in the new "socialist state". (The soviets had ceased to function at all except as rubber-stamp bodies by 1919 or so.)


The personal dictatorship of Lenin was a higher form of democracy because it defended social property, struck blows against the bourgeoisie and defended the workers' cause. -- emphasis added.

How was the NEP a "defense of social property"?

How was inviting foreign capital to return to Russia a "blow against the bourgeoisie"?

How was the institution of "one-man management" and the emasculation of the workers' factory committees a "defense of the workers' cause"?


An act of violence is permissible and even obligatory when directed against the class enemy in a civil war. Do you deny this?

Nope. But in Lenin's eyes (and Trotsky's and Stalin's), any opposition to their personal power automatically marked one as a "class enemy".


How can you have class coercion without a state?

Seriously, your whole argument is that the working class needs no party, needs no dictatorship to impose its dictatorship. I'm quite interested in learning how you would suppress the bourgeoisie, fight off the Whites and the imperialists, combat famine, organise a revolutionary International to spread the revolution, without a party!

In other words, what would the "Redstar-ists" have done in Russia, 1917-1921?

Beats me! It's yet another one of your "what ifs" intended to "prove" that Lenin's approach was "the only possible approach".

Fortunately, we "Redstar-ists" don't live in Russia, 1917-21. We are not "obligated" to furnish an abstract strategy that would have worked better then.

We are only obligated to furnish a revolutionary strategy for our own time.

Something that your particular variant of Leninism (Trotskyism) has conspicuously failed at.


How do you suggest the workers' state be run if not by the workers?

I don't think there should be a "workers' state"...it is no longer needed.


You pigeonhole the Leninist terror with the Stalinist and thus you aid the bourgeois slanderers in the most contemptible way.

Shame on me! :lol:


The Commune failed, did it not? Why? Essentially because it was too timid...A bold leadership could have led the Commune to victory.

The Commune and other spontaneous working class rebellions have been militarily defeated on a number of occasions.

The "bold Leninists" rot from within.


I have the truth on my side

Spoken like a "true believer".


It was called for by the exceptionally bad world and national situation and was naturally set to be lifted as soon as some Western European country joined the Soviet family.

That's not what they said at the time.


Do you think they should rather have surrendered to counter-revolution? Because that was the alternative.

Right. The alternatives at the 10th Party Congress were clear and straightforward. Option 1: reduce the party membership to mindless robots; Option 2: surrender to counter-revolution.

:lol: :lol: :lol:


"Coup" in normal language (and in the usual language of detractors of Bolshevism) signifies the taking of power by a minority, against the democratic will of the people.

On your planet perhaps. On Earth, it means the seizure of power by an armed minority...period.


You denigrate the taking of power by a minority with the active backing of the majority, as a "coup". It implies that you are against this taking of power. If the working class is not allowed to take power through an insurrection by its Party against the bourgeois parliament, then you are precisely respecting the bourgeois parliament! Without organization, that is, without the trade unions and the Party, the working class is only raw material for exploitation.

Torturous "reasoning".

"Coup" is a descriptive term, not a "moral" one.

Had the Bolsheviks wanted power for the working class, Lenin could simply have stood up at a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet and said "Moved: that this assembly now assumes full governing power over this city".

And the soviet would have voted yea or nay; if yea, then you may send out your soldiers to occupy the phone company and the train stations, etc., and arrest those eunuchs at the Winter Palace, etc.

After all, it's not as if the Provisional Government had ever been elected by anybody or had any authority that extended past the front door of the Winter Palace.


First of all the landlords were not at all overthrown by the February Revolution. It was confined to the cities and the peasants hardly moved until some time later. You also try to make it out that the new government was in favour of peasant revolt. In fact only the Bolsheviks decisively settled the land question, which they did by decree on the day after taking power.

I suspect that peasants probably began rebelling against their landlords before February 1917; the revolution in the cities speeded up the process of expropriation dramatically. The Bolshevik decree ratified existing fact. (And the opinions of the Provisional Government never had any influence on the matter whatsoever.)


Among other things [the Bolsheviks] learned that one must avoid premature uprisings which lead to defeat.

And with their "dialectical" crystal ball, they just "knew" that an uprising in July would be defeated.


It is necessary to wait until the right movement, when the majority of the workers are in favour of taking the power and the ruling class is at its weakest.

So on the eve of October, Lenin took a real quick public opinion survey?

And, unlike July 1917, this time the verdict was... go for it!

Your arguments are simply bizarre.


Only a total ignoramus could confuse the necessary and correct defensive stance of the summer with "capitulating to bourgeois legality". Did not this same party take the power a few months later?

One thing Leninists have always been really good at is changing their minds.


Had there been no Bolsheviks then Kornilov would probably have entered Petrograd in the autumn and massacred to his heart's content with little resistance. A one-sided civil war is still a civil war.

More silliness. Kornilov's army melted away before it ever reached Petrograd. There was no "battle".


Before 1924 nobody ever even considered the idea that socialism could be built in Russia alone. This idea was alien to Marxism and Leninism and reflected the pressures and aspirations of the privileged bureaucracy that was beginning to raise itself above the masses.

To pose the question in the same terms that you like so much: what should the Bolsheviks have done when it became clear that no western revolutions were going to bail them out? Surrender to counter-revolution?

Socialism in a backward country like Russia never made any sense from a Marxist perspective...but if you go ahead and try it anyway, then isn't "socialism in one country" the most plausible option available?

You may not "like" that option, but what else could they do? They did try to extend the revolution into Poland by conquest...and got hammered.

Rhetoric about "permanent revolution" is no substitute for practical alternatives, is it?


It follows that under communism there remains for a time not only bourgeois law, but even the bourgeois state, without the bourgeoisie!

Exactly the point I began this thread with: "socialism is capitalism (temporarily) without capitalists".

You guys assert that your state will "wither away"...but it didn't.

I assert that the way to solve that problem is to refuse to establish a centralized state at all.

It may be plausibly argued that such was not possible in the days of Marx or even the days of Lenin; the productive resources to insure abundance for all were lacking.

That's no longer the case in the advanced capitalist countries.


Was it just a "power struggle" between different layers of the "dictatorial Leninist Vanguard?"

In a word, yes.


With respect to Communists, even those who held the highest posts, Lenin demanded moderation. He showed concern for their health and food and living accommodations, but insisted that their salaries, his own included, be kept within certain limits. No luxuries were allowed.

That's the point I was making. The benefit of party membership was not in terms of wages...but in terms of regular access to ample food supplies, decent housing, good medical care, etc.

These were things that were unavailable to most Russians in that period.


He was not trying to "reintroduce capitalism" as you think in your blind, stupid, reactionary fervor.

Abuse is the last resort of the Leninists...until they have state power. Then, they set aside the "arms of criticism" for the criticism of arms.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[Invader Zim]

3. Even Trotskyists of that era accepted the USSR as a "workers' state", albeit "deformed" by a "Stalinist bureaucracy". "Deformed socialism" is still socialism, right?

Wrong, the main defining chracteristic of a socialist state is that the produce of society is owned collectivly by the members of the society. If a "workers state" has deformed to the point where social elites exist, with greater access to product of socety, then that society is not socialist. Economic elitism and socialism are mutually exclusive.

At least that is my view.

[antieverything]

You gotta understand, Enigma, when we talk about the history of real existing "socialism" we are talking about systems that most of us don't envision in our idea of socialism. That doesn't change the fact that they are socialist societies in the eyes of everyone but you and I. If we were to talk about "state capitalist regimes in the USSR and China" we would have effectively brought the level of debate to ridiculously pretentious technical commie-speak that serves no purpose if we are trying to be honest with ourselves and each other. The fact is, these societies were formed in completely new ways...and along distinctly non-capitalist lines. As much as we may not like the implications of defining them as socialist, they are socialist whether we like it or not!

[Djehuti]

Originally posted by [email protected] 4 2004, 02:18 PM
Socialism = capitalism (temporarily) without capitalists


Yes, socialism as in the sovjet union was really capitalism.
I have written some texts on this in swedish, but i dont have time to translate, and my english is not really mega great.

Well, the bolsjevik revolution was in fact a capitalistic revolution,
but "adminstrated" by the bolsjeviks in the absence of the weak bourgeoisie.
Study the development in russia after 1917 and compare with the development after the bourgeoise revolutions in Europe and see. The only bigger difference is that the state took over the role of the capitalists in the Sovjet union.

[YKTMX]

You gotta understand, Enigma, when we talk about the history of real existing "socialism" we are talking about systems that most of us don't envision in our idea of socialism

It's not a question of "our" vision of socialism. It is a question of what are the "actual" criteria for a society to be considered socialist. The societies that called themselves socialist in the 20th century were not. We know them not to have been because we can look at the structure of those societies and study them objectively away from rhetoric or "exisiting realities".


That doesn't change the fact that they are socialist societies in the eyes of everyone but you and I

How very post-modern of you.


If we were to talk about "state capitalist regimes in the USSR and China" we would have effectively brought the level of debate to ridiculously pretentious technical commie-speak that serves no purpose if we are trying to be honest with ourselves and each other

So, the options we are left with are capitulation to Stalinist dogma or "ridicilously pretentious commie-speak"? I know what I choose.


The fact is, these societies were formed in completely new ways...and along distinctly non-capitalist lines

Yes. They were state capitalist. That is Capitalism without private ownership of the means of productions, where surplus is placed in the hands of an "elite" or "bureaucracy" instead of the productive class. I don't consider that analysis to be too "pretentious". Seems relatively simple to me.


As much as we may not like the implications of defining them as socialist, they are socialist whether we like it or not!

Ah, the ever popular "take it or leave it" school of thought. I know the kind of world I am fighting for. A place where the "exisiting reality" will be real socialism and equality.

[antieverything]

The very fact that anyone can seriously talk about the USSR as "capitalism without private ownership" is simply proof of the level of meaninglessness the term "state capitalist" carries.

[YKTMX]

I think you are maybe being deliberately obtuse.


The most common definition of state capitalism within the Marxian literature is that it is a social system combining capitalism (the free wage labor system of producing and appropriating surplus value) with state ownership.

Maybe the fact that people can call the USSR socialist denotes the flaw in their own understanding of the term.

[Djehuti]

What is capitalism? I would say based on Marx:

1: The agrar revolution
2: Production of commodities were the workers is a salariat.

[T_SP]

Originally posted by [email protected] 4 2004, 03:18 PM
Socialism = capitalism (temporarily) without capitalists

How can this "outrageous" thing be said?

In a word, because it's true.


I didn't read all of your intial post RS, I'll be honest I didn't need a sleep at the time, but this statement said it all for me! It shows how little you really know about Capitalism, Socialism and Politics!

[redstar2000]

It shows how little you really know about Capitalism, Socialism and Politics!

From a Trotskyist, I'll take that as a compliment. :lol:

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[T_SP]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10 2004, 02:10 AM
From a Trotskyist, I'll take that as a compliment. :lol:

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas
Thankyou :lol: I must say, I've dealt with someone who has a very similar ideology to yours, bashing Trot's and Leninists for all there worth and yet not producing any viable Socialist/Communist programme, bitter from the mistakes made in Russia you use it as a spring board for all your arguments. The Bolsheviks were Capitalist, Lenin was a dictator, the Vanguard took over etc etc. Heard it, heard it, yet everytime I asked what there programme was I got silence, then a new thread came along bashing the Transitional Programme for instance. I'll expect yours on the T.P soon then eh? :D

[antieverything]

So...in order to have an effective program, one has to delude oneself in regards to the history of past socialist regimes?

[Valkyrie]

>>>The very fact that anyone can seriously talk about the USSR as "capitalism without private ownership" is simply proof of the level of meaninglessness the term "state capitalist" carries. <<<<


The definition of State Capitalism would be The State is the defacto single owner of ALL Capital and operates as sole proprietor and business employer, with Citizens as wage workers, very much a serf-type system. The USSR under the guise of communism with the workers under the serious misconception that they "own" and control production, given some perks doled out by The State, i.e. Food, housing,

Surely not communism, National Socialism... maybe.... not to be confused with Nazism, however.

[redstar2000]

Heard it, heard it, yet everytime I asked what their programme was, I got silence.

There is a common notion to the effect that if one criticizes something, one is therefore "obligated" to provide a "positive alternative".

It ain&#39;t so.

Nevertheless, any criticism of the Leninist paradigm obviously implies alternative perspectives...most notably the idea that post-revolutionary society, whatever its forms, must be characterized by the direct rule of the working class itself.

That&#39;s fundamental.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[YKTMX]

Nevertheless, any criticism of the Leninist paradigm obviously implies alternative perspectives...most notably the idea that post-revolutionary society, whatever its forms, must be characterized by the direct rule of the working class itself.

That is not an alternative perspective though. It has always been the belief of Classical Marxism (Marx, Lenin, Trotsky) that post-revolutionary society should see the coming to power of the working class.

You assume to offer a "critique" of Leninism without offering any real "alternatives" apart from amorphous pseudo-anarchist musings.

Whether you care to accept it or not: This is a flaw.

You are undoubtedly a good socialist and intelligent comrade however, your continued association of Lenin and Leninism with Stalinist orthodoxies long discredited and disassociated from is strange.

Your lucidity and insight when it comes to matters other than this would suggest you are of greater content than this.

I am not suggesting that you should write a 500 word thesis on revolutionary society (although this would help), I am suggesting however that your petulant and misplaced smearing of Lenin and Trotsky (and by association Marx) is rethought.

After revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat ensures survival of socialism from capitalist counter-revolution. We can argue history about this theory in practice and whether it was correctly applied by the Bolsheviks but this theory remains, and to many of us it shows the best way that a new socialism might be sustained and protected.

Your criticism off it seems to come not from an analytical Marxist position but from a desire to distance yourself from the "ugly" revolutions of the 20th century. Moving Marxism into the 21st century does not involve throwing out any theory that was used in the "bad" 20th century.

[redstar2000]

That is not an alternative perspective though. It has always been the belief of Classical Marxism (Marx, Lenin, Trotsky) that post-revolutionary society should see the coming to power of the working class.

We have no argument here regarding Marx.

But Lenin...???


The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of the class, because in all capitalist countries...the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts... that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot direct exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard.

The Trade Unions, The Present Situation And Trotsky’s Mistakes

http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/archive/l...1920/dec/30.htm (http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm)

And Trotsky...???


They [the workers&#39; opposition] have come out with dangerous slogans. They have made a fetish of democratic principles. They have placed the workers&#39; right to elect representatives above the party. As if the Party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship clashed with the passing moods of the workers&#39; democracy&#33;

(I don&#39;t have the specific reference for this one...but it&#39;s obviously from the 10th Party Congress -- March 1921 -- so it&#39;s probably available at marxists.org.)

So tell me, please, how Lenin and Trotsky "believed" that post-revolutionary society would see "the coming to power of the working class" in the light of their own words to the contrary?


You assume to offer a "critique" of Leninism without offering any real "alternatives" apart from amorphous pseudo-anarchist musings.

Again, explain to me how a desire for real power in the hands of the working class is an "amorphous pseudo-anarchist musing"?

Was Marx himself a "pseudo-anarchist"?


After revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat ensures survival of socialism from capitalist counter-revolution.

That&#39;s not what happened.


Moving Marxism into the 21st century does not involve throwing out any theory that was used in the "bad" 20th century.

Not "any" theory...just Leninism.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[YKTMX]

(I don&#39;t have the specific reference for this one...but it&#39;s obviously from the 10th Party Congress -- March 1921 -- so it&#39;s probably available at marxists.org.)
So tell me, please, how Lenin and Trotsky "believed" that post-revolutionary society would see "the coming to power of the working class" in the light of their own words to the contrary?



The WO was an absolute farce. The working class had been decimated in Russia during the war and the famime. The number of large scale industrial workers had been cut from about 2.6 million to about 1.1 million. Those that there were left were the most reactionery elements. Look at Petrograd for instance (Source: Russia: Class and Power, Mike Haynes) the core of the industrial working class and Bolshevik support. 40,000 joined the Red Army, 15,000 were involved in food requestioning and a further 20,000 were sent to work in other areas. There seems to be have been only 40,000 industrial workers left in petrograd in 1921. In other areas too, the working class who had joined the army (and died or been injured) or had been sent to work in the country had been replaced by non-workers. Surely, in this time the Communist Party had the right to exert power over a soicety crumbling before them. You may see this as dictatorial but revolution isn&#39;t made in a book, it&#39;s made in decision, sometimes tough ones. The decision Lenin and Trotsky made during this tough period do not destroy a lifetimes work dedicated to liberation and workers organisation.

On another note, of course I criticize parts of poltical decisions and statements Lenin and Trotsky made, this isn&#39;t theology here. My belief however remains that they were true Marxists and truly believed in social liberation, therefore I see mistakes and correct decision within than context. You believe that Lenin was a malignant dictator and a poor Marxist. Your criticisms come within that context.


That&#39;s not what happened.

Yes, I know that. If you want to get into a debate over the rise of Stalinism then fine.

[redstar2000]

The [Workers&#39; Opposition] was an absolute farce.

Hardly a profound critique.


The working class had been decimated in Russia during the war and the famime...Those that there were left were the most reactionary elements.

So what?

And recall that Lenin wasn&#39;t just talking about Russia...he extended his "analysis" to all capitalist countries.

According to Lenin, nowhere was the working class "fit" to govern itself.

Contemporary Leninists make the same argument today...even on this board. The working class is "not to be trusted" -- only the vanguard can "run the show".


Surely, in this time the Communist Party had the right to exert power over a society crumbling before them.

Right? Is it "right" to call yourself a "communist" and act like something else?

Like a wannabe new ruling class, to be precise.


You may see this as dictatorial but revolution isn&#39;t made in a book, it&#39;s made in decisions, sometimes tough ones.

Puh-leeze. It&#39;s not me that "sees it" as "dictatorial", it&#39;s them that bluntly proclaimed their right to be dictatorial.

As to "revolution isn&#39;t made in a book", don&#39;t forget that favorite comment of the Stalinists: "you can&#39;t make an omelet without breaking eggs".

Meaningless clichés are not a substitute for argument or evidence.


The decision Lenin and Trotsky made during this tough period do not destroy a lifetime&#39;s work dedicated to liberation and workers organisation.

I&#39;m afraid it does exactly that.

Don&#39;t forget that Karl Kautsky had "a lifetime&#39;s work" as the leading Marxist theoretician of his era...and pissed it away with one bad call: supporting his own ruling class in imperialist war.

Communist standards are pretty high...and unforgiving.


You believe that Lenin was a malignant dictator and a poor Marxist.

Malignant? I don&#39;t know...we can&#39;t see inside his mind. He might well have been completely sincere. That&#39;s also true of Stalin, Trotsky, Mao, etc.

My obvious point is that sincerity is irrelevant. What counts is what you actually do...for better or worse.

But Lenin was not, in fact, a very good Marxist at all.

Sorry about that.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas