Originally posted by
[email protected] 12 2006, 01:29 PM
Ok, i get the point that anarchy revolves around no government control, eventhough i dont believe tht is socialism, since i think that would lead to the rich exploiting the poor more and more...
There would be no rich and poor in anarchy. Anarchists seek the abolition of not only the government by all other hierarchies as well, including class. You can't have a class system without a state and vice versa.
but.. what's the difference between Communism and Social Revolution?
There were three Social Revolutionary parties. The original was Russia's first political party. They believed that by assasinating Tsarist officials they could weaken the government enough that it would start a revolt among the peasants, leading to revolution. They wanted an elected government that would take land from the landlords and give it to the peasants, and favor the poor over the rich. In the 1905 revolution a group broke away from the party because they considered it too conservative. They called themselves the Social Revolutionary Maximalists, or just Maximalists for short. Their ideas were similar to council communism or anarchism. They advocated a society run by worker & peasant councils (soviets), with little in the way of any kind of centralized national government. Land would be taken over by peasant communes and factories by the workers. In 1917 the Russian Monarchy was overthown, and an unelected provisional government was set up by some politicians in its place. Some Social Revolutionaries (from the original party) were part of that government, and eventually one of them (Kerensky) became head of it.
By the end of spring 1917 the Bolsheviks had decided to oppose this government, and started advocating a revolution to establish a socialist government run by the soviets. The Maximalists also advocated its overthrow, and ended up in an alliance with the Bolsheviks. The Maximalists and the bolsheviks disagreed on what a post-revolutionary society should look like, with the bolsheviks being much stronger supporters of centralization & hierarchy than the Maximalists. The Social Revolutionary party supported the provisional government (since they were a part of it) and believed that it should eventually evolve into a typical parliamentary government with reforms designed to help workers & peasants. Within the Social Revolutionary party some were disatisfied with their party's support for the provisional government, so they broke away to form the Left Social Revolutionary Party. The Left SRs were sort of halfway between the SRs and the Maximalists. They also allied with the bolsheviks to overthrow the provisional government & establish the soviet government, but they weren't as anti-authoritarian as the Maximalists.
After the revolution the new government was originally a coalition government, with the Bolsheviks getting most government positions but some also being given to the Left SRs. The Left SRs later refused to remain in the government because of a major division between them and the Bolsheviks over the peace with Germany. The Left SRs thought the treaty made too many concessions to German imperialism, while most Bolsheviks argued for peace even if the terms were unfair (although there was a minority of bolsheviks who supported the Left SRs on this issue). Another major difference between the bolsheviks and all three SR parties was that the bolsheviks were Marxists who emphasized the working class as the source of socialist revolution, while the SRs were not Marxists and emphasized the role of peasants instead.