To leninists

[Karl Marx's Camel]

Why did the glorious worker revolutions fall in the USSR and the rest of Eastern Europe, in China, in Vietnam?

Please tell us how the heroic workers gave up their power. Why did the workers and peasants give up their power? Why did they gave their power over to the bourgeois?

Also, another question. Why did their leaders, who was put there by the people, rule until the day they died? Were they so loved, that the people wanted them to govern for that long?

[Karl Marx's Camel]

Why do you hate socialism?

Socialism is the dictatorship of the proletariat. Not the rule of the party.


I will have to ask why you love the dictatorship of the party.

[More Fire for the People]

Socialism is the dictatorship of the proletariat. Not the rule of the party.
The proletarians cannot organize themselves into a party [or parties]?

[LSD]

The proletarians cannot organize themselves into a party [or parties]?

It'd be preferable if they didn't.

Political parties are bourgeois inventions and structurally reflect the interests of the capitalist class.

Workers can join a "vanguard" party, but they will very rarely lead it. Most workers simply don't have the time to go through the hassle of rising throught the bureacratic ranks.

That's why it's nearly always petty-bourgeois academic types who end up "speaking for" the proletariat.

I know that recently some Marxist groups have begun establishing "worker only" membership rules and that's certainly a step in the right direction. But I don't think that it goes far enough in eliminating the fundmental inequality that is at the heart of the bourgeois "party".

Victorious revolutionary organizations will inevitably shape the structure of post-revolutionary society. You can try and seperate "pre" and "post" revolution as if they're divorced from eac other, but the reality is that once the old order falls, something needs to take its place.

In those situations, the leading proletarian organization is usually the only thing with enough support to fill the vacuum.

Accordingly, if that organization is structured along hiearchical anti-democratic lines, so will the emergent post-revolutionary society. That's what happened in Russia, that's what happened in China, that's what happened in Cuba.

Besides, there's something very odd about self-described "Leninists" establishing party rules that would have excluded Lenin. If petty-bourgeois theoreticians should not lead "vanguard parties" then wasn't Lenin's most fundamental belief, namely his own fitness to rule, completely in error?

How then can we take anything that he "theorized" without a great deal of skepticism?

It seems to me that its time for the proletariat to approach the question of its liberatoin from a proletarian perspective. We're not bourgeois politicians trying to push a "policy", we're the exploited masses of the world trying to gain our freedom.

It's time we started acting like it!

[More Fire for the People]

Political parties are bourgeois inventions and structurally reflect the interests of the capitalist class.
Computers are bourgeois inventions as well. A party structurally reflects the interests of the class it is composed of.

[rouchambeau]

A party structurally reflects the interests of the class it is composed of.


The U.S. military is made up of mostly working class types. The minutemen are mostly working class types.

[Rawthentic]

Originally posted by Hopscotch [email protected] 10 2006, 11:23 AM

Political parties are bourgeois inventions and structurally reflect the interests of the capitalist class.
Computers are bourgeois inventions as well. A party structurally reflects the interests of the class it is composed of.
And thats why all the nations that successfully underwent Leninist revolution turned out so great right?

[More Fire for the People]

Originally posted by hastalavictoria+Aug 10 2006, 01:34 PM--> (hastalavictoria @ Aug 10 2006, 01:34 PM)
Hopscotch [email protected] 10 2006, 11:23 AM

Political parties are bourgeois inventions and structurally reflect the interests of the capitalist class.
Computers are bourgeois inventions as well. A party structurally reflects the interests of the class it is composed of.
And thats why all the nations that successfully underwent Leninist revolution turned out so great right? [/b]
Yes it is. The revolutions went quite well but you see there are more forces at work then a party of the working class. There are such things as capitalists, fascists, hegemony, underdevelopment, etc. Perhaps if you ever cracked open a book you would know this, but let me guess you think Antonio Gramsci is some kind of salad dressing.

[Lings]

Yeah.
And what about the countries without revolutions lead by lenninists?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

If you're really interested in an answer (which I suspect you're not, since all you do is make posts with rhetorical questions that attempt to point out how "bad" communism is), then download a speech from Michael Parenti called "The overthrow of communism".


And thats why all the nations that successfully underwent Leninist revolution turned out so great right?

Living standards and social measures increased in them all. They were all better off after the revolution that were before (or now in those in which capitalism has emerged).

[LSD]

Computers are bourgeois inventions as well.

Computers are tools. They can be used by anyone for virtually any purpose.

A political structure, however, is a very specific very class-linked entity. There's a reason that the early capitalists opposed the absolute depostism of the European kings. It wasn't because they had any special love for "the people", it's because feudal social arrangements perpetuate feudalism.

Similarly, bourgeois social arrangements perpetuate capitalism.

Political parties, "representative democracy", etc... they're all


A party structurally reflects the interests of the class it is composed of.

No it doesn't.

Unless you're claiming that "to its end", the CPSU was a proletarian party and the Soviet Government was a "workers' state", you must acknowledge that an organization can be effectively bourgeois even when its largely made up of proletarians.

For my part, I would contend that not only can "majority worker" political parties be bourgeois, but that they must be so. The party structure is, again, intrinsically capitalist in function. It doesn't matter what percentaqe of it's membership are technically workers, it will nonetheless always be fundamentally antithetical to proletarian organization.

Remember, fascist groups can be made up of workers too, that doesn't make them any less petty-bourgeois as organizations nor does it make them any less of a threat to the working class at large.

The American democratic party is almost entirely made of workers at its base, nonetheless because it is a bourgeois political party, its membership is wholly irrelevent.

The nature of political parties is that the leadership very rarely reflects the party at large. Ideologues and bureacrats are the only ones who have the dedication and energy to rise to the top. The rest barely have time to attend meetings.

At its hight, the CPSU counted something like 10% of the Soviet population among its members, around half of those were industrial workers. Despite the official tally, however, no one but the most die hard "revisionist" would claim that those 9 odd million workers had any say whatsover over state policy.

Stalin and Khruschev and Gorbachev did not differ to the "will" of the proletariat, they "judged" what was in the "popular interest" and acted accordingly. And they did so because that's what Lenin had done before them.

As I've repeated several times, power perpetuates itself and once it's established it does not dissapate without a fight. Lenin and his successors may have meant well, but because they operated within a centralized and anti-democratic power structure, they could not help but be oppressive.

A political party is designed to promote an ideology, the most "effective" means of doing this is to centralize and restrict power to those who are most expert in and most dedicated to the said ideology.

Obviously that's not conducive to democracy.


Living standards and social measures increased in them all. They were all better off after the revolution that were before

That's because state monopoly capitalism beats the hell out of feudalism.

Leninist parties are very good at industrializing backwards nations. What they are not good at is achieving capitalism!

[RevolutionaryMarxist]

Go Leninism, Down with Stalinism and Maoism!

If you read the State and Revolution, Lenin's idea are a logical reinterpretation of Marx into less fancy terms

[Wanted Man]

Worst. Thread. Ever. Because we all know that the best way to start a good, serious debate is by throwing in a bunch of one-sided rhetorical questions coated in biting sarcasm. Great going NWOG.

[Guest1]

Let's try some more questions LSD, what the hell do you consider a party?

[Comrade-Z]

Go Leninism, Down with Stalinism and Maoism!

If you read the State and Revolution, Lenin's idea are a logical reinterpretation of Marx into less fancy terms

Do you think State and Revolution is representative of Leninism? I ask because I tend to agree with a lot of State and Revolution. On the other hand....

To me, State and Revolution seems council communist (and marxist). For instance:


Originally posted by Lenin+--> (Lenin)Furthermore, during the transition from capitalism to communism suppression is still necessary, but it is now the suppression of the exploiting minority by the exploited majority. A special apparatus, a special machine for suppression, the “state”, is still necessary, but this is now a transitional state. It is no longer a state in the proper sense of the word; for the suppression of the minority of exploiters by the majority of the wage slaves of yesterday is comparatively so easy, simple and natural a task that it will entail far less bloodshed than the suppression of the risings of slaves, serfs or wage-laborers, and it will cost mankind far less. And it is compatible with the extension of democracy to such an overwhelming majority of the population that the need for a special machine of suppression will begin to disappear. Naturally, the exploiters are unable to suppress the people without a highly complex machine for performing this task, but the people can suppress the exploiters even with a very simple “machine”, almost without a “machine”, without a special apparatus, by the simple organization of the armed people (such as the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, we would remark, running ahead).

Lastly, only communism makes the state absolutely unnecessary, for there is nobody to be suppressed--“nobody” in the sense of a class, of a systematic struggle against a definite section of the population. We are not utopians, and do not in the least deny the possibility and inevitability of excesses on the part of individual persons, or the need to stop such excesses. In the first place, however, no special machine, no special apparatus of suppression, is needed for this: this will be done by the armed people themselves, as simply and as readily as any crowd of civilized people, even in modern society, interferes to put a stop to a scuffle or to prevent a woman from being assaulted. And, secondly, we know that the fundamental social cause of excesses, which consist in the violation of the rules of social intercourse, is the exploitation of the people, their want and their poverty. With the removal of this chief cause, excesses will inevitably begin to "wither away". We do not know how quickly and in what succession, but we do know they will wither away. With their withering away the state will also wither away.[/b]

(All previous and subsequent bolding is mine.)


Originally posted by Lenin+--> (Lenin)The selfish defence of capitalism by the bourgeois ideologists (and their hangers-on, like the Tseretelis, Chernovs, and Co.) consists in that they substitute arguing and talk about the distant future for the vital and burning question of present-day politics, namely, the expropriation of the capitalists, the conversion of all citizens into workers and other employees of one huge “syndicate”--the whole state--and the complete subordination of the entire work of this syndicate to a genuinely democratic state, the state of the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.[/b]

In other words, a council communist state.


Originally posted by Lenin
Democracy is of enormous importance to the working class in its struggle against the capitalists for its emancipation...Democracy is a form of the state, it represents, on the one hand, the organized, systematic use of force against persons; but, on the other hand, it signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens, the equal right of all to determine the structure of, and to administer, the state. This, in turn, results in the fact that, at a certain stage in the development of democracy, it first welds together the class that wages a revolutionary struggle against capitalism--the proletariat, and enables it to crush, smash to atoms, wipe off the face of the earth the bourgeois, even the republican-bourgeois, state machine, the standing army, the police and the bureaucracy and to substitute for them a more democratic state machine, but a state machine nevertheless, in the shape of armed workers who proceed to form a militia involving the entire population.


Originally posted by Lenin
From the moment all members of society, or at least the vast majority, have learned to administer the state themselves, have taken this work into their own hands, have organized control over the insignificant capitalist minority, over the gentry who wish to preserve their capitalist habits and over the workers who have been thoroughly corrupted by capitalism--from this moment the need for government of any kind begins to disappear altogether. The more complete the democracy, the nearer the moment when it becomes unnecessary. The more democratic the “state” which consists of the armed workers, and which is "no longer a state in the proper sense of the word", the more rapidly every form of state begins to wither away.

For when all have learned to administer and actually to independently administer social production, independently keep accounts and exercise control over the parasites, the sons of the wealthy, the swindlers and other "guardians of capitalist traditions", the escape from this popular accounting and control will inevitably become so incredibly difficult, such a rare exception, and will probably be accompanied by such swift and severe punishment (for the armed workers are practical men and not sentimental intellectuals, and they scarcely allow anyone to trifle with them), that the necessity of observing the simple, fundamental rules of the community will very soon become a habit.

Then the door will be thrown wide open for the transition from the first phase of communist society to its higher phase, and with it to the complete withering away of the state.

Nicely put, Lenin. ;)


[email protected]
The point at issue is neither opposition nor political struggle in general, but revolution. Revolution consists in the proletariat destroying the "administrative apparatus" and the whole state machine, replacing it by a new one, made up of the armed workers. Kautsky displays a "superstitious reverence" for “ministries”; but why can they not be replaced, say, by committees of specialists working under sovereign, all-powerful Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies?


Lenin
We, however, shall break with the opportunists; and the entire class-conscious proletariat will be with us in the fight--not to "shift the balance of forces", but to overthrow the bourgeoisie, to destroy bourgeois parliamentarism, for a democratic republic after the type of the Commune, or a republic of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, for the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

[More Fire for the People]

Unless you're claiming that "to its end", the CPSU was a proletarian party and the Soviet Government was a "workers' state", you must acknowledge that an organization can be effectively bourgeois even when its largely made up of proletarians.
As a matter of fact I do. I believe that the CPSU was a party of priveleged, bureaucratized workers similar to Western union bureaucrats. I also affirm that the USSR was a deformed workers’ state until its re-introduction of capitalist relations in the 1980s. I'm a Trotskyist, go look it up sometime and you find out what I typically believe.

[LSD]

Let's try some more questions LSD, what the hell do you consider a party?

A political organization that subscribes to a certain ideology and seeks to attain political power.


As a matter of fact I do. I believe that the CPSU was a party of priveleged, bureaucratized workers similar to Western union bureaucrats.

So then it wasn't a workers' party, it was a "priveleged, bureaucratized workers" party. Those two groups obviously have divergent, and often opposing, interests.

Besides, even if your bizarre Trotskyist revisionist history forces you to accept the CPSU as a proletarian party, I highly doubt that you would consider the NSDAP or American Democratic Party to be proletarian. And yet both of those parties are/were largely or primarily composed of workers.

Again, membership does not nescessarily dicate leadership. Especially when it comes to political parties, most "rank-and-file" members do not have the time to play the nescessary games to get to the top.

The kind of people who end up leading these organizations are the master bureacrats and career ideologues. Very rarely do these types of people share any common class interests with the party masses.

[Louis Pio]

Hmm LSD didn't really thought about getting dragged (since am at vacation at the moment) into this discussion but I started having enough of your socalled arguments. (why can't you present anything concrete? It would make discussion better.)

The strangest thing is that you try to describe a party using delegates as some dictatotrial party. First of all I find a delegate system to be the most democratic, I've been in pseudoanarchist groups were you just had the right to vote if you showed up at one meeting (which as always were being used by socalled anarchists). Were a delegate system were the active people in the branch discuss the issue and vote in my oppinion is much more democratic, personally I wouldn't wan't some freewheeler comming in and casting his vote without being accountable to his comrades for his actions, which in my oppinion seems to be what you want.

Secondly you seem so subscribe to the stalinist idea of Lenin being the sole man who let the bolshevics to power. As you probably know Lenin was in minority most of the time, before the October revolution he had big fights with Stalin and Kamennev about the need to take power and was defeated most of the time. Despite Kamenev and Stalins menshevic position he kept going and eventually convinced the rank and file. This has nothing to do with dictatorship but rather with one of his favourite phrases "patiently explain". In my oppinion your position springs from a total disregard of the working class being capeable of choosing their own path and leaders, nomatter how much anarchist dogma you put into it.

[LSD]

The strangest thing is that you try to describe a party using delegates as some dictatotrial party. First of all I find a delegate system to be the most democratic, I've been in pseudoanarchist groups were you just had the right to vote if you showed up at one meeting (which as always were being used by socalled anarchists). Were a delegate system were the active people in the branch discuss the issue and vote in my oppinion is much more democratic, personally I wouldn't wan't some freewheeler comming in and casting his vote without being accountable to his comrades for his actions, which in my oppinion seems to be what you want.

No, actually what I want is for proletarian organizing to be centred on proletarian organizations instead of bourgeois political parties.

I don't care if you structure your party on "delegate" or "freewheeling" lines, it will nonetheless not represent the interests of the class in general because the class in general does not have time to play the political party game.

Political parties, no matter how they are organized, exist to service an ideology. Workers' syndicates, however, exist to service workers. In my judgment, revolution must come from the latter direction rather than the former.

Ideology and theory are nice, but the whole point is to free the workers, not only at the conclusion of revolution but durring it, as a part of it. That can never come about with political "vanguard" parties leading the "struggle". It can when actual worker organizations do.


Secondly you seem so subscribe to the stalinist idea of Lenin being the sole man who let the bolshevics to power.

No, no, no.

I'm merely saying that Lenin's unique skills counteracted the undue power that he had.

If Lenin had not had the mind that he had, the Bolsheviks would not have had the success they did. Not because Lenin "was" the Bolsheviks, again it was a party oligarchy and Lenin didn't rule entirely alone, but the structure of the party was such that his influence was enough to shape general policy most of the time.

Again, if it had been Stalin instead of Lenin that was the "leading voice" of the Bolshevik party, we would not be discussing it today.

There still would have been a Russian Revolution, it's just highly unlikely that it would have been a "Bolshevik" one.


In my oppinion your position springs from a total disregard of the working class being capeable of choosing their own path and leaders, nomatter how much anarchist dogma you put into it.

On the contrary, I believe that the working class is more than able to choose its own path. Insofar as "leaders", however, you're damn right I'm skeptical.

Not of the workers' ability to choose, mind you, but of the ability of any "leader" to actually represent anyone's interest but his own.

There's a reason that Leninist "vanguards" have been typically lead by petty-bourgeois types. The rest of simply don't have the time or energy to play the nescessary bureaucratic games to sit on "party committees" or "politburos".

We do however have a direct interest in our own wellbeing and that of our fellow workers. Unlike abstract theory about "vanguards" and "dialectical processes", fighting for immediate class aims makes sense to people.

And parlaying that fight into the bigger general class war by means of workers' organization is, as I see it, the only way to make a proletarian revolution actually proletarian.

[Louis Pio]

First of all I see our major disaggrement being on the question of theory. To me theory is the accumulated experiences of the working class whereas you seem to think theory is of no importance, to each his own, I just think you are terrible wrong.

Secondly I find your "workers syndicates" to be nothing more than a word game. Workers have almost since the beginning of the class organised and through their experience tried different ways, your socalled workers syndicates are nothing new but a rather old idea, tried, tested and dumped. To seize power you need a rather wellstructured group.

On the question of leaders I see your point, you however make one grave mistake. As you rightly say most workers do't have the time to get involved fulltime (unless in a revolutionary situation like October) which is exactly why they ellect leaders, because they put people they trust to in position to serve their interests. Now the thing you don't touch upon is that the biggest part of bolshevic leaders in different postions during October were actually workers (or peasants in the form of soldiers), it was never the pettybourgiosie coup you want it to be.

Sorry if I don't reply in a while but am not home (vacation) so I don't really have the time or abbility to be on the net frequently :)

[LSD]

To me theory is the accumulated experiences of the working class whereas you seem to think theory is of no importance

That may be what theory should be, but it's rarely what it is.

Look, I don't deny that worker organizations need to have goals and understandings, I just don't think that ideology should be at the basis of our movement.

Working class revolution needs to come out of the living class struggle not some treatise on "the nature of capitalism". The nature of the political party, however, is that it does not organically evolve out of events, it exists rather to defend ideas.

Look around, leftist parties today don't publicize their dedication to the workers, they announce their theoretical sect; "Trotskyist", "Anarchist", "Leninst", "socialist", the core purpose of these organizations is to serve their ideological progenetors.

And I just don't accept that revolution can ever come out of ideology.


your socalled workers syndicates are nothing new but a rather old idea


Well, I never claimed that I was inventing anything new. ;)


tried, tested and dumped

The same could be said for "Marxism-Leninism".

So far, no type of proletarian organizing has worked because we've yet to achieve communism!

That doesn't mean that we don't already have many of the tools nescessary to get there, it just means that we haven't used them properly yet.

I'm not saying that I have all the answers, I'm just proposing a direction. Syndicalism is not a new idea, but, as I see it, it's the best one we've got right now.

I have no doubt that in upcoming decades the theories and idea of communism and anarchism will require significant revising. We may even need "another Marx" to give us that last push towards practical success.

But however events turn out, one thing that we can learn from the catastrophe of tentieth century Marxism is that while political parties are great at siezing power, they are lousy at freeing workers.


To seize power you need a rather wellstructured group.

The problem, though, is that once those "wellstructured groups" sieze power, they rarely give it up.

Again, a political party is built to take political power and execute its ideology. That's the whole reason for its existance.

But communism and workers' liberation isn't just a matter of "siezing" power. The revolutionary process cannot be treated as just another political process, because when it is, the results bear nothing in common with communism.

"Vanguard parties" promise liberation once they've been placed in power. We are expected to "trust" that when they become the bosses, things will "get better".

The problem with this equation, however, is that it ignores the material basis of class relations. Once the "leadership" of a party is firmly in control, that leadership becomes the new rulling class.

Not the class that it supposedly "represents", but the party elite itself.

That's why every Leninist revolution has failed so spectacularly, that's why despite the dedication and best wishes of Communist leaders throughout history, the workers have yet to actually gain power anywhere.

For a proletarian revolution to actually succeed, it must be a liberating process in itself. It must begin and end with the workers on the ground and it must be predicated on worker self-managment and motility.

"Iron discipline" or "centralization" is fundamentally antithetical to this aim and so any revolution predicated on those principles cannot help but fail. "Military-like" party organization may prove useful at overthrowing weak governments, but if coup d'états were our aim, we'd all be social-democrats.

Communism is about more than a change in government, it's about a change in governance; it's about replacing top-down coercion with participatory democracy.

And that's somewhere to which no one can "lead" us.


On the question of leaders I see your point, you however make one grave mistake. As you rightly say most workers do't have the time to get involved fulltime (unless in a revolutionary situation like October) which is exactly why they ellect leaders, because they put people they trust to in position to serve their interests.


"Trust" is an ephemeral abstraction, class position is concrete.

Lenin didn't renege on his State and Revolution promisses because he was "evil" or "untrustworthy", he did it because, upon gaining control over the means of production, it was no longer in his class interest to free the workers.

He now had the ability to directly manage the economy and to push it in the directions that he saw fit. That opportunity was simply too tempting for a lifelong theoretician to resist.

That's the ultimate problem with revolutionary "leadership" in any form, if the revolution is successful, the machinery for a new state despotism are already in place and the party elite all too smoothly transition into the new rulling class.

Besides, this notion of "party democracy" is and always has been a complete joke.

Workers do not have the time, resources, or dedication nescessary to seriously challenge the leadership of their party. "Choosing" a leader mostly means picking between elite party celebrity A and elite party celebrity B.

Again, workers do not have the time to play the party politics game, not on a direct level and not on an indirect one.

[rebelworker]

I agree with alot of what you ave said, and your critique of the party aparatus alienating the rank and file is spot on, but in practice i have a problem with for lack of a better term the hands off aproach towards propaghanda the "ultra left" critique brings alot of people to.

I think revolutionaries belong in the mass doing the day to day struggles, that is what makes revolution possible. But at the same time I see the need for revolutionary organisation, a place for revolutionary minded people to come togeather and share experiences and ideas and bring those conclusions to their coworkers and communities in a concerted way.

Here I say organisation, ot party. Seizing power and substituting itself for mass action and democracy must not be on the agenda.

We must always remember that if it were just a matter of a critical mass of workers coming to revolutionary conciousness we would have had communism by now. Syndicalist organisations were for a long time the most influencial, in terms of membership, in the left.

The problem is , weither we like it or not, there are political players at work, acrivly trying to lead workers this way or that. From social democracy to Leninism there are a whole host of movements and parties sucessfully winning workers over to their camps at critical moments in struggle. One of the most importnat and especially now damaging elements now is the union burocracy. The one group that time and time again, steps up to "lead workers in struggle, just in time to put the brakes on and return things to buisness as usual.

Revolutionaries must be organised, on a permanent or semi permanent basis to actively counter these elements and act as a pool of concious workers with a sort of institutional memory, making the important links between isloated contemporary struggles and the lessons of historical battles, painting a bigger picture that is equily out of reach for the all but driven worker who coulnt possibly conect all the dots by their selves.

All of us have come to the political conclusions that we have with the help of a great body of experience left to us by a collective conciousness from the past mixed with the day to day struggles shared with our brothers and sisters.

We mst continue that collective learning, and best done if revolutionaries can have the forums to do it togeather.

Internet forums help, but they are no substitute for tangable organisation capable of reaching people where they struggle.

[Honggweilo]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10 2006, 10:27 AM
Why did the glorious worker revolutions fall in the USSR and the rest of Eastern Europe, in China, in Vietnam?

Please tell us how the heroic workers gave up their power. Why did the workers and peasants give up their power? Why did they gave their power over to the bourgeois?

Also, another question. Why did their leaders, who was put there by the people, rule until the day they died? Were they so loved, that the people wanted them to govern for that long?
Why do you have the shanghai skyline in your avatar :P?

And why did council communism ala pannekoek, anarcho-communism/syndicalism and the such never gain any significant momentum en how are you trying plan and organize this?. to gain it without falling into the grasp of "stalinsts", maoists, leninists, trotskism and "the brutal opression of vanguardist who liqiudate the working movement". I have seen your actions within the system, against the system, but never a foundation of your theory for a new system.. And i would like to see you try and prove me wrong :D.

Ow and rethorical questions are a nusance, it lackes honesty and shows arrogance.

[Rawthentic]

Originally posted by Lennie [email protected] 10 2006, 12:48 PM
If you're really interested in an answer (which I suspect you're not, since all you do is make posts with rhetorical questions that attempt to point out how "bad" communism is), then download a speech from Michael Parenti called "The overthrow of communism".


And thats why all the nations that successfully underwent Leninist revolution turned out so great right?

Living standards and social measures increased in them all. They were all better off after the revolution that were before (or now in those in which capitalism has emerged).
no... Im pointing out how "bad" Leninism is.

[Rawthentic]

Originally posted by Hopscotch Anthill+Aug 10 2006, 11:38 AM--> (Hopscotch Anthill @ Aug 10 2006, 11:38 AM)
Originally posted by [email protected] 10 2006, 01:34 PM

Hopscotch [email protected] 10 2006, 11:23 AM

Political parties are bourgeois inventions and structurally reflect the interests of the capitalist class.
Computers are bourgeois inventions as well. A party structurally reflects the interests of the class it is composed of.
And thats why all the nations that successfully underwent Leninist revolution turned out so great right?
Yes it is. The revolutions went quite well but you see there are more forces at work then a party of the working class. There are such things as capitalists, fascists, hegemony, underdevelopment, etc. Perhaps if you ever cracked open a book you would know this, but let me guess you think Antonio Gramsci is some kind of salad dressing. [/b]
exactly, the underdevelopment shows that communist revolutions cannot be effected in underdeveloped nations.

And what I mean by my initial post on this thread is by how they turned out to be capitalist and how Leninism created Stalinism. This is not "quite well" in my book

[Louis Pio]

Just a small question: you then think that workers making a revolution in an "underdeveloped country" should turn the power over to the bourgiosie (who are in the pocket of the imperialists), it seems to be the logic quensequence of your view. It's a position quite similar to the menshevics and socalled bolshevics as Stalin and Kamenev.

[Marukusu]

I neither see myself as a leninist, stalinist, trotskyite nor maoist, though I do sympathise somewhat with all of the mentioned ideologies.
Both Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and Mao where outright motherfuckers and murderers at some times, and heroes at other times.

Lenin re-established the secret police after the revolution and made all the soviets puppets to the Communist Party. BUT he also ended the rule of the aristocrats in the former Russian Empire and contributed a lot to communist thought with his "leninsm".

The "crimes of Stalin" notorious. BUT he made the Soviet Union to a industrial country and a superpower... and utterly destroyed the plague called nazism. I think he deserves at least some creed for that.

Trotsky brutally crushed the Kronstadt rebellion, invented the infamous "blocking units" and insisted that brutal violence should be used against "traitors" and "deserters" during the Russian Civil War. BUT he also played a big role as a military commander and organizer in the civil war and it was much thanks to him that the bolsheviks won the war.

Mao Zedong where the brain behind the disastrous "Great Leap Forward" and the "Cultural Revolution", which both whent straight to hell in the end and killed many, many people (I don't even dare to put up any numbers). BUT he also stood up against the Soviet revisionism and hegemony over the communist movement (and before that he stood up against Japanese imperialism and unified the shattered China), and he also was wise enough to realize that the class-struggle still continues during socialism and that the communist party should be critizised and even overthrown if it showed signs of becoming to bureaucratic or if it ever decided to return to capitalistic doctorines.

Now that's what I think.

[Karl Marx's Camel]

Is there any reason for us marxists to even relate to these, more than we would relate to any other rulers? If there was no dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR, China, Vietnam etc. what is the fuzz about these rulers?

If rulers is not what we want, why "care"?

[Marukusu]

Because they sometimes are progressive and actually improves the living conditions of the working class?

[Led Zeppelin]

Originally posted by hastalavictoria+Aug 13 2006, 03:41 AM--> (hastalavictoria @ Aug 13 2006, 03:41 AM)
Originally posted by Hopscotch [email protected] 10 2006, 11:38 AM

Originally posted by [email protected] 10 2006, 01:34 PM

Hopscotch [email protected] 10 2006, 11:23 AM

Political parties are bourgeois inventions and structurally reflect the interests of the capitalist class.
Computers are bourgeois inventions as well. A party structurally reflects the interests of the class it is composed of.
And thats why all the nations that successfully underwent Leninist revolution turned out so great right?
Yes it is. The revolutions went quite well but you see there are more forces at work then a party of the working class. There are such things as capitalists, fascists, hegemony, underdevelopment, etc. Perhaps if you ever cracked open a book you would know this, but let me guess you think Antonio Gramsci is some kind of salad dressing.
exactly, the underdevelopment shows that communist revolutions cannot be effected in underdeveloped nations.

And what I mean by my initial post on this thread is by how they turned out to be capitalist and how Leninism created Stalinism. This is not "quite well" in my book [/b]
The USSR circa 1938 was more advanced in terms of material conditions than western-Europe and the US were in Marx' era, yet Marx and Engels thought it possible for revolutions to succeed in those nations at that time.

So either the theoreticians who theorized Communism are right, or you are. Guess who I'm siding with on this one?

[Wanted Man]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2006, 10:15 AM
Is there any reason for us marxists to even relate to these, more than we would relate to any other rulers? If there was no dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR, China, Vietnam etc. what is the fuzz about these rulers?

If rulers is not what we want, why "care"?
You are not a marxist. :lol:

[Karl Marx's Camel]

Originally posted by Matthijs+Aug 13 2006, 01:21 PM--> (Matthijs @ Aug 13 2006, 01:21 PM)
[email protected] 13 2006, 10:15 AM
Is there any reason for us marxists to even relate to these, more than we would relate to any other rulers? If there was no dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR, China, Vietnam etc. what is the fuzz about these rulers?

If rulers is not what we want, why "care"?
You are not a marxist. :lol: [/b]
Says the Stalinist :rolleyes:

[ZX3]

Originally posted by [email protected] 11 2006, 03:56 AM

Here I say organisation, ot party. Seizing power and substituting itself for mass action and democracy must not be on the agenda.

We must always remember that if it were just a matter of a critical mass of workers coming to revolutionary conciousness we would have had communism by now. Syndicalist organisations were for a long time the most influencial, in terms of membership, in the left.

The problem is , weither we like it or not, there are political players at work, acrivly trying to lead workers this way or that. From social democracy to Leninism there are a whole host of movements and parties sucessfully winning workers over to their camps at critical moments in struggle.



My question would be at this point: How do you keep the workers executing the revolution properly, if there are other political players ldemocratically leading the workers in other directions?

[ZX3]

exactly, the underdevelopment shows that communist revolutions cannot be effected in underdeveloped nations.
[/QUOTE]
But why would wealthy workers in advanced countries wish for a communist revolt? To be "more rich?"

[More Fire for the People]

What exactly dictates that underdeveloped nation 'x' cannot develop socialism if developed nation 'y' can if they are both capitalist?