stalin and lenin forget them - the fallacy of soviet era com

[zoea123]

I am amazed at the number of people on here who reference lenin and stalin in the same breath as marx. Marx would disown the two if he knew what they have wrought upon the world in the name of his political philosophy.

20 million dead my comrades. A pact with the devil ( the non agression pact between germany and russia ). The displacement of millions and the ecological devastation of a country in the name of the state. Have any of you actually read Das Capital? or the communist manefesto?

[TheDerminator]

zoea123,

For U Stalin = Lenin = genocide.

For some of the rest of us Lenin = genocide = the BORG version of history
And the vague left-wing believer of this tripe = simplistic interpreter of history accepting by rote the BORG version of the Russian revolution.
It is no great amazement that U have no understanding of Lenin's legitimate contribution to the international socialist movement, neither has vox. Antonio Gramsci, the other leading orthodox Marxist after Engels did not throw the baby out with the bathwater, but U and others never knew the baby existed. U only see the filfth of Stalinism = Leninism.
It is a crude intrepretation of history, and shows U have never really studied Lenin, never mind Gramsci. What U possess instead is a poor substitute for Gramsci-Leninism, because even that developed, and it is ludicrous to suggest that Gramsci would have rejected democracy in Italy as a possible way forward rather than revolution. Gramsci would be aware of the ambivalence of Marx on the subject.
He was ambivalent, and that ambivalence was at the heart of the Russian Revolution. The Paris Commune was not attacked by Marx, because it had a revolutionary basis, it was attacked by Marx, because it did not take up the dictatorship of the ploretariat, and that is something Lenin took on board.
U have a BORG conception of Lenin. It does not matter how much U read Das Kapital or the Communist Manifesto, if U do not understand the history of the socialist movement after Marx, then U are just dogmatically parrotting the version of the history of the socialist movement by liberal-democrats.
It is not a socialist interpretation, and never will be. We can proudly refer to Lenin in the same breadth as Marx. Marx could not disown Lenin, without disowning his own political theory.

May the Force be with U!

derminated

[zoea123]

I so disagree with you, but at least you stuck to the subject and stated your argument succinctly and well. I only know how Lenin underminded any true democratic/socialistic reformation of russian autocratic society. He betrayed the revolution and set in motion the system that spawned Stalin and the eventual depradation of russia. Every communist society has devolved into a despotic regime that was worse than the system replaced. But please educate me further if you disagree and suggest some reading material that supports your contentions. At least you are courteous and informative as opposed to civilism who choses to be insulting and quite disagreeable.

[MJM]

Where exactly do you get your figures from?
Do they include people killed in WW2?
Nazis and USSR soldiers?
People killed during the civil war?

I think there are some extreme circumstances that happened during the USSRs early phases;

WW2.

The great depression, although I have heard the USSR was largely uneffected it still was a big event happening in the world economy.

[Valkyrie]

"The Paris Commune was not attacked by Marx, because it had a revolutionary basis, it was attacked by Marx, because it did not take up the dictatorship of the ploretariat, and that is something Lenin took on board."

Derminator - Interesting interpretation of Marx on the Paris Commune, which seems to directly oppose Engels who wrote in an intro of a 1891 German edition of the work The Civil War in France; "Look at the Paris Commune. That was the dictatorship of the Proletariat."


Lenin, no doubt, obviously made a bad choice in Stalin, whether he choose him as his successor or not. it does not say much for Lenin's judgement of perception of character.





(Edited by Paris at 3:17 am on Mar. 26, 2002)


(Edited by Paris at 7:03 am on Mar. 29, 2002)

[Michael De Panama]

It is important to remember Lenin and Stalin. To remember where they went terribly wrong.

[Revolution Hero]

Stalin was the best leader Russia could have during the WW2. Only he could run the state properly and correctly.
Stalin's repressions were needed in order not to let counter- revolution happen. Stalin's age needed Stalin.
The non- agression pact between Soviet Union and Germany was just a smart diplomatic step. Stalin knew that the war with Nazis Germany and Soviet Union was apparent to happen, and he decided to gain some extra time in order to prepare for it.

At the end I would like to repeat the saying , which I don't get tired to repeat here: " Those , who criticizes Lenin can't be called communists."
Lenin have learned Marx and have built his theory according to Marxism. That is why the whole theory is called Marxism- Lenninism. If Zoea123 have read Capital and Communist Manifesto and criticizes Lenin , there is something wrong with Zoea. Such people were called opportunists.

[TheDerminator]

zoea123,

"I only know how Lenin underminded any true democratic/socialistic reformation of russian autocratic society."
"Know" from what source? Why should accept your apriori "knowledge" as a fait accompli, not to be questioned?
Lenin saw the opportunity for a socialist revolution; and history records that the opportunity was acted upon by the Bolsheviks.
You might argue the case that the revolution was premature, and ill-founded upon a lack of understanding of international socialism, but Marx was ambivalent about "revolution" and at the same time Russia was in the grip of World War I. It was the Bolsheviks who negotiated the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty.
The Bolsheviks were necessitated to act, and put their faith in a German Revolution, which died when Luxemburg and Leibnicht were murdered by the German State.
In a sense the Russian revolution died in Germany.
Lenin did not betray the Russian revolution. You make the simple equation that democratic centralism = bureaucratic centralism. There was no need to start up this thread. We have another five of them on the very same subject.
It is simplistic reductionism, it is the anarcho-BORG version of the history of the socialist movement. I will try to find U the title of a book on the subject, which is authorative. I recall there is a trilogy, by European author, and one convers the Bolshevik revolution, but the name of the author escapes me, at the moment.
However, he rejects the simplistic notion, that Stalinism, was the inevitable outcome of Leninism, as did Trotsky who wrote The Revolution Betrayed.
The whole internationalist socialist movement such as it exists in paralysis, rejects the anarcho-BORG lie that Stalinisn = Leninism.
Who or what is "civilism"?

Paris,
Engels was merely stating the Paris Commune was a case of worker's control, but U ought to know wherein Karl Marx derived "the dictatorship of the ploretariat" and that was from the fact that leaders of the Commune let the opposition forces regroup at Versailles. The opposition returned and blew the Commune and much of Paris to smithereens.
Thus Marx out of the ashes of the Paris Commune, grew the necessity for a "dictatorship of the ploretariat" and this is something Engels knew.
As for Lenin's evaluation of Stalin. Lenin did write a letter suggesting the removal of Stalin and it was not able to surface, due to the cohorts of Stalin.
Michael De Panama is just spouting the anarcho-BORG version of the revolution, and it is when this person spouts where Bakunin went terribly right we see the rejection of socialism for anarchism.
Revolution Hero, Stalin made gross errors in WW2 which cost lives, and before WW2, he decimated the leadership of the Red Army with purges. Zhukov, Timoshenko, etc, were the military strategists, and Trotsky could have done atleast as good as Stalin, if not better.
Trotsky was the leader of the Red Army!
The non-agression pact was heinious and if Trotsky had been in charge, the Red Army, would have been prepared so there was no reason to sign such a dreadful pact.
"Stalin's repressions were needed in order not to let counter- revolution happen. Stalin's age needed Stalin. "
Obscene stuff. The repressions were an obscenity against the name of socialism, and the revolution was dead, when the revolution became in the name of Stalin and his Party, instead of in the name of the people. There is a vast difference between Leninism and Stalinism.
Lenin can be criticised. No one is above criticism, and your statement would have appalled Lenin. The benchmark of a Socialist is their depth of humanity, not dogmatic glorification of any leader, no matter how good.
People like zoea123 come in all shapes and sizes so to speak, but they all end up calling anarchism "real socialism", because that is their only alternaitive to democratic centralism.
They are seeking ultra-democratic socialism, and have nothing to offer to the socialist movement. Opportunists? Hopeless romantics.

May the Force be U!

derminated

[El Che]

Hmm, Lenin was not Stalin. Lenin was a socialist at heart, but he was not a marxist. I think we have Lenin to thank for the athoritarian nature of the first every socialist state. It can be argued that it was this authoritarian nature of the soviet state, for which we have Lenin to thank, that made stalin possible. It is a valide case Derminator, there is much to invoque in defense of such a case. It could also be argued that the soviet state had to be authoritarian, I disagree with this, there should have been democracy in the first socialist state, had this happened I think the history of the socialist movement would have been altogether different.

[peaccenicked]

"The Russian Revolution
To propose a new way of looking at what happened in Russia in 1917 (and after) is synonymous with an invitation to be misunderstood. If moreover the questions asked and the methodology suggested happen to differ from those in current use the proposal almost becomes a guarantee. As we have had occasion to mention before misrepresentation is a way of life on the traditional left, for whom nothing is quite as painful as a new idea.

Over the last 50 years all the existing organisations of the left have elaborated a whole mythology (and even a whole anti-mythology) about the Russian Revolution. The parliamentary fetishists of Social-Democracy see 'the failure of Bolshevism' in its 'antidemocratic practices'. The original sin, for them, was the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. The self-styled 'communist' movement (Stalinists, Trotskyists, Maoists, etc.) talks with filial pride of the 'glorious, socialist, October Revolution'. They seek to vaunt and popularise its original achievements while differing in their appreciation's of what happened subsequently when it happened, why it happened and to whom it happened. For various anarchists the fact that the State or 'political power' were not immediately 'abolished' is the ultimate proof and yardstick that nothing of fundamental significance really occurred. (3) The SPGB draw much the same conclusion, although they attribute it to the fact that the wages system was not abolished, the majority of the Russian population not having had the benefit of hearing the SPGB viewpoint (as put by spokes men duly sanctioned by their Executive Committee) and not having then sought to win a Parliamentary majority in the existing Russian institutions.

On all sides people seek to use the Russian Revolution with a view to integrating it into their own propaganda - only retaining of it those aspects which happen to conform with their own particular analysis of history, or their own particular prescriptions for the present. What ever was new, whatever seemed to contradict established theories or break out of established categories, has been systematically 'forgotten', minimised, distorted, denied.

Any attempt to re evaluate the crucial experience of 1917-1921 is bound to evoke opposition. The first to react will be the 'apparatchiks' who for years have been protecting 'revolutionary' organisations (and 'revolutionary' ideology) from the dual threats of subversion and renewal. Opposition will also be found however in the minds of many honest militants, seeking the road to genuinely revolutionary politics. One isn't dealing here with a simple psychological resistance but with a much deeper phenomenon which cannot be explained away by reference to the reaction role and influence of various 'leaderships'. If the average militant has difficulty in understanding the full significance of some of the problems raised in the early stages of the Russian Revolution it is because these problems are amongst the most important and difficult (if not the most important and difficult) ever to have confronted the working class. The working class made a revolution that went beyond a mere change in the political personnel at the top. It was able to expropriate the former owners of the means of production (thereby profoundly altering the existing property relations). But to what extent was it able to go beyond even this? To what extent was it able - or prepared - to revolutionise the relations of production? Was it willing to destroy the authority structure which the relations of production embody and perpetuate in all class societies? To what extent was it prepared itself to manage production (and thereby the whole of society), or to what extent was it inclined to delegate this task to others? And to what extent was the dominant ideology to triumph, compelling the working class to substitute for its avowed enemies a Party that claimed to speak 'on its behalf'?

To answer these questions is a major task beset with pitfalls. One of the dangers confronting anyone seeking dispassionately to analyse the 'heroic period of the Russian Revolution' is the danger of 'retrospective identification' with this or that tendency or individual then active on the political scene (Osinsky, Kollontai, Maximov, Makhno or Miasnikov, for instance). This is a pointless political pastime. It leads rapidly to a state of mind where instead of seeking to understand the broad course of events (which is a relevant preoccupation) revolutionaries find themselves asking such questions as 'what should have been done at this or that moment?'; 'was this or that action premature?': 'who was right at this or that Congress?'; etc. We hope to have avoided this snare. When, for instance, we study the struggle of the Workers' Opposition against the leadership of the Party (in 1920 and 1921) it is not for us a question of 'taking sides'. It is a question of under standing what the forces in conflict really represented. What, for instance, were the motives (and the ideological and other limitations) of those who appeared to be challenging the drift to bureaucratisation in every aspect of social life?

Another danger (or another form of the same danger) threatens those venturing into this field for the first time, while still befuddled by the official mythology. It is the danger of becoming entangled in the very legend one is seeking to destroy. Those, for instance, seeking to 'demolish' Stalin (or Trotsky, or Lenin) may successfully achieve their immediate objective. But they may 'succeed' at the expense of not seeing, sensing or recording the most fundamental new features of this period: the autonomous action of the working class seeking totally to alter the conditions of its existence. We hope to have avoided this trap. If we have quoted at some length the statements of prominent individuals it is only insofar as they epitomise the ideologies which, at a given point in history, guided the actions and thoughts of men. Throughout the account, moreover, we have felt that the only way seriously to deal with what the Bolsheviks said or did was to explain the social role of their utterances and actions.

We must now state our own methodological premises. We hold that the 'relations of production' - the relations which individuals or groups enter into with one another in the process of producing wealth - are the essential foundations of any society. A certain pattern of relations of production is the common denominator of all class societies. This pattern is one in which the producer does not dominate the means of production but on the contrary both is 'separated from them' and from the products of his own labour. In all class societies the producer is in a position of subordination to those who manage the productive process. Workers' management of production - implying as it does the total domination of the producer over the productive process - is not for us a marginal matter. It is the core of our politics. It is the only means whereby authoritarian (order-giving, order-taking) relations in production can be transcended and a free, communist or anarchist, society introduced.

We also hold that the means of production may change hands (passing for instance from private hands into those of a bureaucracy, collectively owning them) with out this revolutionising the relations of production. Under such circumstances - and whatever the formal status of property - the society is still a class society for production is still managed by an agency other than the producers themselves. Property relations, in other words, do not necessarily reflect the: relations of production. They may serve to mask them - and in fact they often have. (4)

This much of the analysis is fairly widely accepted. What has not been hitherto attempted is to relate the history of the Russian Revolution to this overall conceptual framework. Here we can only indicate the broad lines of such an approach. (5) Seen in this light the Russian Revolution represents an unsuccessful attempt by the Russian working class to break out of relations of production that were proving increasingly oppressive. The massive upsurge of 1917 proved strong enough to smash the political supremacy of the bourgeoisie (by shattering the economic base on which it was founded: the private ownership of the means of production). It altered the existing system of property relations. But it did not prove strong enough (despite heroic attempts in this direction) to alter the authoritarian relations of production characteristic of all class societies. Sections of the working class (those most active in the Factory Committee movement) certainly attempted to influence the Revolution in this direction. But their attempt failed. It is worth analysing the causes of this failure - and seeing how new masters came to replace the old ones.

What were the forces pitted against those seeking a total transformation of the conditions of industrial life? First, of course, there was the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie had everything to lose in such a total social upheaval. Confronted with workers' management, it stood to lose not only its ownership of the means of production but also the possibility of privileged positions vested in expertise and in the exercise of decisional authority. No wonder the bourgeois breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that the leaders of the Revolution would 'go no further than nationalisation' and were keen to leave intact the order-giver/order-taker relationship in industry and else where. True, large sections of the bourgeoisie fought desperately to regain their lost property. The Civil War was a protracted and bloody affair. But thousands of those who, through custom and culture, were more or less closely attached to the expropriated bourgeoisie were very soon offered the opportunity to re-enter the 'revolutionary stronghold' - by the back door as it were - and to resume their role as managers of the labour process in the 'Workers' State'. They seized this unexpected opportunity eagerly. In droves they either joined the Party - or decided to co-operate with it, cynically welcoming every utterance by Lenin or Trotsky in favour of 'labour discipline' or 'one-man management'. Many were soon to be appointed (from above) to leading positions in the economy. Merging with the new political-administrative 'elite', of which the Party itself formed the nucleus, the more 'enlightened' and technologically skilled sections of the 'expropriated class' soon resumed dominant positions in the relations of production.

Secondly, the Factory Committee Movement had to cope with openly hostile tendencies on the 'left', such as the Mensheviks. The Mensheviks repeatedly stressed that as the revolution could only be of bourgeois-democratic type there could be no future in attempts by the workers to manage production. All such endeavours were denounced as 'anarchist' and 'utopian'. In places the Mensheviks proved a serious obstacle to the Factory Committee Movement, but the opposition was anticipated, principled and consistent.

Thirdly - and far more difficult to see through - was the attitude of the Bolsheviks. Between March and October the Bolsheviks supported the growth of the Factory Committees, only to turn viciously against them in the last few weeks of 1917. seeking to incorporate them into the new union structure, the better to emasculate them. This process, which is fully described in the pamphlet, was to play an important role in preventing the rapidly growing challenge to capitalist relations of production from coming to a head. Instead the Bolsheviks canalised the energies released between March and October into a successful onslaught against the political power of the bourgeoisie (and against the property relations on which that power was based). At this level the revolution was 'successful'. But the Bolsheviks were also 'successful' in restoring 'law and order' in industry law and order that re consolidated the authoritarian relations in production, which for a brief period had been seriously shaken.

Why did the Party act in this manner? To answer this question would require a much fuller analysis of the Bolshevik Party and of its relation to the Russian working class than we can here attempt. Again one would have to steer clear both of mythology ('the great Bolshevik Party', 'the weapon forged by Lenin', 'the spearhead of the revolution', etc.) and of anti-mythology ('the Party as the embodiment of totalitarianism. militarism, bureaucracy,' etc.), seeking constantly to understand rather than to rant or rave. At the superficial level both the Party's ideology and its practice were firmly rooted in the specific historical circumstances of Tsarist Russia, in the first decade of this century. illegality and persecution partly explain (although they do not justify) the Party's organisational structure and its conception of its relationship to the class. (6) What is more difficult to understand is the naivete of the Bolshevik leaders who don't seem to have appreciated the effects that this type of organisation and this type of relationship to the class would inevitably have on the subsequent history of the Party.

Writing of the early history of the Party no lesser an exponent of Bolshevik orthodoxy than Trotsky was to state- "The habits peculiar . . . to a political machine were already forming in the underground. The young revolutionary bureaucrat was already emerging as a type. The conditions of conspiracy, true enough, offered rather meagre scope for such formalities of democracy as elections, accountability and control. Yet undoubtedly the Committee men narrowed these limitations considerably more than necessity demanded. They were far more intransigent and severe with the revolutionary working men that with themselves, preferring to domineer even on occasions that called imperatively for lending an attentive ear to the voice of the masses. Krupskaya notes that, just as in the Bolshevik committees, so at the Congress itself, there were almost no working men. The intellectuals predominated. ''The Committee man'' writes Krupskaya, ''was usually quite a self-confident person . . . as a rule he did not recognise any internal party democracy... did not want any innovations . . . did not desire and did not know how to adapt himself to rapidly changing conditions". (7)

What all this was to lead to was first hinted at in 1905. Soviets had appeared in many places. "The Petersburgh Committee of the Bolsheviks was frightened at first by such an innovation as a non-partisan representation of the embattled masses. It could find nothing better to do than to present the Soviet with an ultimatum: immediately adopt a Social-Democratic programme or disband. The Petersburgh Soviet as a whole, including the contingent of Bolshevik working men as well, ignored this ultimatum without batting an eyelid". (8) Broue, one of the more sophisticated apologists of Bolshevism, was to write that "those in the Bolshevik Party who were the most favourable to the Soviets only saw in them, in the best of cases, auxiliaries for the Party . . . only belatedly did the Party discover the role it could play in the Soviets, and the interest that the Soviets presented for increasing the Party's influence with a view to leading the masses". (9) The problem is put here in a nutshell. The Bolshevik cadres saw their role as the leadership of the revolution. Any movement not initiated by them or independent of their control could only evoke their suspicion. (10) It has often been said that the Bolsheviks were 'surprised' by the creation of the Soviets: this euphemism should not mislead us. The reaction of the Bolsheviks was of far deeper significance than mere 'surprise' - it reflected a whole concept of revolutionary struggle, a whole concept of the relationship between workers and revolutionaries. The action of the Russian masses themselves. as far back as 1905, was already to condemn these attitudes as outdated.

This separation between the Bolsheviks and the masses was to be revealed repeatedly during 1917. It was first witnessed during the February revolution, again at the time of the 'April Theses'. and later still at the time of the July days. (11) It has repeatedly been admitted that the Party made 'mistakes' both in 1905 and in 1917. But this 'explanation' explains nothing. What one should be asking is what made these mistakes possible? And one can answer only if one understands the type of work undertaken by the Party cadres, from the creation of the Party right up to the time of the Revolution. The Party leaders (from those on the Central Committee down to those in charge of local groups) had been placed, through the combined effects of the conditions of the struggle against Tsarism and of their own organisational conceptions, in a situation which allowed them only tenuous links with the real workers movement. "A worker-agitator" wrote Lenin, "who shows any talent and is at all promising should not work in the factory. We must see to it that he lives on Party support . . . and goes over to an underground status". (12) No wonder the few Bolshevik cadres of working class origin soon lost real contacts with the class.

The Bolshevik Party was torn by a contradiction which helps explain its attitude before and after 1917. Its strength lay in the advanced workers who supported it. There is no doubt that this support was at times widespread and genuine. But these workers could not control the Party. The leadership was firmly in the hands of professional revolutionaries. In a sense this was inevitable. A clandestine press and the dissemination of propaganda could only be kept going regularly by militants constantly on the move and at times compelled to seek refuge overseas. A worker could only become a Bolshevik cadre on condition he ceased work and placed himself at the disposal of the Party, which would then send him on special missions, to this or that town. The apparatus of the Party was in the hands of revolutionary specialists. The contradiction was that the real living forces that provided the strength of the Party could not control it. As an institution, the Party totally eluded control by the Russian working class. The problems encountered by the Russian Revolution after 1917 did not bring about this contradiction, they only served to exacerbate it. The attitude of the Party in 1917 and after are products of its history. This is what rendered so futile most of the attempts made within the Party by various oppositions between 1918 and 1921. They failed to perceive that a given ideological premise (the preordained hegemony of the Party) led necessarily to certain conclusions in practice.

But even this is probably not taking the analysis far enough. At an even deeper level the very conception of this kind of organisation and this kind of relationship to the mass movement reflect the unrecognised influence of bourgeois ideology, even on the minds of those who were relentlessly seeking to overthrow bourgeois society. The concept that society must necessarily be divided into 'leaders' and 'led', the notion that there are some born to rule while others cannot really develop beyond a certain stage have from time immemorial been the tacit assumptions of every ruling class in history. For even the Bolsheviks to accept them shows how correct Marx was when he proclaimed that 'the ruling ideas of each epoch are the ideas of its ruling class'. Confronted with an 'efficient', tightly-knit organisation of this kind, built on ideas of this kind, it is scarcely surprising that the emerging factory Committees were unable to carry the Revolution to completion.

The final difficulty confronting the Committees was inherent in the Committee movement itself. Although certain individuals showed extraordinary lucidity, and although the Committee Movement represents the highest manifestation of the class struggle achieved in 1917, the movement as a whole was unable to understand what was happening to it and to offer any serious resistance. It did not succeed in generalising its experience and the record it left is, unfortunately, very fragmentary. Unable to proclaim its own objectives (workers' self-management) in clear and positive terms, it was inevitable that others would step into the vacuum. With the bourgeoisie in full disintegration, and the working class as yet insufficiently strong or conscious to impose its own solutions to the problems tearing society apart, the triumphs of Bolshevism and of the bureaucracy were both inevitable.

An analysis of the Russian Revolution shows that in allowing a specific group, separate from the workers themselves, to take over the function of managing production, the working class loses all possibility of even controlling the means of producing wealth. The separation of productive labour from the means of production results in an exploiting society. Moreover, when institutions such as the soviets could no longer be influenced by ordinary workers. the regime could no longer be called a soviet regime. By no stretch of the imagination could it still be taken to reflect the interests of the working class. The basic question: who manages production after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie? should therefore now become the centre of any serious discussion about socialism Today the old equation (liquidation of the bourgeoisie = workers' state) popularised by countless Leninists, Stalinists and Trotskyists is just not good enough.

In 1917 the Russian workers created organs (Factory Committees and Soviets) that might have ensured the management of society by the workers themselves. But the soviets passed into the hands of Bolshevik functionaries. A state apparatus, separate from the masses, was rapidly reconstituted. The Russian workers did not succeed in creating new institutions through which they would have managed both industry and social life. This task was therefore taken over by someone else, by a group whose specific task it became. The bureaucracy organised the work process in a country of whose political institutions it was also master.

All this necessitates a serious re-evaluation of several basic concepts. 'Workers' power' cannot be identified or equated with the power of the Party - as it repeatedly was by the Bolsheviks. In the words of Rosa Luxemburg, workers' power must be implemented 'by the class, not by a minority, managing things in the name of the class. It must emanate from the active involvement of the masses, remain under their direct influence, be submitted to control by the entire population, result from the increasing political awareness of the people'. As for the concept of 'taking power' it cannot mean a semi military putsch, carried out by a minority, as it obviously does for so many who still seem to be living in the Petrograd of 1917. Nor can it only mean the defence - however necessary - of what the working class has won against attempts by the bourgeoisie to win it back. What 'taking power' really implies is that the vast majority of the working class at last realises its ability to manage both production and society - and organises to this end.

This text is in no sense an economic history of Russia between 1917 and 1921. It is. at best, a selective industrial chronology. In most instances the facts speak for themselves. In a few places, we have taken the opportunity of describing our own views, particularly when we felt that all the protagonists in the great historical debates were wrong, or trapped in a system of ideas that prevented them from appreciating the real significance of what was happening. Events such as the stages of the Civil War are only mentioned in order to place various controversies in context - and to nail once and for all the allegation that many of the measures described were taken 'as a result of the Civil War'.

It will probably be objected that, throughout the narrative, greater stress has been placed on various struggles within the Party than on the actions of the millions who, for one reason or another, never joined the Party or who, from the beginning, saw through what it was endeavouring to do. The 'charge' is true but the shortcoming almost unavoidable. The aspirations of thousands of people, their doubts, their hesitations, their hopes, their sacrifices, their desire to transform the conditions of their daily life and their struggles to do so are undoubtedly as much a moulding force of history as the resolutions of Party Congresses or the speeches of Party leaders. Yet an activity that has neither rules nor statutes, neither tribunes nor troubadours, belongs almost by definition to what history suppresses. An awareness of the problem, however acute, will not generate the missing material. And an essay such as this is largely a question of documentation. The masses make history, they do not write it. And those who do write it are nearly always more concerned with ancestor worship and retrospective justification that with a balanced presentation of the facts.

Other charges will also be made. The quotations from Lenin and Trotsky will not be denied but it will be stated that they are 'selective' and that 'other things, too' were said. Again, we plead 'guilty'. But we would stress that there are hagiographers enough in the trade whose 'objectivity' (like Deutscher's for instance) is but a cloak for sophisticated apologetics. There is moreover another reason for unearthing this material. Fifty years after the Revolution - and long after its 'isolation' has been broken - the bureaucratic system in Russia clearly bears little resemblance to the model of the Paris Commune (elected and revocable delegates, none receiving more than a workingman's wage, etc., etc.). In fact Russia's social structure has scarcely any anticipation in the whole corpus of Marxist theory. It therefore seems more relevant to quote those statements of the Bolshevik leaders of 1917 which helped determine Russia's evolution rather than those other statements which, like the May Day speeches of Labour leaders, were for ever to remain in the realm of rhetoric."
This is a more sophisticated take on the revolution but it is still, so open to debate. In what sense is a majority not a majority, when its leaders are a minority.
'The led and leaders'. Usual anarchist denial of precomumunist hierarchy. How the war here is side
stepped as a condition of most of the revolution.
Whose version is right?
I can produce Trotskys version, and many others who are not biased with a left communist critique.
Maybe would should really be arguing about why we are arquing. What do we want to prove?
(sorry have to go now catch you soon)

[zoea123]

I really enjoy reading all your replies and I have learned quite a bit. But hte lesson i come away with is this-there is a grand denial going on here. Stalin was the worse thing for Russia during WWII. He signed the non agression pact so he and Hitler could carve up Poland. remember, Stalin purged the Polish officer corp essentially beheading what little military might Ploand possessed.

The real issue here is what agenda you guys really support; an egalatarian, democratic, socialist society based on the tenents of Marxism or hang on to the horrific past of Lenin and Stalin and continue to jusitify your apologetics ad nauseum into irrelavancy. It is your choice my comrades and the comments my postings have illicited only bolster my contentions.

[El Che]

No I`m sorry that is not the issue of this thread. The issue of this thread is your revision of Lenin and Stalin, your views on Lenin have been challenged, and that is the point you must address. Our agendas are a totaly different matter, especialy since this board is made up of all sorts of people with different inclinations and tendancies. And while I`m not a fan of Lenin my self, I dont think putting him the same boat as Stalin is justified.


Good piece, peace. The Bolshevik party was in the end the final obstacle of the revolution. Exactly because it made the revolution its own. The Bolsheviks toke possession of something they had no right to, the revolution, the revolution belonged to the working class. It is well described in your article how the contradiction between party and working class is present from day 1 of party existence, it is this that is at the heart of the problem, it is here that Lenin and the Bolsheviks fail. Does it not stand to reason that if whatever party has the authority over the working class, then it is in and of its self an obstacle to the emancipation of the working class and the true effectivation of revolution? Who is the great apologist vanguard authority? Do you not see his--and their-- myopie? The true betrayal of the revolution started long before the revolution its self started, it was not Stalin that betrayed the revolution but it was rather the vanguardist concept. The party is necessary, the professional revolutionary is necessary, exactly because he can do, by devotion and time alone, what any working man can not. The party is necessary, therefore Lenin was necessary, but he should not have the power over those he is representing. This is at the heart of Leninist theory and practice and it is the main reason for the effective faliure of all sucessful revolutions to this day. In the end we have the beurocratic control of the means of production and class antagonisms are maintained. It is simply one more rotation of one ruling class by another, this is not Marxism, this is the exact oposite of socialist evolution of society. Its antagonic to the very concept of Marxism. Lenin can not escape his responsibilities, and you and your borther should be honest and straight foward enough to recognise them.


(Edited by El Che at 12:12 pm on Mar. 27, 2002)

[El Che]

By the way, who wrote that essay? is there more of the same?

[zoea123]

Whether you agree with me on not, comrades, I do appreciate you hearing my views and engaging me in a civil, courteous discourse.

[vox]

"By the way, who wrote that essay? is there more of the same?"

I believe that it came from a pamphlet called "The Bolsheviks and Workers Control" by Maurice Brinton. You can find it here:

http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/216...3/bolintro.html (http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/2163/bolintro.html)

vox

[El Che]

Vox, you must have some internet archive on socialist topics...

[peaccenicked]

You argument basically is the vanguard must necessarily be corrupted by power. This a childish human nature argument used against socialism.
What is dishonest comrade is criticising a tried and tested method of revolutionary organisation without a replacing it with a coherent alternative.
What you imply is that all representatives are corrupt.
Here is a simple question?
If the vast majority vote socialist
should socialists take power even though only a minority actually actively participating an public life?
Your arguments are saying ''Dont let anybody represent you, representative democracy betrays the revolution.
You are saying no to the majority.You argument is anti democratic. You want no truck wih power.
That comrade is betraying the revolution before it happens.

[peaccenicked]

"This brings me to my second theme. Gramsci saw the role of the intellectual as a crucial one in the context of creating a counter hegemony. He was clear that the transformation from capitalism to socialism required mass participation. There was no question that socialism could be brought about by an elite group of dedicated revolutionaries acting for the working class. It had to be the work of the majority of the population conscious of what they were doing and not an organised party leadership. The revolution led by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917 was not the model suitable for Western Europe or indeed any advanced industrialised country." From MJMs post.
What the revolution requires is mass participation.
No one is going to argue against majority participation.
Here we have to understand transition a class in itself to a class for itself is an organisation, what ever form this organisation through either majority support participation wrest power from the bourgeoisie and smash the bourgeois state and set about creating a classless society.
If you are saying that the class in itself does not become a class for itself, that the bourgeois State will dissappear without a transfer of power to the working class and its organisations. I think you are living in cloud cuckoo land.

[Revolution2002]

Perhaps Lenin..... certinaly not Stalin.

[El Che]

Well this is odd, you wish to do an apology of vanguardism peace? haha. So be it.

Will the vanguard always be currupted by power? well I dont know, maybe yes or maybe no, point is in my view the vaguard has no right to power therefore I am not faced with that problem. The question of power within society always gets the same simple and cofidente answer from me, representative democracy is that answer. Dont try and put words in my mouth.

Your tried and test method of revolutionary organisation speaks for its self, it is my dear friend the strongest argument against you, and the method in question. Alternative? Democratic control of the majority over power in society.

Do I imply all representatives are corrupt? lol. There you go again putting words in my mouth. Represntatives are what they are, they may be corrupt or not, but in the society in defend they are not self apointed representatives and the have to answer regularly to those they represent. You just cant agrue against that, its only ethical system and it is the only system that will bring change. Human nature? save your demagogy. Its all about legitemacy and democratic control of the means of POWER. Power to the people not for the people.

How am I saying no to the majority? how am I saying no to democracy? how am I "betraying the revolution"? If you dont answer this conherantly I`ll be forced to think you`ve lost your marbles. Why im arguing the very opposite...

Now this last point is a bit more delicate. You speak of a class in its self and a class for its self etc.. that to me means nothing, there will alwaays be those whom have the power and those who dont, those who dont have the power must have democratic control over those who do end of story. But was is a bit more interesting and atention worthy is when you say that for the bourgeois state to dissappear we must transfer power to the working class and its organisations. Now I will not avoid this issue, I have to define by self towards it. Maybe you will say such a position as mine is not socialist, but I believe times change and we must evolve and change with them, or become extinct. I dont favor transfering power to the working class alone, society as a whole must have the same right to democratic participations. Not just one class. Every man and women independante of class must have a right to vote therefore there share of power. We may discuss this last point further but if you really want my honest opinion it is the only point worth discussing.

[Valkyrie]

Paris,
Engels was merely stating the Paris Commune was a case of worker's control, but U ought to know wherein Karl Marx derived "the dictatorship of the ploretariat" and that was from the fact that leaders of the Commune let the opposition forces regroup at Versailles. The opposition returned and blew the Commune and much of Paris to smithereens.
Thus Marx out of the ashes of the Paris Commune, grew the necessity for a "dictatorship of the ploretariat" and this is something Engels knew.
As for Lenin's evaluation of Stalin. Lenin did write a letter suggesting the removal of Stalin and it was not able to surface, due to the cohorts of Stalin.


Derminator,

Isn't worker's control synonymous to the position of the dictatorship of the proletariat? Don't you rather mean that out of the ashes of the Paris Commune the need arose for the revolutionary element of the struggle?




(Edited by Paris at 9:11 pm on Mar. 28, 2002)

[peaccenicked]

"Vanguard
Opposite of Mass.

In any social movement there is a vanguard and a mass. On one side, the vanguard, are groups of people who are more resolute and committed, better organised and able to take a leading role in the struggle, and on the other side, the mass, are larger numbers of people who participate in the struggle or are involved simply by their social position, but are less committed or well-placed in relation to the struggle, and will participate only in the decisive moments, which in fact change history.

The Marxist theory of the vanguard, in relation to class struggle under capitalism, stipulates that the working class, the mass, needs to be militantly lead through revolutionary struggle against capitalism and in the building of Socialism. The Communist vanguard is theoretically made up of the forefront of workers who are engaged in direct struggles against the capitalist state, and who occupy an advanced position in constructively and creatively building the socalist movement.''Glossary.

There is no apolology, there is a need for the organisation of the working class.
All activists are self appointed. Why not just stay in your bed all day because no one appoints you. Get real.
Where do we not seek election?
"Democratic control over power in society"
How is that going to be achieved. you have merely presented the goal of revolution.
To me the most disturbing thing about past revolutions is that they were limited to poor nation states. Revolutions isolated will move towards bureaucracy.But let us celebrate our victories and not only look at the goal of revolution and dismiss the heroic struggles of the revolutionary class.
A class for itself, is undestood like this in terms of class interests "Class interests are fundamentally different from, and cannot be derived from, the individual interests imputed by the utilitarian school and classical British political economy. Potential common interests of members of a particular stratum derive from the location of that stratum within particular social structures and productive relations. But potentiality is transformed into actuality, Klasse en sich (class in itself) into Klasse fuer sich (class for itself), only when individuals occupying similar positions become involved in common struggles; a network of communication develops, and they thereby become conscious of their common fate. It is then that individuals become part of a cohesive class that consciously articulates their common interests. As Carlyle once put it, "Great is the combined voice of men." Although an aggregate of people may occupy similar positions in the process of production and their lives may have objectively similar determinants, they become a class as a self-conscious and history- making body only if they become aware of the similarity of their interests through their conflicts with opposing classes.''
No one can think independently of class in real terms, those caught in the middle move to one side or the other. Even members of the bourgeiosie come over to the ranks of the proletariat. Working class interests are the universal interests of humanity ultimately. The capitalists act against humanity.
What I am arguing is that the class interests of the proletariat can only be expressed by the organised working class and its allies.
No matter the type of that organisation, even if it declares itself to be anarchist, will be by nature vanguardistic scientifically. Vanguard as opposed to mass.
With you all I see is a future mass sharing majority power.
How does it get it into a position that allows it to share majority power?
That is the fundamental question of Revolution.




(Edited by peaccenicked at 2:00 pm on Mar. 29, 2002)

[El Che]

Vanguard as opposed to Mass, yes very well, thats true, but its also totaly irelevant and beside the point. Where did I say activists must be apointed? who on this earth would say an enormity such as that? You really must give me no credit at all if thats what you understood of my words. When I spoke of self apointed representatives I was implicitly refering [of course] to represntatives in positions of power. Self apointed Representatives in positions of power like Lenin, Fidel or Stalin.

You write:

""Democratic control over power in society"
How is that going to be achieved. you have merely presented the goal of revolution."

I frontaly disagree with this statement. You can have democracy without socialism, the final goal of leninist revolution is not democracy alone its muc more then that. I repeat that democracy can exist without socialism, it is 100 times so. Cultural hegemony is one very important factor in this equasion, and unlike leninists I dont believe you fight cultural hegemony with fascist state. You fight it with activism, the same activism you say I condem. Hah. Try being politicaly active in a Leninist state and you`ll see where you`ll end up.

Is it impossible to think independently of class? Well if you mean its everyone always thinks in terms of what interests them, then maybe. But thinking in class terms is more then that, its thinking of the whole class, its is class consciousness.

You seem to think revolution will bring democracy, and without revolution there is no democracy. I consider socialist revolution and representative democracy are to different things that are not opposed to each other but that have been separated by circumstances and by mediocre theorists like Lenin. I propose to you the idea that you already have today, in advanced nations, representative democracy that is hindered my cultural hegemony and propaganda. This of course to prepetuate the satus quo of capitalist exploitation. I submit to you that what you must atack, what the working class, as conscious class, organised by any number of "vanguards"(political and social movements etc..), what we all must atack are theses obstructional elements of the democracy already existent. To go from what exists now, to a Leninist state is to walk backwards in evolutionary terms. It is to go from little democracy and political freedom, to no democracy and no political freedom. And I`m not even getting started on what the predictable results of said revolutions will be again in terms of socialist evolution of society.

This is my position, it has always been so, you should know all of this by now. However it seems to me that you are avoid the real issues and I dont know why.

Note that the term revolution is abiguous, in the above by revolution I mean Marxist-Leninst revolution.

Also keep in mind that im not judging the people who to part in these various struggles. Revisions of Lenin require atention to the particular circunstances of the events the protagonists participate in. I`m not condeming them peace, I`m condeming the method, and I`m speaking for what I think should be the socialist position in the year 2002. In you I find passivity or indifference if not defense of the type of vanguardism that has brought no progess and threatens to kill the movement once and for all.

(Edited by El Che at 2:33 pm on Mar. 29, 2002)


(Edited by El Che at 2:37 pm on Mar. 29, 2002)

[TheDerminator]

Marx
Letter to Kugelmann
"If you look at the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire you will find that I say that the next attempt of the French revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it, and this is essential for every real people's revolution on the Continent. And this is what our heroic Party comrades in Paris are attempting. What elasticity, what historical initiative, what a capacity for sacrifice in these Parisians! After six months of hunger and ruin, caused rather by internal treachery than by the external enemy, they rise, beneath Prussian bayonets, as if there had never been a war between France and Germany and the enemy were not at the gates of Paris. History has no like example of a like greatness. If they are defeated only their "good nature" will be to blame. They should have marched at once on Versailles, after first Vinoy and then the reactionary section of the Paris National Guard had themselves retreated. The right moment was missed because of conscientious scruples. They did not want to start the civil war, as if that mischievous abortion Thiers had not already started the civil war with his attempt to disarm Paris. Second mistake: The Central Committee surrendered its power too soon, to make way for the Commune. Again from a too "honorable" scrupulosity! However that may be, the present rising in Paris -- even if it be crushed by the wolves, swine and vile curs of the old society -- is the most glorious deed of our Party since the June insurrection in Paris. Compare these Parisians, storming heaven, with the slave to heaven of the German-Prussian Holy Roman Empire, with it posthumous masquerades reeking of the barracks, the Church, cabbage-junkerdom and above all, of the philistine."

Paris.

There it is; the attack by Marx on the failure to march on Versailles.
The revolutionary element of the struggle was part and parcel of the rising of the Paris Commune This was not the lesson to be learned. The lesson was the necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat!
The Commune had a form of workers control. What is did not possess was the dictatorship of the proletariat, and if this was lost on Engels, that was his error. Workers control= socialist democracy. Dictatorship of the proletariat is more exact. Dictatorship of the proletariat = socialist democracy aimed at preventing counter-revolution.
It was out of the blood soaked ashes of the Paris Commune, that we gain the Marxist understanding for the necessity for a dictatorship of the proletariat.
The "believers" in liberty, egality and fraternity bombarded their "beloved" Paris using cannons to crush the Commune!
Marx and Lenin learned the hard lesson dished out be the French BORGS. U have not.

May the Force be with U!

[peaccenicked]

"Democratic control over power in society''
I submit that democratic control over power in society cannot be truly practised outside of socialism. That relations of dominance are necessary to capitalist society and are intrinsic to its nature.
Socialism is the ending of all relations of dominance.

Bourgeois democracy is a sham and a fraud which mystifies the real relations between people.
Universal suffrage is only the beginning of democracy not the end. There is no democracy in the market place,
everything is dictated by the logic of capitalism.
Capitalists also own and control the means of communication thus deny acess to alternative perspectives. The capitalist state organises the education system to be ideologically hostile towards socialism. The capitalist state have an army and police who they are willing to use against workers, time and time again.
Where is the democracy here?
I fight cultural hegemony with activism also.
I have nt got a fascist state to fight with and if you want to say that all states are fascist or all states are a stalinist thats up to you. I say that we need an organisatiion of activists, set on smashing the bourgoies state to establish a democratic workers state.
''Vanguard as opposed to Mass, yes very well, thats true, but its also totaly irelevant and beside the point''
Now people on this site are attacking vanguardism per
se. Now we are getting somewhere.
When I speak of vanguardism, I am defending it as a scientific notion.
If you want attack leninism as a type of vanguardism that is totally different thing.
What is this leninist vanguardism? An anarchist fantasy.
There is no such thing as a leninist state.
Lenin never had the luxury of that, What they had in Russia, he called a 'workers and peasants state with gross bureaucratic distortions'. I can assure that was not
in anyway for him ideal.
In the advanced capitalist countries this backward form is a historical impossiblity. Neither is it desirable or attainable, nor did Lenin ever visualise that form in the West.
"I propose to you the idea that you already have today, in advanced nations, representative democracy that is hindered my cultural hegemony and propaganda. This of course to prepetuate the satus quo of capitalist exploitation. I submit to you that what you must attack, what the working class, as conscious class, organised by any number of "vanguards"(political and social movements etc..), what we all must atack are theses obstructional elements of the democracy already existent".
Exactly.
On top of that we need to be organised well enough to overcome the violence of the bourgeiosie against workers and the oppressed in struggle at every level
from strike breaking to counter revolutionary violence against the workers movement.
The movement will get nowhere if does not understand the full extent of the enemy.



(Edited by peaccenicked at 4:00 pm on Mar. 29, 2002)

[TITOMAn]

Hey, people, some of you just haven´t seen the point in Russian revolution.

Lenin with Bolscheviks fought for true democracy. Although he was wrong in some things, but we all are.

Some of you should know, that Lenin was very democratic person.


Well, I really have no intentions to write a book about that here because it is already written. But I just want to tell you, that Stalin and Lenin had nothing in common.

Stalin killed thousands of Lenin´s supporters,...


Read the book:

http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~socappeal/russia/

(Edited by TITOMAn at 10:39 pm on Mar. 29, 2002)