Up To What Point Are You Pro-Bolshevik

Same question as that in the old group before TGU deleted it.

I would say I am pro-Bolshevik up to the early 1920's for various reasons which include the Kronstadt incident, outlawing the Workers' Opposition (not a fan of their policies, but they did represent true proletariat concerns), etc. I would then say I am critical but supportive until about the late 1920's, early 1930's. At that point I withdraw my support.

I would say my support goes until the USSR begins to get involved in WWII

Although I think the degeneration of the Revolution began during the Civil War, I, too, am resolutely pro-Bolshevik up until the early 1920s. I cease to be as strongly pro-Bolshevik with such actions as the banning of factions in March 1921 and the adoption of the class collaborationist United Front tactic in late 1922. I think I'd continue to be critically supportive of the Bolsheviks, however, up to and through the Third Period era.

Forever.

I've always been curious as to why people get the bizarre impression that War Communism was something progressive and somehow "closer to socialism" than the NEP. This couldn't be further from the truth. It was simply an expansion of what has been occuring throughout human civilization for millenia: wartime requisitioning of resources. Even the Whites operated the economies of their controlled territories in similar ways. Even if revolution had spread throughout the world, the NEP still would have been necessary; but it's scope and length would have been dramatically reduced with the aid of more advanced industrial economies.

I have to agree with Caj and Brosa; the United Front was a profound mistake. History has shown that collaboration with social-democrats, a tool of alien class elements, cannot help communists in the goal of revolution. Furthermore, social-democrats have always been extremely hostile to genuine communists and have never had any interest in working with them: they are only willing to work with parties that have abandoned a genuine proletarian program in favor of reformism.

You guys are mixing up popular and united fronts, the later of which made Oct. possible.

I've always been curious as to why people get the bizarre impression that War Communism was something progressive and somehow "closer to socialism" than the NEP. This couldn't be further from the truth. It was simply an expansion of what has been occuring throughout human civilization for millenia: wartime requisitioning of resources. Even the Whites operated the economies of their controlled territories in similar ways. Even if revolution had spread throughout the world, the NEP still would have been necessary; but it's scope and length would have been dramatically reduced with the aid of more advanced industrial economies.

I agree completely with you here. Some people believe that war communism was a step toward genuine communism because money virtually became nothing, etc. but that had nothing to do with trying to "implement communism" but more to do with economic collapse. The Workers' Group manifesto had a whole thing about the NEP that said exactly what you are saying now, actually.

I have to agree with Caj and Brosa; the United Front was a profound mistake. History has shown that collaboration with social-democrats, a tool of alien class elements, cannot help communists in the goal of revolution. Furthermore, social-democrats have always been extremely hostile to genuine communists and have never had any interest in working with them: they are only willing to work with parties that have abandoned a genuine proletarian program in favor of reformism.

People that support a united front with social-democrats think that it is to win over the "base" of workers but when you are dealing with organizations like this you are not dealing with the "base" (which could possibly be very revolutionary) but with the "top" full of bureaucratic, reformist, and class-collaborationists. I really like the Third-Period's condemnation of a united front with social-democrats.

Until the Bolshevik coups d'etat of 1918: http://revleft.com/vb/bolshevik-coup...819/index.html

You guys are mixing up popular and united fronts, the later of which made Oct. possible.

United fronts are more or less popular fronts at least nowadays. Its a way for Trotskyists to feel that they are different from Stalinists in any meaningful way. Although, I agree that the historical united front made the Russian revolution possible.

I'm pro-Bolshevik up until the Great Purge as I acknowledge the sectarian opportunist platform that they were.

Trotskyists are different enough than Stalinists to be killed/sold out en masse supporting proletarian democracy, in every country they've been in. And if anybody here would seriously commit, out of some misguided principle, to a strategy that FAILED already and paved the rise of Fascism in Germany, and Italy with Bordiga's split from the Left Opposition, contradicting what was pointed out to have worked in Russia against the Tzarist reaction, aka, "Third Periodism," then you're basically commiting to failure before we even start, since united fronts have always been part of Marxist politics. United fronts are going to need to happen before any attempt by the revolutionary working class is ready to take political power.

It's simple, as long as the reformists adopt the revolutionary programme of the vanguard, as the Mensheviks and SRs did after Kornilov's uprising, there's nothing wrong with working with workers organizations who aren't revolutionary against Fascism, Tzarism, the fucking tea party, Golden Dawn, whatever. "Social Fascism," or basically Left Communist sectarianism has been historically a failure when put into party programs, universally, especially in Germany.

Popular Fronts with bourgeois forces were always denied by Trotskyists btw.

Popular Fronts with bourgeois forces were always denied by Trotskyists btw.

Except with the liberal SPD, and all it's liberal Keynesian sister-parties.

It's also a statement of profound ignorance to say that the revolution only happened because of a "united front" with the Menshevik and Social-Revolutionaries. The Revolution was completed in spite of them, not because of them.

They had mass support, the revolution happened because of their mass support, which was usable for the bolsheviks program and politics because of the United Front against the common enemy of Czarism. And the SPD wasn't liberal, it had mass support.

To alienate that mass support because of bullshit "Social Fascism," AFTER Stalin had that menshevik line in China a year beforehand, is not only stupid, but it proved to be suicidal! The SPD was made up of unions, how is that Liberal? They were the same thing as Mensheviks, a section of the working class unsure about the revolutionary leadership, which failed to be won over because of 2nd Period dick riding done to the SPD by the KPD. The politics zigzagged back and forth, failure after failure.

Besides even the Stalinists got it that "Social fascism," didn't work out and was complete horse shit, and zigzagged in the complete opposite direction for popular fronts, which was probably even a bigger failure. But i'm asking you guys, what's wrong with a united front with hundreds of thousands of people, who have the same interests against Nazism as you do? It's sectarianism, plain and simple, and anybody who still doesn't get that sectarianism on a scale of MASS workers parties doesn't work (and didn't work, in the past tense) is in for a treat.

Bordiga is just as bad, splitting from the Left Opposition (taking half the members), and completely dooming the anti stalinist communists to sectarianism, and it couldn't of happened at a worse time. But look at things in perspective, how is KKE doing in greece with their Third Periodism, and how could you call it a legit theory when it's failed in the past?

Basically, the working class united front would only include working class parties built because of class consciousness, Nazis had a small portion of working class members, but their party was built on a petit bourgeois, ultra reactionary basis. And it would ONLY be applicable (for the revolutionary party) when the working class itself is threatened. The united front didn't happen in October, however it did happen during Kornilov's coup, and it was successful.

Wierd, I saw this on Marxists.org

The Bordigists were the first Italian group to adhere to the Left Opposition, but their inveterate sectarianism led to their separation at the end of 1932.

Historically, they split over the question of the United Front, I always thought that was the case. Because otherwise there wasn't anything different from Trotsky's calls for a fight against the bureaucracy, more democracy, etc. I'm honestly mostly familiar with Germany's revolutionary history, but I always thought that Bordiga split with about half the Left Opposition, over the question of a United front. If I'm wrong you can definately correct me.

you haven't read anything i've wrote it seems, but the united front only matters when there's things everybody can agree on, i.e. Let us (revolutionaries and social dems) both work togather for an immigrants rights protest, it's a united front. Let's agree for the time being that Nazism is a threat to everybody, and work togather against it, that's a united front. Hey liberals, i'm going to tell the workers not to strike if you half commit to a war against Nazism, that's popular fronts. Why would I, or anybody else, mistake the SPD members for "closet communists"? They in Germany simply didn't trust the communist party due to Stalinism, and menshevism through the early 1920s. Once the united front worked against that bastard Kornilov, the bolsheviks had complete support from the working class, the result of the failure of the social dems and SRs to defend the revolution, and because of how full of shit they were throughout 1917 on every issue. You don't stop criticizing people when you're in a front as well

You seem to be ignoring the fact that the SPD didn't want to have anything to do with the KPD, including join action. As a result, that strategy kind of falls flat on it's face. Besides, what you've been advocating is far to the right of a united front; you've even gone as far as to shill for an electoral alliance between communists and social democrats(like your championing of Syriza). I don't think ever advocated trying to get social-democrats in power.

I would have to say up until the Great Purge. I think that the situation necessitates multiple ideas or a right left dichotomy within the party.

I'd consider myself pro-Bolshevik in the sense of Bolshevism being classical social-democracy brought to Russian condition, without the subcurrents of nationalism and statism that eventually got Kautsky and much of the rest of social democracy in trouble elsewhere, and it was that political perspective and program that helped the Bolsheviks become a mass party in the years before the Russian Revolution, which gave them the political platform under which they could seize power. As far as the Bolsheviks in power goes, I'd support them up until sometime between the expulsion of the United Opposition and the adoption of the Popular Front policy, mainly from the perspective that I would have been an oppositionist had I been in the Soviet Union, but I don't know if I would have been a Trotskyist as such. I have a fair amount of sympathy for the Workers Opposition and similar groups in the early 1920s, mainly because I think they're oppositions to the degeneration of the Communist Party which was beginning to occur at that time.

The whole United Front concept I find kind of interesting, mainly through reading what's been posted here and in the Third Period group. Personally, I think the United Front as proposed by the Fourth World Congress of the Comintern made good political sense; it was an attempt to account for the fact that the Comintern hadn't won the majority of the working class away from social democracy in most countries (especially the advanced countries that the revolution needed to spread to in order to healthily survive.) It also seemed like a smart way to turn about some of the propaganda aimed at the communists by social democracy; communists were considered to be "splitters" of the workers movement, and by promoting united defensive action of both parties (possibly even up to the point of forming a "workers government" of the two parties, though that does seem very risky in my opinion) can challenge the social democrats to live up to their supposed desire to unite the workers movement, or at least expose the social democrats for their lies in this regard. I think it's also important to consider that there were a number of rank and file members of social-democratic parties that were sympathetic to the communists (and were indeed former members of Communist parties, such as Paul Levi and parts of the Weimar Republic SPD left, parts of the Italian Socialist Party, and the Norwegian Labour Party.) So I wouldn't completely condemn the United Front tactic; I think it's a more complicated issue than many of the folks who've criticised it here tend to give credit to, though I would agree that the United Front as a tactic in late Weimar Germany would probably not have been successful as many Trotskyists like to claim (not to say that the Third Period was correct, but the United Front in that specific context was much more problematic that Trotskyists would generally admit, particularly the more Stalinophobic ones like the Lambertistes.)

As a related issue, I'm curious if people here have read some of the material John Riddell has been putting out about this period (Fourth Comintern Congress, etc). I've read some of his shorter articles, but he has a book coming out which I think may do to this period what Lars Lih has helped do for the Lenin of What is to be Done? and after.