JPSartre12

(cont, message too long)
The real issue is not the readiness of the Russian Empire for proletarian in 1917, but it's "readyness" in the 1920s. Most of Russia's proletariat was massacred or deproletarianized during the Civil War. For example, in 1920, the population of Petrograd dropped to 700,000. The proletariat practically ceased to exist after the Civil War, and wasn't rebuilt until the mass-industrialization. This is what set in motion the bureaucratization of the party and the Stalinist counter-revolution.

Well we have self-described "Marxists" going on and on about how China is still a socialist society on RevLeft, so not being well-read on Maoism is excusable around these here. Anyways, you need to drop whatever illusions you have about the October Revolution being "premature" or whatever, that's completely nonsense. A proletarian revolution would have been premature during the July days, and the Bolsheviks sensed this.

In 1917, Petrograd had a bigger proletariat than Paris in 1871(2.3 million against 1.8, and Moscow had almost 2 million too). In 1847, Marx anticipated a bourgeoisie revolution that will be followed by an immediate proletarian revolution. How could we say that Russia in 1917 was not ready for a proletarian revolution if according to Marx, Germany in the 1840s was?

(cont.)
Mao's regime didn't start being all socialist-y until the Korean War began, when Mao began to feel his regime will be undermined by the pro-American imperialism bourgeoisie.

And how did a "vanguard" party attempt to surgically insert itself into the historical process? What kind of stupid thing is that to say? First of all, there was no "vanguard" party in China, at all, after the 20s. How did the Bolsheviks "induce" revolution? The Russian proletariat, almost in it's entirety, rose up, constituted itself into a class, overthrew bourgeoisie supremacy and instituted a dictatorship of the proletariat.

No revolution was induced. October wasn't some sort of coup d'état supported only by a minority. It was a proletarian revolution in which almost the entire Russian proletariat stood at side of the Bolsheviks.

Comrade, you've got it all wrong in this post:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...30&postcount=2
The October Revolution didn't occur in agrarian Russia. It occurred in the great proletarian centers of Russia, Petrograd and Moscow, and spread to other cities from there. And the victory of Mao's peasants over the KMT in 1949 was not a "socialist revolution", not even the Chinese "communists" called it that. They called it a democratic revolution, and called the new regime "new democracy"; a bloc of four classes(proletariat, peasantry, petty-bourgousie and national, patriotic, anti-imperialist, bourgeoisie). The working class had literally no participation in Mao's victory, the movement was made up entirely of the peasantry. The dictatorship of the proletariat never existed in any shape or form, and the DoTP, according to Marx, is the first stage to a transition to socialism.

All of us do; "us" referring to actual Marxists.

I don't want to flaim bait in that thread, but I just wanted to add that I don't consider Marxism-Leninism to be Marxist at all. I consider Stalinism the counter revolution against the October revolution.