It really says something about the quality of discussion on RevLeft that the only time I can be bothered to post is when I'm off my face on painkillers.
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Originally Posted by Dave B
Oh I am sorry I didn’t think it needed an explanation; it is about lying Leninist historians.
Oh, and who exactly are those lying historians? What are they lying about? Is it not rather you who is lying, or more precisely, implying something that is completely untrue?
Take the second article. It is clear to anyone that has read the article in question that Lenin is mocking Skobelev, who had no intention of carrying out the programme he put forward, blaming of course the group then known as the "bourgeois ministers" of the Provisional Government (as if Chernov, Peshekhonov, Skobelev etc. were any less bourgeois than Lvov and Konovalov and so on).
The Bolshevik programme was more moderate on paper, because the Bolsheviks had every intention of carrying it out. Of course, if you know that your programme will never be put into practice, you can write whatever you want in it. Why stop at a tax rate of 100%? Why not 120% or 500%? Why not proclaim that you want to immediately abolish money and all forms of finance? Why not proclaim yourself the king of the unicorns?
And because the Bolsheviks had every intention of carrying their programme out, they had to take the objective economic circumstances - those of a near-collapse - into account. A decree to the effect that the entire industry was to be nationalised immediately would be nothing more than empty posturing. The situation was such that, in May 1917 (and indeed in October as well), immediate and complete nationalisation was not possible. The chief thing was to smash the bourgeois state - which October accomplished. Following the seizure of power there necessarily exists a transitional period in which the relations of production change.
As for the first article, what of it? Again, are we supposed to be impressed that one Fyodor Dan, who has mysteriously become a Theodore, could write hypocritical eulogies of Bolshevik revolutionaries? Suffice it to say that not one member of the Left Opposition, excepting the former member and future Nazi Ciliga, wanted anything to do with Dan, the whiteguard.
On that note:
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Originally Posted by Dave B
Where is your evidence that the evil Mensheviks were Kadet loving white-guardist capitalist lickspittles?
I presented the evidence several times, and in fact I am copying this from my earlier posts.
Several prominent members of VIKZhel, the (then) central executive of the railways' union, a proto-white organisation that tried to force the Bolsheviks into a coalition with Mensheviks, Esers and Popular Socialists (who even the Mensheviks derided as Social-Kadets), were Mensheviks. (Source: Brovkin, "The Mensheviks after October".)
To quote Martov:
"All this caused a great turmoil in the Party. At first, our Right elements …took the next step and openly identified themselves with the foreign occupation… and with the struggle against the Bolsheviks as part of a ‘coalition’. They proclaimed it to be a ‘national task’ to restore capitalist order. Headed by Liber, they organised the Committee for Active Struggle for the Regeneration of Russia.
This created a de facto split in the Party, which did not become de jure only because terror put such pressure on all of us that any public debate… or convocation of a conference or congress to judge any rebellious elements became impossible…."
(Source: Brovkin, "Dear Comrades: Menshevik Reports on the Bolshevik Revolution and the Civil War".)
Unfortunately, Martov's excuse doesn't really stand up to scrutiny: not only was the Menshevik organisation legal in the period, they had the time and the resources for a struggle with the Bolsheviks within the trade unions. But apparently not for expelling Liber and so on.
The whiteguard Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia contained two Menshevik members, Kobolov and Yudin. (Source: Pereia, "White Siberia".)
The whiteguard Ufa Directorate contained the Menshevik Maysky, and the Menshevik Preobrazhensky was appointed the Directorate's Plenipotentiary in Samara. The Mensheviks organised a special branch for the KomUch territory (KomUch being a predecessor of the Ufa government), which empowered its members to assist the KomUch and its successors "as long as they were defending the accomplishments of the February Revolution" (such as capitalist industry being "removed from the tutelage of the state"). (Source: Smith, "Captives of the Revolution".)
One of the major White governments, "Democratic" Georgia, was almost entirely staffed by Mensheviks, including the once-minister of the post, Tsereteli.
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Originally Posted by Dave B
Or is it just of slandering people who opposed;
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When we are reproached with having established a dictatorship of one party and, as you have heard, a united socialist front is proposed, we say, "Yes, it is a dictatorship of one party! This is what we stand for and we shall not shift from that position because it is the party that has won,
Hardly, given how prominent the Mensheviks were in the White movement - much more than their microscopic size warranted. But yes, Leninists, and everyone whose brain hasn't gone soft from decades of parliamentarianism, oppose, oppose in all circumstances, a coalition with reformists and bourgeois "workers'" parties.
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Originally Posted by Dave B
It might seem like just Banter now but we know what accusations of Menshevism means when it comes to Leninist in power;
When the revolutionary party has seized political power, it will of course crush all those who act to undermine this power, whether they call themselves Mensheviks, Bolsheviks (quite a few modern reformist groups consider themselves to be Bolsheviks, and I would hardly expect much mercy for the "Bolshevik" Tudeh if there was a proletarian revolution in Iran). The Mensheviks have only themselves to blame - if they did not act to undermine the morale and the logistics of the proletarian power as it was struggling with the Whites - many of who were Mensheviks themselves - no one would talk about shooting them. In fact Lenin makes it clear that the Mensheviks were not to be shot for being Mensheviks, but for undermining the war effort.
Unfortunately very few Mensheviks were actually shot.
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Originally Posted by The Idler
Every issue of the Socialist Standard has stated 'The Socialist Party of Great Britain enters the field of political action determined to wage war against all other political parties, whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist.'
Well that's nice. And the British SWP describes itself as a mass party (the "smallest mass party in the world", but, you know, a mass party nonetheless). And the WRP described themselves as, well, a workers', revolutionary group. And the central organ of the US RCP doesn't carry the warning
"WE ARE ACTUALLY CRAZY BIGOTS".
If political groups are to be judged by what they say, instead of what they do, we must be living in some sort of utopia. Why, just a few days ago a "workers' party" was founded here.
In practice, of course, the SPGB does not even fight openly capitalist parties, let alone "socialist" reactionaries like the Mensheviks. Like all anti-communists the SPGB takes the side of these reactionaries against the Bolsheviks.
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Originally Posted by The Idler
The Bolsheviks asserted “Soviets are the perfect form of State. They are the magic wand by which all inequalities, all misery, may be suppressed” (p. 14).
And where did the Bolsheviks assert that? In one of Martov's horrifyingly boring pamphlets. So we're off to a good start - the first statement in your little list is false.
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Originally Posted by The Idler
In 1917, Lenin urged that the Russian workers would shatter the old bureaucratic and oppressive features of the State. Martov observed '“Reality has cruelly shattered all these illusions. The ‘Soviet State’ has not established in any instance electiveness and recall of public officials and the commanding staff. It has not suppressed the professional police . . . It has not done away with social hierarchy in production . . . On the contrary, in proportion to its evolution, the Soviet State shows a tendency in the opposite direction. It shows a tendency toward the utmost possible strengthening of the principles of hierarchy and compulsion. It shows a tendency toward the development of a more specialised apparatus of repression than before . . . It shows a tendency toward the total freedom of the executive organisms from the tutelage of the electors”'. The SPGB thought similarly.
Why, if Martov said so, it must be true. Martov, after all, was noted as an objective and insightful observer of the political situation. Just recall his incisive articles against the social-democratic persecution of the Communists while he was living in Germany.
(Here is a hint: no such articles are to be found in Martov's collected works. Like all anti-communists, Martov had no problem accommodating himself to the bourgeois SPD government in Germany, all the while criticising the Bolsheviks from a feigned "left" standpoint. It reminds me of those Kronstadters - those poor "anarchist" martyrs - who found White Finland so pleasant.)
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Originally Posted by The Idler
The Bolsheviks, however, thought it possible for an active minority, representing the vague aspirations of the workers, to gain political power before the capitalist revolution itself had been completed.
And here we come to the most perplexing point in this portray of the spamgbot as a Menshevik, the point where the adherent of the One, True, Catholic and Orthodox Socialist Party actually departs from the SPGB doctrine and adopts the doctrine of the Organising Committee. Because as I recall it the SPGB was founded on the assumption that the conditions for socialism have been attained - that there was no need for any "capitalist revolution" in any part of the world. That - the notion of a "capitalist revolution" that needs to precede the socialist revolution in today's world - is undiluted Menshevism.
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Originally Posted by Red Deathy
We don't want to attract bigots, that's nonsense. In fact, I can't see anywhere where Robbo said that, I'm afraid, unless you can provide a quote (which I may be missing) I'll have to say that you are grossly mistaken on that point, and ask you to retract.
Or what, you'll draw up a bill of attainder? Don't be ridiculous. You're in no position to ask anything, and the sheer arrogance is astounding. Here is what robbotnik said:
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Originally Posted by robbo203
How do you "smash" the bourgeois family and how do you convey that in the space of 2 mins 40 secs? I think the overwhelming majority of workers on hearing a slogan like that would immediately be turned off and simply dismiss you as a nutjob on a par with the Monster Raving Looney Party or whatever.
And who opposes slogans like that? Family-values bigots. It is absolutely hilarious, by the way, that robbo thinks the workers (or rather electors - he doesn't distinguish between the two as per the SPGB's bizarre view on the class composition of modern societies) will "dismiss... as a nutjob" someone who talks about smashing the bourgeois family, but not someone who talks about the socialisation of the means of production.
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Originally Posted by Red Deathy
What you're doing is like going up to an 19th Century abo0litionist and asking them "What about the gay slaves" "Er, we'll emancipate them too?" They'd reply.
I imagine that the actual response would be that they are to be hanged or imprisoned, which was probably what the average SPGB member would have said as well, when the organisation was founded in 1904, and the SPGB have not updated their analysis of the question of gay liberation - in fact they have not addressed the question at all.
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Originally Posted by Red Deathy
Likewise, we'd reply that we want the LGBTQ Wages Slaves to emancipate themselves too.
Except, of course, it is more than possible for someone to "want the LGBTQ Wages Slaves [sic] to emancipate themselves" as workers, and for the oppression of LGBT people to continue. It isn't doable - because the oppression of gay people is intimately connected to the conditions of the reproduction of the proletariat - but the SPGB has never analysed this question.
Now compare this abstract, bigoted and workerist attitude to that expressed by Marx, by no means a particularly enlightened individual, to the question of women's liberation. Did Marx confine himself to abstract pronouncements about how "women wage slaves are to be emancipated as well"? No, that would be laughable. Instead he - and after him Engels, Bebel, Zetkin, etc. - analysed the oppression of women, its roots in class society, and raised particular slogans concerning the oppression of women - the same thing the SPGB refuses to do when it comes to women, gay people, national minorities etc.
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Originally Posted by Dave B
I am a factory worker working for a large multinational capitalist corporation. Like most of them they know what is important and what is not when it comes to getting most out of their workers.
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Originally Posted by Dave B
And as far as they are concerned discrimination and hostility between their employees based on antiquated “ism’s” isn’t one of them.
All the factory floor workers have been taken off the job and given extensive ‘equality and diversity’ training.
Including the full range of sexual orientations and gender preferences as well as obviously ‘race’ and religion.
Oh, you dear, how difficult that must have been for you. Just so we're clear, are you claiming that the oppression of gay people doesn't exist in modern Britain?
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Originally Posted by robbo203
You simply cannot convey a nuanced and detailed analysis in under 2 mins 40 secs but presumably such an analysis will be found elsewhere in the literature of the SPGB for instance should people feel inclined to make contact with the SPGB
"Presumably". So, where is this "nuanced and detailed analysis" of the gay question by the SPGB? Are you going to link to a theatre review again? It's those rare moments when your opponent completely fucks up that make this site borderline-tolerable.
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Originally Posted by robbo203
Firstly what articles are you talking about? Please provide the evidence to back up your claim. You have a reputation for being economical with the truth to put it mildly and it is about time you should be called out on this Apart from Martov's critique of the Bolsheviks I'm not aware of any other article that the SPGB published from the Mensheviks so do enlighten us all.
The article from Martov is more than enough! You know your site is borked in several ways, and the search function has gone to keep the company of Martov in the afterlife. But as you yourself said, you published another article by the honorary Menshevik, the late (in both meanings) Kautsky.
Another article cites Dan, the Menshevik leader, who has again become Theodore (why the fy - th switch? it doesn't even make sense as a translation convention - Russians don't go to the fyeatr).
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Originally Posted by robbo203
Anyway, by no stretch of the imagination could you call Martov a whiteguardist. He actually supported the red army against the whites and was critical of those Mensheviks who joined the Kerensky government [...]
In fact it doesn't take much imagination to call Martov a whiteguard - simply an appreciation of the facts. Martov was always in the highest organs of the Organising Committee. Every action I have mentioned previously - Menshevik participation in White governments, forming a separate KomUch branch etc. - all of these happened with his acquiescence. He was instrumental - being one of the few Mensheviks of the Organising Committee (the United Internationalists and former-Menshevik members of the Mezhrayonka having gone over to the Bolsheviks) with a positive public image - in spreading disruptive propaganda while the Bolshevik authorities were fighting a war against the very White movement that contained numerous Mensheviks in its rank.
The only reason people do not usually think of Martov as a whiteguard is that he had cultivated the image of a wide-eyed idealist. But, as I said, when has that wide-eyed idealist ever criticised the Whites, the SPD in Germany, the LSI that the Mensheviks were close to? He called for Mensheviks to join the Red Army, true, but one conciliatory note (made while he was in Bolshevik territory, naturally) doesn't change the character of his actions.
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Originally Posted by robbo203
Even if it were true that the SPGB did print articles from the Mensheviks - and with the exception of Martov , I think it is untrue - how on earth do you jump from that to the conclusion that "
printing Menshevik-whiteguard articles against the Bolshevik state means siding with the Mensheviks, with the Whites, with Kolchak and with the British." The SPGB incidentally was highly critical of the Russian government's agreement in 1920 to repay foreign property-owners their losses and allied Governments their “debts.” - those same governments. like the British, whose armies had invaded Russia . For the SPGB this meant
"continued exploitation of Russian workers to pay foreign exploiters"
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/s...shevist-policy). Would such a sentiment be possible if the SPGB had sided with the British as you stupidly claim?
Yes, it would. In fact it was the only way for the SPGB to support the British. Of course the reparations meant extracting money from the Russian workers (and peasants, but as I said many times, we are not the party of the peasantry) to pay the British bourgeoisie. But it was not something the Bolsheviks decided to do because of their kind feelings for the British bourgeoisie. It was a decision, a hard decision but a necessary one, made after the landing in Arkhangelsk, after British attacks in the Caucasus, after numerous threats. Agitating against these unpopular but necessary measures objectively meant agitating for actions that would give the British state a pretext for further intervention - undoubtedly on the behalf of your beloved Mensheviks, as in Baku etc.
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Originally Posted by robbo203
Yes of course there were some commonalities between the SPGB and the Mensheviks just as there were some commonalities between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. But that does not mean the SPGB supported the Mensheviks. Its ridiculous to suggest otherwise. I was reading recently of a UKIP politician who put forward a view on the nature of taxation that was to all intents and purposes exactly the same view that Marx held - namely that taxation in reality is a burden on the capitalist class alone , not the workers, even if there appear to be tax deductions being made on our pay slips . By your warped logic if one were to publish this article by a UKIP politician this must mean one supported UKIP
...yes? With the exception of polemic articles, one doesn't print articles that one does not politically agree with.
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Originally Posted by robbo203
As for Stalin and Trotsky being on the side of the proletariat the hell they were. Just saying you are on the side of the proletariat doesnt make you so. The proof of the pudding in in the eating. We all know about Stalin[...]
Do we now? What do we know? Don't for a moment imagine that your view of Stalin is the same as that of the Trotskyists. Did "Stalin" (who has come to symbolise the entire state apparatus, apparently) limit sacred democratic liberties? Good for him. He should have done more of that. In fact his removal of restrictions on whiteguards and priests is one of his many mistakes (I am adopting here the convention of talking about "Stalin", mind you). Did he collectivise the economy? He should have done so earlier. Etc.