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Revolution betrayed
How to prevent that from happening in the future?
USSR, China, Vietnam, Cuba etc. etc.. Leftists say the same thing about them - that the revolution was going well in these countries, but one man (Stalin, XYZ or some dictator) ruined the whole thing for the workers, it became capitalist later on, and so forth.
This seems to be the common pattern - starting out with progressive ideals but leading to the opposite as time rolls on. In other words, starting against capitalism and becoming capitalist all over again. So what's the point?
How to stop this from happening again?
Ditch democratic centrism, ditch vanguardism (in the institutional sense), pretty much ditch Leninism.
Your assumption completely disregards a materialist analysis of all those nations/revolutions.
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The materialist analysis, is that everytime you impliment leninist policies you get leninist results, be it in China, Russia, Cuba or Vietnam, thats the common denominator, democratic centrism kills democracy and vanguardist party control kills democracy.
The problem though isn that without "democratic centralism" or "vanguardism" the revolution drifts.
After all, the revolution has to do certain things. Simply saying "democracy" does not guarantee it. And the revolution is about more than "democracy."
You have to view these revolutions in their proper context. Every socialist project that has been attempted was in a relatively weak, imperialized nation, which suffered siege, assassination, and economic coercion on a massive scale. It's easy to hold to staunch revolutionary ideals while you're fighting for revolution, or even for the first generation or so of revolutionaries to remain steadfast, but unless you have the proper revolutionary momentum (by which I mean a large-scale, international revolutionary surge with bases in heavily industrialized first world nations), you're likely going to succumb to capitalism as a practical necessity imposed by the economic and military conditions your state faces.
Revolution, and the socialist struggle in general, is all based on momentum, on having a positive balance of power that prevents socialist countries from becoming isolated and degenerating. This has nothing to do with the "great man theory", a large contributor to the idea of "socialism in one nation" implemented by Stalin was the failure of the western european revolutions, for instance.
The Stalin-story is a concoction by the western bourgeoisie, because of the great threat that the socialist regime under him posed to imperialism. You will notice that all the political groups associated with the anti Stalin lines, specially with the pro Lenin - anti Stalin lines, are all proving to be nothing but pseudo-communist propaganda agencies of the state in countries of intensified class struggle such as India.How to prevent that from happening in the future?
USSR, China, Vietnam, Cuba etc. etc.. Leftists say the same thing about them - that the revolution was going well in these countries, but one man (Stalin, XYZ or some dictator) ruined the whole thing for the workers, it became capitalist later on, and so forth.
This seems to be the common pattern - starting out with progressive ideals but leading to the opposite as time rolls on. In other words, starting against capitalism and becoming capitalist all over again. So what's the point?
How to stop this from happening again?
In my opinion, the true cause behind the fall of every socialist regime so far has been the lack of adequate militarization and politicization of the masses. If the masses are not educated enough in politics, then a small vanguard party can betray them and become the new bourgeoisie itself.
The solution to this problem lies neither in abandoning Leninist vanguardism altogether, nor in following it dogmatically. We need an organization in which all of the oppressed masses decide and execute programmes themselves, but which is also capable of promptly taking decisions as a single body, specially when confronted by major threats.
It would seem then that the proper context is that the socialist revolution occurs in such weak countries. There are no other facts to draw a different conclusion. It doesn't do much good to complain that people ignored the theory to the contrary. Maybe the theory is wrong.
What theory are you talking about? Obviously the failing of the Left in the past has been it's weakness in the so-called "first world", among other things. Of course, the third world countries are the "weak link", as Lenin put it, and this should be taken into account. I think that a third world movement would have to rely on a massive spread to as many countries as possible, so as to strengthen the economic position of said countries. Also, of course, there needs to be greater actual emphasis on Left solidarity, especially between nations. The sino-soviet split was a huge blow to the general socialist surge of the 20th century, for instance. Nobody is complaining here, it's obvious that there will always be repression, and that advocating a radical change to the status quo is almost always an uphill battle (if, at times, less of a steep incline), and that the fault is squarely on the Left for not (yet) rising to meet these challenges properly and for violating supposedly fundamental elements of it's own ethos (solidarity, of course).
Luckily, Leftists take a scientific, self-improving position in regards to these things. We don't like to simplistically boil things down to "essential" "facts" like you seem to want to. Also, there's no single unifying "theory" among any of the past revolutions, save for a general adherence to Marxist analysis and in many cases Leninist practice, with variation from place to place given material circumstances.
You could be a little less vague, though, so that I know what it is you're trying to say and how to respond.
I've NEVER been presented with any evidence of that, nor is it true.
Plus a revolution that ends in the USSR requires another revolution anyway, because you hav'nt liberated anyone, you've just replaced the oppression.
Saying it does'nt guarantee it, having it be the dominant power does. Democracy is the foundation of socialism.
Stalin was coddled with imperialists, he shut down revolutions to be friendly with the west, he destroyed the Spanish revolutoin.
Stalin was a God Send for imperialists and anti-communists.
Yes the massses were so dumb so it was their fault they were oppressed and subject to propeganda, and their freedoms were done away with.
And yeah, the USSRs economy collapsed because they did'nt waste ENOUGH money on the military.
Russia was not subject to imperialism, nor was it an extremely weak country.
The fact is all of these material conditions have no connection to the actual totalitarianism of the regiem, the connection has never been made, the common denominator is Leninism, and THAT connection CAN and HAS been made.
[QUOTE]The "third world" has been the ONLY link. Its the "first world" which has been the weak link in the revolution. You are attempting to explain the tyrannies ect. of the revolutions in the "third world" by explaining that for them to have been successful and avoided all these problems, the revolution needed a "base" amongst in the "First world." In other words, socialism occurs first in advanced industrial nations and societies. That's the theory which has not been borne out.
This is what happened- or at least tried to happen- during the 20th Century.
The OP wondered why socialist regimes tended to collapse into tyrannies ect. You are here explaining that it was so because they lacked-- tyranny (solidarity). Everyone needs to be doing the same thing.
You just finished explaining that the USSR-Sino split was a blow to socialism. Now you are explaining that such differences of opinion are to be expected, and perhaps even welcomed, in the socialist world.
[QUOTE]If you spend more time on this website, you might notice the tremendous disagreement amongst its members as to what does, does not, how to, how to not, build socialism.
In order to build socialism, one has to build socialism. All these various theories are going to be in play. In other words, ain't no socialist gonna see what he or she thinks is real socialism absent a "vanguard."
Yep. The dominant socialist party will sing the tune. They will be the "vanguard." All others are pretenders.
What do you mean by "shut down" ? If a revolution is to be successful then it should at least have the capacity to continue itself even if no external power helps it. A proper revolution cannot be "shut down" by someone from outside.
On the other hand, Stalin helped many revolutionary movements.
Good point. Very helpful for the discussion.
Do you think that yourself ? May be you do, because I never claimed anything like that.
Nice piece of attempted sarcasm, but doesn't work when you're debating an anti-revisionist.
I was referring to Lenin's "weak link" argument that third world nations are the weak link in the capitalist chain, and were thus ripe for revolution.
Actually, I gave an alternate possibility in that same post, namely that a significant number of third world countries have revolutions simultaneously, or at least close to that, and express solidarity in real economic terms with each other in order to serve as an economic counter-balance to much more individually powerful imperialist nations, failing the support of a heavily industrialized first world socialist nation, which would be the best scenario.. But hey, way to totally not get it.
When did I say it "occurs first", or that it should even occur first? I don't believe I did. What I'm saying is, that a first world nation's economic output would be extremely good for an overall revolutionary surge throughout the world. The likelyhood of this occurring "first" is quite low, which is why it would be important for any new revolutionary state export/foster revolution to the nearest country that best fits such criteria, as the Bolsheviks tried and unfortunately failed to do in Germany.
In fact, history has completely "borne out" what I'm saying, you just don't seem to understand what I'm saying.
LOL, what? Now solidarity means tyranny? It doesn't even mean that they have to be doing the same thing. The sino-soviet split was over political differences, for instance, but I argue that despite these differences, and despite any real or perceived degeneration of either party, these countries should have still cooperated to a greater extent than they did. You had two different models of Socialism in two significant countries, the idea that they would attempt to undermine each other is total foolishness. You wind up with the pro-soviet Vietnamese going to war with the Chinese, etc.
The sino-soviet split wasn't simply a theoretical divergence, as both nations before had already taken different approaches, it was a diplomatic split, meaning that they gave up trying to work cooperatively on the world stage. It's not my fault if you keep confusing what I'm saying here, or put words in my mouth, but if you want to have a serious discussion then I'd suggest for your sake you seriously try to answer what I'm saying.
... To live – does it not mean to have indomitable faith in victory?
[QUOTE]Lenin thought the European colonies were the achilles heel of capitalism. Knock those out, and capitalism takes a major blow.
And he was wrong.
So now we are relying upon another theory. This theory requires essentially simultaneous revolutions as well as solidarity with each other, absent a socialist first world community. And how much more simultaneous need it be than say, China and Vietnam in mid 20th century?
Another theory doomed to fail?
Right. That is what Marx said, and which did not occur. Its what the USSR tried to do, and failed.
I guess not.
No. The OBJECTIVE is solidarity- that's the standard.
Obviously, it must else why the angst over the Sino-Soviet split?
But they didn't. And that failure is considered a blow against socialism.
But so what? All that says is that if everyone agreed with everyone, socialism can function well.
Even if that was exactly what he was saying, it's not as if a significant number of colonies were swayed towards socialism, at least not enough to measure if he was "right" or "wrong". Colonies winning independence from European masters who did not go socialist are not a good example, since imperialism still very much keeps them in the sway of Europe economically.
Better than taking the past as absolute gospel on how things will happen in the future, as if (as I said earlier, which is yet another thing you don't seem to understand) the left is not an endlessly self-critical and self-improving entity seeking to learn from mistakes. Whereas you just seem to want to take these failures as some sort of mystical law of nature and avoid any real understanding of what happened and how things can happen differently.
Oh, you mean those two countries that were politically opposed to each other from the outset, as I mentioned (again) in another post?
Oh, I see, it failed once, so lets stop thinking critically and succumb to total despair because it's the will of the almighty. Also, Marx barely theorized on revolution at all, something that you would know if you had read him. He wrote about the dynamics of capitalism and how they would play into the generation of a revolutionary movement yet to be identified.
Nope, I'm pretty sure I was right.
What does this mean and how does it answer my question?
Again, what the fuck are you talking about? This doesn't answer what I was saying, namely that socialist countries attempting different models can and should cooperate economically and diplomatically. There's no "angst", just analysis of the detrimental effects of said split (I know you think analysis amounts to repeating simple historical facts like "X revolution failed" and claiming that that itself constitutes some self-evident fact that it's impossible, but you're wrong buddy).
Thanks captain obvious, I totally didn't just say that before. This attitude is so insane, all that you're doing is pointing out the obvious with no real critique,
No, that is not what I said, and I'm starting to think that you have a trained otter read my posts and explain -via sign language- what it is that I'm saying, because something is obviously being lost in translation. My whole point was, you don't have to agree on everything, all that you have to do is recognize that the various nations on the planet working under the same general framework, a banner if you will, require mutual support and political solidarity in order to collectively resist imperialism. Cooperation =/= absolute homogeneity.
... To live – does it not mean to have indomitable faith in victory?
I'm no Leninist first of all. But why don't you ask why Leninist politics took hold in these areas?
I think the fact that these countries were backwards economically (and socially) with a proletarian minority is the most important factor in the failure of those revolutions. And with some of them, it's arguable whether these were even "revolutions" in the socialist sense at all.
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Thats fine, but whats the connection, whats the logical corrolation?
Its not JUST leninist politics that take hold in those areas btw, but I've never been presented with the corrolation, or inevitablity of totalitarianism.
No, that's not materialist analysis. If it were then you'd be referring to class forces, material conditions, specific historical factors, etc, etc. This is instead of just saying 'A Leninist did it'. The fact that you can simply lump those nations together and claim that they are part of some universal 'Leninist' programme - ie, ignoring the vast differences in the conditions that gave rise to revolution, the measures taken post-revolution and the question as to whether some of these even were revolutions - is evidence enough that you don't know what you're talking about
What this is is simply wishful thinking. Its that little voice that cries out 'Well if only we had been in charge then our ideas would have won through'. However flawed this line of thought is, one thing is clear - it is not rooted in a materialist analysis. If it were then you would be looking to understand how 'Leninist' policies evolved, the conditions that they did so in and their actually implementation. Even if its not as fun as simply baldly proclaiming the superiority of your own beliefs
Actually I don't believe that Lenin never used the phrase in that contextOriginally Posted by Blackscare
March at the head of the ideas of your century and those ideas will follow and sustain you. March behind them and they will drag you along. March against them and they will overthrow you.
Napoleon III
Thats not what I said, I'm saying its the neccessary out come of Lenninist policies. I did'nt blame it on a person.
Your right, they were all different, but they had one thing in common, they followed the basic Leninist policies, which led to totalitarianism.
The BASIC Leninist policy, of democratic centrism, of a singular vanguard party are what lead to totalitarianism.
Whether its done on a carribian island, Russia, or South east Asia.
Leninist policies make it very easy for a top down structure to develop, which it invariably does.
The historical background was different in every situation, any time you have a ruling party that is considered the ruling party, and the direct political arm of the working class, and that party is run on a top down style democratic centrism, and which demands conformity you have a recipy for totalitarianism, be it in a more urban or rural country.
