Results 1 to 10 of 10
Felix Dzerzhinsky
I've seen a decent amount of Dzerzhinsky avatars / profile pictures / album pictures, and some users mentioned his name in a few threads here and there. Sometimes favourably. I didn't know who he was, so I had to look it up.
So why the Dzerzhinsky avatars? What do peope think of him?
“Where the worker is regulated bureaucratically from childhood onwards, where he believes in authority, in those set over him, the main thing is to teach him to walk by himself.” - Marx
"It is illogical and incorrect to reduce everything to the economic [socialist] revolution, for the question is: how to eliminate [political] oppression? It cannot be eliminated without an economic revolution... But to limit ourselves to this is to lapse into absurd and wretched ... Economism." - Lenin
"[During a revolution, bourgeois democratic] demands [of the working class] ... push so hard on the outer limits of capital's rule that they appear likewise as forms of transition to a proletarian dictatorship." - Luxemburg
“Well, then go forward, Tower of Bebel! [August] Bebel is one of the most brilliant representatives of scientific international socialism. His writings, speeches and works make up a great tower, a strong arsenal, from which the working class should take their weapons. We cannot recommend it enough… And if the [International] deserves to be named Tower of Bebel... well, then we are lucky to have such a Tower of Bebel with us.” - Vooruit
Dzerzhinksy was as instrumental in crushing the counter revolution as the red army was. I believe that without the CHEKA, the red army would not have succeeded. Dzerzhinksy also personified the revolutionary: he was wholeheartedly devoted to the cause, got sacked from
3 jobs for organising the workers, was known as incorruptible, and lived in austerity in an apartment.
Segui il tuo corso e lascia dir le genti.
Socialism resides entirely in the revolutionary negation of the capitalist ENTERPRISE, not in granting the enterprise to the factory workers.
- Bordiga
He also kept a portrait of Rosa Luxemburg in his office.
But Rosa did say something along the lines of "Felix has gotten so cruel"
Segui il tuo corso e lascia dir le genti.
Socialism resides entirely in the revolutionary negation of the capitalist ENTERPRISE, not in granting the enterprise to the factory workers.
- Bordiga
And Derzhinsky was instrumental in crushing all hopes for freedom in soviet state. CHEKA was the basis of later secret police which oppressed all freedom movements regardless their origins. And not all of them were reactionary. Soviet secret police oppressed Anarchists, Trotskists and Marxists who are not Leninists or Stalinists too.
"Property is theft."
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
"the system of wage labor is a system of slavery"
Karl Heinrich Marx
Dzerzhinsky was a goddamn psychopath.
Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long possessed that he is set free - he has set himself free - for higher dreams, for greater privileges.”
-James Baldwin
"We change ideas like neckties."
- E.M. Cioran
Re: Felix Dzerzhinsky
The archtype for a good Communist. An eternal hero of the proletariat, the mighty sword of the october revolution. Never before has the class enemy trembled before a name as much as they did Dzerzhinsky. Felix, honorable and noble as he was, allowed himself to be the face of the terror, in order to save the revolution. Personally, despite his work, he was kind and gentle, even took up the task of sheltering all of Moscow's homeless children. Dzerzhinsky was the most skilled counter intelligence officer to ever exist. And a feirce enemy of the counter revolution. Indeed he sided with Stalin, as any good marxist would have, had they not known what was to come. Every revolution needs a Felix Dzerzhinsky.
[FONT="Courier New"] “We stand for organized terror - this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Revolution and of the new order of life. ”
― Felix Dzerzhinsky [/FONT]
لا شيء يمكن وقف محاكم التفتيش للثورة
Its cute how your posts always read like some old lefty propaganda rag from a different era.
Rafiq hit the nail on the head, apart from the Stalin part...
Segui il tuo corso e lascia dir le genti.
Socialism resides entirely in the revolutionary negation of the capitalist ENTERPRISE, not in granting the enterprise to the factory workers.
- Bordiga
A question comes to mind. It concerns Trotsky's analysis of the Soviet Thermidor and the expression "the revolution devours its own children".
Trotsky saw in Stalin's comming to power a Soviet variant of the Thermidorian reaction that ended the most radical phase of the French Revolution. One could say, however, that Stalin actually represented a Soviet Brumaire, some kind of coup that would replace the revolution(ary phase) with a (military) dictatorship. Just like the Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte (1799) and the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1851).
By this analogy, Dzerzhinsky would be the one representing the Thermidorian reaction. He and others who supported the repressive methods of economic, military and political stabilisation during the mid twenties (1922-1929) were the ones who created the means by which many children of the revolution, among them many old Bolsheviks, were devoured in the 1920's and 1930's. Or is such a concideration too far-fetched?
Last edited by Tower of Bebel; 31st May 2013 at 12:37.
“Where the worker is regulated bureaucratically from childhood onwards, where he believes in authority, in those set over him, the main thing is to teach him to walk by himself.” - Marx
"It is illogical and incorrect to reduce everything to the economic [socialist] revolution, for the question is: how to eliminate [political] oppression? It cannot be eliminated without an economic revolution... But to limit ourselves to this is to lapse into absurd and wretched ... Economism." - Lenin
"[During a revolution, bourgeois democratic] demands [of the working class] ... push so hard on the outer limits of capital's rule that they appear likewise as forms of transition to a proletarian dictatorship." - Luxemburg
“Well, then go forward, Tower of Bebel! [August] Bebel is one of the most brilliant representatives of scientific international socialism. His writings, speeches and works make up a great tower, a strong arsenal, from which the working class should take their weapons. We cannot recommend it enough… And if the [International] deserves to be named Tower of Bebel... well, then we are lucky to have such a Tower of Bebel with us.” - Vooruit
Regarding the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Marx said that "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce"
Instead of twice he should have said thrice. I completely agree with Trotsky's analysis of the Thermidorian reaction in the Russian revolution and I usually have it in mind when I evaluate how Stalin ended the revolutionary stage of the Russian revolution and allowed the return of the Old Order with a new face pretty much like Napoleon.
I would say that he would be the one representing the Great Terror of the French Revolution (Red Terror in the Russian Revolution), the most violent and revolutionary stage of the French Revolution, since Dzerzhinsky was already dead when the Thermidorian reaction began in USSR.
