The biggest mistake!

[ravengod]

What is according to you the biggest mistake in all the communist history?
A person a decision an event and so on
but remember: mistake, not accident and not bad luck!

[LeonardoDaVinci]

The murderous uneducated thug that goes by the name of Joseph Stalin.

[ComradeJunichi]

Not enough unity.

Stalin the "uneducated"?

[redstar2000]

Another tough question...we have so many fuckups to choose from.

Try this: when the 3rd International was set up, its headquarters was in Moscow and the Russian influence was overwhelming...and often not exactly helpful. Would Russian influence been lessened if the headquarters had been in, say, Geneva? Would communist parties in western Europe and North America been more willing to "stand up" to Soviet "persuasion" if they had been meeting in Switzerland rather than in Moscow?

I really don't know if it would have helped or not...but if I could go back, that's something I'd do differently.

[Just Joe]

maybe Stalin telling the KPD to support Hitler?

if the Communists could have won in Germany, who knows where we'd be now.

then again that goes back to redstar2000's point about Russian domination. maybe if world Communism hadn't been controlled by one (totalitarian) country, other countrys might have looked more fondly on it and the domino effect the Berlin wall had may not have happened.

[hawarameen]

i think revolutionaries that overthrow governments and declare a socialist government without going through the transitional process, not being prepared, rushing into it etc.

[MJM]

The second internationa - german social democrats voting for war credits for WW1.

[Palmares]

The birth of Stalin is the most promninent. I do not like saying such a thing, but he could have done many other bad things without being Soviet leader.

[red warlock]

Stalin is a black spot in the history of communism..
and yes, Stalin was kind of uneducated, the ideas that he actually read Marx is pure desinformation..

[redstar2000]

RedWarlock, I wish it were that easy.

Stalin was "educated" in a Russian Orthodox seminary; though he was finally expelled for "activism", his "style" of learning was extremely dogmatic.

His approach to Marxism was like that of a Russian Orthodox priest's approach to theology.

He "knew" a lot of stuff, but it's questionable that he ever learned to "think" like a Marxist. Much of his writings "read" like theological works...and lots of communists imitated this style, so there's almost a kind of "3rd International" genre of Marxist literature.

Sadly, some folks are still imitating it.



PS: JustJoe, the KPD never supported Hitler; that's bourgeois mythology.



(Edited by redstar2000 at 9:15 pm on Feb. 14, 2003)

[Uhuru na Umoja]

Quote: from redstar2000 on 2:13 am on Feb. 15, 2003
RedWarlock,
PS: JustJoe, the KPD never supported Hitler; that's bourgeois mythology.
(Edited by redstar2000 at 9:15 pm on Feb. 14, 2003)

I'm glad you've pointed that out. The communists did try to opposed Hitler and paid the consequences: 30,000 dead, 150,000 in concentration camps (the highest death toll from any pre-1933 political party incidentally). They even oragnised a strike at the Auto Union works in 1936, which shows how resilient they were despite being outlawed. It is also perhaps significant to note that the KPD was not allowed to vote on the Enabling Act.

[redstar2000]

Yes indeed, Uhuru na Umoja, the KPD was, in my view at least, the only serious internal opposition to the Nazis before 1942 or thereabouts...when elements of the Army and the old Prussian aristocracy, realizing that the war was lost, began plotting the assassination of Hitler.

The bourgeois myth of the KPD "supporting Hitler" derives, I think, from a single incident: a streetcar drivers' strike in Berlin in late 1932 was supported by both the Nazis and the KPD. That the KPD should have supported the strike was expected; that the Nazis supported it was probably a cynical maneuver by Joseph Goebbels (Berlin Party Chief) to distract public attention from the fact that Hitler and other top Nazis were seen more and more in the company of Germany's biggest capitalists...who were financing the Nazi party's election campaigns.

[Just Joe]

i'll have to get back to ya on this KPD thing. i was pretty sure Stalin told them not to try and take power until Hitler was in government.

[redstar2000]

JustJoe, it would not have mattered what "Comrade Stalin" told the KPD.

The KPD had 300,000 members in 1932...in a nation of nearly 70,000,000. Their rivals in the Nazi Party probably had more than a million members with perhaps another million in the S.A. (Stormtroopers).

95% of the KPD membership was unemployed; most had been members for less than two years.

Under the circumstances, I think the KPD put up a magnificant fight against Nazism.

[red warlock]

you are right ,but this educational argument doesn't justify his paranoid fueled murders....his murders, meaning his actions are the black spot...

[MAN with a RED face]

Quote: from Revolution Hero on 10:20 pm on Feb. 17, 2003
The biggest mistake of the communist movement was the failure to prevent counter- revolution in the Soviet Union at the end of 80s and the beginning of 90s of the 20th century.

right, they should have prevented gorbachev from rising into power

[YerbaMateJ]

If Comandante Che were alive today, what would he think of Sadam Hussein?

[canikickit]

If Comandante Che were alive today, what would he think of Sadam Hussein?

Welcome to the forums. I suggest you start a fresh thread in the "Ernesto "Che" Guevara" forum on this subject.

http://www.che-lives.com/cgi/community/for...ums.pl?forum=10

If you click on the above link it will take you there. Then just click on "New Topic" (surprisingly enough).

[death b4 dishonour]

Too many to list. Among other things, using tanks to put down the student uprising in China was probably has to be up there.