Okay, so what’s the plan?
Well, I’ve read a lot of theory, and I’m pretty sure our best bet is posting memes online, crossing our fingers, and hoping for the best. We definitely shouldn’t go outside and talk to people, that’ll never work
Communism would have taken hold in 19th Century Germany if the Rheinische Zeitung had a meme section
Maybe get a beret? But will it look weird if I wear a beret with my Che Guevara t-shirt?
Revive Lenin and have some stroke medication on hand?
Sounds like a fun and comfy gathering
Get everyone in the retirement home to sign the petition
Gam-Gam is fucking done with them bouegeois pigs
Slippin’ Lenin gets the goods.
I’m a socialist but this needs the obligatory:
“Fuck Lenin™”
So you are a bad socialist
Marx is the theory , Lenin is the practice
Marx wasn’t the only socialist of his time, though history has deemed him certainly the most important.
Lenin on the other hand…
Nothing about the theory required Lenin to overthrow the results of a democratic election in 1917
Nothing about the theory required Lenin to backstab and crush his anarchist allies in Ukraine.
Nothing about the theory required Lenin crushing anarchism/syndicalism in Russia.
Nothing about the theory required Lenin banning all dissent even within the Communist party.
By the time of Lenins death, he had put in place all the institutions and levers of control that Stalin would later use to brutalize the population, all the worst parts of the Great Purge can be connected back to the systems that Lenin put in place.
Lenin had immense opportunities for positive change as the leader of the first socialist nation, however he squandered it completely by his purge of any ideals that weren’t his own, and his project turned into a dictatorship. Meanwhile the Democratic Socialists and Anarchists that Lenin loved to berate helped build societies that are now infinitely better to live in and more open to change from the working class than any of the modern countries inspired by his ideology.
You can say “Marx is the theory , Lenin is the practice” but it’s much more accurate to say, Marx is the theory, Lenin is a practice, and not the best one historically.
Lenin may not be the one who best (in your opinion) applied real Marxism, but you cannot deny that he was on of its greatest exponents
Peace between us, war on the bourgeoisie, comrade
but you cannot deny that he was on of its greatest exponents
While the revolution was a great propaganda victory for Socialists globally, almost every group that sprung up inspired by the revolution later became controlled by Moscow.
For example, the communists in my home country, the Communist Party of the USA, were summoned to Moscow by Stalin and had their more anarchist/democratic leaning factions purged, with some even being arrested and kept in Moscow till they died. The amount of control that Stalin and the Comintern had on international communism lead to repeated purges of more democratic/less Authoritarian socialists and basically ensured that Stalinist/Marxist Leninist Socialism was the only type allowed to flourish in any form for most of the cold war.
I certainly couldn’t predict what would’ve changed had the Russian Revolution been more democratic/pluralist, or had a more democratic revolution inspired the last century of global Socialism, but I at least believe that Socialism wouldn’t face the uphill “Gulags, Famine, Stalin, Mao” battle that it currently does.
Peace between us, war on the bourgeoisie, comrade
I would love nothing more than a united left, but it’s more the actions of Marxist Leninist inspired governments after their revolutions, (Universal banning of non-Leninist Socialists, Universal banning of pluralist socialist democracy, Yugoslav’s Split, 1956, and 1968) that makes me bash against ML’s. It’s hard to trust talk of leftist unity when the history of Leninism has involved the crushing of any other form of leftism since its inception.
“Peace between us until the MLs get into power and then I’ll have you look towards that wall.”
Man, anticommunist leftists sure love ignoring the political, historial and material context of things, don’t they? Yeah, Lenin was evil and he did that all because he was very very bad and the Bolsheviks are so evil!!! The man who consecrated his entire life to a worker’s revolution, read and wrote extensively about it, and from the start was adamant on educating the workers through newspapers and other publications, just was so bad and so evil and so bad. Bad Lenin! Bad!!
If by “nothing required the overthrow of the results of a democratic election” you ignore the ever-increasing threat of a reactionary, pro-Tsarist coup under lukewarm administration, then yeah, it wasn’t required.
If by “nothing required Lenin to purge other fellow socialists” you mean there weren’t counter-revolutionary Mensheviks and other such assets in positions of power during a literal civil war, then yeah, it wasn’t required.
If by “crushing syndicalism” in Russia you mean not immediately giving the means of production to uneducated workers, but instead slowly growing unions to unforeseen levels of participation, with tens of millions of union members in the 30s already, but understanding that socialism can’t survive against the onslaught of external powers without heavy planning (as proven by the 20+ million soviet deaths in WW2 in the fight against Nazism due to still comparatively low levels of industrialization), planning which initially can be done better by a vanguard party of socialist intellectuals, then yeah, it wasn’t required.
If by “crushing the working class” you mean creating unforeseen levels of access to healthcare, education, eliminating unemployment and homelessness. Or maybe you mean going against the interests of Kulaks and understanding that the best for peasants isn’t direct ownership of the land, but the elimination of structures of ownership of it altogether. Then yeah, it wasn’t required.
Talking of war communism as if the USSR wasn’t facing constant struggle against the rest of Europe portrays that you either don’t understand the history or you’re making a malicious intent. The Bolshevik revolution faced a coalition of the Tsarist loyalists in the civil war, which was militarily and economically supported by a total of 14 other countries, including Britain and its colonies, France, and many other European powers, in the direct aftermath of WW1. It’s basically a miracle that the Bolsheviks were able to win the war, and it speaks very highly of their power to mobilize the population and resources in times of extreme difficulty. This was in the immediate inception of the newborn state, before the USSR even existed as such. Then it was subjected to economic sanction and isolation. Afterwards, during several attempts to make agreements of mutual defense against Nazism with France and Britain (and even Poland) for all the decade of the 30s and being systematically ignored, what is the USSR to think about the rest of the world? Again, the victory of barely post-feudal agricultural USSR against the industrial power of Germany which was established for more than a century at that point, is basically another miracle. Saying that the USSR didn’t have reasons to see itself in “war socialism” is astonishing. It falls into what Michael Parenti said in his work Blackshirts and reds: for anticommunist leftists, the only worthy revolutions are the ones that failed.
This is not to say that there weren’t excesses in repression during the USSR. Of course there were. Stalinism was extremely excessive and brutal during WW2, and the oppression went way overboard. Then again, that’s the nature of the history of states up to that point, isn’t it? How can we expect the people born in brutal systems of oppression, who directly suffered that oppression, to not fall in excesses of oppression when times are hard? The best we can do is analyse these excesses from a historical, materialist, constructive point of view, and try to minimise the excesses. But let us not deceive ourselves with idealism: revolutions are bloody, and the ruling class doesn’t give away its power without fighting. Let’s learn from the mistakes of the past and build more fair and resilient systems that won’t commit those excesses, or will minimize them. But let’s not be ignorant about the historic and material conditions that led up to them, or we will fall in the same mistakes, or even worse, be on the receiving end after the reactionaries take over.
Nice propaganda bro, sources would be nice.
threat of a reactionary, pro-Tsarist coup
If by “nothing required Lenin to purge other fellow socialists” you mean there weren’t counter-revolutionary Mensheviks and other such assets in positions of power during a literal civil war,
Oh the good old, “Call them counter revolutionary and now it’s okay to shoot them”. The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries had a far bigger hand in the Febuary Revolution than the Bolsheviks, and later had their legitimacy confirmed with a free election. If anyone was counter-revolutionary it’d be the betrayers of the majority elected socialist government, the Bolsheviks under Lenin.
If by “crushing syndicalism” in Russia you mean not immediately giving the means of production to uneducated workers, but instead slowly growing unions to unforeseen levels of participation,
Nice try, but the Union’s under Marxist Leninist regimes are always heavily policed and controlled by their respective governments. "In this respect, through the Western lens of a dichotomy of independent unions versus company unions, they were more accurately comparable to company unions, as “unlike unions in the West, the Soviet variety do not fight for the economic interests of the workers. They are conveyor belts for Party instructions, carrying punishments and rewards to industrial and collective farm employees. Soviet trade unions work with their employer, the government, and not against it.” I’m not completely against planning, but I’m against banning any form of independent organization/representation for workers, and then striking them down whenever they complain.
If by “crushing the working class” you mean creating unforeseen levels of access to healthcare, education, eliminating unemployment and homelessness.
While the soviets did eventually institute some rather progressive welfare reforms for their time, these reforms had no popular demand from the working class that grain requisition did originally, and were put in place from above, not gained through demands of a working class movement. I believe most Leninists would call this a Bourgeoisie Concession had it happened in a capitalist country.
The Bolshevik revolution faced a coalition of the Tsarist loyalists in the civil war, which was militarily and economically supported by a total of 14 other countries, including Britain and its colonies, France, and many other European powers, in the direct aftermath of WW1
The Bolsheviks only faced an allied invasion after having pulled out of the war and signed a separate peace with the Germans through Brest-Litovsk, which happened after the bolsheviks had overthrown the mensheviks. More importantly though, the civil war didn’t even start until the Bolsheviks had crushed their socialist opposition. The Tsarists had almost zero power and were thoroughly crushed after events such as the Kornilov affair, and it would’ve stayed that way had the Bolsheviks not fractured the Russian socialist movement.
Of course there were. Stalinism was extremely excessive and brutal during WW2, and the oppression went way overboard.
I actually have far more of a problem with Stalins actions in the 1920s before the Great Purge and World War 2. Between Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Ryhzkov, and their supporters, Stalin had effectively crushed any opposition even within the party. Not though discrediting them intellectually or by testing their ideas and showing the failures, but instead by killing or imprisoning them.
I thoroughly believe these conflicts during the 1920s were what doomed the USSR, Stalin had killed almost all competing ideas for a potentially better Socialism, even among fellow Leninists. And through his purges Stalin became the gold standard of Leninism for the USSR, with the effective intellectual ban on the ideas of Bukharin, Zinoviev, and Trotsky lasting until the end of the USSR.
Let’s learn from the mistakes of the past and build more fair and resilient systems that won’t commit those excesses, or will minimize them.
That is what I tried to do here, and is why I’m majoring in Soviet history, but I don’t think just quoting the old propaganda justifications or Parenti counts as sober analysis. As socialists I believe we should focus historically on the possible off-ramps from authoritarianism that the USSR and all “Actually Existing Socialist” states had. Which is why I focus on Stalin and how the collection of power into Lenin’s position lead to the possibility of much larger later abuses under Stalin, imagine how much could’ve changed had after the civil war the Factions ban been lifted and the working class was allowed to choose between the Workers Opposition, Left Opposition or Right Opposition in free and fair internal Party elections like takes place now in most modern Socialist parties. I’m sure in this scenario Stalin wouldn’t of been able to commit the atrocities he later did, and that Soviet politics would rely much more on the will of the working class than behind the curtain political maneuvering.
Nice propaganda bro
Thanks comrade. A good marxist would know that everything is propaganda.
sources would be nice
Won’t be citing Wikipedia here, western Wikipedia sadly has an anti-soviet bias due to the literature available in the west as a consequence of anti-communism.
I know the coup attempt took place before October. But that doesn’t point you to other possible coup attempts? You don’t see a coup fail and go “oh thank god that’s over” and keep doing the same, right?
Oh the good old, “Call them counter revolutionary and now it’s okay to shoot them”
It’s not me saying that. There were terrorist attempts on Lenin, and even some successful ones against prominent Bolsheviks.
The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries had a far bigger hand in the Febuary Revolution than the Bolsheviks, and later had their legitimacy confirmed with a free election
Yes, this is true, that’s the whole point of the October Revolution. Mensheviks weren’t just “another good’ol branch of socialists”, the key issue here is that Mensheviks believed that for a revolution to happen, a prior capitalist phase (that Russia hadn’t been through) must be a prerequisite. I don’t see how forfeiting power to capital and letting it grow in private hands is the most intelligent idea for a socialist revolution. And you know what? Bolsheviks were right! You CAN establish socialism without a previous phase of capitalism. In the USSR, class relations disappeared, and the exploitation was no more.
"In this respect, through the Western lens of a dichotomy of independent unions versus company unions, they were more accurately comparable to company unions, as “unlike unions in the West, the Soviet variety do not fight for the economic interests of the workers. They are conveyor belts for Party instructions, carrying punishments and rewards to industrial and collective farm employees. Soviet trade unions work with their employer, the government, and not against it.”
Again, great job citing Wikipedia, which cites itself an English/American author from 1985, not at all suspected of having an ideology of themselves right? If you want sources, you can read Pat Sloan’s “Soviet Democracy”, a 1939 book written by Pat Sloan, an Englishman who went to the USSR to work for some years and retold an account of the functioning of the system, including unions. Spoiler alert: unions did represent the workers and, among other things, they were responsible for such important things as the access to healthcare and housing for many of the workers. Saying that they were conveyors for instructions from the top down is nonsensical, especially seeing how union membership amounted to tens of millions of workers while being totally voluntary.
While the soviets did eventually institute some rather progressive welfare reforms for their time
“Eventually”? Really? Again, you’re just spouting anti-communist propaganda. You can complain about repression but saying that the USSR “eventually” instituted progressive welfare is crazy, it’s one of the earliest things the USSR did. The fact that healthcare and education are extremely important is absolutely not a matter of discussion for any socialist, and that you would say “had no popular demand from the working class” is insane.
I believe most Leninists would call this a Bourgeoisie Concession had it happened in a capitalist country.
You can be as smug as you want about it, but in a classless state there are no “concessions”. There’s no exploitation, so there’s nothing to concede.
The Bolsheviks only faced an allied invasion after having pulled out of the war and signed a separate peace with the Germans through Brest-Litovsk
Damn Bolsheviks, signing peace treaties and pulling their country out of war… So evil!
The Tsarists had almost zero power
So little power that they could kickstart a 2-year-long civil war in which many Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries joined them, and in which more than a million and a half people died on the Bolshevik side. I’m sure independent unions controlling the industry separately would have fought much better against the White armies.
and it would’ve stayed that way had the Bolsheviks not fractured the Russian socialist movement.
Blaming the russian civil war on Bolsheviks instead of the actual, literal monarchic fascists that wanted to restore the Russian Empire. God, I don’t know how people like you can self-declare as leftists.
I actually have far more of a problem with Stalins actions in the 1920s before the Great Purge and World War 2. Between Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Ryhzkov, and their supporters, Stalin had effectively crushed any opposition even within the party. Not though discrediting them intellectually or by testing their ideas and showing the failures, but instead by killing or imprisoning them.
I also have problems with this repression because, surprise surprise, people can have nuance about the USSR and its past and history beyond “Lenin bad”. I’m fully aware of the repression against Trotskyism and the oppressive descent of the USSR in Stalinist times. What you anti-communists refuse to do is to analyze the material conditions of the moment. We’re talking of the first Socialist experiment ever. They didn’t know what they’d encounter, they only experienced war, initially military but later also economically, against their surrounding countries, for the sake of daring to be socialists. They had lived through tsarist repression and murder, and just come out of a brutal WW1 and an equally brutal civil war. If you think it’s possible to have a revolution without excesses and mistakes, you’re sorely mistaken. That doesn’t discredit the entire revolution, its ideals, and its achievements, at least it doesn’t to me, whereas it clearly does for anti-communists like you.
I thoroughly believe these conflicts during the 1920s were what doomed the USSR, Stalin had killed almost all competing ideas for a potentially better Socialism, even among fellow Leninists.
Again, these things don’t happen in a vacuum. There is a need for varying degrees of centralization depending on the material conditions. I ultimately agree that there was way too much power in the higher spheres of the USSR, which ironically led to the demise of the country once the higher ups decided it was time to “liberalize” the economy and the politics, aka Glasnost and Perestroika. But refusing to do material analysis of the circumstances, and reducing everything to “Lenin bad”, is counterproductive.
Without giving a context to everything that happened in the USSR, it’s very easy to judge the mistakes, but believing that “Lenin was bad and we’d do better nowadays” is delusional and shows a poor understanding of the underlying reasons, which when our revolution comes, will come to haunt us in the form of excessive and disorganized repression because of the lack of a plan for it, or as I said, even worse, a failure of the revolution as happened in my home country, Spain. Spain, during the time of the second republic, had a leftist government composed of a coalition of socialdemocrats, communists and anarchists. They were implementing land reforms according to the will of the majority, but because of the resistance of landowners and capitalists, this didn’t go smoothly. Instead of applying repression against reactionary elements, and a vanguard party taking control of a revolution, what happened is that the fascists attempted a coup that plunged the country into a bloody civil war that tore the country apart, and ultimately implemented nation-wide fascism for almost four decades. Funnily enough, nobody on the left talks or complains about the excesses of violence carried out by the antifascist side during the civil war, such as burning churches with priests alive inside, or raping nuns, or execution of fascist prisoners, or even infighting among the leftist parties. You know why? Because it failed, and failed leftist movements aren’t criticised but idealised by people like you. Only successful attempts of socialism deserve the ruthless public scrutiny that you guys apply. And scrutiny they deserve, but not without material and historical context that again, you guys so often forget about.
That is what I tried to do here, and is why I’m majoring in Soviet history
Can I ask where you’re majoring in Soviet history? I’m interested.
imagine how much could’ve changed had after the civil war the Factions ban been lifted and the working class was allowed to choose between the Workers Opposition, Left Opposition or Right Opposition in free and fair internal Party elections like takes place now in most modern Socialist parties. I’m sure in this scenario Stalin wouldn’t of been able to commit the atrocities he later did, and that Soviet politics would rely much more on the will of the working class than behind the curtain political maneuvering.
We can imagine the ideal utopian past where all humans were perfect and excesses weren’t committed, and repression was applied just in the right manner and only on fascist elements. We can also imagine an ideal utopian past where the working class got exactly what they wanted after the revolution and nothing else, where land reform was carried out in the Menshevik way, where consumer goods were prioritized instead of the heavy industry, and where, as a consequence of the lack of heavy industry, a socialist peasant country was absolutely demolished by Nazi Germany and subjected to a holocaust. I would also love to imagine a Spain where there had been Bolsheviks and we had had some Bolshevik oppression for some years instead of 36 years of fascism.
I would also like to note because my other reply ran out of space, I wouldn’t consider myself an anti-communist, but rather pro-democracy.
There’s plenty of communists, even leninists, that I look up to for inspiration, people and movements such as Allende, Sankhara, Che, Hu Yaobang, and the French and Italian communist parties being some examples, and I don’t think the actions of Lenin or even Stalin are universally bad, just that their authoritarian actions allowed for abuses that never should’ve happened in the name of socialism, and that there’s also plenty of inspiration in non-Leninist democratic socialists such as Goldman, Luxemburg, Haywood, Bevan, and Meidner.
You guys are comically well described by Parenti… “I’d like to cite every failed socialist movement as a source of inspiration”.
As for the longer comment I’ll answer in another moment, I’m out right now. You’re definitely one of the most reasonable anticommunists I’ve discussed with.
Thanks comrade. A good marxist would know that everything is propaganda.
Hence me saying that and then requesting sources for even better propaganda.
Won’t be citing Wikipedia here, western Wikipedia sadly has an anti-soviet bias due to the literature available in the west as a consequence of anti-communism.
While it’s definitely true wikipedia has biased pages around the Russian Revolution, specifically around not showing the proper criticisms of the anarchists like Mahkno during that period, however I believe it’s still the best (free and accessible) source available for the “Steel manned” criticism of the Bolsheviks during the revolution. If I was criticizing the actions of the anarchists or mensheviks I would definitely have to pull from actual books however.
I know the coup attempt took place before October. But that doesn’t point you to other possible coup attempts? You don’t see a coup fail and go “oh thank god that’s over” and keep doing the same, right?
No of course not, but it showed that the socialist parties had the ability to work together to counter the reactionary threat when needed. In my humble opinion as a college student I believe the Russian socialists would’ve been better off to keep cooperating with eachother against the Kadets and Whites rather than succumbing to infighting. However it’s questionable whether the mensheviks or Right-SR’s would have done so, but the anarchists, and Left SR’s definitely would have.
It’s not me saying that. There were terrorist attempts on Lenin, and even some successful ones against prominent Bolsheviks.
I’m aware of the assassination attempts on Lenin and other bolsheviks, but I don’t think that should’ve condemned the entirety of the other socialist parties to being purged, especially since I’ve never seen evidence of these assassination attempts being planned by the leadership of any of the socialist parties.
Bolsheviks were right! You CAN establish socialism without a previous phase of capitalism. In the USSR, class relations disappeared, and the exploitation was no more.
I don’t think that’s exactly what happened, I’d say it was far more than the class relations changed from lord and peasant to party official and worker, though that’s my Trotskyist sympathies and it’s a topic that’s been well debated and I’m sure you’re aware of that.
Saying that they were conveyors for instructions from the top down is nonsensical, especially seeing how union membership amounted to tens of millions of workers while being totally voluntary.
While the unions functioned very much like you say as the means through which the government gave certain benefits such as vacations at the sanitariums, they also had the ability to punish workers for non-loyalty and for stepping outside of party line, the ability for the party to influence the union and not the other way around is what I have problems with. And while technically being voluntary, it’s hard to measure how much participation in any organization is voluntary in an authoritarian environment like the Stalin and Brezhnev periods of the USSR.
“Eventually”? Really? Again, you’re just spouting anti-communist propaganda. You can complain about repression but saying that the USSR “eventually” instituted progressive welfare is crazy, it’s one of the earliest things the USSR did.
I said eventually because while the subsidies and reforms put in place during War Communism did help the urban class, they also lead to shortages of food in the countryside. In my opinion it’s only later after the end if War Communism and the beginning of the NEP that true welfare reforms were put in place, not just redistributory policies that redistributed resources from the rural to urban class. (I’m aware that some of the redistributions came from Kulaks and not peasants, however grain seizures did not happen only to Kulaks)
There’s no exploitation, so there’s nothing to concede.
That was the party line, but my Trotsky/Bernstein/Luxemburg inspired self would probably say otherwise.
So little power that they could kickstart a 2-year-long civil war in which many Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries joined them, and in which more than a million and a half people died on the Bolshevik side. I’m sure independent unions controlling the industry separately would have fought much better against the White armies.
Again that civil war started only after the revolution in October, had the socialists presented a more united front then I doubt the Tsarists would’ve had the opening to grab political control, they were vastly less popular than the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and SRs. And while the need for a strong central plan during the war is justification for the War Communism, but not for the lack of control the workers and unions had on planning after the war during the NEP period and after for the rest of Soviet history.
Blaming the russian civil war on Bolsheviks instead of the actual, literal monarchic fascists that wanted to restore the Russian Empire.
Had the Black Hundreds started the conflict I would completely agree with you. But in my view, the widespread violence/conflict didn’t actually start until after the start of violence between socialists in October. I only blame the bolsheviks for starting the conflict, I blame the mensheviks for working with people like Wrangel, Denikin, and the other white officers for perpetuating it and not bringing it to a quick close or trying to find agreement with the bolsheviks. But I don’t think the Mensheviks/Right SR’s would’ve ever stooped to working with people like Wrangel had the bolsheviks not started hostilities.
We’re talking of the first Socialist experiment ever.
I’m extremely sympathetic to this argument, however my only problem is that the socialists of that time were doing exactly what socialists today do, fighting and hating eachothing more than they fought the capitalists. After the 1917 election effectively, the entire government was controlled by socialists, the Kadets and Whites would’ve only had whatever power the socialists let them. I feel like if I was participating in the first socialist revolution I would put much more care into ensuring the movement as a whole stayed united and in power, instead of one particular section of it, however here I am engaging in leftist infighting so who knows.
That doesn’t discredit the entire revolution, its ideals, and its achievements, at least it doesn’t to me, whereas it clearly does for anti-communists like you.
I don’t think it discredits the revolution actually, hence me putting effort into learning about Soviet history post-revolution as well. I do however think it discredits some of the ideals of Leninism, just because of how easy they were for Stalin to abuse. Primarily the concept of the Vanguard party meant that the Bolsheviks could justify to themselves the repression of other socialists movements and in my view it had an inherently patriarchal view of the working class needing to be “guided” by a party instead of the party being guided by the working class. In my view the ban on factionalism also allowed whatever faction was in power to crush any competition and basically allowed it to not have to listen to the working class. If a broad swath of the population began to support Trotsky or any other faction leader, the ruling faction could simply say that those Trotskyists were counter-revolutionary and repress them.
which ironically led to the demise of the country once the higher ups decided it was time to “liberalize” the economy and the politics, aka Glasnost and Perestroika. But refusing to do material analysis of the circumstances, and reducing everything to “Lenin bad”, is counterproductive.
The Gorbachev period is actually why I blame Lenin. In my view Gorbachev was just the leader of one of the two major factions of the USSR during that time. But in my view, because of the ban on factions that started with Lenin, and the collection of power around the Politburo that started with Lenin, the internal political conflicts of the party were decided more by who had connections and political maneuvering abilities far more than who the working class preferred. Had the working class been able to vote specifically for which faction they wanted more in the Gorbachev era and before, I don’t think the scheming that lead to the August Coup and dissolution of the union by the Liberals ever would’ve happened.
Funnily enough, nobody on the left talks or complains about the excesses of violence carried out by the antifascist side during the civil war, such as burning churches with priests alive inside, or raping nuns, or execution of fascist prisoners, or even infighting among the leftist parties. You know why? Because it failed, and failed leftist movements aren’t criticised but idealised by people like you.
I do actually criticize the infighting between liberals, anarchists, and leninists during the Spanish Civil War, however it’s a topic that doesn’t come up often in American political discourse so I don’t often get the chance to. I’ve read far less about the Spanish War than the Russian one, however from what I’ve read the fighting between the Leninists and Anarchists and the schemes of the Liberals directly contributed to their loss. I don’t think the Leninists seizing power over the socialist movement in Spain would’ve exact been the answer, with it likely leading to infighting within the left like during the Russian war, I think the answer probably would’ve been deeper negotiation and agreement between socialists for a more united Popular Front, however you’d know more than me on if that was feasible.
Can I ask where you’re majoring in Soviet history? I’m interested.
University of Chapel Hill at North Carolina, unfortunately the best I can afford at the moment for a secondary major.
Great discussion, very informative. Thanks
Planning the murder of 500,000 people
landlords and foreign imperialists are not people.
dehumanization of the other
Whooooah there buddy.
would somebody PLEASE think of the leeches and colonial mass murderers
Ah, yes, all societies and situations are homogeneous I forgot.
Besides that, people deserve to die for playing by the rules of the system in which we live? Why not change the rules to prevent abuse?
Clown
you liberals are such fuckig morons, its unbelievable.
i suppose, according to you the slaves of haiti should have simply forgiven the slavers, since they were “playing by the rules”. this institutionality fetish of yours is the same excuse fascists use to justify their crimes. “the untermenschen werent playing by the rules.”
please read theory. especially engels, lenin and mao.
I do read theory. I just know theory isnt the be all end all of understanding the world. If it was, that would be great, but you just happen to agree with this guys philosophical musings. Besides that, you call me a liberal when I’m literally not but whatever.
You’re arguing with an imaginary friend and a beautiful strawman opinion you made for him to hold.
I never said anything about Haiti, but comparing anybody living in a first world country (the vast majority of this site’s users and where such a revolution is more likely to take place) to a slave is disingenuous at absolute best.
I also don’t think that Dessalines needed to massacre the remaining french people on the island. I’m willing to bet I have a better und3rstanding of the haitian revolution than you. You know they reinstated slavery within a couple of years, right? Read some Trouillot.
🤡
Isn’t the context about the overthrow of the Russian Empire by communist revolutionaries? Not modern first-worlders? Am I missing something here? Why would “foreign imperialists” be relevant to modern first-worlders?
That being said, to actually answer your line of questioning, it is the correct solution to change society while ALSO overthrowing and locking up the oppressors. That may involve the elite dying, but those deaths are necessary. Peaceful reformism and strict nonviolence policies never works – unless you consider extremely high amounts of unnecessary suffering for innocents to achieve comparatively minor goals as “success” (cough cough Nelson Mandela). Even Gandhi and MLK (who took most of his influence from Gandhi), although nonviolence advocates, were well aware that violence is often necessary to achieve a better future, and much of the work they did was to the benefit of violent/militant revolutionaries (although of course they’re portrayed a lot more neutered/“deradicalized”, as well as the roles of complete compliance to nonviolence being completely overstated while violent methods are hidden away as if they didn’t exist, not even to be mentioned).
After capture though, death pentalty is not the way to go, but life imprisonment is fine and they may have a chance to be released later, mostly depending on their status/loyalty. I’m sure a lot of “revolutionaries” would disagree with me though, but I’m not an “eye for an eye” believer… I suppose if you’re in a situation where the former imperialist rulers would likely have power to directly cause damage while detained or incarcerated, or they’re likely to escape or be “rescued”, then it would be justified to chop off their heads or put a bullet in their cranium.
The core issue is that these people (the oppressors/ruling class) can not be rehabilitated, and are likely to stir up considerable trouble and disrupt when they have the opportunity, either in a bid to regain their power, or out of a large feeling of loss that makes them go nuts. You can’t always reasonably ensure that they won’t try to fuck shit up in the future.
That’s just my view, but of course there are people other than me who are just bloodthirsty for vengeance (my opinion is that they’re not thinking all too rationally and it’s the same mindset as parents that hit/yell at their kids, they’re convincing themselves it’s for the greater good but in reality it’s just attempting to satisfy their feelings of anger). Either way, I see their lives as considerably less valuable than the lives of the people they oppressed, not because they have an inherently evil soul or something, but because they are already too far gone and only can bring chaos to the world.
Just
for a classless society, you fool, you absolute baffoon.
🤡We live in bourgeois “democracies,” which were formed from bourgeois revolutions. These states weren’t created to represent us, and they never have and never will. The rules of the system can’t be reformed into socialism, because the bourgeoisie will never allow it. They would sooner unleash fascism on us (again in the case of Europe) than relinquish ownership of the means of production.
Rosa Luxemburg, 1900: Reform or Revolution
Oh god this meme is disgusting
I know! If it said “Friends, cake, tea” it would rhyme
that does work better :)
Not as disgusting as
Oh, now it’s okay to vote for a lesser evil?
The abolition of capitalism is kinda the lesser evil, the transition to communism isn’t exactly smooth even in theory.
Are you lost? The revolution will not be won by ballot.
Name one time in history where the capitalist class accepted a vote to dismantle themselves. It has never happened and very likely never will. They’ll unleash fascism upon the working class if need be to maintain their position.
I agree, that’s why Russia needs another.
Why?
Because of lenin, i hate this guy
Why?
Because he was the one of the many russians who was destroying my countrie’s culture and economy
Just words of extreme nationalists.
one of the many Russians
Ok, racist. You can blame governments for certain actions, but blaming ethnicities, especially when the form of government has changed 180° two times in the past century, just shows you’re a racist nationalist.
Funnily enough, Lenin’s ethnicity is contested, but his patronymic “Ilich” doesn’t necessarily suggest that he’s ethnically Russian. Sorry that your country has been brainwashed for the past 3 decades to hate an entire nationality. You can blame the current Russian government for any oppression they’re carrying out in your country if it’s the case, and that’s very legitimate, but don’t be a racist prick and don’t blame a nationality.
I just know the history of my country, not the russian version of our history
Thanks for at least not refuting the claims of nationalism and racism
