Greetings fellow socialists, please support me as I try to spread socialism to the youth.
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I am defending the USSR's case before Stalin. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were about to create the most democratic regime of all time, although there was not an abundance of resources in Russia. Once Stalin took control, he did not assist revolutions in Germany and China, and implicated Socialism in One Country. Trotskyist's oppose this idea, and believe in proleterian internationalism, and permanent revolution. Once socialism unfolds in other countries, resources are no longer scarce. If Stalin supported the German and Chinese revolutions, and was a true Marxist, imagine how different things would be. "Mechanical centralism is necessarily complemented by factionalism, which is at once a malicious caricature of democracy and a potential political danger." – Trotsky http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1923/newcourse/x01.htm Trotskyism is not hypocritical.
Hi celticnachos, it's time to kill your idols!Read this account of the Kronstadt Commune, written at the time: http://www.marxists.org/archive/mett/1938/kronstadt.htmAnd this demolition of romantic visions of Lenins period of rule:http://www.marxists.org/archive/brinton/1970/workers-control/The Russian Revolution was a capitalist revolution from the start, it could not have been anything else.
celticnachos wrote:I am defending the USSR's case before Stalin. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were about to create the most democratic regime of all time,"Our Central Committee has decided to deprive certain categories of party members of the right to vote at the congress of the party. Certainly it is unheard of to limit the right of voting within the party, but the entire party has approved this measure, which is to assure the homogenous unity of the Communists. So that in fact, we have 500,000 members who manage the entire state machine from top to bottom."ZinovievFirst congress of the 3rd international 1920So 500,000 members in a population of 180,000,000 and not even all of them are allowed to vote. It kind of contradicts Marx's "vast majority of the working class acting in the interests of the vast majority of the working class" (manifesto).
Completely agree with you there Ed. Couldn't have put it better myself mate.Trotskyism is an ideology based on hypocrisy, very similar to that of the present system of which we have in the western world.Economic democracy/equality of opportunity is the only way forward.
Lenin had to use vangaurdism and state capitalism in Russia because he believed the Russian revolution was not the "real revolution." In Marxist theory the revolution would take place in the most advanced capitalist area, during Lenin's time that would be Germany. I don't understand the point when you say Trotskyism is hypocritical, because his theory on permanent revolution is that it would be impossible for socialism to take place in one country. The tsarist regime was insanely corrupt, and using the Soviet Union took keep things in place and to help organize and assist other revolutions would make sure that socialism would be established. If Lenin hadn't implentned the NEP then the country would've gone to turmoil. Conditions were very bad for Russia after the revolution.
What you say is very true. Circumstances in post 1917 Russia dictated Lenin's policies and directed his actions which led to the implementation of a form of capitalism. It led to the dictatorship of the party substituting for the dictatorship of the proletariat. But the problems were no unforeseen. As Marx explained, you cannot jump from feudalism to socialism. You turn Marx upside down by suggesting that Russia assist the more developed West. Marx specifically described that the only way Russia could possibly miss out the capitalist stage was through the intervention from the industrialised nations. You seem to switch the situation around. The post First World War world situation was indeed radical…general strikes in America and in Canada and elsewhere. Lenin made a judgement call that there was a genuine revolutionary surge and he saw evidence in many movements of this revolutionary fervour. He was wrong. Simple as that. There existed a strong re-vtalised class struggle by workers but organisations and actions he considered to be the vanguard could not bring over the majority of workers to its side. That was reality. That failure of Lenin reading what was really happening and fully understanding the workers consciousness outside Russia, determined the shifting and changing compromising rhetoric of Comintern and the abandonment of world revolution as an objective to be replaced by an accommodation with the Western Powers. 1923 Treaty of Rapallo with Germany saw the Red Army training and supplying German government troops that were used against a workers uprising in Germany (Stalin was not yet in power so it cannot be laid at his feet) However, there were other alternatives to choose from which would have strengthened the working class, not weakened it by removing its independent self-organisation. For all its flaws bourgeois democracy would have been more benefit for the small Russian working class and would have avoided or at least minimised the civil war that you correctly describe as turmoil. The Left Mensheviks, perhaps represented the better option for the urban working class and the Left Social Revolutionaries for the peasantry. We are not going to convince you in a brie exchange of posts as this. It is up to yourself to read the links you have been provided, to Julius Martov and other socialist but anti-Bolshevik critics like Anton Pannekoek and Paul Mattick.
Yup, Marx actually said that Socialism/Communism would only come about, when the material conditions existed to make it possible. In the agrarian, feudalistic society, that existed in Russia, whether pre or post revolution, the material conditions for a revolution for and in the interests of the vast majority did not exist. One also has to factor in, the "fact", posited earlier, that Marx also understood that the Socialist/Communist revolution would, of necessity, be a world wide revolution. To replace Capitalism worldwide, with Socialism/Communism worldwide. Even though I do not have qualifications in 'geography', the last time I looked, Russia did not, nor does, encompass the whole landmass of the planet. We can take from this, one simple fact, the Russian revolution had nothing to do with the idea that Marx had, for a proletarian revolution, it was 'only' the conceptualisation of revolution as envisaged by Lenin and thereafter by his disciples, Trotsky and uncle Joe. That their idea of "revolution" was to be brought about, by "an intellectual elite", a "cadre of professional revolutionaries" is another and indicative pointer, to the fact that these 'people', did not draw their inspiration from Marx but from their own "twisted" interpretation of Marx.So let us be quite clear, Lenin and his lickspittle sycophants, were not following, in any way shape or form, the ideas, nor tenets of revolution, as espoused by Marx. You want Socialism/Communism, read Marx. You want "State-Capitalism", read and believe Lenin, Totsky, Stalin et al. But do not, in any way, transpose one set of ideas from one to the others. Intellectual redundancy is simply that, whichever way you slice it.Steve Colborn.
By the way, I wrote my post before the post from Alan appeared but which does not detract from it's veracity but which is only validated by his post.Steve Colborn.
We've given you quite a reading list task so perhaps this 5 minute video on Kronsdadt may be a welcome break. http://libcom.org/blog/kronstadt-short-film-24022012 Don't be misled by those apologists who claim that the Kronsdadt of 1921 was different from 1917 in class make up. Simply not accurate. Historian, Israel Getzler investigated this issue and demonstrated that of those serving in the Baltic fleet on 1st January 1921 at least 75.5% were drafted before 1918. Veteran politicised Red sailor still predominated in Kronstadt at the end of 1920. Of the 2,028 sailors where years of enlistment are known, 93.9% were recruited into the navy before and during the 1917 revolution (the largest group, 1,195, joined in the years 1914–16). Other research confirms Getzler’s work. Documents from the Soviet Archives such as areport by Vasilii Sevei, Plenipotentiary of the Special Section of the Cheka, dated March 7th, 1921,stated that a “large majority” of the sailors of Baltic Fleet “were and still are professional revolutionaries and could well form the basis for a possible third revolution.” “In September and October 1920 Bolshevik party lecturer Ieronymus Yasinksky went to Kronstadt to lecture 400 naval recruits and writes “‘in Kronstadt the red sailor still predominates.’ Gramsci says that “to tell the truth is a communist and revolutionary act”. Most Trotskyists argue that the suppression of the rebellion was essential to defend the “gains of the revolution.” What exactly were these gains? Not soviet democracy, freedom of speech, assembly and press, trade union freedom and so on as the Kronstadters were crushed for demanding these.
You may all I think I am unrealistic then but I think you can jump to socialism straight away. Material conditions has nothing to do to whether we have capitalism or socialism.The quicker the better I say.Oh and I know I will now get a lot of criticism for this comment, but democratically turning any society into socialism is what I believe in regardless of what that society may be, and that is what Marx would have wanted because he would have far rather seen socialism in his lifetime instead of having to suffer his final days under the vile capitalist system.
You maybe interested in what Engels and Marx has said, Alex. Answering the question in 1847 “Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke?”, Engels wrote:”No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity”. In 1847 Marx writes:”If the proletariat destroys the political rule of the bourgeoisie, that will only be a temporary victory, only an element in the service of the bourgeois revolution itself, as in 1794, so long as in the course of history, in its `movement’, the material conditions are not yet created which make necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production and thus the definitive overthrow of bourgeois political rule.” [my emphasis] In 1850, Marx stated:”History has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong. It has made it clear that the state of economic development at that time was not, by a long way, ripe for the elimination of capitalist production.” Also in 1850 Engels desribes what happens in a premature revolution:Also, writing in 1850, Engels discussed the fate of Thomas Munzer, as the leader of a communistic party coming to power before conditions were ripe for establishment of a communistic society. This passage is worth quoting extensively: “The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government at a time when society is not yet ripe for the domination of the class he represents and for the measures which that domination implies. What he can do depends not upon his will but upon the degree of antagonism between the various classes, and upon the level of development of the material means of existence, of the conditions of production and commerce upon which class contradictions always repose. What he ought to do, what his party demands of him, again depends not upon him or the stage of development of the class struggle and its conditions. He is bound to the doctrines and demands hitherto propounded which, again, do not proceed, from the class relations of the moment, or from the more or less accidental level of production and commerce, but from his more or less penetrating insight into the general result of the social and political movement. Thus, he necessarily finds himself in a unsolvable dilemma. What he can do contradicts all his previous actions and principles, and the immediate interests of his party and what he ought to do cannot be done. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whose domination the movement is then ripe. In the interest of the movement he is compelled to advance the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with talk and promises, and with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests. He who is put into this awkward position is irrevocably lost.” Marx recognised the inevitability of some limitations on free consumption in the early stages of socialism (had it been established in the 1870’s), and endorses “labour-time vouchers” as one possible method of doing this.
Alex Woodrow wrote:You may all I think I am unrealistic then but I think you can jump to socialism straight away. Material conditions has nothing to do to whether we have capitalism or socialism.Sorry Alex, but this is a totally utopian concept.The SPGB, as scientific socialists, view social and political developments as being largely determined by economic conditions as opposed to ideas in contrast to utopian socialists and classical liberals, and thus hold the view that social relations and notions of morality are context-based relative to their specific stage of economic development. Therefore as economic systems, socialism and capitalism are not social constructs that can be established at any time based on the subjective will and desires of the population, but instead are products of social evolution.Marx and Engels argued that socialism (or communism, as they called it) could not have been established at any historical time but only when the material conditions for its existence, large-scale industry capable of producing plenty for all, had come into existence. They were well aware that these conditions had only just begun to appear in the 1840s and that they were not then sufficiently developed to have allowed the immediate establishment of socialism. The point was specifically made by Engels in reply to another of the questions ("Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke?") in his draft for the Communist Manifesto:
Quote:No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of communal society. In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity. (emphasis added)However, the material conditions necessary for the establishment of socialism and free access to the wealth produced by society do exist now… and have done for some considerable time.
I think there is some danger of major confusion arising here.On one aspect Alex is correct in thinking socialism can be "jumped" to straight away. As Gnome points out, the material conditions for establishing world socialism exist now. If enough workers want socialism tomorrow, it could be done. "In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually…"Anyone care to explain the above snippet of Engels, in light of the fact that material conditions are ripe for socialism now?
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