The Communism Thread

[Axl Van Sixx]

No we're not talking about something different. There's nothing at all wrong with putting your candidates forward. What Lenin did on the other hand though was ensure that only Bolsheviks would be up for election, thus ensuring that Bolsheviks would take control.

What are you talking about? Lenin didn't control the soviets. The Bolsheviks were only one party among many.

Take a history class.

Read some history. One that isn't written with a Marxist bias.

This is your best argument? You have no idea what I read. Hate to break it to you, but there aren't a hell of a lot of Marxist tracts available in your typical giant book store. I read all the history I can get my hands on, including from authors severely critical of communism. Pretty sure you don't read any historians that offer a contrary point of view to your own.

I read historical works that are both pro-communist and anti-communist. You talk as if you know all the facts and you've heard both sides of the story, but you almost certainly have never read an account of the Russian Revolution that actually defended it. So how exactly is your opinion more informed than mine?

Answer: it's not. You take all these stale cliches about the USSR and communism and then somehow believe you're being bold and clever by parroting them.

Ummmmm......no. You see there is a difference between what Lenin did and what the United States elections run.

First lets take a look at the United States electoral system which uses a first past the post system. Typically in a FPTP system, a two dominant party system is what emerges (Democrat/Republican in the United States, Conservative/Labour in the United Kingdom, Conservative/New Democrats in Canada, etc.) Second, you don't have one party ensuring that every candidate on the ballot is part of the same party. In the United States, there is almost always a Republican and Democrat on the ballot and they also have candidates for the Libertarian Party, Green Party, Socialist Party, Constitution Party, Reform Party, etc. Opposition candidates, particularly those of parties who are not Republican or Democrat, don't do very well because the system is typically designed against them, but they are not oppressed.

The two corporate parties have a lock on power. They put up massive obstacles that prevent other parties from being represented on the ballot. The Republicans and Democrats both carry out the whims of the American ruling class.

Free and fair? American "democracy" is a joke.

The Bolsheviks tried to win them over, doesn't change the fact that they looked down on them.

And if they did - so what?

I'm sure that Republican and Democratic politicians totally respect and care about the opinions of ordinary voters.

Ummmmm.....no. That is not an acceptable excuse that they were "forced" to ban other parties. You're talking to the guy who criticizes Abraham Lincoln for abuses of power during the American Civil War. What makes you think that I would find the need to ban other parties during the Russian Civil War to be an acceptable excuse.

Whether you find it acceptable is irrelevant. I was just correcting your mistaken view that the Bolsheviks set out to have a one-party state from the beginning.

Here's an excerpt from the Museum of Communism:

"After the Czar's abdication, power passed to a Provisional Government appointed by a temporary committee of the Duma, which proposed to share power to some extent with councils of workers and soldiers known as "soviets." Following a brief and chaotic period of fairly democratic procedures, a mixed body of socialist intellectuals known as the Ispolkom secured the right to "represent" the soviets. The democratic credentials of the soviets were highly imperfect to begin with: peasants - the overwhelming majority of the Russian population - had virtually no say, and soldiers were grossly over-represented. The Ispolkom's assumption of power turned this highly imperfect democracy into an intellectuals' oligarchy. As Pipes explains, the Ispolkom "was not representative of the workers and soldiers, for its members were not elected by the Soviet but, as in 1905, nominated by the socialist parties. Members of the Ispolkom represented not workers and soldiers but their respective party organizations, and could be replaced at any time by others of these parties." In short, "Rather than serving as the executive organ of the Soviet, therefore, the Ispolkom was a coordinating body of socialist parties, superimposed on the Soviet and speaking in its name." (The Russian Revolution) "

The Bolsheviks adopted the slogan "All power to the soviets" precisely to direct power to these councils run by the workers. The Ispolkom didn't play a significant role.

Almost all historians call it a coup.

Right - bourgeois historians whose only interest is defaming the Russian Revolution. You don't get tenure at Harvard by defending the Bolsheviks.

Something that didn't resort to despotic means maybe?

Wow. What an amazing solution! I'd love to get you in a DeLorean and send you back to 1917 so you could tell that to all the starving Russian workers.

The Russian proletariat overthrew their brutal despot in February 1917. Your "democratic" Russian government was more than happy to arrest opposition leaders like Lenin and Trotsky, but of course you would never dare describe Kerensky's imprisonment of the opposition as "despotism". Frankly, that selective outrage is starting to get a little old.

You have to take into account that the governments of the world did not want Lenin in power. Lenin advocated and supported their overthrow. He supported movements in other countries that were similar to his. The other governments of the world could not allow that.

Your reasoning is ridiculous. Southern slaveowners could never permit a slave rebellion either, but you effectively want me to side with the slaveowners on the grounds that doing so would maintain order.

Not demonizing him, just putting him in a light that doesn't glorify him like you do. You want to see demonization, look at how Stalin is rightfully portrayed.

No, they absolutely demonize Lenin and it's easy to see how many of their lies you've swallowed. I'm sure you read books by hack historians like Robert Service or Richard Pipes and think of their crap as "objective" history.

There's a difference between glorifying Lenin unquestionably and praising him for what he actually accomplished. The old Stalinist historians used to paint Lenin as this solitary genius who singlehandedly led the workers to triumphant victory in the October Revolution and never made a mistake. That has nothing in common with real history, or the history I've read.

Read Bolshevism - The Road to Revolution by Alan Woods. It carefully details both the successes and mistakes of the Bolsheviks en route to their gaining power. But I'm sure you never will - because somehow, anti-communist historians are "objective", while Marxist historians are hopelessly compromised.

Except I don't excuse them either. The Whites weren't innocents at all.

How very nice for you that you can look at the Russian Civil War and think "both sides were bad!" Bravo. But there's a difference between playing amateur historian and being in the middle of a civil war where you have to pick a side.

Call me crazy, but I'll take the progressives who claim to represent workers of all races and creeds over the quasi-fascist reactionaries who massacre Jews and communists and want to impose a right-wing dictatorship.

Then this goes to my point that mentioned before, that if there is any truth to Marx's solution, it will not be realized in our lifetime. Perhaps after a coupe of centuries social evolution, humanity will have the conditions to realize an ideal communist, but clearly humanity is not ready for it now. You cannot force humanity to be ready for something they are not ready for. The politics of revolution have mostly failed humanity for the last century, I believe evolution is the key to the future. If the ideal communist society will exist, it will not be exactly as Marx envisioned. Marx felt communism was just around the corner and yet a 150 years after Marx's communist writings, it hasn't happened. Clearly Marx's time table has failed and has to be reexamined. I see no evidence that humanity is ready for this now. I'm naturally a skeptic, so without any truly concrete evidence, I think believing in that communism is viable today is like believing in Zeus, an article of faith rather then rationality or science.

Frankly Canada became the state it is today through social evolution rather then revolution, I like that about Canada. It is far more orderly process and more realistic.

Maybe human nature will change to fit communist ideals, but won't that happen tomorrow, we will have been long dead when or even if that happens. In the mean time, I will deal with the world that exists today, instead of the one that might exist in the future.

Sometimes you need a revolution. Would Egypt have "evolved" out of the Mubarak dictatorship?

Marx never made a specific timeline about when socialism or communism would arrive. He simply stated it would happen at some indefinite point in the future. His approach was above all scientific, and he was loath to make concrete predictions that he couldn't verify.

Personally, I think humanity is more than ready for socialism, because all that means is a society built on human needs rather than private profit.

If your mom bakes you a blueberry pie, is she doing it to make a profit? No.

If you see someone who's been in a car accident and is badly injured, do you ask for money before you help them? I would hope not.

Do most musicians create music to make money - or because it satisfies some deep creative urge? Generally, it's the latter.

The point is that people do things all the time without profit being a consideration. Capitalism atomizes society by attaching a monetary value to everything. So even though we've got lots of homeless people, and lots of empty homes, we can't put those people in those homes because to do so would be unprofitable. Don't you see anything wrong with this picture?

A society based on the satisfaction of human needs is not some unachievable utopia; it's common sense.

Marxism claims to be scientific, but all Marxists seem to do is test the same hypothesis, over and over again and simply dismiss the results when they don't like them. That's not science. Unless the variables change in a dramatic way, the same result will occur. These variables will not change any time soon, they could change in the far future.

Can you give me some examples?

 

[hippie_hunter]

You are aware that you are essentially arguing against professional historians now right? The people who have PhD.s and whatnot.

 

[The Overlord]

Sometimes you need a revolution. Would Egypt have "evolved" out of the Mubarak dictatorship?

And yet it seems the the social reactionary parties that would oppress women and religious minorities will win power in Egypt, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The oppressed often want to become oppressors.

Marx never made a specific timeline about when socialism or communism would arrive. He simply stated it would happen at some indefinite point in the future. His approach was above all scientific, and he was loath to make concrete predictions that he couldn't verify.

What was more likely a communist revolution in the 30s when the capitalist economy was at its weakest or one now, after communism has had its reputation dragged through the mud by criminal regimes who committed horrors in its name? Communism reputation wasn't in tatters in the 30s, like it is now. Communism wasn't seen as a proven failure in the 30s, people would have been more forgiving to it then, rather then now.

Personally, I think humanity is more than ready for socialism, because all that means is a society built on human needs rather than private profit.

If your mom bakes you a blueberry pie, is she doing it to make a profit? No.

If you see someone who's been in a car accident and is badly injured, do you ask for money before you help them? I would hope not.

Do most musicians create music to make money - or because it satisfies some deep creative urge? Generally, it's the latter.

The point is that people do things all the time without profit being a consideration. Capitalism atomizes society by attaching a monetary value to everything. So even though we've got lots of homeless people, and lots of empty homes, we can't put those people in those homes because to do so would be unprofitable. Don't you see anything wrong with this picture?

A society based on the satisfaction of human needs is not some unachievable utopia; it's common sense.

You are making leaps of logic, you comparing family relations and helping people in immediate danger to the social conditions to create a communist society. I would easily put the welfare of my family above some stranger. Just because family members are willing to help each other or help people in immediate danger, doesn't mean people don't also have a greedy side and want superior status to one's neighbor. I don't think people want to truly equal, I think people want to be recognized as being superior in recent ways, with superior status or household or something else. I think you are looking only at the positives of humanity and ignoring all the flaws. Plus with all the crimes done in the name of communism, people will not accept in our lifetime. It doesn't matter if the USSR was real communism or not, many people who were victimized by that system will blame communism. In parts of Eastern Europe, communist symbols are illegal the same way Nazi symbols are in Germany.

Many crimes were committed in the name of communism and its naive to assume that the psychological scars from those crimes will go away any time soon. That was there will be no communist revolution in the near future, because many people will think it will produce the same result every other communist revolution has produced, a police state. There is a line in 1984, where O'Brien says the purpose of a revolution is gain power and form a dictatorship, I think most of the revolutions in the last century have ended that way. I don't trust revolutions at this point, they create chaos and allow opportunist to take over.

Poverty is a real problem, but I don 't think its something that can be solved overnight with a revolution. I don't believe in easy solutions to life's problems.

Can you give me some examples?

Every communist revolution ever. Everyone of them failed and yet communists just seem to ignore them. If communists fail to learn from past mistakes, they will repeat them. If the past revolutions have failed, why would the next one be different.

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

You are aware that you are essentially arguing against professional historians now right? The people who have PhD.s and whatnot.

Well you see, hippie, just because someone has a PhD doesn't necessarily mean everything they write is gospel truth.

For example, I could take any number of economists with PhDs who would say the answer to our economic woes is to cut government spending. But from the perspective of working class people who suffer from austerity, that's not true at all.

The point is that you're struggling to avoid confronting the simple fact that the Bolsheviks democratically won a majority in the soviets. They had the support of the workers in the cities and this is why they were able to carry through a bloodless revolution.

This notion that it was some kind of coup not only ignores the facts of history, it gets close to outright mysticism. Tell me, if the Bolsheviks were a tiny minority with no support among the population, how exactly did they gain control over a nation of 150 million people?

I assume you'll say terror and repression, which avoids the question of how they were able to get away with that if they had no support, as you appear to believe.

And yet it seems the the social reactionary parties that would oppress women and religious minorities will win power in Egypt, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The oppressed often want to become oppressors.

And are those reactionary parties going to remain in power forever? The Egyptian people have demonstrated their willingness to revolt if their government fails to represent their interests. You have to avoid looking at things statically and instead look at the process of dialectical change in which things turn into their opposites.

The reason parties like the Muslim Brotherhood came out on top is mainly because they had by far the best organization of any of the parties, due to their quasi-legal status under Mubarak. The disorganization of the left in Egypt provided a vacuum that the reactionary parties were able to exploit. But things won't stay that way. If the parties in power fail to address the grievances of the Egyptian masses, you'll see a sharp swing in a different direction.

You are making leaps of logic, you comparing family relations and helping people in immediate danger to the social conditions to create a communist society. I would easily put the welfare of my family above some stranger. Just because family members are willing to help each other or help people in immediate danger, doesn't mean people don't also have a greedy side and want superior status to one's neighbor. I don't think people want to truly equal, I think people want to be recognized as being superior in recent ways, with superior status or household or something else. I think you are looking only at the positives of humanity and ignoring all the flaws. Plus with all the crimes done in the name of communism, people will not accept in our lifetime. It doesn't matter if the USSR was real communism or not, many people who were victimized by that system will blame communism. In parts of Eastern Europe, communist symbols are illegal the same way Nazi symbols are in Germany.

Many crimes were committed in the name of communism and its naive to assume that the psychological scars from those crimes will go away any time soon. That was there will be no communist revolution in the near future, because many people will think it will produce the same result every other communist revolution has produced, a police state. There is a line in 1984, where O'Brien says the purpose of a revolution is gain power and form a dictatorship, I think most of the revolutions in the last century have ended that way. I don't trust revolutions at this point, they create chaos and allow opportunist to take over.

Poverty is a real problem, but I don 't think its something that can be solved overnight with a revolution. I don't believe in easy solutions to life's problems.

Likewise, just because people might have a greedy side doesn't mean they aren't capable of selfless altruism. Your argument cuts both ways: human beings are complex creatures who are guided by a variety of different motives. The point is that right now we live in a society that rewards antisocial behaviour like greed and selfishness instead of minimizing and discouraging it.

Regarding the "failure" of communism, I have two responses to that. Firstly, we're living in an age in which capitalism has proven to have failed. You don't have to be a Marxist to understand the world we're living in. Just turn on the TV news and what do you see? Hunger, war, famine, poverty, ecological destruction, death and misery for the vast majority of humanity. To me, that's clear evidence that, as Megadeth put it, "the system has failed."

Secondly, the current generation has grown up with no direct experience of Stalinism. What they have experienced, over the last 20 years, is a ruthless cutthroat capitalism that has little use for them and cannot offer them a future. Youth today, by and large, have nothing to look forward to but unemployment, debt and poverty. No matter how much they're propagandized against the evils of "communism", they're going to be much more open to alternative forms of society to the one that has failed them so clearly. In my experience at protests and whatnot, I've seen a real hunger for Marxist ideas.

Finally, nobody ever said that revolution would be an "easy solution". It's a hard bitter fight that will last a long time; that's why they call it a class struggle.

An easy solution would be believing you can just vote in the right politician and they'll fix everything (Obama), or that we simply need to cut government spending and the magic of the market will turn things around (GOP, Merkel, Sarkozy).

Every communist revolution ever. Everyone of them failed and yet communists just seem to ignore them. If communists fail to learn from past mistakes, they will repeat them. If the past revolutions have failed, why would the next one be different.

See, that's the thing: Marxists have learned from these experiences, and they've written a great deal about what happened with the Soviet Union, etc. You just aren't interested in learning about them.

I always recommend people read The Revolution Betrayed by Leon Trotsky, but I'm sure nobody here has read any Marxist views on the subject other than mine. Why bother? It's so much easier to just ignore them, which is what you're doing.

To simply avoid mentioning the countless tomes written by Marxists about the experiences of the Soviet Union, China, et al, and insist that communists haven't reflected on the lessons of the past at all, is breathtaking in its head-in-the-sand approach to historical scholarship.

One last point: I was at the Toronto May Day march last week and was pleased to see the following banner leading the procession:

People are starting to draw conclusions.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Well you see, hippie, just because someone has a PhD doesn't necessarily mean everything they write is gospel truth.

For example, I could take any number of economists with PhDs who would say the answer to our economic woes is to cut government spending. But from the perspective of working class people who suffer from austerity, that's not true at all.

The point is that you're struggling to avoid confronting the simple fact that the Bolsheviks democratically won a majority in the soviets. They had the support of the workers in the cities and this is why they were able to carry through a bloodless revolution.

This notion that it was some kind of coup not only ignores the facts of history, it gets close to outright mysticism. Tell me, if the Bolsheviks were a tiny minority with no support among the population, how exactly did they gain control over a nation of 150 million people?

I assume you'll say terror and repression, which avoids the question of how they were able to get away with that if they had no support, as you appear to believe.

Are you seriously trying to tell me that you are more credible than people with PhD.'s? You know people who have spent many years studying and dedicated their lives towards particular disciplines as opposed to someone who follows a glorified version of history? The facts are that the Soviets were not democratic, the Bolsheviks did not gain power bloodlessly, and they seized power when they were a minority in a coup.

 

[Papa G]

True...economist Thomas Sowell ironically wrote a book called "Intellectuals and Society", describing how phD's have great expertise in one area, but they think they can then make judgements about a whole society. Sowell is actually more of a conservative if anybody is willing to acknowledge those critiques. There are definitely some academics who need to take a step back and realize that maybe they don't know everything-I read "The Modern Constitution", by French Philosopher Bruno Latour, and his introductory arguments about the "hybridized" nature of culture are really interesting, but then it all goes downhill when he starts talking politics.

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

Are you seriously trying to tell me that you are more credible than people with PhD.'s? You know people who have spent many years studying and dedicated their lives towards particular disciplines as opposed to someone who follows a glorified version of history?

Having a PhD in history makes you infallible?

History is an extraordinarily complex phenomenon. The philosopher Karl Popper once said, "There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life." While I would argue from an individual standpoint that's true, there are certain broad patterns in human history that ultimately boil down to the mode of production and the development of class society in a given epoch.

A different Karl, Marx, wrote that "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness." That holds true for everyone, including academics and historians who present themselves as purveyors of objective truth.

Universities and the media don't exist in a vacuum, but within the context of class society, in this case capitalism. The historians, journalists, political scientists, economists and other academics who advance the most, whose books are lauded in the media and the award circuit, are those who present a view of reality that most reflects the values of the ruling class.

So despite the fact that he is a clueless hack, Thomas Friedman gets a column at the New York Times because he extols the virtues of American democracy and "freedom", which he associates with neoliberal capitalism. Historians like Robert Service and Orlando Figes receive awards and critical raves in the media - alongside their cushy academic positions - for shoddy, poorly-researched revisionist crap.

I read Service's biography on Stalin, thinking that at least I could agree with a right-wing historian on this subject. But it was painfully obvious the guy had no real knowledge of Marxist theory at all. His Trotsky biography is a total hatchet job, explicitly dedicated to discrediting both the man and his legacy (Service said at a book launch in 2009, "There’s life in the old boy Trotsky yet—but if the ice pick didn’t quite do its job killing him off, I hope I’ve managed it"). The American Historical Review in its withering critique of the book noted, "In his eagerness to cut Trotsky down, Service commits numerous distortions of the historical record and outright errors of fact to the point that the intellectual integrity of the whole enterprise is open to question.”

But Robert Service has a PhD.



The point is that no, having a PhD or even being a successful historian does not necessarily make one credible. Service and the other establishment historians look at history from the perspective of the ruling class - the bourgeoisie - and extol the virtues of bourgeois democracy while denouncing any opponents to this system.

To look at history from a working class perspective is to see the other side of the coin, which is precisely why it's so dangerous. American high schools are not going to start issuing textbooks that talk about the Black Panther Party and its program in glowing terms. We won't hear academics or pundits on American corporate news channels denouncing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima or the invasion of Iraq as war crimes, or suggesting Obama and Bush should be extradited to The Hague as torturers.

The facts are that the Soviets were not democratic, the Bolsheviks did not gain power bloodlessly, and they seized power when they were a minority in a coup.

Sorry, but all of your "facts" are laughable falsehoods.

1. The soviets were the most democratic form of government ever conceived, far more representative of the population than bourgeois parliaments.
2. No one died in the actual seizure of power during the October Revolution.
3. The Bolsheviks won a democratic majority in the soviets, whether you like it or not.
4. Even reactionary historian Orlando Figes, who argues that the Bolsheviks seized power in a coup, contradicts himself when he acknowledges that the takeover was a mere police action - taking over buildings, arresting people.

I can see you're a stubborn one. Ever heard Plato's allegory of the cave?

True...economist Thomas Sowell ironically wrote a book called "Intellectuals and Society", describing how phD's have great expertise in one area, but they think they can then make judgements about a whole society. Sowell is actually more of a conservative if anybody is willing to acknowledge those critiques. There are definitely some academics who need to take a step back and realize that maybe they don't know everything-I read "The Modern Constitution", by French Philosopher Bruno Latour, and his introductory arguments about the "hybridized" nature of culture are really interesting, but then it all goes downhill when he starts talking politics.

Interesting, thanks for the recommendations. I looked at the Wikipedia entry on Sowell's book and even though he's clearly writing from a very right-wing perspective, he makes some great points (though I read anything, so I'd probably check it out either way).

 

[hippie_hunter]

Sorry, but all of your "facts" are laughable falsehoods.

1. The soviets were the most democratic form of government ever conceived, far more representative of the population than bourgeois parliaments.

Really dude

2. No one died in the actual seizure of power during the October Revolution.

It's still a seizure of power with military force!

3. The Bolsheviks won a democratic majority in the soviets, whether you like it or not.

Except they didn't even do it democratically.

4. Even reactionary historian Orlando Figes, who argues that the Bolsheviks seized power in a coup, contradicts himself when he acknowledges that the takeover was a mere police action - taking over buildings, arresting people.

Fighting the Bolsheviks would have been incredibly dumb and a guaranteed death sentence. They were a vastly superior force to the government's forces especially in Petrograd. That is why they fled.

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

Really dude

Yes, really. I think you still don't even know what a soviet is.

"Soviet" is just the Russian word for council. The soviets were formed spontaneously during the 1905 revolution and began life as extended strike committees. Workers and soldiers elected delegates who were subject to immediate recall and who made no more than a skilled worker. Eventually, after the October Revolution, they transformed into organs of revolutionary direct government.

It's important to realize that Marx or Lenin or Trotsky didn't sit in a library and come up with the concept of soviets; the workers spontaneously self-organized them. This actually happens all the time in revolutionary situations. In Germany in 1918, for example, workers' and soldiers' councils had control of the country before they handed power back to the Social Democrats.

More recently, these kinds of workers' organizations formed in the midst of the Egyptian and Syrian revolutions. Workers in Cairo and other cities formed Committees for the Defence of the Revolution and issued demands that included the renationalization of industries privatized under Mubarak.

In Syria, similarly, we have seen the tendency in certain areas beyond the regime's control to set up People's Committees that carry out activity including security, health care, holding people's tribunals, distributing food and protecting refugees.

It's still a seizure of power with military force!

"Military force" is an interesting way to describe a ragtag workers' militia (the Red Guards) taking over buildings and arresting government ministers with no bloodshed.

Your criticism would be better directed at, say, the American Revolution. But I know you would never, ever criticize the use of force in that situation.

Except they didn't even do it democratically.

lol. Yes, they did.

The best argument you've been able to muster is that somehow the Bolsheviks used dirty tricks to get their majority in the soviets. But you've provided no links, no sources - in short, no reason for me to accept any of your criticisms as valid.

Fighting the Bolsheviks would have been incredibly dumb and a guaranteed death sentence. They were a vastly superior force to the government's forces especially in Petrograd. That is why they fled.

Hmm...and I wonder why a radical group that had been a small minority at the beginning of 1917 was suddenly "a vastly superior force to the government's forces, especially in Petrograd." Could it be that - gasp! - they had the support of most of the people there?

Q.E.D.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Yes, really. I think you still don't even know what a soviet is.

"Soviet" is just the Russian word for council. The soviets were formed spontaneously during the 1905 revolution and began life as extended strike committees. Workers and soldiers elected delegates who were subject to immediate recall and who made no more than a skilled worker. Eventually, after the October Revolution, they transformed into organs of revolutionary direct government.

It's important to realize that Marx or Lenin or Trotsky didn't sit in a library and come up with the concept of soviets; the workers spontaneously self-organized them. This actually happens all the time in revolutionary situations. In Germany in 1918, for example, workers' and soldiers' councils had control of the country before they handed power back to the Social Democrats.

More recently, these kinds of workers' organizations formed in the midst of the Egyptian and Syrian revolutions. Workers in Cairo and other cities formed Committees for the Defence of the Revolution and issued demands that included the renationalization of industries privatized under Mubarak.

In Syria, similarly, we have seen the tendency in certain areas beyond the regime's control to set up People's Committees that carry out activity including security, health care, holding people's tribunals, distributing food and protecting refugees.

I know what a Soviet is. The concept isn't the problem, the problem lied in its practice.

Okay, first of all, this is a system that was developed in freaking Russia. A culture that has been politically corrupt for well over a century. A democratic institution isn't going to come out of an area that has had no experience with democracy. Without having previous experience, democracy typically ends up flopping.

Second, the Soviets woefully underrepresented everyone that was not a part of the industrial working class.

Third, Lenin took advantage of the flaws within the Soviets to gain power for the Bolsheviks.

"Military force" is an interesting way to describe a ragtag workers' militia (the Red Guards) taking over buildings and arresting government ministers with no bloodshed.

The Bolsheviks were no ragtag workers militia. They were armed to the teeth because the Provisional Government had no choice but to let them arm up. Kerensky feared a German invasion and a military coup and had to rely on the Bolsheviks for the defense of Petrograd and other urban areas.

Your criticism would be better directed at, say, the American Revolution. But I know you would never, ever criticize the use of force in that situation.

I often criticize the American Revolution. It wasn't about fighting against tyranny and oppression, we didn't want to pay our legitimate taxes.

lol. Yes, they did.

The best argument you've been able to muster is that somehow the Bolsheviks used dirty tricks to get their majority in the soviets. But you've provided no links, no sources - in short, no reason for me to accept any of your criticisms as valid.

Here's an article that states that Lenin had agents take control of unions that dominated the Soviets:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSbolsheviks.htm

And much of what I had was learned in class.

Hmm...and I wonder why a radical group that had been a small minority at the beginning of 1917 was suddenly "a vastly superior force to the government's forces, especially in Petrograd." Could it be that - gasp! - they had the support of most of the people there?

Ummmm....maybe it had to do with the fact that most of the military was off fighting the Germans. Or how the government armed the Bolsheviks and depended on them for defense. Or how the military was getting utterly decimated by the Germans.

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

I know what a Soviet is. The concept isn't the problem, the problem lied in its practice.

Okay, first of all, this is a system that was developed in freaking Russia. A culture that has been politically corrupt for well over a century. A democratic institution isn't going to come out of an area that has had no experience with democracy. Without having previous experience, democracy typically ends up flopping.

Second, the Soviets woefully underrepresented everyone that was not a part of the industrial working class.

Third, Lenin took advantage of the flaws within the Soviets to gain power for the Bolsheviks.

1. Democratic institutions have to start somewhere, otherwise you have an infinite regression that leads nowhere. Ancient Athens had no experience of democracy either before instituting a system of direct democracy.

Your suggestion that Russia had no history of democracy is not 100% accurate. Peasants in the villages had the traditional communes known as the obshchina ("commune") or mir ("society"). Land was owned collectively and the peasants would elect a village elder.

The generation of Russian workers that existed at the time of the 1905 and 1917 revolutions were made up largely of peasants who had only recently moved to the cities. They still had that connection to the village and one could argue the soviets were in part an extension of the peasant communes on the shop floor - albeit with much fuller democracy.

2. The working class, like the bourgeoisie, plays an independent role in society (unlike the peasants, petty-bourgeoisie, lumpenproletariat, students, etc.). That means that any movement towards socialism would have to be led by the workers.

3. What flaws are you talking about, specifically?

The Bolsheviks were no ragtag workers militia. They were armed to the teeth because the Provisional Government had no choice but to let them arm up. Kerensky feared a German invasion and a military coup and had to rely on the Bolsheviks for the defense of Petrograd and other urban areas.

Right, but the armed power of the Bolsheviks effectively came from their control over the Red Guards, who were paramilitary formations of armed factory workers and some sailors and soldiers. Given that these were mostly armed workers rather than professional soldiers, I think that counts as a militia, not an army.

Here's an article that states that Lenin had agents take control of unions that dominated the Soviets:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSbolsheviks.htm

And much of what I had was learned in class.

I read the whole page - quite helpful, overall. But the part that mentions Lenin's "agent" has different connotations than what you implied. You write that Lenin had his agents "take control" of unions, which sounds very sinister and Machiavellian. But in the article, it actually says that "one of Lenin's agents, Roman Malinovsky, was elected as general secretary of the St. Petersburg Metalworkers' Union."

Elected. When someone takes control of a body they were elected to, we usually call that democracy in action. Unless Bolsheviks are involved, apparently.

Ummmm....maybe it had to do with the fact that most of the military was off fighting the Germans. Or how the government armed the Bolsheviks and depended on them for defense. Or how the military was getting utterly decimated by the Germans.

The Russian military had collapsed at this point. Morale was non-existent and desertion was rampant. The Bolsheviks had a huge following among the soldiers because they were the only party dedicated to ending the war.

Why did the government have to rely on the Bolsheviks in the first place for defense against right-wing putschists like General Kornilov? Why couldn't they rely on their own forces? For the simple reason that Lenin & Co. had the support of most of the workers in the big cities and major industrial centres, and much of the military.

 

[hippie_hunter]

1. Democratic institutions have to start somewhere, otherwise you have an infinite regression that leads nowhere. Ancient Athens had no experience of democracy either before instituting a system of direct democracy.

And even then Athenian democracy was severely flawed. It took other cultures to take on those democratic institutions and evolve them. Democracy really only takes root in areas that well....have previously had some form of democratic experience. You can't just form the most democratic form of government in a land that has pretty much experienced nothing but autocracy for over a millennium.

Your suggestion that Russia had no history of democracy is not 100% accurate. Peasants in the villages had the traditional communes known as the obshchina ("commune") or mir ("society"). Land was owned collectively and the peasants would elect a village elder.

But those were small areas. A commune can work when you have a small and manageable group of people.

The generation of Russian workers that existed at the time of the 1905 and 1917 revolutions were made up largely of peasants who had only recently moved to the cities. They still had that connection to the village and one could argue the soviets were in part an extension of the peasant communes on the shop floor - albeit with much fuller democracy.

What works in one area doesn't always translate well into others.

2. The working class, like the bourgeoisie, plays an independent role in society (unlike the peasants, petty-bourgeoisie, lumpenproletariat, students, etc.). That means that any movement towards socialism would have to be led by the workers.

But the workers were a huge part of the minority. Communism was meant to take off in places like England, the United States, and Germany where industrialization had already fully taken off and had a fully developed working class. Not Russia.

3. What flaws are you talking about, specifically?

Like how the industrial working class almost completely dominated the Soviets when they were a very clear minority of the population. The peasant class was woefully underrepresented and many historians do not believe that the Soviet elections were free or fair, but instead manipulated (quite brilliantly) by Lenin.

Right, but the armed power of the Bolsheviks effectively came from their control over the Red Guards, who were paramilitary formations of armed factory workers and some sailors and soldiers. Given that these were mostly armed workers rather than professional soldiers, I think that counts as a militia, not an army.

They were able to pretty much form an army. There eventually comes a time when a mere militia is no longer a militia.

I read the whole page - quite helpful, overall. But the part that mentions Lenin's "agent" has different connotations than what you implied. You write that Lenin had his agents "take control" of unions, which sounds very sinister and Machiavellian. But in the article, it actually says that "one of Lenin's agents, Roman Malinovsky, was elected as general secretary of the St. Petersburg Metalworkers' Union."

The ideologies of Marx are pretty Machiavellian overall. In order to gain power, Marx suggested that socialists should ally themselves with various groups like nationalists, the bourgeoisie, industrialists, and other groups to create a situation that is ripe for a socialist revolution and then stab them in the back. Whether you see them as sinister or not is a matter of personal opinion.

Elected.

When someone takes control of a body they were elected to, we usually call that democracy in action. Unless Bolsheviks are involved, apparently.

Except the Bolsheviks really didn't care for democracy. They're the ones who rigged the Soviet elections and pretty much discarded election results that didn't go their way and completely did away with any potential for democracy in Russia.

The Russian military had collapsed at this point. Morale was non-existent and desertion was rampant. The Bolsheviks had a huge following among the soldiers because they were the only party dedicated to ending the war.

Why did the government have to rely on the Bolsheviks in the first place for defense against right-wing putschists like General Kornilov? Why couldn't they rely on their own forces? For the simple reason that Lenin & Co. had the support of most of the workers in the big cities and major industrial centres, and much of the military.

Because much of the remnants of the Russian Army were located within the Polish Frontier and while there was a good amount of support within the military for the Bolsheviks, Kerensky had to rely on the Bolsheviks for the defense of Petrograd in particular was because of the advancing Germans through Finland (and Petrograd is located right next to the Russo-Finish border, thus forcing him to make hasty decisions) and he feared a military coup (for good reason).

 

[Axl Van Sixx]

Go ahead - ban me. My work here is done.

 

[Marvolo]

Huh?

 

[Compi716]

Sorry to interject, but I have a question for Axl: are you in college?