Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
i wouldn't really call them useful...ernestolynch said:
An open question to all SWP members on u75
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rebel warrior
Soca Warrior
ernestolynch said:
Come get some.
In a 'Care in the Community' kind of way of course.
danno_at_work
ASBO fodder
nice holiday ern??
Dr. Christmas
ca suffit
ernestolynch said:
Shwurely
'Professor' Callinicos
Dept of Revisionist Arsewittery
University of York
(if you don;t have the money for an aerogramme to the Pentagon, that is)
e: [email protected]
w:http://www.deformedworkersstate.org
Or even
Agent Widley
MI5
Southbank
London
Agent Widley
MI5
Southbank
London
cockneyrebel
New Member
I've printed off the link Joe....
I think the Bolshevism vs Stalinism pamphlet is very good...but we can agree to disagree!
I think that whatever the criticisms of Bolshevism to just lump them all in with the stalinists is just totally crude and defies the facts. The ideology and methodology of people like Lenin and Trotsky was totally different from Stalin. The internationalism vs socialism in one country shows that. And do people really think that the 100,000s of Bolsheviks and in particular the left oppositionists (including nearly all of the Bolshevik leaders) that were killed by Stalin was just over a personality battle?
I was reading something on Indymedia about what documents have come out since the fall of the USSR about the pre-Stalin era. Considering how eager right wingers must have been to use this material to criticise the Bolsheviks I’m surprised that almost nothing seems to have come out…..
I think the Bolshevism vs Stalinism pamphlet is very good...but we can agree to disagree!
I think that whatever the criticisms of Bolshevism to just lump them all in with the stalinists is just totally crude and defies the facts. The ideology and methodology of people like Lenin and Trotsky was totally different from Stalin. The internationalism vs socialism in one country shows that. And do people really think that the 100,000s of Bolsheviks and in particular the left oppositionists (including nearly all of the Bolshevik leaders) that were killed by Stalin was just over a personality battle?
I was reading something on Indymedia about what documents have come out since the fall of the USSR about the pre-Stalin era. Considering how eager right wingers must have been to use this material to criticise the Bolsheviks I’m surprised that almost nothing seems to have come out…..
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
you obviously haven't seen the anthology of documents "the hidden lenin: from the secret archives" or some such, published by yale university press (in the "annals of communism" series, unless i'm much mistaken).cockneyrebel said:
cockneyrebel said:
But those of us who say stalinism was a logical development of leninism don't simply 'lump them all in' we explain why this is so. It's the replies that erect a crude strawman.
cockneyrebel said:
Saying it does not make it so. In fact there is far more of a contintuation rather than a difference, most trots fool themselves that stalin introduced the nasty methods that had in fact been introduced years before under lenin and trotsky. For instance
Introduction of one man management
Introduction of saluting and petty privileges in the army
Banning of left opponents
Banning on left publications
Execution of strikers
Shutting down of soviets who returned the 'wrong' delegates
Banning of internal factions in the Bolshevik party
Execution of left opponents
Deals with imperialism
Slave labour
Military discipline for 'key workers'
were all policies introduced under lenin, in most cases before the civil war got really going with the revolt of the Czech legion in May 1918. Maybe you could spell out a list of policies you think were newly introduced by stalin?
cockneyrebel said:
Might be what you would like to think but everything from the treaty of Brest Livtitosk through the invasion or Poland to lenins claim that the Kronstadt uprising was about sabotaging a treaty with the US suggests otherwise. Not to mention the rotten deals done in the east, which included cuddling up to the organisers of the Armenian genocide to the disgust of the Armenian communists (check Carr for details). These were all about making necessary sacrifices of the international situation in order to bolster the regime in Russia and at the time were sold as such.
There is an argument that Stalin was a lot cruder and a lot less efficent in applying these sort of policies but they were not a new departure.
cockneyrebel said:
Actually these sorts of power struggles are very typical of splits within dictatorships. The same thing happened under Mao and after Mao in China, the new leadership often moves to wipe out not only its rivals but the base from which new rivals might emerge. I think a 'falling out between thieves' is one popular phrase that expresses how common this sort of thing is.
cockneyrebel
New Member
Haven’t got time now cos I’ve gotta finish some stuff off at work. I rember this debate went on for about 800 pages last time!
But what I will say quickly is that I don’t think the Bolsheviks were perfect by any means and I think they made some bad mistakes at times, probably inevitable to some extent in a revolution – but look at the mistakes of the anarchists in Spain, ending up in a government with the Stalinists and capitalists! But what I would say is that some of the things that the Bolsheviks implemented (like the things you mention) were openly admitted to being set backs and revolutionary defeats, not something you’d want to do . Wheras Stalin held up socialism in one country as the way forward.
Indeed the fact that the Bolsheviks said that the revolution had to spread to avoid the formation of a bureaucratic dictatorship shows the differences with Stalin.
Anyway I'll read the link but probably won't be around for a few days.....
But what I will say quickly is that I don’t think the Bolsheviks were perfect by any means and I think they made some bad mistakes at times, probably inevitable to some extent in a revolution – but look at the mistakes of the anarchists in Spain, ending up in a government with the Stalinists and capitalists! But what I would say is that some of the things that the Bolsheviks implemented (like the things you mention) were openly admitted to being set backs and revolutionary defeats, not something you’d want to do . Wheras Stalin held up socialism in one country as the way forward.
Indeed the fact that the Bolsheviks said that the revolution had to spread to avoid the formation of a bureaucratic dictatorship shows the differences with Stalin.
Anyway I'll read the link but probably won't be around for a few days.....
cut out his tongue, castrated him, yet they were so evil that they left him his fingers and a keyboard and then left him in solitary confinment on Urban 75, don't worry o'lynch, the kiddies haven't got out of line whilst you've been out the class room.ernestolynch said:
(sadness it's just fantasy, at least the real Mungo looked cuddly)
(Trot as it swp stalinist posers are on the menu)
cockneyrebel said:
You know the problem here is that trots always do this. They hold up the bolsheviks as a model and then once the flaws are pointed out come out wit the "some mistakes...". If you did it the other way around it might be more convincing but in any case the important word here is model. You model yourself on a party that drowned a revolution in blood but imagine because your faction got supppressed before some of the killing happened this makes it ok. Its a silly as 3rd positionists who reckon because they side with the SA there somehow not responsible for the crimes of the Nazis (err not saying you like fascists just as silly as them).
These 'some mistakes' you refer to are not only the liberty and in many cases the lives of hundreds of thousands of socialists much like you or I but also the very thing they were fighting for. 'some mistakes' doesn't quite capture it.
cockneyrebel said:
Err have I wandered into a school playground or something. 'nah nah nah takes one to know one;, 'he did it too, miss' etc?
The difference is that just about every anarchist I've ever met with says that the Spanish collaboration was a huge mistake. I don't think I've ever heard the equivalent of the SWP's 'it didn't happen' or the 'objective circumstances' excuse. Plus of course the collaboration was opposed not only by the anarchist movement internationally but also by a significant minority of the movement in Spain. (The FIJL with around 100,000 members and the FoD with 5,000 or so to name two). No one in other words holds it up as a model and only a small minority of anarchists would even suggest the CNT was a model for today.
cockneyrebel said:
Not this old chestnut. In fact lenin and trotsky at the time actually attacked the idea that one man management (for instance) was a 'set back' and said that were it not for the civil war it would have been implemented later. The only 'set back' I can recall them talking about was the introduction of the NEP in 21 which I didn't include above
BTW left out the replacement of election of red army officers with their appointment from above which was early 1918.
cockneyrebel said:
Well apart from the fact that the bureaucratic dictatorship actually existed this amounts to 'do what I say not what I do'. I think any serious analysis of the leninist international would conclude that it took a vibrant and multi-faceted international revolutionary movement and turned it into an unthinking servant of the Kremlin. Germany 1924 was the first warning of just how disasterous this was going to prove for the socialist project not just in Russia but everywhere on the globe.
Idris2002 said:
Actually it was 4 including health and justice. But your point is correct.
Those interested in the anarchist viewpoint of the Spanish experience including a lot of material written at that time have a look at http://struggle.ws/spaindx.html
cockneyrebel
New Member
Just read the link you put and this really will have to be my last post. I have never said the Bolsheviks didn’t make serious mistakes, I just said earlier I don’t think they were the same as Stalinists.
The problem I have with this debate (from both sides, and including your link) is that people just throw in statistics with no seemingly no evidence.
We are told the Bolsheviks tortured and executed 10,000s of revolutionaries (which you’ve just upped to 100,000s). That there were 200,000 “left” political prisoners. That the Bolsheviks closed all soviets that opposed them. Now whether this is true or not, where is the evidence? It’s just someone stating it in the article. And then we are told that in 1918 the anarchists were growing. The evidence seems to be that delegates at the KAS confederation said they represented 75,000 workers! Did they? Then we are told Spain shows that production doesn’t have to fall after a revolution. First of all Spain was much more developed (and conditions for a revolution much better) and secondly production in many cases did end up falling in Spain and there were huge shortages…..
And as for what I model myself on, it’s certainly not the mistakes the Bolsheviks made. And as for the anarchists in Spain it shows the failures of anarchist theory not just the CNT. And the FOD having 5000 members, are you sure? And is just over 100,000 workers a significant minority in a total of millions? And it’s ok for the FOD to say they’re different from the CNT but not for a left oppositionists to do the same? Incidentally the FOD are very interesting, there call for a common central command of the army being quite significant…..
Some of what the Bolsheviks did (including setting up the Red Army) clearly were revolutionary setbacks, but I think revolutionary set backs will happen in any revolution, but hopefully with a mass working class in industrial societies this will be much less so. In terms of what happened, yeah it was disastrous, just as Spain was 20 years later…..
The problem I have with this debate (from both sides, and including your link) is that people just throw in statistics with no seemingly no evidence.
We are told the Bolsheviks tortured and executed 10,000s of revolutionaries (which you’ve just upped to 100,000s). That there were 200,000 “left” political prisoners. That the Bolsheviks closed all soviets that opposed them. Now whether this is true or not, where is the evidence? It’s just someone stating it in the article. And then we are told that in 1918 the anarchists were growing. The evidence seems to be that delegates at the KAS confederation said they represented 75,000 workers! Did they? Then we are told Spain shows that production doesn’t have to fall after a revolution. First of all Spain was much more developed (and conditions for a revolution much better) and secondly production in many cases did end up falling in Spain and there were huge shortages…..
And as for what I model myself on, it’s certainly not the mistakes the Bolsheviks made. And as for the anarchists in Spain it shows the failures of anarchist theory not just the CNT. And the FOD having 5000 members, are you sure? And is just over 100,000 workers a significant minority in a total of millions? And it’s ok for the FOD to say they’re different from the CNT but not for a left oppositionists to do the same? Incidentally the FOD are very interesting, there call for a common central command of the army being quite significant…..
Some of what the Bolsheviks did (including setting up the Red Army) clearly were revolutionary setbacks, but I think revolutionary set backs will happen in any revolution, but hopefully with a mass working class in industrial societies this will be much less so. In terms of what happened, yeah it was disastrous, just as Spain was 20 years later…..
gurrier said:
In the setting of Russia (shall we also include the Russian empire,1 sixth of the world surface in mainly a continuous land mass) the old feudal and the ‘new’ (to government in Russia) capitalist classes united in whatever means to destroy the Revolution, means justified the end, what the end was Trotsky clearly perceived through his political and historic perceptions.
One must trace continuously his background references to understand them, so yes on his perception of the opposition he worked to help devise means to resist them.
The dialectic is only based on the movement within society, so one can analyse from that stand point or one can take a straight line approach, as did - or so he tried, Charles the second. As does the SWP, part reason as to why it’s shrinking, through alienation to isolation, they unfortunately do not run a state.
For the straight line approach, one needs whips, as did Charles, his brother in Scotland, so how many died ?
Not uncommon in English politics, reference to Stalin as the Russian Tory, he was originally trained as a Jesuit, but asked to leave for rebellious activities, the Jesuits were disbanded by the Pope/Vatican in the 1790’s and moved to the Russian religion, they had been an integral part of the old state. The seminary at which he was based supplied other ‘graduates’ to work in the construction of the gov’ throughout the period of Stalin, he liked to help out his old seminary’s students. He was an expansive sort of chap.
-----------------------------------------------
Reversion of soviet union to capitalism, so wherein lies the ‘immanent rev’ or the ‘vanguard parties’, in the Transitional Program Trotsky poses the period as being between revolutions, and the vanguard parties as forerunners of socialist parties which he looked to arrive/draw closer along with change to a revolutionary period.
There was a crisis following the 30's it's recorded as the 2nd WW, but yes no rev's.
He also mentions that at the time of a revolutionary period, that in that period also the capitalist economy and reflecting from that the cap’ class will elaborate through crisis, in it’s correct context it tends to make sense. The SW assembles the pages in the wrong order and then wrongly numbers them, to confuse the members and supporters.
The vanguard theory loomed large with the WRP in the early seventies when it was founded and through internal opposition, resulting in separation. Before then they were a league for some years, changed theoretical base late 60’s.
SWP members simple repeat it, the immanence was also part of the theory ‘the driving force’, the SWP is correctly characterised as a re-run.
BUT for what reason, the dialectic has changed since the 70’s, politics have moved forwards, though not in a straight line, double helix, dialect of conflict and unity of opposites, as with Manchester.
Re-runs in a later period is expressly designed to hold back forward movement.
Study original works to verify what was really written, compare with the revisionist G Glucksteins versions.
Not sure how much earlier it really goes, or from where.
danno_at_work
ASBO fodder
gurrier said:
gurrier
you seem sensible
ignore ss please
dan
gurrier I'd be more than interested to see the evidence. If someone could convince me that the Bolsheviks got it all wrong and were genocidal maniacs I'd accept it, as it goes I haven't seen that evidence as yet as this kinda debate always has people throwing in figures with no evidence.....
As it goes though my belief in the need for a workers state, revolutionary party etc doesn't depend on what the Bolsheviks did (although obviously it would present different lessons), I'd believe it was necessary regardless. The ideology of anarchism seems totally utopian to me and I don't think it could ever work (would be lovely if it did). So until something more convincing comes along then the ideas of the Bolsheviks seem the best way forward.....
As it goes though my belief in the need for a workers state, revolutionary party etc doesn't depend on what the Bolsheviks did (although obviously it would present different lessons), I'd believe it was necessary regardless. The ideology of anarchism seems totally utopian to me and I don't think it could ever work (would be lovely if it did). So until something more convincing comes along then the ideas of the Bolsheviks seem the best way forward.....
Has anyone here read The Guillotine At Work- The Leninist Counter-revolution by Maximoff (apart from Butchers)? There is a transcribed chapter here http://www.geocities.com/cordobakaf/max.html
I'm reading the book at the minute. Alot of interesting information in there...
I'm reading the book at the minute. Alot of interesting information in there...
cockneyrebel
New Member
sorry the post from "red boy" was me....must be my flat mates log in.....
redboy said:
So what you're saying is -
You haven't seen the evidence that the Bolsheviks executed tens of thousands of leftists, shut down every soviet that disagreed with them on substantial issues, closed down every opposition group and newspaper in Russia, inside and outside the party, enforced one-man management by choice not necessity, subordinated the soviets, trade unions, factory committees, and all other bodies to the decisions made by the central committee of the party, etc, etc
But if you do see such evidence, you don't really care, because you think the Bolsheviks were right anyway.
Have I missed anything, or is that a fair summary of your position?
cockneyrebel said:
I can't quote page number from memory but if you follow the links you'll see many of these 'statistics' are foot noted there.
cockneyrebel said:
An easy way to satisfy yourself in this sort of discussion is to make up an extreme version of what you think I said and then demand that I justify your imagined version. I've just spent 10 minutes re-reading what I wrote yesterday and nowhere do I claim 100,000s were executed or tortured. The only thing I say even close to this is "not only the liberty and in many cases the lives of hundreds of thousands of socialists ". This is suggesting that 100,000's lost their liberty not their lives. Large numbers were of course also executed or died in the gulags but quite how many I don't know.
100,000 losing their liberty by say 1923 would be a very easy figure to reach, indeed the number of Makhnovists sent to the gulags or killed alone would probably exceed this. See Nestor Makhno in the Russian Civil War by Mike Malet for the most exhaustive study of the Makhnovists.
In terms of executions no clear record was kept but George Leggett in The Cheka, Lenins Political Police, (1981) estimates 50,000 to 140,000. Some of these would have been actual whites but not very many. The Bolshevik Victor Serge revealed how out of control this process was when on the night that the death penalty was 'abolished' "while the newspapers were printing the decree, the Petrograd Chekas were liquidating their stock! Cartload after cartload of suspects had been driven outside the city during the night, and then shot, heap upon heap. How many? In Petrograd between 150 and 200; in Moscow it was said between 200 and 300."
cockneyrebel said:
Where is this claim made? The only mention of this figure I've found is in the link I posted (http://struggle.ws/once/iwg.htm ) which includes "At the time of the third treaty between the Mhaknovists and the Bolsheviks one of the provisions was that the Bolsheviks should release 'left' prisoners. The Mhaknovists estimated their number at this time to be 200,000, mostly peasants who had fought with or been sympathetic to the Mhaknovists but also the anarchist activists of every region and city."
From the context this is clearly a figure presented in the exchange of documents between the Bolsheviks and the Makhnovists at that time, these should be in the book above and are probably also in 'History of the Makhnovist Movement' by Peter Arshinov.
cockneyrebel said:
Actually I find it astounding that someone who seems to spend a lot of effort trying to build something in the model of leninism in power could be unaware that the Bolsheviks were closing soviets that returned non - bolshevik majorities from 1918. But perhaps the 'whether this is true or not' above means you are aware they were doing so? This tactic is pretty silly and it would take me till Christmas to answer properly (maybe your intention?) but a quick bit of googling provides http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/russ/oct.html#The Soviets who lists a number of the soviets disbanded in early 1918 and provides footnotes.
cockneyrebel said:
I'm pretty sure you will find this referenced in the 'Bolsheviks and Workers Control' which is online at http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/russia/sp001861/bolintro.html This is a book every leninist should read
I just checked and that is a source for this figure. If you go to 1918 and the report on the union conference you will find "[The main strength of the anarcho - syndicalists was among the miners of the Debaltzev district in the Don Basin, among the portworkers and cement workers of Ekaterinodar and Novorossiysk and among the Moscow railway workers. At the Congress they had 25 delegates (on the basis of one delegate per 3,000 - 3 ,500 members)." I leave you to multiply 3,000 * 25 yourself.
cockneyrebel said:
A discussion on production in Spain is going off on a tangent but support for this claim is to be found at http://struggle.ws/wsm/rbr/rbr7/spain.html
cockneyrebel said:
This is a bit like saying that German social democracy proves the failure of marxist theory. The CNT were one section of an international movement that took a route that no other section agreed with and that a significant section of their own members disagreed with. There were flaws here that are common to other anarchist currents but then the existing debate within anarchism (in particular that in 1920''s France) had already pointed these out and positions had been taken in opposition to them.
cockneyrebel said:
Jesus, having to source everything is a time consuming pain in the ass but I'll induluge you. The FoD paper 'The friends of the people' published accounts of the organisations funds including members subs. These indicate a membership in the region of 5,000. You'll find substantial translations of sections of this paper in the pamphlet at http://struggle.ws/spain/FODtrans/preface.html
cockneyrebel said:
The CNT may have had as many as 1,500,000 members by early 1938. So I guess 105,000 is around 7% of this. I'd call this significant. In any case individual locals of the CNT all over the place were also opposed to collaboration, but I've no idea what the actual total was.
cockneyrebel said:
Well here we are getting into the detail of their analysis.
Trotsky many years after everything went bad said there was no fundamental problem with the organistion but the wrong guy was allowed to get into power.
The FoD within a year of the revolution said there was a fundamental problem with the organisation and things would have to be done differently.
I presume you can 'spot the difference' between these two positions?
For those interested in the depth of the FoD analysis see http://struggle.ws/fod/towardsintro.html
cockneyrebel said:
Indeed as it provides an example that demonstrates the leninist lie that in order to run a military struggle 'the Party' has to be in charge. They proposed a council of delegates answerable to the unions with powers that were limited to those areas central to the war. The economy was excluded for instance. And these delegates were to be recallable by the unions. Rather different from leninism in power!
cockneyrebel said:
A return to 'your as bad as me so it all doesn't matter'? If this statement was true in the sense you use it then it would not imply a defence of leninism but rather then need to also ditch anarchism.
But the disasters were different and left very different legacies. The illusory sucess of Lenins experiment destroyed the hope of socialism in the 20th century as it reduced a multi-faceted movement to endless clones that tried to ape what was a failed project. Plus it left the legacy where most people think communism means something like they had in the USSR. In Spain we lost as we have lost before and will lose again. There are lessons to be learnt but the Spanish defeat did not destroy the movement internationally.
charlie mowbray
The Enforcer
Good post, Joe!!
charlie mowbray
The Enforcer
But a word of warning- debating with Cockney Webel is a complete waste of time- brick walls come to mind!! Me n' Butchers and Co have been over all of this with him before
Idris2002
Stay Alive in '25
To go back to the value or otherwise of Marx's orginal work . . . can the crimes of Lenin cited above by Joe and others be said to have their roots in Marx's thought and proposals?
I know I've asked this question in various forms before, but I don't recall getting a proper answer - and I would like to hear the opinions of others on this.
I know I've asked this question in various forms before, but I don't recall getting a proper answer - and I would like to hear the opinions of others on this.
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