An open question to all SWP members on u75

[JoeBlack]

But what about the scenarios I outlined. What is your answer to them?

Are you aware that this method of arguing is the same that the British army used in WWI and WWII with concentious objectors. The question then was 'what would you do if a German soldier was raping your mother/sister/wife I believe'.

Its also the excuse the Israeli's use for torturing Palestinians today and for some in the US government to argue for torture. The Economist has a good article on the detail of this at http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1522792 It's called "ticking-bomb" urgency in both cases so this is if anything a more extreme scenario than the one you use!

Anyway there are two points here
1. There is a big difference between understanding spontaneous and sometimes desperate actions and supporting organised state brutality.
2. That you can have already mentally prepared yourself to torture people when the biggest threat to your revolution is someone forgetting to bring the papers along to your next tescos sale should be a warning as to how far you would extend torture under any real pressure.

As to whoever claimed morals were bourgeoise, would they include 'don't cross picket lines' in that?

 

[cockneyrebel]

Sorry so me saying CNN (CNN for fucks sake!) is not necessarily reliable equates to:

This is why I'm not going to the effort to source stuff for you, it doesn't look like you'll accept anything except 'Workers Power'

Am it’s me not debating properly!

I actually brought this up as something of a cheap shot which neatly illustrates how little the lenin fan club actually know about their hero. It's always funny to watch the confusion that emerges and the spontaneous excuses offered.

Firstly where did I say he was my hero and secondly I don’t know what pants he wore either. This “cheap shot” is hardly the most important thing on the scale of the Russian revolution.

No I wouldn’t be chanting discipline in 1956, it was disgusting what happened. However having decent transport for delegates or leaders in a revolution, especially given what communication was like then is probably pretty crucial. That doesn’t mean I’d accept anything (yet another cheap shot), and Idris has said that Lenin complained that nine were bought. It may have been a bad decision, but the slant of them being the most reliable in the world in winter, and Lenin having one for his own luxury is very different.

Any chance on coming back to anything I’ve asked or the scenarios? Or, as said, is it all one way?

Sigh, there is something addictive about banging one's head off this wall and I've got sucked in again.

The whole point that Ray is making and you seem to be doing your best to ignore, is that you never know in advance that the torture will save 1000's of lives, or that the banning of factions, or the terror against the peasants, or the imposition of one man rule, or the re-creation of a top-down army, or any of these things is necessary to save the revolution. What you do invariably have is the people who will gain power as a result of any of these 'reforms' saying it is so. And what happens in practice, which is obvious to the 99.9% of non-leninist humanity, is that these things become routine, the logic becomes self-reinforcing and the revolution turns itself into a dictatorship. If you want to create a social order which does not depend on these things you have to adopt a principled opposition to them and refuse to adopt them ever.

Obviously there not things you aspire to, but in the situations I outlined what is your answer, yes or no? Would you rather let 1000s die that carry out torture, and would you let fascist leaders go who had carried out atrocities and would do so again rather than shoot them?

What I’m saying is situations aren’t black and white. A revolution, sadly, will very probably be brutal and bloody because of the ruling classes, it won’t be “pure”……

And you just avoided the question regarding the food shortages. What would anarchists do if there was starvation and the peasants refused to hand over the grain? Would you let them keep it or forcibly take it?

Considering the working class was only 3-4% of the country, if the Bolsheviks got 25% (have you got a source out of curiosity, if you have I will add it to my reading list if I haven’t already read it) that means are large layer of peasants must have supported them…..

 

[cockneyrebel]

Tie them up and leave one person to guard them. Give that person orders to shoot anyone who tries to escape. Give those orders right in front of the fascists. If you don't have any rope, blow out a few knee-caps.

So you would blow out a few knee caps and risk them bleeding to death?

I haven’t said anything about following. I said would you use torture on one person if you could save 1000s of lives. Simple as that. What I am saying in a wider context is things would be very complex…..

As for your examples I can’t be bothered with it. It’s a one way street it seems full or sarcasm…..

I think the simplest way of answering it is to say that I think the decisions made by the delegates should be binding, but there must be limits on how they are enforced. If a particular factory would rather make frdges than guns the delegate council can decide that no, they have to make guns. But they can't appoint a manager, order troops in, or ship everyone off to the gulag to enforce their will. This is basically the same answer I gave earlier (and others have given too). The delegates have the power to make decisions, but only within certain limits.

Fair enough. It is good to see that anarchists accept the need for centralisation of power and that federations can’t all just be autonomous. At least you’ve said it. How much centralisation is obviously the crucial question…..

As for not crossing picket lines. What if the strike was organised by a fascist union?

 

[aw go on]

First of all, you didn't ask me a grain question, you asked Joe. ...I think the simplest way of answering it is to say that I think the decisions made by the delegates should be binding, but there must be limits on how they are enforced. If a particular factory would rather make frdges than guns the delegate council can decide that no, they have to make guns. But they can't appoint a manager, order troops in, or ship everyone off to the gulag to enforce their will. This is basically the same answer I gave earlier (and others have given too). The delegates have the power to make decisions, but only within certain limits.

oh go on ray, enlighten us on the grain question ray, don't cop out on the tough ones now! You'd be the first libertarian to come up with an answer to it, the anarchists at the time had no solution and neither have any of the anarchist groups today.

gold plated rolls - well they didn't have ford cortinas at teh time and it was before the age of the mass car pioneered by ford in the wealthy US in the late 1920s, so i expect if they wanted to buy cars and trains they'd buy them from the likes of rolls royce? gold plated though, riiiiiight, you just dig out that source for us!

in terms of factory committees if a congress of soviets or its economic body can set what is made, guns vs whatever, why can't it set things like work productivity - thats what one man management was meant to answer - the workers in some factories would relelect a new factory committee when the one they had tried to enforce some collective work norms or other conditions of work. And by 1920 the civil war was so bad and collapse of the factory committees complete that there was no alternative.

and of course many of the various parties or groups that hadn't made the revolution and that had members in the factories encouraged this trend for their own politcial purposes - the Mensheviks, cynically, because they wanted to roll back the revolution to parliamentary democracy and capitalism, and the Left SRs and anarchists because the workers revolution and soviet movement meant challenging their base (the cross class peasant village for the SRs) or their modes of organisation (the anarchists who refused to accept any form of discipline or authority beyond the autonomous workplace or militia.

in terms of which sources to read, the anarchists always look at the bolshevik crimes and Lenin, trotsky etc give the big picture- but for things like kronstadt there are anti-bolshevik acadmics like paul avrich and israel getzler who at least are honest, and whose facts blow apart the anarchist myths about these events - same for makno.

go on ray, lets hear your solutions to the grain crisis! we're all ears.

 

[levien]

I tried to deflect some attention cockers but they're not avin it. Just leave them to it.
Arguing in defense of Leninism on your own on Urban is the political equivelent of waving a palestinian flag at a Likund party conference.

Didn't trotsky say of the Bukahrinists that if reformists entire political view point was taken from the moment rather then the underlying factors (ie if the moment is not revolutionary the period can't be) then Bukahrinists do the opposite and generalise from the abstract to each moment, without recognising the changing situations (ie period is revolutionary so one set of tactics will apply equally through out.)

When the difference is this core any arguments about the need for particular tactics at particular points is inconcievable to them. Like the argument that UAF is right now - ANL was right then. In the mind of an anarchist this is a dicotomy as they don't recognise different situations call for different tactics. Same is true in arguing that although the bolshiviks were not always right there choices of tactics after 1917 were limited by the reality of a backward and unevenly developed economy/ mass of petty capitalist pesantry and the need to keep the beacon of revolution alight to spread the revolution. This did lead to buearocratic state capitalism but that this was not intrinsic in bolshevik theory. The failure to accept this leads to the dismissale of the left oppositionists as failed stalinists etc.

 

[Groucho]

Anyway there are two points here
1. There is a big difference between understanding spontaneous and sometimes desperate actions and supporting organised state brutality.
2. That you can have already mentally prepared yourself to torture people when the biggest threat to your revolution is someone forgetting to bring the papers along to your next tescos sale should be a warning as to how far you would extend torture under any real pressure.

As to whoever claimed morals were bourgeoise, would they include 'don't cross picket lines' in that?

Marxists do have morals. Don't cross picket lines is a good example.

The question of ends and means is always brought up. Does the end justify the means? The question on it's own means nothing. What end and what means? Firstly is the end justifiable? If so do the intended means have a realistic chance of achieving the desired end? And finally, in terms of the overall justification (e.g. for the common good) do the means employed actually do more harm to the common good than the desired end?

Is revolutionary violence justified? Is it really necessary?

Marxists today are quite right to consider such issues. But rather than be derailed into discussing the likely level of any violence in a modern revolution we should concentrate on i. the aim being to secure revolution without resorting to violence. ii. Any violence will be a response to violence against a popular revolution by the forces of reaction - the stronger the base of the revolution, the less likelihood of violence.

We are not in a revolutionary situation. However, the objective circumstances are far better for succesful revolution today than in 1917. I for one believe that any preparation for large scale violence, for repression, for secret police etc would be a warning sign that the revolution was in danger. Any Marxist, IMO, should not accept the inevitabilty of drastic measures that have been desperate attempts to defend a dying revolution. I do feel that we have lessons to learn from the Bolsheviks, but we must accept that the weakness of the Russian revolution does not provide a complete blue print for modern revolutions.

We need revolutionary organisation; and I believe democratic centralism to boot. The best members will be those who reserve the right to object and oppose any policies considered detrimental to the ideals of socialism and revolution.

 

[cockneyrebel]

Good post groucho....

 

[JoeBlack]

The question of ends and means is always brought up. Does the end justify the means? The question on it's own means nothing. What end and what means? Firstly is the end justifiable? If so do the intended means have a realistic chance of achieving the desired end? And finally, in terms of the overall justification (e.g. for the common good) do the means employed actually do more harm to the common good than the desired end?

Actually you left out the important question here which BTW is also the answer to the grain question and the torture question.

That question is who makes this decision. The major problem in Russia was that it was the central committee of one party that represented a minority of the revolutionary forces. And when anyone objected they simply labelled them as counter revolutionaries on the basis of that objection (a circular argument if ever there was one).

In terms of the grain question the answer may well not have been centralisation but decentralisation, I sort of mentioned this earlier. Most urban workers were the sons or daughters of peasants and still had strong links to the villages. Indeed this is why the bolsheviks introduced the control detachments to prevent them returning to the villages to get food. One of the demands of the Kronstadt rebellion was the abolition of such detachments because they reckoned (probably rightly) that they were stopping the working class resolving the problems of shortage and supply. Lenin instead choose to reintroduce the market in the NEP.

Likewise it's impossible to prove but there are certainly many, many anecdotal complaints that the workers of individual factories knew how to get production restarted but the Bolshevik insistence on centralisation prevented such initatives. In this thread or elsewhere I think gurrier has referred already to the silly adhesion to taylorism the bolsheviks had, something long since abandoned by capitalism BECAUSE it produces shortages and inefficencies. So one man management may not have simply destroyed workers self management, it may also have been in part responsible for the very things it was supposed to rectify.

Incidentally if all this is a bit heretical for you trots consider it from another angle. 'Work to rule' works because management often lack the knowledge to understand and codify how a workplace actually functions. So a simple way of damaging production can simply be to do exactly what you are told. So putting armed guards in the factories to make sure the workers obeyed the Bolshevik imposed manages may after all not be as efficent as you seem to think.

 

[gurrier]

enlighten us on the grain question ray, don't cop out on the tough ones now! You'd be the first libertarian to come up with an answer to it, the anarchists at the time had no solution and neither have any of the anarchist groups today.

The crass ignorance of virtually all of the Leninists about anything to do with anarchists would be shocking if I wasn't familiar with the fairytale versions of anarchism that make up their internal mis-eduction. Ever heard of "The Conquest of Bread" Kropotkin's book written in 1911? It deals with precisely this question in great detail. Also, if you care to look at the Spanish revolution you will find that food production increased markedly and this area, where anarchist organisation was most pre-dominant and fully implemented, was the one area where there were barely any shortages or distribution problems whatsoever. Even among bourgeois historians, it is generally accepted as being the biggest success of the revolution. If you want to have this debate you should really take the trouble to inform yourself of the basic facts of the situation - your un-informed goading is simply embarassing.

Levien - that is a great example of wierd trotspeak that is so disconected from the reality of any anarchist critique that you should save it for your branch meetings, it barely merits a snigger in the real world.

 

[Random]

Fair play to Ray. I don't know if it's because s/he's new, or just has a better sense of humour than the rest of us, but s/he actually seems to be having fun taking apart CokR.

Nice to see Levien chipping in with a few comforting words of scripture for his co-religionist. Affirming faith based bonds rather than engaging with the argument, etc. lol Who's criticising UAF on an 'abstraction'? FFS Most people criticising it have done so on the basis of concrete activties that UAF have or haven't done.

ON the question of the Rolls Royce, since those cars were used by the Brit officers on the Western Front for getting through the mud, I can see why the leaders of the Bolshevik party would want them; good hard working vehicles. The Hummers of 1917

 

[gurrier]

One of the main reasons that capitalism abandoned Taylorism was that workers started taking it seriously and implementing the work to rule as they were told. Naturally this meant that production ground to a halt almost immediately. "Nobody told me to stop putting goods on the assembly line when the packaging machine was on fire, I was just doing what I was told" and this is exactly what happens when you impose centralisation of power on people. The rest of the world has long since accepted that involuntary centralisation of functions is disasterous for efficiency, yet the leninists still hold it up as a model for all time.

It's interesting how you see this reflected in modern Leninist groups where there is almost no capacity for innovation at all. For example, all SWP/ISO newspapers and posters look the same all over the world despite the fact that they are some of the crappest designs known to humanity.

 

[Ray]

Sorry so me saying CNN (CNN for fucks sake!) is not necessarily reliable

It seems that every time someone comes up with a statistic you don't like, you argue that its not reliable. Which makes it pretty pointless coming up with statistics, doesn't it?

You have a computer there yourself, google for Lenin and Rolls Royce. Come back if you find something that casts doubt on the CNN reference. If they're not a reliable source, that shouldn't take you long, should it? If you're not prepared to do that, then you're in no position to moan.

 

[Ray]

So you would blow out a few knee caps and risk them bleeding to death?

If there were no other alternatives, I would take a risk on someone bleeding to death, yes. I'd also shoot one of these 'high-ranking fascists, responsible for atrocities' if they were trying to escape. But if you don't see any difference between that, and having a policy of executing political prisoners and deserters, then I really don't know how I can explain it any further.

I haven’t said anything about following.

Its right there above you in the thread. Each time I asked you, 'would you do X if someone told you it was necessary', and each time you replied 'I don't like X, but if someone told me it was necessary'.

I said would you use torture on one person if you could save 1000s of lives. Simple as that. What I am saying in a wider context is things would be very complex…..

Just like Guantanamo Bay is complex, yes.

As for your examples I can’t be bothered with it. It’s a one way street it seems full or sarcasm…..

Its very simple, really. You keep saying that some things are very bad, but then saying they might not be that bad, if you were told they were necessary for the defence of the revolution. Your latest examples of very bad things are 'rape as terror' and 'wiping out villages'. I'm wondering if they're 'really, really very bad', or are they 'bad, but not as bad as failing to defend the revolution by any means I'm told are necessary'. If you didn't keep expanding the second category at the expense of the first I wouldn't have to keep asking.

Fair enough. It is good to see that anarchists accept the need for centralisation of power and that federations can’t all just be autonomous. At least you’ve said it. How much centralisation is obviously the crucial question…..

Just make sure you remember that I was very explicit in saying that there are strong limits on the centralisation of power. I wouldn't like that bit to be forgotten in all the excitement, or for anyone to think I only meant those limits to hold until someone tells me its really, really important to ignore them.

 

[JoeBlack]

You have a computer there yourself, google for Lenin and Rolls Royce.

Indeed this returns

Results 11 - 20 of about 1,980 for Lenin rolls royce. (0.16 seconds)*

They are unlikely to be all made up but the evil bourgeoise press out to defame the greatest revolutionary of all time.

I suggest you switch to option B of explaining why he needed 9 of them

or

Option C of saying he didn't want 9 but some carried away sycophant ordered them for his birthday as a surprise

 

[aw go on]

"The major problem in Russia was that it was the central committee of one party that represented a minority of the revolutionary forces...And when anyone objected they simply labelled them as counter revolutionaries on the basis of that objection (a circular argument if ever there was one)."

What other revolutionary forces?

The Mensheviks who organised the opposition were against the revolution and in favour of obstructing it until they could win leadership and restore parliamentary democracy and capitalism - they didn't believe a socialist revolution was possible.

the anarchists, some were individually heroic, but were tiny and hardly led the revolution or built the necessary, national, centralised revolutionary movement (the National Congress of Soviets) that was necessary to make it.

The Left Socialist Revolutionaries were based on the cross class village, and wanted the class struggle to stop at its walls - when the bolsheviks, to feed the starving cities, began to organise the landless peasants against the richer ones who wouldnt' cough up the grain, that was what was the last straw for the LSRs - but up till then they were part of the soviet movement and in its leadership. That was what led them to make an armed uprising against it.

And i didn't even have to read any marxist sources to get all that, i got it from the anti-Bolshevik articles in the Slavic Review journal!

"Most urban workers were the sons or daughters of peasants and still had strong links to the villages. Indeed this is why the bolsheviks introduced the control detachments to prevent them returning to the villages to get food. "

how ridiculous and reversing reality is that! Your right they did leave the cities - never to return most of them. Many became grain speculators. And to make it possible for workers to remain in the factories, rather than using 3 weeks out of every month scouring the countryside for food and paying for it on the blackmarket, the bolsheviks initiated systematic grain requisitioning in march 1918 - after 4 months of starvation rations had decimated the industrial working class. the soviets and working class spontaneously in the biger factories had already begun to sent detachments into the countryside, sometimes to barter for grain, sometimes to seize it, so it wasn't even an invention of the bolsheviks they merely systematised it when it became the only possible way to keep the cities going.

"Ever heard of "The Conquest of Bread" Kropotkin's book written in 1911? It deals with precisely this question in great detail. "

yeah we're not talking aobut some peaceful utopian future, we are talking about the savage civil war period in 1918 russia, sorry mate, ever read state adn revolution? its a good basic marxist text but will hardly give you the answers for organising food distribution in 1918!

"Also, if you care to look at the Spanish revolution you will find that food production increased markedly and this area, where anarchist organisation was most pre-dominant and fully implemented, was the one area where there were barely any shortages or distribution problems whatsoever."

of course, spain started at a much higher economic level, where the peasantry was much more proletarianised and landless unionised, the economy much more developed, and the depth of crisis much shallower. If the Bolsheviks had been able to take the route of colectivising agricultural production voluntarily and en masse they would have- that was their programme. Unfortunately by the time they managed to make the revolution, the peasants had alraedy seized the land and broken up into individual parcels along the lines of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries' programme.

do you think the bolsheviks should have forcibly colectivised the peasantry? even makno didn't do this.

 

[aw go on]

It seems that every time someone comes up with a statistic you don't like, you argue that its not reliable. Which makes it pretty pointless coming up with statistics, doesn't it?

You have a computer there yourself, google for Lenin and Rolls Royce. Come back if you find something that casts doubt on the CNN reference. If they're not a reliable source, that shouldn't take you long, should it? If you're not prepared to do that, then you're in no position to moan.

sorry ray i mised the quote, can you post up the bit where it says gold plated??

 

[cockneyrebel]

Your posts have just degenerated into sarcy comments and ridiculous scenarios. See grouchos post on morality. As for the Rolls Royce point various posters have put a very different slant on that one….

Joe Black you still haven’t answered the question on grain. The source I gave above stated that Moscow was facing starvation in early 1918 and the peasants were refusing to give over their grain to help out. In these circumstances there seems a simple choice. You either take it or you don’t. What would anarchists do? So far you seem to just provide vague statements…..

As said it’s good to see that it’s been accepted that centralisation of power is needed and everyone can’t just be autonomous (kinda like democratic centralism on a loser scale by the sounds of it). Would you agree that in a revolutionary situation where production and military decisions have to made very quickly and in a co-ordinated way that the central bodies, during this time, would have to have fairly wide spread powers…..

 

[Ray]

sorry ray i mised the quote, can you post up the bit where it says gold plated??

Sure, its on the same page where I say it was gold plated.

 

[JoeBlack]

sorry ray i mised the quote, can you post up the bit where it says gold plated??

I threw the gold plating in for a laugh in the post where I suggested that he needed 9 so he could use a different one to get to the opera ever night. Hint -> he probably didn't go to the opera every night either.

And CR I answer your point about the grain above. You very oddly seem to have read this as support for centralisation but I presume this is simply another familar school yard debateing method. The answer should also have included 'If I wanted to go there I wouldn't start from here' flowing out of my post on the bolshevik policies towards the peasantry.

 

[gurrier]

What other revolutionary forces?

Um, the mass of workers and peasants who were the ones who actually carried out the revolution, dispossessed the bosses and siezed the lands with minimal or no bolshevik involvement. Oh, shit I forgot that they were counter-revolutionaries because they failed to support the bolsheviks and so had to be over-ruled for the greater good of the revolution....

And your reference to Kropotkin's utopian future just reveals the fact that you haven't read the book and don't know anything about it. It is actually a very concrete look at the extremely critical task of feeding the cities in the immediate aftermath of a revolution in early 20th century Europe, faced with precisely the same objective problems that Russia saw in 1917. On the other hand you seem to have no problem in coming out with statements that are immediately proven false and then just changing tack to argue a different point, so you'll probably ignore this one too. Do you have any sense of intellectual integrity at all? Do you have any ability to think or do you just endlessly recycle excuses for thought that have been handed to you by some lying party leader?

 

[aw go on]

I threw the gold plating in for a laugh in the post where I suggested that he needed 9 so he could use a different one to get to the opera ever night. Hint -> he probably didn't go to the opera every night either..

yeah or a smear?

waiting for that oh so coherent defense of the anarchist grain policy in the russian civil war comrades.

 

[cockneyrebel]

Joe the centralisation comment was to Ray, not yourself. Replying to about five anarchists is quite confusing.....

As for Prince Kropotikin, I know you were responding to aw go on, but I'll have a look at it when I have the time.....

In terms of people saying what 99.9% of people think. How big is class anarchism in the UK? I think the AF is the biggest anarchist organisation to go and they've got about 70 members. You're hardly representative of the masses!!!

 

[gurrier]

Aw go on, you are one of the worst debaters that I have ever come across. You have a singular ability to be bury your head in your doctrine and sneer at others from your closed mind.

You defended the bolsheviks famine-inducing policies by basically saying 'nah nah the anarchists have no answers'.

I pointed out that:
1. Anarchists produced lengthy theoretical treatises which adressed this very question in advance of the period
2. These ideas were put into practice extensively in Spain and they proved remarkably succesful (the book was actually sold in hundreds of thousands in spain in the 20s and 30s and much of the practical results were actually explicitly aiming to implement the ideas).

You respond by
1. Revealing your complete ignorance of the contents of the book.
2. Saying that the immensely practical results don't count because you don't want them too (your objective conditions excuse is horseshit by the way).
3. Repeating 'nah nah the anarchists have no answers'

Why do you think anybody would waste their time putting any more time into arguing with you after you have revealed such an incapacity for engaging in anything resembling a debate?

 

[cockneyrebel]

So if aw go on doesn't accept that

1) Prince Kropotkin is the oracle of all knowledge regarding the grain crisis when he wrote about it 6-7 years before it happened!

2) Says the obvious the Spain and Russia were very different in terms of social conditions and industrialisation

3) Stating that you still haven't given any answers but just a link to the prince

He is not worth debating with! Nice logic.....

PS Where did aw go on show ignorance of the book? Where he called it utopian? How do you know aw go on is ignorant about it?

 

[aw go on]

Um, the mass of workers and peasants who were the ones who actually carried out the revolution, dispossessed the bosses and siezed the lands with minimal or no bolshevik involvement. Oh, shit I forgot that they were counter-revolutionaries because they failed to support the bolsheviks and so had to be over-ruled for the greater good of the revolution....

And your reference to Kropotkin's utopian future just reveals the fact that you haven't read the book and don't know anything about it. It is actually a very concrete look at the extremely critical task of feeding the cities in the immediate aftermath of a revolution in early 20th century Europe, faced with precisely the same objective problems that Russia saw in 1917. On the other hand you seem to have no problem in coming out with statements that are immediately proven false and then just changing tack to argue a different point, so you'll probably ignore this one too. Do you have any sense of intellectual integrity at all? Do you have any ability to think or do you just endlessly recycle excuses for thought that have been handed to you by some lying party leader?

the peasants wanted the land and took part in the revolution to seize it and as a result solved their own social question - they weren't anticapitalist.

The working class largely collapsed in the winter of 1917-1918 - it was decimated by hunger and the advanced layer of militants who fought for the revolution and convinced the others of the necesity of it either joined the red army or the soviet administration - after all they had an economy to run, they couldn't leave it to the spontaneous market to sort out.

Whats more there are many different layers to the working class, not everyone is a revolutionary - the bolsheviks had only won a majority a month before the revolution itself, and not surprising that besides many leavnig the factories and cities, those that remained were not the most revolutionary and often demoralised by hunger cold etc. How else can you explain the unemployed movements in march 1918 where many speakers already were raising the slogan "down with jew commissars"? Any one who got up and said that in front of the workers in october 1917 would have been lynched.

you can get most of taht out of any basic university text, why dont you buy one instead of just living off the highly selective facts you can get off of anarchist websites?

shows how all over teh place you anarchists are on the question of how to overthrow CAPITALISM that is what the revolution is for.

 

[aw go on]

He is not worth debating with! Nice logic.....QUOTE]

dont worry cockney rebel me ole chum, been here before, this is where the anarchists start dropping off from the debate, when the facts start getting tough for them. Its one thing to slag of the bolsheviks for their crimes and keep repeating the mantra of the revolutionary working class (like it didn't change politcially from month to month after the revolution, just like it did before it!!) its another to actually have to put forward positive solutions that would have worked - they couldn't do it in 1917, 1918, 1919 and 1920 and they can't do it now.

The bolsheviks continued to represent the majority of the revolutionary working class and continued to represent the historic and internatinonal interests of the working class, which was to hold the line until a revolution took place in germany that could salvage the situation - or do the anarchists believe in socialism in one country as a possibility?

How would anarchists deal with soviets that elected the Mensheviks and turned against soviet power and against the revolution? Just stand by and let the Mensheviks overthrow it?

 

[gurrier]

I'm starting to get irritated with the constantly shifting goalposts of the trots here. It's especially annoying when anybody can just scroll up the page and read the debate themselves, so I don't see what the point is in these misrepresentations.

The especially sneering trot calling himself 'aw go on' wrote:

You'd be the first libertarian to come up with an answer to it, the anarchists at the time had no solution and neither have any of the anarchist groups today.

I refuted this entirely and absolutely. He was simply proved wrong but rather than apologising or changing his position, he merely stuck his head back in the sand. You then wrote a series of misrepresentations about what I wrote.

To repeat, I wrote a correct and complete refutation of what the other dim trot wrote. I nowhere wrote any of the things that you claimed that I did.

 

[gurrier]

this is where the anarchists start dropping off from the debate, when the facts start getting tough for them

Actually, it's where the anarchists start going home from work and leave the debate to the student trots.

I find your suggestion that the facts are getting tough to be hilarious. Scroll back up and you'll see that you haven't really introduced any facts, just a series of posts that restate in various ways 'nah nah nah nah nah, the anarchists don't have any answers'. Aside from the fact that this is not a defence of the bolsheviks in any way - even if it were true it doesn't amount to a defence of the bolshevik dictatorship - it is extremely annoying to have to argue with somebody who has such a tenuous grasp of logic and is more than happy to resort to sneering rather than argument.

 

[aw go on]

Aw go on, you are one of the worst debaters that I have ever come across. You have a singular ability to be bury your head in your doctrine and sneer at others from your closed mind.

what a ridiculous post gurrier - in terms of tone i'm just responding in kind to you and your anarcho mates - i'm always amazed at how nasty the anarchos can be, calling youa liar, ideologue etc, and then when you do the same back they get all whiny! fair nuff tho, if you feel i've been over the top, i'll just stick to the facts, as i have done above.

It has had nothing to do with my ideology. you showed nothing about the famine, i put forward the facts, and like i say i got my stats from mainstream texts that are anti-bolshevik not the collected works of lenin.

ive read the anarchist FAQ cheers, read Kropotkin thanks and actually read quite a bit about the spanish civil war, anarchists included. Not saying i'm a whiz kid but alot of my friends are anarchists and i respect them and read what they say, i'm not the close-minded caricature that you always advance when you can't answer a fact or argument. neither were lenin or trotsky or most real marxists, its just a convenient stereotype the anarchists use to deflect debates.

But btw how much lenin and trotsky have you read Gurrier? Most anarchos read nothing other than quotes in Maximov berkman and Brinton.

 

[aw go on]

student trots hah, now who's sneering G? CR is a shop steward and i'm in a union myself - but hey why stop when your on a roll G!

but okay this hasn't been answered dont think, look forward to seeing what you have to say tomorow:

How would anarchists deal with soviets that elected the Mensheviks and turned against soviet power and against the revolution? Just stand by and let the Mensheviks overthrow it?

how would you solve the grain crisis?