Most firefighters think the SWP/ruc (Wespec') is a load of ole bollocks

[butchersapron]

Isn't it more of an example of how not to seize power?

 

[audiotech]

Isn't it more of an example of how not to seize power?

In fact it's a successful example of seizing power and I would be really interested in any example you may have on the subject? Then, I can make comparisons and maybe it can be adopted for use by other organisations?

 

[butchersapron]

In fact it's a successful example of seizing power and I would be really interested in any example you may have on the subject? Then, I can make comparisons and maybe it can be adopted for use by other organisations?

Like the demand that every situation in the UK in 2005 is 1917 over and over again?

See, "In fact it's a successful example of seizing power" is such a crude answer that i don't know where to start.

If you're going to ask me to provide evidence of a sucessful world revolution, then you're not going to find it. You might find evidence of tactics being applied where they were not appropiate as a direct result of the the dominance of the bolsheviks though.

 

[audiotech]

Like the demand that every situation in the UK in 2005 is 1917 over and over again?

See, "In fact it's a successful example of seizing power" is such a crude answer that i don't know where to start.

If you're going to ask me to provide evidence of a sucessful world revolution, then you're not going to find it. You might find evidence of tactics being applied where they were not appropiate as a direct result of the the dominance of the bolsheviks though.

I've made no such demands.

Result: Monarchy 0 Bolsheviks 1 (after extra time).

There has been no 'successful world revolution' so I expect the evidence is scant. Doesn't mean it can't happen.

I might find it yes, but as you have raised the issue maybe you would like to do that?

 

[butchersapron]

Evidence of a revolution temporarily knocking the top brass off? You know where and when.

 

[audiotech]

Evidence of a revolution temporarily knocking the top brass off? You know where and when.

Sorry, I'm not good at cryptic clues (avoided The Times crossword even before Wapping!). Please elaborate?

 

[butchersapron]

OK, Spain 36-37, Ukraine 191-21, Germany 1919 - you get the picture?

 

[Pickman's model]

OK, Spain 36-37, Ukraine 191-21, Germany 1919 - you get the picture?

what about france?

 

[butchersapron]

Yep France as well. England 17th cent.

 

[mk12]

Well they didn't overthrow the bourgeoisie though did they?

 

[audiotech]

OK, Spain 36-37, Ukraine 191-21, Germany 1919 - you get the picture?

Lost revolutions? So, (blimey, it's like shelling peas) why did that happen do you think?

 

[Pickman's model]

Well they didn't overthrow the bourgeoisie though did they?

do you intend yr posts to have some sort of naive, innocent charm or are you really as thick as you sound?

 

[mk12]

Am I right or wrong Pickman's?

 

[Pickman's model]

half-right, he said - grudgingly.

but - he continued - a revolutionary moment does not a revolution make.

 

[audiotech]

do you intend yr posts to have some sort of naive, innocent charm or are you really as thick as you sound?

Subtlety is not one of your strong points is it?

 

[LLETSA]

Because it is the only model that has been successful in practical terms as an instrument for seizing power.

But this is just simplistic. Much of this thread has been about whether there is any point in the present day western left trying to emulate an organisation designed to gain power in the conditions of a vast police state a century ago.

Surely the record of the organisations that do this speaks for itself?

 

[mk12]

But the Bolsheviks didn't seize power under the conditions of a police state did they? They won support through democratic workers councils remember?

 

[JHE]

They [the Bolsheviks] won support through democratic workers councils remember?

How long did the councils then remain democratic?

 

[LLETSA]

Totalitarian tendencies in Russia were indeed there from the Tzarist period and beyond. However, Lenin was probably one of the first Russians to speak about democracy for the vast majority, rather than an elite oligarchy and was one of the few Bolsheviks to applaud the setting up of Soviets by workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors (others saw them as a threat to the party).

To say that Stalin was 'building on the foundations laid by Lenin' is probably true, but Stalin used those 'foundations' to shore up his own position as head of the bureaucratic state, which Lenin warns of in his last testament. It was Stalin's dictatorial stamp on the Comintern and it's ultra-left turn which paved the way for what happened on Germany. Nothing to do with Lenin as he was dead at the time. His preferred successor Trotsky gave warning on that, despite the difficulties he faced from Stalin's assassins.

There is no 'quest' being sought here. I think the ideas of Lenin and the role of the party need to be examined and learnt from rather than to be thrown out with the bathwater.

Just to be clear I'm not a 'Trotskyist' and I suspect your use of that term in a perjorative way is deliberate. However, your flippancy on that point I will put to one side. I wasn't being 'flippant' by the way.

So too did Lenin see those soviets as a threat to the party, or more accurately the party dictatorship, as soon as the crunch came. By the end of the civil war the party had inevitably painted itself into a corner, presiding over what Moshe Lewin calls 'a dictatorship in a void.' The tragedy of Lenin is that he could see the likely outcome while being powerless to do anything about it. Even if the testament had been distributed to the whole party there would have been few prepared to give up the party's monopoly on power and thus risk the threat of the revolution falling. Yet without giving up the party dictatorship they risked its inevitable increasing bureaucratisation and its falling into the hands of a single dictator. That was the inescapable dilemma the party faced and a large part of it was thanks to Lenin.

You say, correctly, that it was Stalin's ultra-left turn that paved the way for the Nazis seizure of power but in an earlier post claim that the role of the USSR in the defeat of the Nazi regime was one of the successes of Leninism. I said that this was a strange thing for a Trotskyist to claim. I wasn't using the term pejoratively, as I didn't for one minute think you'd regard it as an insult.

I too think that Leninism is there to be learnt from - which is why I've spent much of this thread trying to provoke a more detailed response from Leninists. Apart from yours and Nigel Irritable's responses the rest have been either mindlessly defensive or pitifully simplistic. I suppose that's the benefit of experience over youth eh....

 

[LLETSA]

But the Bolsheviks didn't seize power under the conditions of a police state did they? They won support through democratic workers councils remember?

What Pickman's Model said.

Jesus!

 

[fanciful]

it's not true he saw there was nothing to do about it, namely the international revolution. defeat was only inevitable if you think lenin advocated socialism in one country. he didn't.

 

[butchersapron]

Lost revolutions? So, (blimey, it's like shelling peas) why did that happen do you think?

Because they didn't have a leninist party to lead the way...

Despite having Leninist parties to lead the way...

Ho fucking hum....

 

[butchersapron]

But the Bolsheviks didn't seize power under the conditions of a police state did they? They won support through democratic workers councils remember?

No, i don't remember that.

 

[mk12]

You wouldn't remember because you weren't alive. But the Bolsheviks gained a majority in the Moscow and Petrograd Soviet.

Bolshevik support is clear if you look at the make up of the Second Congress of Soviets.

October 25-26, 1917
390 Bolshevik
160 Socialist-Revolutionaries (about 100 were Left SRs)
72 Mensheviks
14 Menshevik Internationalists
13 of various groups.

 

[cockneyrebel]

How many of those 13 were anarchist then?

 

[mk12]

I think a great big 4

 

[butchersapron]

Sorry, don't remember Moscow and Petrograd together making up more than 1% of the Russian population. Got the nationwide results then? You might like to browse through this whilst looking though:
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/russia/sp001861/bolintro.html]The Bolsheviks and Workers Control 1917 - 1921: The State and Counter-revolution[/URL]

 

[Herbert Read]

I think a great big 4

I stopped worrying about who had the biggest a long time ago Matt. Its time to get your head out of the sand and realise that state socialism has being historically proved to do exactly waht it states on the tin. Oppress, divide and destroy the freedom it espouses in its slogans.

 

[cockneyrebel]

And what has anarchism done in practice except to prove a total failure?

 

[Herbert Read]

And what has anarchism done in practice except to prove a total failure?

failure by what measure to take power or control, or be at the forefront of every popular and autonomous uprising. We dont need paper sellers or a committee to understand freedom and lberation from illegitamate authority.