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

[LLETSA]

Well I wonder why I'm not suprised by your response? I have posted a piece of research (as I did in the couse of my time on the RA boards), carried out by myself, using quotes from significant figures to address some of the points raised in your post. You on the other hand come up with some throwaway remark that has no reference to the post, in order to undermine what has been written. Not really good enough is it?

Gimme a chance. I've only just seen the bleedin' posts. I doubt if I'll be replying tonight as I've got to go out for a while.

I don't see why you can't put it all in your own words though.

 

[audiotech]

Gimme a chance. I've only just seen the bleedin' posts. I doubt if I'll be replying tonight as I've got to go out for a while.

I don't see why you can't put it all in your own words though.

OK, I wasn't expecting an immediate retort, I was annoyed with your off hand comments. I have tried to use my own words as far as I can, but sometimes you have to use the words of the players themselves, to place them in their original, historical context.

 

[LLETSA]

OK, I wasn't expecting an immediate retort, I was annoyed with your off hand comments. I have tried to use my own words as far as I can, but sometimes you have to use the words of the players themselves, to place them in their original, historical context.

That must be the first time I've ever annoyed you, MC5....

 

[audiotech]

That must be the first time I've ever annoyed you, MC5....

to you too........

 

[mk12]

Good debate. MC5, you posted a quote by Lenin saying "'Genuine democracy, i.e., Liberty and equality, is unrealizable unless this aim is achieved." I didn't understand what he meant. Unless what aim is achieved?

 

[audiotech]

Good debate. MC5, you posted a quote by Lenin saying "'Genuine democracy, i.e., Liberty and equality, is unrealizable unless this aim is achieved." I didn't understand what he meant. Unless what aim is achieved?

The first thing to do to win genuine equality and enable the working people to enjoy democracy in practice is to deprive the exploiters of all the public and sumptuous private buildings, to give to the working people leisure and to see to it that their freedom of assembly is protected by armed workers, not by heirs of the nobility or capitalist officers in command of downtrodden soldiers.

Genuine freedom and equality will be embodied in the system which the Communists are building, and in which there will be no opportunity for massing wealth at the expense of others, no objective opportunities for putting the press under the direct or indirect power of money, and no impediments in the way of any workingman (or groups of workingman, in any numbers) for enjoying and practicing equal rights in the use of public printing presses and public stocks of paper.

Genuine democracy, i.e., Liberty and equality, is unrealizable unless this aim is achieved. But it's practical achievement is possible only through Soviet, or proletarian, democracy, for by enlisting the mass organizations of the working people in constant and unfailing participation in the administration of the state, it immediately begins to prepare the complete withering away of any state.

V.I. Lenin
First Congress of the Communist International

http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/r.htm#proletarian-democracy

 

[mk12]

Thanks for your (longer than expected) response. Continue the debate...

 

[audiotech]

Thanks for your (longer than expected) response...

I just wish I'd written it.

 

[LLETSA]

I just wish I'd written it.

I wish you had as well....

 

[Herbert Read]

.

Genuine democracy, i.e., Liberty and equality, is unrealizable unless this aim is achieved. But it's practical achievement is possible only through Soviet, or proletarian, democracy, for by enlisting the mass organizations of the working people in constant and unfailing participation in the administration of the state, it immediately begins to prepare the complete withering away of any state.

V.I. Lenin
First Congress of the Communist International

http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/r.htm#proletarian-democracy

We all no what Lenins idea of the state withering away was

Why keep posting this shit

 

[audiotech]

We all no what Lenins idea of the state withering away was

Why keep posting this shit

Because it was a reply to a question and as you seem to know all the answers then you don't need to read it.

 

[LLETSA]

Lenin alway's called for unity, his book 'Left Wing Communism an Infantile Order' makes this clear. Lenin viewed the population not 'as a tool', but well able to lead the revolution, which, as he wrote '...must be the work of the class and not of a little leading minority in the name of the class.' Moreover, '...it must proceed step by step out of the active participation of the masses; it must be under their direct influence, subjected to the control of complete public activity; it must arise out of the growing political training of the mass of the people.'

I do believe that when the functionaries of the Tsarist regime began to join the party that its bureaucratisation began to move apace along with Stalin's authoritarian rule.

On the other hand, David Shub wrote: "(Lenin) was no social dreamer in the ordinary sense. Russia was his laboratory for testing Communism on a grand scale; the immediate welfare of the Russian people was secondary. The enormous sacrifices which his great experiment required was inescapable and irrelevant. Mercy was a bourgeois virtue. The man who loved children, animals and nature seldom lifted a finger to save human beings from Cheka firing squads. Gorky, who often burdened him with pleas for men and women who were condemned to death felt that his intercession aroused almost contempt. 'Don't you see you are wasting our time on mere trifles?' asked Lenin. 'You are compromising yourself in the eyes of our comrades, the workers.'

"But although he had no mercy for his enemies, he tolerated the worst scoundrels provided he could make use of them. 'There are no morals in politics,' he often said; 'there is only expediency.'"

 

[LLETSA]

The ultra-left line had nothing to do with either Bolshevism, or Lenin and everything to do with Stalin. As I said, revolutionary leaders of the Bolshevik party were purged, tortured, imprisoned and murdered. Lenin was dead.

Yes, using the mechanisms put in place with Lenin's direct approval. The same mechanisms that Stalin used to terrorise and decimate the Soviet working class as well as the party. Moshe Lewin: "In (Lenin's) amendments to the project for the penal code he insisted that the notion of 'counterrevolutionary activity' should be given the widest possible interpretation. This definition was to be linked with the 'international bourgeoisie' in such a way that this kind of crime became quite imprecise from a juridicial point of view and thus left the way open for every kind of arbitrary action. Among other things, the crime would cover 'propaganda and agitation."

 

[Herbert Read]

Because it was a reply to a question and as you seem to know all the answers then you don't need to read it.

apologies

 

[mk12]

Yes, using the mechanisms put in place with Lenin's direct approval.
Typical anarchist argument that one, but its a pretty poor one. Victor Serge said, "By the same reasoning Jesus Christ was the father of the Spanish Inquisition and Abraham Lincoln the father of United States imperialism, but nobody, one hopes, imagines that statements of this type lead to any useful conclusion." I think he is right...

 

[LLETSA]

I'm not sure which organisations you are relating to when you refer to other 'left forces'? Are you relating to the Mensheviks who were united in their opposition to the October Revolution?

Of course most of the Mensheviks supported the Red Army against the White Army during the Russian Civil War. The mistake the Mensheviks made was to denounce the persecution of liberal newspapers, the nobility, the Cadets and the Socialist Revolutionaries. It is important to note too that athough most Mensheviks condemned Russia's involvement in the First World War, a small minority supported Nicholas II and his government. The decision to ban the Mensheviks was based on their opposition to the revolution.

If we examine the actions of another of the 'left forces', the Socialist Revolutionaries, who followed the tactics used of the People's Will. They had a terrorist wing, the SR Combat Organization. Membership of this group was secret and independent of the rest of the party. Gregory Gershuni, became its head and was responsible for planning assassination. At this time the Socialist Revolutionaries continued to be infiltrated by agents employed by Okhrana.

In 1917 the SRs split between those who supported the Provisional Government and the Bolsheviks who favoured a communist revolution. Those like Maria Spirdonova and Mikhail Kalinin who supported revolution became known as Left Socialist Revolutionists. By 1918 the Soviet government had closed down the Constituent Assembly and banned the SR. As a result the SRs resorted to acts of terror. On 30th August, 1918, Vladimir Lenin was shot by Dora Kaplan and soon afterwards Moisei Uritsky, Commissar for Internal Affairs in the Northern Region, was assassinated by another supporter of the SR.

But you acknowledge that the Mensheviks supported the Red Army against the Whites and that the left SR's supported the October revolution prior to their being banned by the Bolsheviks. Room for compromise there surely?

However, this kind of thing is an argument without end. Nobody can say for definite what would have happened had this or that not taken place. With the internal and external opposition, the Bolsheviks were in a desperate situation for sure, but by relying almost solely on repression they alienated all potential allies and set up the apparatus that Stalin would later use to wreak havoc upon the whole country.

However, much of this is only of academic interest now. To get back to the point I have been trying to raise throughout much of this thread, can anybody answer the question of why a party model designed to meet the conditions of the Tsarist dictatorship should continue to be the model for contemporary opponents of capitalism? Neither you nor any other Leninist has yet offered a coherent argument for this. You have said that it is necessary to learn from the Leninist experience while simply defending the actions of Lenin almost a century ago in a country that resembles contemporary western society in almost no way at all. How is it all supposed to inform action now?

 

[LLETSA]

Yes, using the mechanisms put in place with Lenin's direct approval.
Typical anarchist argument that one, but its a pretty poor one. Victor Serge said, "By the same reasoning Jesus Christ was the father of the Spanish Inquisition and Abraham Lincoln the father of United States imperialism, but nobody, one hopes, imagines that statements of this type lead to any useful conclusion." I think he is right...

How about answering my question at the end of post 406? Put to Leninists for the nth time in this thread, to no avail.

 

[Herbert Read]

Yes, using the mechanisms put in place with Lenin's direct approval.
Typical anarchist argument that one, but its a pretty poor one. Victor Serge said, "By the same reasoning Jesus Christ was the father of the Spanish Inquisition and Abraham Lincoln the father of United States imperialism, but nobody, one hopes, imagines that statements of this type lead to any useful conclusion." I think he is right...

matt you are a fool and quoting an anarchist who joined the bolsheviks

 

[mk12]

Jesus christ, why am I a fool? I think its a valid quote to counter one of LLETSA's points?

 

[audiotech]

On the other hand, David Shub wrote: "(Lenin) was no social dreamer in the ordinary sense. Russia was his laboratory for testing Communism on a grand scale; the immediate welfare of the Russian people was secondary. The enormous sacrifices which his great experiment required was inescapable and irrelevant. Mercy was a bourgeois virtue. The man who loved children, animals and nature seldom lifted a finger to save human beings from Cheka firing squads. Gorky, who often burdened him with pleas for men and women who were condemned to death felt that his intercession aroused almost contempt. 'Don't you see you are wasting our time on mere trifles?' asked Lenin. 'You are compromising yourself in the eyes of our comrades, the workers.'

"But although he had no mercy for his enemies, he tolerated the worst scoundrels provided he could make use of them. 'There are no morals in politics,' he often said; 'there is only expediency.'"

I don't know what Shubs agenda was when he wrote that, as he makes assertions about 'laboratory's' and 'experiments' bordering on spin?

According to 'Time', Lenin began the Bolshevik tradition of waging war on intellectual dissidents — of exiling, imprisoning and executing thinkers and artists who dared oppose the regime. He was a peculiarly modest figure who wore a shabby waistcoat, worked 16-hour days and read extensively. (By contrast, Stalin did not know that the Netherlands and Holland were the same country, and no one in the Kremlin inner circle was brave enough to set him straight.)

Andrei Sinyavsky, one of the key dissidents of the 1960s stated that Lenin '...was a rather kind person whose cruelty was stipulated by science and incontrovertible historical laws. As were his love of power and his political intolerance.'

This stipulation included him to urge comrades to:

'... Hang (hang without fail, so that people will see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers ... Do it in such a way that ... for hundreds of versts around, the people will see, tremble, know, shout: 'They are strangling and will strangle to death the bloodsucker kulaks' ... Yours, Lenin."

Revolution, by any historical laws is a nasty business. It is the result of a 'bourgeois virtue' whereby they unleash extreme violence on their own people who then react in kind.

He was right about politics.

 

[Pickman's model]

'labotories'

 

[mk12]

Interestingly, a google search about that 'hang, hang' quote has four hits. Two from 'Time magazine' and a couple from 'quotes/anecdotes' websites. One arguing - "Lenin created a model not merely for his successor, Stalin, but for Mao, for Hitler, for Pol Pot..."

Hitler?!?

 

[Pickman's model]

yeh.

 

[audiotech]

Jumped in a bit quck there. Should have waited a spell

 

[Pickman's model]

i thought it was a new word for places where they conducted lobotomies on an industrial scale.

or summat.

 

[audiotech]

How about answering my question at the end of post 406? Put to Leninists for the nth time in this thread, to no avail.

It's been answered. To build a party of revolutionaries with supporters and sympathiesers (or, should that be synthersiers pickman?).

 

[Pickman's model]

synthesizers

 

[audiotech]

synthesizers

Ta.

 

[audiotech]

But you acknowledge that the Mensheviks supported the Red Army against the Whites and that the left SR's supported the October revolution prior to their being banned by the Bolsheviks. Room for compromise there surely?

However, this kind of thing is an argument without end. Nobody can say for definite what would have happened had this or that not taken place. With the internal and external opposition, the Bolsheviks were in a desperate situation for sure, but by relying almost solely on repression they alienated all potential allies and set up the apparatus that Stalin would later use to wreak havoc upon the whole country.

However, much of this is only of academic interest now. To get back to the point I have been trying to raise throughout much of this thread, can anybody answer the question of why a party model designed to meet the conditions of the Tsarist dictatorship should continue to be the model for contemporary opponents of capitalism? Neither you nor any other Leninist has yet offered a coherent argument for this. You have said that it is necessary to learn from the Leninist experience while simply defending the actions of Lenin almost a century ago in a country that resembles contemporary western society in almost no way at all. How is it all supposed to inform action now?

Lenin wanted to go further than both the Mensheviks and SR's (who had weak leadership) so, for him, compromise was out of the question.

Why indeed should it continue to be the model for capitalist opponents to follow? Because, to be anti-capitalist you wish to see an end to that corporate edifice and create something better, based on equality and liberty. An organisation that is made up of individuals with the aim of achieving that purpose is more likely to succeed. With the hindsight of history it's easier to avoid bureaucratic distortions.

 

[LLETSA]

I don't know what Shubs agenda was when he wrote that, as he makes assertions about 'laboratory's' and 'experiments' bordering on spin?

I'm sure that it can be firmly established that his agenda was undoubtedly evil, if not sponsored directly by the CIA.

On the other hand he might, as a Marxist, have had valid criticisms to make of the Bolshevik interpretation of Marx:

"Born and educated in Russia, David Shub joined the Social Democratic Party as a very young man and frequently met Lenin and other leaders abroad. After taking part in the Russian revolution of 1905 he was exiled to Siberia but escaped to the USA. Thereafter he still kept up his contact with the revolutionary leaders, with many of whom he was personally acquainted."

That's from the cover of the Penguin edition of Lenin, by David Shub and is all I know about him. The book is a good read if you've got an open mind.