How can there be capitalists under communism, when communism is a society without money, without private control over the means of production, etc.?
In communism there is money (money is a medium of exchange). You can not pay mine workers in butter and nuts... (or gold?) Eventually under communism, there is trade. Plus, there are small capitalists and manufacturers who give services under communism.
Rat, your ignorance never ceases to amaze me... Keep your uninformed, biased and ignorant statements that make no point whatsoever out of the rest of everyones intellectual debate... go back to finding articles you like off prison planet and posting them here... LIK DUDE ALEX JONES IS SO COOL HES LIKE GOD MAN HES SO RIGHT ABOUT EVERYHTING. LIBERTARIANISM MAKZ ME SO COOL LIK OMG, IM NOT LIKE THE REST OF EVERY1 ELSE WHO IS COMMUNIST TO BE COOL, I AM ORIGNAL AND UNIQUE... COMMIES R JUST THAT WAY COZ THEY ALL LISTEN TO RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE!!!!!! (get real, no one listens to rage, they suck ass) Oh yeah rat, no one is suffering because of capitalism!! say that to the slaves who work under americas multinational corporations.
Statistics for deaths supposidly caused by Lenin range from anywhere to 1 million to 10 million... Statistics for death caused by the USSR as a whole range from 28 million to 126.8 million... huge ass ranges... the truth is, no one knows the death tolls... just like we dont know the death tolls in iraq... the government did not bother to count... counting creates political dissent when the reality of how many people are murdererd chimes in the citizens. You have to understand that when people say "Lenin Killed" its like saying "George Bush killed" -- but in america... we dont consider george bush to have killed a single person -- but his actions and decisions to go to war with Iraq & afghanistan make him a killer like Lenin was a killer. Lenin never had ultimate power, or rule... his only time in power was during the provisional government where the actions of the state were no caused by just Lenin, but the entire provisional government. During the time Lenin was in the provisional government he was a peaceful man... he promised peace, and he lived up to this standard right up until America gave the USSR a pact to go to war... War kills people, the war lenin went to is counted in the statistics of "Lenin Killed"... but he never would have went to war if America hadnt offered him money to feed the people of the USSR. People dont admire Che or Lenin because of the people they killed -- they admire them for their philosophical beliefs and how they showed strength and power against their capitalist oppressor. People like Lenin because of his writings... but the main problem with USSR communism at the time was it was authoritarian and it TOTALLY ignored marxist philosophy... If it would have followed Marxist philosophy they would haven't had a central government, provisional government, or government. (Lenin outlines how he plans to follow Marx by getting rid of the powerful Totalitarian Government in his April Theses which I will discuss later) To be able to actually understand where Lenin was coming from, you have to have an incredible grasp of the russian revolution... you have to study the timeline of events before the collapse of the provisional government before you can truly understand what his ideas and plans meant to the USSR at the time and why they mean anything to communists today.... With any philosopher there personal ideas stretch beyond what the centre of people will accept... I have my disagreements with Lenin and I have my disagreements with Che, but I also agree with them on many things... i bet many of you havent ever heard of the "april theses" which outlined lenins plans for his party at the time... id ont agree entirely with the april theses but some parts I do like a lot which was in it. The april theses was the REAL birth of communism(not the communist manifesto or das kapital as those were philosophical ideologies which were long before the first communist party was established in the USSR), as it was the first real party which symbolized 'communism' and used the name 'communism' notes from the april theses 9) Party tasks: (a) Convocation of a Party congress; (democracy, not dictatorship... this part of the AT i agreed with) (b) Alteration of the Party Programme, mainly: (1) On the question of imperialism and the imperialist war, (2) On our attitude towards the state and our demand for a "commune state" (based off of france's Paris Commune) (3) Amendment of our out-of-date minimum programme; (c) Change of the Party's name. (Instead of "Social-Democracy", whose official leaders throughout the world have betrayed socialism and deserted to the bourgeoisie (the "defencists" and the vacillating "Kautskyites"), we must call ourselves the Communist Party. ) ((The first communist party stood for DEMOCRACY)) Lenin was militant towards capitalism in SELF-DEFENSE... The only thing I can think of that I can compare this to, would be the Black Panther Party who opposed the US Govts actions and the widespread Police Brutality and Racism in America... they were militant because they saw themselves as being OPPRESSED.. Lenin thought he must fight, or else he'd be submitted to Capitalist Oppression. These different opinions by communists and the different parties which were existant in the early USSR truly fascinate me... it means that communism is open toward debates, changing, evolving itself over the years to fit what is truly best for Man... it ensures that anyone can basically mold communism to mean anything -- with all the different opinions and beliefs carried by communists... This is why Communist China has capitalism in its larger cities and is still considered communist... when proposing capitalism in its larger cities officials in china used the marx quote "To each according to his ability, to each according to his need" to justify its actions... its no wonder how easily America has gotten its populace to believe that communism means Authoritarian State Power, when they can define communism by looking at the beliefs of a Mentally Challenged Murderer and say "that is communism" when ALL of his fellow communists at the time would have disagreed with almost all of his policies. Lenin fought AGAINST the provisional government at the time... you have to understand why before you can judge his opinions. (More on the april theses) 3. No support for the Provisional Government; the utter falsity of all its promises should be made clear, particularly of those relating to the renunciation of annexations. Exposure in place of the impermissible, illusion-breeding "demand" that this government, a government of capitalists, should cease to be an imperialist government. The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers' Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses. As long as we are in the minority we carry on the work of criticising and exposing errors and at the same time we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers' Deputies, so that the people may overcome their mistakes by experience. -- Renunciation of annexations... Worker's Deputies... do you understand what these things mean? This is why Lenin is still looked up to today. -- 5. Not a parliamentary republic -- to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers' Deputies would be a retrograde step -- but a republic of Soviets of Workers', Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom. Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy. {I.e., the standing army to be replaced by the arming of the whole people.} The salaries of all officials, all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time, not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker. (the government is not any more powerful or different than people under lenin... or so it would have been if stalin hadnt took power) This is why stalin hated lenin and trotsky, stalin was an impostor, a fake... he stood for none of this.. in fact quite the opposite.
Che's failure to manifest a communal society and the violence of his frustrations could have been easily predicted. Che, by the time he was five, was, like the rest of us, already en-culturated into Hierarchical Civilization. No one raised in our Hierarchical Civilization, can ever hope to be wholistically communal. Che, like Mao, Lenin, Marx, You or Me, was and is clueless about the communal spirit. Violent and aggressive, yes; graspingly anal-retentive, yes; but wholistically communal, never. Only those with the courage to let-go, can ever allow the communal spirit to enter them. Cuba, was once the home of a people who did live and breathe communally, till we slaughtered them. Columbus said that the people of the Carribean live in Paradise. They love each other openly, and they share all they have freely with each other. And with 50 armed men, we could conquer them all. I can't be hard on Che, Stalin, You or me for our pittiful innocence. After all, I have been trying to live communally much of my adult life since the '60s, and I know how difficult it is for the Civilized ever to let-go and be re-born in a spontaneous communal spirit.
m6m, Maybe part of the problem is that communalism has to be voluntary and not forced on people. State socialism didn't even work in post-colonial Africa. Even though many indigenous African cultures could be said to be communal,this communalism was voluntary and wasn't forced on people by their rulers. When post-colonial African leaders tried to put in state socialism,thinking that their citizens would naturally adapt to it because of their communalism,it just didn't work. The people rejected it. Communalism and collectivism needs to be done voluntarily it seems in order for it to work and not forced on people by the government which is what communism does.
Motion, 'They obey no lords! Each is lord unto himself!' This is what Amerigo Vespucci discovered to his amazement when he first arrived here and relized that this was a whole New World. The communal spirit only exists where every man possesses the courage to follow his own unique individual sacred path. You, following your sacred-path is a fulfillment of me, following my sacred-path. Your sacred-path is my sacred-path, and your fulfillment is my fulfillment. That is the only true community of man. The community of Life. A community of fearless individuals sharing the natural grace of their fearlessness. But like Amerigo Vespucci, we live in a community of Death. Civilized Man is a slave to Death-Fear. And we become what we fear. Hierarchical Civilization is a fear driven drive to conformity. Where we are too afraid of eachother to allow eachother to follow our own path like real and natural men. Where in our effeminate fears we castrate ourselves and submissively conform to hierarchical authority like frightened women. The Africans who you mention, however, are only 3500yrs behind the European in their descent down the pit of fear we call Civilization. Those Africans were easily enslaved because they, like us, were raised to obey hierarchical authority. Those Africans can never truely live in a communal spirit. Not like the true indigenous peoples of Africa; not like the Bushman, or the Pigmy. It's easier to capture the wind than to enslave them. It's understandable that there will be Civilized Castrati like Che, Rousseau, You or Me, who dream of becoming real men, but it's only a frustrating dream.
look at cuba now. it is hardly a government of the people. fidel limits all of their freedoms. he is an evil dictator, and doesn't allow his people to do what they want. they cannot leave the country if they want. why aren't you people complaining about this. this is just as 1984 as our current situation. but apparently everything that america does is evil to you. look at how fidel worked with the russians to aim nuclear bombs at america. yea, he's a really great man.
how about the same America that actually dropped two* of them nukes on civilians in Japan? * edited thanks to m6m for the correction
Maes, I think it was two nukes, but your point is a stab at the heart of our psychotic delusions of moral superiority. Of course Cuba is a mess! Try to find a drop of free Native blood anywhere in Cuba! You have to hunt in the remotest village of the highest mountains. Cuba has been a mess for 500yrs, thank you! Che and Fidel are simply scapegoats for our own inadequacies. You really want to see an evil dictator? Look in the mirror! We came to the New World only to spread our slavish Old World fears. The only freedom we ever sought in this land was the freedom to rape this land. Rape as we are raped by Old World Hierarchical Civilization. Everywhere Civilization spreads its grasping anal-retentive desires, freedom is hunted-down. A free man will always be threatening to a Civilized Man- HomoEroticus. 1984 is Hierarchical Civilization when the matrix of delusion is withdrawn.
yes i feel he was a very brave man to take on a capitalistic world. or believe he was.... but unfortunalty be became a political scapegoat and was in turn murdered himself... thank you lovenpeace from saff
I think you got it all wrong. Who ever said the workers are supposed to be paid anything. People will receive according to need. I wonder what kind of crazy conspiracy theory you've read into... Capitalists... in a communist society??
you have to understand these people that we argue against do not know a thing about the real philosophy tought by lenin/marx/engels/trotsky... they treat books like the Black Book of Communism like gospel when the truth is books like those are propaganda created by capitalists that choose select events and leave out 99% of the truth... they also make people think Lenin is like Stalin..... and blind them with other flat-out LIES... and in return they go spout off to their friends the same bullshit... it spreads, these people do not know what kind of bullshit they are really talking about. There idea of being open minded and doing objective research is reading one-sided biased garbage.
OK, instead of all the theory (propaganda) you like to spout-let's look at facts. Why have all the communist regimes essentially collapsed, within 70-odd years? The remaining are either hanging on by a thread, about to collapse, or are transitioning to capitalism. How you can defend a failed economic hypothesis, a failed social construct, and a means to enslave the masses in the face of all logic, reason, and experience never ceases to amaze me. If only... If only... If only... Communism has been PROVEN not to work. It cannot sustain itself. Period.
Theres lots of points I can bring up to this argument... First of all theres never been a 'communist' country that hasnt been at war with HUGe capitalistic powerhouses. theres never been a democratic 'communist' government (even though that is ESSENTIAL in marxism/leninism/trotskyism)... and lots of governments went completely against the real teachings of communism. Communism has no social construct and it is NOT a means to enslave the masses... Where the fuck do you get that from? You think you know what communism is, but you are blinded by years of propagandist bullshit. I bring the truth of the teachings of Marx Engels Trotsky and Lenin for years on the forums... So many times people have cowered away and ignored 90% of my arguments. have you ever read the communist manifesto? what about das kapital? state and revolution? Please dont spout off this bullshit unless you know what your talking about and are prepared to defend it. communist philosophy says that POWER SHOULD BE IN HANDS OF THE PEOPLE, no 1 person should have more power than another... this is TRUE DEMOCRACY... and it hasnt existed EVER. communist philosophy says that there should be NO GOVERNMENT to rule over people, and that we should work towards helping and sharing what we produce with one another instead of using our produce as a means for collecting power and wealth. and this hasnt existed EVER The USSR is not communist, cuba is not communist, china is not communist, north korea is not communist. None of them follow Marxism... and Marx is the God of communism. These countries are totalitarian nationalistic capitalist dictatorships. Stalin represents the heart of capitalism and oppression... he murdered anyone tied to Lenin becuase lenin tought what TRUE communism meant, just as I am doing right now. which is why I am subject to as much slander as the next commie... there are so many flat out lies tought by the education system, we are here to bring the truth.
VLADIMIR LENIN, the main leader of the Russian revolution, made the following insightful observation in mid-1917: "During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred, and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonise them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the ‘consolation’ of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarising it". (State and Revolution) Lenin died 80 years ago, on 21 January 1924, but had by then been seriously ill and away from political work since the end of 1922. Since his death, however, the ruling classes globally have made no attempt at canonisation. Their fear of the Russian revolution, ‘ten days that shook the world’, led them to continue with ‘the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander’. Never before or after have the capitalists been closer to losing their profits and their power worldwide than in the period 1917-20. Anti-Lenin campaigns are used to scare workers and youth away from revolutionary ideas and struggle. For socialists today, it is therefore necessary to answer the lies and slanders directed against Lenin and the Russian revolution. The image of an unbroken line from Lenin to Joseph Stalin, and on to Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachov, is maybe the biggest falsification in history. Publications like The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression – by Stephane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panne, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin (Harvard University Press, 1999) – say nothing about the policies of the Bolsheviks led by Lenin or the decisions made immediately after the October revolution in 1917. They hide the enormous struggles of the 1920s, started by Lenin himself, to stop the rise of Stalinism. They cannot explain the one-sided civil war Stalin conducted in the 1930s against anyone connected to Lenin. One distinguished historian who did differenciate between Lenin and Stalin was EH Carr, who described how Lenin’s regime encouraged the working class to take an active part in the business of the party and the nation. That position on democracy and workers rights’ was completely opposite to the dictatorship established by Stalin. It was the workers’ councils, the soviets, which took power in October 1917, and it was their elected and recallable delegates who appointed the government. Workers’ rights, including the right to strike, were enshrined. The setting up of factory committees and collective bargaining were encouraged. The Bolsheviks were not in favour of banning any party, not even the bourgeois parties, as long as they did not take up armed struggle. In the beginning, the only organisation banned was the Black Hundreds, which was made up of mobs organised as a proto-fascist party specialising in physical attacks on radicals and pogroms against Jewish people. Stalin’s counter-revolution THE BOLSHEVIK GOVERNMENT proved to be the most progressive in history in its first decisions. These included new laws on women’s rights, the right to divorce and to abortion. Anti-semitism and racism were forbidden by law. Oppressed nations were given the right to decide their fate. It was the first state which attempted to create a new socialist order, despite terrible material conditions. Lenin’s Soviet Union and his political programme were smashed by Stalinism. The coming to power of the Stalinist bureaucracy meant a counter-revolution in every field, apart from the nationalised economy. Rights for workers, women and oppressed nations were all put under the iron heel. Instead of ‘dying away’, which was Lenin’s perspective for the apparatus of the workers’ state, it grew into an opressive military-police machine of gigantic proportions. Stalinism was a nationalistic dictatorship, a parasitic organism living on the body of the planned economy. This was not an inevitable result of the workers’ revolution, but was caused by concrete circumstances, the isolation of the revolution – particularly the defeat of the German revolution of 1918-23 – and the economic backwardness of Russia. Stalinism, however, could not take power without resistance, without a bloody political counter-revolution. Stalin’s purges and witch-hunts in 1936-38 were not blind actions, but the response of the bureaucracy towards growing opposition to its rule. The main accused in the show-trials was Lenin’s ally from 1917, Leon Trotsky, and his followers, who were imprisoned and executed by the thousands. Trotsky – who defendend and developed the programme of Lenin and the Bolsheviks – was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929 and murdered by Stalin’s hired assassin in Mexico in 1940. (See Socialism Today No.49, a special commemorative issue on the sixtieth anniversary of Trotsky’s assassination) Trotsky became the main enemy of Stalin’s regime because he had actually led the revolution in 1917 alongside Lenin (while Stalin had been hesitant and remained on the sidelines), he analysed and exposed the terror regime of Stalin in detail, and he had a programme for overthrowing Stalinism and for the restoration of workers’ democracy. Bourgeois politicians and social democrats in the West also attacked Trotsky as a revolutionary Marxist leader. They understood that his ideas were not just a threat to Stalin but to the capitalists’ power as well. During the Moscow Trials in 1936, the Norwegian government did not allow Trotsky, who was then in Norway, to publicly defend himself. When Stalin in 1943 closed down the Communist International (which was set up in 1918 to link revolutionary groups across the world), in order to achieve an alliance with the US and Britain, the New York Times commented that Stalin finally had renounched ‘Trotsky’s idea of world revolution. Stalin’s former spy chief, Leopold Trepper, later wrote: "But who did protest at that time? Who rose up to voice his outrage? The Trotskyites can lay claim to this honour. Following the example of their leader, who was rewarded for his obstinacy with the end of an ice axe, they fought Stalinism to the death and they were the only ones that did… Today, the Trotskyites have a right to accuse those who once howled along with the wolves". (The Great Game, 1977) We can compare his comment with Winston Churchill’s, who in the 1950s named Stalin as a ‘great Russian statesman’. Before the political counter-revolution of Stalinism, the leadership under Lenin and Trotsky did not act from their own interests as first priority. Principles guided their actions, above all to take the workers’ struggle forward on a world scale. They admitted when they were forced to retreat or compromise. Stalinism, on the other hand, used the conditions from the years of civil war and mass starvation to build an entirely new political system. Stalinist society was described as a perfect ideal, a dream world. Dictatorship was introduced, not only in the Soviet Union, but in all the ‘communist’ parties internationally. This continued even when the economies of the Stalinist countries were at their peak in the 1950s and 1960s. The living debates and traditions of the Bolshevik party had been terminated in the 1920s and 1930s. Stalinism in words kept a connection to the revolution, Marx and Lenin, and turned them into religious icons because this helped strengthen these regimes. The bureaucracy wanted to take the credit for the revolution, which in itself is proof of its attractive power. The end result, however, was to discredit the very concepts of Marxism and ‘Leninism’ in the minds of workers and oppressed people globally. ‘Leninism’ became the slogan of a parasitic dictatorship. This Stalinist falsification of Lenin’s ideas and of Marxism was accepted without question by the social democrats and the ruling classes internationally. They all had an interest in hiding Lenin’s real ideas. Trotsky and his supporters defended the political heritage of Lenin, and were opposed to the cult of personality which Stalin constructed. In contrast to superficial criticism from politicians in the West, Trotsky had a scientific and class-based programme against Stalinism. Trotsky, for example, warned against Stalin’s military-led, forced collectivisation of agriculture in 1929-33 (while some anti-Lenin propagandists claim that it was Lenin who forced through collectivisation). In the book, Revolution Betrayed, written in 1936, Trotsky explained in detail how Stalin’s policies were the opposite to Lenin’s: on culture, the family, agriculture, industry, democratic and national rights, etc. On all international issues, Stalinism broke with the programme and methods of Lenin, above all the need for the independence of the working class: in the Chinese revolution of 1925-27, the struggle against fascism in Germany, the Spanish revolution in the 1930s, and in all other decisive struggles. Today’s anti-Lenin commentators, by stressing that revolutionary struggle is ‘unrealistic’, thereby end up in Stalin’s camp against Lenin and Trotsky. 1917: what was achieved? THE REVOLUTION IN February 1917 overthrew the tsar’s dictatorial regime. The provisional government which replaced the tsar, however, continued the policies which had led to revolution in the first place. The horrors of the first world war continued, the land question remained unsolved, national oppression was actually stepped up, hunger in the cities worsened, there were no elections and huge repression was directed against workers and poor peasants. These developments, hardly mentioned by bourgeois historians, laid the basis for the Bolsheviks’ mass support and for the October revolution. While Rumsfeld and Co rely on mere slogans, books like The Black Book of Communism are an attempt to give a factual and historical justification to Rumsfeld’s slander. Nicolas Werth, who wrote the chapter on the Bolsheviks, attempts to virtually avoid the politics of the autumn of 1917. He briefly skirts over the decrees on peace and land agreed at the second Soviet congress, the meeting which elected the new government led by Lenin. It was this meeting which adopted the policies demanded by the poor since February, and which they themselves had already started to implement – a drastic redistribution of land. It was the Bolsheviks who actually implemented the slogan of the Social Revolutionary party, ‘land to the toiler’ – land to the 100 million peasants and landless. (The Social Revolutionaries had wide support among the peasantry, but split along class lines in 1917. Its left wing joined the Soviet government – before attempting to overthrow it in 1918.) Thirty thousand rich landowners, hated by all layers of the peasantry, lost their land without compensation. The decree of the Bolshevik government on peace was a decision of world historic proportions, longed for by millions of soldiers and their families for more than three years. This effect of the Russian revolution and the subsequent German revolution a year later, in ending the first world war (in November 1918), is completely buried by the slander campaigns against Lenin and the revolution. Werth, in The Black Book, writes that the Bolsheviks "seemed" to appeal to non-Russian peoples to liberate themselves. In fact, the government declared all people equal and sovereign, advocated the right to self-determination for all peoples, including the right to form their own states, and the abolition of all national and religious privileges. The decisions to abolish the death penalty in the army and to ban racism, which show the real intentions of the workers’ regime, are nowhere mentioned in The Black Book. The same goes for Soviet Russia being the first country to legalise the right to abortion and divorce. Entirely new, too, was the right for workers’ organisations and ordinary people to use printing presses, making freedom of the press more than empty words. The fact that criticism could be raised on the streets is verified by many eyewitness reports. The reformist Mensheviks and the anarchists operated in total freedom and could, for example, organise mass demonstrations at the funerals of Georgi Plekhanov and Prince Pyotr Kropotkin (in 1918 and 1921) respectively. At the third Soviet congress, the first after October 1917, the Bolshevik majority increased further. The new executive committee elected at this congress included 160 Bolsheviks and 125 Left Social Revolutionaries. But there were also representatives of six other parties, among them two Menshevik leaders. Soviet democracy was spreading to every region and village, where workers and poor peasants established new organs of power, local soviets, which overthrew the old rulers. Soviet rule meant that some smaller privileged groups in society did not have the right to vote: those who hired others for profit or lived off the work of others, monks and priests, plus criminals. This can be compared with most European countries where, at that time, the majority of workers and all women lacked trade union rights and the right to vote. Lenin explained the historic importance of the revolution: "The Soviet government is the first in the world (or strictly speaking, the second, because the Paris Commune [1871] began to do the same thing) to enlist the people, specifically the exploited people, in the work of administration. The working people are barred from participation in bourgeois parliaments (they never decide important questions under bourgeois democracy, which are decided by the stock exchange and the banks) by thousands of obstacles, and the workers know and feel, see and realise perfectly well that the bourgeois parliaments are institutions alien to them, instruments for the oppression of the workers by the bourgeoisie, institutions of a hostile class, of the exploiting minority". At the same time, Lenin always had an internationalist perspective. He even warned against using the Russian experience as a model to be followed everywhere: "Proletarian democracy, of which Soviet government is one of the forms, has brought a development and expansion of democracy unprecedented in the world, for the vast majority of the population, for the exploited and working people". "It should be observed that the question of depriving the exploiters of the franchise is a purely Russian question, and not a question of the dictatorship of the proletariat in general". (The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, 1918) Lenin noted that a victory for the working class "in at least one of the advanced countries" would change the role of the Russian revolution: "Russia will cease to be the model and will once again become a backward country (in the ‘Soviet’ and the socialist sense)". (Left-wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder, 1920)
Anti-Soviet ‘crusade’ IN PETROGRAD, THE workers’ representatives took power in October almost without any bloodshed. If anything, the Bolsheviks were too lenient with their enemies. In Moscow, generals who attempted to stop the workers with arms were not imprisoned if they promised not to do it again! The enemies of the Russian revolution, on the other hand, acted according to the motto that against the Bolsheviks all methods were permissible, noted Victor Serge in his book, Year One of the Russian Revolution (1930). First they hoped that the military would crush the new government directly after October. When that failed, they instigated uprisings and sabotage, while re-arming a counter-revolutionary ‘White’ army. The oppressed nationalities – the Baltic countries, Finland, Ukraine, etc – had been under direct rule from the provisional government set up in February 1917. Given the possibility of national self-determination after October, the national bourgeoisie distinguished itself, not by the wish for independence, but by inviting imperialist troops to attack the revolutionary government. In Ukraine, the German army expressed its gratitude by banning the very ‘radan’ (parliament) which had invited it. National rights were not guaranteed in Ukraine until Soviet power under the Bolsheviks had prevailed. The Swedish anti-Lenin author, Staffan Skott, unintentionally proves the liberating effect of the revolution, and how this was later crushed by Stalin: "Under the tsar, the Ukrainian and Belorussian languages had not been allowed. After the revolution, the independent culture in both countries developed quickly, with literature, theatre, newspapers and art. Stalin, however, did not want ‘independence’ to go too far and become real independence. After the 1930s there was not much left of Ukrainian and Belorussian literature – almost all authors had been shot or sent to prison camps to die". After October, "people from the left-wing of the Social Revolutionaries" were the only ones cooperating with the Bolsheviks, Werth writes in The Black Book, to create an impression of Bolshevik isolation. But he has to admit that, at the end of 1917, there was no serious opposition able to challenge the government. The weakness of the counter-revolutionary violence, at that stage, also gives a true picture of the intentions of the Bolsheviks. If Lenin’s aim was to start a civil war – which The Black Book and others claim – why then did the civil war not start until the second half of 1918? In the first half of 1918, a total of 22 individuals were executed by the ‘Red’ side – less than in Texas under governor George W Bush. Peaceful politics still dominated. There were lively debates in the soviets between Bolsheviks and other political currents. However, the officer caste and the bourgeoisie in Russia and internationally were determined to act militarily. The civil war in Finland in the spring of 1918, where the White side won at the cost of 30,000 workers and poor peasants killed, was a dress rehearsal for what would happen in Russia. With the aim of invading and defeating the Russian revolution, a new alliance was quickly formed by the two imperialist blocs which had been at war with each other for three years (15 million died in the first world war). British war propaganda against Germany totally ignored the German invasion of Russia in the spring of 1918. It was Churchill who in 1919 coined the expression ‘the anti-Soviet crusade of 14 nations’. By then the Soviet government was surrounded by the White generals, Pyotr Krasnov and Anton Denikin, in the South, the German army in the West, and Czech forces in the East. Most of the invasion took place in 1918. British troops arrived in the port of Murmansk, North-West Russia, in June. Two months later, British and French forces took control of Arkhangelsk, with the US joining them later. The US, with 8,000 troops, and Japan with 72,000, invaded Vladivostok in the Far-East in August. German and Turkish forces occupied Georgia, later under British control. Georgia became the base for General Denikin’s army. Among others involved were Romania, a legion of Czech former prisoners of war, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Baltic countries. On 30 August 1918, the Bolshevik leader, Moisei Uritsky, was murdered, and Lenin was seriously wounded in an attempt on his life. Two months earlier, the right wing of the Social Revolutionaries had killed another Bolshevik, V Volodarsky, press commissar for the Petrograd soviet. The increasing blood lust of the opposition parties was again proved in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan. The Bolsheviks lost their majority in the Baku soviet, where Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries welcomed British troops to ‘establish democracy’. Contrary to the mythology, the Bolshevik leaders peacefully resigned – but were then arrested and executed on the order of the British general, W Thompson. The realities of civil war triumphed over the preparedness of the Bolsheviks to offer other parties the possibility to win a majority within the working class. The ‘red terror’ proclaimed by the Bolsheviks in September 1918 had nothing in common with what today is called terrorism. The ‘red terror’ was public, agreed by the Soviet power, and directed against those who had declared war against the government and the soviets. It was in defence of the revolution and the liberation of the oppressed, against imperialist exploitation of colonies and slaves. The examples of Finland and Baku had shown to what lengths the ‘White terror’, the counter-revolutionary generals, were prepared to go. Even Werth in The Black Book is obliged to refer to the mood in the White camp. ‘Down with the Jews and the commissars’, was one of the slogans used against Lenin and Grigori Zinoviev, a prominent Bolshevik (eventually framed in one of Stalin’s show trials and executed in 1936). The brutality of the civil war in Ukraine can only be explained by the anti-semitism of the counter-revolution. The White soldiers were fighting under slogans such as, ‘Ukraine to the Ukrainians, without Bolsheviks or Jews’, ‘Death to the Jewish scum’. The Red Army smashed Cossack uprisings which were linked to Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak’s forces. The Black Book claims the Cossacks were especially persecuted, but their intentions were clear and uncompromising: ‘We Cossacks… are against the communists, the communes (collective farming) and the Jews’. Werth estimates that 150,000 people were killed in the anti-semitic pogroms conducted by Denikin’s troops in 1919. Another alternative? IN RUSSIA IN 1917 and the following years there was no possibility of a ‘third road’ between Soviet power and a reactionary military-police dictatorship. The Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries, in particular, put the issue to the test. Already during the first world war, major parts of the Menshevik leadership had capitulated and joined the chauvinist or patriotic camp, supporting tsarist Russia in the imperialist war. When the soviets dissolved the Constituent Assembly in January 1918, the two parties entered into negotiations with French and British representatives. In cooperation with the bourgeois Cadet party (Constitutional Democrats) they established a new constituent assembly in Samara, South-West Russia, in June 1918, under Czech protection. This assembly dissolved the soviets in the region. Massacres were conducted against Bolsheviks. Even the newspapers of the assembly itself referred to "an epidemic of lynchings". The final argument from the anti-Lenin, anti-revolutionary campaign is that ‘communism’ has killed more than 85 million people – the arch anti-communist, RJ Rummel, says 110 million. But even an examination of the figures given in The Black Book counters the claim that Stalinism and the regime of Lenin were one and the same. Stephane Courtois claims that 20 million of the ‘victims of communism’ were killed in the Soviet Union. For the period 1918-23, however, the number of victims is said to be ‘hundreds of thousands’. That figure from the civil war can be compared, for example, to the 600,000 killed by the US bombing of Cambodia in the 1970s, or the two million killed as a result of the military coup in Indonesia in the 1960s. The Black Book places responsibility for all victims of the civil war in Russia, including the 150,000 murdered in the pogroms organised by the White army, on Lenin and the Bolsheviks. According to Serge, 6,000 were executed by the Soviet authorities in the second half of 1918, as civil war raged, less than the number of dead in one single day at the battle of Verdun in the first world war. From the period up to Lenin’s death, Courtois also counts five million dead as a result of starvation in 1922. The Russian communists and their supporters internationally showed how this catastrophe was a result of the economic embargo and conscious starvation policy of the Western powers from 1919 onwards. Exports to and imports from Russia were in practice zero. Sweden was among those countries blockading Soviet Russia. Even the ‘body-counting’, anti-Lenin academics end up recording that most of the deaths "caused by communism" listed in The Black Book on Communism took place under Stalin or subsequent Stalinist regimes. That, however, does not change the position of Courtois or other anti-communists. They do not warn against Stalinism, but against "the desire to change the world in the name of an ideal". The Red Army prevailed in the civil war because of the mass support for the social revolution, both in Russia and abroad. It was the threat of revolution at home which forced the imperialist powers to withdraw from Russia. Within six months of the launch of the Communist International in 1918, one million members had joined. Half of them lived in countries and regions previously ruled by the Russian tsar. The new communist parties internationally, however, did not have the experience of the Bolsheviks, who built the party through two decades of struggles – the revolution in 1905, the mass support of the Bolsheviks in 1913-14, etc. The defeats of the revolutions in the rest of Europe – above all in Germany – laid the basis for Stalinism. Now it is time for a new generation of socialists to learn the real lessons of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, in preparation for impending world-shaking events.
Blah blah blah blah blah... The fact is, regardless of how idealistic it may be, and what the intentions may have been, the economic construct cannot work. It is naive to believe that it can. Years of reading propaganda have softened your mind to the point where you cannot perceive reality. You say there have never been "communist" countries. All the countries that have tried to implement communism always fail. It is artificial, and contrary to human nature. Have you actually read Kapital? Total crap. The origin of the family, private property and the state? Unadulterated bullshit. Engels was as ignorant an anthropologist and historian as marx was an economist. Just because they say something's true, doesn't mean it is. If communism was really so great, why then has it never, in your words, really existed anywhere for any significant period of time? Why does it always degenrate into tyrranical authoritarianism? The answer is human nature. Anyone astute enough to realize human nature knows that communism will never work, has never worked. People will always wave the banner of marxism to justify tyrrany. I just love how so-called communists, to try to defend the failure of the philosophy, always say-"well there's never been a REAL communist country". That is a lie. Marx' writings are words on paper. All the hell-holes you deny are communist ARE COMMUNIST. That's what the failed, proven failed, system creates. Repressive, tyrranical prison-states, always on the verge of economic and social collapse, which create NOTHING, which produce nothing but misery, which are resposible for millions of deaths, starvation, deprivation, and which contribute NOTHING to humanity. Good choice. Keep deluding yourself. Capitalism has eveolved naturally over time as the superior system. Communism was dreamed up by an insane, maleducated fool. Like I said-good choice. Keep thinking it will EVER work. The fact that you are so serious about it very much amuses me.
