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Post by honky tonk on Feb 5, 2004 18:35:47 GMT -5
Part 2
g (who as Redstar correctly pointed out) was "influenced" by the bolshevik success, NEVER broke deeply with this belief in the spontaneity of revolution. And the rich objective conditions of Germany (1919-23) werer throw away exactly because the very best socialists (i.e. Luxemburg, Liebknecht and their circles) never broke with the larger Socialist Party (of kautsky) -- they never developed their own network (independent of the reformists and revisionists) -- never trained an independent cadre with an independent and revolutionary line etc.
Restar tells a story that "The "young hot-heads" carried a motion to launch an insurrection (Luxemburg was against it on the sensible grounds that there was insufficient working class support for the idea)."
This is exactly wrong. In fact the things never came together -- in part because there was no party to bring it together. So the advanced wanted to rise up, the intermediate were confused, and the communists were not in a position to lead and influence the "shop steward movement" that was calling for an insurrection. The January uprising (which Redstar refers to) was the advanced trying to spark and uprising without ithaving been prepared and led by a communist vanguard. And what were the choices of the communists then? Either to counsel against it (as Luxemburg did) or go into the streets to join-and-tail it (as Liebknecht did). Both approaches were failures -- exactly because the communists (i.e. Lux and Lieb) had not done the preparatory work to ACT AS A VANGUARD. All they could do was criticize (on one hand) or tail (on the other) -- because they had not done ten years of leninist work to put them in a position to LEAD AS A VANGUARD.
One of history's great opportunities for proletarian revolution were thrown away -- and the leaders of the Spartacus Bund (luxemburg and liebknecht) died as martyrs at the troops led by their own former "comrades" (the rightwing social democrats Noske and Ebert)!
Redstar say that Lenin's bolsheviks had the same line as the 2nd international, but just different (tsarist) conditions. This is not true. The political and ideological line of Lenin's key works ("One step forward" on forming a vanguard party, and "What is to be done?" on the nature of communist political work) were RADICALLY different from the 2nd international -- and in fact it was the Menshiviks of Russia who had the Kautsky approach (in both line and practice).
Redstar adds: "The whole episode had nothing to do with the statement by Debs or the political line that it implied."
This is exactly wrong. Debs is expressing exactly the idea that revolutions "just happen" and don't need to be organized, prepared. He has no sense of "hasten and await" (as Mao and the RCP say). He did not have the view of "strikes as school of war, but not war itself." He saw no difference between turning economic struggle into political struggle AND the very different Leninist notion of "communist work" based on all round political agitation and propaganda, and organized around a newspaper etc. He had no sense of a backbone of underground professional revolutionaries etc.
I think Debs (and those like him) wanted socialism and loved the masses. But they never solved the key problem facing the socialist movement -- a problem which Lenin (and he alone) solved.
Redstar then descends into a game unworthy of him: he attributes a stupid argument to "flyby" and then calls flyby stupid.
Red start writes: "Funny, I didn't notice Tito in your list. I know Maoists don't like Tito--"fucking revisionist bastard" is the technical term, I believe--yet he did lead a successful revolution. And, as we have seen so many times, after his death, everything turned to shit. But if "winning" is "what counts", why aren't you carefully studying the collected works of Tito? Learning from him? Cherishing him, even? Are you going to say that Tito was "lucky" while Mao was "really great"? Can you say internal contradiction?"
First don't put words in peoples mouths. Tito was the first communist to seize power but then build a capitalist (not a socialist) society. He was the first "revisionist in power." And this example is actually an important lesson on the Maoist saying "Political and ideological line are key."
Tito led an armed movement against the Nazis, he turned that movement into a force to seize power -- but when the "revolution" was done, the people were fucked, and capitalism (in a new revisionist state capitalist form) was set up. If that isn't an example of the need for a Mao (and not a Tito) -- what is??!!
Redstar gives another mistaken example: "The Maoist heirs of Lenin assert that Mao's leadership was crucial in the victory of China's peasant revolution of 1949. Without Mao, they say in effect, Chiang's gangster-fascist despotism would have won. I am deeply skeptical of this assertion. We have no way of knowing, of course...we can't re-run the Chinese revolution and see what would have happened without Mao."
But of course you can. There were three key leaders of Chinese Communism before Mao: Chen Tu-shiu, Li-Li San and Wang Ming. They has virtually identical conditions, and they led the communists into massacre after massacre, defeat after defeat.
Chen preached that the Reds should trust the KMT and put their armed forces under the control of the KMT -- and were massacred in 1927.
Mao at that same moment led the Autumn Harvest uprising, created the first political base area, and created the red army (i.e. armed forces not subordinated to the KMT).
Mao's line was radically different. When his line was not in command, there was defeat. When his line was in command, there was a tortuous advance toward victory (under complex conditions).
Redstar says: "But it seems to me that the objective material conditions in China in 1945 were highly favorable to peasant revolution...and that any number of the leading personalities of the "Communist" Party of China could have successfully led the revolution to victory.'
Well, so were conditions in India, or in Africa, or in the Middle East -- but the revolution after WW2 happened in China (where there was a Mao) and in the surrounding countries (Vietnam and Korea) as epi-phenomena. And those are the real objective facts.
Redstar says: 'I frankly think that they would enjoy success in those areas if they were led by monkeys..."third world" peasants have much to be pissed off about."
This is exactly wrong. And in fact, there will not be revolution without communist vanguards -- and more: without communist vanguards who have leaderships united around a correct revolutionary line. There are countries that have powerful communist (even Maoist) movements that have NOT moved forward toward revolution because they insist it is not possible -- and that itself is something to sum up. Because the Nepalese Maoists broke with that view, and have moved on toward those successes.
Redstar writes: "At any rate, Maoism is irrelevant to those of us who live in the developed world."
As porol writes, this just shows a complete ignorance about what maoism is.
Maoism is not "marxism applied to the third world" -- it is marxism applied to the contradictions of our whole period (including especially summing up the sources and problems of capitalist restoration.) Mao developed communist philosophy, military doctrine, socialist economics, approach to mass line, methods of work, etc etc.
I am sure Redstar is not a racist, and my following remark is not aimed at him: But there is a whole legacy of eurocentric leftism that sees Mao as just some Chinese dude dealing with problems in china. This is bullshit. Mao liberated a quarter of humanity, he opposed and exposed the restoration of capitalism in the other formerly socialist countries (USSR etc), he developed the first truly proletarian approach to military doctrine (the doctrine of peoples war, representing a break with eclectic or even bourgeois Soviet approaches) and more.
Finally Redstar ends with a true point and deserves credit for that much. He writes: [b}"It's an audacious plan, in a way...the idea of "kick-starting" the revolutionary process.But it depends on the leader really being the next Lenin...no "lesser man" will do."[/b]
It depends, of course, on many things -- including the arrival of favorable objective conditions (which we can't control) and THE CARRYING OUT COMMUNIST WORK NOW (which we can control). And yes, it depends on our leaders being up to the standard of a Lenin or a Mao --- and also on our ability to protect them, and understand what they are calling for.
So we have a lot of work to do.
Let me end with this:
The line of "overestimating spontaneity" is a line of armchair chatter.
If you don't really need to organize revolution, or revolutionaries, or link the party and its leadership to the masses, you can sit and babble. You can spin theories and hot air.
But more is expected of communists, exactly because without real COMMUNIST POLITICAL WORK the masses (when they finally want revolution in their millions) will not be in the position to make revolution.
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Post by redstar2000 on Feb 6, 2004 1:37:02 GMT -5
Once more into the labyrinth, eh?
Porole wrote: You had me laughing the whole time. Is it your common practice to act like you know history, when you do not? Any way thanks, your rewritten history was not only funny, but a hilarious joke on the revolutionary masses that rose up in Eastern Europe and China. Especially the part where you said the Chinese masses could have followed a monkey...that's funny because you the Chinese people must have been dumber than a monkey... that was great!!! I like jokes that insult whole peoples and underestimate their revolutionary spirit and the sacrifices they make.
I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. If you think this sort of caricature will serve to discredit my views...good luck!
You'll need it.
Porole wrote: Wow, that is a stirring rewrite, when after the crushed revolution in 1905 revolutionaries were being hunted down by the Czarists and their lackeys.
Note that I specifically mentioned the year 1917 in the excerpt that Porole quoted from my post...and "suddenly" we're back in 1905.(!)
Very strange...!
Porole wrote: A revolt that was actively opposed by Mensheviks, social democrats, and many anarchists, this opposition gave strength to the Czar and weakened the revolutionary masses...
What revolt are you speaking of here?
Porole wrote: In fact Lenin had to struggle hardcore with other revolutionaries to rise up.. including in his Party, where he threatened to quit if the Bolsheviks didn't rise up, guns in hand, and lead the masses to do this.
This part would appear to refer to October 1917...which would make the previous paragraph unintelligible. There was no Czar in October 1917.
Porole wrote: The Czarists were dismantled, the army destroyed, and replaced with a Red Army, and a situation of dual power came into existence.
And now we're back in February 1917 again...and Lenin is still in Switzerland.
I could continue...but it's starting to get embarrassing. Porole, you have obviously muddled up three (at least) distinct periods of Russian history.
I can't "debate" with you about this because you don't know what you're talking about.
Porole wrote: Obviously, the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, were pivotal in not just one instance, but many crucial instances. And it should also be obvious, but that without a hardcore revolutionary group pushing for a revolutionary outcome, not only would there not have been a class-conscious working class, but there would have a been a bourgeoisie in power of the state.
If you're speaking of the period prior to October 1917, I can think of only two ("two" is not "many"...). In July of 1917, many rank-and-file workers (including many Bolsheviks) wanted to proceed directly to the seizure of power. Lenin and his most loyal lieutenants managed to stop that from happening...barely.
And the other, of course, was the October coup itself...which took place on the evening prior to the first session of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets.
I say "coup" because by that time the bourgeois Provisional Government's authority did not extend past the front door of the old Winter Palace.
(Whoops, I almost forgot the "Kornilov affair"...a pro-Czarist general managed to scrape together a few dummies and attempt a march on Petrograd in August 1917. The Bolsheviks and virtually everyone else organized a successful defense of the city. I can't remember now if a battle was actually fought or if Kornilov just faded away...if there was a battle, General K would have been routed.)
Porole wrote: Communists do not blame leaders for not starting revolutions, unless they could have started one and did not!
I understood that your view regarding the French General Strike of May 1968 is that the "reason" it did not go on to proletarian revolution was the "absence of real communist leaders"...even though there were a horde of vanguard parties, large and small, on the scene at the time.
Likewise, from this thread I understand that your view of the "reason" that the turbulence of the 1960s in the U.S. did not develop further was the "absence of real communist leaders".
The Draft Programme of the RCP wrote: The Party’s orientation must be to strain against and strive to transform the limits imposed by the objective situation.
This seems to be exactly what I was speaking of...revolution as an act of will in defiance of the "limits imposed by the objective situation". (I'm assuming the word "transform" is in that paragraph for decoration; you cannot "transform" limits...you can either accept them or ignore them.)
Porole wrote: However the leadership of the China CP before Mao became Secretary was influenced by the thinking of the the Soviet Union. Which held that the revolution should be fought in the style of the October Revolution.
They were wrong and Mao led the Party to understand why and how they were wrong.
"Style" is an interesting choice of words there...I think the word you were really looking for there is class.
The Bolsheviks (whatever their many shortcomings) did have a Marxist orientation towards the working class.
You may argue, if you wish, that it was entirely mistaken to transfer Marxism to China.
In any event, Mao's thesis was that China was ripe for a peasant revolution...and he was definitely correct about that (perhaps some would argue that Mao had a superior understanding of the class situation in China than those who were trained in the USSR).
Porole wrote (about Mao's "notable contributions): He led the way in developing our understanding of the dialectical materialist understanding...
He developed our understanding on how to develop and correctly unleash dissent and criticism in a socialist country, recognizing the necessity of such dissent to socialism.
He led the Chinese masses in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. A lesson to the worlds people in how to fight a new bourgeoisie from rising in a socialist world.
As to No. 1, you are quite right...I do not understand it and neither does anyone else. It is liturgical language meant only for special occasions (like this discussion). It's purpose is entirely mystical and intended to suggest a "superior" understanding of "real" reality that is hidden from the "unbeliever".
But I can understand why Mao had a lot of fun with it...it fits so neatly into traditional Chinese "yin & yang" beliefs.
As to No. 2, I flatly disagree. Instead of open public debates over the future of "socialist" China in the media, debates were couched in "Mandarin" terms...obscure Chinese historical figures were used as surrogate targets for internal party power struggles.
This was done, of course, to keep the masses out of the picture. As to No. 3, here you are on (slightly) firmer ground. Mao, to his credit, did arouse the masses to "bombard the headquarters". The "Big Character Poster" movement was a step in the right direction.
But his own conservatism (remember, he was a peasant...not an urban worker) betrayed his own goals.
His failure to fully support the Shanghai Commune was probably the most crucial blunder.
But even his over-all approach was pretty bad: "95% of the cadre are sound; only 5% are capitalist-roaders".
I recall reading at the time that there was a small group of "ultra-leftists" who put up a poster saying that "95% of the cadre are rotten capitalist-roaders and only 5% are real communists".
As we have seen, the ultra-leftists were much closer to the truth than Mao.
So your basic assertion--that Mao has anything of relevance to say to revolutionaries in advanced capitalist countries--is, in my view, untenable.
Porole wrote: In fact the way you do this, and other things:
-ignoring strong arguments and try to take on weak points in people's arguments
-rewriting of history to serve your arguments
-selective and partial quotes of people, that misrepresents what they are trying to say
-potshots at individuals and those they respect
-the way you dishonestly label yourself a communist
.. and more, all this comes off to me as very opportunist and anti-communist. On another board someone said they had a problem with the way you raise the red flag to fight the red flag, I agree.
I think that you are very ignorant on many things, and that is why you act the way you do, but I also think that your attitude and approach reveal a very plain and aggressive anti-communist view. Are you just "venting" your frustrations or do you expect a response to this foolishness?
I will be "a nice guy" this time and let it slide.#nosmileys
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Post by redstar2000 on Feb 6, 2004 3:20:31 GMT -5
honky-tonk wrote: You are raising the need for objective conditions to make the argument that human agency (leadership, correct decisions, theory, ideology, etc.) essentially don't matter.
Close. It's not that they "don't matter"...it's that they are secondary phenomena.
The quote from Marx actually supports my position, by the way. We can indeed "make history" but the kind of history we make will be in accord with objective conditions (sooner or later) and not necessarily in accord with our subjective desires.
When we say "we'll do X", it is objective material conditions that have the decisive voice in whether X actually gets done...and not our "strength of will" or "grit and determination".
honky tonk wrote: But -- and here is the key point -- revolutions (at least socialist revolutions that survive) don't just "happen" they are organized and led. They are created.
I agree that is "the key point"...and I completely disagree with yours (and Lenin's) hypothesis.
Further, I assert that the Leninist hypothesis has been historically demonstrated to be false.
The Leninist attempt to create a "socialist revolution" that "survived"...did not survive.
It did succeed in dispersing the old bourgeoisie that had grown up under the Czars...but only to create a new bourgeoisie that now reigns undisputed over the remnants of the USSR.
Suppose there had been no Lenin and no Bolsheviks. What would have been the likely outcome of the February 1917 revolution?
It would have been a bourgeois republic, of course...probably containing a mixture of political institutions borrowed from France and Germany. The peasant land seizures would have been (reluctantly) confirmed. A peace treaty with Germany might not have been signed...but de facto peace on the western front would have prevailed. With a "responsible" government in power, there would have been little or no foreign support for Czarist aristocrats wanting to try a come-back...so, no civil war.
By 1919 or so, the Russians would have "achieved" what they "achieved" in 1992.
Material reality prevails.
Turning to Germany 1919-1923...
honky tonk wrote: And the rich objective conditions of Germany (1919-23) were thrown away exactly because the very best socialists (i.e. Luxemburg, Liebknecht and their circles) never broke with the larger Socialist Party (of Kautsky) -- they never developed their own network (independent of the reformists and revisionists) -- never trained an independent cadre with an independent and revolutionary line, etc.
I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say here. Do you suggest that they should have split away from the SPD around 1910 or so and attempted to organize a Leninist party?
If so, why would they want to do that? Up until 1914, the "SPD model" (which you summarized quite well) was one that looked like it was winning.
I don't even think it can be shown that Lenin himself was critical of that model...except he thought it unworkable under the conditions of the Russian autocracy.
And I believe he even quotes Kautsky on a number of occasions favorably...Kautsky didn't become a "renegade" until after 1917.
Unless I misunderstand you here, I think you're asking the Germans to be more far-sighted than could reasonably be expected.
honky tonk wrote: This is exactly wrong. In fact the things never came together -- in part because there was no party to bring it together.
Well, the Spartakist Bund was a "proto-vanguard party"...would you accept that? They tried to "imitate Petrograd" in Berlin. I'm sure there was much foolishness involved that more experienced people would have avoided.
But I'm not convinced anything would have helped. After all, there was (briefly) a "Bavarian Soviet Republic"...but genuine popular support was virtually non-existent.
In my view, the German working class of that era--while one of the most advanced in the world--was still considerably short of the level of class consciousness minimally necessary for proletarian revolution. There were, as you say, "advanced elements"...but far too few to make a difference.
honky tonk wrote: Debs is expressing exactly the idea that revolutions "just happen" and don't need to be organized, prepared.
I think you read far more into the Debs quote than is actually there. I think he is simply telling workers that he is "not Moses" and that they should not "wait for Moses" but deliver themselves from bondage.
That seems like a perfectly reasonable statement to me.
As to "organized and prepared" revolutions...I think you're talking about a coup, not a revolution.
I agree that under the appropriate material conditions (not all that rare, actually), a small group of determined men can overthrow a faltering and discredited government and seize power for themselves and their supporters.
What they can actually do with that power is limited. First of all, both the state apparatus and the large private sector are managed by people of questionable loyalty (to put it mildly). You cannot dispense with them (the workers have no confidence in their ability to run things) nor can you trust them not to plot a coup of their own.
So you find yourself creating an elaborate special police force...which generates a dynamic of repression of its own.
As long as your decrees are popular, things are not too bad. But if things turn sour--even if it's not your fault--popular discontent starts to bubble and the special police force gets a lot bigger...as do the prisons.
Well, I could go on about this for a while...but I think you get the idea.
To put it in terms with which we are both familiar: if the RCP had twenty million members, you might possibly spark a genuine popular revolution in the United States. With less than a million, it will be a coup...if you can do it at all.
honkey tonk wrote: Tito was the first communist to seize power but then build a capitalist (not a socialist) society. He was the first "revisionist in power." And this example is actually an important lesson on the Maoist saying "Political and ideological line are key."
You're forgetting Lenin's "New Economic Policy", aren't you? Not to mention his strenuous efforts to attract foreign investments or his statements about "state capitalism" being a "step forward"...
Perhaps Tito, whom you criticize so harshly, was merely more successful at doing what Lenin would have done if it were possible.
Maybe?
As to Mao's platitude, who would disagree? What's always in dispute is what political and ideological line makes sense in the current objective conditions.
honky tonk wrote: Well, so were conditions in India, or in Africa, or in the Middle East -- but the revolution after WW2 happened in China (where there was a Mao) and in the surrounding countries (Vietnam and Korea) as epi-phenomena. And those are the real objective facts.
You seem to be arguing here that if Mao had been an Indian or a South African or an Arab that there would have been a successful revolution in India or South Africa or "Saudi" Arabia and China would have submitted to Chiang.
I don't find that credible in the least.
honky tonk wrote: And in fact, there will not be revolution without communist vanguards -- and more: without communist vanguards who have leaderships united around a correct revolutionary line. There are countries that have powerful communist (even Maoist) movements that have NOT moved forward toward revolution because they insist it is not possible...
Interesting. Who's not getting the job done?
honky tonk wrote: The line of "overestimating spontaneity" is a line of armchair chatter.
If you don't really need to organize revolution, or revolutionaries, or link the party and its leadership to the masses, you can sit and babble. You can spin theories and hot air.
But more is expected of communists, exactly because without real COMMUNIST POLITICAL WORK the masses (when they finally want revolution in their millions) will not be in the position to make revolution.
Yeah, yeah, yeah...people are always throwing that damn armchair at me.
Ok, I'm just sitting here "chattering", "babbling" and "spinning theories" and "hot air".
Why are you even bothering to argue with me?
Why aren't you "out there" doing "REAL COMMUNIST POLITICAL WORK"?
Here you are wasting your time arguing with a "spinner of theories" instead of "linking the party and its leadership with the masses" (whatever that splendid phrase might be supposed to mean).
Still, it's your choice. Argue with a "spinner of theories" and spun theories are what you will receive.
Don't say I didn't warn you.#nosmileys
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Post by Deleted on Feb 6, 2004 4:09:50 GMT -5
This is exactly wrong. Debs is expressing exactly the idea that revolutions "just happen" and don't need to be organized, prepared. He has no sense of "hasten and await" (as Mao and the RCP say). He did not have the view of "strikes as school of war, but not war itself." He saw no difference between turning economic struggle into political struggle AND the very different Leninist notion of "communist work" based on all round political agitation and propaganda, and organized around a newspaper etc. Wow, I've never seen the meaning of Debs' words so horrible butchered. Do you even know where that quote is from? It was from a speech on Industrial Unionism which he gave in front of the Industrial Workers of the World. Here's how he started that speech: There is inspiration in your greeting and my heart opens wide to receive it. I have come a thousand miles to join you in fanning the flames of the proletarian revolution. (Applause.)
Your presence here makes this a vitalizing atmosphere for a labor agitator. I can feel my stature increasing, and this means that you are growing, for all my strength is drawn from you, and without you I am nothing.
In capitalist society you are the lower class; the capitalists are the upper class-because they are on your backs; if they were not on your backs they could not be above you. (Applause and laughter.)
Standing in your presence, I can see in your gleaming eyes and in your glowing faces the vanguard; I can hear the tramp, I can feel the thrill of the social revolution. The working class are waking up. (A voice, “you bet.”) They are beginning to understand that their economic interests are identical, that they must unite and act together economically and politically and in every other way; that only by united action can they overthrow the capitalist system and emancipate themselves from wage-slavery. (Applause.)That's just a silly statement. Conditions in the United States (for the most part) at the time were not such that is was necessary for socialists to be "underground" like they did in Tzarist Russia. Lenin solved it eh? Where is the Soviet Union again? Oh that's right, it doesn't exist anymore...what was it that Lenin solved again?
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Post by pretty boy floyd on Feb 6, 2004 12:55:35 GMT -5
This is a pretty much anonymous forum. I don't think it is really fair to take cheap shots, especially when nobody here really has any idea of the political work of others. This kind of postuering on these forums can also encourage from the undisciplined rebuttles of "oh yea.. well we are doing this" which is a bit dangerous.
I don't think accusations about "armchairs", "fools", "acedemics", or even "cults" to be very helpful.
just an opinion
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Post by porole on Feb 6, 2004 13:03:05 GMT -5
I find it interesting that RS2000 gets confused over straightforward history and wonder, is he attempting to cload and confuse the history of the SU and its rev.
It is straightforward. RS2000 basically argued that the rev 'just happened', but in fact years of communist work including an attempt to seize power not 12 years before, and the subsequent communist work despite major repression by the State.
These are a part of the material conditions that led to the 1917 uprising, a borgeoi upsrising despite the major involvement of worker. It was bourgeois because the nature of those that came to power were borgeois.
I see his as a part of the overall misunderstanding you have of what a proletarian viewpoint and class stand is. It is not something that workers have because they are 'born' with it.
In fact it takes struggle for anyone, workers included, to gain class-consciousness.
In line with this, when RS2000 says "remember, he[Mao] was a peasant...not an urban worker" as a way to say that Mao could not be a real socialist or have a proletarian worldview. This points to a basic ignorance of proletarian class consciousness. Mao led with ideology, and though he did make a few mistakes (which are inevitable), overall he brought forward a revolutionary proletarian understanding, an understanding that evaulated the concrete conditions in China. As opposed to the Soviet's mechanical analysis on revolution. That a strategy could be transplanted anywhere.
When RS2000 says that tin China used a different "class" approach to revolution, he hits on an interesting contradiction, though he did not mean to. In fact Mao led a different class, other than the proletariat to wage a proletarian revolution. The nature of the revolution was in fact proletariat, however a large section of the fighting force was not.
This confusion of RS2000 points again to his confusion of what a proletarian ideology is, and what class-consciousness is.
In relation to materialist dialectics, it is understandable that RS2000 does not have a good understanding of this scientific approach. Its more complicated than 1+1=2. In fact I would recommend that people open a forum discussing this science. Because if one does not understand dialectics, as RS2000 clearly does not, I feel communists should explain it (in another thread would be best). I do not have tme today to do this or I would.
However I can recommend that he checks out a couple of books either "Phony Communism is Dead, Long Live Real Communism" by Bob Avakian or "The Science of Revolution" by Lenny Wolff
In relation to the point that ou raise the red flag to attack communism... well you speak for yourself and prove this. I do not think, however, that with an understanding of communism and materialist dialectics that you could not break with anti communism.
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Post by honky tonk on Feb 6, 2004 13:06:12 GMT -5
Ok, sonofrage, i'm guessing i was not clear enough. So let me break it down.
I don't doubt "the meaning of Debs' words" -- I said before, and will repeat: I think he wanted socialism and even proletarian revolution. And I think he sought the ways of getting there.
However (a big HOWEVER), i think that today (a hundred years later) we have to sum up that Debs' conception of the *strategy* for getting there was inadequate (another word for: incorrect) and did not break sufficiently with the whole legacy of the second international.
Debs views can be (crudely) described like this:
economic struggle + electoral activity + mass organizations (unions and a mass party) + some socialist agitation = a movement that may eventually seize power.
This has never worked. And in fact this is a prescription for an endless treadmill of reform and economic struggles (at best).
At worst, the parties that fell into this trap were unable to face repression OR opportunity. (The KPD in Germany in the 1930s is the best example -- they were both unable to prepare for fascist repression, or survive it, or take advantage of the situation BEFORE the Nazis seized power.)
Communist preparation for revolution is more than just "talking about socialism while we wage struggles for short-term demands."
So I didn't "horribly butcher" his quote -- My point is that elequent talk of socialism is not enough. there are deeper strategic issues (about how we do our work, organize our forces, create dividing lines and focuses of struggle etc.)
When I said "He had no sense of a backbone of underground professional revolutionaries etc. "
You respond by saying: "Conditions in the United States (for the most part) at the time were not such that is was necessary for socialists to be "underground" like they did in Tzarist Russia."
Two points: first having a backbone of professional revolutionaries beyond the reach of the system does not mean that the socialists *as a whole* are "underground." (Two different concepts.) Here is the difference i am talking about: Some parties talk about revolution, and then print the names and photos of their leading committees. I.e. they are obviously not seriously thinking about what they face.
Second point: In fact, the U.S. had exactly the conditions that *cried* out for a Leninist approach. The Wobblies (a mass revolutionary formation that imagined it was a union) was essentially destroyed during World War 1 by mass arrests. And its quality as a mass formation (and not a leninist party) meant that it was vulnerable for that kind of repression.
Second, the forces that Debs led, and who became part of the communist movement in the U.S. after WW1 were also decimated by the Palmer-Hoover raids. They were "pro-communist" the way Debs was -- but they were organized like Second International mass parties (largely in "foreign language federations" of immigrants) -- their members and leaders were all known, had no way of preventing or surviving the mass raids and deportation.
The point is that all capitalist societies are based on repression of revolutionary forces. If they aren't rounding you up today, they are planning it for tomorrow.
Summation: Debs wanted revolution, but his political line led somewhere else: to the treadmill of endless reform struggle. And his organization line was pre-leninist. He wanted revolution but he didn't know how to actually prepare for it.
Finally, sonofrage, you throw out a casual and typical attack on Lenin (i.e. if he was so smart, how come the revolution wasn't permanent.) It is both a good question and a cheap shot.
let me answer like this:
first, lenin solved keyu problems of preparation and seizure of power (for the first time). He was not just a "follower of Marx" but he creatively developed Marxism and injected NEW understandings that are essential (and were badly needed.)
However no one (certainly not me) claims that he solved ALL problems. In particular, he died two or three years into the revolution, and never confronted the problem of restorationist forces *within* the socialist state, or the pressure to conservatize the revolution. He didn'thave practice with the problem, barely wrote about it, and did not solve it.
Such things were later summed up by Mao (in a series of penetrating analyses and audatious political movements). Mao DID have a chance to see the restoration of capitalism in the USSR in the 1950s, and he was able to make major contributions to the understanding of this problem and its roots.
Finally: It has turned out that revolution is not a linear process. We don't seize one country, hold it. Then seize a second country, hold that, and then move systamtiacllly around the globe untill the world is socialist. That was what people *thought* might happen a century ago (until the 1950s) but the actual living process of world revolution has been more ocmplex. It has had waves, high tides, and retreats, and low tides. Back and forth.
And looking at that process now, with some experience of the 20th century, we can say "why of course!" After all capitalism took three centuries to seize power. And its first revolution (in france) was reversed by Napoleon within ten years. Only to see capitalism reemerge in the mid 1800s with great power etc. History is wavelike.
The reversal in russia doesn't mean the leninist method of making revolution was wrong... it means that we are dealing with a wavelike global process that will not be linear. And we had better dig into understanding what that means.
And this (by the way) brings us to Avakian, who in a number of works has grappled with exactly this question. Several peple have asked "what are some of these contributions of Avakian to Marxist theory?"
Well here is one: he has made a unique and pathbreaking analysis of the whole process of prol rev so far. In ways Mao couldn't and didn't see or sum up. In the work "Conquer the World" and then (twenty years later) in "End of a Stage, Beginning of a New stage" -- he analyzes this wavelike process of revolution, the relationship of revolution in one country to the larger world revolution, the relation of socialist countries to revolution in non-socialist countries, and so on.
It is needed, profound -- and it is the real living answer to the last question you hurled out in your post, sonofrage.
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Post by dont miss this on Feb 6, 2004 13:16:50 GMT -5
on the whole issue of "how are revolutions made" and "is the role of a vanguard party, and its vaguard leadership essential": This series of historical articles are unforgettable. The 1917 October Revolution: How the Bolsheviks Seized Power, Part 1: The Bolsheviks Win the Masses Part 2: Leninist Tactics: Triple Audacity and Relying on the Masses Part 3: To Delay is Fatal Part 4: The New Day Dawns The first article starts here rwor.org/a/v19/930-39/931/octrev.htmAnd you can go to the subsequent articles from the links at the bottom. All of the links can be found on this "People's History" page: rwor.org/s/histry.htm
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Post by honky tonk on Feb 6, 2004 13:26:51 GMT -5
pretty boy floyd says that he thinks it is wrong to label others in this forum "armchair" or "fools" etc.
I agree.
Earlier there was a remark that said that if you follow the line of "overestimating spontaneity" you can use it to justify armchair inactivity.
Redstar2000 took that as a personal attack and ran with that.
But if you look back at the posts, no one accused Redstar2000 of that. If he is sensitive, and defensive, perhaps he should explain why.
The fact remains that overestimating spontaneity (and saying "the masses make revolution, we can join in or watch or whatever it doesn't really matter" IS (rather obviously) a rational for armchair do-nothingism.
Without pointing fingers at anyone here, I think that is an important point.
Mao said "Many deeds cry out to be done, and always urgently. Time rolls on." And lenin said that if we are frustrated with the backwardness of some among the masses of people, we should look at our OWN lagging, and we should pick up our COMMUNIST work.
"overestimating spontaneity" is a very very dangerous thing in a movement that wants radical change -- it is a method by which the most conscous, most active and most organize denigrate the urgency and importance of their own challenges.
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Post by redstar2000 on Feb 6, 2004 22:35:46 GMT -5
porole wrote: It is straightforward. RS2000 basically argued that the rev 'just happened', but in fact years of communist work including an attempt to seize power not 12 years before, and the subsequent communist work despite major repression by the State.
Ok, it's "straightforward"...so you won't object to a straightforward question, will you?
Are you asserting that the Bolsheviks were necessary in the period 1905-1916 for the February revolution to have taken place?
Keep in mind that not even the Bolsheviks themselves claimed credit for that massive uprising...had they tried to do so, everyone would have laughed at their pretensions.
I don't think you are really aware of how small and weak all of the organized progressive forces were in Russia under Czar Nicholas II.
Perhaps you think Lenin was sitting in Switzerland directing tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of revolutionary workers in class struggle back in Russia.
It wasn't like that at all. He actually spent most of his time in the local library researching his next article or in a café arguing with other exiles. Had there been an internet, he would have been online. His main contact with Russia itself revolved around smuggling copies of Iskra (Spark) into the country while getting fragmentary reports of local struggles and trying to analyze them.
The great uprising of February 1917 caught Lenin and everyone else completely by surprise. It was no more "prepared & organized" by the Bolsheviks than by the German General Staff.
porole wrote: It (February 1917) was bourgeois because the nature of those that came to power were bourgeois.
Yes. The Marxist consensus was that Russia was "due" for a bourgeois revolution and that's what happened.
It was "not" due for a proletarian revolution. Lenin and the Bolsheviks thought they could make that happen anyway -- by an "act of will".
They were wrong.
porole wrote: In fact it takes struggle for anyone, workers included, to gain class-consciousness.
Yes, but some struggles are "easier" than others.
If you are born into the upper middle class (or higher), it is "easiest" for you to adopt the class outlook of that part of the social structure. You are "to the manor born", you learned that you were "superior" at your parents' knees, your private schooling reinforced all those lessons, etc.
It is very hard to break away from that. Even if you ultimately become a revolutionary with an advanced theoretical understanding of class society, the idea of "your fundamental right to privilege" still remains in the back of your head, ready to re-assert itself given the opportunity.
Where do you think so many Bolshevik leaders got the idea of having a second home out in the countryside? They came from "higher class" Russian families where that was normal.
They didn't see that as "special privilege" even though it was--it was just how "normal people" (of their class) lived.
On the other hand, I have seen American workers try very hard to learn how to be "middle class". It doesn't come easy to them at all. Even when s/he can afford the trappings of middle class life (usually involving a ton of credit card debt), they have a really hard time imitating the "correct attitudes". They "know" that they are supposed to be "ruthlessly out for No. 1" but they have to "force themselves" to act that way...and they don't feel very good about themselves even when they manage to pull it off successfully. It cuts "against the grain".
Once a working class person does become familiar with communist ideas, that usually "spoils" them for any chance of "upward mobility" in class society. Even if they think it will "never happen" and do nothing at all in the way of active struggle, their "attitude" shows...especially on the job.
I speak from some degree of personal experience about this. There was a brief period in my life when I approached the fringes of American middle-class existence...but I lacked both the ruthless ambition and the instinct to flatter the unworthy required to make "the leap".
I had "a bad attitude".
I still do.
porole wrote: ...a way to say that Mao could not be a real socialist or have a proletarian worldview. This points to a basic ignorance of proletarian class consciousness.
No, what I was saying that regardless of how "proletarian" he might have "thought" he was, the class consciousness he absorbed from growing up a peasant was still there and still influenced his views.
For example, I recall reading a piece from Mao in which he wanted to reduce the years of medical training received by students and then send them into the countryside. Why? That's where most of the people of his own class lived...and that's whose welfare came to his mind first.
Not to mention "the great leap forward". Only a peasant could think that you could make steel in usable quantities & quality "in the back yard". Even the dimmest worker grasps that production of high-technology products requires a high-technology apparatus.
Consider a somewhat different though still pertinent example: Khrushchev's "virgin land project" in the USSR. Khrushchev, also raised a peasant, thought of increasing agricultural production not in terms of better technology but--as a peasant would--in terms of more land.
porole wrote: In fact Mao led a different class, other than the proletariat to wage a proletarian revolution. The nature of the revolution was in fact proletarian, however a large section of the fighting force was not.
A highly dubious assertion and one for which you offer no evidence. What was the class composition of the "Communist" Party of China...especially the leadership?
That's not a "trick question" -- I don't know the answer and you probably don't either. But it would seem reasonable that it was almost all peasants, would it not?
You can call something a "proletarian revolution" and even use a lot of Marxist terminology...that does not make it so.
porole wrote: In relation to materialist dialectics, it is understandable that RS2000 does not have a good understanding of this scientific [sic] approach. It's more complicated than 1+1=2.
I quite agree. "Dialectics" is more like 1 + 1 = any number you please.
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Post by redstar2000 on Feb 6, 2004 23:21:38 GMT -5
honky tonk wrote: The fact remains that overestimating spontaneity (and saying "the masses make revolution, we can join in or watch or whatever it doesn't really matter" IS (rather obviously) a rationale for armchair do-nothingism.
It may well be for one who wishes to use it for that purpose...that does not change the fact that it is a true statement.
Real revolutions are made by the masses, under conditions and circumstances of their choosing.
In the last analysis (or "the broad sweep of human history"...), the presence or absence of this or that individual or organized political group is essentially trivial.
A working class person who learns of communist ideas will often be strongly motivated to spread those ideas in whatever way seems most effective -- it's clearly in her/his long-run class interest to do that.
In so doing, s/he "advances" the time of proletarian revolution...by an amount too small to measure.
A political group is organized which advocates proletarian revolution as a matter of principle. Even if small, they also "advance" the time of proletarian revolution...perhaps by a few seconds or so. (If the group has a "bad" political line, they might also delay matters for a few seconds or so.)
Like it or not (and I don't, any more than you do!), history is slow.
In a way, you actually acknowledge this...
honky tonk wrote: And looking at that process now, with some experience of the 20th century, we can say "why of course!" After all capitalism took three centuries to seize power. And its first revolution (in France) was reversed by Napoleon within ten years. Only to see capitalism reemerge in the mid 1800s with great power etc. History is wavelike.
I quite agree -- though I don't think this insight is unique to Chairman Bob. Marx himself observed that the working class advances, then retreats, achieves a certain understanding only to discard it and go back to the beginning, etc., etc.
Marx and Engels were real optimists and thought things would progress faster than they actually have (so far).
And like them, we want to see the real changes in our own lifetimes.
We slide rather easily into the illusion that because we "want" something to happen, we can "make" it happen.
There's a limited sense in which that conviction can occasionally be justified...but in something as monumental as the end of class society, I don't think you can just "order it done" and "it will be done".
We can do the best we can and strive as hard as we might...but it will only happen when tens of millions of workers really want it to happen--and not even ten minutes sooner.
That's just the way things are.
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Post by roman meal on Feb 6, 2004 23:35:29 GMT -5
etw says: Well here is one: he has made a unique and pathbreaking analysis of the whole process of prol rev so far. In ways Mao couldn't and didn't see or sum up. In the work "Conquer the World" and then (twenty years later) in "End of a Stage, Beginning of a New stage" -- he analyzes this wavelike process of revolution, the relationship of revolution in one country to the larger world revolution, the relation of socialist countries to revolution in non-socialist countries, and so on.
link please? is it online? I will read it if I can find it. However, simply saying revolutions happen in waves is not new. The metaphor, in itself, is pretty common. I will see if I can find the documents online before I say anything more though. I do remember reading about the "waves of revolution" and "new great wave of revolution" in old PC Peru literature and/or the Luis Arce Borja interview of Gonzalo many years ago.
roman
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Post by redstar2000 on Feb 9, 2004 22:54:46 GMT -5
Note: This is a reply to honky tonk in the "sex trade" thread in the Women's Liberation forum...either he closed the thread after his response was posted or else there is a limit on this board to how long a thread can be before it "self-closes" (like the limit on the length of posts). You can see his last post here. honky tonk wrote: you think that what we communists do doesn't matter -- that the masses either make revolution or they don't. (i.e. it is an argument, made to the advanced, that there is no urgency for them to act.)No, it matters to us.What we do to emancipate our class from wage-slavery -- however marginal its historical effects -- follows from our knowledge of the real situation of our class. A "sense of urgency" can only derive from subjective factors--there's no real objective historical basis for it. When abolitionists and ex-slaves organized the "underground railroad", they were hardly under any illusion that this would fatally undermine slavery or the state-power of the slave-holding class. But it would serve "to help things along". The more ex-slaves in the north, the more speakers at abolitionist meetings with first-hand knowledge of the evils of slavery and the arrogance of slave-holders. The more slaves who successfully escaped, the more the "awesome power" of the slave-holders didn't look quite so "awesome" any more. When federal agents tried to re-capture escaped slaves, that was another weapon in the arsenal of the abolitionists...even some northern white racists resented federal efforts to enforce slavery to the point of indirectly allying themselves with the abolitionists. What conscious communists can do, at their best, is "help things along". Not play ***A WORLD-HISTORIC ROLE***, blah, blah, blah. I don't want to sound unfeeling here, but the transition from capitalism to communism is not a block-buster movie project in which we are all competing for a "starring role". That is one important thing that is wrong about the Leninist approach to revolution--you are deeply concerned with who is going to get the credit.Look at the little blurbs you and others here drop into your posts every so often--"Here is where Bob Avakian made a deep and profound contribution to our understanding of blah, blah, blah". It's not as bad as a pop-up ad yet...but the downside is that I know of no software that will block it either. (!) Why do you want to make this guy into a "political rock star"? Are you so impressed with the bourgeois media's success at diverting the attentions of the masses with these cult figures that you feel as if you "must" have "one of your own" to "compete"? True, the RCP is "your show" and I'm just a guy in the audience. Who's not applauding. And who knows that nothing really interesting is going to happen until the audience takes over the stage. honky tonk wrote: You argue that all the examples of socialism were bullshit. You say Russia needed a bourgeois revolution (and was not ready for a socialist one) -- so the communists just caused the people more misery by trying to push too far.To say that "all socialist revolutions" were not what they purported to be is not the same as saying they were all "bullshit". Revolutions are never "bullshit"...in one fashion or another, that's one of the main ways that history moves.Nor would I argue that the Russian Bolsheviks necessarily "caused" more human misery than would otherwise have been the case. Could a doubtlessly corrupt Russian bourgeois republic have staved off the designs of German imperialism in World War II? As "bad" as Stalin purportedly "was", the historical alternative could have been far worse. And, as I pointed out elsewhere, would anyone care to argue that the gangster-fascist regime of Chiang's KMT was really "preferable" to Mao's "red" despotism? But what you have to realize is that we've reached a point in history in which all the old scenery and costumes of the Leninist paradigm have become shoddy and worn...and easy to see through.It's really no longer possible to fly some red flags and throw out some "Marxist" terminology and expect to maintain any credibility. If there's nothing really substantively different in your vision of "improved" class society (socialism) from what we have now... then people not only won't "buy" it, they won't accept it as a gift.Nor should they! honky tonk wrote: And then in your evaluation of Maoism (in particular) you take that to its conclusion -- this is just some peasant phenomenon. No new methods of work. No new insights into socialism. No insights into restoration of capitalism. No insights into socialist economics. No insights into revolutionary warfare. No insights into methods of analysis, or philosophy, or methods of leadership or whatever.Yeah, that's my summary. Of course, there's lots to be learned from Maoism if you yourself are a peasant revolutionary. Since the ideology is rooted in the material conditions of the peasant class, its practice in the appropriate circumstances will "work". We, of course, are not peasants and we live in countries where only a small number of "kulaks" remain from the old peasantry. If we try to apply Maoism to our material situation, nothing happens. It's like trying to repair a computer... with a pitchfork.For us, Maoism is the wrong tool for the job.It's not my place, of course, to advise "western" Leninists on how to develop their ideology...but if my advice were asked, I would tell them to go back to Lenin and start from there. Lenin, for all his many shortcomings, was actually oriented towards the working class...and not the peasantry. His strategy might be wrong (in my opinion, of course), but at least it would be relevant.honky tonk wrote: So your arguments (over and over) boil down to:
Nothing we do matters, and nothing we think matters. No need for marxism, no need for marxists.
Let's all sink deeper into our seats and snore.I'd respond to this base canard but...it's time for my nap.#nosmileys
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Post by porowl on Feb 10, 2004 10:25:30 GMT -5
I never said this, nor implied, this. And yet you put these words in my mouth. The bolsheviks led the SOCIALIST REVOLUTION also known as the OCTOBER REVOLUTION that occured in OCTOBER 1917 not the bourgeois revolution that occurred in February 1917. If the Bolsheviks had not led the Socialist revolution, a genuine socialist system would not have been established in that area, at that time. That should be understandable, and if this confuses you, I am going to question whether you are really confused at all.
This macho intellectual tussle over history is getting silly and redundant.
Instead of sitting here and debating the Russian Revolution till I die of old age, lets get into this point:
If the Bolsheviks had not taken the iniative and focused the revolutionary sentiment of the masses onto their oppressors and exploiters, and unleashed this revolutionary sentiment in a coordinated and conscious way, then there would not have been an October Revolution, and the Soviet Union would never have come into existance.
This points to a fact that is not just particular to the Russian Revolution, but is universal in this world. To unleash, wage and win a socialist revolution some people are going to have to take iniative to see it happen and responsibility for it to succeed. Other material factors are involved in whether or not it will be able to win, but without the initiative, confidence, and resonsibilty needed, such a revolution would have a damn near impossible time even starting, and if it somehow did, would never be able to marshal the forces needed to establish socialism.
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Post by redstar2000 on Feb 10, 2004 13:16:31 GMT -5
porowl wrote: Instead of sitting here and debating the Russian Revolution till I die of old age, let's get into this point:
If the Bolsheviks had not taken the initiative and focused the revolutionary sentiment of the masses onto their oppressors and exploiters, and unleashed this revolutionary sentiment in a coordinated and conscious way, then there would not have been an October Revolution, and the Soviet Union would never have come into existence.
That is what is known as an assertion of inevitability.
You are saying (or whoever you're quoting is saying) that what did happen was the only thing that could have happened.
That is a common and respectable view among many historians...but if you are going to "hold to it" on this occasion, then you must hold to it on all occasions.
You can't "cherry pick" your historical developments so that you get credit for the "wins" and avoid blame for the "losses".
If the Bolsheviks "made" the October "revolution" then they also "lost" it. If the Maoists "made" the revolution of 1945-49, then they also "lost" it.
You can't, for example (as some Maoists like to do now), say that Lenin and Mao overcame imperialism to make revolution and then turn around and blame the ultimate defeat of those revolutions on imperialism.
It's a "package deal"--the more you allow a small group to "make history" for "good", the more they get the "blame" for "making history" for "ill".
Are you sure you want to go that route?
porowl wrote: This points to a fact that is not just particular to the Russian Revolution, but is universal in this world. To unleash, wage and win a socialist revolution some people are going to have to take initiative to see it happen and responsibility for it to succeed. Other material factors are involved in whether or not it will be able to win, but without the initiative, confidence, and responsibility needed, such a revolution would have a damn near impossible time even starting, and if it somehow did, would never be able to marshal the forces needed to establish socialism.
And this, of course, is sheer speculation. It could be true; it could be false; it could be true or false depending on a whole series of complex and particular circumstances.
What the two paragraphs really do is take the October 1917 experience and generalize it into a universal rule.
As a "universal rule", it has thus far been a universal flop--inspite of hundreds of "vanguard parties" in the advanced capitalist countries doing their best to "imitate" Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
Of course one can always blame the "backward masses" for failing to see the "need" to entrust their destinies to those who promise a more benevolent version of class society.
While that may provide some consolation in the winter of your discontent, it's not of much practical use.
Let me ask you this: granted that in any revolutionary period there will be people who will "take initiative" and "responsibility" for the formal "transfer of power", why does it have to be the RCP?
Assuming that the Greater New York Council of Workers' Deputies sees the need for an executive committee to handle its day-to-day decisions, why should you be in control of that committee?
And if you are in control of it, what happens when the next elections roll around and the Workers' World Party or Progressive Labor or ("God" save us!) the Socialist Workers' Party wins a majority of the deputies? Are you going to disperse the Workers' Councils "for their own good" and rule by decree?
That's what Lenin did! By early 1918 (before the start of the civil war), soviets that failed to return a Bolshevik majority were either dissolved or additional delegates were appointed so as to insure a Bolshevik majority.
Think that will fly...in the information age?
But, I digress. The correct response to your two paragraphs is that it would be extraordinarily foolish to generalize from a single (and temporary) success to the universe of proletarian revolutions at all times in all places.
There were many "roads to power" for the bourgeoisie; why should it not be the same for the proletariat?
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