2017: 100 years on from the Russian Revolution

There's a serious lack of learning from history on this board. Don't get offended, don't get defensive; it's true. And it's totally understandable. But that doesn't make it positive; it's something that needs to change.

It's great that everyone here is interested in discussing current events, socio-political trends, and 21st century academic thought. These are all important things to be knowledgeable about. Every good socialist should have their eyes and ears to the ground; to the mood in society, the machinations of the ruling class, and the ideas of those thinkers who have platforms.

But it's not enough. A good socialist should also take the time to educate themselves on history; on previous revolutionary efforts, their successes and their failures.

This year is 100 years since the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. It was the first (and arguably one of, if not the, only) times that the working class has risen up and collectively seized state power from the ruling class. The events that unfolded after October 1917 are vital to study too, and it is a question intimately linked to this one: how did they do it?

On the centenary of this momentous historical event, all good socialists should take the time to study the events of 1917, and to draw the revolutionary conclusions from those events. We should all read the works pertaining to this event by the men involved; Lenin, Trotsky, and others. We should all read analysis of the event afterwards, from as many points of view as you can - and importantly, from solid, strong socialist perspectives.

A lot has changed since 1917, and to spend your time only buried in the works of Lenin would be a fruitless task. You're all doing great work in educating yourselves politically on the current state of affairs, on trends in thought, on capitalism today. This is all vital. But only a novice scientist would begin an experiment without first familiarizing himself with previous attempts at such experiments, even if those previous experiments were done under different conditions.

ITT: We discuss and post literature related to the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Other urls found in this thread:

bolshevik.info/what-the-russian-revolution-achieved-and-why-it-degenerated.htm
prole.info/texts/factorycommitteesinrussia.html
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/francois-martin-and-jean-barrot-aka-gilles-dauve-eclipse-and-re-emergence-of-the-communist-move.
twitter.com/rt_1917
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

First, Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution - in two parts.

For something a bit less dense, I highly recommend www.bolshevik.info for a website dedicated to theory and lessons from the Russian Revolution. There's a whole selection of articles to browse.

bolshevik.info/what-the-russian-revolution-achieved-and-why-it-degenerated.htm
This one in particular is great, in particular I enjoyed this section:


The amazing leaps in technological capability (and thus quality of life for people; life expectancy in Russia increased rapidly after 1917) that were only possible with a planned economy - the anarchy of the market in capitalism (the anarchy of individual production) is actually massively inefficient.

Is ten days that shock the word by John Reed any good?

Yeah, I've read it. It's kind of hard to follow, all the Russian names and place-names, but it's pretty accurate. He's embellished a lot of the detail, but the general trend of events is an accurate eye witness account. Would recommend.

What worked in 1917 won't work today anyway though.

it was pretty shit tbh

The only good thing they did was killing the royal family.

Obviously we don't have the same exact material and historical conditions as 1917, but does that mean we shouldn't analyze history? Should we not analyze the history of both Socialist as well as bourgeois revolutions? There's a lot to learn there.

they did the right thing, but then failed to properly live under real communism, instead choosing to have basically a dictatorship of the proletariat.

What the fuck are you talking about fam?

I guess I just don't really see the point. It doesn't look like anything we do really matters does it?

I don't think you know what dictatorship of the proletariat means

We are fucked anyway.

I guess I can understand feeling defeatist at times, but history shows us the exact opposite. There have been hundreds of times throughout history that revolutionary subjects (not just commies) have actively changed the face of history, consider the fact that the transition from Feudalism to Capitalism was not a bloodless one, nor immediate, it took centuries of strife, as well as waiting for the conditions to be right for Capitalism itself. It's only under the ideology of the Capitalist dominant culture that we retroactively project the conditions of Capitalism on all of human history, both past and future.

>>>/qq/

...

He's saying that Siberian methane is going to kill us all

I refer you to the OP:

Seriously, there's much to be learned from these events. In 1917, Russia was passing through the a deep political and social crisis, Europe was in tatters, capitalism was in decline. The same picture, roughly is painted today. Of course we cannot simply mimic past events, but we can learn from them.

She loves that BWC (big white cawk)

If you gave a worker a pamphlet in 1917 they would probably read it/listen to someone else read it, nowadays there are a billion other things to do than care about the destruction of the world. We are amusing ourselves to death.

You're here. On a leftist politics board. You could be anywhere on the internet. We're a minority, sure. But a true socialist understands things dialectically, and in motion. The quantity itself is an interesting fact, but what matters more is the direction it is going in. We are growing. More and more people are getting interested in socialism.

I think you're projecting your own hopelessness onto other people. I suggest seeing a therapist or smoking some pot, I don't see why you need to derail a thread on a leftist imageboard in order to get free therapy from us.

We have like 500 regular users. If we had 500 million, maybe that would be enough to seize power worldwide.

I'm just sad right now, sorry to be a downer. It just makes me so mad what we're doing to ourselves and the world.


Fine, I'll stop posting, but don't act like I'm so alone on this. If you really think things will change in time, you're naive.

prole.info/texts/factorycommitteesinrussia.html – from before the failing February revolution, to the successful October revolution and then some.

Chin up: theanarchistlibrary.org/library/francois-martin-and-jean-barrot-aka-gilles-dauve-eclipse-and-re-emergence-of-the-communist-move.

I'm not saying you shouldn't post. But it's also undeniable that there's a rising Left right now, as well as a shrinking political center, if Leftists don't take that responsibility seriously then the Right will naturally fill that power vacuum. Remember, Liberalism is a corridor to Fascism, and while Climate Change is unstoppable at this point what would you rather have? Fascists who militarize boarders and accelerate Capitalism to the point where the proletariat is a completely atomized drifting mass of helpless lumpens? Or a Socialism that actually tries to use the technology and vast socially produced wealth at our disposal to actually survive this crisis. If you really think it's that hopeless it doesn't even make sense to be a Leftist.

Also, actually learning about history and theory can be extremely empowering, it helps put things in perspective, helps you to understand that the seemingly apocalyptic circumstances your generation is faced with aren't as unique as you'd think. It's true, no other human generation has faced something like global climate change, but to be completely honest, even under the worst conditions of absolute Fascism and Capitalism, a 100% Landian future, climate change does not have the power to make humanity extinct, Fascism, on the other hand, does have the power to enslave all of mankind.

Alexander Berkman
The Bolshevik Myth (Diary 1920–22)

Literally all I know about him is his fuck retarded, adventurist, opportunist assassination attempt on Frick that resulted in a strike being utterly crushed.

Babby-tier, individualist anarchist bullshit, to be honest

The Air Force allows weaves?

Bump

Have you seen this?
twitter.com/rt_1917

kys

The site in linked has their own twitter feed too, posting daily updates from Russia 1917 as if they had twitter then. Pretty interesting stuff

To ensure continuous extraction of surplus value*

Read Panzieri

They are extracting surplus value right now. That's all they care about.

People aren't stupid, much less the ruling class.

Modern capitalism is all about self-sustainment. How do you explain the sheer amount of research that goes into keeping proles at bay? Just look at industrial sociology, the role of trade unions in modern states, Keynesianism in general.

No happy proles, no surplus value.
No earth, no surplus value.

Read Panzieri

Start living in the real world and stop reading ideological nonsense.

I guess the welfare state and environmental programs exist out of altruism then.

Faggot

They are band-aids at most, and hardly bring any meaningful change at the end of the day. Hence why they suck

A short green text history of the USSR

Good reading here.

The real lessons to learn from the Russian Revolution are threefold:
1) the masses will move when the material conditions call them to it, and the leadership of that movement will not be decided prior to the revolutionary events, but during them.
2) there will be reaction, from places you would expect support as well as the obvious class enemies, and attempts at compromise and unity will only betray the masses
3) the only organ that can ensure the first two lessons are learnt well and the pitfalls avoided, is the organ of a genuine revolutionary party, both in touch with the mood of the masses and with a clear program for socialism that will not bend to reactionary elements.