Great short Lenin Biography

wat

It's an old Holla Forums joke, trips-man.

Bump

page 52 atm, gonna bump this and finish this later

Thanks for the PDF, fam. Will read this soon.

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Damn - he was too good for us comrades. Imagine how fucked up he'd be if he saw all the Stalin era propaganda featuring him.

Sure, then move on to reading Lenin's What is to be One, and his State&Rev.

Must bump comrades - this is a good read

obligatory

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Source?

The Third Revolution Volume 3 by Murray Boochin

Very fitting name comrade

I take it Bookchin was no fan of Lenin

I agree with him. Revolution is war, and war is the most authoritarian thing there is. A dictatorship is either necessary, inevitable or both. If anything, Lenin at least had the decency to say what he was doing, even if it went against his old promises.

Honestly, I think Lenin would have dismantled the authoritarian apparatus he assembled to secure the revolution, if only he had lived long enough. He dedicated his entire life to socialism and revolution, and was dead serious in his belief that the masses drive history, not "great persons".

Because he said and did stuff like that.
Famrade, it'a utterly ridiculous to suggest that we should conduct revolution in such a manner that contradicts the fundamental beliefs the the revolution was founded on.

Furthermore, Lenin would have been unable to dismantle the system he made. Remember that Robospierre was the last man killed during the terror.

You underestimate Leninistic dialectics

Ebin

Relevant

jacobinmag.com/2017/06/china-mieville-october-russian-revolution-lenin-stalin

There are no Leninistic dialectics because Lenin didn't understand dialectics at all and neither do you. Read a real book like Pannekoek's "Lenin As A Philosopher".

Why didn't Bookchin like Lenin but still copy his style?

I kind of agree with you here, man. The revolution ought to use the same democracy, socialism and humanism we want to see in the following society. It makes strategical and ethical sense, and Lenin betraying almost all his old promises once he was in power. But…

Libertarian armies have historically had a bad military track record, I think I hardly need to point to examples. One important detail about this is that every single time, they fought against traditional, hierarcical and usually downright authoritarian armies. I'm sure there are whole encyclopedias explaining why traditional armies always win these battles, but regardless, you can just see how the non-ML experiments fared.

There's a funny thing about the Red Army, when it was created it was exactly like one of those libertarian armies. Volunteer-only, all soldiers were committed revolutionaries, officers were elected, and so on. Problem is, they were nearly worthless at fighting. Maybe such a libertarian army could have been efficient if it had been created and trained properly before combat began, but the situation being what it was, this was a no-go. So Lenin had no choice but to task Trotsky with reforming the Red Army as a traditional army in March 1918, over protests of the first leaders.

This problem with the armies extends to dealing with a restive country as well. I'm afraid that authoritarianism seems to be a necessary evil for the triumph of a revolution. Yes, I know it seems like a paradox: the supposed need to assemble an authoritarian apparatus in order to create a free society runs against the tendency of structures of power not letting go of it, which puts us in luck's hands: we have to hope our dear leader is incorruptible. To paraphrase Lenin: what else is to be done? Look at the trainwreck they were saddled with in the pic.

I honestly think Lenin was the kind of man who would have followed up on dismantling the State; he was a man dedicated to the cause above all else, like a Robespierre or a Washington or the old Roman dictators (a system which, incidentally, worked well for centuries). But as we know, he croaked too soon to finish that task, and lesser men inherited the perfect tool for a tyrant.

Oh my comr8, that's where you're mistaken. More people were guillotined after the Thermidorian Reaction than before. Marx more or less said that counterrevolution would be so much worse than the revolution, that the only way to make both end as soon as possible and wipe away the old order is through terror, as Robespierre was doing. I'm afraid Robespierre didn't send enough people to the guillotine.

obtained a pass enabling her to spend two hours in the Hall of
Columns. In a letter to her husband, who was absent from Moscow
at the time, she described the scene : "Mothers lift up their children
for one look at him, hysterical women fall on the floor crying 'tovarishch Lenin,' three strong men in white suits are there to lift
them and carry them out, and they cry so terribly that your blood
becomes cold." Outside, the city presented the following picture:
"The red flags with black hems, the black-red sash on the right arm
of many people, many people selling little picture-brooches of Lenin,
and his small white bust and small white statue, the white bright
snow, the thick cold air, the frosted hair' and furs, white smoke from
the mouths and red fires in the street at night. That is Moscow of
these days."

Did anyone else shed a little tear upon reading this part? Imagining that is just very saddening.

It's a really moving little bio & that excerpt especially is beautiful. I thought the bit on folk/superstitious interpretations of Lenin were particularly interesting.

The Black Army was actually an innovator in terms of the war, even being the first to utilize the tachanka. The failure of the Black army against the Red army has nothing to do with organization and everything to do with scale. Through enough numbers at something and eventually it will fall, regardless of organization.

I see your point, but I would argue that manpower shortage is itself an inherent problem with libertarian armies, seeing as they're very unlikely to draft by their own definition. The early Red Army itself being another example.

I'm OK with commune mandated conscription. Really, it has more to do with the scope of ussr vs that of a fairly small territory in the ukraine.

I reckon one of Rojava's cantons voted in favor of a draft, which is still libertarian, I think. It was also the first time I ever heard of a people actually putting draft to the vote.

Long Live Lenin