Kronstadt Rebel Demands

How do ☭TANKIE☭s justify refusing these demands? They all seem perfectly compatible with a genuine socialist society?

Other urls found in this thread:

marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/01/kronstadt.htm
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Soviet_Constitution
marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ot/zizek.htm
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensheviks
libcom.org/library/the-kronstadt-uprising-ida-mett
marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol01/no04/marx.htm
hiaw.org/defcon6/works/1881/03/zasulich1.html
jacobinmag.com/2017/07/russian-revolution-bolshevik-party-july-days
jstor.org/stable/2625787
jstor.org/stable/150283?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Parvus#cite_ref-20
louisproyect.org/2017/06/17/did-the-kaiser-fund-the-bolsheviks/
louisproyect.org/2017/07/22/boris-souvarine-no-the-kaiser-did-not-fund-the-bolsheviks/
man-with-dogs.livejournal.com/599185.html
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Why do you bother? It's cool kid thing here to dismiss Kronstad workers as menshevik collaboratiors + you will likely get banned too for pissing off a ☭TANKIE☭ in his natural habitat.

Have you read Trotsky's assessment of the situation? Or rather, are you willing?
marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/01/kronstadt.htm

Even Victor Serge, who had many sympathies with anarchism, was implacably opposed to the Kronstadt mutineers:
(Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901-1941)

I'd also add that, whatever your first impression of Serge is here, read Victor Serge anyway. He is an invaluable writer on his experiences which are extremely relevant to leftists.

This seems to be operating under the assumption that anybody who wasn’t a Bolshevik was a reactionary.

I fixed that for you.

During the civil war weakening the bolsheviks in any way is objectively acting in the direct interest of the genocidal white generals and their foreign interventionist allies.

That wouldn’t have been a problem of the Bolsheviks hadn’t chased all the other leftist parties out of the red faction.

Specify. The "other leftist factions" supported the provisional government, which was a bourgeois democratic government that promised to pull out from WW1 and didn't, promised land reform and didn't do it, etc.

Have you read any history books on the Russian revolution or you just passionately enjoy regurgitating liberal talking points?

Wow it’s almost like they were following the Marxist progression of history.


And the Bolsheviks promised to hand the MoP over to the workers and didn’t. They promised to establish proletarian democracy and didn’t. There was absolutely no excuse to maintain the police state and single party rule after the war was finished, and by the time of the Kronstadt Uprising the war was essentially won.

Should have told them dumb Bolsheviks to practice clairvoyance!!!

After we overthrow Trump we need a broad coalition of the Democratic Cops of America, Bernie, and Hillary in the senate! After that we can finally transition to communism.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Soviet_Constitution
You don't know your history. The USSR was under siege from the very beginning.

You realize that going from a feudal monarchy to a bourgeois Republic is literally Orthodox Marxism right? Even Lenin explicitly recognized the need for a period of capitalist development.


True, but that doesn’t necessitate a complete elimination of free press or political freedoms. There is no point in a socialist revolution if personal freedoms aren’t protected, and there was nothing unreasonable about the Kronstadt demands. They basically wanted to re-institute proletarian democracy and abolish the limits on personal and political freedoms for the workers.

Tsarist Russia wasn't exactly your classical example of a feudal society: primitive accumulation already have taken place, industry developed, finance capital started controlling the latter.

NEP

ok

“Freedom yes, but for WHOM? To do WHAT?”
marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ot/zizek.htm

what do you mean?

civil war ended in 23
kronstadt was in 21

It was in the late stages of feudalism and early stages of capitalism, a bourgeois revolution was exactly what it needed.


Don’t pull that shit, this isn’t some liberal whining here, basically every other leftist in the world criticized the Bolsheviks for repressing freedom of speech, including Gene Debs and Rosa Luxemburg. Without the freedom to express whatever opinions you want, democracy can’t exist because there is no free exchange of ideas.


No free press, no democracy in the Soviets, numerous leftist political prisoners.


WW2 ended in 45, but after Kursk in 43 the allied victory was certain.

shilling for a bourgeois republic. cute
and you ask why do we assume that every non bolshevik leftist was essentially a reactionary, huh


so what is your problem? you had your "period of capitalist development"
do you want it to last forever?

Don't get me wrong, most of these demands are completely fair. However, raising up a fuss when the Revolution was being attacked on all fronts was a bad idea.

So I guess Marx was a reactionary then? Establishing a capitalist bourgeois democracy out of a semi-feudal monarchy is revolutionary by definition.

This is part of the main reason why Russia was not a good candidate for socialism. The peasantry was far too large a group to disenfranchise completely without mass chaos, repression, etc which is exactly what happened.

yay, more ignorance

why should we give a platform to capitalists?
so that they could promise chocolate rivers to the people and appeal to the tribe mentality?
guess soviets should've given a platform to the nazis too, huh

The part you don't seem to comprehend is what implications the semi- hold in the semi-feudal for a communist revolutionary.

I mean in practical terms this just seems like it would've set up a shit and unstable "liberal democracy" that would've collapsed back into dictatorship anyway.
Alternatively the Balkanisation of Russia (to the benefit of capitalists.)

Just because you have reasonable demands doesn't mean your demands are reasonable.

capitalism was established by the NEP
all according to the historical materialism
again, do you think that if it is not a bourgeois republic than it is not capitalism?
is China not capitalist in your view?


wew, someone has a reading comprehension problem

No, you should give a platform to the Mensheviks, Left SRs, and Makhnovites, all of which were socialists.


So if it’s semi feudal then would it not be progressive to abolish all feudal institutions, allow the development of the MoP, the growth of a substantial proletariat, and then establish socialism? Clearly the Bolshevik way failed, because not only did it degenerate into oligarchic dictatorship and state capitalism almost immediately, it ceased to exist as a political entity after a few decades.

Too bad the proletariat in Russia weren't as enlightened as you are and went with those dumb Bolsheviks. If only the material contradictions didn't drive them towards them!

Ah well, next time when a revolution happens make sure you're there to enlighten the masses on the correct recipe of historical development: one step forward, two steps back.

How would it have been a liberal democracy if all the organs of state power were proletarian institutions like Soviets? Why do people seem to think that multi party democracy is the same as liberal capitalism?

Well in all seriousness I suppose the Bolsheviks did what the Mensheviks wanted to do anyway, they put Russia through a 70 year long period of capitalist development.

Well, actually, the rest of the European communists failed, but you know, that's just, like, objective historical fact, man.

You’re misunderstanding me. The proletariat in Russia was small and weak, the class character of the country was not conducive to a socialist revolution. The majority of the population were peasants, not workers.

sorry socialists don't shill for a provisional government in the name of historical materialism

You know that large numbers of Left SRs and Mensheviks supported the October Revolution right? And are you seriously trying to tell me that the fucking Anarchists supported the provisional government?

so what are you bitching about?
absence of election circus murika style?

Lurker here… I'm confused even more about what communism is now. When I asked other times, I was told that communists only want to abolish private property title, so that nobody could "own" the means of production in place of who actually uses and works them, and instead people only possess productive things as befits who actually uses them.

It sounds like what the Kronstadt workers wanted was to keep their PERSONAL property. It doesn't matter if it was productive property, because they weren't "owning" it with some kind of absentee title, and they weren't hiring wage labor. So why not? That sounds consistent with what everyone told me what communism actually was outside of shitty ancap memes about everything being collectivized because lol collectivization.

It sounds like Lenin was the living embodiment of the toothbrush meme from what I'm hearing in this thread.

No freedom of speech, no democracy, no political freedoms, etc.

If the ultimate historical role of the Bolsheviks was to establish capitalism in Russia then there were many far less destructive and repressive ways it could have been done.

right SRs supported
mensheviks supported
and majority of left SRs joined bolshevik party anyway

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensheviks

Sorry ☭TANKIE☭s but I have to side with the wobbly ITT

bullshit
just look at south america
it was too an "emerging industrial powerhouse"

If you unironically think that the only options are 19th century dark satanic mill tier capitalism or full on socialism then you are stupid.

...

t. Person who wouldn’t have survived the revolution because he would have been purged

Neither of which would have been possible without the USSR, you undialectical faggot. The first one was a direct reaction to the threat the USSR posed to the capitalists of the West; the second, Yugoslavia, was only possible because it could parasitize as a "non-aligned" state on both papa soviet bloc and the West.

READ
A
FUCKING
BOOK

A lot of anarchists have actually joined the Bolsheviks.

a reaction to the existence of SU and organized proletarian militarism
also, a failed ideology that is incompatible with capitalism in the long run as stagflation have proved

also south america widely used social democratic policies after ww2
protectionism, infant industry protection etc etc
economists thought south america had a bright future, industry was booming

now look at the south america today
bright future indeed, kek

a failed ideology
literally had higher unemployment than social democracies
and also sold its ass to the IMF and later was forced into austerity

Social democracy started appearing in Germany in the fucking 19th century.


I didn’t say Yugoslavia, I said market socialism. It’s obviously the best solution for an underdeveloped country aiming for genuine socialism, since it develops the MoP similar to capitalism, while maintaining workplace democracy, consolidating industry into large worker run institutions, and doesn’t create an elite bourgeois class.

Then they weren’t anarchists then were they.

...

And Leninism isn’t?

Here we go, back to your one liner liberal red baiting.

Seriously, how was Leninism not a failure? Do we have world communism today?

If you unironically think that you can compromise with capitalism then you are stupid.

I didn’t say that. I said that societies require a period of capitalist development in order to create the conditions for socialism. That being the case, an ideologically socialist government in a semi feudal society can pursue social democratic or market socialist policies in order to develop their economy and make socialism viable without inflicting excessive misery on the population.

This doesn't make sense unless you view "Leninism" not as Lenin's thought, but as a mere label for the ideological product that was the isolation of the Revolution, ie Stalinism.

It was the actions of Lenin in crushing the non-Bolshevik socialists and revoking the autonomy of the Soviets that made Stalin’s actions possible.

Yeah, sure.
Yeah that's totally not compromising with capitalism.
"No guys for real as long as they're ideologically socialist having capitalism is okay. They're ideologically socialist so they won't be subject to the logic of capital production."

You are seriously mistaken in all of your beliefs and it suggests a lack of thought or cognitive ability on your part.

That’s fucking Marxism you dipshit. The absolute fucking state of leftypol these days, where reddit retards are sitting around branding the basic tenets of Marxism and historical materialism as compromise with capitalism.


Okay, kindly explain to me how you are going to implement a dictatorship of the proletariat in a country where the proletariat are firmly in the minority.

This isn't the 19th century, fuckface. The conditions Marx described then aren't directly translatable to now when the logic of capital has infiltrated practically every level of every society of every country on the planet. We're no longer generally speaking evolving out of feudal or semi-feudal social conditions, you absolute, masterwork vorpal retard +10.

You are a fucking retard and appealing to Marx doesn't change that. If you actually had read or understood him you wouldn't be pinching off post after post of ridiculous, theory-less shit.

lol "satisfy my vague hypotheticals" kill yourself dildo licker

calm your tits, sperg
all happened according to histmat
and you can't negotiate with capitalists if you have no leverage, such as soviet nukes

also, RI was a peasant country and there's no way it could've done a better job than forced Stalinist industrialization
so you should shill for a Stalin industrialization with all its consequences if you're so dogmatic about the stages theory of history

We’re talking about the Russian revolution, not the modern day.


Jesus Christ m8 at least try to make an argument. Socialism is not viable in a country where the proletariat are the minority, therefore it was not viable in imperial Russia, and the ultimate failure of the Soviet Union to move past state capitalism is proof of this.


Yes it could have, it could have allowed the natural development of industry that occurs under capitalism while maintaining minimum standards for workers.

Social democracy traces it's roots back to XIX century, with foundation of Soical Democratic Party of Germany. It's main figure, Ferdinand Lassalle, acknowledged existence of class struggle, but rejected Marx's view on state as a bourgouise aparatus. Instead, he accepted the "idea" of state, arguing that workers may actually use it in order to enhance their interests and even transform the economy. The notion that social democracy is just a "direct reaction" is outrightly wrong. I agree that social democratic movements, especially in Europe, gained montion after ww2 as a alternative path of ensuring welfare and prosperity for workers.

provisional gov fucked up big time, you can't blame their incompetence on bolshies
bolsheviks even saved Kerensky's ass from Kornilov for fuck's sake

they didn't solve the land problem, food problem, war problem
and it was their downfall eventually
reformists tried to solve russian land problem without disturbing status quo many times
Alexander II tried to solve it and was killed
Vitte tried to solve it and was hated for it
Stolypin tried it and was despised and eventually killed

Lenin said it better than anyone, power was just lying in the streets

So the Jewish nigger case was Marx way of saying A FUCKING ROSE?

I’m not defending the provisional government itself, moreso the idea of establishing a bourgeois republic before moving on to socialism, or establishing genuine proletarian democracy. My criticism of the Bolsheviks are mainly focused on their utter failure to do the latter. The thread started with the demands of the Kronstadt rebels, which had nothing to do with re-instating capitalism, the monarchy, or the provisional government. Their demands were for new elections in the organs of proletarian democracy, and the end of political repression of non-Bolshevik proletarian movements.

Could not have said it better

Yes you were, but that's besides the point. Your general thrust in here is that "bolshies bad everything else [nonspecified] good," which is to say a cheap anti-bolshevism without actually caring to mark your own position while ahistorically clinging to the predicament of Marx's time. Faggots like you are the first to betray a revolution and have the broadest array of reasons for it, it is also faggots like you who pick and chose what they like and dislike about Marx as if theory was just a potato dress up game for your ego.

The prime objective was winning the revolution with the substantiated hope that the Europeans won't fuck up theirs which they did, one by one. The Bolsheviks achieved a Pyrrhic victory, their proletarian base and communist cadre almost totally wiped out, and with no international allies in sight.

Were already addressed by several posters ITT, but you don't care about the actual historical progression of events ("lel, why didn't the bolsheviks see the future") because you are here with a liberal agenda.

Just a reminder that the time you wasted here could have been spent on reading a history book and you'd be half-way through it.

No, my point is that destroying the organs of proletarian democracy is bad, and that anybody who wants to protect those institutions is good. It’s not my fault that the Bolsheviks did the former while the Kronstadt rebels did the latter.


They lost the revolution the second they instituted one party rule and undermined the autonomy of the Soviets. So far everybody in the thread has been saying that the Bolsheviks did what they did to “save the revolution” when it’s pretty clear that their actions ultimately caused it to fail, degenerate into dictatorship, and collapse completely.


Fuck off, I’m not the one clinging to a failed SocDem regime because I’m not a damn LARPer. There is literally no defense for Bolshevik policy regarding non-Bolshevik leftist movements after the war, and considering that their policies during the war are directly responsible for the failure of the USSR to establish genuine socialism. Your reasoning is that these policies were necessary to save the revolution, but it’s pretty obvious that they didn’t fucking work, and many of them were blatantly anti-socialist on their face, so don’t give me that “hurr durr hindsight” shit.

wow i guess the bolshies should have just sat on their hands with out acting

Or they could have staged the October revolution and still allowed freedom of the press, Soviet autonomy, and the free operation of non-Bolshevik socialists who wanted to support the Red war effort.

...

but landowners of large areas of land selling grain they harvest wage labour (what happend during the nep) is

user if you don’t support one man management of factories and making it illegal for workers to organize outside of state approved channels then you’re a Menshevik crypto lib!

kronstadt uprising was mostly a left-sr anarchist thing both supported revolution. the ones who wanted to keep the provisional gov where the meshivicks

I remember hearing that some of the marines that took part in the uprising were literally the same troops that stormed the Winter Palace, and that all of the men involved were veterans of the Red Army or Soviet Navy.

The suggestion that they were reactionaries is ridiculous, even if they were disrupting the war effort. There were plenty of strikes in the US during WW2, does that mean the strikers were Nazis? Of fucking course not.

rose should now filter to jewish nigger

If you believe Voline (russian anarchist who fought in the free territory) than the Kronstadt sailors were among the first to join the bolsheviks when 1917 happened.

And all those;
is pipe-dream bullshit that would never happen in a civil war, especially not while being invaded by 11 different fucking countries. So please, Mr. anarchist, do yourself a favor and shut the fuck up before spreading your sissy bs. You're the type of person to clap while fascists are destroying Lenin's monuments. Smh my head

This is exactly what the Bolsheviks did, and what the Mencheviks couldn't have done.

Only the Bolsheviks could have done that of course.

How is that even relevant? Are you under the impression Russia was a socialist society?

...

In this particular case, it was talking about war measures. Production during the civil war massively plummeted. At no point during the civil war did Lenin pretend to try communism, because he was trying to win the revolution first.

Not trying to excuse him here, but this isn't anything about personal property vs private, because at this point there isn't anything resembling a workers state.

Tl;dr: Shit was being seized to support the war effort, not for communism.

Leninists started the counter-revolution before the Kronstadt uprising
Even today one can study the same kind of behavior from their ilk
For us socialists in the post- red bloc era; we need to wise up to this con
This time - deny the left wing of capital the power they depend on; our attention
Power to the working class; negate all forms of reified corporatism masked as proletarian dictatorship
Organize syndicated councils, regional autonomy, local defense and federate outward
Let the new era of genuine proletarian internationalism begin

Tito's implementation of Market Socialism was a joke and could barely be referred to as such.

Market Socialism cannot be implemented from the top down, the whole point of it is to decentralize the economy and put the MoP under worker control, thus giving workers power over surplus management.

The greatest failure of the MLs was their refusal to transfer the MoP to the Workers, this is the greatest reason people lost faith in state "socialism".

Like clockwork.

Bullshit, are you suggesting that in other countries they don’t have elections in the Middle of Wars? Literally all the major bourgeois powers in WW2 did, including Britain and the US. The same goes for freedom of the press, which was something basically every leftist, both Marxist and not, outside of Russia was calling for the Bolsheviks to do.

The rebels were demanding a return to democracy and genuine dictatorship of the proletariat, and because of that the Bolsheviks crushed them.

No they didn't. There were no national elections between 1935 and 1945. Local elections were suspended from 1938 to 1945. The only elections were byelections. (i.e. if a minister resigned or died, there would be an election for his seat only.) Even there, the major parties agreed not to stand against one another in those byelections.

The UK did not hold a general election until 1945, 2 months after VE day. The US did hold elections during the war, an advantage of the war literally never coming to their own shores.

libcom.org/library/the-kronstadt-uprising-ida-mett

Shit you’re right, I was under the impression that Chamberlain was voted out instead of resigning.

Even so, the US held an election in the middle of the Civil War, clearly they didn’t see war as a justification for undermining the institutions of their state.

It's a mystery.

where are the proofs :DDDD

The American Civil War was almost entirely confined to Confederate territory. The deepest major offensive the Confederacy managed into Union territory got only as far as Gettysburg in southern Pennsylvania and lasted only a month.

This is of course ignoring the fact that the Bolsheviks were also initially supported by the Germans. I guess we should stand with the Tsar against German imperialism right?


This is of course ignoring the fact that there would have been no rebellion of the Bolsheviks had allowed free elections to the Soviets, freedom of the press, political freedoms for socialists, and free association for workers and proletarian movements.


And? It was still waged within the territory claimed by the US, and the entire region was much smaller than the theatres of war in Russia.

You're ignoring how different military strategy and technology was back then as opposed to in World War 2.

So what about the Russian Civil War made it impossible to have elections?

You obviously don't know anything about the Russian Civil War or Bolsheviks if your first question for me is already so wrong. Do you even expect an answer if you're already this lost and ignorant on this?

Sounds like a cop out to me. There must have been some factors that made it impossible to have elections to the Soviets during the war. What were they?

It was great and all, but at that point in time, it would be either impossible to enact or would entail the collapse not just of the Soviet government, but of Russia itself. Sorry.

The circumstances determined that it was the right course of action.

Clearly it was the wrong course of action because the actions of the Bolsheviks in this case were directly responsible for the degeneration of socialism in Russia.

they had elections for the soviets earlier in the war when things where even more perilous

This means the infrastructure needed to conduct a national election remained intact in US territory at the time, roads and railways continued to operate without the interfere and disruption of enemy forces. By contrast the Russian Civil War caused large scale devastation to existing infrastructure, Pravda noted by the end of the war that the railways could barely operate, and what use they could be had to be reserved for moving troops. Cities were choked with refugees during the war, another issue the Union did not have to deal with when organizing their elections. The logistics for conducting elections simply did not exist at the time, certainly not without drawing on resources desperately needed for the war effort and for humanitarian relief

Then why did they not allow multi-party elections after the war? Or at least lift the ban on factions within the party?

Or for that matter see to the other demands like the right of workers to organize outside of state approved channels, or freedom of the press?

Yes I wonder why a party that had to resort to unpopular policies to ensure its survival didn't play the bourgeois popularity game that could very well have seen them ousted and more likely than not lined up against a wall.

Surely your judo grip on Marxism can give you the answer, iww brainlet.

...

It's adorable how philistines love to discredit everything and anything from the Russian experience, from the abolition of the family to the act of revolution itself, to show how "it turned out 2 be a failure lul". The fact of the matter is that sustaining "proletarian class-rule" in Russia would not have been a problem to the slightest if not for the reality that they were a demographic minority, and the inability to reconcile this problem is what led to the destruction of the proletarian dictatorship. Your notion of power is already infantile, however: Class rule IS NOT the literal, active rule of everyone who fits a certain criteria, it amounts to the existence of power contingent upon its approximation to definite social realities, upon its approximation to certain social formations. This is why we can say Germany was a bourgeois state in the 1930's, even if the state wasn't built upon bribery and corruption by their money. Production exists for its own sake.

That’s the fucking point I’ve been making this entire thread! Russia was not a developed capitalist society, ergo according to the Marxist progression of history it was not suitable for the implementation of socialism. Which is why I defended the concept of a bourgeois revolution or implementing more prole friendly capitalism while the means of production develop and create the proletariat as a majority class. If the only options for the Bolsheviks were degeneration into oligarchy or total collapse, then it’s proof of their failure to understand the historical conditions of Russia, and their ultimate failure to build socialism.

except there where elections to the soviets in 1917. when the situation was alot worse than it was in 1921.

...

You are intentionally distorting Serge's words. Serge was in favor of amnesty for the Kronstadt rebels.

"The final
assault was unleashed by Tukhachevsky on 17 March, and culminated
in a daring victory over the impediment of the ice. Lacking any quali­
fied officers, the Kronstadt sailors did not know how to employ their
artillery; there was, it is true, a former officer named Kozlovsky among
them, but he did little and exercised no authority. Some of the rebels
managed to reach Finland. Others put up a furious resistance, fort by
fort and street by street; they stood and were shot crying “Long live
the world revolution!” There were some of them who died shouting
Long live the Communist International!” Hundreds of prisoners
were taken away to Petrograd and handed to the Cheka; months later
they were still being shot in small batches, a senseless and criminal
agony. Those defeated sailors belonged body and soul to the Revolu­
tion; they had voiced the suffering and the will of the Russian people;
the NEP had proved that they were right; and, finally, they were pris­
oners of war, civil war, and the Government had for a long time prom­
ised an amnesty to its opponents on condition that they offered their
support. This protracted massacre was either supervised or permitted
by Dzerzhinsky."

Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, pg 153

Marx really didn't stand behind that interpretation of a deterministic model of progression.
marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol01/no04/marx.htm
hiaw.org/defcon6/works/1881/03/zasulich1.html

Also when you read over the original post it seems to be taken out of context.


In other words, what he’s saying here is that reactionaries interpreted these demands as being anti-socialist, not that they actually were anti socialist.

Maybe so, but it doesn’t take a genius to realize that the dictatorship of the proletariat is not viable in a county where the proletariat are in the minority.

It wasn't just taken out of context, it's meaning was intentionally reversed by doing so.

True. Which is why Marx thought that the peasant communes could implement existing productive technology in a communal fashion without having to convert the peasantry into proles.

Are you stupid? No, really? Are you? You are regurgitating Menshevik anti-communist propaganda here and yet you argue ITT that you are not a Menshevik-fag.

Germany didn't "support" the Bolsheviks, they merely allowed Lenin&co. passage because they hoped it would weaken their enemy.
This is from the fucking wiki on Lenin, this is the bare minimum you should read before starting a thread like this.

>The Provisional Government as a whole, however, took revenge in a much more perfidious way: the next day, it began a slanderous campaign that described Lenin — who had reached Russia by traveling through Germany in a sealed train — as an agent of the German General Staff.
jacobinmag.com/2017/07/russian-revolution-bolshevik-party-july-days

If you can't separate historical topics from your current butthurt with this board, well, this shows your intellectual level, friend. Let's make it official, then. You are stupid.

They also sent them guns and money. However I’m not so stupid as to think that this makes the Bolsheviks agents of German imperialism, I was making fun of the people who imply that because the Kronstadt rebels had support from western powers that made them agents of western powers.

jstor.org/stable/2625787

...

Do you have a copy of that book or did you just google and paste one of the first results that satisfied your angle? Don't even answer.

Similarly I can't access this one jstor.org/stable/150283?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents that is in part a direct response to your book, however I found several citations and articles relying on it. Notably:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Parvus#cite_ref-20 (Parvus is the supposed agent to have funneled the money.)

and this comrade's two articles that rely on multiple texts dealing with the topic:
louisproyect.org/2017/06/17/did-the-kaiser-fund-the-bolsheviks/
louisproyect.org/2017/07/22/boris-souvarine-no-the-kaiser-did-not-fund-the-bolsheviks/

From the latter note Boris Souvarine's long letter that deconstructs and completely shatters the "funding narrative."

Wtf is wrong with these people

Marx specifically said that after the French revolution there was never again a need for bouj revolutions against feudalism, for Russia and other third world colonial countries Marx advocated New Democracy and Mass Line

M8 there are literally German sources stating that they were sending support to the Bolsheviks. From the JSTOR article I posted…


The sources you posted focus primarily on the alleged cash sent to Lenin himself, whereas it is recognized that Lenin may not have been aware of the German origins of funds. Pic related is a German foreign office document stating that the support for the Bolsheviks was carried out by the German government.

That doesn’t mean I’m claiming that Lenin was a German agent, he clearly wasn’t. But the Bolsheviks did receive German support initially.

Stop playing games, post the book itself.

I don’t have it, it’s on JSTOR and I can’t save it to my phone.

Aren’t those Maoist concepts?

Because at the time that would have ruined the bolsheviks hold on the situation and the whites would have won.

source?

That's… wrong.

Everybody keeps saying this but I see no justification for it, or why there was any good reason to not hold elections apart from what Hoxha user said about there not being the infrastructure to carry out an election. Even if what you’re saying is true, it doesn’t explain why the Bolsheviks failed to hold elections, relax press restrictions, or remove the ban on party factions after the war.

Jesus, try reading a book on the Civil War. The Left SRs were in a Coalition government with the Bolsheviks, and the Mensheviks refused to be involved in a purely Socialist government, whilst the Makhnovites only pop up once the war is well underway.

By searching for phrases in that document I found it and a foreword by none other than George Katkov. Often speaking in conditionals, he finally concludes his introduction with:
man-with-dogs.livejournal.com/599185.html
>Will the German Archives throw a light on whether or how far Lenin was aware of the fact ? The content of the high-level document here reproduced seems to indicate that detailed research into the lower strata of German-Bolshevik contacts would prove rewarding.
Which is the exact task Alfred Erich Senn (in .pdf related) takes up, looking at the candidates Katkov names for the hypothetical link between the Germans and Lenin. Senn's conclusions: the list of names include a con-artist, a double-agent, a german spy that proves to be "an expensive failure" (for the Germans, that is), an agent that "discovered [and directly reported on – so he claimed] Lenin" who in reality just offered a summary to his contractors about one of Lenin's articles, etc. Senn notes how when in 1915 the Bolsheviks found out about a Russian émigré paper in Paris was funded by Germany they stopped supporting it. In closing Senn notes that he basically did what Katkov asked, but that involves only looking at the first possible period for a collusion. Since further documents or even hints are not presented for this case he argues that it is essentially inconclusive and advises for adopting a skeptical stance.

is this what you were posting? I grabbed it off jstor myself just now

Not to mention that the Makhnovites were offered a "platform," twice even, in the form of a military alliance both times ending tragically, but contrary to paranoid and ridiculously simplified anarchist narratives neither side was perfect, and both side had their fair share of bitter animosities that undermined the cooperation: Makhno's agitprop aimed at the soldiers of the Red Army encouraging them to defect, or Trotsky's accusation of Makhno being an anti-semite comes to mind.

War is not a game and OP is still deep in la-la-land.

Yeah that’s it.

Skepticism is fine, but asserting that any claim that the Bolsheviks took German money makes you a crypto lib like people seem to think is stupid. I honestly wouldn’t support them any more or less even if they had taken support from the Germans, since it’s not the reason why I’m critical of them.

As Senn notes in his last paragraph: there is a long lived tendency to try to fit anything into the collusion narrative in hopes to "erase the revolution". Your whole post history ITT is about relativizing the Bolshevik's aims, methods, legitimacy, etc. thus suspect of this very striving. What creates the distinct impression of this is your all too eager adherence to the Menshevik's victimhood status (sad_violin.mp3). Despite your contradictory positions on them, they were the first to forge documents for political purposes on the collusion narrative – the Sisson Documents –, a narrative that was later readily adopted by Russian nationalist (the Germans sent le jooz on us to rule over us) and Western liberals (le it wasnt real revolution).

I just assumed you fitted more in the latter category, but do tell if you are a Russian.

My post history throughout this entire thread has been criticizing the Bolsheviks for quashing freedom of the press, banning factions within the party, muscling the other parties out of the state and implementing single party rule, barring workers from organizing independently, and suppressing non-Bolshevik worker’s movements. The collusion between Germany and the Bolsheviks is irrelevant to my points, it came up in response to the argument that the Kronstadt rebels had western support, but was never a core issue until one person sperged out about it.

If you want to talk about why the Bolsheviks did all the blatantly anti-democratic, anti-socialist, anti-proletarian shit they did, and whether or not there was a justification for it then fine. But he German issue is beating a dead horse at this point.

Yeah, yeah. You wan't a revolution without a revolution. We got it. Next.

...

No I want a revolution, not to trade one ruling elite for another. I would be willing to concede the necessity of Bolshevik authoritarianism if it produced the desired results. Dictatorship of the proletariat, abolition of class rule, etc. But it didn’t. Instead it just degenerated into another porky state that doubled as a gigantic boogeyman to scare proles away from socialism, and made the entire Left a laughing stock when it collapsed from the internal contradictions set in motion by the Bolsheviks when they failed to actually implement proletarian democracy. It unironically would have done more good by just collapsing right away, at least then it would have been a martyr like the Paris commune.

And how did the historical conditions necessitate what the Bolsheviks did? user’s have already pointed out that there were elections earlier in the war, and plenty of Marxists at the time thought that freedom of the press was perfectly doable. And once again, the Bolsheviks failed to reverse any of their shit policies after the war was done.

Thanks fam, I'll give that a read.

Soviet Union was more libertarian than either Russian Empire or the Russian Federation. Next time, no destalinization and escalation of war with imperialists, k?

Artist doesn't know the basics of caricature.

This is absurd. If it produced "the desired results", we wouldn't be arguing about it in the first place.

And? The justification for the authoritarian policies of the Bolsheviks is that they were necessary to preserve the revolution and socialism. But that argument only makes sense if the Soviet Union was able to establish socialism and actually last, which it didn’t.

They were necessary, not sufficient.

The artist on purpose tried to portray Lenin as the left portrayed capitalists at the time if I had to take a guess.

And buy a big ass jar of kraft mayo?

Let me translate this question of yours into an affirmative statement on the state of your knowledge relating to the history of the Russian revolution: ''I do not know what the historical conditions were!'" Mind you, this would be completely acceptable if you were open about it, and didn't jump to (typically anti-communist) conclusions based on abstract principles and liberal hysteria.

Victor Serge's memoir was already mentioned in this thread. For convenience's sake I'll rely on it to illustrate my point. Forgive me for not copying the text (I'll printscreen parts of it and provide the page number), my reason for this being that the copy of the book is so shitty that it fucks up when pasted. Nevertheless you are invited to read the broader textual context.

This part is indicative of the state of the general populace. We first and foremost should note how contemporary commentators (you included) have an ahistorical view based on the present state of things. In 1921 Russia (a huge, huge territory) didn't have radio, TV, internet, etc. and this had severe consequences not just on the propaganda arms of each faction, not just on the war effort, but on the temporary tactics and overarching strategies, including so called "press freedom". But back to the populace. This part shows how severely the locals were so malnourished and immiserated by 1921 that their opinions would shift based not on "reasoned debate" (tips fedora) like it is assumed in our normal contemporary bourgeois democratic setting, but followed any and all sources that could corroborate its position by providing the bare minimum requirements of existence. Conversely, this shows that the Kronstadt rebellion in its origins weren't primarily due to reasoned critiques of the central government, far from it, it was an immiserated state in which any narrative that could provide a reason for our immiseration received popular support.

cont.

Yet Serge, noting his totally legitimate ambivalence towards the central government, ultimately decides to stay in the party and wrote pic related. What revolutionary in such dire state should not question the official government line?

The Bolsheviks offered an ultimatum as the leading revolutionary central force should when faced with comrades who at the current conjuncture are more influenced by misery and want then revolutionary discipline. The disgusting (that is, judged from the position of peace) wording of Trotsky ("rabbits") should be viewed as a warning that is an exemplary warning

Note the word "fraternicide." Yes, this is true. Serge says that (quite ironically) while the politburo was sketching the NEP, the Kronsdadt rebels were naming the same demands, yet the origin of the two are different. For the central gov. this was a position reached from the war room, for the rebels this was reached from the position of easily manipulated misery. The revolution eats its children, the question is who remains on top.

Serge is completely aware of the objective forces contained in the historical conjuncture. The Kronsradt rebel's shift from "new election of the soviets" to "soviets without communism" means the objective betrayal of the revolution itself.

Literally liberalism – the post. There's no elite. There are classes, bourgeois and proletariat, and parties/movements representing objective class interests: Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks had bankers in the government, the Bolsheviks paved the way for a proletarian alternative.
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm

Highly recommended, fam. Makhno was a great leader, much better then your usual anarchist in early 20th century Russia (or even today): he hated the typically impotent urban anarchists of his time and actually got shit done. Of course he was full of flaws, just like every revolutionary leader.

As an ex-ancom I can only add this: the future of anarcho-communism (IMO every other anarcho-whateverism is a joke) rests on adopting platformism. Each and every idiotic current will cease to exist and will be proved unattainable on the organizational level.

LONG LIVE MAKHNO
FUCK CONTEMPORARY ANARCHISTS

disbanding military and private ownership of cattle. probably. because surely it couldn't have been the elections, riiiight?

platformism is full of fail and aids, so no thanks

that's why anarchists are more dependable to sniff out ruling class and its bullshit. MLs are in the end, just red liberals in denial.

I would shit all over bolshevik authoritarianism even if it produced results, brainlets don't get to bask in glory.

Yes, buying food items in big volumes instead of many small volumes is absolutely dialectical!

Such an interesting opinion. Care to substantiate it? (Of course you won't, more importantly: can't!) Makhno realized at the very beginning that "anarcho-individualists" were complete trash as far as politics goes. They'd rather see the revolution fail rather than move the little finger on their toes. Then he realized that the urbanite "anarchists" were complete trash too, they sustained themselves on the basis of opposing anything and everything. No shock that Makhno came to the realization that for an anarchist movement to work they needed a platform that at least shared the absolute minimum of aims.

What are you, anyway? Assume your flag, ya complete fag.

Your posts are so full of bullshit it’s not even funny. First of all, your statement that the Bolsheviks were the most progressive force among the proletariat is objectively false, since it was doing very little to advance the cause of working class rule. The party itself was in firm control of the Soviets, did not allow factionalism or splits within the party, thus abolishing working class democracy. Their authoritarian methods, supposedly introduced as necessary to maintain the revolution during the war, were tightened, not removed, after the war ended. Not only that, but they did away with workplace democracy when they instituted one man management policies. Their actions were blatantly anti-proletarian on their face.

The argument that the rebels were acting based on immediate conditions of poverty may be true, but then that only means that the Bolsheviks refused to negotiate with the workers and soldiers (whose interests they supposedly represented) over a legitimate grievance like access to basic goods. That hurts more than helps your position honestly, it shows that the Bolsheviks would rather meet legitimate dissent with force rather than diplomacy.


Except that’s not what the demands were. Serge himself says “the popular counter-revolution translated the demands”, as in reactionaries saw an anti-Bolshevik movement and automatically assumed it was anti-communist, he doesn’t say that the demands of the rebels were anti communist. In fact according to
Serge himself didn’t see the rebels as counter-revolutionaries.


Jesus fucking Christ change your flag because clearly you haven’t read any books.

What exactly is wrong with one-party dictatorship. Following a Marxist analysis, political parties are the representatives and tools of economic classes. Since capitalism is a chaotic, highly competitive society with different capitalist interests constantly fighting each other for market share and dominance, multiple political parties makes sense. But in a socialist state, ie a dictatorship of the proletariat, there is only one class - the working class, and the working class has no reason to compete between each other as they all have the same economic interests. So what is wrong with the working class being completely united into one compact political organization?

Multiple parties means multiple classes.

I agree completely. "Pluralists" base their position on an "all-encompassing" (that is: populist) vision of society and not on a class basis, i.e. they are not Marxists in any way.

No it doesn’t. It’s possible for a single class to be represented by more than one party. Both the democrats and republicans are parties of the bourgeoisie for example. Therefore it’s possible to have multiple parties of the working class.

In the case of a one party state, the success or failure of the proletarian revolution and democracy rests on the internal integrity of that single party. If it is compromised the entire revolution is compromised.

Rather typical opinion of a liberal. I'm actually glad you shared it so that others may learn from it. Your theoretical confusion shall stand as an example for others, bless your soul. ;_;

The pluralist regime is a sham, you absolute fucktard. There is only one actual party in every so called "democratic" country, and the apparent multitude of parties serve an ideological function: the illusion of "choice." Yes, they campaign on different platforms, yes, they get donations from different factions from the bourgeoisie, nevertheless, they get it from one single class and when they get into power they always negotiate with bankers, capitalists, "entrepreneurs". "Compromising governments" so far have only won concessions for the working people while still accepting the rules dictated by our owners. There can be no other rule of thumb: a new government – however idealist – will always strive for the most powerful allies, and that will always be the ruling class. Bernie would have been no different.

So now that your main premise has been debunked let's move on to the rest of your diarrhea.

The corrupt nature of your premise rests on this: you compare the status quo ante with the revolutionary government by the standards of the former. How. Fucking. Dare. You.

>your statement that the Bolsheviks were the most progressive force among the proletariat
Victor Serge's*. Do you even read the shit you are replying to, my god?

Are you developmentally challenged?

Lol, Russia was a giant fucking battleground, the Bolsheviks would have crushed ANYONE who rose up, no matter their professed "ideology", because they had to hold onto power. Even if some ultra-Marxist group rose up saying that the Bolsheviks were too soft and more bourgeoise needed to be killed, they would of crushed them too.

You guys are ridiculous, the Kronstadt demands meant nothing, it's just words, in ACTIONS the Kronstadt rebels were aiding the counter-revolution.

So many goddamn idealists on this board.

If I were OP, around the first quarter of this thread I would have started to feel a sense of deep shame and would have retreated into silence. Thank God I'm a psychopath and hence incapable of self-reflection, tho.

Yeah wow it’s almost like different factions of the bourgeoisie are in competition with each other and no class are monolithic in its interests.


Where did I say I was a SocDem? I want a revolution, but I want that revolution to be genuine and actually last. There’s nothing wrong with multiple parties in a socialist state representing different views for the best path forward as long as they all accept the basic premises of socialism. Even a single party isn’t necessarily bad, so long as it allows free debate among members and the right to vote their conscience, but at that point you might as well just abolish parties altogether.


I compare governments based on the standard of what they do to advance the cause of working class self governance and socialism. No more no less.

D E V E L O P M E N T A L
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Holla Forums tier

By this point I'm beyond kidding. I think you legit have to suffer from some kind of physical challenge to keep on going. Look at all the responses you got, all the BTFO's your thread accumulated, all the corrections you received, all the posts that pointed out how you lack even the most basic assessment of what you are supposedly talking about, all the logical flaws you committed. The sheer amount of these would make humble any average autistic faggot, but not you, no, you are a special one with a mission. With every post you make yourself look worse.

Get help.

M8 all of the responses so far have been arguing that the Bolshevik authoritarianism was necessary for the revolution to succeed, without acknowledging the fact that

A) The revolution didn’t succeed, it degenerated, stagnated, and collapsed.
B) Those authoritarian policies entailed the abolition of socialism by abolishing proletarian democracy. Meaning that if the choice was between abandoning socialism or immediate collapse, that the material conditions in Russia were not suitable for socialist revolution. That means that the October Revolution was ultimately a huge fuckup, and that a period of bourgeois democracy, for all its flaws, was the necessary next step to bringing about socialism in Russia.

These have been my two points throughout the thread and so far nobody has actually addressed them.

...

So would you say that Nazi Germany wasn't real capitalism/dictatorship of the bourgeoisie because the NSDAP suppressed every other party? Why does every member of a class need to consent somehow to to the way in which their own class rule is exercised to be legitimate?
Anyway, in the end it obviously doesn't matter who the proles vote for/the capitalists give support to, because in the end there still exists the state machine which is protecting the status quo. This state is an inherently oppressive thing which can never be truly legitimate in itself, no matter how many empty choices are presented to us within its boundaries, so we might as well use it to its fullest extent when the revolution is in danger. Self governance and other meaningless platitudes doesn't matter at all when you have to fight a civil war or the economy requires labor discipline to be enforced.

I should probably clarify my position on the issue of the use of state power. I’m not an anarchist or a liberal, I’ll put porkies, fascists, and anybody else against the wall to get the job done, because short term destruction for long term freedom is better than long term slavery. What I’m arguing is that not only did the authoritarianism of the Bolsheviks fail to ensure that freedom, it ultimately was the reason why the Soviet Union failed.

Now if I’ve been ignorant regarding the material or logistical viability of the rebel demands then fine, I’ll concede that. But it still doesn’t absolve the Bolsheviks of their utter failure to re-instate the core institutions of socialism following the war’s conclusion. It also doesn’t change the fact that if the choice is between immediate collapse of the Soviet state or the abandonment of socialism, the revolution is lost either way.

Retardation +1. EDUCATE YOURSELF for the sake of class struggle you faggot.