Stoller: Now, hurry up, RD, and turn all these explicit quotes into equivocal, liberal mush...And, as expected, RD, you do just that...
Let's cut to the chase, your endless revisionism is getting tedious...
: But note, no-where there does [Engels] say that those 'leaders' should form a vanguard to execute teh revolution *for* the workers, who couldn't otehrwise do so. Such leaders are leaders in thought and ideas, the conscious communists who point the way, etc.
And so it was during the October Revolution. Your consistent error is your belief that the Bolsheviks 'form[ed] a vanguard to execute teh revolution *for* the workers,' that's an untruth. As their land policy, and the consequent N.E.P., aptly demonstrated, the Bolsheviks followed the impulses of the populace.
: But not *making* them, not in Trotsky's sense of the revoultion being made by the minority, and certainly not Lenin's 'jacobins indissolubly *linked* with teh class conscious section of the working class" (note the shift in that quote from yours above...)
Note your continuing use of the same UNSUBSTANTIATED Trotsky one-liner again and again, the whole edifice of your prejudice against the Bolsheviks. Again: let's see the WHOLE quote IN CONTEXT, or withdraw it, thank you. I could fill pages with quotes of Trotsky saying the opposite (and I have, to little effect).
: Well, if I killed your father, you wouldn't like me very much, so our social bonds would be destroyed; if our social bonds are destroyed I'd lose your support, so its counter productive, because each death will lose more support than it gains; and food, and resources are fairly necessary, and war squanders them hideously, so its wasteful.
Marx and Engels:
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution.(1)
: And that does not imply any violence, merely revolution, which, for the dispossessed ruling class will be a tremble worthy quote.
Revolution without violence? RD, you really can spin anything, can't you?
And to repeat the point (brought up by Chuck):
During the conflict and immediately after the struggle, the workers must counteract, above all things and in so far as it is possible, bourgeois appeals for peace by forcing the Democrats to carry out themselves their present terroristic phrases. They must strive so that the revolutionary excitement immediately manifesting itself is not suppressed again immediately after the victory. On the contrary they must manitain it as long as possible. Far from coming out against the so-called excesses (instances of popular revenge against hated individuals or public buildings which are bound up with hated reminscences) it is not merely necessary to tolerate these examples, but it will be necessary to take them into the... hands [of the Communist League] and direct them... If the proletarian democracy comes out in the very beginning with determination and with terroristic acts against the reaction the influence of the reaction at the elections will moreover be destroyed in advance.(2)
Hence, Trotsky:
The man who repudiates terrorism in principle---i.e., repudiates measures of suppression and intimidation towards determined and armed counter-revolution, must reject all idea of the political supremacy of the working-class and its revolutionary dictatorship. The man who repudiates the dictatorship of the proletariat repudiates the socialist revolution, and digs the grave of socialism.(3)
IMPORTANT NOTE: None of this is intended to be a glorification of war or terror or any of the very ugly measures that accompany all revolutions. Personally, I'd prefer to see the capitalist minority 'come around' and surrender their militias and missiles when the overwhelming proletariat finally confronts them. However, as this would constitute a historical aberration, communists should not expect such easy going! Instead, in order to be honest, they must inform the workers that the struggle for class rule WILL be a violent struggle. To expect otherwise is foolishly utopian and / or disingenuous.
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Notes:
1. Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, International 1948, p. 44.
2. Marx, 'First Address of the Central Committee of the Communist League to its Members in Germany,' Germany: Revolution and Counter-Revolution, International 1933, p. 141 & 143-4, emphasis added.
3. Trotsky, The Defence of Terrorism, Allen & Unwin1935, pp. 23-4.
None.
