I think Lenin was the revisionist...: Let's cut to the chase, your endless revisionism is getting tedious...
: 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.
For them, they did it *for* them, as Lenin himself said, if the Bolsheviks hadn't done it, we'd have had to wait 500 years for the workers to do it themselves - when did teh workers get to vote for the October uprising? Trotsky is quite clear, they did not procede by a vote at the soviet, but the bolsheviks acted of their own initiative. Lenin's model was 'Jabocibins indisolubly connected to teh class conscious sections of the working class', Jacobins, i.e. a small band who make the revolution for us - I heard a trotskyist on one of our tapes put it thus, the other day - picture teh revolution as being like a surfer, riding the wave, the workers were that wave, the vanguard party the surfer, controling his own fate, providing teh afdequate revolutionary leadership.
: Note your continuing use of the same UNSUBSTANTIATED Trotsky one-liner again and again, the whole edifice of your prejudice against the Bolsheviks.
That quote is from Lenin's what is to be done, my exact source is a Rosa Luxemburg Pamphlet published by the ILP entitled 'Marxism or Leninism', but which is a translatuion of her 'Questions of tactics in Russian SOcial Demociracy' (IIRC).
: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).
LENIN! Said that, it is a line from lenin, and one I have seen leninist organisations use to describe their theories often enough to know its a well known phrase...
: Revolution without violence? RD, you really can spin anything, can't you?
Yes, we can have a revolution without violence, because we can make it quite plain that we are an *overwhelming* majority, that there is no going back, that we are conscious and determined - and we can use political democracy to prevent the state using lethal force against us, and disable it. Look, we are 90% of the population - despite your feeble attempts to define a middle class (look, plumbers, car mechanics, bus and train drivers are all skilled and unproductive, yet everyone considers them working class). Violence is the preferred tool of tiny minorities who want to impose their will....
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: 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)
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If thats Communist League stuff its fairly early, pre the failures of 1848, and largely concentrating on a Germany where teh proles were in a minority, and a French style of revolution would be necessary (don't forget, Germany hadn't as yet had its bourgeois revolution,a nd Charlie and Fred were talking about the workers making the bourgeoise revolution for them).
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: 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)And better still is to organise to pre-empt and prevent that counter revolution, by ensuring working class solidarity (after all, only workers would die in a civil war, unless you imagine massed ranks of capitalists charging across the field), by ensuring an unstopable majority.
: 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.
When has the capitalist class 8ever* been faced by the conscious and determined working class revolution? How could they hope to return workers to a system that requires their *willing* co-operation - you cannot make accountants work with a gun at their head, much less scientists, computer programmers, etc. You cannot raise violence up as teh first principle of teh revolution.
Note to Chuck; Marx was referring to the presence of pollitical democracy, and the lack of bureaucratic dictaorship, as per france, we have pollitical democracy still, its worth trying to organise that way to at least try and avoid violence.
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