The Red and BlackBoard

Kwa-zululand wrote:

I have to disagree a little bit. I'll try and break down what i mean in my response.....
"Lenin used the terror in the revolution to establish the bolsheviks power, while Stalin went on pointless killing rampages all over the ussr"
The scale may have been somewhat different, but methods were far too similar. Millions of people (ordinary soldiers, workers, and peasants as well as so-called 'opponents') died as a result of Bolshevik policies (what they called War Communism i believe) after their coup in October (i refuse to call it a revolution, since it was really the Bolsheviks seizing power for themselves from the top, and not a revolution emerging in support of them from below which overthrew the Tzar. It seems that to the Bolshevik Party, and Lenin too, the slogan of 'All Power to the Soviets' really meant, in their eyes as well as the eyes of their other Left-leaning allies and opponents, 'All Power to the Bolsheviks'). The persecution of dissent and political opponents by the Cheka, famine in the countryside as a result of grain and seed confiscation, and suppression of revolts by other left-leaning forces as well as 'White sympathizers' alike lead to these millions of lives as well as the destruction of Russia.
Stalin's policies were not just 'pointless killing rampages', but planned and organized policies of rapid Industrialization (since the Communists took power in an agrarian country, not ideal for a Proletarian revolution according to Marx), forced Collectivization (to provide food for the industrial workers), and De-Kulakization (the killing/exiling of 'Kulaks', peasants that might have been a little better off than the average peasant, who were accused of hoarding grain, killing livestock, sabotaging harvests, etc.). Such policies, to to mention the Purges and WW2, lead to the endless deaths of millions of people via famine, poverty, bullets (executions), and forced labour (not unfamiliar to the early Bolsheviks, but on a larger scale).
"Lenin wanted to prevent the russians from the hazards of WW1 and settled with the germans"
... I dont disagree that Russia had to get out of WW1, but unfortunately, Lenin plunged the country into an even more costly, more bloody, and far more brutal Civil War after getting out of WW1 (you cannot completely blame Bolshevik opponents for resisting violently when the Bolsheviks were already using violence to secure their power). Sort of undermines the 'peace' part of his 'Peace, Bread, and Land' slogan.
"while stalin even negotiated with Hitler to invade poland together"
You mean their 'non-aggression pact', part of which included partitioning Poland between them as well as the annexing of some Eastern European countries by the USSR? Again, not too unfamiliar, since the Bolsheviks negotiated with the Germans after 1917, giving up large chunks of land in what was Western Russia in exchange for 'peace' (and then immediate Civil War afterward, as i mentioned before).
"Lenin also, after the party was established, relied less and less on terror, compared to the revolution times."
Perhaps so. Then again, its a little difficult to terrorize your enemies after you've already killed, imprisoned, and or exiled them. The rest of the people in Russia were simply struggling with survival during that time to make any mass effort to topple Bolshevik power. For example, Stalin's purges also died down after most of his 'opponents' (or anyone thought to be an opponent) were killed between 1936-38, not reaching as large of a scale (that is, not until the slaughter of WW2, and even afterwards the killings were not at the same scale as that initial Great Purge).
"Plus we can add that Lenin also wrote in his testemony, that he can't support the views of stalin and that he is to violent and rude. I can see in what ways lenin is related to the stalin times, but i still don't think stalin was the nescesary follow-up to lenin. If he could have chosen, he would have definitly chosen someone else."
True, Lenin did think poorly of Stalin, (he even wanted him removed from his positions of power just before he died). Also, from what i thought, he might have wanted Trotsky or someone like that to take his place. But Stalin, using the Bolshevik Party-system Lenin created, had grown too powerful for even Lenin to stop him.
So overall, I don't think Stalin would have done what he did, had it not been for the rottenness of the early years of Bolshevik reign under Lenin

Well written comrade. It can also be summed up as: Even if Lenin and Stalin were benevolent fathers of the proles. One person dictatorship or Party Aristocracy is inexcusable. This notion of divine right to rule, or vanguard party is intolerable even in its most utopian incarnation.

Council democratic republics wrote:

Well written comrade. It can also be summed up as: Even if Lenin and Stalin were benevolent fathers of the proles. One person dictatorship or Party Aristocracy is inexcusable. This notion of divine right to rule, or vanguard party is intolerable even in its most utopian incarnation.

Thank you, comrade! And your summary is quite good too. The Vanguard Party idea really just replaces one ruling class (the bourgeoisie) with another (the Party bureaucrats). The key fault of any benevolent dictatorship is the 'dictatorship' part: if they are a dictator, what is to stop them from ceasing their 'benevolence'?

Aceics wrote:

Transemilia lives in the states as well.

I didn't mean to imply he didn't, I actually don't know where most people here live. My point was that he claimed a factually wrong statement when evidence and law within the states shows otherwise.

It's impossible to provide education without political bias, so even if there is some kind of law (idk about US law) I doubt people would be severely prosecuted. Teachers say stuff like that all the time, most are probably just a little more subtle.

Breaking with the topic, if I forked an operating system for not depending anymore (or not being bothered by) on the state or enterprises, would be willing to use it?
With that I mean, the same we can do know with our desktop computers, but anonymous developers and contributions to the source, all can be reviewed and we can replace the central servers for a distributed darknet with social networking and server capabilities.

Would you make the effort of leaving the actual social networks, central servers (like Nationstates and Google) and learning a bit? First it would lack options because of the lack of content and people, but everything could be replaced progressively with more people. Although I know software isn't enough for the purpose, but it's one of the necessary steps.

Rubyna wrote:

What of Maoism, Leninism, Stalinism, and Trotskyism among other forms of attempted communism? Although, I would understand if you would argue Stalinism is not at all related to communism, but there are apparently different viewpoints on how to achieve communism built upon but despite of those preached by Marx.
Now, on anarchism. There can be capitalist anarchism in the economic sense, and in fact, one could argue that the point of pure capitalism is to create a society free of regulation and interventionism.
So what do you align yourself more closely with? What form of government or economic system?

I used to be marxist and luxembourgist, nowadays I'm not sure

Syrian rebels may have committed war crimes in Aleppo – Amnesty
Syrian rebels may have committed war crimes in their bombardment of a Kurdish-controlled area of Aleppo, killing dozens of innocent civilians, according to Amnesty International.
https://www.rt.com/news/342906-syrian-rebels-war-crimes/

Hello comrades!

Aufrechte wrote:

NINTENDO ACTUALLY TWEETED THIS NOTHING IS UNCORRUPTED BY CAPITALISM
http://i.imgur.com/tp3P8Ii.png

Ouh sh*t here comes dat boy😂

Kwa-zululand wrote:

Thank you, comrade! And your summary is quite good too. The Vanguard Party idea really just replaces one ruling class (the bourgeoisie) with another (the Party bureaucrats). The key fault of any benevolent dictatorship is the 'dictatorship' part: if they are a dictator, what is to stop them from ceasing their 'benevolence'?

That is the issue with pretty much any political system: humans. We ourselves make it improbable that a system will ever work to the best of its capabilities, because we want more and always will, from dictators having complete control and having noone to stand against them, to an anarchy where one will drag others down for their own gain. That is why it is all about finding a balance, and a way to remove as much bias from ourselves when it comes to running the country.

Council democratic republics wrote:

Professional politician or professional revolutionary = Professional masters. No thanks.
Hello, this isn't very Red or Black. No its not the issue with every political system. Instead of writing off human development past "country" phase, cause humans are greedy. You are throwing away the baby with the bathwater. Political systems are only there to serve humans, not humans to realize arbitrary political systems. Why don't you set the bar lower than "the best" to relatively harmonious human society that provides a dignified live for every one.

I think you read into my post a bit too much. I never said all is bad because we cannot reach 'the best', I am just saying that we as a species need to work towards something to benefit us all, which will be difficult but not impossible. It isn't JUST greed that holds us back, either. Yes, that is pretty much the aim of any system... any fair and just system, anyway.

What always amuses me in debates about the vanguard party is that everyone is a vanguardist to some degree whether they acknowledge it or not.

A vanguard, in military terms, is simply a group that is moving forward ahead of the mass of troops, the first line if the advance as it were. Does such a phenomena exist in politics? Obviously yes: not everyone is a revolutionary at the present moment, but some people- who Gramsci would describe as the organic intellectuals- are. It's simply true that not everyone accepts revolutionary ideas at the same time and that in, normal periods, most people operate within the limits of the hegemonic ideology and there is only a relatively small revolutionary minority, a vanguard if you will.

What then is the task of this revolutionary minority? To throw its hands up in the air and sit around waiting for the proletarian masses to arrive at its position? I don't think anyone would advocate that. Instead the task of revolutionaries becomes one of education and organization. Revolutionaries must educate both themselves and the mass of people as much as possible. Likewise we must organize to disseminate revolutionary ideas- newspapers and websites don't publish themselves, for instance- and effective organization mandates the election of specific people to specific positions, the assigning of definite responsibilities to definite people.

This organization, which, of course, is nothing other than a party organization, also has a role to play in the revolution itself as the subjective element. When mass of people become disfranchised with the existing social order, they turn first to the existing organized opposition regardless of what its political content is- hence the temporary assent of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Egyptian revolution, the parallel phenomena of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the US, and the general principle that the rise of right-wing and left-wing parties occurs in tandem. Of course, different social classes are drawn to different political positions and give those positions their own particular class content- that is elementary for any Marxist- and, by a series of successive approximations move from more moderate positions to more radical and revolutionary ones- from the Girondists to the Jacobins and the Mensheviks to the Bolsheviks. Yet when revolutionary organizations are not present with sufficient strength to become a channel for the masses, the revolution becomes derail along the lines of 'oppositional' movements within present society. Consider the difference between 1968 in France and 1917 in Russia, in the second case the revolution succeed in the taking of power (even if it later degenerated along Stalinist lines) and in the the first case power remained in the hands of the bourgeois. The crucial difference between the two cases was the presence of the Bolshevik party in Russia in 1917 as a revolutionary organization capable of providing a channel for the seizure of power by the proletarian masses.

The vanguard revolutionary party is then a school for revolutionaries and the proletarian masses, an organizer for the advocacy of revolutionary ideas, and the instrument of the proletariat in the seizure of power. Anyone not possessed by the notion that the majority of people are not already the most extreme and well-educated revolutionaries most acknowledge the importance of at least some of these functions and, in so doing, the necessity for a a vanguard party even if they insist on playing with words and refusing to clearly acknowledge that fact.