A Modest Proposal for the Left...

[TremulousTetra]

I don't beleive that was anywhere near as widespread as we're led to beleive. A few gangs of armed-workers on instruction from the Bolsheviks may have taken over in a few places (protection racket-syle) and then made it very clear who the new bosses of the main bulk of workers were. The actuall rank-and-file workers were totally subordiante to this new ruling class. Same old same old.

A workers revolution it was not - it wouldn't have allowed a cyncical thuggish clique like that of Lenin, Trotski and then Stalin to muscle in as the new, self-interested boss class.

honestly this is rubbish. Less people died in the revolution, than in the making of the film about the revolution, precisely because support for a change was so widespread, there were so few forces to oppose it. An example of how this worke was when General Kornilov tried to raise a counterrevolution, trains to carry the troops back to Moscow suddenly disappeared.

The good thing about Trotsky's history of the Russian Revolution, is that he uses the words of the enemies of the revolution to make his points.

(Edited to add) revolution is normal. Name me one instance where a society has changed from one social order, to another social order, with no revolution involved in that transformation?

PS. None of this detracts from your statement about the diabolical regime After 1928.

 

[The Black Hand]

Sorry - is this thread predicated on the idea that the UK left needs to
(a) do less than it does now, and
(b) look at itself more?

Because I would have thought that inaction and introspection were not things that are actually in short supply.

Good point. There is also a lot of people not actually doing any politics at all. They join the party/fed and then assume that is it, this leaves the organisations with theory but no actual tested practice, their theory is thus completely divorced from practice.

 

[poster342002]

Less people died in the revolution, than in the making of the film about the revolution, precisely because support for a change was so widespread, there were so few forces to oppose it.

Or, perhaps, because it wasn't a revolution but a coup - with most of the population passive onlookers.

The deaths and murdering of the working classes (by the Bolsheviks and the White Guards) really set in in enrest after the "revolution", anyway.

PS. None of this detracts from your statement about the diabolical regime After 1928.

The Bolshevik regime was diabolical way before 1928. Stalin just added the final touches to the job made possible by the other thugs' prior groundwork.

 

[Spion]

Or, perhaps, because it wasn't a revolution but a coup - with most of the population passive onlookers.

Yeah, perhaps this, perhaps that. Perhaps if my aunty had some bollocks she'd be my uncle.

 

[urbanrevolt]

Thank you.

A considered answer.

Do you think the situation you describe is what we have now?

Clearly the left is in bad shape now, particularly the organised left. There are some healthy campaigns but nevertheless union militancy is low, the involvement of ordinary working class people in neighbourhood and city-wide campaigns low.

There are many problems. I think part of the solution has to be to acknowledge our problems, work together on what we can, take a long hard look at ourselves but not neglect doing work to support workers in struggle.

An interesting post here http://conventionoftheleft.org.uk/2008/02/27/themes-of-the-convention-of-the-left/ in relation to the plan for a Manchester counter-conference to Labours in September

 

[chilango]

Clearly the left is in bad shape now, particularly the organised left. There are some healthy campaigns but nevertheless union militancy is low, the involvement of ordinary working class people in neighbourhood and city-wide campaigns low.

There are many problems. I think part of the solution has to be to acknowledge our problems, work together on what we can, take a long hard look at ourselves but not neglect doing work to support workers in struggle.

An interesting post here http://conventionoftheleft.org.uk/2008/02/27/themes-of-the-convention-of-the-left/ in relation to the plan for a Manchester counter-conference to Labours in September

I think you're right...

 

[TremulousTetra]

Or, perhaps, because it wasn't a revolution but a coup - with most of the population passive onlookers.

U are missing the point. The state-controlled masses of people, at the point of the revolution there was none, quite literally a handful of people. This is not a passive act. You passively refuse to do something in the Army in 1917, and you get shot. This was a mass action.

Secondly, the organisers of this mass action, and the other mass actions such as the disappearance of the trains mentioned earlier, were workers and peasants. The various committees actively created by workers and peasants, were far more democratic than the Duma. That is indisputable fact.

thirdly, to have a coup one group overtake control of the state from another group. Those worker and peasant elected committees, effectively controlled those areas previously controlled by the bourgeoisie and the Duma even before the October Revolution. Therefore, the existing state was not simply taken over by another group, it was replaced by a different form of state, those committees work from a different class, and those who elected them were from a different class. This was not just a revolution, it was an embryonic social revolution.

However, you are right the death of the revolution began before 1928, that was the conclusive but to be honest quite arbitrary point of pronunciation of death. But if you are to have any credibility you surely had to concede the invasion by 10 national armies, a bloody and atrocious civil war, economic embargo, and many other factors have to be considered contributary factors to its death? If you are seriously trying to suggest Winston Churchill causing a mutiny in the British Army due to wanting to send a British Army straight after the first war to intervene in Russia, is not indicative of the general hostility of the rest of the world to ruling classes to the workers revolution in Russia, and their contribution to its death, you are like people say they deliberately obtuse troll.