Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Tiny trot groups: any future?

andymod said:
Good afternoon all, this is my first post to U75, and it looks like a place where there is plenty of creative debate, so good. On the so-called micro groups...

Looking for huge revolutionary groups and parties is the wrong way to look at it. The Bolsheviks had a membership only in the hundreds in February 1917, only 10,000 or so in October - but with correct ideas and tactics they changed the world. And even earlier in 1915 there were only a few dozen attendees at the Zimmerwald anti-war conference. So berating socialist groups for being small is barking up the wrong tree - revolutionary organisations will nearly always be a small minority, if they were massive we would be on the brink of a revolution.
Comradely
Andy
Click to expand...

It;s a question of scale and perspective, too; 10-30,000 people with the experience of failed revolution and imprisonment behind them in some cases, with decades of revolutionary agitaion and exile in others, versus a couple of hundred students and permanent malcontents with little experience in anything other than falling out with one another, and monomaniac myopia on the subject of their own irrelevance.
 
butchersapron said:
I think 30 000 is closer to then mark for the bolsheviks in feb 1917...

(And welcome to the boards as well)
Click to expand...

It won't last. :D

Not wishing to be rude, like. Just a bit of a poor first post in the light of the rest of the thread....
 
steeplejack said:
It;s a question of scale and perspective, too; 10-30,000 people with the experience of failed revolution and imprisonment behind them in some cases, with decades of revolutionary agitaion and exile in others, versus a couple of hundred students and permanent malcontents with little experience in anything other than falling out with one another, and monomaniac myopia on the subject of their own irrelevance.
Click to expand...

There's also the fact that a large proportion of the events in 1917 were not the product of Bolshevik agitation and had their roots in more commonplace grassroots organising...
 
And it there ever is a revolution in late capitalist societies, the only thing we can be certain of is that it won't resemble revolution in a semi-feudal, reactionary Czarist autocracy.
 
There is also the fact that as a percentage of the total working class, the ten thousand or so Bolsheviks concentrated in the cities really had significant influence in the working class movement in Russia as it was still only a few million people.

Nowadays the working class in Russia and globally is massive. However, in the years of counter-revolution after 1905, the Bolsheviks did fall away until at one point there was only one tiny functioning branch in Moscow and most of the members of that were police spies. So, it is true that revolutionary groups can grow from tiny beginnings. However, they can also fade away and die like the WRP in Britain, for example.
 
Idris2002 said:
What was it Swift said about satire being a glass in which we see every reflection but our own?
Click to expand...

It must have been a bit of a chore being that excessively eloquent ... (Swift not Idris... well, maybe)
 
Idris2002 said:
What was it Swift said about satire being a glass in which we see every reflection but our own?
Click to expand...
He's on a bit of a run at the minute isn't he? Pity that he can't appreciate what we're all laughing at himself though.
 
To grow or fade away, that is the question

rebel warrior said:
There is also the fact that as a percentage of the total working class, the ten thousand or so Bolsheviks concentrated in the cities really had significant influence in the working class movement in Russia as it was still only a few million people.

Nowadays the working class in Russia and globally is massive. However, in the years of counter-revolution after 1905, the Bolsheviks did fall away until at one point there was only one tiny functioning branch in Moscow and most of the members of that were police spies. So, it is true that revolutionary groups can grow from tiny beginnings. However, they can also fade away and die like the WRP in Britain, for example.
Click to expand...

Exactly - parties and groups are built or fade away by the actions of the people in them. And if you're not organised with other people then you will achieve nothing, but there are no guarantees or cookbooks for surefire success.
 
Idris2002 said:
And it there ever is a revolution in late capitalist societies, the only thing we can be certain of is that it won't resemble revolution in a semi-feudal, reactionary Czarist autocracy.
Click to expand...
Or China, or Vietnam, or Korea, or Cuba, or Nicaragua, or Columbia, or Venezuela, or Iran, or etc.etc.

I think you will find that your late (?) capitalist societies include a fair few semi-feudal, reactionary autocracies.
Or are only more civilised Europeans capable of revolution? I'm afraid they don't have a good track record so far!
 
I don’t even know why everyone hates ‘the trots’. Didn’t he advocate for a worldwide revolution? That makes a lot more sense than being walled off. The only other thing i know about him is the ice pick business. #rhetoricalpost
 
Christ. Now I can't stop singing:

I'm a trot*
Je suis un trot
Tilly, Tom and Tiny...

*I'm not.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

RedObserver
Any Tories you have or do like?
2 3 4
Replies
111
Views
4K
urphae
urphae
editor
King's Army - homophobic right wing religious group march through Soho
2 3 4 5 6
Replies
162
Views
4K
Pickman's model
Pickman's model
O
Is anyone worried about the future of Britain's culture?
33 34 35 36 37
Replies
1K
Views
29K
8ball
8ball
two sheds
Unite the union accusations from Graham report with response by McCluskey
Replies
9
Views
425
Smokeandsteam
Smokeandsteam
Sasaferrato
Can anyone shed any light on this? Rachel Reeve's lies.
2 3
Replies
75
Views
6K
GarveyLives
G
Back
Top Bottom