Marxism for beginners

So you never read about the "robber baron" days?

Really it should be obvious anyways. I did try hard to be economically libertarian, but economic libertarianism to an extreme extent doesn't actually result in economic freedom, eventually.

It starts out strong; people make material wealth based on their abilities and motivation. But as generations go on, it tends to become more and more focused on the top few people, because of, well...capitalism.

It gets to the point, eventually, where it takes either a lot of money, or a lot of luck, to even make money. Or both.

 

It's a fact of nature that some people are more productive than others. There is no getting around that.

Also, it is not inevitable that there are "poor" people.

 

Yawn. I had a hard time staying awake during your tedious Trotskyite propaganda - you know none of what you are saying is actually true.

There have been democratic socialist nations all over the world. There has never been a Communist country to your satisfaction because the worker's paradise is an unrealizable fantasy, a con to fool the credulous.

Or great-grandchildren? Yea someday way in the future the worker's paradise will arrive. In the meantime the people must accept enslavement and famine.

Though by 1949 many countries were imprisoned within the Communist system.

Mao said a lot of things, including this in 1945: "We Communists never conceal our political views. Definitely and beyond all doubt, our future or maximum program is to carry China forward to socialism and communism. Both the name of our Party and our Marxist world outlook unequivocally point to this supreme ideal of the future, a future of incomparable brightness and splendor."

And this in 1954: The force at the core leading our cause forward is the Chinese Communist Party. The theoretical basis guiding our thinking is Marxism-Leninism.

The Russian Civil War was a result of Lenin's determination to set himself up as dictator. What if Lenin had cooperated with other political parties and worked within a democratic regime? Can you doubt that a civil war would have been avoided?

Let's see a link. Does Wikipedia blame the "wealthy peasants"? Blaming the kulaks is just the usual Soviet propaganda. In reality Lenin seized food from starving peasants to give to his supporters.

Lenin's stupid policy of War Communism had destroyed the economy. The ones who saved millions of lives were not Communists. Herbert Hoover, the Red Cross, the American Friends Service Committee, and other Western organizations saved millions. Despite the extraordinary efforts of Western charitable institutions Lenin's stupidity and hunger for power led to many deaths. Up to ten million died.

lol You're such a drama queen. The Russian Civil War was mostly over by the time of the Kronstadt Rebellion.

quote: Although there are no reliable figures for the rebels' battle losses, historians estimate that 1,200 to 2,168 were executed in the days following the revolt, and a like number were jailed, many in the Solovki prison camp.

LINK

Yes, executed after the battle. Do you ever tire of lying to cover up the misdeeds of mass-murderers? Just curious.

 

You totally ignored the point or didn't have the comprehension to get it.

Economic anarchy, eventually, makes it to the point where it takes either a lot of money or a lot of luck to even make much (if any) money.

 

Some of the demands of the Kronstadt Rebellion:

1. Immediate new elections to the Soviets. The present Soviets no longer express the wishes of the workers and peasants. The new elections should be held by secret ballot, and should be preceded by free electoral propaganda for all workers and peasants before the elections.
2. Freedom of speech and of the press for workers and peasants, for the Anarchists, and for the Left Socialist parties.
3. The right of assembly, and freedom for trade union and peasant associations.
4. The organisation, at the latest on 10 March 1921, of a Conference of non-Party workers, soldiers and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt and the Petrograd District.
5. The liberation of all political prisoners of the Socialist parties, and of all imprisoned workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors belonging to working class and peasant organisations.
6. The election of a commission to look into the dossiers of all those detained in prisons and concentration camps.

No wonder that bastard Trotsky attacked them and had them executed.

 

That's not based on fact.

 

umm...it's based on a combination of history and (what should be) common sense.

If you have a few million bucks already (perhaps handed to you by heir or by manipulating people to where you got it, which are the two most common ways to get that much money), you can just buy a company (say, a McDonald's franchise) and start there. Eventually you can own several companies and have a monopoly over all them.

Then, when your kids inherit all that, they will be competing against other people who also own several companies. See it use to be that a lot of people owned many different competing companies, but now, a few people own all these companies. Those few people will inevitably (under a completely unrestricted market) make an alliance and have a monopoly over everything.

This process goes on and on until the day when after a few generations, only a handful of people own everything and have a monopoly over everyone.

That is when economic tyranny begins. Even if it's technically not violating anyone's "rights" to property, it's still not practical and most people don't want to live in such a system, period. Sorry

 

I will answer with one question.

Do you support the ideology of Milton Friedman and the School of Chicago?

 

Spiders are tenacious, and if you are coming up with reasonable arguments, then great, let's get stuck in. But it is you who will get tangled in the web of historical reality.

Name a country that was/is democratic socialist.

3 million Russians had died in WW1 before the revolution. Most people were peasants for whom serfdom had been formally eliminated, but they had to buy land and the prices were far too high. Three quarters of Russia in August 1917 had peasant revolts. Capitalism had not filled any of it's historical roles. Famines and pogroms were common. This is what you think people should have accepted?

The Bolsheviks did not cause the 1921 famine. It was the result of 7 years of war and civil war all caused by the capitalists, economic blockade caused by the capitalists, collectivisation carried out by the Bolsheviks because the people in the cities were starving. And drought. And in 1922 they took the step of partial retreat, ie the NEP, to revitalise agricultural production.

We live in a capitalist world where 15 million children starve every year, despite no global food shortage. In fact in America people eat too much and also throw a lot away. Is this what people are expected to accept?

The Russian revolution happened to end WW1 and an intolerable life of the people. Lenin and Trotsky knew it could only go two ways, back to capitalism, or an attempt at socialism. They also knew it had no chance of socialism on it's own, and unfortunately it failed to spread, which I can discuss more later.

Stalinist, not communist. Stalinism is anti-communism. It is more of a hindrance than a help. Stalin was trying to ensure all those countries stayed capitalist.

Yeah, maximum programme. Long term aspiration. But not now. For now the aim is a bourgeois revolution, with the CP collaborating.

By 1954 everything had changed of course, Mao was forced to give up on his attempts at collaboration with the bourgeoisie very early on, especially with the Korean war kicking off. The fact is, this Stalinist approach was always gonna be a pipe dream, as Trotsky predicted back in 1927 when Stalin first tried it in China, getting 35,000 communists killed by the KMT and wrecking the revolution.

What rubbish. I already showed that they had a democracy in 1918. They had a coalition with the Left SRs, but other parties also had delegates at the congress of Soviets. You are ignoring the fact that it was the other parties who supported the Whites and tried to sabotage the peace deal with Germany. The civil war started while Russia still had democracy. The Mensheviks were not banned until 1921. In March 1918 the Congress was
1,232 delegates with a vote; they included 795 Bolsheviks, 283 Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, 25 Socialist-Revolutionaries of the Centre, 21 Mensheviks, and 11 Menshevik-Internationalists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin's_Hanging_Order
"Hanging Order" is a name given by the Library of Congress to Vladimir Lenin's telegram on suppressing kulaks' revolt in the Penza Gubernia."

"During the Summer of 1918, many of Russia's central cities, including Moscow and St. Petersburg, were cut off from the grain producing regions of Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, and Siberia by the civil war. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people were on the brink of starvation."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak
"Kulaks (Russian: кула́к, kulak, "fist", by extension "tight-fisted"; kurkuls in Ukraine, also used in Russian texts in Ukrainian contexts) were a category of relatively affluent peasants"

Actually it was as much to do with the civil war and suppressing uprisings as it was to do with feeding people.

Has it occurred to you that starving peasants would have not grain for the Bolsheviks to seize?

Wikipedia

"1916 was the year of food crisis in the country."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodrazvyorstka

Where do you get all your (dis)information? Yes the Red Cross etc helped out after autumn 1921. But there had been an economic blockade from the west before that, and the west had 200,000 troops fighting with the Whites. The death toll was 5 million. This was a famine caused by drought and made worse by WW1, the civil war and the economic blockade (which ended in 1921 in the Anglo Soviet trade agreement)

 

Cuba is democratic socialist.
If the imperialist pigs didnt embargo it, would be one of the most advanced nations.

 

Maybe you should take the subject more seriously. Paul Avarich, who was anarchist sympathiser and historian, wrote a book on Kronstadt, in which he said ‘the historian can sympathise with the rebels and still concede that the Bolsheviks were justified in subduing them.’ I already mentioned that Victor Serge said the same sort of thing. You say the civil war was 'mostly over'. I like they way you cover your arse with the mostly. It was mostly over, but Wrangel (a White Army general) had 80,000 men on the border. Fighting with Poland had finished but no peace treaty was signed. About 1.5 million people had been fighting in recent months in the Polish-Soviet war. Avrich produced documents to show that just a month before the uprising White organisations were predicting an incident in the fortress.

Wow, now who's being the drama queen. 1-2000 executed. Maybe. So? It was a serious mutiny, it threatened the revolution. 10,000 Bolsheviks died to quell it. Obviously people there decided examples had to be made to prevent this sort of thing happening again.

You need to read up on it properly, why it happened and so on.

Here are some links

http://www.marxists.org/archive/harman/1971/xx/kronstadt.htm
http://www.icl-fi.org/english/esp/59/kronstadt.html
http://www.marxist.com/History-old/Trotsky_was_right.html

"New material from Soviet archives confirms the Bolsheviks' position

Kronstadt: Trotsky was right!"

Yes, and worthy aims too. On paper. But this was not the time for messing about. It is worth noting here that the Workers Opposition, who had just been defeated at Congress, were in the vanguard of the attack on Kronstadt.

In the fortress, some ships declared neutrality, and some moved against the rebels.

Also note that during the attack, workers in Kronstadt moved against the mutineers even before the Bolsheviks arrived. This was described in a couple of new books which came out in 2000 and 2001, after new Soviet archives were opened. See the marxist.com link.

"Victor Serge, who had many sympathies with anarchism, was implacably opposed to the Kronstadt mutineers, as the following passage shows:

"The popular counter-revolution translated the demand for freely-elected soviets into one for 'soviets without Communists.' If the Bolshevik dictatorship fell, it was only a short step to chaos, and through chaos to a peasant rising, the massacre of the Communists, the return of the émigrés, and in the end, through the sheer force of events, another dictatorship, this time anti-proletarian. Dispatches from Stockholm and Tallinn testified that the émigrés had these very perspectives in mind: dispatches which, incidentally, strengthened the Bolshevik leaders' intention of subduing Kronstadt speedily and at whatever cost. We were not reasoning in the abstract. We knew that in European Russia alone there were at least 50 centres of peasant insurrection. To the south of Moscow, in the region of Tambov, Antonov, the Right Social Revolutionary school teacher, who proclaimed the abolition of the Soviet system and the re-establishment of the Constituent Assembly, had under his command a superbly organised peasant army, numbering several tens of thousands. He had conducted negotiations with the Whites. (Tukhachevsky suppressed this Vendée around the middle of 1921.)" (Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901-1941, pp. 128-9.)"

 

Whether conscious or unconscious, you're playing a game. It is not answering a question to ask a question.

When you address what I wrote, I will answer your questions. Until then, I'm not here to entertain your continued desire to say what you say without challenging it.

 

Let's go with your (ridiculous) contention here.

Are you saying that the fabulously proper Socialist Mecca of Cuba requires America to make it go?

 

Democratic? Hardly.

If the imperialist pigs didnt embaro it, it would be a capitalist nation quite possibly. It was Americas sabotage that drove Cuba over to the USSR. And it was Cuba's lack of democracy which facilitated Russian assistance.

 

No, it was Castro's entertaining of the USSR which drove it to the USSR.

Capitalism happens naturally between two parties. Government is the only force which can suppress it - so saying that Cuba would be Capitalist without embargo is a ridiculous farce.

 

It requires not to be embargoed.

http://librexpresion.org/elecciones-en-cuba

How many times you heard about cuban electoral system in the mass distraction weapons?
Check the link and read cuba has several parties and 2 types of elections.


Cuban elections can be viewed by everyone including non-cubans. Didnt heard that on the media, do you?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Cuba

"The Communist Party of Cuba is the official state party,[5] and various other political parties have been active in the country since their existence was legalised in 1992. Nevertheless, they, along with the Communist Party of Cuba, are prohibited from campaigning in elections or public political speech. The most important of these are the Christian Democratic Party of Cuba, the Cuban Democratic Socialist Current, the Democratic Social-Revolutionary Party of Cuba, the Democratic Solidarity Party, the Liberal Party of Cuba and the Social Democratic Co-ordination of Cuba. Members of all of those political groups are free to put themselves forward at open and public candidate selection ("Town Hall") meetings and, if they command a simple majority of those present, will be entered onto the ballot paper and have their election materials posted.
[edit]Municipal elections
Municipal assemblies are elected every two and a half years. Municipal elections are officially non-partisan, but as with National Assembly elections, critics maintain that no candidate can express overt opposition to the Castro government or to the communist system[citation needed]."

 

They along with the communist party of Cuba. Doesnt that mean that PCC is also forbiden?


The popular assemblies made the constitution. What means cubans decided to have this way. I can tell you I leave in weastern europe and old people go to Cuba because they have awsome healthcare.

 

Yeah well the PCC hardly needs to campaign does it? It has everything sewn up.

Yes they have great healthcare.

Without real workers participatory democracy though, it will end up capitalist in the end. Which will be a shame.

 

Castro is seen as a national hero so popular assemblies always vote for him.

Popular assemblies are the fear of corporations, you imagine the bottom 90% making the choices and not the top 1%? That is way the propaganda against them.

 

To say that 'If you have a transitionary period -from communism to Capitialism 'is a accidental mistake.

The transitionary period from Capitalism to Communism is called Socialism which is the period from revolutionary overthrow of Capitialists and their expropiation and suppression as a class by a Workers Government ,that is Government by ,for and of the Working Class or DEMOCRACY in other words you know ,"the will of the overwhelming majority of the people thing!"

As the Working Class is overwhelmingly the Largest social Class its needs represented by the Trotskyist 4th International is where true Democracy lives!

Not in the halls or chambers of any government on this planet!

Next thing you know someone may put forward the ludicrous proposition that the US government is Democratic,he he he .

 

Anonymous internet message boards...the domain of the lone communists to dredge up their failed ideology and propose once again that "we can do it right this time!"

*facepalm*

 

Yep, a democracy where Castro got 100% of the vote every election because the elections were rigged and political dissenters were executed. Your definition of democratic socialism is flawed

You have no evidence to support your claim.

 

If you're not skilled with metaphors please don't try to use them. You may injure yourself.

Did I say that? François Furet estimated 5 million died in Lenin's 1921 famine. (Some estimates are much higher.) The famine was caused by 1) The idiocies of Lenin's War Communism 2) The Civil War caused by Lenin's power grab and 3) Lenin stealing grain from the peasants. He then bestowed this grain on his lackeys. According to Furet the worst crop failure of late Tsarist Russia, in 1892, caused 375,000 to 400,000 deaths. Thanks Communism for all those millions of additional deaths!

1) Can you honestly tell me War Communism was a success?
2) If Lenin had worked with other parties, could the Civil War have been prevented?
3) Did Lenin terrorize the peasants?

Do you think Marxism-Leninism will improve the situation?! Look at the horrendous Communist famines under Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong-il, etc. All Communism does is make socialism repugnant. Marx and Lenin were the greatest friends capitalism ever had. They've fooled millions into thinking socialism = tyranny.

Or a third route, which they took - dictatorship, the Cheka, mass execution of those demanding freedom.

Feeling sleepy already. zzzzzzzz

Like the way you changed Mao's words because he didn't say what you wanted him to say. Did Big Brother tell you to make the correction?

Did you forget about the Bolsheviks dissolving the Constituent Assembly. How can you possibly claim the Bolsheviks were democratic?!

So Lenin starves those that oppose his democracy-hating regime and you think that's okay?

quote from your own link: Moreover, it did much damage to the agricultural sector and caused peasant's growing discontent.

LINK

Do you doubt the various Western charities saved millions of lives?

There you go. Thanks for exposing yourself.

ZZZZZZZZ

 

quote: On balance, however, I still don't understand the fondness for Trotsky shared by many Western leftists (and even a few formerly leftist conservatives I have met). The truth about Trotsky is that he was a brutal mass murderer. Trotsky was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people during the era of War Communism 1918-21. Together with Lenin, he (not Stalin) established the Gulag system, the secret police, and other major institutions of Soviet repression. Trotsky also played a leading role in engineering the first, abortive collectivization of Soviet agriculture - which led to a deliberately engineered famine that killed several million people in 1920-21. Richard Pipes' book Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime has a good discussion of Trotsky's role in these and other early Soviet atrocities.

As bad as Stalin was, it's possible that Russia and world would have been even worse off had Trotsky defeated him in the late 1920s. After all, Trotsky broke with Stalin in the 1920s in large part because he thought Stalin wasn't going far enough in repressing "bourgeois elements," collectivizing agriculture (which eventually led to an even bigger deliberately engineered famine in the early 1930s), and promoting communist revolution abroad. In exile in the 1930s, Trotsky argued that the Soviet Union should not ally with the western democracies against the Nazis because both were "capitalist" powers, and neither was preferable to the other. Had Trotsky won, life would have been better than under Stalin for members of the Communist Party; Trotsky was less interested in purging the party comrades. But it might have been even worse for everyone else.

Western admirers of Trotsky often praise him for his criticism of Stalin's purges of the 1930s. However, as Leszek Kolakowski points out in the chapter on Trotsky in his comprehensive history of Marxism, Trotsky had no objection to political repression as such. He was very much in favor of ruthless persecution of non-communists, including even non-communist socialists. Trotsky merely objected to the repression of his own followers. Praising Trotsky for opposing Stalin's purges is a bit like praising the Ku Klux Klan as champions of free speech because they oppose laws banning racist hate speech. Obviously, The Klan would have no objection to censorship if they could be the censors themselves. The same point applies to Trotsky - except that he murdered, repressed, and censored far more people than the KKK ever did.

LINK