https://twitter.com/Mateba_6/status/1541449829683011586
From the book Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire (1882-1917)
It's always funny to find out that old leftist are mostly no different then current ones. Just differing in scale.
"Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it"
I always thought this was a dumb saying, but damn as I see more of the world it just gets truer and truer. It's gotten so I can predict how certain events will play out as they're starting. It's uncanny, it's like being the kid in a Stephen King novel that has this cursed magic power.
It's really telling that some leftists today think being a snitch is ok if it's for the revolution. Sort of explains why all western ML parties keep cannibalizing themselves.
:fedposting: Did you know your rival said something nice about Trotsky once? Maybe you should dox them?
They’re factional rivals. Imagine divergent DSA chapters calling the FBI on each other to get them blackbagged and disappeared instead of having to argue with them. Leaning on state violence is admittedly a big brain move here but holy shit is that not kosher imo. Like really what disagreement warrants handing people over to the state (and we know they wouldn’t be moles because the state wouldn’t have come picked them up)
Eh, if said chapter was patsoc I still don’t see the issue. Just claiming to be a comrade doesn’t actually mean it’s true.
Edit: thought of a joke: real menshivek defender hours
Would the state really crack down on the most reactionary/counter-revolutionary factions though? Maybe it’s just that the state’s gotten better at this sort of stuff but those would be prime suspects for infiltration and/or signal boosting over revolutionary factions rather than disappearing them
I didn’t say they had to be reactionary. I picked an extreme and mutually acceptable example.
To out my position as bluntly as possible: nothing is unacceptable if it helps/prevents harm to the revolution. Which is the only good until it happens and we are in a position to quibble about such things in the comfort of secure socialism. Look at what happened to the USSR after they stopped being brutal. They fell.
Edit: only good is too extreme. Most good would be a better phrasing albeit still flawed. I’m drunk. Point is, we can’t afford to be idealistic. Deck is stacked against as it is and was.
Agreed in that the revolution can and should be protected at all costs. I’m not squeamish about the violence necessary to carry out and prosecute a revolutionary political project. My disagreement here is about the specific strategy of relying on bourgeois state violence to bolster your own power base. This power can only work in your favor when your goals line up with theirs otherwise they won’t act. Masters tools and dismantling a house yada yada yada
I see what you are saying. My disagreement then boils down to: if you can make use of it….why not? A shoe isn’t a hammer, but if it gets the job done and a hammer isn’t around. Economics 101 brain: substituting goods and all that. Obviously a communist paramilitary death squad is good and preferable, but lacking that finding a way to get somebody else to remove the problem is necessary.
Depends on who exactly is doing the enforcement. If some cop sees "patriotic socialist" and doesn't understand that that means "Nazi", they might just fucking go for it.
This is how you justify covering up a rape case that blows up your organization a few years later.
That would harm the revolution. And be bad. I’m not saying we have to think only in the immediate term. Any long term vision would see the harm in that.
Any long term vision would show that getting your own party members black bagged would harm the revolution. But this mindset isn't about long term vision. It's about holding onto your post because only you will be the true leader of the revolution.
You see the problem here is you are thinking "enemies" as an external rival group and your own party members, which is what Rosa is accused of doing. Getting your fellow comrades black-bagged by the FBI just so you can hold onto your position isn't good for the revolution. It is the same rape-coverup mindset: "If this rape case comes out we will be outed from leadership and those guys will take over and drive the party into the ground."
You're assuming with no evidence that she was snitching on reformists and not simply rival revolutionaries. That can all change with specifics of who she was snitching on but I don't know where to find that information. It stands to reason though that mere reformists wouldn't get black bagged.
Saying "snitches get stitches" isn't deontological, it's inherited wisdom of centuries of consequences. It's not absolute, but it's too easy for someone to think they are the exception. Going around saying it's acceptable to snitch is how you end up with zero support from fellow proles and zero trust of your comrades.
Revolution is a tool to ease human suffering. Don't get lost in the ideology.
The state doesn't have perfect knowledge and is still vulnerable to ideological biases and ordinary human frailty.
Its all cool until a patsoc chapter does it to your lefty chapter. Which they would 100% do if it was an established practice.
I thought we assumed the fash and fash adjacent were already going all out short of dragging into the street? We’re almost there in the here and now as is tbh
This was a dumb idea to begin with because doxxing a patsoc wouldn't even work. Feds would just ignore it. It only works against other revolutionaries that you just don't like.
Now I could be off base because I've only studied Rosa and early 1900 Germany a little bit, but weren't the majority of Luxemburg's detractors moderate Soc-Dems that were already in state power? They coopted the communist movement that overthrew the kaiser to install themselves and continued to use the revolutionary currents dull the edge of communists with moderate thought and to validate and empower their own position. It makes sense to me that a lot of these pseudonyms weren't subject to state repression as much as retired because they were exposed as mouthpieces of the state.
Of course that's just most of the opposition that survived, anyways. The state at the time really liked using machine guns and mustard gas against suspected revolutionary communists so its also very possible that evidence of greater left dissent against Luxemburg was just destroyed. I suppose I would like to know more about footnote 35, because again I am not an expert on this.
I think your stretching here to assume the people she was (allegedly) doxing were in-power socdems. If that was the case doxing them wouldn't work. The passage was implying she was doxxing rival factions within the Spartacus league or a larger radical organization.
If they were socdems and this was during the Kaiser then she was probably getting them killed but eventually they returned the favor.
Yeah thats fair. When i think state repression in Germany I immediately think post Kaiser, but you're right that theres no reason it couldn't be before.
This method was used against pps Marxist Kelles-Krauz in 1904 (Snyder 1997, pp. 184–5) and against internal sdkpil rival Karl Radek in 1912 (Nettl 1966, pp. 586–7). See also Fayet 2004, p. 113.
The sources are from:
Snyder, Timothy 1997, Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz, 1872–1905, Cambridge: Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University.
Nettl, J.P. 1966, Rosa Luxemburg, London: Oxford University Press.
Fayet, Jean-Francois 2004, Karl Radek (1885–1939): Biographie Politique, Bern: Peter Lang.
I think the simple reality of it is that the German state apparatus was much more organized and supplied than the Tsarist state ever was, and that extraordinary ability to crush dissent created fundamentally harsher conditions for the German communists. Desperate times call for desperate measures, Luxemburg and her coleadership may have resolved that it was the best and only way to deflect state repression & maintain party cohesion; if someone is going to be targeted, may as well be the divisive factional groups. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were brilliant revolutionaries, certainly, but I doubt they would have been nearly as effective if it weren’t for the relative weakness of the Tsardom.
I have a personal theory that the state needs to fuck up for revolutionaries to ever win. Like for every action a revolutionary force could take, there's an appropriate counter strategy the state could take which the revolutionaries cannot counter. The question is if the state will take that counter strategy.
One of the reasons why BLM gets traction is because the police always instinctively brutalize the protesters even when the correct strategy is to feign sympathy and let them carry on.
I think it depends on the relative power of the state compared to the revolution. Like, couple of socialist groups, let's say 7 centered on the big cities of the US versus the government gets owned easily of the government doesn't slip,, but if the military, at least a good chunk like 35-40%, joined a revolution it would be pretty even.
but if the military, at least a good chunk like 35-40%, joined a revolution
I would say allowing that to happen would be a fuck up on the state's part. For the Tsars that was keeping a massive conscripted standing army because volunteer armies were gay-satanic-judeao-liberalism.
Yeah that's fair. I guess I'm looking at mistakes once things are underway, you just mean in general.
I mostly meant before things are underway. Before the shit hits the fan the state has to think it's a good idea to throw shit at the fan.
I don't know about that. The author of the book, Eric Blanc, also wrote an article called "The Rosa Luxemburg Myth: A Critique of Luxemburg’s Politics in Poland (1893–1919)" and in it he argues that
This article challenges widespread uncritical portrayals of Rosa Luxemburg. By examining the politics and practices of Luxemburg and her SDKPiL party in Poland, I show that their commitment to proletarian emancipation was undermined by sectarian and doctrinaire tendencies that contributed to the defeat of Poland’s workers’ revolutions in 1905 and 1918–19. A critical analysis of their approaches to the national question, the Polish Socialist Party, German Social Democracy, and the role of the revolutionary party, undermines the prevailing romanticisation of Luxemburg. I argue that the Polish Socialist Party, Luxemburg’s main political rival, posed a viable Marxist alternative for Poland’s revolutionary movement.
So I don't think Luxemburg's actions were necessary
Yea, after I wrote the comment I thought more about it, realized I didn’t really agree with my thought. I will have to look into the PSP.
