At literally no point in their history were they free from conflict with captialist powers or the class struggle as it intensified as socialism was constructed
I assume you are leaving the "direct" part out deliberately, because that's what makes the difference.
"This is pure idealism. It is masturbation. If this were true then the 20th century would’ve provided in material reality (and not the pure socialism in our minds) a revolutionary theory capable of defending its revolution from the counter attack which is sure to come from within and without.
I say “any relaxation of the dictatorship of the proletariat ends with the French communards against the wall.” And your response is that the state should be fine to relax the DOTP despite there being zero instances of a successful anarchist revolution of the 20th Century.
Doesn't the relaxation of the DOTP in Cuba or Vietnam and their consequent survival prove that the relaxation doesn't end with the communards against the wall? Because it looks like it doesn't to me.
"It is telling that anarchism in practice (and that’s all I care aboue. The anarchism that has actually existed) has not changed since Marxs The Bakuninists At Work
As soon as they were faced with a serious revolutionary situation, the Bakuninists had to throw the whole of their old programme overboard. First they sacrificed their doctrine of absolute abstention from political, and especially electoral, activities. Then anarchy, the abolition of the State, shared the same fate. Instead of abolishing the State they tried, on the contrary, to set up a number of new, small states. They then dropped the principle that the workers must not take part in any revolution that did not have as its aim the immediate and complete emancipation of the proletariat, and they themselves took part in a movement that was notoriously bourgeois. Finally they went against the dogma they had only just proclaimed – that the establishment of a revolutionary government is but another fraud another betrayal of the working class – for they sat quite comfortably in the juntas of the various towns, and moreover almost everywhere as an impotent minority outvoted and politically exploited by the bourgeoisie."
I'm astonished that you think this is true to any anarchist project ever, but you do you.
"It’s ironic that I say the exact same thing about the Soviet leadership throughout its entire leadership. They were often relying on regional leaders or party members eager to please and the leadership acted more like a fire department responding to fires than a monolithic overseer anticommunists portray them as"
Okay so then how come that when the soviets started electing Menshevik or leftcom reps they just pretended the elections didn't count and put party members in their place? Like okay, we're defending a revolution ova'here but clearly they had more leverage through the party over local councils than the CNT had over the rank and file.
"Only cos the revolution failed. The USSR was never even that bad. Even during the Ezhovschina the USSR imprisoned less people per capita than USA."
We're not comparing the US to the USSR. We're comparing Catalonia to the USSR.
"This is cartoonish anticommunist propaganda. It is never explained by State dept Anarchists like Chomsky how the reds sought to “hunger for power” by siding with the weakest, most vulnerable and poorest sections of society in country after country often at great costs to themselves."
Was Lenin at any point recallable during his tenure?
Doesn’t the relaxation of the DOTP in Cuba or Vietnam and their consequent survival prove that the relaxation doesn’t end with the communards against the wall?
Comrade Cuba and Vietnam did not relax their Dotp. Its form changed over time (as it would be expected) as socialist ideology became hegemonic. Further would you have been one of those whining about the human rights of executed mafioso and US collaborators when the Cubans were shooting dissenters in the 70s when their dotp was neither hegemonic nor consolidated?
Cuba has an intelligence agency that has been running rings around US intelligence particularly since 19. The dotp consolidated and strengthened itself in the form of State power to the point they can laugh at the turncoats and and cia paid traitors that wave banners saying "down with socialism!" Whenever a US delegate visits. In the 60s or 70s those people would probably be in a basement with a bag on their head.
But Cuba has ideoligcal hegemony and support for the proletarian state and Cuban intelligence good enough to leak their finances linking them to Cia. The population laughs and understands they're traitors etc.
Dictatorships of the bourgeoisie can allow a relatively high amount of individual freedom and freedom of expression - because you or me in the town square screaming about overthrowing capitalism does not threaten the bourgeois State
However if you become effective like Malcolm X or Fred Hampton they'll execute you in a no knock raid. California still has a law not allowing communists to run for election etc.
Further as heroic as the Cuban and Vietnamese struggles were they largely were helped by the fact the nationalists expressed their nationalism through the communists in the struggle for national liberation. They were also not put through the trial of two world wars. The nationalists/white guardists/embittered kulaks/monarchists and conservatives in Russia expressed their nationalism as a fight against Bolshevism which inevitably led to them collaborating with Nazis in ww2.
The vietnamese did not have to deal with entire regions of the Soviet union who were susceptible to nazi ideology as the entirety of Eastern europe and some russians were
The dotp of Russia was, by the historical and material conditions of the period from 1917-1945, by necessity much more brutal than Cuba and Vietnam.
We’re not comparing the US to the USSR. We’re comparing Catalonia to the USSR.
Theres not much to compare and its better to compare two superpowers than one city in Spain. Catalonia was a disaster. The end result of catalonia was socialists, communists, trotskyites and anarchists seeking refugee status in France while a 4 decade long fascist dictatorship ruled in Spain
Was Lenin at any point recallable during his tenure?
Yes by the central committee
This cartoonish display that reds hunger for power needs to go in the bin.
The biggest purveyor of this is Chomsky. Now Lenin was a brilliant figure and one of the smartest people in Russia. If power was all he wanted why would he find a revolutionary path for the poorest in Russia which ended with him being shot by an anarchist followed by a stroke
If Lenin just wanted power he could've occupied an academic position (like Chomsky) then advocated change but not too much. Sought a position in the Tsars government advocating for bourgeois parliamentary democracy
He'd have been a Prime Minister of Russia no problem. He'd have got power without the difficulty of revolution, being shot or the difficulty of going into hiding from the Tsarist police
He could have sat in some academic tower like Chomsky did and grew to a ripe old age
Comrade Cuba and Vietnam did not relax their Dotp. Its form changed over time (as it would be expected) as socialist ideology became hegemonic.
Uhm, i think we're thinking about the same thing.
Further would you have been one of those whining about the human rights of executed mafioso and US collaborators when the Cubans were shooting dissenters in the 70s when their dotp was neither hegemonic nor consolidated?
No. But i think that was clear until now too.
Cuba has an intelligence agency that has been running rings around US intelligence particularly since 19. The dotp consolidated and strengthened itself in the form of State power to the point they can laugh at the turncoats and and cia paid traitors that wave banners saying “down with >socialism!” Whenever a US delegate visits. In the 60s or 70s those people would probably be in a basement with a bag on their head.
But Cuba has ideoligcal hegemony and support for the proletarian state and Cuban intelligence good enough to leak their finances linking them to Cia. The population laughs and understands they’re traitors etc.
That's great news, so the anarchists who were chased away from Cuba can go back and the ones currently imprisoned can be released, as they're not a threat to the state, right?
Further as heroic as the Cuban and Vietnamese struggles were they largely were helped by the fact the nationalists expressed their nationalism through the communists in the struggle for national liberation. They were also not put through the trial of two world wars. The >nationalists/white guardists/embittered kulaks/monarchists and conservatives in Russia expressed their nationalism as a fight against Bolshevism which inevitably led to them collaborating with Nazis in ww2.
The vietnamese did not have to deal with entire regions of the Soviet union who were susceptible to nazi ideology as the entirety of Eastern europe and some russians were
The dotp of Russia was, by the historical and material conditions of the period from 1917-1945, by necessity much more brutal than Cuba and Vietnam.
That's understandable, but the problem is still not brutality in itself, it's excess, unnecessary brutality against people who were a, not a threat to the communist hegemony and b, were also among the poorest of Russia.
And if that's what is needed in order to a socialist revolution to succeed (i don't think so and reading Lenin hasn't convinced me that there's only one way) it spells really bleak for any first world country where anticommunism is rampant.
Yes by the central committee
This cartoonish display that reds hunger for power needs to go in the bin.
The display is not that reds hunger for power and i'm not basing my arguments on Chomsky, so this flew right by me.
The display is that the poor are in every country of the world the biggest pool of power. And if they get in the wrong hands and there's a state apparatus they can get ahold of you'll get Mussolini, you'll get Hitler you'll get Trump or you'll get Orbán. There are two ways to counter that, you try to hijack the state and if you succeed there's almost always a civil war brewing or you build a bottom-up movement that won't go away even if the people "finding the revolutionary way for them" are gone. Much like it's happening in Bolivia for example.
I assume you are leaving the "direct" part out deliberately, because that's what makes the difference.
"This is pure idealism. It is masturbation. If this were true then the 20th century would’ve provided in material reality (and not the pure socialism in our minds) a revolutionary theory capable of defending its revolution from the counter attack which is sure to come from within and without.
I say “any relaxation of the dictatorship of the proletariat ends with the French communards against the wall.” And your response is that the state should be fine to relax the DOTP despite there being zero instances of a successful anarchist revolution of the 20th Century.
Doesn't the relaxation of the DOTP in Cuba or Vietnam and their consequent survival prove that the relaxation doesn't end with the communards against the wall? Because it looks like it doesn't to me.
"It is telling that anarchism in practice (and that’s all I care aboue. The anarchism that has actually existed) has not changed since Marxs The Bakuninists At Work
As soon as they were faced with a serious revolutionary situation, the Bakuninists had to throw the whole of their old programme overboard. First they sacrificed their doctrine of absolute abstention from political, and especially electoral, activities. Then anarchy, the abolition of the State, shared the same fate. Instead of abolishing the State they tried, on the contrary, to set up a number of new, small states. They then dropped the principle that the workers must not take part in any revolution that did not have as its aim the immediate and complete emancipation of the proletariat, and they themselves took part in a movement that was notoriously bourgeois. Finally they went against the dogma they had only just proclaimed – that the establishment of a revolutionary government is but another fraud another betrayal of the working class – for they sat quite comfortably in the juntas of the various towns, and moreover almost everywhere as an impotent minority outvoted and politically exploited by the bourgeoisie."
I'm astonished that you think this is true to any anarchist project ever, but you do you.
"It’s ironic that I say the exact same thing about the Soviet leadership throughout its entire leadership. They were often relying on regional leaders or party members eager to please and the leadership acted more like a fire department responding to fires than a monolithic overseer anticommunists portray them as"
Okay so then how come that when the soviets started electing Menshevik or leftcom reps they just pretended the elections didn't count and put party members in their place? Like okay, we're defending a revolution ova'here but clearly they had more leverage through the party over local councils than the CNT had over the rank and file.
"Only cos the revolution failed. The USSR was never even that bad. Even during the Ezhovschina the USSR imprisoned less people per capita than USA."
We're not comparing the US to the USSR. We're comparing Catalonia to the USSR.
"This is cartoonish anticommunist propaganda. It is never explained by State dept Anarchists like Chomsky how the reds sought to “hunger for power” by siding with the weakest, most vulnerable and poorest sections of society in country after country often at great costs to themselves."
Was Lenin at any point recallable during his tenure?
Comrade Cuba and Vietnam did not relax their Dotp. Its form changed over time (as it would be expected) as socialist ideology became hegemonic. Further would you have been one of those whining about the human rights of executed mafioso and US collaborators when the Cubans were shooting dissenters in the 70s when their dotp was neither hegemonic nor consolidated?
Cuba has an intelligence agency that has been running rings around US intelligence particularly since 19. The dotp consolidated and strengthened itself in the form of State power to the point they can laugh at the turncoats and and cia paid traitors that wave banners saying "down with socialism!" Whenever a US delegate visits. In the 60s or 70s those people would probably be in a basement with a bag on their head.
But Cuba has ideoligcal hegemony and support for the proletarian state and Cuban intelligence good enough to leak their finances linking them to Cia. The population laughs and understands they're traitors etc.
Dictatorships of the bourgeoisie can allow a relatively high amount of individual freedom and freedom of expression - because you or me in the town square screaming about overthrowing capitalism does not threaten the bourgeois State
However if you become effective like Malcolm X or Fred Hampton they'll execute you in a no knock raid. California still has a law not allowing communists to run for election etc.
Further as heroic as the Cuban and Vietnamese struggles were they largely were helped by the fact the nationalists expressed their nationalism through the communists in the struggle for national liberation. They were also not put through the trial of two world wars. The nationalists/white guardists/embittered kulaks/monarchists and conservatives in Russia expressed their nationalism as a fight against Bolshevism which inevitably led to them collaborating with Nazis in ww2.
The vietnamese did not have to deal with entire regions of the Soviet union who were susceptible to nazi ideology as the entirety of Eastern europe and some russians were
The dotp of Russia was, by the historical and material conditions of the period from 1917-1945, by necessity much more brutal than Cuba and Vietnam.
Theres not much to compare and its better to compare two superpowers than one city in Spain. Catalonia was a disaster. The end result of catalonia was socialists, communists, trotskyites and anarchists seeking refugee status in France while a 4 decade long fascist dictatorship ruled in Spain
Yes by the central committee
This cartoonish display that reds hunger for power needs to go in the bin.
The biggest purveyor of this is Chomsky. Now Lenin was a brilliant figure and one of the smartest people in Russia. If power was all he wanted why would he find a revolutionary path for the poorest in Russia which ended with him being shot by an anarchist followed by a stroke
If Lenin just wanted power he could've occupied an academic position (like Chomsky) then advocated change but not too much. Sought a position in the Tsars government advocating for bourgeois parliamentary democracy
He'd have been a Prime Minister of Russia no problem. He'd have got power without the difficulty of revolution, being shot or the difficulty of going into hiding from the Tsarist police
He could have sat in some academic tower like Chomsky did and grew to a ripe old age
Uhm, i think we're thinking about the same thing.
No. But i think that was clear until now too.
That's great news, so the anarchists who were chased away from Cuba can go back and the ones currently imprisoned can be released, as they're not a threat to the state, right?
That's understandable, but the problem is still not brutality in itself, it's excess, unnecessary brutality against people who were a, not a threat to the communist hegemony and b, were also among the poorest of Russia.
And if that's what is needed in order to a socialist revolution to succeed (i don't think so and reading Lenin hasn't convinced me that there's only one way) it spells really bleak for any first world country where anticommunism is rampant.
The display is not that reds hunger for power and i'm not basing my arguments on Chomsky, so this flew right by me.
The display is that the poor are in every country of the world the biggest pool of power. And if they get in the wrong hands and there's a state apparatus they can get ahold of you'll get Mussolini, you'll get Hitler you'll get Trump or you'll get Orbán. There are two ways to counter that, you try to hijack the state and if you succeed there's almost always a civil war brewing or you build a bottom-up movement that won't go away even if the people "finding the revolutionary way for them" are gone. Much like it's happening in Bolivia for example.