Didn’t she work as a prosecutor? A literal prosecutor, vs a literal criminal, might be able to make an effective dichotomy of democracy vs fascism in (somehow) still undecided voters.

Which government are you talking about? Most land owned by the government in the U.S. is either worthless desert, contracted out to the private sector, or the small bit leftover that’s actually used by the federal government.

It’s imperative to understand that non-internationalist worker movements that don’t care about imperialism are the actual bourgeois concessions that you mentioned earlier.

Certainly, but the left wing of the Labor party and the Communist Party in France were the ones to advocate for and eventually succeed in gaining decolonization, instead of endless campaigns of repression.

Excuse me, which demsoc movements have control in the so-called “democratic world”?

Lula in Brazil, Luis Arce in Bolivia, Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico, and Gabriel Boric in Chile to name a few.

Speaking of Cuba, I bring another source: a book by Pedro Ross called "how the worker’s parliaments saved the cuban revolution

I’ll have to read it, I’ve been meaning to do more research on Cuba.

Anyhow, how’s your statement that as soon as they have multi-party systems you’ll consider them successful, consistent with your claim that you measure success on the material conditions of the working class?

I believe the main abuses of the Communist parties were caused by their complete control over power with no recourse. When the party became repressive, the leaders/bureaucrats making the decisions couldn’t be voted out, not even by average party members. I also just thoroughly have an issue with the party dictating to the working class what it’s priorities are, and not the reverse. I’m not arguing they’d even have to start having multi-party elections, but at least have multiple people within the part contest the same seat in the politburo/central committee/legislature, argue for separate sets of ideas or plans (that adhere to party ideology), and let the party members decide which should be deciding the future of the party and country. That’d be enough for me, currently I see the political selection process in communist states to be controlled from above, usually by the highest organs of power, such as the Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party, which controls the party and state bureaucracy, and the Politburo, which controls the process in China.

I think there’s just a different measure of success. I think the socialist movement that built up the NHS in England with Bevan, the movement that built the Workers Coucils in France, the socialists that wons the 8 hour day globally, the Zapitistas, the PKK/YPG, and the rest of the socialist movements that built the modern welfare state could be considered successful.

I measure success more on the material conditions of the working class, rather than if the party has complete control over a country. Currently the democratic socialist movements have more control in the Democratic world, global South and global North, than the Leninists do.

The very second that China, Vietnam, Cuba, or Laos actually allows for free elections between multiple socialist factions, and not just the control of society by a party elite, that’s the second I’ll consider those leninists more successful than the Democratic Socialists.

I would also like to note because my other reply ran out of space, I wouldn’t consider myself an anti-communist, but rather pro-democracy.

There’s plenty of communists, even leninists, that I look up to for inspiration, people and movements such as Allende, Sankhara, Che, Hu Yaobang, and the French and Italian communist parties being some examples, and I don’t think the actions of Lenin or even Stalin are universally bad, just that their authoritarian actions allowed for abuses that never should’ve happened in the name of socialism, and that there’s also plenty of inspiration in non-Leninist democratic socialists such as Goldman, Luxemburg, Haywood, Bevan, and Meidner.

Thanks comrade. A good marxist would know that everything is propaganda.

Hence me saying that and then requesting sources for even better propaganda.

Won’t be citing Wikipedia here, western Wikipedia sadly has an anti-soviet bias due to the literature available in the west as a consequence of anti-communism.

While it’s definitely true wikipedia has biased pages around the Russian Revolution, specifically around not showing the proper criticisms of the anarchists like Mahkno during that period, however I believe it’s still the best (free and accessible) source available for the “Steel manned” criticism of the Bolsheviks during the revolution. If I was criticizing the actions of the anarchists or mensheviks I would definitely have to pull from actual books however.

I know the coup attempt took place before October. But that doesn’t point you to other possible coup attempts? You don’t see a coup fail and go “oh thank god that’s over” and keep doing the same, right?

No of course not, but it showed that the socialist parties had the ability to work together to counter the reactionary threat when needed. In my humble opinion as a college student I believe the Russian socialists would’ve been better off to keep cooperating with eachother against the Kadets and Whites rather than succumbing to infighting. However it’s questionable whether the mensheviks or Right-SR’s would have done so, but the anarchists, and Left SR’s definitely would have.

It’s not me saying that. There were terrorist attempts on Lenin, and even some successful ones against prominent Bolsheviks.

I’m aware of the assassination attempts on Lenin and other bolsheviks, but I don’t think that should’ve condemned the entirety of the other socialist parties to being purged, especially since I’ve never seen evidence of these assassination attempts being planned by the leadership of any of the socialist parties.

Bolsheviks were right! You CAN establish socialism without a previous phase of capitalism. In the USSR, class relations disappeared, and the exploitation was no more.

I don’t think that’s exactly what happened, I’d say it was far more than the class relations changed from lord and peasant to party official and worker, though that’s my Trotskyist sympathies and it’s a topic that’s been well debated and I’m sure you’re aware of that.

Saying that they were conveyors for instructions from the top down is nonsensical, especially seeing how union membership amounted to tens of millions of workers while being totally voluntary.

While the unions functioned very much like you say as the means through which the government gave certain benefits such as vacations at the sanitariums, they also had the ability to punish workers for non-loyalty and for stepping outside of party line, the ability for the party to influence the union and not the other way around is what I have problems with. And while technically being voluntary, it’s hard to measure how much participation in any organization is voluntary in an authoritarian environment like the Stalin and Brezhnev periods of the USSR.

“Eventually”? Really? Again, you’re just spouting anti-communist propaganda. You can complain about repression but saying that the USSR “eventually” instituted progressive welfare is crazy, it’s one of the earliest things the USSR did.

I said eventually because while the subsidies and reforms put in place during War Communism did help the urban class, they also lead to shortages of food in the countryside. In my opinion it’s only later after the end if War Communism and the beginning of the NEP that true welfare reforms were put in place, not just redistributory policies that redistributed resources from the rural to urban class. (I’m aware that some of the redistributions came from Kulaks and not peasants, however grain seizures did not happen only to Kulaks)

There’s no exploitation, so there’s nothing to concede.

That was the party line, but my Trotsky/Bernstein/Luxemburg inspired self would probably say otherwise.

So little power that they could kickstart a 2-year-long civil war in which many Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries joined them, and in which more than a million and a half people died on the Bolshevik side. I’m sure independent unions controlling the industry separately would have fought much better against the White armies.

Again that civil war started only after the revolution in October, had the socialists presented a more united front then I doubt the Tsarists would’ve had the opening to grab political control, they were vastly less popular than the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and SRs. And while the need for a strong central plan during the war is justification for the War Communism, but not for the lack of control the workers and unions had on planning after the war during the NEP period and after for the rest of Soviet history.

Blaming the russian civil war on Bolsheviks instead of the actual, literal monarchic fascists that wanted to restore the Russian Empire.

Had the Black Hundreds started the conflict I would completely agree with you. But in my view, the widespread violence/conflict didn’t actually start until after the start of violence between socialists in October. I only blame the bolsheviks for starting the conflict, I blame the mensheviks for working with people like Wrangel, Denikin, and the other white officers for perpetuating it and not bringing it to a quick close or trying to find agreement with the bolsheviks. But I don’t think the Mensheviks/Right SR’s would’ve ever stooped to working with people like Wrangel had the bolsheviks not started hostilities.

We’re talking of the first Socialist experiment ever.

I’m extremely sympathetic to this argument, however my only problem is that the socialists of that time were doing exactly what socialists today do, fighting and hating eachothing more than they fought the capitalists. After the 1917 election effectively, the entire government was controlled by socialists, the Kadets and Whites would’ve only had whatever power the socialists let them. I feel like if I was participating in the first socialist revolution I would put much more care into ensuring the movement as a whole stayed united and in power, instead of one particular section of it, however here I am engaging in leftist infighting so who knows.

That doesn’t discredit the entire revolution, its ideals, and its achievements, at least it doesn’t to me, whereas it clearly does for anti-communists like you.

I don’t think it discredits the revolution actually, hence me putting effort into learning about Soviet history post-revolution as well. I do however think it discredits some of the ideals of Leninism, just because of how easy they were for Stalin to abuse. Primarily the concept of the Vanguard party meant that the Bolsheviks could justify to themselves the repression of other socialists movements and in my view it had an inherently patriarchal view of the working class needing to be “guided” by a party instead of the party being guided by the working class. In my view the ban on factionalism also allowed whatever faction was in power to crush any competition and basically allowed it to not have to listen to the working class. If a broad swath of the population began to support Trotsky or any other faction leader, the ruling faction could simply say that those Trotskyists were counter-revolutionary and repress them.

which ironically led to the demise of the country once the higher ups decided it was time to “liberalize” the economy and the politics, aka Glasnost and Perestroika. But refusing to do material analysis of the circumstances, and reducing everything to “Lenin bad”, is counterproductive.

The Gorbachev period is actually why I blame Lenin. In my view Gorbachev was just the leader of one of the two major factions of the USSR during that time. But in my view, because of the ban on factions that started with Lenin, and the collection of power around the Politburo that started with Lenin, the internal political conflicts of the party were decided more by who had connections and political maneuvering abilities far more than who the working class preferred. Had the working class been able to vote specifically for which faction they wanted more in the Gorbachev era and before, I don’t think the scheming that lead to the August Coup and dissolution of the union by the Liberals ever would’ve happened.

Funnily enough, nobody on the left talks or complains about the excesses of violence carried out by the antifascist side during the civil war, such as burning churches with priests alive inside, or raping nuns, or execution of fascist prisoners, or even infighting among the leftist parties. You know why? Because it failed, and failed leftist movements aren’t criticised but idealised by people like you.

I do actually criticize the infighting between liberals, anarchists, and leninists during the Spanish Civil War, however it’s a topic that doesn’t come up often in American political discourse so I don’t often get the chance to. I’ve read far less about the Spanish War than the Russian one, however from what I’ve read the fighting between the Leninists and Anarchists and the schemes of the Liberals directly contributed to their loss. I don’t think the Leninists seizing power over the socialist movement in Spain would’ve exact been the answer, with it likely leading to infighting within the left like during the Russian war, I think the answer probably would’ve been deeper negotiation and agreement between socialists for a more united Popular Front, however you’d know more than me on if that was feasible.

Can I ask where you’re majoring in Soviet history? I’m interested.

University of Chapel Hill at North Carolina, unfortunately the best I can afford at the moment for a secondary major.

Nice propaganda bro, sources would be nice.

threat of a reactionary, pro-Tsarist coup

The coup took place before the October Revolution and was crushed by the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks before the October Revolution even started.

If by “nothing required Lenin to purge other fellow socialists” you mean there weren’t counter-revolutionary Mensheviks and other such assets in positions of power during a literal civil war,

Oh the good old, “Call them counter revolutionary and now it’s okay to shoot them”. The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries had a far bigger hand in the Febuary Revolution than the Bolsheviks, and later had their legitimacy confirmed with a free election. If anyone was counter-revolutionary it’d be the betrayers of the majority elected socialist government, the Bolsheviks under Lenin.

If by “crushing syndicalism” in Russia you mean not immediately giving the means of production to uneducated workers, but instead slowly growing unions to unforeseen levels of participation,

Nice try, but the Union’s under Marxist Leninist regimes are always heavily policed and controlled by their respective governments. "In this respect, through the Western lens of a dichotomy of independent unions versus company unions, they were more accurately comparable to company unions, as “unlike unions in the West, the Soviet variety do not fight for the economic interests of the workers. They are conveyor belts for Party instructions, carrying punishments and rewards to industrial and collective farm employees. Soviet trade unions work with their employer, the government, and not against it.” I’m not completely against planning, but I’m against banning any form of independent organization/representation for workers, and then striking them down whenever they complain.

If by “crushing the working class” you mean creating unforeseen levels of access to healthcare, education, eliminating unemployment and homelessness.

While the soviets did eventually institute some rather progressive welfare reforms for their time, these reforms had no popular demand from the working class that grain requisition did originally, and were put in place from above, not gained through demands of a working class movement. I believe most Leninists would call this a Bourgeoisie Concession had it happened in a capitalist country.

The Bolshevik revolution faced a coalition of the Tsarist loyalists in the civil war, which was militarily and economically supported by a total of 14 other countries, including Britain and its colonies, France, and many other European powers, in the direct aftermath of WW1

The Bolsheviks only faced an allied invasion after having pulled out of the war and signed a separate peace with the Germans through Brest-Litovsk, which happened after the bolsheviks had overthrown the mensheviks. More importantly though, the civil war didn’t even start until the Bolsheviks had crushed their socialist opposition. The Tsarists had almost zero power and were thoroughly crushed after events such as the Kornilov affair, and it would’ve stayed that way had the Bolsheviks not fractured the Russian socialist movement.

Of course there were. Stalinism was extremely excessive and brutal during WW2, and the oppression went way overboard.

I actually have far more of a problem with Stalins actions in the 1920s before the Great Purge and World War 2. Between Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Ryhzkov, and their supporters, Stalin had effectively crushed any opposition even within the party. Not though discrediting them intellectually or by testing their ideas and showing the failures, but instead by killing or imprisoning them.

I thoroughly believe these conflicts during the 1920s were what doomed the USSR, Stalin had killed almost all competing ideas for a potentially better Socialism, even among fellow Leninists. And through his purges Stalin became the gold standard of Leninism for the USSR, with the effective intellectual ban on the ideas of Bukharin, Zinoviev, and Trotsky lasting until the end of the USSR.

Let’s learn from the mistakes of the past and build more fair and resilient systems that won’t commit those excesses, or will minimize them.

That is what I tried to do here, and is why I’m majoring in Soviet history, but I don’t think just quoting the old propaganda justifications or Parenti counts as sober analysis. As socialists I believe we should focus historically on the possible off-ramps from authoritarianism that the USSR and all “Actually Existing Socialist” states had. Which is why I focus on Stalin and how the collection of power into Lenin’s position lead to the possibility of much larger later abuses under Stalin, imagine how much could’ve changed had after the civil war the Factions ban been lifted and the working class was allowed to choose between the Workers Opposition, Left Opposition or Right Opposition in free and fair internal Party elections like takes place now in most modern Socialist parties. I’m sure in this scenario Stalin wouldn’t of been able to commit the atrocities he later did, and that Soviet politics would rely much more on the will of the working class than behind the curtain political maneuvering.

but you cannot deny that he was on of its greatest exponents

While the revolution was a great propaganda victory for Socialists globally, almost every group that sprung up inspired by the revolution later became controlled by Moscow.

For example, the communists in my home country, the Communist Party of the USA, were summoned to Moscow by Stalin and had their more anarchist/democratic leaning factions purged, with some even being arrested and kept in Moscow till they died. The amount of control that Stalin and the Comintern had on international communism lead to repeated purges of more democratic/less Authoritarian socialists and basically ensured that Stalinist/Marxist Leninist Socialism was the only type allowed to flourish in any form for most of the cold war.

I certainly couldn’t predict what would’ve changed had the Russian Revolution been more democratic/pluralist, or had a more democratic revolution inspired the last century of global Socialism, but I at least believe that Socialism wouldn’t face the uphill “Gulags, Famine, Stalin, Mao” battle that it currently does.

Peace between us, war on the bourgeoisie, comrade

I would love nothing more than a united left, but it’s more the actions of Marxist Leninist inspired governments after their revolutions, (Universal banning of non-Leninist Socialists, Universal banning of pluralist socialist democracy, Yugoslav’s Split, 1956, and 1968) that makes me bash against ML’s. It’s hard to trust talk of leftist unity when the history of Leninism has involved the crushing of any other form of leftism since its inception.

Marx wasn’t the only socialist of his time, though history has deemed him certainly the most important.

Lenin on the other hand…

Nothing about the theory required Lenin to overthrow the results of a democratic election in 1917

Nothing about the theory required Lenin to advocate for the purging of his other fellow socialists in the soviets/councils.

Nothing about the theory required Lenin to backstab and crush his anarchist allies in Ukraine.

Nothing about the theory required Lenin crushing anarchism/syndicalism in Russia.

Nothing about the theory required Lenin to crush the working class when they told him outright that his actions were against their will.

Nothing about the theory required Lenin banning all dissent even within the Communist party.

Nothing about the theory required Lenin to start mass seizures of food and mass nationalizations under “War Communism” that started the canard of “Socialism is when the government owns things”.

By the time of Lenins death, he had put in place all the institutions and levers of control that Stalin would later use to brutalize the population, all the worst parts of the Great Purge can be connected back to the systems that Lenin put in place.

Lenin had immense opportunities for positive change as the leader of the first socialist nation, however he squandered it completely by his purge of any ideals that weren’t his own, and his project turned into a dictatorship. Meanwhile the Democratic Socialists and Anarchists that Lenin loved to berate helped build societies that are now infinitely better to live in and more open to change from the working class than any of the modern countries inspired by his ideology.

You can say “Marx is the theory , Lenin is the practice” but it’s much more accurate to say, Marx is the theory, Lenin is a practice, and not the best one historically.

I’m a socialist but this needs the obligatory:

“Fuck Lenin™”

Disregarding the weirdest propaganda meme I have literally ever seen.

Lei Feng died of very very non-natural causes, supposedly when he was struck by a telephone pole that had been hit by a truck.

It’s also worth noting that he was essentially just a caricature of the “perfect revolutionary” for the Chinese government, it’s very hard to establish any historicity to any of the things attributed to him.

Pretty sure this is North Korea not China

Enough to know it’s bullshit.

Sure you can grab the one example in my argument that was actually functional and not fully symbolic, but my point still stands, humans build seemingly irrational things to grandstand, and the Pharoahs would’ve for sure done the same in their role as dictators.

I have my fucking doubts.

And I’m sure so has every serious academic who has studied the pyramids and all came to the conclusion that it was a tomb, and if you read their reasonings for that I’m sure you’d understand why they came to that conclusion.

Here’s an electrical engineer tearing apart the electrical pyramid conspiracy theory for it’s misunderstanding of basic electronics.

Honestly, why would they make three precise giant buildings for a tomb?

Same reason we would spend a stupid amount of money on the St. Louis Arch, Statue of Liberty, or Palace of Versaille, or any work of art? To create a lasting symbol of something and to symbolize status.

I’m sure you found that book very compelling, but any electrical engineer or historian with an understanding of that period’s technology could rip it apart.

Wtf? Pls say this is satire.

What did marx say communism was again?