More on the Russian Revolution

"For the Anarchists declared, if 'power' really should belong to the soviets, it could not belong to the Bolshevik party, and if it should belong to that Party, as the Bolsheviks envisaged, it could not belong to the soviets." - Voline, Unknown Revolution

Within six-weeks of the October Revolution, all opposition parties were banned from the Soviets. This occured after an extended attack against the opposition, mostly in the gerry-mandered 2nd and 5th All-Russian Congresses. By 1920, the Bolsheviks were busy organizing outside worker-groups to combat the increasing level of disdain and "growing disenchantment of Petrograd workers with economic conditions and the evolving structure and operation of Soviet political institutions." (From "Bolsheviks in Power") A shrinking of party-membership apparently happened at this time.
http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/review-the-bolsheviks-in-power

Back to Toledo Grows... I wish I had the time to write!

"http://libcom.org/forums/history-culture/trotskys-history-russian-revolution-21102008"

"http://eng.anarchopedia.org/An_Anarchist_FAQ_-_Did_the_Bolsheviks_really_aim_for_Soviet_power%3F"

"http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/jul/04.htm"

Quotes for Marxism & Anarchism pt 2

"It seems to me that this attempt to build a communist republic on the basis of a strongly centralized state, under the iron law of the dictatorship of one party, has ended in a terrible fiasco. Russia teaches us how not to impose communism." - Peter Kropotkin

Socialism is when "proletariat seized political power and turns the means of production into state property."- Engels

In the case of the Bolsheviki this tyranny is masked by a world-stirring slogan . . . Just because I am a revolutionist I refuse to side with the master class, which in Russia is called the Communist Party." - Emma Goldman

Until the 'higher' phase of communism arrives, the Socialists demand the strictest control, by society and by the state, of the amount of labor and of consumption - Lenin

In its struggle against the collective power of the propertied classes the proletariat cannot act as a class except by constituting itself a political party, distinct from and opposed to, all old parties formed by the propertied classes . . . The conquest of political power has therefore become the great duty of the working class. - Hague Conference, First International

"Communist Manifesto had already proclaimed the winning of universal suffrage, of democracy, as one of the first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat" - Engels, 1895

Marxism as Revolutionary-Reformism; Pt. 2

--Table of Contents (probably will be reworked)-- I really can go two directions, a historical look, or a theoretical. I need a synthesis of the two, but how that will work, I'm not entirely sure. Perhaps get that through a lot at the beginning in the early debates? Hmm...

Introduction
History of Socialism & its varieties leading to The First International (Harsh reactions from the First International led to a lull in revolutionary organizing, brought back to life later on)
Paris Commune & the reworking of Marxist ideas
History of The State, a History of Capitalism (linked from the International by Engel's quote of the difference of the Anarchists and the Marxists)
Russian Revolution, Kronstadt, Makhnovists
The Socialist Labor Parties & the Reaction of the Communists
Spanish Revolution
Hungary, France, and today's Greece
An Attempted Synthesis

Other issues to discuss include:
The Problem with a Pure Economic Focus/ Economic Determinism (and a lack of a critique of hierarchy and the State) "The rule of heaven and the rule of nature – angels, spirits, devils, molecules, atoms, ether, the laws of God-Heaven and the laws of Nature, forces, the influence of one body on another – all this is invented, formed, created by society. Marxism is the new scientific Christianity, designed to conquer the bourgeois world by deceiving the people, the proletariat, just as Christianity deceived the feudal world. —Abba and V.L. Gordin, The Russian Anarchists (Nationalism and Culture, Chapter 1 touches on this idea a lot too)
The State (Marx may have wished to touch on this idea, though he died, so it didn't happen)
A Critique of Capitalist "Progress"
Reforming the State

Interesting essay for me to read later: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/bio/robertson-ann.htm

Marxism as 'Revolutionary-Reformism' (work in progress)

Belbaltlag; Soviet Labor Camp (GULAG) - 1932

Marxism as 'Revolutionary-Reformism'

Marx is long dead and the historical heirs of his theories have become bloated corpses of the mass worker movements they once were. The few still clinging to life have resorted to finishing what they began 150 years ago: destroying the radical-autonomous and revolutionary elements of the world's working-class.

In practically every single revolutionary moment, in every opportunity for the downtrodden to do away with their oppressors, Marxists of varying varieties have been at the forefront of reactionary, repressive deeds. This has placed Marxists at odds with many other socialists, from the parliamentary-reformists of the Labor and Socialist Parties, to the Libertarian wings of Anarchism, Council Communism, and even elements of Marxists.

(rework this shit)

This essay attempts to hammer one of the final nails in the coffin of 'Revolutionary-Reformism' by detailing its theories, its history, and its inevitable fall (not satisfied with that last sentence).




A Potential Warning

Detractors from this text are likely to find notes of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, or any other Marxist disputing that said claims. I suppose they may be somewhat correct. The problem with this view is much like the problem in debating Christians. Should anyone argue against the True One, snippets telling the opposite will be recited, regardless if the counter-argument would better anything aside from one-upping me. It is easy to find such thins when you have with you such contradictory elements of the same story. Where there is the God of Love, there is also the God responsible for the great floods and "how blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rock." Where there is the libertarian Marx, "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready made State machinery and weld it for its own purposes" there also exists the tyrant Marx, "[the proletarian] must employ coercive measures, that is, governmental measures; so long it is still a class itself, and the economic conditions which give rise to the class struggle and the existence of classes have not yet disappeared and must be forcibly removed…"




Its internationalism, (by careful to not do away with 'internationalism though... need new wording) in theory was necessary to save the fleeting Soviet Republic. Instead, it became its own imperial force, spreading revolution itself. But rather than coming from the grassroots, it came down with an iron fist. (remember the soviets failed to spread revolution, when it had an easy chance, into Finland but stopped to create a pact with the Finland government, essentially doing away with the radical Finnish movement)
Even should the desire for a completely communal lifestyle exist, it is necessary for the preservation of the autonomous individual, to choose, to craft in one's own, the practice of freedom. Abusive relationships tend to create abusive tendencies, not so much a liberation of desires and the expansion of mutual aid.


When World War I began, many of the socialist parties resorted to a mainstream nationalism to their countries of origin, doing away with the previous goals of worker internationalism.

Even the Marxist sects focused on Workers Democracy remind us, "Without some form of state, how could the trains run on time, how could the harmonious development of the economy, of society that socialism represents be planned." http://www.marxist.com/marxism-state-apparatus-army-police1994.htm (There's another quote by Engels who said something similar; find it!)

(Obsession with Industrialism, Industry; created by capital!)

(For the history of the Paris Commune, http://question-everything.mahost.org/History/ParisCommune.html)

For me later: http://struggle.ws/rbr/rbr1_marxstat.html

Quotes for Marxism & Anarchism

"A radical social revolution’ said Marx, “is connected with certain historical conditions of economic development; the latter are its presupposition. Therefore it is possible only where the industrial proletariat, together with capitalist production, occupies at least a substantial place in the mass of the people.’ Marx continues: ‘He [Mikhail Bakunin] understands absolutely nothing about social revolution ... For him economic requisites do not exist...He wants a European social revolution, resting on the economic foundation of capitalist production, to take place on the level of the Russian or Slavic agricultural and pastoral peoples ... Will power and not economic conditions is the basis for his social revolution."

"Bakunin maintains that it is the state which has created capital, that the capitalist has his capital only by the grace of the state. As, therefore, the state is the chief evil, it is above all the state which must be done away with and then capitalism will go to blazes of itself. We, on the contrary, say: Do away with capital, the concentration of the means of production in the hands of the few, and the state will fall of itself.’ - Engels

They [the Marxists] maintain that only a dictatorship — their dictatorship, of course — can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up. - Bakunin

"Anarchism or freedom is the aim, while the state and dictatorship is the means, and so, [for Marxists] in order to free the masses, they have first to be enslaved" - Bakunin

Nationalism and Culture; pt 1?

"State capitalism, the most dangerous antithesis of real socialism, demands the surrender of all social activities to the state. It is the triumph of the machine over the spirit, the rationalization of all thought, action and feeling according to the fixed norms of authority, and consequently the end of all real intellectual culture." - Rudolf Rocker, Nationalism and Culture.

If ya'll don't know, the last quote was also Rocker, and if you didn't get the connection, I'm reading Nationalism and Culture right now. Probably one of the better books I've read in a long time. Basically, Rudolf Rocker, author of Anarcho-Syndicalism and Pioneers of American Freedom (a series of essays on a number of Americans such as Thoreau, Benjamin Tucker, William Lloyd Garrison; comparing and contrasting a number of liberal thinkers to the later N-American Anarchist movement; can't find a copy to save my life though). For a good overview of Nationalism and Culture, see the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism_and_Culture) or most of the book found here (http://www.anarchosyndicalism.net/rocker/nc.htm).

I hope a later discussion on the topic. Though I do have three ideas that are also running through my head. At work I wrote (in my head) a perspective eulogy, talking about how without death, life could not exist (as well as the irony of being at a funeral for a person who spent their entire life giving life, only to have it taken away; sounds rough but I'm a weird one). The second is me fantasizing of a good lashing on the authoritarian strands of Marxism, taking in everything from Marx's theory of history to the rise and fall of the various Marxist camps (I think I'll close with some good words on the libertarian trends of Marxism though). Third is a theory I've been hammering out, mostly thanks to some personal conversation with someone, a few readings of Autonomist Marxist ideas, and the quote from yesterday (refresher: "The peoples owe all the political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength." -Rudolf Rocker) The third will probably be written first and I already had an argument/discussion with my mom about it (she seemed interested, I think). Also apart of that process is a discussion on the ongoing nature of revolutionary success and how it relates to a rise of tyrannical forces (worker groups led to fascism, successes of peasants and later unions gave way to "primitive accumulation" and later what N-Americans know as "globalization.")

"The peoples owe all the political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength."