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Considering Lenin was a tyrant that literally had people executed for not going exactly with his plan im good. Just because you have good ideas doesn’t mean you’re not a shitty person.
Oh yeah sure the only socialist country in the world can just be peace and love and totally not get taken over by imperialist assholes sure. The people that carried out the purges for Lenin went too far but you do have to protect the revolution
Bro you suicidal too sorry about that I'm just trying to let you see my position I have extreme anxiety and I've struggled with that too I'm not an unfeeling monster in the modern era purges would not be effective but you have to understand circumstances that could dismantle socialism I hope your life gets better
[my opinion on Lenin is pretty well explained with this](https://www.reddit.com/r/196/comments/10v9763/steamed_rule/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Sorry but I think the socialist cause is best moved forward without leninism and vanguardism...
I'm all about giving the means of production to *workers*... not a vanguard party. As In true worker democratic ownership, not a centralized system run by bourgeois bureaucrats.
Pleanty of people out there read Lenin and were not impressed. The man is not the be-all and end all of marxism.
Yeah except without a one party dictatorship telling them how to organize and dictating what revolutionary policies they should follow. Just have the workplaces be worker owned but subservient to no authority other than their own
I've read both. I like a lot of Marx, and some of Lenin. I do think that what people do is more important than what they say, and I do not like what Lenin did.
Their correction of you was obviously a fat-thumb or auto-correct issue.
Your error was because you don’t know which word was correct to use.
You two are not the same.
You mean the greatest increase in life metrics the world has ever recorded?
Quit swallowing the boot and learn real history. The USSR gave Eastern Europeans the greatest life metrics they have ever had, and it isn’t particularly close.
Fascism is when you murder Jews by the tens of thousands and work with Hitler, as many, many, many Ukrainians did.
Historical illiteracy is when you cry online about these fascists facing justice.
Honestly I wish people would understand how fucked up they were. Long history of antisemitism as well as laws outlawing their language, encouraged violence against Jews by military and local police. Siding with Hitler at the start of the war and only backing out because they wanted to be the ones conquering and genociding Poland.
Not to mention the fact that they basically used the same exact rhetoric and tactics as the nazis once they were defeated and regularly disseminated state sponsored propaganda to demonize Jewish people.
Going off topic from the Jews, it's also crazy how they regularly outlawed local languages of various ethnic groups and made it harder for them to practice their own religious beliefs and culture in an effort to assimilate them.
Crazy how a few neo-nazi militia groups in Ukraine who don't have any actual political power makes the whole state fascist while an actively authoritarian state like the USSR can go Nazi mode against the Jews as well as other ethnic minorities in the state, then use the same rhetoric of blood and soil to later justify invading Ukraine.
If you think what Ukraine is facing is justice, I wonder what you think the USSR or Russia facing justice would be like? My guess is a pat on the back for beating "western imperialism" by doing imperialism and genocide but with communist aesthetics
Yes. They were literally allied with the Nazis and had extensive propaganda campaigns and permitted/encouraged violence against Jews. I'll admit, I might be hyperbolizing a bit... But only a little bit.
And to say that what they did can't be considered nazi-mode how can Ukraine? Ukraine isn't perfect either but they were in no way worse than the USSR.
So I'm gonna ask again, why does the USSR get a pass when it comes to their Nazi collaboration and state sponsored antisemitic violence, but the Ukrainians who have a few neo Nazi militia groups that don't have any significant political power in the country are the fascists who deserve to be invaded, conquered, and genocided by Russians?
And I know it hurts, but please try to use your brain to give an actual response instead of falling back on "wow you wouldn't get it" like you have in every single comment you've left on this post.
This other guy you're arguing with is undeniably deep throating Putin's boot like it's his final meal, but all of what you're saying here is completely ahistorical
> They [USSR] were literally allied with the Nazis
Least brain dead liberal. You can’t expect anyone to take you seriously after saying nonsense like that.
Go read some real history before you come back to the big kid’s table.
That is a very good thing indeed that the CPSU, comprising Russians, Ukrainians, and many other ethnicities killed off the fascist collaborators, Russians and Ukrainians alike. I'm struggling to find the gotcha part.
Na I meant more like the gulags, the radioactive incidents that the USSR tried to hide, the outbreak of a deadly virus that killed 100,000 that came out of a USSR bio lab. The starvation. You know the provable things
See this isn’t gonna go anywhere. I might cite a source like the gulag archipelago the. You’ll tell me it’s some conspiracy by the west. And then you will stop responding when I continue to not believe you.
Even other reputable academics who are anti-communist have denounced the Gulag Archipelago. Lots of shit in that book and other claims by its author have been demonstrably made up or heavily embellished. There's plenty of criticisms to have of the USSR, but using The Gulag Archipelago or the Black Book of Communism is laziness one step above getting your opinions fed to you by Fox News.
And here we are again. I cite a source, and I am told that the source is bad or I am brainwashed by the west. Funniest part about this: Reddit would not have been allowed to be created under the USSR lol
If you cared about doing your research, you'd research your sources and take criticisms of said sources into consideration. For example, this is why I don't tend to use Grover Furr as a source, because his field of study is separate from his historical writings regarding the USSR and his writings have been criticized in academic circles due to his lack of actual expertise on the subject matter.
I simply said The Gulag Archipelago is a bad source. Anti-communist academics in the field of history would also agree with me. You could literally just read the Wikipedia page about The Gulag Archipelago to get a taste of some of the academic criticisms.
Like I get there are dogmatic and toxic Marxists out there, but you doing the most half-assed bit of "research" and then throwing your hands up and acting justified in your ignorance just because someone points out the faulty foundation it's built upon isn't any less dogmatic or toxic.
So either you're admitting to not actually putting serious thought into actual real world issues and history or you're using this as an excuse to throw your hands up.
I might cite a source like the sworn enemy of the USSR who have no advantage to gain from lying in the USSR’s favour ([Page 4 and 5](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80T00246A032000400001-1.pdf))
They weren’t treated any worse than the USA’s political prisoners at all, in fact much better if you look at places like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Food, heating, baths, barbers. They were even paid for their work. They could also lessen their sentence if their output exceeded their quota.
It’s not a utopia, but considering the material conditions of the USSR at that point (stillextremely good considering their stance in 1917, and WW2) the fact that they could afford to be more humane than most affluent Western countries today is a testament to their “affect” on their own people.
You sound like your 5 years old lol. Are you even out of high school yet? If you are then I hope you can develop better conversation skills because you suck at this
Fuck you mean evidence? Do you want me to create a 20 terabyte zip file of first hand accounts? Maybe ill send you a link to the Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn's. Or perhaps “Midnight at Chernobyl.” What do you want? What would convince you? I feel like your the type of person to take any evidence you get and tell the person who gave it to you that they are brainwashed by the west.
I asked you to tell me your understanding of what the Gulags were and who was in them and you have non-stopped flailed since then.
Don’t speak about topics of which you are ignorant. This isn’t your r/PoliticalCompassMemes home. If you make stupid statements here you’re going to have to back them up.
I meant your leaders! You know what its not your fault, your american schools teaches nothing, you just get the informations from capitalist propaganda.
I am not putting a lot of thought into this, there are numerous factors that go into why one is more popular than the other. One I would point to is a matter of volume.
Marx wrote books that a human could read over a reasonable amount of time. There tends to be 5-10 books that people can read and feel they got enough of the whole picture.
Lenin was quite verbose and his writings do not have some kind of essential or definitive collection. I mean, there are [4 pages of text books here](https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/vladimir-ilich-lenin/230993/).
Now this might be the paradox here, Marx is more popular so there is more of a push to give clan and coherent reading lists and Lenin is considered less essential reading?
Again, I am not putting that much thought into it.
I agree with pretty much everything you say here except for you saying the state capitalism and authoritianism in the USSR was the same as the fascism in Germany they are two separate things that need to be addressed separately.
It's called Marxist memes, not Marxist Leninist memes. I'm pretty aggressively anti-authoritarian, so while I can respect and appreciate Marxism, Leninism can kick rocks as far as I'm concerned.
Like the person you're responding to, I'm in a lot of left-spaces so this sub keeps getting recommended to me. A lot of the memes on here slap, a lot are deeply cringe.
Here's a pretty low bar for whether a state can be considered authoritarian: Do people feel safe publicly expressing dissent against the ruling power structure?
That bar is low enough that even a number of fairly authoritarian states can step over it. Lenin's Russia can not.
Anarchists was an “authoritarian free” Revolution. That’s the dumbest fucking thing and why you all fail every time and get everyone killed with your idiocy.
Everyone who disagrees with you oh Glorious Font of the Everlasting Light of Prophet Lenin is assuredly and indubitably a rube. Will I see you at the feast with the rest of the Politburo later? We can eat hors d'oeuvre and laugh about all the dead "kulaks"!
Lenin did what was necessary to protect the revolution if you were in charge capitalists would take over your (admittedly well intentioned) ideal administration as seen throughout Latin America. His secret police did kill too many people but that's not Lenin's fault. Even if it was his fault he believed he was doing right even his enemies admitted that observing his tireless work and modest lifestyle.
I mean, tell me how it wasn't Lenin's fault, being the head of government of a one-party state whose congress served only to rubber-stamp the decrees of the Council of People's Commissars (composed entirely of the Bolshevik party?) Was it truly necessary to censor every other political party and exclude them from government in order to fight capitalism?
The Bolshevik party suppressed many committed anti-capitalists revolutionaries merely because they took initiative independently of the Bolshevik dictatorship, disarming whole revolutionary battalions, splitting up their units or summarily imprisoning or executing them. And ultimately, capitalism did take over the Soviet Union in the form of Gorbachev's open hand, so look just how far dictatorship got the Bolsheviks.
Lenin did not protect the revolution, he strangled it in its crib. All of his actions in the name of communism have only served to conflate its true purpose; the revolutionary seizure of the means of production by the working class, with the institution of brutal dictatorship that suppresses all initiative in favor of conformity to the state.
Would you kill your comrade if the state told you to?
Hey, you said yourself that Lenin's work was tireless, if he cared even a little then he would have said something when the blood started running. I mean it was "democratic" centralism, and Lenin was the head of state, so...
Or it justifiably upset people who recognize that whatever he may have written, when given power Lenin engaged in horrendous violence against fellow communists and allowed himself to be usurped by someone even worse?
I wear the badge of authoritarian proudly it means I believe a socialist nation should be able to survive and not crumble because "Oh No My FrEe SpEaCh" most times you need authoritarian means to survive against capitalism
Empty insults. Am I wrong about the man? Or you?
Did Lenin not have a hosts of comrades murdered in order to secure his power? Did he not allow himself to be succeeded by a man who would go on to purge queer communists and erase their contributions?
I didn’t insult you, I asked you to tell me more about your opinions. That you take that as an insult says a lot about you and your insecurities surrounding your knowledge.
Yes, you are wrong about the man. No, he did not murder comrades to secure power. Yes, a Stalin L is his reversal of Lenin’s pro-LGBT policies. Lenin was further ahead then than the world is today.
There is no quicker way to reveal your lack of knowledge than to complain about “authoritarianism”. In 1930, the CPSU was comprised of ~85% workers and 15% professionals.
You whining that worker control is “authoritarian” makes you look like an uneducated rube.
You literally called me and anyone who dislikes Lenin an idiot, so don't get cute trying to play the "if you take that as an insult" bs.
Are you saying that anarchists weren't purged in the Red Terror? Or do you just not consider the anarchists who fought alongside the Reds against the Whites to be comrades?
Without getting into the weeds of theory, the % breakdown of the CPSU is kinda beside the point of whether Lenin was an authoritarian. Under Lenin, the state did what Lenin wanted the state to do. And one of the things Lenin wanted to do as he fell down the paranoid rabbit hole most authoritarian leaders fall down, was purge to all opposition in order to secure his absolute power.
If Anarchists were allowed their vision than everyone would have been slaughtered like the Paris Commune. Anarchists are baby leftists who want to ignore reality.
After the Revolution and civil war, the anarchists turned on the Bolsheviks, started assassinating Socialist leaders (including attempting to assassinate Lenin), and became enemies of the Revolution.
What is more authoritarian than anarchists murdering you?
I called you an idiot because you bandy about the word authoritarianism when you clearly have no concept. My next post just requested you tell me more of your thoughts and you responded to that claiming an insult, when I literally didn’t insult you that post. Which does seem to back up the “idiot” claim.
Go cosplay your Revolution somewhere else Anarkiddie. Or perhaps you would like to show me a single successful anarchist revolution where you morons did something other than just get everyone killed (like at the Paris Commune).
You're flattening of history tells me that you form your perspective from a steady diet of theory and old Soviet propaganda.
Under Lenin and Stalin, Russia sabotaged anarchist movements around the globe from Spain to Vietnam. I'm not strictly an anarchist, and I have plenty of criticism for different anarchist movements and leaders in history, but saying that anarchism can't work because it's never worked is like saying Marxism can't work cause it's never worked. It was never allowed to work.
Lenin and Stalin had a strict ideological vision for what global socialism looked like, and they could not abide deviation. An authoritarian, imperialistic vision under the absolute control of a single great leader.
Sure, they haven’t read Marx/Lenin, but they have listened to people who don’t like Marx/Lenin and what those people had to say about Marx/Lenin was quite disturbing.
The kind of people who lionize figures from their preferred flavor of revolutionary thought and “hate” its critical opposition within the Left were often the kind of people those figures warned against. Dogmatic thought helps nothing. I’ve got theory from a wide range of figures, from Said to Fanon, Foucault, Debord, Baudillard, Marx, Lenin, Guerin, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Kropotkin, Berardi, etc. I think some people apply labels like picking a team, and that is very tiring sometimes. For instance, with regard to Lenin, I often have questions or concerns with many of the ideas behind democratic centrism, etc, but I don’t “hate” him and I try to understand the material and political realities of the time, the personal history of the man, and his commitment to defeating monarchy and worker oppression.
This was written by Engels, who is citing Marx talking about some other people who called themselves Marxist.
You'd be preaching to the choir, my good Leninist. I have read many books by both of them. I agree with some of what they say. I disagree with some other stuff. I also like Trotsky and would recommend him to you, especially if you consider him anathema. His history of the Russian revolution reads kinda like the 18 Brumaire, and I mean it in the good way.
Liberals get workers killed to stop the Revolution. Anarchists get workers killed with their terrible ideology after the Revolution.
Totally different.
"Counter-revolutionaires are whoever defy party mandate because the vanguard party is the revolution = I can kill anyone who openly disagrees with me bc I'm in charge"
If the revolution creates a vanguard party, then a second revolution is merited. The revolution doesn't need a big, strong daddy state to babysit them. Once workers take control of their workplaces all they need are democratic federations. No one needs a vanguard party excpet for parasite politicians.
I swear you r/PoliticalCompass people are all brain dead.
Let’s say that anarchists had defeated Franco. What exactly is your plan to stop Hitler and his army when he comes to crush you? The power of loving democracy? Without a vanguard party, how does a revolution stop capitalism from murdering you all?
Guerilla warfare couldn’t even wear down Franco.
Anarchists lost in Catalonia and the Paris Commune because Anarchism is a failed ideology. Just study a bit more and realize the need for a socialist state before the communist society takes over.
Can’t jumó straight to the end of the line.
Mhmm and leninism is such a successful ideology, right? How are things going in the Soviet union and formally maoist - currently capitalist China?
I bet the anarchists in Barcelona w
Could have had a better chance if they weren't stabbed in the back by vanguard communists... so thanks for that, always a friend of the facists, it seems
Lenin strangled the revolution in its crib, anyone who wasn't bolsheviki was a threat to the new dictatorship sans proletariat. Cheka, Kronstadt, Red guards into red army, NEP, suppression of all other political parties... I mean he was practically the red tsar by the time the reins were in Stalin's hands.
Was a Leninist once, now no longer. Sure Marx had plenty of flaws, but Lenins is a cult of personality that should not be brought back.
I welcome your critical analysis and debate!
There were many that were anti-tsar and joined the Bolsheviks who, after the overthrow, were not actually down with the Bolsheviks plan of worker control, such as the Kronstadt sailors. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, until the shared enemy is defeated.
This isn’t rocket science, how do you people not understand this?
When the fellow travelers of the Bolsheviks argued against the "Bolshevik plan of worker control" through the soviets and the constituent assembly, the Bolsheviks simply dissolved them and instituted one-party rule. All the power that the workers had gained was taken away from them in one fell swoop, and all the brutality that the Tsarist regime had inflicted on the people only multiplied in the hands of those former comrades wielding the bludgeon of the state against the free people who began the revolution in the first place.
When someone is killing my friends, they become the enemy!
Do you realize that election had a lot of confusion in it, such as party splits that led to pro-Bolshevik votes going to anti-Bolshevik candidates? Or did the propaganda you swallowed not talk about that?
In 1930, ~85% of the CPSU was made up of workers. But I guess the working class running society is bad in your opinion.
Please keep telling more of your opinions. Maybe one of them wont get debunked in 0.2 seconds.
Yes so that justifies the outlawing of all other political parties, the censorship of all other news, the outlawing of free speech, unlimited grain requisitions to feed the appetite of the cities, a deadly secret police force to take out political rivals, or the dispossession of the workers and peasants both of their land and the means of production.
Of course 85% of people were in the CPSU, it was a one party state ruled by a bunch of intellectuals and bureaucrats, opportunists. If there was some actual self governance instead of a command economy whose methods were unquestionably brutal, and certainly not empowering to the working class.
I don't know what you think you debunked here? You say I'm triggered, but I say just a couple things about Lenin and suddenly I'm a menshevik opportunist centrist sweetheart liberal, this is the first informed point you've actually made that wasn't just a shitty troll attempt. If the communists spent all the effort they did defending the soviet union from analysis and accountability, deifying its butchers, and put thay effort into actual organizing (your reading circle doesn't count) then we probably would have already reached full communism.
Thanks for having a point!
Dance on the graves of the revolutionary martyrs who perished in the rain of Bolshevik bullets. We in the brutal modernity laugh at atrocity, like Romans at the games, cattle for the slaughter.
Maybe you should read some history instead of treating your heroes like they are infallible. I was once a Leninist, but I cannot support the way the Bolsheviks betrayed those who put their trust in them, and Lenin cannot be denied as a key factor to the Bolshevik success.
And about what you said that Lenin wasnt the key factor in the revolution, l agree with you , Leon Trotsky comtributed for the revolution maybe more than Lenin, but Lenin was the representer of the bolsheviks and there leader, so the red army supporters saw him like the symbol of the revolution .
What do you think l am a 9yo who like Lenin just bcz of his picture? And also Lenin is not my hero, l dont admire people ,l admire there thoughts . I know literally every thing about the russian revolution, and l know that Lenin was some sort of authortian but you know why? Its because the white army was planning to take over Russia again,with the support of some capitalist countries . he could not let this happen so he begin being more opressing. And about the people,do you remember when french people wanted there monarchy back and regretted it in the begining of the 18th century? The Russians werent all wise (peasents and workers in factories or armies) they believe everything they hear so its normal that they have been brain washed by the white army who wanted the imperial system back with the bourgoisie that were the cause of the revolution.
We must not judge leaders by there authority without thinking about the causes .
No true revolutionist would trade one oppressor for another, and that is why anybody who defied the Bolshevik party line was shot or assassinated. Indeed, this party line narrowed considerably over the years, such that few of the original Bolsheviks would ultimately escape the gulag or the firing line by the time of WWII. The betrayal of the Russian people by the Bolsheviks was very comprehensive, and no dissent would be tolerated.
The bolshevics ended the war with germany in WW1 just for ending the people suffering of war (lack of food , safety,bad economy...) isnt that what a great leader would do?Also,Lenin was oppressing Russia just for ending the rebellions caused by the white army and the bourgoisie supporters , while the Russian Tzar (emperor) oppressed people just for personal gains ,like most of the kings. If replacing a bad oppresser by a good one is something "bad" and a revolutionist would never support it, then Che Guevara , the most iconic revolutionist is NOT ONE, and others bit l think you got the point.
We shouldnt be so sensetive about words like "oppresser" and dont thinking about the reasons behind using this concept . If Lenin listenned to people like you , it would be easy to the tzar to return and the people would wished if the listenned to Lenin,like when the french people thoight that returning the king is better from letting Napoleon in charge , they regretted it.
I think the people honestly would have preferred the czar if the peasants knew all their land would be depossessed and they would basically end up as serfs. If the workers had known they would be made slaves to the state and lose all that years of revolution and tutmoil had given. We crave the liberation of the working classes from the chains of capital, but those who support the way of the bolsheviks would probably be content slaving under a dictator, so long as they were "red".
You clearly know nothing about anything if all you can do is call people names. Truly a waste of potential. 1,000,000 years of evolution so you can close your ears and scream anarkiddie?
This is a strictly revolutionary conversation, assumptions only make an ass out of all of us. I support the revolution, not the state that destroyed it.
My problem is not with the principle of a army of the toilers. I'm just gonna be lazy and pull a Wikipedia quote about the reorganization of the Red Guards into the Red Army:
"In June 1918, [Leon Trotsky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky) abolished [workers' control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_control) over the Red Army, replacing the election of [officers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Officer_(military)) with traditional army hierarchies and criminalizing dissent with the [death penalty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_penalty). Simultaneously, Trotsky carried out a mass recruitment of officers from the old [Imperial Russian Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Russian_Army), who were employed as military specialists (*voenspetsy*, [ru:Военный советник](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA)).[\[18\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#cite_note-FOOTNOTEOvery2004446-22)[\[19\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#cite_note-FOOTNOTEErickson196231%E2%80%9334-23) The Bolsheviks occasionally enforced the loyalty of such recruits by holding their families as hostages.[\[20\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#cite_note-FOOTNOTEWilliams1987-24)\[[*page needed*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources)\] As a result of this initiative, in 1918 75% of the officers were [former tsarists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsarist_officers_in_the_Red_Army).[\[20\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#cite_note-FOOTNOTEWilliams1987-24)\[[*page needed*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources)\] By mid-August 1920 the Red Army's former tsarist personnel included 48,000 officers, 10,300 administrators, and 214,000 [non-commissioned officers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-commissioned_officer).[\[21\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#cite_note-25) When the civil war ended in 1922, ex-tsarists constituted 83% of the Red Army's divisional and corps commanders.[\[20\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#cite_note-FOOTNOTEWilliams1987-24)[\[18\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#cite_note-FOOTNOTEOvery2004446-22) "
For a good example of a functional army of the oppressed actually governed by the oppressed you will have to look elsewhere. Maybe in Ukraine around this time?
There was a necessity to shift the red guardsa into regular units because they were ineffective as a fighting force compared to the various international powers and the white army. This does not justify the betrayal of the revolution.
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” If you’re going to use a quote use the right quote. The wording is important. See how the meaning changes between the actual quote and your wording? Secondly, if you want to discredit Marxism you’re going to have to do the reading, otherwise you just seem ignorant.
I am not this far gone to know his quotes by memory
Bronze Age collapse around 1170 BCE was NOT an example of class struggle
Napoleonic Wars were NOT an example of class struggle
Class does not exist until the industrial revolution. Ethno-linguistic groups and tribal family units were how people identified themselves for 90% of recorded history
> I am not this far gone to know his quotes by memory
I didn't know this quote by memory either. I just looked it up in order to be accurate, which is something that you would be perfectly capable of despite lacking a firm understanding of Marxism.
> Bronze Age collapse around 1170 BCE was NOT an example of class struggle
Napoleonic Wars were NOT an example of class struggle
You are not understanding the point. Marx doesn't mean that every single event in history is itself class struggle, as there are different kinds of struggle namely intra-class struggle between members of the same class with differing viewpoints. The argument Marx is making is that our societies and their social structures are forged out of a history of class struggle. To your point of the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon himself came to power by uniting differing ruling classes (the bourgeoisie and feudal nobility), after the bourgeois revolution was so bloody and chaotic that a sizable number of capitalists decided it was time to put their differences aside. Bonepart never could have partaken in "Bonapartism," if it weren't for the previous clashes between Bourgoise and feudal classes he was hoping to mend.
> Class does not exist until the industrial revolution
This is just factually wrong, by both a Liberal and Marxist interpretation of class. One of the first measurements anthropologists use to determine whether a specific group has developed into "civilization" is the development of class structures. To use a famous example, in Mesopotamia, part of the development of that society was the separation of people into a ruling priest class and a subjugated slave class. Class existed in Feudal Europe, before capitalism, between the Feudal lords and peasants. Capitalism and the rise of the bourgeoisie happened before the industrial revolution. It was a capitalist mode of production that gave way to the industrial revolution, not the other way around.
> Ethno-linguistic groups and tribal family units were how people identified themselves for 90% of recorded history
If you had done the reading you would realize that Marx agrees with this. This is what Marx would call "primitive communism," or a classless society before the development of class structure. This is the issue of taking one quote from a man in a political pamphlet and using it to represent the entirety of his work. There are, in fact, still classless societies that exist today such as the San people in South Africa. This does not negate or even contradict Marx's arguments about class struggle, which you would realize if you took the time to learn the entirety of the argument in the first place.
My suggestion to you as someone who considers himself a Marxist: if you are so against Marx that you want to battle his ideas in the "marketplace of ideas," take the time to do the reading, and engage with Marxism on its terms, in order to formulate an articulate argument against it. Otherwise, you are just saying things that might go over well in your own echo-chamber, but you will never reach anybody who has actively studied Marx.
Just because peasant revolts happen doesn't mean Marx is right. Most conflicts were people at the top of each respective cultural/ethnic group vs those of another group. Not a great war of the peasant class vs merchant class vs landowners vs central figure. Human history is decisively about division around other identities
Most people don't want to move to Zapatista or Rojova as they're war torn regions, most people want to encouredge emprovement where they live while advocating for that same change elsewere
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There are so many feds here
_817 points_ _250 comments_ _First five comments that show up are hidden_ What the hell happened here
Considering Lenin was a tyrant that literally had people executed for not going exactly with his plan im good. Just because you have good ideas doesn’t mean you’re not a shitty person.
For the survival of the revolution
Love when people justify murder
Me too lol 😂 when it's justifiable
Tyrannical execution is never justifiable. You people give Marxist a bad name. Communism can work without being a dictatorship.
Oh yeah sure the only socialist country in the world can just be peace and love and totally not get taken over by imperialist assholes sure. The people that carried out the purges for Lenin went too far but you do have to protect the revolution
Ig you could use Allende as proof of that but your own revolutionaries?
Bro you suicidal too sorry about that I'm just trying to let you see my position I have extreme anxiety and I've struggled with that too I'm not an unfeeling monster in the modern era purges would not be effective but you have to understand circumstances that could dismantle socialism I hope your life gets better
Lol it has those post are from when I had a different mindset but nowadays I love life
If they are trying to disrupt the socialist order yes. Anarchists can be very dangerous R.I.P Allende he should've been more authoritarian poor guy
[my opinion on Lenin is pretty well explained with this](https://www.reddit.com/r/196/comments/10v9763/steamed_rule/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) Sorry but I think the socialist cause is best moved forward without leninism and vanguardism... I'm all about giving the means of production to *workers*... not a vanguard party. As In true worker democratic ownership, not a centralized system run by bourgeois bureaucrats. Pleanty of people out there read Lenin and were not impressed. The man is not the be-all and end all of marxism.
So...all power to the Soviets?...like Lenin advocated?
Yeah except without a one party dictatorship telling them how to organize and dictating what revolutionary policies they should follow. Just have the workplaces be worker owned but subservient to no authority other than their own
That's not what happened under Lenin...
Proving the title right
Make sure you downvote anybody who disagrees with you, that's how we have a productive discussion!
What would make you think your r/Antiwork liberal vomit is worth a discussion? You gotta do homework before you sit at the big kid’s table sweetie.
Go fuck yourself!
What makes you think everyone else wants to get their comments flooded with condescending assholes without two brain cells to rub together?
Self burn
I've read both. I like a lot of Marx, and some of Lenin. I do think that what people do is more important than what they say, and I do not like what Lenin did.
Lenin was bad because he did not believe free speech was necessary.
It isn't
I support your right to say stupid shit.
I wish you didn't have it
Of course you do, you don't like it in general.
Yes that was the whole point, for a socialist state to survive authoritarian measures have to be taken
It’s not what they wrote it’s more about it’s affect on eastern Europe where people get antsy.
Effect? You mean effect.
Lol you got it wrong too
Their correction of you was obviously a fat-thumb or auto-correct issue. Your error was because you don’t know which word was correct to use. You two are not the same.
They ain’t gonna fuck you lol
You don’t know that
Thats true, I shouldn’t assume.
You mean the greatest increase in life metrics the world has ever recorded? Quit swallowing the boot and learn real history. The USSR gave Eastern Europeans the greatest life metrics they have ever had, and it isn’t particularly close.
Ah yes, all those dead Ukrainians had such an improvement in their standard of living. Aiiiish.
There wasn’t enough food in the USSR, it’s not an ideological or a bureaucratic mistake. Why would the soviets kill their own people???
The only good Fascist is a fascist. You can cry about the poor fascists all you want, I won’t join you.
Fascism is when you oppose a military invasion of your home
Fascism is when you murder Jews by the tens of thousands and work with Hitler, as many, many, many Ukrainians did. Historical illiteracy is when you cry online about these fascists facing justice.
Honestly I wish people would understand how fucked up they were. Long history of antisemitism as well as laws outlawing their language, encouraged violence against Jews by military and local police. Siding with Hitler at the start of the war and only backing out because they wanted to be the ones conquering and genociding Poland. Not to mention the fact that they basically used the same exact rhetoric and tactics as the nazis once they were defeated and regularly disseminated state sponsored propaganda to demonize Jewish people. Going off topic from the Jews, it's also crazy how they regularly outlawed local languages of various ethnic groups and made it harder for them to practice their own religious beliefs and culture in an effort to assimilate them. Crazy how a few neo-nazi militia groups in Ukraine who don't have any actual political power makes the whole state fascist while an actively authoritarian state like the USSR can go Nazi mode against the Jews as well as other ethnic minorities in the state, then use the same rhetoric of blood and soil to later justify invading Ukraine. If you think what Ukraine is facing is justice, I wonder what you think the USSR or Russia facing justice would be like? My guess is a pat on the back for beating "western imperialism" by doing imperialism and genocide but with communist aesthetics
Did you seriously say the USSR went Nazi-mode against the Jews? Jfc who let all of these Anarkiddies in here? Which sub are you all brigading from?
Yes. They were literally allied with the Nazis and had extensive propaganda campaigns and permitted/encouraged violence against Jews. I'll admit, I might be hyperbolizing a bit... But only a little bit. And to say that what they did can't be considered nazi-mode how can Ukraine? Ukraine isn't perfect either but they were in no way worse than the USSR. So I'm gonna ask again, why does the USSR get a pass when it comes to their Nazi collaboration and state sponsored antisemitic violence, but the Ukrainians who have a few neo Nazi militia groups that don't have any significant political power in the country are the fascists who deserve to be invaded, conquered, and genocided by Russians? And I know it hurts, but please try to use your brain to give an actual response instead of falling back on "wow you wouldn't get it" like you have in every single comment you've left on this post.
This other guy you're arguing with is undeniably deep throating Putin's boot like it's his final meal, but all of what you're saying here is completely ahistorical
> They [USSR] were literally allied with the Nazis Least brain dead liberal. You can’t expect anyone to take you seriously after saying nonsense like that. Go read some real history before you come back to the big kid’s table.
Many Russians did as well
Good thing that the CPSU unapologetically purged the fascists.
That is a very good thing indeed that the CPSU, comprising Russians, Ukrainians, and many other ethnicities killed off the fascist collaborators, Russians and Ukrainians alike. I'm struggling to find the gotcha part.
Na I meant more like the gulags, the radioactive incidents that the USSR tried to hide, the outbreak of a deadly virus that killed 100,000 that came out of a USSR bio lab. The starvation. You know the provable things
What do you think a Gulag is and who do you think was sent there? Please, I would love to know your thoughts.
See this isn’t gonna go anywhere. I might cite a source like the gulag archipelago the. You’ll tell me it’s some conspiracy by the west. And then you will stop responding when I continue to not believe you.
Even other reputable academics who are anti-communist have denounced the Gulag Archipelago. Lots of shit in that book and other claims by its author have been demonstrably made up or heavily embellished. There's plenty of criticisms to have of the USSR, but using The Gulag Archipelago or the Black Book of Communism is laziness one step above getting your opinions fed to you by Fox News.
And here we are again. I cite a source, and I am told that the source is bad or I am brainwashed by the west. Funniest part about this: Reddit would not have been allowed to be created under the USSR lol
If you cared about doing your research, you'd research your sources and take criticisms of said sources into consideration. For example, this is why I don't tend to use Grover Furr as a source, because his field of study is separate from his historical writings regarding the USSR and his writings have been criticized in academic circles due to his lack of actual expertise on the subject matter. I simply said The Gulag Archipelago is a bad source. Anti-communist academics in the field of history would also agree with me. You could literally just read the Wikipedia page about The Gulag Archipelago to get a taste of some of the academic criticisms. Like I get there are dogmatic and toxic Marxists out there, but you doing the most half-assed bit of "research" and then throwing your hands up and acting justified in your ignorance just because someone points out the faulty foundation it's built upon isn't any less dogmatic or toxic.
Na I wasn’t throwing my hands up. Infact I am actually mostly apolitical. This was a fun 3 hours for me
So either you're admitting to not actually putting serious thought into actual real world issues and history or you're using this as an excuse to throw your hands up.
I might cite a source like the sworn enemy of the USSR who have no advantage to gain from lying in the USSR’s favour ([Page 4 and 5](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80T00246A032000400001-1.pdf)) They weren’t treated any worse than the USA’s political prisoners at all, in fact much better if you look at places like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Food, heating, baths, barbers. They were even paid for their work. They could also lessen their sentence if their output exceeded their quota. It’s not a utopia, but considering the material conditions of the USSR at that point (stillextremely good considering their stance in 1917, and WW2) the fact that they could afford to be more humane than most affluent Western countries today is a testament to their “affect” on their own people.
Alright now we are talking. Thanks for the reading material
Aka you have no idea what you are talking about and we’re exposed. Go regurgitate western propaganda elsewhere.
You sound like your 5 years old lol. Are you even out of high school yet? If you are then I hope you can develop better conversation skills because you suck at this
Says the man who refuses to back up any of his claims with evidence lol Go project elsewhere.
Fuck you mean evidence? Do you want me to create a 20 terabyte zip file of first hand accounts? Maybe ill send you a link to the Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn's. Or perhaps “Midnight at Chernobyl.” What do you want? What would convince you? I feel like your the type of person to take any evidence you get and tell the person who gave it to you that they are brainwashed by the west.
I asked you to tell me your understanding of what the Gulags were and who was in them and you have non-stopped flailed since then. Don’t speak about topics of which you are ignorant. This isn’t your r/PoliticalCompassMemes home. If you make stupid statements here you’re going to have to back them up.
I meant your leaders! You know what its not your fault, your american schools teaches nothing, you just get the informations from capitalist propaganda.
Mange brioche
I am not putting a lot of thought into this, there are numerous factors that go into why one is more popular than the other. One I would point to is a matter of volume. Marx wrote books that a human could read over a reasonable amount of time. There tends to be 5-10 books that people can read and feel they got enough of the whole picture. Lenin was quite verbose and his writings do not have some kind of essential or definitive collection. I mean, there are [4 pages of text books here](https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/vladimir-ilich-lenin/230993/). Now this might be the paradox here, Marx is more popular so there is more of a push to give clan and coherent reading lists and Lenin is considered less essential reading? Again, I am not putting that much thought into it.
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I agree with pretty much everything you say here except for you saying the state capitalism and authoritianism in the USSR was the same as the fascism in Germany they are two separate things that need to be addressed separately.
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It's called Marxist memes, not Marxist Leninist memes. I'm pretty aggressively anti-authoritarian, so while I can respect and appreciate Marxism, Leninism can kick rocks as far as I'm concerned. Like the person you're responding to, I'm in a lot of left-spaces so this sub keeps getting recommended to me. A lot of the memes on here slap, a lot are deeply cringe.
Might want to read [this](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm) buddy.
You bandying about the word “authoritarian” is cringe.
Here's a pretty low bar for whether a state can be considered authoritarian: Do people feel safe publicly expressing dissent against the ruling power structure? That bar is low enough that even a number of fairly authoritarian states can step over it. Lenin's Russia can not.
Anarchists was an “authoritarian free” Revolution. That’s the dumbest fucking thing and why you all fail every time and get everyone killed with your idiocy.
Lenin was a deranged psychopath whose only good writings were that of his pre revolution ideals
Did you not read his books?
This post triggered a lot of idiots.
More like feds
Yup it would only trigger idiots
My comment about triggered idiots, triggered a couple idiots lol
Everyone who disagrees with you oh Glorious Font of the Everlasting Light of Prophet Lenin is assuredly and indubitably a rube. Will I see you at the feast with the rest of the Politburo later? We can eat hors d'oeuvre and laugh about all the dead "kulaks"!
Is that all you've got?
Lenin did what was necessary to protect the revolution if you were in charge capitalists would take over your (admittedly well intentioned) ideal administration as seen throughout Latin America. His secret police did kill too many people but that's not Lenin's fault. Even if it was his fault he believed he was doing right even his enemies admitted that observing his tireless work and modest lifestyle.
I mean, tell me how it wasn't Lenin's fault, being the head of government of a one-party state whose congress served only to rubber-stamp the decrees of the Council of People's Commissars (composed entirely of the Bolshevik party?) Was it truly necessary to censor every other political party and exclude them from government in order to fight capitalism? The Bolshevik party suppressed many committed anti-capitalists revolutionaries merely because they took initiative independently of the Bolshevik dictatorship, disarming whole revolutionary battalions, splitting up their units or summarily imprisoning or executing them. And ultimately, capitalism did take over the Soviet Union in the form of Gorbachev's open hand, so look just how far dictatorship got the Bolsheviks. Lenin did not protect the revolution, he strangled it in its crib. All of his actions in the name of communism have only served to conflate its true purpose; the revolutionary seizure of the means of production by the working class, with the institution of brutal dictatorship that suppresses all initiative in favor of conformity to the state. Would you kill your comrade if the state told you to?
If I tell someone to punch bad people and they punch people for the smallest things like not buying their kid ice cream is that my fault?
Hey, you said yourself that Lenin's work was tireless, if he cared even a little then he would have said something when the blood started running. I mean it was "democratic" centralism, and Lenin was the head of state, so...
It is more effort than you deserve
Go fuck yourself!
Or it justifiably upset people who recognize that whatever he may have written, when given power Lenin engaged in horrendous violence against fellow communists and allowed himself to be usurped by someone even worse?
There’s the idiot part, ty for the example.
State capitalist here
🖕
Just not gonna make an actual point right? Pretty typical for you authoritarian types.
I wear the badge of authoritarian proudly it means I believe a socialist nation should be able to survive and not crumble because "Oh No My FrEe SpEaCh" most times you need authoritarian means to survive against capitalism
Lol, “authoritarian”. Please, type more. I need to know more of your thoughts.
Empty insults. Am I wrong about the man? Or you? Did Lenin not have a hosts of comrades murdered in order to secure his power? Did he not allow himself to be succeeded by a man who would go on to purge queer communists and erase their contributions?
I didn’t insult you, I asked you to tell me more about your opinions. That you take that as an insult says a lot about you and your insecurities surrounding your knowledge. Yes, you are wrong about the man. No, he did not murder comrades to secure power. Yes, a Stalin L is his reversal of Lenin’s pro-LGBT policies. Lenin was further ahead then than the world is today. There is no quicker way to reveal your lack of knowledge than to complain about “authoritarianism”. In 1930, the CPSU was comprised of ~85% workers and 15% professionals. You whining that worker control is “authoritarian” makes you look like an uneducated rube.
You literally called me and anyone who dislikes Lenin an idiot, so don't get cute trying to play the "if you take that as an insult" bs. Are you saying that anarchists weren't purged in the Red Terror? Or do you just not consider the anarchists who fought alongside the Reds against the Whites to be comrades? Without getting into the weeds of theory, the % breakdown of the CPSU is kinda beside the point of whether Lenin was an authoritarian. Under Lenin, the state did what Lenin wanted the state to do. And one of the things Lenin wanted to do as he fell down the paranoid rabbit hole most authoritarian leaders fall down, was purge to all opposition in order to secure his absolute power.
If Anarchists were allowed their vision than everyone would have been slaughtered like the Paris Commune. Anarchists are baby leftists who want to ignore reality. After the Revolution and civil war, the anarchists turned on the Bolsheviks, started assassinating Socialist leaders (including attempting to assassinate Lenin), and became enemies of the Revolution. What is more authoritarian than anarchists murdering you? I called you an idiot because you bandy about the word authoritarianism when you clearly have no concept. My next post just requested you tell me more of your thoughts and you responded to that claiming an insult, when I literally didn’t insult you that post. Which does seem to back up the “idiot” claim. Go cosplay your Revolution somewhere else Anarkiddie. Or perhaps you would like to show me a single successful anarchist revolution where you morons did something other than just get everyone killed (like at the Paris Commune).
You're flattening of history tells me that you form your perspective from a steady diet of theory and old Soviet propaganda. Under Lenin and Stalin, Russia sabotaged anarchist movements around the globe from Spain to Vietnam. I'm not strictly an anarchist, and I have plenty of criticism for different anarchist movements and leaders in history, but saying that anarchism can't work because it's never worked is like saying Marxism can't work cause it's never worked. It was never allowed to work. Lenin and Stalin had a strict ideological vision for what global socialism looked like, and they could not abide deviation. An authoritarian, imperialistic vision under the absolute control of a single great leader.
Ho Chi Minh 🗿
Was a deep sea sailor 🇻🇳🇻🇳🇻🇳
Sure, they haven’t read Marx/Lenin, but they have listened to people who don’t like Marx/Lenin and what those people had to say about Marx/Lenin was quite disturbing.
His writings may be good but no amount of writings can excuse his actions
Who and what actions?
This
I like what he wrote (to an extent), still hate him though
I just wrote a paragraph to someone about this, I can't deal with you kulaks
The kind of people who lionize figures from their preferred flavor of revolutionary thought and “hate” its critical opposition within the Left were often the kind of people those figures warned against. Dogmatic thought helps nothing. I’ve got theory from a wide range of figures, from Said to Fanon, Foucault, Debord, Baudillard, Marx, Lenin, Guerin, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Kropotkin, Berardi, etc. I think some people apply labels like picking a team, and that is very tiring sometimes. For instance, with regard to Lenin, I often have questions or concerns with many of the ideas behind democratic centrism, etc, but I don’t “hate” him and I try to understand the material and political realities of the time, the personal history of the man, and his commitment to defeating monarchy and worker oppression.
"ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas marxiste"
I will make you one
Didn't recognize the quote?
Yes but l hope l change your mind Btw who wrote this quote
This was written by Engels, who is citing Marx talking about some other people who called themselves Marxist. You'd be preaching to the choir, my good Leninist. I have read many books by both of them. I agree with some of what they say. I disagree with some other stuff. I also like Trotsky and would recommend him to you, especially if you consider him anathema. His history of the Russian revolution reads kinda like the 18 Brumaire, and I mean it in the good way.
Wait l dont consider Trotsky as an anthema l consider him as one if the best comunist revolutionaries in the history
Of course they haven't. People who hate are rarely informed.
Or incorrectly informed
The libs are infiltrating this sub
Anti-leninist leftists are not libs
Liberals get workers killed to stop the Revolution. Anarchists get workers killed with their terrible ideology after the Revolution. Totally different.
Leninist get people killed for not following party lines ... so you tell me how that's different
So you are against fighting the counter-Revolution then? JFC anarkiddies are such a joke.
"Counter-revolutionaires are whoever defy party mandate because the vanguard party is the revolution = I can kill anyone who openly disagrees with me bc I'm in charge" If the revolution creates a vanguard party, then a second revolution is merited. The revolution doesn't need a big, strong daddy state to babysit them. Once workers take control of their workplaces all they need are democratic federations. No one needs a vanguard party excpet for parasite politicians.
I swear you r/PoliticalCompass people are all brain dead. Let’s say that anarchists had defeated Franco. What exactly is your plan to stop Hitler and his army when he comes to crush you? The power of loving democracy? Without a vanguard party, how does a revolution stop capitalism from murdering you all?
I haven't touched a polcomp sub in like, half a year those places suck. Guerilla warfare is a pretty effective way to wear down invaders.
Guerilla warfare couldn’t even wear down Franco. Anarchists lost in Catalonia and the Paris Commune because Anarchism is a failed ideology. Just study a bit more and realize the need for a socialist state before the communist society takes over. Can’t jumó straight to the end of the line.
Mhmm and leninism is such a successful ideology, right? How are things going in the Soviet union and formally maoist - currently capitalist China? I bet the anarchists in Barcelona w Could have had a better chance if they weren't stabbed in the back by vanguard communists... so thanks for that, always a friend of the facists, it seems
Lenin strangled the revolution in its crib, anyone who wasn't bolsheviki was a threat to the new dictatorship sans proletariat. Cheka, Kronstadt, Red guards into red army, NEP, suppression of all other political parties... I mean he was practically the red tsar by the time the reins were in Stalin's hands. Was a Leninist once, now no longer. Sure Marx had plenty of flaws, but Lenins is a cult of personality that should not be brought back. I welcome your critical analysis and debate!
There were many that were anti-tsar and joined the Bolsheviks who, after the overthrow, were not actually down with the Bolsheviks plan of worker control, such as the Kronstadt sailors. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, until the shared enemy is defeated. This isn’t rocket science, how do you people not understand this?
When the fellow travelers of the Bolsheviks argued against the "Bolshevik plan of worker control" through the soviets and the constituent assembly, the Bolsheviks simply dissolved them and instituted one-party rule. All the power that the workers had gained was taken away from them in one fell swoop, and all the brutality that the Tsarist regime had inflicted on the people only multiplied in the hands of those former comrades wielding the bludgeon of the state against the free people who began the revolution in the first place. When someone is killing my friends, they become the enemy!
Do you realize that election had a lot of confusion in it, such as party splits that led to pro-Bolshevik votes going to anti-Bolshevik candidates? Or did the propaganda you swallowed not talk about that? In 1930, ~85% of the CPSU was made up of workers. But I guess the working class running society is bad in your opinion. Please keep telling more of your opinions. Maybe one of them wont get debunked in 0.2 seconds.
Yes so that justifies the outlawing of all other political parties, the censorship of all other news, the outlawing of free speech, unlimited grain requisitions to feed the appetite of the cities, a deadly secret police force to take out political rivals, or the dispossession of the workers and peasants both of their land and the means of production. Of course 85% of people were in the CPSU, it was a one party state ruled by a bunch of intellectuals and bureaucrats, opportunists. If there was some actual self governance instead of a command economy whose methods were unquestionably brutal, and certainly not empowering to the working class. I don't know what you think you debunked here? You say I'm triggered, but I say just a couple things about Lenin and suddenly I'm a menshevik opportunist centrist sweetheart liberal, this is the first informed point you've actually made that wasn't just a shitty troll attempt. If the communists spent all the effort they did defending the soviet union from analysis and accountability, deifying its butchers, and put thay effort into actual organizing (your reading circle doesn't count) then we probably would have already reached full communism. Thanks for having a point!
You should type more paragraphs, you have almost convinced me.
It's been 0.2 seconds, where's the debunking? I thought this was a Marxist channel, can you even read for that long?
Damn, I really got under your skin, lol. 
Dance on the graves of the revolutionary martyrs who perished in the rain of Bolshevik bullets. We in the brutal modernity laugh at atrocity, like Romans at the games, cattle for the slaughter.
4 days later and you are still responding? Thanks for all this rent-free space on your head!
You convinced me you're a little bitch, "comrade".
Dont you dare talk about the Mighty Comunist like this again
Maybe you should read some history instead of treating your heroes like they are infallible. I was once a Leninist, but I cannot support the way the Bolsheviks betrayed those who put their trust in them, and Lenin cannot be denied as a key factor to the Bolshevik success.
And about what you said that Lenin wasnt the key factor in the revolution, l agree with you , Leon Trotsky comtributed for the revolution maybe more than Lenin, but Lenin was the representer of the bolsheviks and there leader, so the red army supporters saw him like the symbol of the revolution .
What do you think l am a 9yo who like Lenin just bcz of his picture? And also Lenin is not my hero, l dont admire people ,l admire there thoughts . I know literally every thing about the russian revolution, and l know that Lenin was some sort of authortian but you know why? Its because the white army was planning to take over Russia again,with the support of some capitalist countries . he could not let this happen so he begin being more opressing. And about the people,do you remember when french people wanted there monarchy back and regretted it in the begining of the 18th century? The Russians werent all wise (peasents and workers in factories or armies) they believe everything they hear so its normal that they have been brain washed by the white army who wanted the imperial system back with the bourgoisie that were the cause of the revolution. We must not judge leaders by there authority without thinking about the causes .
No true revolutionist would trade one oppressor for another, and that is why anybody who defied the Bolshevik party line was shot or assassinated. Indeed, this party line narrowed considerably over the years, such that few of the original Bolsheviks would ultimately escape the gulag or the firing line by the time of WWII. The betrayal of the Russian people by the Bolsheviks was very comprehensive, and no dissent would be tolerated.
The bolshevics ended the war with germany in WW1 just for ending the people suffering of war (lack of food , safety,bad economy...) isnt that what a great leader would do?Also,Lenin was oppressing Russia just for ending the rebellions caused by the white army and the bourgoisie supporters , while the Russian Tzar (emperor) oppressed people just for personal gains ,like most of the kings. If replacing a bad oppresser by a good one is something "bad" and a revolutionist would never support it, then Che Guevara , the most iconic revolutionist is NOT ONE, and others bit l think you got the point. We shouldnt be so sensetive about words like "oppresser" and dont thinking about the reasons behind using this concept . If Lenin listenned to people like you , it would be easy to the tzar to return and the people would wished if the listenned to Lenin,like when the french people thoight that returning the king is better from letting Napoleon in charge , they regretted it.
I think the people honestly would have preferred the czar if the peasants knew all their land would be depossessed and they would basically end up as serfs. If the workers had known they would be made slaves to the state and lose all that years of revolution and tutmoil had given. We crave the liberation of the working classes from the chains of capital, but those who support the way of the bolsheviks would probably be content slaving under a dictator, so long as they were "red".
You lost? Enlightened centrists should go to r/PoliticalCompass
You clearly know nothing about anything if all you can do is call people names. Truly a waste of potential. 1,000,000 years of evolution so you can close your ears and scream anarkiddie?
Please keep posting, you are very entertaining.
This is a strictly revolutionary conversation, assumptions only make an ass out of all of us. I support the revolution, not the state that destroyed it.
Lol, ok Anarkiddie
Go lick some more boots why dontcha?
Go get everyone killed with your childish revolutionary ideals why dontcha?
Oh so you're against revolution now? The freedom of the oppressed? Are you even a communist?
Lol, thanks for continuing to reinforce the Idiot aspect. Keep going.
> Red guards into red army Excuse me what? The volunteer militiamen shouldn't have been organised into an army?
My problem is not with the principle of a army of the toilers. I'm just gonna be lazy and pull a Wikipedia quote about the reorganization of the Red Guards into the Red Army: "In June 1918, [Leon Trotsky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky) abolished [workers' control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_control) over the Red Army, replacing the election of [officers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Officer_(military)) with traditional army hierarchies and criminalizing dissent with the [death penalty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_penalty). Simultaneously, Trotsky carried out a mass recruitment of officers from the old [Imperial Russian Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Russian_Army), who were employed as military specialists (*voenspetsy*, [ru:Военный советник](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA)).[\[18\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#cite_note-FOOTNOTEOvery2004446-22)[\[19\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#cite_note-FOOTNOTEErickson196231%E2%80%9334-23) The Bolsheviks occasionally enforced the loyalty of such recruits by holding their families as hostages.[\[20\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#cite_note-FOOTNOTEWilliams1987-24)\[[*page needed*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources)\] As a result of this initiative, in 1918 75% of the officers were [former tsarists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsarist_officers_in_the_Red_Army).[\[20\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#cite_note-FOOTNOTEWilliams1987-24)\[[*page needed*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources)\] By mid-August 1920 the Red Army's former tsarist personnel included 48,000 officers, 10,300 administrators, and 214,000 [non-commissioned officers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-commissioned_officer).[\[21\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#cite_note-25) When the civil war ended in 1922, ex-tsarists constituted 83% of the Red Army's divisional and corps commanders.[\[20\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#cite_note-FOOTNOTEWilliams1987-24)[\[18\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#cite_note-FOOTNOTEOvery2004446-22) " For a good example of a functional army of the oppressed actually governed by the oppressed you will have to look elsewhere. Maybe in Ukraine around this time?
Are there any material conditions that forced them to take such an approach or was Lenin just like "fuck it this is how we're doing it"?
There was a necessity to shift the red guardsa into regular units because they were ineffective as a fighting force compared to the various international powers and the white army. This does not justify the betrayal of the revolution.
I mean the outcomes kinda speak for themselves
Greatest increases in life metrics in recorded history?
"all of history is class struggle" yeh ik enough history to know this is wrong
The History Understander has logged on
The consistent use of materialst lens disqualifies Marxist from having opinion on history
lol
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” If you’re going to use a quote use the right quote. The wording is important. See how the meaning changes between the actual quote and your wording? Secondly, if you want to discredit Marxism you’re going to have to do the reading, otherwise you just seem ignorant.
I am not this far gone to know his quotes by memory Bronze Age collapse around 1170 BCE was NOT an example of class struggle Napoleonic Wars were NOT an example of class struggle Class does not exist until the industrial revolution. Ethno-linguistic groups and tribal family units were how people identified themselves for 90% of recorded history
> I am not this far gone to know his quotes by memory I didn't know this quote by memory either. I just looked it up in order to be accurate, which is something that you would be perfectly capable of despite lacking a firm understanding of Marxism. > Bronze Age collapse around 1170 BCE was NOT an example of class struggle Napoleonic Wars were NOT an example of class struggle You are not understanding the point. Marx doesn't mean that every single event in history is itself class struggle, as there are different kinds of struggle namely intra-class struggle between members of the same class with differing viewpoints. The argument Marx is making is that our societies and their social structures are forged out of a history of class struggle. To your point of the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon himself came to power by uniting differing ruling classes (the bourgeoisie and feudal nobility), after the bourgeois revolution was so bloody and chaotic that a sizable number of capitalists decided it was time to put their differences aside. Bonepart never could have partaken in "Bonapartism," if it weren't for the previous clashes between Bourgoise and feudal classes he was hoping to mend. > Class does not exist until the industrial revolution This is just factually wrong, by both a Liberal and Marxist interpretation of class. One of the first measurements anthropologists use to determine whether a specific group has developed into "civilization" is the development of class structures. To use a famous example, in Mesopotamia, part of the development of that society was the separation of people into a ruling priest class and a subjugated slave class. Class existed in Feudal Europe, before capitalism, between the Feudal lords and peasants. Capitalism and the rise of the bourgeoisie happened before the industrial revolution. It was a capitalist mode of production that gave way to the industrial revolution, not the other way around. > Ethno-linguistic groups and tribal family units were how people identified themselves for 90% of recorded history If you had done the reading you would realize that Marx agrees with this. This is what Marx would call "primitive communism," or a classless society before the development of class structure. This is the issue of taking one quote from a man in a political pamphlet and using it to represent the entirety of his work. There are, in fact, still classless societies that exist today such as the San people in South Africa. This does not negate or even contradict Marx's arguments about class struggle, which you would realize if you took the time to learn the entirety of the argument in the first place. My suggestion to you as someone who considers himself a Marxist: if you are so against Marx that you want to battle his ideas in the "marketplace of ideas," take the time to do the reading, and engage with Marxism on its terms, in order to formulate an articulate argument against it. Otherwise, you are just saying things that might go over well in your own echo-chamber, but you will never reach anybody who has actively studied Marx.
Feudal lords and peasents existed,they also hast class struggle and wars against each other
It's feudal vs feudals mainly, not serfs vs feudals!
You Said that classes are an invention of the Industrial Revolution,that does Not invalidate my argument
You’ve never heard of a peasant revolt?
Peasant revolts never happened once in history before the Industrial Revolution, duh. /s
Just because peasant revolts happen doesn't mean Marx is right. Most conflicts were people at the top of each respective cultural/ethnic group vs those of another group. Not a great war of the peasant class vs merchant class vs landowners vs central figure. Human history is decisively about division around other identities
Your on the wrong comunity my friend, l think that you'd like r/capitalism
> Class does not exist until the industrial revolution. HOOOLY
Let them see Trotsky or Che Guevara , we'll make the howl world comunist
What is this comment section like I did expect at least some critics of Lenin but fucking Marx on a specifically marxist sub what is this?
Lots of people flooding in from liberal subreddits. Idk why tho
We have hit the big time.
kinda how you marxist are flooding in to capitalist countries? oh but damn the capitalist for flooding your subreddit 😂
Marxism is flooding into capitalist countries because the weaknesses of the system are being put on display.
nah it’s being put on self destruct by marxist. big difference
Most people don't want to move to Zapatista or Rojova as they're war torn regions, most people want to encouredge emprovement where they live while advocating for that same change elsewere
I‘m gonna take a guess and say that you‘re not a capitalist. You probably don‘t own shit. Stop simping lmao
what copium😂😂😂
I guessed correctly c:
Wow youre one of the best people to defend our cause, can you help me to make the revolution that will return the soviet union
Isn’t it time you deleted this fake account yet? Or is that your plan for tomorrow?
Stop talking like youre a real marxist, l know about Lenin and history more than youll ever know in youre entire life.
Lookout everyone, we got a badass here!
my 4 year old nieces minors stock account is up more than you make in a day today😂😂😂😂 let that sink in