@bubblybubbles Having read some books myself I can’t help but bring up the betrayal of the non-communists after the revolution, notably the murder of anarchists, as pointed out by Emma Goldman and others (in exile).
of non-bolsheviks*
They outlawed every communist/socialist/anarchist organization that wasn’t them, and then, when there was no other party to kill, they started killing their own, but you are probably in the wrong instance to bring that up.The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
The pure socialists had a vision of a new society that would create and be created by new people, a society so transformed in its fundaments as to leave little opportunity for wrongful acts, corruption, and criminal abuses of state power. There would be no bureaucracy or self-interested coteries, no ruthless conflicts or hurtful decisions. When the reality proves different and more difficult, some on the Left proceed to condemn the real thing and announce that they “feel betrayed” by this or that revolution.
The pure socialists see socialism as an ideal that was tarnished by communist venality, duplicity, and power cravings. The pure socialists oppose the Soviet model but offer little evidence to demonstrate that other paths could have been taken, that other models of socialism — not created from one’s imagination but developed through actual historical experience — could have taken hold and worked better. Was an open, pluralistic, democratic socialism actually possible at this historic juncture? The historical evidence would suggest it was not.
Decentralized parochial autonomy is the graveyard of insurgency — which may be one reason why there has never been a successful anarcho-syndicalist revolution. Ideally, it would be a fine thing to have only local, self-directed, worker participation, with minimal bureaucracy, police, and military. This probably would be the development of socialism, were socialism ever allowed to develop unhindered by counterrevolutionary subversion and attack.
One might recall how, in 1918-20, fourteen capitalist nations, including the United States, invaded Soviet Russia in a bloody but unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the revolutionary Bolshevik government.
Not really true. The Bolsheviks won out in the Russian civil war, and afterwards some groups took up arms against the socialist state, and were thus killed off. The people by and large supported the bolsheviks, the terrorist cells were not really supported.
Despite their name, the Bolsheviks weren’t the majority of the revolution. But there was a group that indeed took up arms against the Socialist State, it was the Bolsheviks, which represented only about 13% of the delegates for all the other socialist parties had way more people and support. After staging a coup and taking the control, every other group became a “terrorist cell”. It’s easy to be the majority when you murder the rest.
and then stalin ate all the ukrainians with his giant spoon
That’s a pretty fantastical view. The Bolsheviks came in second, behind the SRs, who were fond of terrorism and were entirely backwards in theory and in practice. The SRs had also had a major split shortly before the election without most of the voters knowing. It was the bolsheviks that succeeded in carrying out the revolution, weathering the Russian civil war, and then solidifying the socialist state.
They didn’t just murder anyone that had more support than them, that’s a fanfiction view of soviet history. They were, towards the revolution, consistently the most supported among the working classes. The Left-SRs, who weren’t really a coherent political force as the SRs themselves had a major split, supported the revolution and many ended up joining the bolsheviks anyways as the SRs faded away. The Right-SRs, who came behind the bolsheviks, had some join the bolsheviks and some join the White Army.
All in all, the bolsheviks were supported by the majority, and the CA was being phased out in favor of the soviets anyways.
Removed by mod
51·16 hours agoSmells like stankies, am I right.
Cmon stop… America’s already dead.
I’m not gonna be the guy in a horror movie who just assumes the bad guy is dead because he was knocked in the head, looks away and gets megamurdered.
Unfortunately it is in fact not.
Not yet. We will win.
