Lenin: the original dictator?

[the_sociallist]

In a moment of exaltation when US troops conquered Baghdad on April 10 last year, the US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, proclaimed that “Saddam Hussein is now taking his rightful place alongside Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Ceausescu in the pantheon of failed, brutal dictators”. Eighty years after the death of Lenin, the ruling classes globally still link him to the most horrific dictators. PER ÅKE WESTERLUND looks at the reasons behind these decades of slander. cwi online.

Lenin: the original dictator?
VLADIMIR LENIN, the main leader of the Russian revolution, made the following insightful observation in mid-1917: “During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred, and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonise them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the ‘consolation’ of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarising it”. (State and Revolution)

This is posted at socialistworld.net

Anyone agree?? Was Lenin a dictator??

If so, that means that anyone who bring birth to a revolutionary movement could be seen as a dictator

[mir]

No, of course Lenin was not a dictator.  It's a pure lie invented by the capitalists.

[des-esseintes]

Well, it is very true that he personally, overtly, ordered many people to be shot. This is used by capitalists to "prove" that he was a bloodthirsty dictator and the enemy of the people. The fact that they were mainly counter revolutionaries that aimed to destroy workers democracy in Russia and re-establish the bourgeois dictatorship "conveniently" eludes these people.

What are they supposed to say? "Lenin was the greatest man ever, a heroic example for the working people of the world, and a mortal threat to our system and our very lives?" :rolleyes:

[the_sociallist]

Thay could have just left him off the list....I saw no mention of F. Castro...America's enemy since the 60's

[mrbojangles]

What has not been mentioned here is that Lenin dissolved the constituent assembly in january 1918 after the Social revolutionaries won majority support in it and the Bolsheviks won only a quater of the votes - if they are not the actions of a dictator, then i do not know what is.
The Bolsheviks never enjoyed majority support in Russia - only the support of a tiny industrialised group in St Petersburg and Moscow.

[Frederik]

The constitutent assembly is an example that the bourgeois always use to 'proove' that the bolcheviks - and especially Lenin and Trotsky - used undemocratic methods and that the october revolution was a coup. But it is worth to remember, that after october you had a functioning system of soviets, based on the workers, soldiers and peasants. You cannot have this alonside a bougeois parlamentary system - a constitutent assembly.

I would recommend chapter one in Ted Grants book Russia - From Revolution to Counter-Revolution. It's a long read, but the best on the subject.

http://www.marxist.com/russiabook/part1.html

[des-esseintes]

Exactly: the Bolsheviks did not have a majority in the bourgeois parliament, which as everyone with half a brain knows is always and everywhere a tool for TWISTING and MISREPRESENTING the popular vote in the interests of the rich, BUT they DID have a majority in the soviet democracy, the most direct and democratic system of representation as yet discovered.

To claim that the Provisional Government represented the Russian people is the most outrageous and stupid lie:

1) It didn't stop the war
2) It didn't solve the national question
3) It didn't nationalise private property
4) It didn't even distribute the land among the peasants!!!

It was a BOURGEOIS PARLIAMENT. What kind of a miserable opportunist and parliamentary cretin can defend this pathetic caricature of a popular assembly?

[marx_was_right]

It was a BOURGEOIS PARLIAMENT. What kind of a miserable opportunist and parliamentary cretin can defend this pathetic caricature of a popular assembly?

Never has a truer word been spoken :D

[Frederik]

I think that a good indicator of the bankrupcy of Russian capitalism is that the bourgeois parliament was unable to carry out the tasks of the bourgeois revolution - to smash feudal landlords and distribute the land between the peseants...

[igor_r]

What has not been mentioned here is that Lenin dissolved the constituent assembly in january 1918 after the Social revolutionaries won majority support in it and the Bolsheviks won only a quater of the votes - if they are not the actions of a dictator, then i do not know what is.
_The election had been led using the old electoral lists of SRP. To that time SRP splited to Right-SR and Left-SR. Left-SR's joined the bolshevik gouvernment. So, either in bourgeous law, Assembly was not legitime. There was no quorum in the assenbly, because not only bolshevik fraction leaved it. And, as it was said, it was a bourgeoeous (i can never remember how to wright this *ucking word) parliament, and at this time there were Soviets, democratically elected by workers_.
The Bolsheviks never enjoyed majority support in Russia - only the support of a tiny industrialised group in St Petersburg and Moscow.
Bolshevicks never stayed for abstract democracy (wich is in realaty the dictatorship of bourgeoesie).  They stayed for the democracy of working class. The thing is, that there are no tyrans and not tyrans. There are just politicians of different classes, so for capitalists Lenin was tyran, for us Nikolai was tyran. Its just a class point of viev.

[turnoviseous]

The main argument that is held by anarchists and practically all bourgeoisie theoriticians and historians is that bolsheviks soon started to impose their will on society and that dictatorship of proletariat did not exist, rather (they say) it was a dictatorship of a party.

The problem with this thinking is that it considers the question of bolshevik power totally in abstract and totally from idealistic interpretation of history. Not only anarchists, but also bourgeois theoriticians look on history from totally idealistic point of view, which is the main root of all of their blindness and inability to analyze society.

For one who considers history in idealistic way, material conditions in country are not important, and they conclude that it is rather the organization of society which creates such and such material conditions. But presented as such, this is totally false to the core. As Marxists explained again and again, material conditions are the most important in the last analysis.

You can´t have workers´ democracy just any time in history under any material conditions. For workers democracy to work efficiently, you first need some material conditions. You can´t have workers´ democracy on backward material base. For workers´ democracy, one of the main material conditions is that working day is reduced, so that people can involve in state activities. You can´t expect workers to bother with state affairs after 11 hours of physical labour and even more, without proper education.

However on the material basis which young Soviet state inherited from the tsarist state, this was not possible, furthermore the material conditions in the country were made even worse with civil war and imperialist intervention. Civil war was an important factor in the degeneration of the Soviet state, since a lot of class conscious workers went on front to fight the Whites, and most of them never returned.

On the other hand a lot of counter-revolutionary tendencies started to express through the soviets and political parties, which could totally endanger the revolution under the civil war, resulting in counter-revolution and fascist dictatorship. Bolsheviks had to abandon political struggle between parties in soviets, to protect the revolution. Bolsheviks considered this as a step back for the revolution, but a necessary one to protect it from direct counter-revolution.

But still at that time regime was more or less democratic, since there was one of the fullest democracies in the bolshevik party. From 1921 onwards, when bolsheviks were forced to destroy factional struggle from bolshevik party, since all the alien political pressures expressed in the only legal party, bureaucratization went on to a higher level.

As Marx said, social law can never be higher than the economic base of society. Under backward material base and isolation of the young soviet state, bureaucratic reaction happened.

Excellent article on this matter is Trotsky´s Stalinism and Bolshevims. There he says:

that the conquest of power, however important it may be in itself, by no means transforms the party into a sovereign ruler of the historical process. Having taken over the state, the party is able, certainly, to influence the development of society with a power inaccessible to it before; but in return it submits itself to a 10 times greater influence from all other elements in society. It can, by the direct attack by hostile forces, be thrown out of power. Given a more drawn out tempo of development, it can degenerate internally while holding on to power. It is precisely this dialectic of the historical process that is not understood by those sectarian logicians who try to find in the decay of the Stalinist bureaucracy a crushing argument against Bolshevism.

In essence these gentlemen say: the revolutionary party that contains in itself no guarantee against its own degeneration is bad. By such a criterion Bolshevism is naturally condemned: it has no talisman. But the criterion itself is wrong. Scientific thinking demands a concrete analysis: how and why did the party degenerate? No one but the Bolsheviks themselves have, up to the present time, given such an analysis.

Anarchists and bourgeois class thinks that one tactics provides such and such results. This is totally idealistic and not materialistic conception of history. Under different conditions, same tactics can provide different results. And ideas of people, as noble and smart they can be, can´t negate material base. No administrative measures from bolsheviks could stop bureucratic degeneration.

So, my point is that bureaucratic degeneration started at the very beginning of the Soviet union, but at the start it was still healthy workers´ state. Then with more and more problems the soviet state had, bureaucratic degeneration was gradually proceeding to higher levels, eventually expressing itself in Thermidor of bureaucracy.

[Daymare17]

This extract from chapter 6 of volume 3 of Trotsky's The History Of The Russian Revolution should shed light on the subject of the Marxist understanding of democracy and class dictatorship in general, and the October insurrection in particular. Of course the entire work must be read by every serious comrade.

"The resolution of the July congress of the Bolsheviks, while warning the workers against premature encounters had at the same time pointed out that the battle must be joined "whenever the general national crisis and the deep mass enthusiasm have created conditions favourable to the going over of the poor people of the city and country to the side of the workers.” That moment arrived in September and October.

The insurrection was thenceforth able to believe in its success, for it could rely upon a genuine majority of the people. This, of course, is not to be understood in a formal sense. If a referendum could have been taken on the question of insurrection, it would have given extremely contradictory and uncertain results. An inner readiness to support a revolution is far from identical with an ability clearly to formulate the necessity of it. Moreover, the answer would have depended to a vast degree upon the manner in which the question was presented, the institution which conducted the referendum — or, to put it more simply, the class which held the power.

There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens. If the saving operation is carried out skilfully, however, and in time, the approval of the passengers is guaranteed in advance.

Parliamentary consultations of the people are carried out at a single moment, whereas during a revolution the different layers of the population arrive at the same conclusion one after another and with inevitable, although sometimes very slight, intervals. At the moment when the advanced detachment is burning with revolutionary impatience the backward layers have only begun to move. In Petrograd and Moscow all the mass organisations were under the leadership of the Bolsheviks. In Tambov province, which has over three million population — that is, a little less than both capitals put together — a Bolshevik faction first appeared in the Soviet only a short time before the October revolution.

The syllogisms of the objective development are far from coinciding — day by day — with the syllogisms of the thought process of the masses. And when a great practical decision becomes unpostponable, in the course of events, that is the very moment when a referendum is impossible. The difference in level and mood of the different layers of the people is overcome in action. The advance layers bring after them the wavering and isolate the opposing. The majority is not counted up, but won over. Insurrection comes into being at exactly that moment when direct action alone offers a way out of the contradictions.

Although lacking the power to draw by themselves the necessary political inferences from their war against the landlords, the peasants had by the very fact of the agrarian insurrection already adhered to the insurrection of the cities, had evoked it and were demanding it. They expressed their will not with the white ballot, but with the red cock — a more serious referendum. Within those limits in which the support of the peasantry was necessary for the establishment of a soviet dictatorship, the support was already at hand. “The dictatorship" — as Lenin answered the doubters — "would give land to the peasants and all power to the peasant committees in the localities. How can you in your right mind doubt that the peasant would support that dictatorship?" In order that the soldiers, peasants and oppressed nationalities, floundering in the snow-storm of an elective ballot, should recognise the Bolsheviks in action, it was necessary that the Bolsheviks seize the power."