Trotsky's Influence On The October Revolution

He was one of the top leaders in Bolshevick revolution indeed. Wiki has absolutely brilliant article about him:

no surprise, given the loads of money he received from the german government... 

Trotsky was not at Lenin's funeral but was that not because of Stalin, who tricked him as part of his bid to take power and his devising of the "Cult of the Leader"?

The question is not whether Trotsky had any influence in the Revolution of 1917, but rather if the Bolsheviks as a whole had any influence on Russian people when the Tsar was overthrown.

Originally posted by Spartakus The question is not whether Trotsky had any influence in the Revolution of 1917, but rather if the Bolsheviks as a whole had any influence on Russian people when the Tsar was overthrown.

The Bolsheviks did not create the revolution. They attempted to seize control of it in February, and failed. They attempted again in the October revolution, and seized partial control. Even at this point they did not control events, although they were an influential group in the revolution by this time. But the revolution continued, in the form of the Left Wing Uprisings, consisting of Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and anarchists. Lenin dissolved the Constituent Assembly and introduced the Red Terror to stop the revolution. It's only after this, after the revolution is crushed and popular uprisings at Kronstadt etc are put down, that we can say the Bolsheviks are truly in control. In some senses, the Bolshevik seizure of power was merely a coup by reactionary forces (with imperialist ambitions, to boot).

Edgewaters doing his social-fascist tricks as usual. The Bolsheviks were the primary revolutionary force in November and they had the greatest support from the Russian people, not just because they promised peace. They have taken the power easily in November. And were attacked by the counter-revolutionaries. 

Bolsheviks had the support of the proletariat in the elections. This means they dominated important industrial centres such as Petrograd and Moscow. They used their strength to take the power and they used the power to gain the support of the non-proletariat workers, i.e. the the peasants, successfully. Peasants supported the LSR party, but when the Bolsheviks have taken the power, they switched to support the Bolsheviks, who delivered their promises to the peasants. Otherwise October Revolution could not have survived, let alone won the Civil War. 

Lenin thereupon dissolved the Constituent Assembly, as he was unable to tolerate the will of the populace where it differed from his own.

Typical fascist lie, I am sure your right-wing kamaraden here will agree with you, but the truth remains clear. Lenin was part of a mass movement. He was not a dictator. Even if he wanted to be one, he lacked the power and control of the party that Stalin had. Bolsheviks dissolved the assembly because they did not believe in Bourgois democracy. You may agree or you may disagree, but Lenin thought only the proletariat could move the revolution forward, by taking control of the state apparatus and using it to gain the support of the peasants, who favoured the LSR. And you know what, history proved him right. 

The Left SR responded by declaring the Third Russian Revolution; in repsonse to which, Lenin called for "systematic" and "organized" "mass terror".

There is no such thing as 'Third Russian Revolution'. There is a counter-revolution attempt by the Whites and their allies. It was defeated by the Red Army with popular support. As for terror, it was practiced by all sides in the Civil War, which was started by YOUR side (i.e. counter-revolutionaries, rabid anti-communists such as you).

Lenin's Terror was only partially aimed at White forces - it was equally aimed at ending the revolution. The leftist revolution didn't stop when the Bolsheviks took control of the state.

I don't particularly ilke what happened in Kronstadt, and I would very much sympathise with an anarchist or a revolutionary communist who would bring up Kronstadt. I am not even a Leninist. The reason people think I am one here is because I constantly have to defend the revolution here from pocket Mccarthys like you. So, when a social-fascist like you brings this subject up, it is for one purpose only: anti-communism. 

You may not be a Leninist, but all true anarchists, socialists, communists that I know (and I know many) ultimately know that Soviet Union was an achievement for the workers, at least compared to the capitalist Empires you promote. As such, no true leftist would engage in neo-con style anti-communism here in AE. 

You, of course are a social-fascist, and that's what you do.   

Besides unleashing the Terror on the popular Left SR, Lenin also attacked the Petrograd Soviet for its list of demands, which included such orthodox Marxist fundamentals as the abolition of wage labour, worker's power (rather than vanguardist Party rule) in industrial collectives, freedom of speech and press for the proletariat and peasantry, and so on.

Marx is not a prophet whose words are holy. That's another fascist lie, which you are engaging. In other threads you fascists and liberals argue 'Quran says this so Muslims should do that' here you argue 'Marx said that so Communists should do that'... What matters is practice, not theory. Lenin was a revolutionary, not a frothing anti-communist latte-liberal like you. He knew what to do to make the Revolution survive your (i.e Whites') attack and did it. 

Orthodox Marxism (or "Kautskyism" as Lenin termed it) was entirely ill-suited to the vanguardist, pseudocommunist imperialist ambitions of Leninism.

Kautskyism supported World War I. Social Democrats' support of their own Empire in the War was what caused the split between them and the Communists internationalists in the first place. Given that, you as a kautskyite social fascist, are in no position to call Lenin an imperialist. Lenin ended the imperialist war, humiliated the imperialists by publishing their secret plans, protected other peoples from Great Russian imperialism. Even the most rabidly anti-Communist countries of East Europe of today, where people like you are dime a dozen, were created thanks to Lenin. It is a disgrace to humanity that a great defender of British Empire like you to call Lenin imperialist. 

As far as your "social fascist" comment, I don't think anyone pays any attention when those words come out of your mouth anymore. You have overabused and cheapened the terms to the point they no longer have any meaning, when you speak them. It is just frustrated spittle and froth.

To the contrary, a lot of people listen to what I write. Also, you are either lying or plain dumb, because I call only one person 'social-fascist' in AE and that is you. Hardly overused terms.

Leninist pseudocommunism was hated from the very moment it assumed power, and ultimately smashed by the people who suffered under it. It will never rise again. Deal with it.

Here you show once more your true face. End of history, eh? Keep on w**king Fukuyama Jr... 

Originally posted by Beylerbeyi Bolsheviks had the support of the proletariat in the elections.

No ... that's why they took only 22% of the popular vote while the Left SR took 58%. That's why a general strike was called demanding Lenin's resignation, one which the Bolsheviks took seriously - it had broad support among the proletariat, who credibly threatened to halt the trains.

Lenin was part of a mass movement. He was not a dictator.

There is, therefore, absolutely no contradiction in principle between Soviet (that is socialist) democracy and the exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals. - Lenin

Yes, he was part of a mass movement that was unaware of his true intentions, until he took power and his actual nature and aims were revealed. The workers believed that he would implement Marxism and direct worker control and abolish wage labour, instead he outlawed all labour which was not wage labour, dissolved the worker-controlled Factory Committees, which were exploding in number, about which he cheefully admits "On three occasions in the first months of Soviet power, the [factory] committees leaders sought to bring their model [of workers' self-management of the economy] into being. At each point the party leadership overruled them. The Bolshevik alternative was to vest both managerial and control powers in organs of the state which were subordinate to the central authorities, and formed by them."

Contrast this with Marx in Critique of the Gotha Program: "Since Lassalle's death, there has asserted itself in our party the scientific understanding that wages are not what they appear to be -- namely, the value, or price, of labor—but only a masked form for the value, or price, of labor power. Thereby, the whole bourgeois conception of wages hitherto, as well as all the criticism hitherto directed against this conception, was thrown overboard once and for all. It was made clear that the wage worker has permission to work for his own subsistence—that is, to live, only insofar as he works for a certain time gratis ... the system of wage labor is a system of slavery, and indeed of a slavery which becomes more severe in proportion as the social productive forces of labor develop ... It is as if, among slaves who have at last got behind the secret of slavery and broken out in rebellion, a slave still in thrall to obsolete notions were to inscribe on the program of the rebellion: Slavery must be abolished because the feeding of slaves in the system of slavery cannot exceed a certain low maximum! ... Instead of arising from the revolutionary process of transformation of society, the "socialist organization of the total labor" "arises" from the "state aid" that the state gives to the producers' co-operative societies and which the state, not the workers, "calls into being" ... a toiling people which, through these demands that it puts to the state, expresses its full consciousness that it neither rules nor is ripe for ruling!"

Or Marx's views on "the exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals" and vanguard parties: "The emancipation of the working class must be achieved by the working class themselves. We cannot therefore co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic persons from the upper and lower middle classes." I think that would probably include lawyers born as aristocrats who lived the bourgeoius lifestyle and demanded dictatorial powers.

Lenin unabashedly implemented state capitalism, wage slavery, and even big banks. On one occasion, he notes: "Everybody talks about imperialism. But imperialism is merely monopoly capitalism ... "war-time socialism" is in fact war-time state-monopoly capitalism, or, to put it more simply and clearly, war-time penal servitude for the workers and war-time protection for capitalist profits" 

Which is all fine and well, but after admitting that state/monopoly capitalism is a form of slavery, he advocates it: "state capitalism would be a step forward as compared with the present state of affairs in our Soviet Republic. If in approximately six months' time state capitalism became established in our Republic, this would be a great success. I can imagine with what noble indignation a Left Communist will recoil from these words, and what devastating criticism he will make to the workers against the Bolshevik deviation to the right ... [but]the big banks are the state apparatus which we need to bring about socialism"

Socialism, of course, is just a word - what Lenin means is that he wants state capitalism, including central banking schemes, imposed in true Blanquist fashion so as to exploit the workers, unveil mass terror, attack the revolutionaries, skim surplus value from wages, exercise personal dictatorial powers, and so on, which he somehow twists into being called "socialism" (kind of like the Nazis did, but Lenin was a first rate lawyer, not a Viennese artist-hobo, and far more sophisticated at such semantical perversions). And just like a good little fascist, he derided the left as "childish" (remind you of anyone today?) for opposing his personal dictatorship and his dismembering of the revolution and its institutions like the factory committees. The above quote comes from Lenin's smarmy polemic, "Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder". 

Lenin not only justified personal dictatorship, mass terror, outlawed worker control of the factories, embraced state capitalism and big banks, but even urged exploitation of workers at gunpoint. "Not a single rogue (including those who shirk work) to be allowed to be at liberty, but kept in prison, or serve a sentence of compulsory labour of the hardest kind…In one place ... half a dozen workers who shirk their work (in the manner of the rowdies, the manner in which many compositors in Petrograd, particularly in the Party print shops shirk their work) will be put in prison. In another they will be put to cleaning latrines. In a third place they will be provided with yellow tickets after they have served their time…In a fourth place one in every ten idlers will be shot on the spot." Even capitalists didn't shoot workers for not working fast enough. Note the particular attention paid to the workers who slaved away in Lenin's print shops ...

As Jack Fitzgerald noted at the time, the Bolshevik seizure of power was "but another example of the capitalists using the discontent and numbers of the working class in Russia to sweep away the Feudal rules and restrictions so strongly symbolized in the Czar and the Council of Nobles, and to establish a system of government in line with modern capitalist needs and notions."

You have a nice pic of Lenin as your avatar, but you do know that was just a costume, right? He only wore it for a little while in Finland as a disguise to prevent being recognized, as soon as he was back in Russia he started dressing like an aristocratic lawyer again. He was, after all, a lawyer and politician, born an aristocrat - and it's not a coincidence that he looked like one, that was what he was. As a lawyer, he was of course a master at semantical perversions of the intent of statements, which is what he did to Marx's theories. Here he is as a kid:

And here he is as a banker. Whoops! ... I mean Bolshevik.

Bolsheviks dissolved the assembly because they did not believe in Bourgois democracy.

They believed in elections as long as they won. They first tried to gerrymander the elections so that they'd wrest the vote from the Left SR, but they still didn't have enough to do so ... so they dissolved the assembly. Denouncing the CA elections as "bourgeouis" was an afterthought - they had no problem with it before they lost to the Socialist Revolutionaries. In fact, before this occurred, Lenin attacked numerous groups (eg Spartacists) for not participating in 'parliamentarianism', with his usual smarm, as part of the "childish" left:

[quotes Spartacist author:] "All reversion to parliamentary forms of struggle, which have become historically and politically obsolete, must be emphatically rejected"

This is said with ridiculous pretentiousness, and is patently wrong. "Reversion" to parliamentarianism, forsooth! Perhaps there is already a Soviet republic in Germany? It does not look like it!"

You may agree or you may disagree, but Lenin thought only the proletariat could move the revolution forward, by taking control of the state apparatus and using it to gain the support of the peasants, who favoured the LSR. And you know what, history proved him right.

History proved that Leninism was an absurd parody of Marxism, resulting in a farcical, imperialist dictatorship.

There is no such thing as 'Third Russian Revolution'.

Yes, there is. It was declared by the Left SR and joined by Left Communists, socialists, anarcho-syndicalists, the Makhnovists, and even, eventually, the Kronstadt communists who had originally brought the Bolsheviks to power before they realized what they stood for. It lasted until 1921 or thereabouts, with the slaughter of the Petrograd communists. It is separate from the war against White forces. 

Or, perhaps, one could say that there was no Third Russian Revolution, and say that there was simply a single revolution which began in Petrograd in December 1904 with striking workers, and ended in Petrograd in March 1921 when Lenin's thugs slaughtered the Kronstadt communists.

I don't particularly ilke what happened in Kronstadt

It was crucial to the Bolshevik triumph and fully in accord with Leninist theory. It was the face of Leninism in action ... and was a prelude to the entire history of the Soviet Union. Bolsheviks are always "sorry" about Kronstadt, the kind of sorry that a wife-beater is, meaning they'd do it again but they want to escape blame. Stalin was not some aberration that perverted Leninism, he simply continued and expanded Leninst doctrine. Lenin, and the rest of the Bolsheviks, perverted communism to take power. Communism was never supposed to be about glorious leaders  or imposing wage labour on people, let alone slaughtering workers and outlawing direct worker control of the point of production.

Kronstadt was the last gasp of the Russian revolution ... snuffed out by Lenin & co. They had a party to celebrate the Paris Commune the following day, while the Kronstadt communists were being dismembered with axes in Bolshevik prisons - just to give you an idea of Bolshevik sincerity.

and I would very much sympathise with an anarchist or a revolutionary communist who would bring up Kronstadt. I am not even a Leninist. The reason people think I am one here is because I constantly have to defend the revolution here from pocket Mccarthys like you. So, when a social-fascist like you brings this subject up, it is for one purpose only: anti-communism.

The truth or falsehood of a statement doesn't depend on who spoke it. Unless you're Bey, lol. 

You may not be a Leninist, but all true anarchists, socialists, communists that I know (and I know many) ultimately know that Soviet Union was an achievement for the workers

Only kids who like to wave black flags without knowing their history. There are even many communists who vehemently disagree that Lenin was anything other than a reactionary brute. What about Kautsky? 

Or these guys?

http://libcom.org/library/the-bolsheviks-and-workers-control-solidarity-group

http://libcom.org/library/lenins-terror-bolshevik-party-maximov

The whole of Left Communism is, in fact, defined by its vehement opposition to Right (wing) Communism (aka Bolshevism):

http://www.marxists.org/subject/left-wing/index.htm

I could point you to literally mountains of anarchist literature that criticizes Lenin and names him a dictator, so your statement is plainly false. This statement reveals to me that you don't really have a clue. You just wave a little red flag around and go with the most superficial understanding of Marxism and the communist and anarchist movements, probably gleaned from Soviet state publications written by bureaucrats in some propaganda office, seeking to use Marx's name to justify their dictatorship.

Although, in a sense, you might be correct: there are probably many Marxists who would say that despite being a brutal dictatorship, the Soviet empire overthrew feudalism and, when it fell, paved the way for the emergence of industrial capitalism in Russia. According to the theory of dialectic materialism, overthrowing feudalism and establishing industrial capitalism would be a step on the road to the socialist society.

You, of course are a social-fascist, and that's what you do.

*Yawn* 

You're obviously not familiar with the historical context of the term "social fascist" nor what usage of it implies about your politics. Or maybe I'm wrong, and you embrace what is implied. 

The term "social fascist" was invented by the Stalinists. It was dreamed up at the Sixth Cominterm as a slur against both socialists and communists, who wanted a united front against the rise of reactionary fascism. One of its uses was to denounce Party members who spoke out against the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: these were named "social fascists", expelled from the Party, and usually disappeared into one of Lavrenty Beria's torture/death facilities. Stalinists would not concede to cooperate in any undertaking which they were not given total control of and would not agree to common fronts against fascism - groups like the CNT-FAI in Spain were frequent targets of the accusation.

In fact, you too are a social fascist if you are not a Stalinist. No group that wasn't Stalinist escaped the term. Not even communist groups - communist organizations across Europe, in Britain, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy etc were all, at one point or another in the 1930s, branded as social fascists by the Stalinists. 

As George Orwell put it, "anyone who advocated a united front of Socialists and Communists was denounced as a traitor, Trotskyist, mad dog, hyena and all the other items in the Stalinist vocabulary." Hmmm ... sounds vaguely familiar .... I'm looking at you, Bey ...

The term went out of use in 1941, when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union. 

I don't even want to speculate where you picked up this term or why you are using it, but the implications are certainly most unpleasant ... I can only sincerely hope that you are truly ignorant of what your usage of the term suggests, and that you just picked it up somewhere and thought it sounded neat or something. But perhaps, the implications are correct and you identify with the worst facets of Stalinism. There are alot of people today attracted to the glamour of Nazism, perhaps you have simply found an alternative form of the same phenomena. I hope not. 

If you intend to continue using the term, should I think of you as a sophomoric pseudocommunist or a Stalinist troglodyte?

Marx is not a prophet whose words are holy.

That is true. But the foundation of Marxism is the labour theory of value and communism was meant to abolish wage labour and introduce equal labour-value in place of wages and monetary prices, ie instead of dollars one would make purchases with hours as established by certificates. That's the whole point and foundation of Marxist communism, its what distinguishes Marx from the Owenites and other forms of revolutionary socialism.

Why call yourself something you're not? Marx had alot of credit with the workers and the  Bolsheviks needed that legitimacy to establish their dictatorship, so they usurped the name, just as the Czar wanted to portray himself as some sort of Caesar.

Kautskyism supported World War I.

Don't make stuff up.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1914/09/war.htm

http://books.google.com/books?id=WTPba7pYH68C&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=kautsky+great+war&source=bl&ots=AYSWemum0K&sig=cRkeoGcNlp5V4BMpk0Zx0eX18po&hl=en&ei=-N6pSaejA8TMnQe4h9nrDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=6&ct=result

Read, and learn. Obviously you know nothing at all about the history of the left apart from some vague notions about Lenin the glorious leader etc. Kautsky was a pacficist who opposed the war at every turn, his entire life. He may have been a little impractical, something of an idealist when it came to his pacifism, and one might say that his understanding of war's role in capitalism was incorrect, but he never supported the war! In fact, he split from the SPD solely because of the party leadership's position on the war, and joined the USPD (which opposed the war). If you don't know something, just say so. Don't make stuff up.

kautskyite social fascist

I am not a Kautskyist just because I mention his name and know what he stood for.

Lenin ended the imperialist war

Against the Germans, and began a new one against Ukraine, because they were easier to pick on. The Mahknovists had no Ludendorff, just militias. 

Anyway ... how could it be an imperialist war without the Czar? If the state really was a people's state, then any defence of the territories that got ceded in Brest-Litovsk against the Germans and Austrians would be a defence of the revolution, same as the war against the Whites. 

Leninist pseudocommunism was hated from the very moment it assumed power, and ultimately smashed by the people who suffered under it. It will never rise again. Deal with it. Here you show once more your true face. End of history, eh? Keep on w**king Fukuyama Jr...

You are amusing. How the hell is the end of Leninism the end of history - or even the end of Marxism? So many fallacies all tied up in knots I don't even know where to begin. The left, perhaps even Marxism, may yet survive the damage Lenin did, if it can manage to dissolve the false notion that Leninism was Marxist or anything other than a state capitalist dictatorship. Given that Lenin, in his own words, lays bare his plan to impose state capitalism and dictatorship - even of "subjecting the will of thousands to the will of one" - by mass terror, it is surprising that it has proven so difficult for some to tear that dead little barnacle of a horror-parasite off, and acknowledge Lenin for what he was - a fascist dictator and the ultimate traitor of a popular revolution, who in the end ordered that the lives of the revolutionaries in Kronstadt, who had brought him to power, be snuffed out.

Your messiah was a Blanquist fraud - Bolshevism is just that, Blanquism. It's that simple. There's nothing wrong with the ideals of communism particularly, but Leninism - and all of its progeny, Stalinism, Maoism, etc - is a fraudulent fascist ideology masquerading as Marxism. It's no coincidence that all the revolutions Leninism inspired ended the same way, in personal dictatorships built on brutal repression. Imo, this is not Marxism and does not discredit Marxism. I have no particular argument with sincere Marxism, anarchism etc, other than two basic points: I do not believe political parties or political programs, or any sort of politics, can achieve anything meaningful, and I dismiss dialectic materialism as a teleology. Nor am I an evolutionary type. My avatar (Sab Cat) ought to give you a clue as to my politics (or lack thereof!). If the reference is too obscure outside North America, I'd be glad to enlighten you (in a different thread).

If I was a fascist, I would not say Lenin was a pseudocommunist. I would say that Lenin was the real deal, and terror and dictatorship and state capitalism were what communism is really supposed to be about. No fascist - nor even most "latte-sipping liberals" - would admit Lenin was a pseudocommunist. Their criticisms of communist thought depend on equating it with Leninism. Their criticisms would, for the most part, collapse without Lenin. There are only tiny handful of those types who can make solid arguments against Marx without pointing at Lenin or some variant of Leninism (Maoism, Stalinism, etc).

You can't just dismiss all criticism of Lenin as "fascist" "capitalist" "imperialist" or all the other sophomoric "-ist" ad hominems you use as crutches to hop about on, like a drunken epileptic on stilts. If you choose to defend Lenin, you have taken a side and you have arrayed yourself in opposition to other traditions even within the communist movement. For instance, to defend Lenin, you oppose the person who said this:

One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward, written by Lenin, an outstanding member of the Iskra group, is a methodical exposition of the ideas of the ultra-centralist tendency in the Russian movement. The viewpoint presented with incomparable vigor and logic in this book, is that of pitiless centralism. Laid down as principles are: 1. The necessity of selecting, and constituting as a separate corps, all the active revolutionists, as distinguished from the unorganized, though revolutionary, mass surrounding this elite . . . for Lenin, the difference between the Social Democracy and Blanquism is reduced to the observation that in place of a handful of conspirators we have a class-conscious proletariat. He forgets that this difference implies a complete revision of our ideas on organization and, therefore, an entirely different conception of centralism and the relations existing between the party and the struggle itself. Blanquism did not count on the direct action of the working class. It, therefore, did not need to organize the people for the revolution. The people were expected to play their part only at the moment of revolution. Preparation for the revolution concerned only the little group of revolutionists armed for the coup. Indeed, to assure the success of the revolutionary conspiracy, it was considered wiser to keep the mass at some distance from the conspirators."

Any idea who said that? Rosa Luxembourg. So what is Rosa in your sophomoric version of communism? Fascist? Imperialist? Nazi? Capitalist? Bourgeouis? Or just a dumb woman?

Before I start naming off the rest, would you like to let me know exactly how much of the left you will sacrifice to your Bolshevik god?

Edited by edgewaters - 01-Mar-2009 at 08:28

Originally posted by Beylerbeyi Edgewaters, this is by far the longest and most professional anti-communist attack I have read in AE. I see you surpass even the neo-nazis, fascists, religious fanatics, east european nationalists, american imperialists, and various liberals in your anti-communist zeal.