I’m really not sure how to answer your question constructively.
While I’ve seen you admit errors in the past, and that’s admirable, that’s not your first instinct.
When faced with the recognition of an error on your part, you seem to duck it at first and counterattack, often without validity or thought.
So, I would say the most common poor judgement that I’ve seen from you, is reacting on instinct and not thinking through the course of your arguments.
For example, it seems pretty clear that Lenin did some pretty crappy things. Trying to justify them both for Lenin personally, and within the context of Socialism is an instintive move, but a tactical error, as is suggesting others through history have done as much, or worse.
Well, that’s kind of difficult, for two reasons. First of all, what’s a “truly socialist or communist state”? and secondly, organizations like Amnesty International, the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Council for Human Rights have one problem or another with almost every country in the world. It’s a matter of degree. For example
U.S.: Has the death penalty. Some examples of racism in sentencing
Sudan: Gov’t oppression, denial of religious liberties, and state sponsored slavery
If, when you say, “A truly socialist or communist state”, you just mean “A state where the majority in the government are socialists or communists”, I can give you a number of states that fit your criterion, from Sweeden, to the U.K. under Blair, to Israel under Barak.
The UK is a socialist country by the definition I gave above, which was that a socialist county was one where socialists have a majority in the government. Currently, in the House of Commons, out of 659 members, 411 are members of the Labour Party. An additional 3 are members of the Social Democratic & Labour Party. Both the Labour Party and the Social Democratic & Labour Party are member parties of the Socialist International. Therefore, under the above definition, the UK is a socialist country.
Then you misinterpret me. Nowhere am I trying to justify what happened during the Russian Civil War as explainable by Lenin’s personality or as a programmatic aspect of socialism. There was a war on, and a particularly vicious one at that. Fighting that war meant defending the revolution from both internal and external enemies - not perceived ones, but those that have openly declared themselves as such (e.g. the declaration from Patriarch Tikhon in Sam’s latest post in the GD thread). This is the framework in which we need to view Lenin’s actions and the actions of Bolshevism, because it is a very specific situation. You cannot judge the whole of socialism, or even specifically Bolshevism, from a few years of turbulent events. In much the same vein, you cannot pass judgement on Lenin from one or two letters on a website if you are largely unfamiliar with the body of his works (as I strongly suspect Sam is).
Did Germany have a socialist majority in the Reichstag in 1914? I guess if they didn’t that would explain why they voted to financially support the war when the question came to the floor.
I’m sorry, Captain Amazing, but socialism is a heck of a lot more than just having a majority Red parliament. It’s a question that was just as important back before WWI as it is today.
The Socialist International says of itself: “The Socialist International is the worldwide organisation of social democratic, socialist and labour parties.” Even by its definition, Britain’s Labour Party does not necessarily qualify as a socialist party.
Hmmm. Dunno about that. I seem to remember Blair specifically stating after the '97 election that the Labour Party was emphatically not a left-wing (and hence socialist) party, but was instead a party of the “Third Way” which sought to take a politically “central / centrist” role. The current British Labour govt. (perhaps as distinguished from the party (and there is an increasing divide between the two) is a supporter of free capitalism and promotes itself as the party of commerce.
As you said, according to your definition it might be possible to shoe-horn Blairites into a socialist role, but it aint how they see themselves… (although there are a few notable “old skool” Labour-lefties kicking around, just not that many of 'em). Maybe your definition is in need of revision…?
I’m aware that had bugger all to do with the thread topic / OP, but I thought I’d chuck it in anyways
Up the Revolution, innit.
– rob s.
ps. I prob’ly ought to provide a link to something (anything!) which backs me up. I’ll have a dig if anyone really wants to know (and I *know[/] you don’t!)
Whew. Apology accepted, Olentzero. I spend a lot of time in this forum, and I like to think I can take it as well as I dish it out.
F.Y.I. I spent a year in Czech Republic, and 4 years travelling extensively to Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, and Poland for my job, trying to undo some of the economic and environmental damage done by communism itself and also in the wake of its abrupt collapse. Professor Kaminski, a Polish dissident who escaped and came to the U.S., was my advisor and taught me for a year-long History of Eastern Europe course. I also spent some time with Professor Stites studying Russian art and politics culminating in a study of similarities between Nazi & Socialist portraiture and sculpture. Incidentally, Norman Rockwell would have made a great socialist realist painter in the U.S.S.R.
You may not support the society I described, but your Lenin was one of its chief architects whether you choose to believe or not. I deplore the atrocities committed in the name of that kind of socialism the way I deplore the Spanish Inquisition or the methods used by Pinochet or McCarthy to quell that same socialism.
At the risk of putting Alphagene off his dinner, I’ll ask you the same questions that I ask the guy who hands out socialist newspapers near my subway stop: In the U.S. you get to be a “revolutionary”, holding anti-government meetings, passing out anti-government propaganda, protesting, and trying to convert followers. If your revolution should succeed, would I be able to do the same thing? Agitate for an end to the system of government, recruit followers, publish my own propaganda? Think about what Lenin’s answer to this would be and whether it’s the same as your own.
Now if I can only find those pictures ( I swear I have at least one somewhere with a background shot of you in New South cafeteria)…
Awwright, so we take Lenin’s actions in context. To me that says that instead of mass murder and psycopathy we have crimes against humanity, and megalomania.
Additionally, it’s a trite standpoint that a society’s ethics are what that society can afford, and Lenin’s revolutionary nation couldn’t afford higher ethics, and therefore the actions need to be understood from that standpoint.
I happen to think that exactly the opposite is true. The ethics that measure a society or a system of government are not the malleable ones, they’re the ones that you stand on no matter what.
If I take your suggestion of understanding these actions within this context, than I again come to the conclusion that Socialism presents no firm and unyielding moral firmament to build itself upon.
Rather it is tied to nothing more substantial than the interpretation of what is good for that society by whatever person or group happens to be in control at that time.
I seem to recall an old saying about power and corruption here.
Actually, Germany didn’t have a Socialist majority in the Reichstag in 1914. They had the most seats…110 of a 331 man Reichstag, but they didn’t have a governing coalition, and, in fact, had been isolated from government. The Kaiser wouldn’t even receive Socialist members, and Bethmann-Holweg was hostle to them also. Yes, the party voted for war credits when they probably shouldn’t, but they suffered for it. Liebknecht led about a third out of the party, and finally when they DID get the government after the Kaiser’s abdication at the end of the war, they spent the first few years trying to hold back a Communist revolution. Even if they had voted against the war credits, what good would it have done? The pro-war block was strong enough that it didn’t need their vote for it to pass, and all voting against the credits would have done would be to make sure the socialists lost all the influence they had.
There are two ways to make a revolution. You can go and kill a lot of people, and keep on killing and overthrowing governments until you’re in charge and can implement your policies, or you can pressure a democratic system, through mobilization and strikes, and winning elections, and getting your people elected to positions of power. You can change the society that way too. Maybe in Russia the first option was neccesary. The tzarist state was a brutal dictatorship that didn’t care what the majority of people wanted. In a place like Germany, or England, or France, or anywhere that had already had its bourgoise revolution, though, all violence does is make change harder, because the forces of reaction entrench, and violence is met with violence.
What are your choices, then? You can be a “voice crying out in the wilderness”, where no one listens to you. Alternatively, you can get involved in the government, and yes, compromise sometimes, but always keep in mind that your goal is to change the system so that everyone is a part of it.
I’ve read your post three times through, Scylla, and I can’t make heads or tails of what you’re saying, outside of some vague sense of moral outrage. Is it possible you could be more specific?
I’ve heard a reformulation that I like much better than the old saying. I have the bad habit of remembering quotes, and misplacing the sources, and I’ve done the same here.
“Power does not corrupt; power simply attracts the corruptible. Better people are attracted to different things.”
