US Politics Mega-thread - Page 449

On July 11 2018 13:21 IgnE wrote:


Lenin and the bolsheviks were very popular among the workers in the Vyborg district of St. Petersburg and amongst the soldiers stationed in that city in 1917. They did not "just see fit to attribute their choices to acting on behalf of the exploited class." They actually were elected by workers' councils in that city and confirmed by soviets from cities all across the Russia.

On July 11 2018 12:50 xDaunt wrote:

Perhaps now would be a good time to explain to your leftist compatriots why the rule of law actually matters.

On July 11 2018 13:27 KwarK wrote:

St Petersburg is not Russia, and the peasants Plansix was referring to were not living there.

As for popularity with soldiers, no shit, the other side was advocating that the conscripts keep getting shot at by Germans. "We're against forcing you to get shot by Germans" pretty much sells itself. I'd vote for that. Personally I think whether you get shot should be a matter of individual preference rather than state policy.

Unfortunately it became a matter of state policy anyway, but they didn't know that at the time.

On July 11 2018 12:38 GreenHorizons wrote:
You guys understand that the US while having a horrific domestic history of it's own does it's most horrific stuff in other countries? Trump has killed thousands of civilians already.

It seems to me that you guys are far too comfortable with killing people as long as they are in other countries.

On July 11 2018 14:14 WolfintheSheep wrote:

I'd say you're far too comfortable whitewashing any killing done by non-American countries.

Lenin killed off hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens, and tens of thousands Polish people, in his first four years. Trump's got some catching up to do before his term's up.

On July 11 2018 14:37 GreenHorizons wrote:


Well I'm sure when the civil war starts he'll eclipse them in no time.

On July 11 2018 14:37 GreenHorizons wrote:


Well I'm sure when the civil war starts he'll eclipse them in no time.

On July 11 2018 14:37 GreenHorizons wrote:


Well I'm sure when the civil war starts he'll eclipse them in no time.

On July 11 2018 03:46 GreenHorizons wrote:


Why don't we establish what about Lenin makes it so obvious that president Hillary would be demonstrably better, and for whom?



I have to presume this is an exclusively domestically focused position. Surely she would do little to nothing to slow (would have probably increased) the civilian casualties around the world from explosive ordinance to say nothing of the cost of life resulting from capitalism concentrating wealth to such degrees people have yachts with boats and helicopters on them while people working 40 hours a week are still under the poverty line.

So the argument is that brutal treatment of the bourgeoisie would be worse than the type of bombing that leads to 9 out of 10 of the people you kill not being the target or whatever other atrocities you want to pick from the Obama administration and amplify (no doubt she was more hawkish than Obama) then?

I want to make sure I understand it before I go into detail about why I disagree

EDIT: I should add P6's point about "the wrong people" being lumped in with the bourgeoisie

On July 11 2018 13:41 IgnE wrote:


There is a curious paradox where the (post)modern conservative asserts the primacy of the rule of law knowing full well that it is advocacy of order as such, the very form of order, as based in an unjustifiable (that is, ungrounded) decision. The concrete content of this order is arbitrary (although property rights seems to be popular these days). Carl Schmitt's decisionism is the basis for this conservatism which is a return to an unconditional authority that cannot be grounded in positive reasons, and is opposed to any traditionalist notion of organic community norms. So yes, the paradox here is that we cannot escape decisionism and the struggle for hegemony. Now the question is: why is Lenin a properly ethical actor? Because, of course, he is. So how can we distinguish the bolshevik imposition of a new hegemonic order, with its own arbitrary rule of law, from that arbitrary decisionism which grounds the US government and its Constitution? Isn't the terror itself the imposition of the necessary form of order as such? Why do the conservative revisionists in this thread insist on dismissing the events of 1917 as the criminal scheming of a few power-hungry monsters?

On July 11 2018 04:55 Plansix wrote:

I have bad news for you:

You will not get to decide if you are an enemy of the people. The man with the gun from the People’s Government will decide because of his own reasons. He is part of the people’s police force, which has less accountability and oversight than ICE.

On July 11 2018 17:15 iamthedave wrote:


Domestically focused, yes. I would say the first job of a leader is to not kill their own people. The bourgeoisie could have been depowered without being murdered, and killing them all set the groundwork for it all to go to hell, same as it did for the French Revolution. And of course, the sphere of 'people we have to kill' expanded and expanded.

I'll let Lenin off the hook for Stalin, as I prefer to judge leaders on their own merits/demerits. Same as I don't judge Thatcher for Blair or Obama for Trump or will blame Trump for whoever comes after him.

On July 11 2018 17:27 Falling wrote:

Actually the wonderful thing about the Bolshevik revolution is that it ate up the true believers. Farmers that worked hard and (each according to their ability) were rewarded with... an award, but not the grain they so desperately needed. And if they ever complained... they'd disappear.

But Lenin was great. @GH

"How to Organize the Competition" Jan 7 and 10, 1918 'Lenin proclaimed the common, united purpose of "purging the Russian land of all kinds of harmful insects." And under the term insects he included not only all class enemies but also "workers malingering at their work"'

And beware the intellectuals: "In what block of a big city, in what factory, in what villlage... are there not... saboteurs who call themselves intellectuals?" Sometimes you only got imprisonment, other times you got shot... or "punishment at forced labor of the hardest kind."

And to really kickstart this off, he 'proposed that communes and communities should compete to find the best methods of purging.' Nice. And who were these insects? People in the cooperative movement, teachers in the gymnasiums, Church councils and their choirs, priests, monks, and nuns. Tolstoyans (refusing to work on the rails with gun in hand), workers of the railroad, telegraphers, trade unions.

And how to deal with these insects? The Cheka- to investigate, arrest, interrogate, prosecute, give trial and execute verdict. Sounds like a great system set up by Lenin. People protesting the plundering of churches- enemies. Arrest them.

August 30, 1918 NKVD ordered all the localities "to arrest immediately all Right Socialist Revolutionaries and to take a significant number of hostages from the bourgeoisie and military officers."

Feb 15 1919 Defence Council- Lenin as chair. Cheka and NKVD 'were ordered to take hostage peasants from those localities where the removal of snow from the railroad tracks "was not proceeding satisfactorily" and "if the snow removal did not take place they were to be shot." 1920 permission was given to take hostage the Social Democrats as well.

But simply being Communist was not good enough, one had to be Bolshevik. Oh how cleverly the Bourgesois had hidden under the guise of non-Bolshevik communism! Arrest the Left SR's and the SR, the Mensheviks, the Anarchists, the Popular Socialists, the delegates of the Non-Party Workers Congress.

Also the Russian expeditionary force returning home- too much foreign influence, I suppose. So arrest all the officers.

1919 was a good year after a couple real and fake plots and so led to man executions on the basis of lists. "free people were simply arrested and executed immediately, and right and left those elements of the intelligentsia considered close to the Cadets were raked into prison. (What does the term 'close to the Cadets' mean? Not monarchists and not socialist: in other words, all scientific circles, all university circles, all artistic, literary, yes and, of course, all engineering circles... 80 percent" of the intelligentsia " was close to the Cadets'"

Food requisitioning in January 1919 was met by resistance so naturally arrests and shooting followed.

1920 the decree "on Subversive Activity in the Rear' more arrests likely.

"A particular difficulty- and also a particular advantage- in the organization of all these waves was the absence of a criminal code or any system of criminal law whatsoever before 1922. Only a revolutionary sense of justice (always infallible) guided those doing the purging and managing the sewage system when they were deciding whom to take and what to do with them.

Signed by Lenin July 22, 1918 "Those guilty of selling, or buying up, or keeping for sale in the way of business food products which have been placed under the monopoly of the Republic... imprisonment for a term of not less than ten years, combined with the most severe forced labor and confiscation of all their property."

Peasant revolts followed (naturally) which led to suppression and arrests. Siberian Peasants Union got a trial in 1920. Tambov peasants' rebellion did not.

Nor was this simply a matter of war time pressures, for once the war ended, in 1921, Cheka Order No 10 went out "to intensify the repression of the bourgeoisie."
1920 was also when they began arresting students for "criticism of the system'.
1921 non-Bolshevik parties arrested systematically. And even if you had switched from the other parties to the Bolsheviks, they remembered your old loyalties and they'd get you. If not in the 1922 sweep, then in 1932, or maybe 1937. Once a non-Bolshevik, always a non-Bolshevik.

Then mass arrests of the church, theosophists, mystics, and spiritualists. "In the twenties the religious education of children was classified a political crime under Article 58-10 of the Code- in other words, counterrevolutionary propaganda."

Your move, GH. Why is Lenin such a great guy? (And alternatively, how have we been brainwashed- you've been long on accusations and short on evidence. So show some cards.)

I contend that while Leninism is not the same thing as Stalinism, there is enough of a pattern to think Lenin would only have been better than Stalin in that he wasn't so paranoid. Both should be summarily rejected. But Lenin opened the door and Stalin walked through- the systems (or lack of systems) set in place under Lenin gave the perfect pass for Stalin's layup.

On July 11 2018 13:18 KwarK wrote:

Lenin and his followers weren't members of the exploited class, they just saw fit to attribute their choices to acting on behalf of the exploited class.

On July 11 2018 17:42 GreenHorizons wrote:


I think the first job of a leader is to not kill innocent civilians. I don't think killing "other" people is better just because they are "others". On that count he has the company of pretty much every US president and plenty of other leaders around the world as far as killing loads of civilians to pursue their political ambitions.



I find it funny that it's you guys who keep saying Lenin and Stalin "were great" or "could do no wrong" despite me never saying anything like that.

Accepting your belief that he was a terrible person who should have be summarily rejected, who are some leaders on the global stage that you don't think should be/have been rejected?

On July 11 2018 17:55 Falling wrote:

The context of that is an understatement, meaning not great- the rest of the post indicates absolutely abhorrent. My argument works just fine without you thinking they were 'great' 'or 'could do no wrong', the latter of which I never said anyways. It is you that would take him over Clinton or Trump. It is you claiming that we have been been tricked by corporate propaganda. But rather than running from Leninist Russia or Stalinist Russia, you've played this mercurial 'but I didn't actually say' game. So get off the fence and take a position. What is it that you are saying about Soviet Russia? What have I got wrong about Lenin, a man who has actually signed orders for purges, for people you think will probably give purge orders. What part is corporate propaganda?

Here's the thing about Trump or Clinton... as bad as they could ever get within the American system, their most monstorous desires will be held in check by the limitations of power still present in the republic of America. By contrast, Lenin and his lads pulled down every check and balance to become judge, jury, and chief executioner, were monstrous, and created a monster that could never be controlled. So then the destroyer destroyed itself, killing and imprisoning millions in the process. So long as the limitations of the republic are protected, corrupt though they be, this will never happen.