Comment on The Dangers of Socialism they warned us about...

• HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I’m far from a scholar on economics, let alone socialism or communism, but my understanding of the broad strokes would be:

  Lenin proposed that a vanguard party implement Marx-described socialism by force. That one-two combination is called “communism” by many.

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  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Lenin proposed that a vanguard party implement Marx-described socialism by force.

    Lenin proposed that a vanguard party lead the proletariat in reasserting their control of domestic infrastructure. The funny thing is that Lenin’s biggest triumph wasn’t as a violent revolutionary, but a peace activist. His coup against the Mensheviks was in opposition to their continued prosecution of The Great War. It was, in effect, a soldier’s strike action.

    So you have it totally ass backwards. First the Tsarists and then the Mensheviks implemented a policy of forced conscription and endless war. Then Lenin championed a radical response of mass desertion and refusal to fight. When the national leadership tried to force newly christened anti-war Communists back to the front lines - by threatening summary execution, corporal punishment, and indefinite detention in Tsarist gulags - they found themselves entirely outnumbers. And, as a result, their civil government collapsed on itself.

    Afterwards, Lenin began issuing instructions on how to transform the Russian aristocratically managed economy into independently organized and managed worker’s soviets. Then he attempted to organize a bureaucracy that could knit the soviets together into an international economic network without relying on the traditional methods of market mechanics.

    That second part - the actual functional implementation of the Marxist economic model - is what makes him a Communist in practice and not just another Tsar or President.

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    • HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      That’s a whole lot of writing just to say, “I agree, but I want to argue with you.”

      Did he or did he not use violence to throw out the Tsarists and then the Mensheviks?

      Was the party he (and his comrades) created a vanguard party or was it not?

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