The Russian Revolution

An overview of how the Bolsheviks came to power and why the working class supported them.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• russian revolution
• ussr
• cccp
• communist
• communism
• history

[mattaki]

totallyz FAKE FAKE FAKE. there was no color back then. learn to history peoples!

[borbo23]

@mattaki Damn, you caught on!

[spinoza1111]

But: if socialism requires violence it betrays its own humanism. It is ever under threat for the re-expropriation by the worst of the returned capitalists and socialism's own *nomenklatura* and they will justify this theft by reference to socialism's own struggles to maintain itself through violence. The first form of socialism to succeed will have such widespread approval as to be completely peaceful.

[borbo23]

@spinoza1111 Reality is not cut and dried like that. Socialism is not about appealing to everyone, it's about the working class. Members of the other classes can join us after the fact, but not in their current form. It only cares about the working class because they're the only class who produce anything and who can end the violence of class systems. That's all that matters.

[spinoza1111]

@borbo23 'Work" and "producing" are not the names of properties that people possess. They name the relationship of a human activity to the means of production, and this understanding allows us to see that anyone can be considered a worker when in this relationship. It accounts for the unpaid labour of women and that of the white collar. Traditional Marxism fetishizes a relationship to the tools of production that's been long outdated by automation.

[borbo23]

@spinoza1111 Indeed, it does need to adjust over time, but the basic premise remains the same. Marxists have always embraced means of increasing production. Automation is not new, it's just gotten technically more sophisticated than cotton gins.

The working class are the only ones who actually perform labour and services. Marxists simply believe that the people who perform the labor inherently own the means of production. After all, they built it.

[spinoza1111]

Even partially socialistic policies including capitalism at war creates real wealth which is irresistible to the capitalists once they retake power. The computer was developed as part of war capitalism in the USA as the large mainframe. Miniaturization in 1973 was the ONLY innovation: the early "microcomputers" were simply small and underpowered mainframes.

[spinoza1111]

The Bolsheviks did set out to create a one-party state. Lenin believed that the Party was the Proletariat, and that since the Proletariat was scientifically the most advanced class, it could not admit any other parties. This made some sense since otherwise, the parliamentary socialist party will build a partial socialism only to have it completely dismantled by a successor capitalist party, whether that party takes control through an election (Thatcher 1980) or a coup (Pinochet 1973).

[borbo23]

@mukmakumkum The original version of Doctor Zhivago.

[mukmakumkum]

Just curious, what movie was this from?