Vladimir Lenin - Not a Socialist but an opportunistic member of the Intelligentsia

BalcombeSt4

Now I know some people might say this is just Soviet revisionism but this was a popular belief held in lots of countries, by Left-Wing Communists, Social Democrats, Trade Unionists etc.... of the time period.

Lenin and his groups of Bolsheviks hijacked the Russian Socialist Revolution that had created some good things for the Russian people, and Lenin's Intelligentsia molded the working class into the society they wanted, which was a the Dictatorship of Intelligentsia's. - There is nothing Socialist about that, the core, the main thing in Socialism is the Workers control over production.

If anything instead of being a Socialist he was a authoritarian dictator with a small class of Bolshevik intellectuals around him, who distorted Marx's work for opportunistic reasons. He was the Robespierre and Trotsky the Marat of the Russian Revolution except it could be argued the French Revolutionaries started out with efforts to do good but became consumed with power.

Some of Lenin's first moves when he returned to Russia in April 1918, was to destroy the democratic assembly set up by the Russian people. The so called "October Revolution" was a coup in which Lenin & Trotsky directed the Red Guards to seize important buildings in the middle of the night without firing a shot. He, soon banned all political parties besides the Bolsheviks, he got rid of any real power of the workers councils , soldiers councils & peasants councils & centralized power for himself. That is not Socialism that is the complete opposite. This is not revisionism this was the view held at the time by the Socialist Revolutionaries likes Eduard Bernstein and of "Red" Rosa Luxemburg and later Annton Pannekoek who wrote "Instead of workers' councils, the Bolsheviks instituted the rule of their party, which is what led to the institution of the Bolsheviks as a new ruling class".

Lenin in my opinion seems to influenced more by Blanquism than Marxism. He just skillfully manipulated the mass popular support for Marxism & working class control for his ends.

"Blanqui did not believe in the preponderant role of the working class, nor in popular movements: he thought, on the contrary, that the revolution should be carried out by a small group, who would establish a temporary dictatorship by force. This period of transitional tyranny would permit the implementation of the basis of a new order, after which power would be handed to the people. In another respect, Blanqui was more concerned with the revolution itself than with the future society that would result from it: if his thought was based on precise socialist principles, it rarely goes so far as to imagine a society purely and really socialist."
Engels went on to say "In his political activity he was mainly a "man of action", believing that a small and well organized minority, who would attempt a political stroke of force at the opportune moment, could carry the mass of the people with them by a few successes at the start and thus make a victorious revolution" - This sounds exactly like Lenin's ations in October 1917 & there after.

Red Rosa said:
"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"

This is because Marx believed the Russian peasantry had plenty of Revolutionary potential, Lenin on the other hand being a member of a different class had disdain for the peasants and believed they had to be driven by brute force to Socialism with the old Lash of the Tsar whip, which is not socialism at all in fact once again it's the exact opposite, it's more closer to a Fascist Junta.
Rosa went on to say "Lenin's conception of revolution was opportunistic and elitist. "

Lenin basically used Socialism & popular Uprisings as tools to gain state power and establish a militaristic bureaucratic state, using terror squads like the Cheka to eliminate, Whites, Left-Wing Socialists, Mensheviks & Revolutionary Socialists. "War Communism" or the NEP again had nothing to do with Socialism
if socialism at it's core has workers control over production.

He later attacked his left-wing critics with, "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder" which was a work by Lenin attacking assorted critics of the Bolsheviks who claimed positions to the left of Leninism.

Soon after the Bolshevik seizure of power their was a serious uprising by the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party in July 1918, this was the first of many left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks which comprised of alliances of Anarchists, Left SR, & Mensheviks which lasted from 1918 to 1923 until they were brutally crushed & the Gulag system was first set-up.

Lenin created the worlds first military dictatorship of the 20 century which future tyrant leaders would copy of, ones who would try to destroy the Bolsheviks themselves.
In my opinion Hitler looked at how Lenin manipulated mass popular causes for his own end and how Lenin comprised with the Provisional Government with Kerensky until the compromise was no longer needed just how Hitler compromised with the Conservatives.

Lenin's legacy is a shameful, brutal one, he created a blueprint for power hungry despots to take control of entire states.

Historybluff

I agree with you to a large extent but I think you miss the more fundamental problem: Marxism itself.

The 1917 October Revolution was more of a coup d'état than a revolution, as you say. The Bolsheviks promised the masses peace and bread, two things which the Provisional Government had failed to deliver. They withdrew Russia from the Great War and attempted to implement socialist ideas to get the economy off its knees. As you say, they shut down the democratic assembly, banned all other political parties, hobbled the workers' councils and centralized power in their own hands.

You think that this was a perversion of Marxist thought. I think it was a predictable product of Marxism. Fundamentally, Marxism is a totalitarian philosophy. Marx and Engels might talk of freedom and self-actualisation under communism, but the achievement of communism - from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs - demands complete government control of society. As power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, no one can be trusted with such control. In Marx's own day, the anarchist Bakunin criticised this. 'If the proletariat is to be the ruling class, one may ask whom will it govern?' he wrote. 'There must be yet another proletariat that will be subjected to this new domination, this new state.' He concluded: 'the instinct of liberty is lacking in him [Marx]; he remains from head to foot, an authoritarian'. The Bolsheviks were like fanatical religious fundamentalists. They believed that they knew the real truth, revealed in Marx's writings: class conflict, the labour theory of value etc. Therefore, to tolerate opposition was out of the question. After all, civil liberties, such as freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, were mere bourgeois baubles disguising capitalist oppression. Under the benevolent rule of the Bolsheviks, the proletariat would not need these gimmicks. Therefore, critics of any Bolshevist government, as the Socialist Revolutionaries and other groups were likely to be, were demonised as capitalists, enemies of the people etc. and subjected to vicious repression.

Unlike you, I believe that the Bolsheviks genuinely believed in socialism. And they did implement socialist ideas. Contrary to your assertion, 'War Communism', introduced during the Civil War, contained some genuinely socialist policies, such as the nationalization of industry and the introduction of centralized economic management; the prohibition of private entreprise; and the rationing of food. It was the dreadful consequences of these measures that forced a reluctant Lenin to allow the return of private capitalist entreprise under the New Economic Policy. This concession was a major factor in allowing the Bolshevik regime to win the Civil War. Therefore, the problem was not that the Lenin & Co. were faithless to Marx's ideas but that they were all too faithful. Fundamentally, Marx's economic ideas are wrong. Centrally-commanded economies do not work. They cannot work because it is impossible for a government, however sincere or powerful, to gather all the information that is necessary for the smooth working of an economy. Today, no serious economist takes Marxist economic ideas earnestly: the labour theory of value etc. Even in Lenin's day, it was realised that Marx's predictions, such as the ever greater immiseration of the workers, were proving wide of the mark. Cocooned in their Marxist dream world, Lenin, Trotsky and their comrades ignored this reality, instead repeating to themselves the pseudo-science of Marx and Engels.

Therefore, the Bolsheviks were faithful followers of Marx.

Thomas_IV

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

...

If anything instead of being a Socialist he was a authoritarian dictator with a small class of Bolshevik intellectuals around him, who distorted Marx's work for opportunistic reasons. He was the Robespierre and Trotsky the Marat of the Russian Revolution except it could be argued the French Revolutionaries started out with efforts to do good but became consumed with power.

Some of Lenin's first moves when he returned to Russia in April 1918, was to destroy the democratic assembly set up by the Russian people. ...

Well, I presume that in such comparisons Stalin must have been Napoleon.

Besides, you've got a the year of his return to Russia wrong, it was in 1917, not in 1918.

You may say that he has set up a pattern for later Socialist Regimes (which in fact were Communist Regimes of the same type like that in the SU).

Socialism has been corrupted by the despotes it brought to the surface, but it also has shown that in fact it is not working, because doing all in accordance of years planing isn't quite meeting the demands of the consumers as the needs change etc.. More to the point, what many Socialists and Communists neglect is the need for investment and not just control of the resources by the workers. Without capital there is no Investment and consequently no economical growth.

Jolly Red Giant

I normally do not respond to anti-socialist rants like this - but given that this is a history forum I will address the historical inaccuracies in the OP

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

Lenin and his groups of Bolsheviks hijacked the Russian Socialist Revolution that had created some good things for the Russian people,

When did this 'Russian Socialist Revolution' occur - and what 'good things' did it create?

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

Some of Lenin's first moves when he returned to Russia in April 1918,

As has already been pointed out to you - Lenin arrived in Russia in April 1917

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

(Some of Lenin's first moves) was to destroy the democratic assembly set up by the Russian people.

The 'democratic assembly' was not democratic - it was established under the old Tsarist regime and until November 1917 no elections were held.

The Constituent Assembly was not 'destroyed' - it no longer exercised any power in Russia because the mass democratic revolutionary forces exercised power through the Soviets. Furthermore, the results of the Constituent Assembly elections were undemocratic - the candidates had been selected months previously and the Socialist Revolutionaries had split - the SR candidates on the ballot paper were made up of the rump of the right-wing rather than the mass of the Left SR.

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

He, soon banned all political parties besides the Bolsheviks,

Not true - the only political party banned in Russia after the revolution were the fascist Black Hundreds.

Temporary bans were imposed on different parties at different times during the Russian Civil War when they went over into open support for the White counter-revolution. The Mensheviks were banned and then un-banned several times during the course of the civil war until they were banned completely in 1921 for counter-revolutionary activities.

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

he got rid of any real power of the workers councils , soldiers councils & peasants councils & centralized power for himself. That is not Socialism that is the complete opposite.

Not true - on numerous occasions between 1917 and his death in 1924 Lenin was in a minority - both in the Soviets and within the Bolsheviks (including on occasions being in a minority of one on the central committee.

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

This is because Marx believed the Russian peasantry had plenty of Revolutionary potential, Lenin on the other hand being a member of a different class had disdain for the peasants and believed they had to be driven by brute force to Socialism with the old Lash of the Tsar whip, which is not socialism at all in fact once again it's the exact opposite, it's more closer to a Fascist Junta.

Thus the red banner of the class-conscious workers means, first, that we support with all our might. the peasants’ struggle for full freedom and all the land; secondly, it means that we do not stop at this, but go on further. We are waging, besides the struggle for freedom and land, a fight for socialism.

Lenin - The Proletariat and the Peasantry

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

Lenin basically used Socialism & popular Uprisings as tools to gain state power and establish a militaristic bureaucratic state, using terror squads like the Cheka to eliminate, Whites, Left-Wing Socialists, Mensheviks & Revolutionary Socialists. "War Communism" or the NEP again had nothing to do with Socialism if socialism at it's core has workers control over production.

You are attempting to make this claims in the abstract - ignoring the fact that the revolutionary government were faced with a White counter-revolution supported by 14 invasion armies from western powers. The Bolsheviks did not want to introduce 'War Communism' - they had no choice - it was either War Communism or a counter revolution that would have obliterated tens of millions of Russian workers and peasants in White terror.

Similarly - you throw out 'NEP' and declare it was against 'workers control' - without any consideration of the circumstances - a Russian society that had its industry and produce destroyed by a counter-revolution, a working class decimated by fighting to defend the revolution and a mass of the population starving. Something had to be done and Lenin proposed the NEP.

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

He later attacked his left-wing critics with, "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder" which was a work by Lenin attacking assorted critics of the Bolsheviks who claimed positions to the left of Leninism.

You are getting your timeline mixed up again here - 'Left-Wing Communism' was written in mid-1920 long before much of the stuff above - and it was a critique of some mad demands made by international leftists at the height of the civil war.

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

Soon after the Bolshevik seizure of power their was a serious uprising by the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party in July 1918,

The leadership of the Left SRs attempted a coup in areas ceded by Russia to the Germans in the Brest Litvosk Treaty - because they wanted to continue the war against Germany. The Left SR Central Committee ordered the assassination of the German ambassador in Moscow - an assassination carried out by two Left SR members of the Cheka - in the belief that his assassination would provoke an uprising in the ceded territories (it didn't). The attempted coup comprised of no more than 2,000 Left SRs (at most) - out of a party with several million members. They telegraphed a Left SR commander on the Eastern Front for a support and he ordered his troops to march on Moscow - the troops refused and he was killed resisting arrest.

In the immediate aftermath of the coup attempt the mass of the ranks of the Left SR split and formed the the Party of Revolutionary Communism and continued to participate in the revolutionary government.

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

this was the first of many left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks which comprised of alliances of Anarchists, Left SR, & Mensheviks which lasted from 1918 to 1923 until they were brutally crushed & the Gulag system was first set-up.

As I said previously - on many occasions elements within the Russian Left went over to the side of White counter-revolution - the Bolsheviks had two choices - let the Whites succeed or not - and the suppression of counter-revolutionary uprisings were a necessary component of that.

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

Lenin created the worlds first military dictatorship

Evidence?

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

Lenin's legacy is a shameful, brutal one, he created a blueprint for power hungry despots to take control of entire states.

Evidence?

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

Chomsky on Lenin - seriously ?

Jolly Red Giant

Historybluff wrote: »

The 1917 October Revolution was more of a coup d'état than a revolution, as you say.

False - the October Revolution was a mass uprising that had the support of the overwhelming majority of the workers and significant sections of the peasantry.

Historybluff wrote: »

As you say, they shut down the democratic assembly, banned all other political parties, hobbled the workers' councils and centralized power in their own hands.

See above

Historybluff wrote: »

. Fundamentally, Marxism is a totalitarian philosophy. Marx and Engels might talk of freedom and self-actualisation under communism, but the achievement of communism - from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs - demands complete government control of society.

Evidence?

And - as above - there is no point in addressing the anti-socialist rant.

Jolly Red Giant

Thomas_IV wrote: »

You may say that he has set up a pattern for later Socialist Regimes (which in fact were Communist Regimes of the same type like that in the SU).

The model of later regimes was established by Stalin - not Lenin - Lenin wanted Stalin removed from his position as General Secretary of the CP, and if he hadn't been debilitated by a series of strikes he would have confronted Stalin and demanded his removal.

BalcombeSt4

Historybluff wrote: »

I agree with you to a large extent but I think you miss the more fundamental problem: Marxism itself.

The 1917 October Revolution was more of a coup d'état than a revolution, as you say. The Bolsheviks promised the masses peace and bread, two things which the Provisional Government had failed to deliver. They withdrew Russia from the Great War and attempted to implement socialist ideas to get the economy off its knees. As you say, they shut down the democratic assembly, banned all other political parties, hobbled the workers' councils and centralized power in their own hands.

You think that this was a perversion of Marxist thought. I think it was a predictable product of Marxism. Fundamentally, Marxism is a totalitarian philosophy. Marx and Engels might talk of freedom and self-actualisation under communism, but the achievement of communism - from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs - demands complete government control of society. As power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, no one can be trusted with such control. In Marx's own day, the anarchist Bakunin criticised this. 'If the proletariat is to be the ruling class, one may ask whom will it govern?' he wrote. 'There must be yet another proletariat that will be subjected to this new domination, this new state.' He concluded: 'the instinct of liberty is lacking in him [Marx]; he remains from head to foot, an authoritarian'. The Bolsheviks were like fanatical religious fundamentalists. They believed that they knew the real truth, revealed in Marx's writings: class conflict, the labour theory of value etc. Therefore, to tolerate opposition was out of the question. After all, civil liberties, such as freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, were mere bourgeois baubles disguising capitalist oppression. Under the benevolent rule of the Bolsheviks, the proletariat would not need these gimmicks. Therefore, critics of any Bolshevist government, as the Socialist Revolutionaries and other groups were likely to be, were demonised as capitalists, enemies of the people etc. and subjected to vicious repression.

Unlike you, I believe that the Bolsheviks genuinely believed in socialism. And they did implement socialist ideas. Contrary to your assertion, 'War Communism', introduced during the Civil War, contained some genuinely socialist policies, such as the nationalization of industry and the introduction of centralized economic management; the prohibition of private entreprise; and the rationing of food. It was the dreadful consequences of these measures that forced a reluctant Lenin to allow the return of private capitalist entreprise under the New Economic Policy. This concession was a major factor in allowing the Bolshevik regime to win the Civil War. Therefore, the problem was not that the Lenin & Co. were faithless to Marx's ideas but that they were all too faithful. Fundamentally, Marx's economic ideas are wrong. Centrally-commanded economies do not work. They cannot work because it is impossible for a government, however sincere or powerful, to gather all the information that is necessary for the smooth working of an economy. Today, no serious economist takes Marxist economic ideas earnestly: the labour theory of value etc. Even in Lenin's day, it was realised that Marx's predictions, such as the ever greater immiseration of the workers, were proving wide of the mark. Cocooned in their Marxist dream world, Lenin, Trotsky and their comrades ignored this reality, instead repeating to themselves the pseudo-science of Marx and Engels.

Therefore, the Bolsheviks were faithful followers of Marx.

Good Post.

Yeah, I think the "October Revolution" was a lot like Hitler's Beer Hall coup in many ways, except Lenin succeded.
Yeah the slogan was "Peace, Land & Bread". A very simple slogan that the masses could latch on to, Chomsy compared it to what politicians say nowadays, like Obama - "Yes, We Can", or Trump - "Make America Great Again", very vague but attractive slogans.

Not so much a perversion of Marxism but a perversion of Socialism and more like an extension of Marxism. I probably should have been more clear on that. That's not just me talking that's what the people to the left of Leninism believed as well, not just in 2018 but in 1917 as well like I said already Luxembureg & Pannakoek heavily critisized Lenin for. I'm not a Marxist but am a Socialist.
Marx was probably more famousfor his critique of Capitalism than his descriptions of what Socialism should be like.

Marx was not the first Socialist and he was certainly not the first person who believed workers should control production.
Just look at the Lowell Mill Girls who were known as "factory girls" who worked in textile mills in Massachusetts from around 1820 - 1850. During the early days when they worked in the mills they controlled the means of production. They believed who ever worked in the mills should own them. But with the social changes of the Industrial Revolution mainly the new "Factory System" which they viewed as a great attack on their their dignity and independence and many of them joined the American Labour Movement to protest the new system. And they printed their own paper which was very radical & radically oppossed to the changes of the Indrustrial Revolution, mainly what they saw as a attack on their economic liberty, and they viewed selling their labour as selling thmeselves.
As Norman Ware observed:

The old term for the remuneration of the mechanic was 'price'. It referred to his product rather than to his labor, for it was his product that he sold. When the producer, whether master or journeyman, sold his product, he retained his person. But when he came to sell his labor, he sold himself. The term 'wage' that displaced 'price' as the Industrial Revolution advanced had formerly applied only to day labor, and the extension of the term to the skilled worker was regarded by him as a symbol of a deeper change

Here's Chomsky on the Lowell Mills & the "factory girls" & the papers they printed:

it has very strong roots in the American working class movements. So if you go back to, say, the 1850s, the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, right around the area where I live, in Eastern Massachusetts, in the textile plants and so on, the people working on those plants were, in part, young women coming off the farm. They were called "factory girls," the women from the farms who worked in the textile plants. Some of them were Irish, immigrants in Boston and that group of people. They had an extremely rich and interesting culture. They're kind of like my uncle who never went past fourth grade -- very educated, reading modern literature. They didn't bother with European radicalism, that had no effect on them, but the general literary culture, they were very much a part of. And they developed their own conceptions of how the world ought to be organized.
They had their own newspapers. In fact, the period of the freest press in the United States was probably around the 1850s. In the 1850s, the scale of the popular press, meaning run by the factory girls in Lowell and so on, was on the scale of the commercial press or even greater. These were independent newspapers -- a lot of interesting scholarship on them, if you can read them now. They [arose] spontaneously, without any background. [The writers had] never heard of Marx or Bakunin or anyone else; they developed the same ideas.

In the 1930's in Revolutionary Catalonia, workers control was established without any Red buerocracy and the system worked well until Franco established his dictaroship. .

So my point is Leninism had nothing to do with Socialism as it was understood to be. The core principal of Socialism is "Workers controlling the means of production." Without that key principle you don't have a Socialist state. They might call it Socialism but it clearly had nothing to do with Socialism, as we have both established Lenin & Trotsky pretty soon after they took power shut down the workers & factory councils, shut down the soviets, shut down the Assembly, banned the Socialist Revolutionary Party, the Left-Socialist Revolutionaries, the Anarchists & the Mensheviks - who were all former allies.
But they also called themselves Democrats, they pretended it was "People's Democracy", just like it had nothing to do with Socialism it had nothing to do with Democracy either.

So what I do agree is that any movement that follows Marxist-Leninist doctrine and they manage to take power somewhere well end up creating an Authoritarian state with State Capitalism as it's economic system.
I do not agree that Democratic Socialism will lead to any authoritarian or totalitarian state. I think it's probably the best chance of creating a fair democratic society. Clement Attlee a Democratic Socialist constantly top polls as the greatest PM in the 20 century and his government built the foundations for the Welfare State.

But I don't really want to get into a debate about Capitalism v Socialism v Leninism etc... that's more for the Politics forum.

I do believe a lot of the Bolsheviks genuinely believed in Socialism as well, but I think they believed in a form of Utopian Socialism along with Authoritarian Socialism, which is dangerous for obvious reasons. No system is going to be perfect whether it's a Social Democracy or a Democratic Socialist one it will have flaws, people who believe they can create a perfect system without flaws are delusional, and I believe Lenin was delusional.

Historybluff

Jolly Red Giant wrote: »

False - the October Revolution was a mass uprising that had the support of the overwhelming majority of the workers and significant sections of the peasantry.

Untrue. Yes, a majority of the workers and significant sections of the peasantry were rebelling, but they were rebelling against the Tsarist regime, not in favour of its replacement by an equally tyrannical Bolshevik one. The 'revolution' was a coup.

Temporary bans were imposed on different parties at different times during the Russian Civil War when they went over into open support for the White counter-revolution. The Mensheviks were banned and then un-banned several times during the course of the civil war until they were banned completely in 1921 for counter-revolutionary activities.

That's a rather charitable interpretation of Lenin's suppression of basic civil liberties. The charge of 'counter revolutionary activities' was so vague and commodious as to be legally meaningless. It meant that the accused was unhappy with the Leninist regime and had expressed that discontent by means that stretched from violence to speech-making. While no political society can tolerate violent opposition, most can withstand non-violent opposition. Under Lenin, however, the Bolsheviks were latter day millenarians, believing that they knew the truth and viewing those who opposed them as malevolent who had to be crushed.

The model of later regimes was established by Stalin - not Lenin - Lenin wanted Stalin removed from his position as General Secretary of the CP, and if he hadn't been debilitated by a series of strikes he would have confronted Stalin and demanded his removal.

I presume you mean a series of strokes – Lenin certainly was not debilitated by a series of strikes. Any workers brave enough to go on strike to protest living and working conditions in Lenin's despotic regime would have been condemned as 'counter-revolutionaries' and shot!
In any event, your charity to Lenin knows no bounds. It is true that Lenin was suspicious of the power Stalin had accumulated as General Secretary. However, his objection was mainly to Stalin's personality rather than the principle of the general secretary holding such power. The potential for tyranny did not worry Lenin terribly. This was because he was a tyrant himself. Virtually everything that Stalin is rightly condemned for had its precursor under Lenin's rule: secret police forces, political prisons, executions, famines etc.

Finally, you ask for evidence proving the commonplace observation I made that 'Fundamentally, Marxism is a totalitarian philosophy.' Here are some classic books you should read:

• Albert Camus, The Rebel (1951)
• Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism (3 Vols, 1976)
• Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (1922)
• Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies: Vol 2 Hegel and Marx (1945)
• Bertrand Russell, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920)

If you read those works with an open mind, you will be cured of your Marxist-Leninist delusions.