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Historical Bolshevism Discussion Thread
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I Must Enter a Username Away
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Post: #1
Historical Bolshevism Discussion Thread

Interestingly, Kamenev and Zinoviev seemed to agree with each other on almost everything.
Here's a selection from Trotsky's writings on them:
Quote:Zinoviev and Kamenev are two profoundly different types. Zinoviev is an agitator. Kamenev-a propagandist. Zinoviev was guided in the main by a subtle political instinct. Kamenev was given to reasoning and analyzing. Zinoviev was always inclined to fly off at a tangent. Kamenev, on the contrary, erred on the side of excessive caution. Zinoviev was entirely absorbed by politics, cultivating no other interests and appetites. In Kamenev there sat a sybarite and an aesthete. Zinoviev was vindictive. Kamenev was good nature personified. I do not know what their mutual relations were in emigration. In 1917 they were brought close together for a time by their opposition to the October revolution. In the first few years after the victory, Kamenev’s attitude toward Zinoviev was rather ironical. They were subsequently drawn together by their opposition to me, and later, to Stalin. Throughout the last thirteen years of their lives, they marched side by side, and their names were always mentioned together.

With all their individual differences, outside of their common schooling gained by them in emigration under Lenin’s guidance, they were endowed with almost an identical range of intellect and will. Kamenev’s analytical capacity served to complement Zinoviev’s instinct; and they would jointly explore for a common decision. The more cautious Kamenev would sometimes allow Zinoviev to carry him along farther than he had wanted to go hiinself, but in the long run they found themselves side by side along the same line of retreat. In the stature of their personalities they were peers, and they supplemented each other by their dissimilarities. Both of them were deeply and unreservedly devoted to the cause of socialism. Such is the explanation for their tragic union.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/...mzinov.htm
06-22-2014 08:26 AM
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thewake Offline
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Post: #2
Historical Bolshevism Discussion Thread

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_p...otsky.html

Quote:We can dignify Trotsky's ruthlessness with the name of realism if we like, but the question abides of just how realistic his ruthlessness would have been if he had won a power struggle against Stalin and stayed on to rule the Soviet Union. As things turned out, there never was a power struggle. Trotsky wasn't interested in the hard grind of running the show: Leave that to Stalin. But—an important but—Trotsky yielded no points to Stalin in the matter of dealing with anybody who dared to contradict him. It was a trick they both inherited from Lenin. Golo Mann said it went back all the way to Marx. Marx's Italian contemporary Giuseppe Maz­zini observed that he had more anger in his heart than love, and that his whole temperament was geared to domination.

We can still see it today, even when totalitarianism is no longer a thing for states, but only for religious fanatics. It is the trick of meeting contradiction by silencing whoever offers it. Trotsky's undoubted fluency as a polemical journalist does not mean that he wouldn't rather have had a gun in his hand. The humanist makes a big mistake in supposing that a literary talent automatically ameliorates the aggressive instinct. Osama Bin Laden has several of Trotsky's characteristics. According to students of Arabic, he commands his native language with vibrant fluency, giving a thrilling sense of its historic depth; he can lead a simple life and make it look enviably stylish, as if asceticism were a luxury; and above all, he can inspire the young to dedicate their lives to an ideal. If the ideals of the caliphate tend to become more elusive on close examination, so did the ideals of communism: but they needed to be incarnated for that very reason. Trotsky lived on after Stalin, and to some extent is still alive today, not because young people want the world he wanted: a phantasm that not even he could define. What they want is to be him.

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06-22-2014 08:35 AM
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I Must Enter a Username Away
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Post: #3
RE: Historical Bolshevism Discussion Thread

(06-22-2014 08:35 AM)W Kuts Wrote:  http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_p...otsky.html

Quote:We can dignify Trotsky's ruthlessness with the name of realism if we like, but the question abides of just how realistic his ruthlessness would have been if he had won a power struggle against Stalin and stayed on to rule the Soviet Union. As things turned out, there never was a power struggle. Trotsky wasn't interested in the hard grind of running the show: Leave that to Stalin. But—an important but—Trotsky yielded no points to Stalin in the matter of dealing with anybody who dared to contradict him. It was a trick they both inherited from Lenin. Golo Mann said it went back all the way to Marx. Marx's Italian contemporary Giuseppe Maz­zini observed that he had more anger in his heart than love, and that his whole temperament was geared to domination.

We can still see it today, even when totalitarianism is no longer a thing for states, but only for religious fanatics. It is the trick of meeting contradiction by silencing whoever offers it. Trotsky's undoubted fluency as a polemical journalist does not mean that he wouldn't rather have had a gun in his hand. The humanist makes a big mistake in supposing that a literary talent automatically ameliorates the aggressive instinct. Osama Bin Laden has several of Trotsky's characteristics. According to students of Arabic, he commands his native language with vibrant fluency, giving a thrilling sense of its historic depth; he can lead a simple life and make it look enviably stylish, as if asceticism were a luxury; and above all, he can inspire the young to dedicate their lives to an ideal. If the ideals of the caliphate tend to become more elusive on close examination, so did the ideals of communism: but they needed to be incarnated for that very reason. Trotsky lived on after Stalin, and to some extent is still alive today, not because young people want the world he wanted: a phantasm that not even he could define. What they want is to be him.

From the same article:
Quote:After being murdered at Stalin's orders, Lev Davidovich Bronstein, alias Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), lived on for decades as the unassailable hero of aesthetically minded progressives who wished to persuade themselves that there could be a vegetarian version of communism

Ewww. Anyway, actual Trotskyists (Like James P. Cannon) recognized all the typical Leninist stuff and this is clear with Trotsky's 1920 (then Red Army commander) reply to Karl Kautsky's (dubbed the "renegade" of Marxism in a polemic by Lenin in 1918) Terrorism and Communism, so "aesthetically minded progressives" are looking at the wrong guy if they want some weird stagist (or maybe not even that) social-democratic thing.
(This post was last modified: 06-22-2014 08:56 AM by I Must Enter a Username.)
06-22-2014 08:48 AM
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SwiftEscudo Offline
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Post: #4
RE: Historical Bolshevism Discussion Thread

(06-22-2014 08:35 AM)W Kuts Wrote:  http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_p...otsky.html

Quote:We can dignify Trotsky's ruthlessness with the name of realism if we like, but the question abides of just how realistic his ruthlessness would have been if he had won a power struggle against Stalin and stayed on to rule the Soviet Union. As things turned out, there never was a power struggle. Trotsky wasn't interested in the hard grind of running the show: Leave that to Stalin. But—an important but—Trotsky yielded no points to Stalin in the matter of dealing with anybody who dared to contradict him. It was a trick they both inherited from Lenin. Golo Mann said it went back all the way to Marx. Marx's Italian contemporary Giuseppe Maz­zini observed that he had more anger in his heart than love, and that his whole temperament was geared to domination.

We can still see it today, even when totalitarianism is no longer a thing for states, but only for religious fanatics. It is the trick of meeting contradiction by silencing whoever offers it. Trotsky's undoubted fluency as a polemical journalist does not mean that he wouldn't rather have had a gun in his hand. The humanist makes a big mistake in supposing that a literary talent automatically ameliorates the aggressive instinct. Osama Bin Laden has several of Trotsky's characteristics. According to students of Arabic, he commands his native language with vibrant fluency, giving a thrilling sense of its historic depth; he can lead a simple life and make it look enviably stylish, as if asceticism were a luxury; and above all, he can inspire the young to dedicate their lives to an ideal. If the ideals of the caliphate tend to become more elusive on close examination, so did the ideals of communism: but they needed to be incarnated for that very reason. Trotsky lived on after Stalin, and to some extent is still alive today, not because young people want the world he wanted: a phantasm that not even he could define. What they want is to be him.

That article looks like a pointless and almost baseless criticism of Trotsky, only focusing on some idiotic moralist analysis. Then the author simply tries to convince that the 'vegetarian version of communism' is an absurd idea through this. Not only does the author fail to provide any convincing evidence that 'vegetarian communism' is truly contradictory, but the author also misunderstands the nature of trotskyism in the first place. Implying that trotskyism is some kind of humanist, humanitarian and moral crusade is absurd. Especially because of several of the points that the author himself brings up in his article, along with Trotsky's pamphlet 'Their Morals and Ours'. These things show that trotskyism is not in any means focused on 'vegetarian communism' or moralism in any way, shape or form.

Furthermore, the author outright states that Trotsky's only criticism of forced collectivisation is that it wasn't 'militant' enough. Also stupid, since Trotsky's 'The Revolution Betrayed' presents great criticism of the forced collectivisation. Finally, the author unashamedly claims that trotskyists do not actually want to build communism, but that they want to be Trotsky; His final baseless accusation.

RIP GORE GOROTH
RIP SAINTVICIOUS
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06-26-2014 08:47 PM
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brainiac3397 Offline
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Post: #5
Historical Bolshevism Discussion Thread

Communist Totalitarianism is the only truth.

The writer of that article is obviously a disgusting Stalinist and should be executed.

Personality DNA Report
(06-14-2013 08:02 AM)Potato Wrote:  watch the fuq out, we've got an "intellectual" over here.

Hidden stuff:
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06-27-2014 09:36 AM
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I Must Enter a Username Away
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Post: #6
RE: Historical Bolshevism Discussion Thread

(06-27-2014 09:36 AM)brainiac3397 Wrote:  Communist Totalitarianism is the only truth.

Interestingly, there are some people who are infatuated with the Jacobin-esque revolutionary terror from the like of Felix Dzerzhinsky on RL.

There was an interesting debate involving a Leninist and anarchist (bring your popcorn) over whether the Cheka was really that bad and/or necessary, you can read it here:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/bad-were-cheka...index.html
(This post was last modified: 06-27-2014 10:21 AM by I Must Enter a Username.)
06-27-2014 10:16 AM
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