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All these anti-Bolshevik treatises of late merely profit from the decay and ruin of Left-wing consciousness and culture that has taken place in the last century

All these anti-Bolshevik treatises of late merely profit from the decay and ruin of Left-wing consciousness and culture that has taken place in the last century. The old Bolsheviks I once knew would have laughed at this "thesis". But who is around anymore to argue against it?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
narag 9y ago
Against? TBH, I'm not sure there's a need to argue against a political movement with such a record. It's interesting how a lot of people tries to defend the unambiguously totalitarian party and, at the same time, criticizes autoritarian trends of western democracies.
- influx 9y ago
  For folks who don’t know and want to learn more: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communis... Note: please no what aboutism as a response to this. I’m aware that this isn’t the only ideology that has committed atrocities, but we are discussing this one in this thread.
  - undersuit 9y ago
    But why did you link the article. Are you asserting something?
  - geofft 9y ago
    "Whataboutism" is absolutely relevant, though. In order for the idea of mass killings under communism to be an intellectually honest one, the mass killings have to be at least correlated with communism, if not caused by it. If there's one other ideology that's committed atrocities, sure, I understand that that doesn't absolve communism. But if every ideology has, saying "We're only talking about this one" is actively misleading. And the very article you link to acknowledges that, by comparing killings under communist regimes to killings under the Inquisition, to the Holocaust, and so forth, and by comparing deaths under famine in Communist countries to deaths under famine in the British empire. Otherwise you might as well say "Look at this list of atrocities committed by men, I'm aware that women have committed atrocities too but that's not what we're discussing in this thread."
    - narag 9y ago
      In order for the idea of mass killings under communism to be an intellectually honest one, the mass killings have to be at least correlated with communism, if not caused by it. Mass killings under communism is not an idea, it's a fact, isn't it? Was it caused by communism in general or some persons in particular is debatable.
      - geofft 9y ago
        Yeah, I was a bit sloppy in my wording. The deaths are a fact; I am referring to the idea that "mass killings under communism" / "mass killings under communist regimes" is an appropriate descriptor - as well as the idea that "killings" is an appropriate descriptor for deaths from famine / poverty. (And yes, both of these are debatable ideas.)
        candiodari 9y ago
        Mass killings are caused - in almost all cases in history - by disastrous economic performance preceeding them, and yes, including the Holocaust. But of course there are many cases, mostly further back, where economic disaster was caused by climate change or just a real natural disaster. In many cases in the 20th century (arguably including that one) disastrous economic performance was caused by incompetent and corrupt central control of the economy, and then that caused massacres, essentially from Western Europe Eastward all the way the the pacific coast. Say, what was the basic idea behind communism again ? Yeah I'm sure that version 2.0 will "skip" the incompetent and corrupt parts. Right. Otherwise it's not real communism. Arguably corrupt and incompetent leadership is a fact of life and is the very core of what distinguishes theory from practice.
    - Parcissons 9y ago
      Communism to be implemented requires centralization of nearly all goods. Centralization of nearly all goods is a very powerfull tool to rule. Meanwhile- i guess any system would do by now, if it gamified its inner workings for the inhabitAnts. The capitalsim we have today is just very conveniant for those longing for small empires and pyramid powerstructures. The claim that it is the best organizational form- or the most natural occuring one is ridiculous- its just the one that comes most natural to the creatures creating it.
- riffraff 9y ago
  it's not uncommon in some countries/cultures to see people defend an abstract "communist" ideology while acknowledging the evils of the actual regimes. So, it seems likely that if specifically more bolsheviks were around, they might take issues with the characterization of TFA, as grandparent says.
  - geofft 9y ago
    Is this very different from the tendency in the US to say "the problem isn't capitalism, the problem is 'crony capitalism', if we were living under real capitalism things would be okay"?
    - muninn_ 9y ago
      Well, mostly, because capitalist systems work. Look at Sweden, or Germany, or Japan, or the United States (largely) or Canada. These are all capitalist economies. Communism for a technological society doesn’t work in any capacity because of the basic tenants of communism. Some forms of capitalism work better than others (maybe look at Norway vs idk Brazil or something) but they largely work.
      - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
        >These are all capitalist economies. Communism for a technological society doesn’t work in any capacity because of the basic tenants of communism. // Work for the betterment of the community in preference to selfish ambition; from each according to there abilities, to each according to their needs; ... These are what I think of as basic tenets of communism ... What about this is not consistent with technological progress of society? Communism seems, to me, to be our last great hope for a long future for the human race. I suppose some would prefer technological advancement over sustainability.
        TeMPOraL 9y ago
        IMO in terms of technological advancement, the primary difference between (theoretical) communism and (theoretical) capitalism is that the former lacks a strong forcing function. One has to admit that market pressures are a tremendous incentive to develop new technologies. But it's also totally misaligned with what's important. I feel a communist-tech society might develop slower, but in more meaningful ways.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Against? TBH, I'm not sure there's a need to argue against a political movement with such a record. And yet people don't have issues with political movements with the same or even worse records (from colonialism to slavery), and can swipe their issues under the carpet (what does capitalism has to do with some such countries enslaving 2/3rds of the world causing untold suffering and deaths, that's just human nature, some bad apples, some greedy leaders, etc) whereas issues with other systems they present as "inherent". It's mostly the winners getting to write history.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    I'm not sure that colonialism, taken as a whole, has a worse record than Bolshevism (or even Communism), taken as a whole.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      Make sense, since colonialism belongs to the winners, who have been whitewashing (and continuing) its legacy at the same time. From the murdered native Americans (North and South), to concentration camps, mass executions, slavery work (including US blacks), huge colonial wars, all the way to human zoos...
  - hacknat 9y ago
    The most scathing analyses of Bolshevism I have heard have come from the likes of Chomsky and Zinn, who are/were hardly neo-liberals. For all of its faults at least capital aggregation doesn’t have a moral prerogative behind it.
    - danharaj 9y ago
      > For all of its faults at least capital aggregation doesn’t have a moral prerogative behind it. Are you sure? For example, colonialism was a project of capitalist development and it very much involved a moral prerogative to '''civilize''' the inferior races of the world... by plundering them of their resources and subjugating them.
    - 9y ago
aaron-lebo 9y ago
Weren't the Bolsheviks just a minor faction that ended up winning the civil war? Bolshevism became the party in the USSR. I understand your complaint were it about communism, but it's hard to defend a group (Bolshevism) that was loaded with cowardly and narcissistic mass murderers. There's no one to defend them because they're all dead, in many instances killed off by each other. Their form of government collapsed. What's there to defend? Does anyone really want to associate themselves with the actions and mistakes of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Beria, etc. at this time? Is this incorrect? Were there Bolshevik communities elsewhere that you may have been part of? I thought most of the Bolsheviks were dead by the 1950s.
- testestx 9y ago
  There are many people today that want to associate themselves with Trotsky. They are called trotskyists.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Marxism-Leninism is certainly not dead, although the fall of the USSR was a harsh blow. In my Western European country, the Communist Party still gets almost 10% of the votes, and while they no longer openly defend Stalin's legacy, Leninism is still very much at the core of their identity.
- pandaman 9y ago
  >Weren't the Bolsheviks just a minor faction that ended up winning the civil war? Bolshevism became the party in the USSR. Nope. It was a majority faction ("bolshevik" literally means "member of majority" as opposite to "menshevik", "member of minority") in the Russian Social-Democratic Worker Party (РСДРП). They took power during the October Revolution. Soon after the revolution the party was renamed into Russian Communist Party (of Bolsheviks). A year later the Communist International (Commintern) was created by Lenin's order and its first congress in 1919 was attended by delegates from 21 different countries. So, it seems to me, it was not a minor faction in a single country but a member of the international Communist movement.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
dragonwriter 9y ago
> All these anti-Bolshevik treatises of late merely profit from the decay and ruin of Left-wing consciousness and culture that has taken place in the last century I don't think so; Bolshevism itself was the decay and ruin in left-wing consciousness. The emphatic rejection of Leninism and it's descendants by many on the left, even many who remain committed to Marxism and non-Leninist derivatives thereof, is a renaissance in left-wing consciousness and thought, and an escape from the swamp in which much of it was mired for much of the twentieth century.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Compared to what, though? Leninism had a lot of adherents because it had actually worked on multiple occasions, whereas the economist/trade unionist approach hasn't panned out so well for the working class, or indeed the middle class in developed countries.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    > actually worked on multiple occasions As in, killed an impressive number of people?
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      No, as in seizure of state power, which is a legitimate political goal. Many, perhaps most countries have gone through political change as a result of revolution. The USA, the UK, France, Ireland, to name but a few western democratic examples, all of which also had civil wars. If you're just going to keep making sarcastic remarks I'm not going to answer any more of your comments.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Leninism had a lot of adherents because it had actually worked on multiple occasions Leninism, like traditional western capitalism, “worked” at displacing a pre-capitalist elite with a new elite and industrializing pre-industrial societies, and largely in the process replicated the key problems associated with western capitalism identified in works like Marx’s Capital, which is why post-Leninist Marxist critics of Leninism often call that system a “state capitalism”. Leninism didn't however, “work” at solving any problem for which the Left didn't have a clear, well-established working solution before Lenin, and I don't think the Left (outside of the Leninist part, which just ignores the problem and pretends that Leninism is perfect) yet has a theory of how to move on from a Leninist society that doesn't run through capitalist democracy on the route to anything else. Leninism is an unproductive dead-end for the Left.
hacknat 9y ago
You knew old Bolsheviks? Or did you know some Western sympathesizers? Big difference, but either way you’d have to be north of 80 years old. Chomsky on Leninism: https://youtu.be/Nz11K1wUbrc https://youtu.be/Nz11K1wUbrc Hint: he’s not a fan
- lostlogin 9y ago
  How? A Bolshevik could have died at 80 or 90, and the OP could have met them at age 20, making them 60ish now. There is plenty of wriggle room for the OP to be younger.
ocschwar 9y ago
Of course they would have laughed, just as the Mormon leadership laughs at The Book of Mormon, the musical.
raguuu 9y ago
Shocking to see something like this here. Could moderators explain why defending these vile people is allowed here? Next someone starts a story about misunderstood old nazi friends.
- grzm 9y ago
  If you believe a post is inappropriate for HN, you can flag the submission (if you have sufficient karma). You can also contact the mods directly via the Contact link in the footer. Help make HN the place you want it to be.
woodandsteel 9y ago
>All these anti-Bolshevik treatises of late merely profit from the decay and ruin of Left-wing consciousness and culture that has taken place in the last century. The old Bolsheviks I once knew would have laughed at this "thesis". But who is around anymore to argue against it? So are you saying the thesis is wrong, but you are not going to offer us any arguments as to why?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

narag 9y ago

Against? TBH, I'm not sure there's a need to argue against a political movement with such a record. It's interesting how a lot of people tries to defend the unambiguously totalitarian party and, at the same time, criticizes autoritarian trends of western democracies.

influx 9y ago
For folks who don’t know and want to learn more: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communis... Note: please no what aboutism as a response to this. I’m aware that this isn’t the only ideology that has committed atrocities, but we are discussing this one in this thread.
- undersuit 9y ago
  But why did you link the article. Are you asserting something?
- geofft 9y ago
  "Whataboutism" is absolutely relevant, though. In order for the idea of mass killings under communism to be an intellectually honest one, the mass killings have to be at least correlated with communism, if not caused by it. If there's one other ideology that's committed atrocities, sure, I understand that that doesn't absolve communism. But if every ideology has, saying "We're only talking about this one" is actively misleading. And the very article you link to acknowledges that, by comparing killings under communist regimes to killings under the Inquisition, to the Holocaust, and so forth, and by comparing deaths under famine in Communist countries to deaths under famine in the British empire. Otherwise you might as well say "Look at this list of atrocities committed by men, I'm aware that women have committed atrocities too but that's not what we're discussing in this thread."
  - narag 9y ago
    In order for the idea of mass killings under communism to be an intellectually honest one, the mass killings have to be at least correlated with communism, if not caused by it. Mass killings under communism is not an idea, it's a fact, isn't it? Was it caused by communism in general or some persons in particular is debatable.
    - geofft 9y ago
      Yeah, I was a bit sloppy in my wording. The deaths are a fact; I am referring to the idea that "mass killings under communism" / "mass killings under communist regimes" is an appropriate descriptor - as well as the idea that "killings" is an appropriate descriptor for deaths from famine / poverty. (And yes, both of these are debatable ideas.)
      - candiodari 9y ago
        Mass killings are caused - in almost all cases in history - by disastrous economic performance preceeding them, and yes, including the Holocaust. But of course there are many cases, mostly further back, where economic disaster was caused by climate change or just a real natural disaster. In many cases in the 20th century (arguably including that one) disastrous economic performance was caused by incompetent and corrupt central control of the economy, and then that caused massacres, essentially from Western Europe Eastward all the way the the pacific coast. Say, what was the basic idea behind communism again ? Yeah I'm sure that version 2.0 will "skip" the incompetent and corrupt parts. Right. Otherwise it's not real communism. Arguably corrupt and incompetent leadership is a fact of life and is the very core of what distinguishes theory from practice.
  - Parcissons 9y ago
    Communism to be implemented requires centralization of nearly all goods. Centralization of nearly all goods is a very powerfull tool to rule. Meanwhile- i guess any system would do by now, if it gamified its inner workings for the inhabitAnts. The capitalsim we have today is just very conveniant for those longing for small empires and pyramid powerstructures. The claim that it is the best organizational form- or the most natural occuring one is ridiculous- its just the one that comes most natural to the creatures creating it.
riffraff 9y ago
it's not uncommon in some countries/cultures to see people defend an abstract "communist" ideology while acknowledging the evils of the actual regimes. So, it seems likely that if specifically more bolsheviks were around, they might take issues with the characterization of TFA, as grandparent says.
- geofft 9y ago
  Is this very different from the tendency in the US to say "the problem isn't capitalism, the problem is 'crony capitalism', if we were living under real capitalism things would be okay"?
  - muninn_ 9y ago
    Well, mostly, because capitalist systems work. Look at Sweden, or Germany, or Japan, or the United States (largely) or Canada. These are all capitalist economies. Communism for a technological society doesn’t work in any capacity because of the basic tenants of communism. Some forms of capitalism work better than others (maybe look at Norway vs idk Brazil or something) but they largely work.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      >These are all capitalist economies. Communism for a technological society doesn’t work in any capacity because of the basic tenants of communism. // Work for the betterment of the community in preference to selfish ambition; from each according to there abilities, to each according to their needs; ... These are what I think of as basic tenets of communism ... What about this is not consistent with technological progress of society? Communism seems, to me, to be our last great hope for a long future for the human race. I suppose some would prefer technological advancement over sustainability.
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        IMO in terms of technological advancement, the primary difference between (theoretical) communism and (theoretical) capitalism is that the former lacks a strong forcing function. One has to admit that market pressures are a tremendous incentive to develop new technologies. But it's also totally misaligned with what's important. I feel a communist-tech society might develop slower, but in more meaningful ways.
coldtea 9y ago
>Against? TBH, I'm not sure there's a need to argue against a political movement with such a record. And yet people don't have issues with political movements with the same or even worse records (from colonialism to slavery), and can swipe their issues under the carpet (what does capitalism has to do with some such countries enslaving 2/3rds of the world causing untold suffering and deaths, that's just human nature, some bad apples, some greedy leaders, etc) whereas issues with other systems they present as "inherent". It's mostly the winners getting to write history.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  I'm not sure that colonialism, taken as a whole, has a worse record than Bolshevism (or even Communism), taken as a whole.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    Make sense, since colonialism belongs to the winners, who have been whitewashing (and continuing) its legacy at the same time. From the murdered native Americans (North and South), to concentration camps, mass executions, slavery work (including US blacks), huge colonial wars, all the way to human zoos...
- hacknat 9y ago
  The most scathing analyses of Bolshevism I have heard have come from the likes of Chomsky and Zinn, who are/were hardly neo-liberals. For all of its faults at least capital aggregation doesn’t have a moral prerogative behind it.
  - danharaj 9y ago
    > For all of its faults at least capital aggregation doesn’t have a moral prerogative behind it. Are you sure? For example, colonialism was a project of capitalist development and it very much involved a moral prerogative to '''civilize''' the inferior races of the world... by plundering them of their resources and subjugating them.
  - 9y ago

aaron-lebo 9y ago

Weren't the Bolsheviks just a minor faction that ended up winning the civil war? Bolshevism became the party in the USSR. I understand your complaint were it about communism, but it's hard to defend a group (Bolshevism) that was loaded with cowardly and narcissistic mass murderers. There's no one to defend them because they're all dead, in many instances killed off by each other. Their form of government collapsed. What's there to defend? Does anyone really want to associate themselves with the actions and mistakes of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Beria, etc. at this time? Is this incorrect? Were there Bolshevik communities elsewhere that you may have been part of? I thought most of the Bolsheviks were dead by the 1950s.

testestx 9y ago
There are many people today that want to associate themselves with Trotsky. They are called trotskyists.
icebraining 9y ago
Marxism-Leninism is certainly not dead, although the fall of the USSR was a harsh blow. In my Western European country, the Communist Party still gets almost 10% of the votes, and while they no longer openly defend Stalin's legacy, Leninism is still very much at the core of their identity.
pandaman 9y ago
>Weren't the Bolsheviks just a minor faction that ended up winning the civil war? Bolshevism became the party in the USSR. Nope. It was a majority faction ("bolshevik" literally means "member of majority" as opposite to "menshevik", "member of minority") in the Russian Social-Democratic Worker Party (РСДРП). They took power during the October Revolution. Soon after the revolution the party was renamed into Russian Communist Party (of Bolsheviks). A year later the Communist International (Commintern) was created by Lenin's order and its first congress in 1919 was attended by delegates from 21 different countries. So, it seems to me, it was not a minor faction in a single country but a member of the international Communist movement.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago

dragonwriter 9y ago

> All these anti-Bolshevik treatises of late merely profit from the decay and ruin of Left-wing consciousness and culture that has taken place in the last century I don't think so; Bolshevism itself was the decay and ruin in left-wing consciousness. The emphatic rejection of Leninism and it's descendants by many on the left, even many who remain committed to Marxism and non-Leninist derivatives thereof, is a renaissance in left-wing consciousness and thought, and an escape from the swamp in which much of it was mired for much of the twentieth century.

anigbrowl 9y ago
Compared to what, though? Leninism had a lot of adherents because it had actually worked on multiple occasions, whereas the economist/trade unionist approach hasn't panned out so well for the working class, or indeed the middle class in developed countries.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  > actually worked on multiple occasions As in, killed an impressive number of people?
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    No, as in seizure of state power, which is a legitimate political goal. Many, perhaps most countries have gone through political change as a result of revolution. The USA, the UK, France, Ireland, to name but a few western democratic examples, all of which also had civil wars. If you're just going to keep making sarcastic remarks I'm not going to answer any more of your comments.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Leninism had a lot of adherents because it had actually worked on multiple occasions Leninism, like traditional western capitalism, “worked” at displacing a pre-capitalist elite with a new elite and industrializing pre-industrial societies, and largely in the process replicated the key problems associated with western capitalism identified in works like Marx’s Capital, which is why post-Leninist Marxist critics of Leninism often call that system a “state capitalism”. Leninism didn't however, “work” at solving any problem for which the Left didn't have a clear, well-established working solution before Lenin, and I don't think the Left (outside of the Leninist part, which just ignores the problem and pretends that Leninism is perfect) yet has a theory of how to move on from a Leninist society that doesn't run through capitalist democracy on the route to anything else. Leninism is an unproductive dead-end for the Left.

hacknat 9y ago

You knew old Bolsheviks? Or did you know some Western sympathesizers? Big difference, but either way you’d have to be north of 80 years old. Chomsky on Leninism: https://youtu.be/Nz11K1wUbrc https://youtu.be/Nz11K1wUbrc Hint: he’s not a fan

lostlogin 9y ago
How? A Bolshevik could have died at 80 or 90, and the OP could have met them at age 20, making them 60ish now. There is plenty of wriggle room for the OP to be younger.

ocschwar 9y ago

Of course they would have laughed, just as the Mormon leadership laughs at The Book of Mormon, the musical.

raguuu 9y ago

Shocking to see something like this here. Could moderators explain why defending these vile people is allowed here? Next someone starts a story about misunderstood old nazi friends.

grzm 9y ago
If you believe a post is inappropriate for HN, you can flag the submission (if you have sufficient karma). You can also contact the mods directly via the Contact link in the footer. Help make HN the place you want it to be.

woodandsteel 9y ago

>All these anti-Bolshevik treatises of late merely profit from the decay and ruin of Left-wing consciousness and culture that has taken place in the last century. The old Bolsheviks I once knew would have laughed at this "thesis". But who is around anymore to argue against it? So are you saying the thesis is wrong, but you are not going to offer us any arguments as to why?