[Captain Hat]

In essence, you are saying it is ok for a small group of "professional revolutionaries" to dictate to the populace (or the protletariat) at large what is in their best interest?

Like I said before, this doesn't make much sense. The whole idea of "false consciousness" doesn't make sense.

If the people want change, they will ask for it. This is the idea behind the "classical" revolutions, the American and French Revolutions. No one sat down for either of those and said "Hey, let's go destroy Governor Hutchinson's house!" or "Let's just go storm the Bastille for the Hell of it!"
No, these revolutions were spontaneous. Which means the people as a whole got sick of one condition or another and decided to do something about. The Bolsheviks felt the people were incapable of this and staged an organized coup, the October/November Revolution.

[Potemkin]

In essence, you are saying it is ok for a small group of "professional revolutionaries" to dictate to the populace (or the protletariat) at large what is in their best interest?

Given that this was Lenin's position, both theoretically and in practice, and given that I am a Marxist-Leninist, then yes.

Like I said before, this doesn't make much sense. The whole idea of "false consciousness" doesn't make sense.

It makes perfect sense. The ruling class own and control the media outlets and the educational system. They therefore control the commanding heights of the superstructure of capitalist society. This enables them to impose their own worldview on every other class, even those classes being exploited by the ruling elite. The proletariat are invited to perceive the world as the ruling bourgeois class perceives it; in fact any other worldview is condemned as 'subversive' or 'unpatriotic' and is usually suppressed. This creates 'false consciousness' in the majority of the population, by which I mean something very specific - the ideological obfuscation of the outlook of the proletariat so that they cannot perceive what is in their own true interests. At best, they are able to develop a moderately clear view of their immediate, short-term interests, such as higher wages or better working conditions. This is what Lenin meant by 'trade union consciousness'. Even the most politically advanced members of the working class have mostly only managed to develop trade union consciousness.

If the people want change, they will ask for it. This is the idea behind the "classical" revolutions, the American and French Revolutions. No one sat down for either of those and said "Hey, let's go destroy Governor Hutchinson's house!" or "Let's just go storm the Bastille for the Hell of it!"
No, these revolutions were spontaneous.

Your own position seems to be virtually the same as that of the Mensheviks - they also believed in waiting for the 'spontaneous' uprising of the people to overthrow capitalism. Lenin, however, realised that they would be waiting forever - the bourgeoisie had already succeeded in hijacking the February Revolution and imposing their own 'Provisional Government'. It was the workers and peasants who had risked their lives fighting against Tsarist oppression on the barricades of Moscow and Petrograd, and the privileged bourgeois class were snatching the fruits of victory from them. Just as it was the French people who overthrew the ancien regime, but the bourgeois class succeeded in taking control of that popular uprising, leading to a successful counterrevolution by 1800, the same process was occurring in Russia. Lenin was determined to prevent it, and did so in the only way possible.

Which means the people as a whole got sick of one condition or another and decided to do something about. The Bolsheviks felt the people were incapable of this and staged an organized coup, the October/November Revolution.

The Russian workers and peasants were not capable of spontaneously overthrowing the bourgeois Provisional Government. They needed the disciplined cadre of professional revolutionaries in the Bolshevik Party to do it in their name. It was a coup, yes, but it was needed to overturn the bourgeois coup which had preceded it.

[enLight]

I voted "Uncoded". I've seen too many good things get bogged down in America's constitutional porcess and never get passed (or they're passed too late).

[The Immortal Goon]

I would argue that the masses were behind the Bolsheviks. Afterall, every other party - at the very least - wanted to stay in the very unpopulor WWI. Either to get back lost territory (which the Reds were willing to concede), or even worse, some of the "Moscow as the Third Rome" mumbo-jumbo.

The Bolsheviks promised "Land, Peace, and Bread." The masses wanted this. If the Bolsheviks hadn't formed a majority, it would have been impossible to win a Civil War in which the opposition was supplemented with foreign troops and aid.

This in mind, I would also argue that a codified (I knew coded didn't quite sound right) constitution is still best as it, in theory, acts as protection to the masses from the hands of the ruling elite. Furthermore, in the US at least, there is still a legal right to revolution (among the Jeffersonians, which were in opposition to the Hamiltonites).

Jefferson supported Shay's rebellion, for instance.

-TIG

[Potemkin]

This in mind, I would also argue that a codified (I knew coded didn't quite sound right) constitution is still best as it, in theory, acts as protection to the masses from the hands of the ruling elite. Furthermore, in the US at least, there is still a legal right to revolution (among the Jeffersonians, which were in opposition to the Hamiltonites).

Jefferson supported Shay's rebellion, for instance.

-TIG

If the state gives you the legal right to have a revolution against it, then either it's not a state, or it's not a revolution.

"It's alright, you can have a Revolution if you want to, but make sure and get our permission first, okay?"

[Todd D.]

Bullshit. You can revolutionize things through the proper means. Look at the welfare staters, and how much influece they have had over the past 70 years. Nothing illegal about that.

[The Immortal Goon]

The constitution and documents, the 'canon' if you will, that makes up the American legal system is quite clear in that the people have a right to abolish the government.

However, what isn't written but understood, is that the government has the right to fight back.

Regardless - I really don't think a codified or an uncodified constitution is going to stop a dielectic manifestation from taking place.

-TIG

[Potemkin]

Bullshit. You can revolutionize things through the proper means. Look at the welfare staters, and how much influece they have had over the past 70 years. Nothing illegal about that.

That's reform, not revolution. A very different thing.

[Potemkin]

The constitution and documents, the 'canon' if you will, that makes up the American legal system is quite clear in that the people have a right to abolish the government.

However, what isn't written but understood, is that the government has the right to fight back.

Then it's a completely meaningless right. "You have the right to abolish the government, but if you try, we'll shoot you!"

Regardless - I really don't think a codified or an uncodified constitution is going to stop a dielectic manifestation from taking place.

-TIG

I presume you mean 'dialectical'. In that case, I agree with you; however, an uncodified Constitution would make it easier to dissolve the existing system, which is a necessary step in any Revolution.

[The Immortal Goon]

:lol: Then it's a completely meaningless right. "You have the right to abolish the government, but if you try, we'll shoot you!"

Yeah, pretty much. Legally speaking, on a constitutional level, this is acceptable.

However, we all know that in practice, it isn't.

I presume you mean 'dialectical'. In that case, I agree with you; however, an uncodified Constitution would make it easier to dissolve the existing system, which is a necessary step in any Revolution.

Curse my spelling! Yes, I mean dialectical. I'm a bit dyslexic, I think, in addition to being a terrible speller anyway.

England has had fewer armed revolts than the US in a much longer history - I would say that it really doesn't matter too much.

What the hell do I know though?

-TIG

[Potemkin]

:lol: Then it's a completely meaningless right. "You have the right to abolish the government, but if you try, we'll shoot you!"

Yeah, pretty much. Legally speaking, on a constitutional level, this is acceptable.

However, we all know that in practice, it isn't.

In other words, the Constitution is largely a work of fiction. It 'grants' you rights which it has no intention of guaranteeing in reality. At least here in Britain we don't have that sort of smug hypocrisy - we don't have any codified 'rights', and the government is quite open and honest about its potentially despotic powers. I'll choose the honesty of an uncodified Constitution over the hypocrisy of a codified one any day.

England has had fewer armed revolts than the US in a much longer history - I would say that it really doesn't matter too much.

Not really true. The US has had two big ones - the Revolution and the Civil War, and that's about it. Britain has had dozens, from the periodic peasant uprisings in the Middle Ages (one big one about every generation or so) to the multiple Revolutions and Civil Wars in the 17th century, to the Jacobite Risings (three of them) in the 18th century, to the Diggers and the Levellers and the Luddites and the Blanketeers and the Chartists in the 19th century. And then there's that little bit of unpleasantness in Ireland....

[The Immortal Goon]

In other words, the Constitution is largely a work of fiction. It 'grants' you rights which it has no intention of guaranteeing in reality. At least here in Britain we don't have that sort of smug hypocrisy - we don't have any codified 'rights', and the government is quite open and honest about its potentially despotic powers. I'll choose the honesty of an uncodified Constitution over the hypocrisy of a codified one any day.

All bourgeois governments set laws that are a work of fiction. But more specifically, the contradiction above is a deeper issue steming from the Federalists (Hamiltonites) and the Anti-Federalists (Jeffersonians) from the beginning of the country. The Federalists won easily after the Jeffersonians lost thier revolutionary charactor at about the Jackson era.

The Hamiltonites have won out and form the sun school of thought - that is that the government is correct and commercial and right and all that trite. The Jeffersonians have, like most old revolutionary movements, shattered in to so many pieces you can't really pick up one and call it diffinitive. The legacy remains, however, the legal right to rebel. In theory (though I'm sure in practice it wouldn't have been so) should the South have left the US and not attacked Fort Sumpter, they could have.

----

The British Imperial issues - tuche (again, my spelling), yes the English have had their fair share of wars, but I would argue that national revolution isn't the same type of revolution we're speaking of - that is complete revolution.

The Revolution and the Civil War are examples of armed risings that brought themselves from fetal development in to an actual war.

There are many more. To name a few at the moment -

Bacon's Rebellion
Shay's Rebellion
Ludlow Rebellion
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877
Gabriel Prosser's Rebellion
St. John the Baptist Rebellion
Fort Blount Rebellion --1816
Denmark Vesey's Uprising
Nat Turner's Revolt

Granted, many of these are slave revolts, but there are indeed many more - worker's rebellions in the depression era for instance.

-TIG

[Subversive Rob]

All bourgeois governments set laws that are a work of fiction.

"Work of fiction" is too strong a word. Bourgeois laws tend to be internally coherent and also a site of class struggle. Although real, lasting changed can never be made through a law (in the sense of moving from one social system to another) to call laws simply "fiction" ignores a complex material and ideological process that goes on in the totality that is capitalist society.

For instance if you look at the bourgeois struggle under feudalism they managed to advance quite far, setting up autonomous institutions etc. by using the old Roman law and contesting the feudals in this way. The legal struggle was obviously also an ideological one, but, I would never call laws merely "fiction". Although their basis can be removed in a second (i.e. the transition from consent to force) this will not *always* happen, and in terms of everyday struggle bourgeois law is not solely monolithic.

[TROI]

Codified!

God your like the kids in my politics class who diddn't know what an election was .

The Bolsheviks and the left SRs had a majority in the constituent assembly and in the Soviets.

[The Immortal Goon]

"Work of fiction" is too strong a word. Bourgeois laws tend to be internally coherent and also a site of class struggle.

Agreed, "fiction" isn't quite the right word.

The Bolsheviks and the left SRs had a majority in the constituent assembly and in the Soviets.

Agreed, as stated in a post above.

-TIG

[Attila The Nun]

Given that this was Lenin's position, both theoretically and in practice, and given that I am a Marxist-Leninist, then yes.

Isn't that a little hierarchical and even bourgeoise? The fact is, Lenin was doing the same exact thing as the Czars he hated. He was letting a minority rule over them without majority consent. It is the assumption that the minority know best for the majority that is quite arrogant.

It makes perfect sense. The ruling class own and control the media outlets and the educational system. They therefore control the commanding heights of the superstructure of capitalist society. This enables them to impose their own worldview on every other class, even those classes being exploited by the ruling elite. The proletariat are invited to perceive the world as the ruling bourgeois class perceives it; in fact any other worldview is condemned as 'subversive' or 'unpatriotic' and is usually suppressed. This creates 'false consciousness' in the majority of the population, by which I mean something very specific - the ideological obfuscation of the outlook of the proletariat so that they cannot perceive what is in their own true interests. At best, they are able to develop a moderately clear view of their immediate, short-term interests, such as higher wages or better working conditions. This is what Lenin meant by 'trade union consciousness'. Even the most politically advanced members of the working class have mostly only managed to develop trade union consciousness.

The lower classes are not children, they know when they are being had. They are more aware of their surroundings then you give them credit for, quite arrogant. That's why they overthrew the Czar in the first place, without the help of Lenin and his menshevik "bolsheviks".

Your own position seems to be virtually the same as that of the Mensheviks - they also believed in waiting for the 'spontaneous' uprising of the people to overthrow capitalism. Lenin, however, realised that they would be waiting forever - the bourgeoisie had already succeeded in hijacking the February Revolution and imposing their own 'Provisional Government'. It was the workers and peasants who had risked their lives fighting against Tsarist oppression on the barricades of Moscow and Petrograd, and the privileged bourgeois class were snatching the fruits of victory from them. Just as it was the French people who overthrew the ancien regime, but the bourgeois class succeeded in taking control of that popular uprising, leading to a successful counterrevolution by 1800, the same process was occurring in Russia. Lenin was determined to prevent it, and did so in the only way possible.

The Russian workers and peasants were not capable of spontaneously overthrowing the bourgeois Provisional Government. They needed the disciplined cadre of professional revolutionaries in the Bolshevik Party to do it in their name. It was a coup, yes, but it was needed to overturn the bourgeois coup which had preceded it.

But it had already happened, the revolution. And if a socialist government does not occur, it is because the majority does not want it to occur

[Potemkin]

All bourgeois governments set laws that are a work of fiction.

"Work of fiction" is too strong a word. Bourgeois laws tend to be internally coherent and also a site of class struggle.

Agreed. But when I said that bourgeois laws are a work of fiction, I did not imply that they are internalyy inconsistent, simply that they do not correspond with objective reality. A set of laws (or any abstract system of law or theory) can be internally consistent and yet not be consistent with reality itself.

For instance if you look at the bourgeois struggle under feudalism they managed to advance quite far, setting up autonomous institutions etc. by using the old Roman law and contesting the feudals in this way. The legal struggle was obviously also an ideological one, but, I would never call laws merely "fiction". Although their basis can be removed in a second (i.e. the transition from consent to force) this will not *always* happen, and in terms of everyday struggle bourgeois law is not solely monolithic.

True, but this bourgeois 'evolution' could only proceed so far before meeting determined resistance from the entrenched feudal system, which necessitated a bourgeois revolution; the changing of the system by force. Feudalism could never spontaneously and peacefully evolve into capitalism, just as capitalism itself can never spontaneously and peacefully evolve into socialism.

[Potemkin]

Codified!

God your like the kids in my politics class who diddn't know what an election was .

The Bolsheviks and the left SRs had a majority in the constituent assembly and in the Soviets.

True, but that alliance (the Bolsheviks ruled Russia in a coalition government with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries until 1918) did not, and could not, last long. The SRs represented the interests of the peasants, who were basically petty-bourgeois in their outlook, and the SRs were a pretty unstable bunch. They had a reputation as terrorists, and they were prone to resort to political violence at the slightest provocation. It may seem strange to us now, but it was the SRs who had the reputation of being in favour of terror, while the Bolsheviks had always opposed the use of terrorism against Tsarist officials before 1917. The Bolsheviks claimed (and there is some evidence that their claims were true) that the SRs attempted to stage a coup d'etat to seize complete political power for themselves from their Bolshevik allies; the Bolsheviks discovered the plot and rounded up the leadership of the Left SRs. And because the Constituent Assembly was dominated by the SRs, they disbanded that too. The results of the elections were therefore effectively annulled.

[Potemkin]

Given that this was Lenin's position, both theoretically and in practice, and given that I am a Marxist-Leninist, then yes.

Isn't that a little hierarchical and even bourgeoise? The fact is, Lenin was doing the same exact thing as the Czars he hated. He was letting a minority rule over them without majority consent. It is the assumption that the minority know best for the majority that is quite arrogant.

But all political parties in Britain have this assumption. The Conservatives believe the bourgeois class, with their hereditary class privileges, are best suited to know what is best for the hoi polloi; the Liberals have the same belief, with the proviso that they do not believe in class struggle, and the left wing parties, as you point out, believe that the working class requires a vanguard of professional revolutionaries. It's part of our culture, and is inevitable given Britain's semi-feudal, semi-bourgeois social structure.

The lower classes are not children, they know when they are being had. They are more aware of their surroundings then you give them credit for, quite arrogant. That's why they overthrew the Czar in the first place, without the help of Lenin and his menshevik "bolsheviks".

They succeeded in overthrowing the Tsar, but their revolution had already been hijacked by the bourgeois class, who set up a Provisional Government to look after their particular class interests. Kerensky wanted to continue the imperialist war, and he sent out detachments of troops to stop the peasants from seizing the landowners' land for themselves. That shows you whose side he was on. The working class were not able to overthrow the bourgeois Provisional Government on their own, so Lenin did it for them, in their name.

But it had already happened, the revolution. And if a socialist government does not occur, it is because the majority does not want it to occur

The revolution to overthrow the Tsar had already happened, yes, but it had rapidly turned into a bourgeois revolution. The people who actually made the revolution happen, who risked their lives by facing Tsarist troops and cossacks on the streets of Moscow and Petrograd, had had the fruits of their victory snatched away from them, as had happened in France after 1789. Lenin wanted to reverse that, and place all power into the hands of the Soviets, the workers' councils.

[Attila The Nun]

But all political parties in Britain have this assumption. The Conservatives believe the bourgeois class, with their hereditary class privileges, are best suited to know what is best for the hoi polloi; the Liberals have the same belief, with the proviso that they do not believe in class struggle, and the left wing parties, as you point out, believe that the working class requires a vanguard of professional revolutionaries. It's part of our culture, and is inevitable given Britain's semi-feudal, semi-bourgeois social structure.

I don't live in Britian. I live in the US. And rich means bad, right? What aobut people who fairly deserve it without abusing the workers?

They succeeded in overthrowing the Tsar, but their revolution had already been hijacked by the bourgeois class, who set up a Provisional Government to look after their particular class interests. Kerensky wanted to continue the imperialist war, and he sent out detachments of troops to stop the peasants from seizing the landowners' land for themselves. That shows you whose side he was on. The working class were not able to overthrow the bourgeois Provisional Government on their own, so Lenin did it for them, in their name.

Oh, I'm sorry, you mean the "wartime communism" Lenin? The one who was hated by the peasents?

The revolution to overthrow the Tsar had already happened, yes, but it had rapidly turned into a bourgeois revolution. The people who actually made the revolution happen, who risked their lives by facing Tsarist troops and cossacks on the streets of Moscow and Petrograd, had had the fruits of their victory snatched away from them, as had happened in France after 1789. Lenin wanted to reverse that, and place all power into the hands of the Soviets, the workers' councils.

But weren't all these Soviets part of the communist party?