[Dave]

Propaganda has it's uses, but it only goes so far. The ruling class will just counter it with their own propaganda, which already has roots in the mentality of society. Teaching theory to as many members of the working class as possible is necessary to make Marxism genuine "common sense".

This is really just a direct, grassroots form of propagandizing.

Actually, this is just slander from anti-Leninists who take passages from "What is to be done?" out of context. This "theory" about the need of bourgeois intellectuals actually came from Karl Kautsky(who in 1902 was considered the Pope of Marxism, but was later denounced by Lenin as a sell-out), and Lenin even corrected him in a footnote saying that it's entirely possible for workers to become socialist theorists. He even cited examples of such theorists in history.

I didn't cite this with libelous intent, but thank you for the information.

The rise of the ruling class in the Soviet Union was the result of the development of social structures under the abnormal situation the country was facing. A workers' state born in an isolated & backward country with a small working class and dozens of internal antagonisms and pressures from foreign forces is not going to develop the same way as a workers' state under theoretically preferable conditions.

Every country has dozens of "internal antagonisms". This doesn't make any sense. Any country that wants to go anywhere has to abandon pointless ideology and rule pragmatically. The actions undertaken perhaps reflected some unique circumstances, but rejecting turgid, useless ideology in favor of results-orientation was not some sort of bizarre aberration.

[Kiroff]

As for common sense and Marxism, for me personally, common sense defines Marxism, Marxism does not define common sense. Of course that is not the approach for everyone as people are well, different.

For example, when I read official reports about maniacs and murderers, I had a sort of sympathy, thinking that they were just misunderstood - well, they were in a way, as 95% percent of such publications are basically retarded with authors just stroking their ego reciting what they learned in criminology 101. However, looking at the works of those madmen made me realize that they may have been misunderstood by a shoddy publication, but indeed had an absense of all logical processes brought on by either desperation, a healthy dose of religion, or actual insanity and that there was nothing redeemable about those men beyond the sacks of meat they inhabited their entire life.

Of course, that is one extreme example. However, there is a trend of such incongruencies when you look at the entire population, especially with the fact that poorer people are also dumber overall (the exception to this being the upper classes of England). Lenin's solution to this was the Vanguard - an emulation of the ruling class in function. Of course the issue that came out of that is the fact that no one is above class conflict as there is no God as far as this is concerned that can take us out of it and any mediator can develop a conflict of interest. In the wide scope, there is nothing "socialist" about democratic centralism (Lenin didn't even invent it, he just described the structure of the SPD) as most liberal countries today use it anyway. And as the other alternative seems totally hopeless, we will probably need to define another compromise between overly complicated Vanguardism(though most uses of it by parties here are idealistic imitations) and overly impotent mob revolt.

[ingliz]

It was a coup which had mass support among the working class

60% of the proletariat supported 'socialists' of all stripes, not just the Bolsheviks, but the proletariat only comprised 10% of the population. The coup was opposed by the SR's who represented the majority of the peasantry and were the majority in the provisional government in January 1918.

... and the victory of proletarian revolution in Europe may allow the proletarian minority in Russia to place the peasantry on socialist rails. The absence of this revolution can cast the proletariat from power. If the Soviet government, standing on the point of view of a dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry...takes into account the numerical and social preponderance of the peasantry, then it will proceed to compromise with capital, a compromise acceptable from the point of view of the peasantry, but one which destroys the socialist character of the Revolution and is therefore unacceptable to the proletariat.

The SRs faded after the Bolsheviks' October Revolution. However, in the election to the Russian Constituent Assembly they proved to be the most popular party across the country, gaining 57% of the popular vote as opposed to the Bolsheviks' 25%.

ps. We have discussed this in a previous thread so I won't repeat myself but only say that Lenin did exactly what was necessary but without mass support at the time he did it.

There was no pro-Bolshevik enthusiasm, only apathy.

[Vladimir]

It was a coup which had mass support among the working class; in fact the July Days demonstrated that the working class in Petrograd and Moscow were actually more revolutionary than the Bolshevik leadership at that time. The idea that a few dozen activists could just seize control of a vast nation like Russia and hold absolute power against the wishes of the population for nearly eighty years is simply absurd. They may have been geniuses, but they were not supermen.

It had supported bolsheviks to an extent, because the bolsheviks used pro-proletarian promises such as an 8-hour working day, right to strike, and most importantly the promise of peace (which secured the army's proletarian AND peasant sections' support) - which were gradually retracted afterwards anyway - but the bolsheviks did not in any way take power on belhalf of the proletariat, or even allowed proletarian organisations to legislate.
And furthermore, the bolsheviks didn't "sieze control" over Russia, they simply used an unstable situation in the capital to stage a coup and break through into the state structure. The state itself remained as it was, after the period of instability

[Potemkin]

And furthermore, the bolsheviks didn't "sieze control" over Russia, they simply used an unstable situation in the capital to stage a coup and break through into the state structure. The state itself remained as it was, after the period of instability

While there was more institutional (and even personnel) continuity between Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union than is often assumed, it is untrue to claim that the state apparatus was essentially unchanged by the October Revolution. The state was still autonomous from civil society, but was thoroughly reformed from top to bottom, not just in October 1917 but repeatedly throughout Soviet history. Indeed, the growing resentment of the nomenklatura against this constant upheaval was one of the factors which made Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation campaign possible.

[Vladimir]

yeah that's fair enough, but then being marxists we must focus more on the base structures, not the superficial political ones - which were very slightly changed in october. The big change was a rapid assult on the remains of the feudal class... which was of course necessary, and likely earned the bolsheviks their place in the state structure, and fully integrated them into it (it was in fact a transplant from the SR party program - a peasants' party - and was admitted by Lenin as what kept his lot in power) - a decisive class effort against the feudals was the key moment in the new state's establishment. It is what marked the "great october", and why the bolshevik coup was an element in the ongoing bourgeois revolution

[canadiancapitalist]

The more interesting question is when will Marxists develop common sense

[ingliz]

Worker's control and accountancy:

"When we say workers' control, always associating that slogan with the dictatorship of the proletariat, and always putting it after the latter, we thereby make plain what state we have in mind... If it is a proletarian state we are referring to (i.e. the dictatorship of the proletariat) then workers' control can become a national, all-embracing, omnipresent, extremely precise and extremely scrupulous accounting of the production and distribution of goods".

Keeping reliable records is important but to identify workers' control in a 'workers' state', with the function of accountancy seems a tad bizarre.

Vladimir Lenin, Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?

[Red Star]

Red Star Note: Less one-line posts, whether they are witty or not. Thanks.

[Potemkin]

Keeping reliable records is important but to identify workers' control in a 'workers' state', with the function of accountancy seems a tad bizarre.

Actually, it's not bizarre at all. Once actual existing Communism is achieved, politics as we currently understand it will cease to exist. Politics is the by-product of the conflict between antagonistic social classes, and represents the formalisation of that conflict. Without such class anatagonism, politics will lose its function and will wither away. What would be left is precisely the acccounting of the production and distribution of goods to which Lenin referred - a society without a state and without politics.

[ingliz]

Once actual existing Communism is achieved, politics as we currently understand it will cease to exist.

But the dictatorship of the proletariat, the worker's state, is not the communist society; it is that transitional state between capitalism and communism. In the socialist worker's state there is still politicking, as class antagonisms still exist, and so to exclude the worker from politics is to reduce those who should be the decision-takers to mere bookkeepers; that act alone betrays the bourgeois character of Lenin's revolution.