Re: AUT: Response to Mauro, jr. from "Commie00"

[commie zero zero <commie00@xxxxxxxxx>]

WHAT I SAID:

>   "....... the reason no revolution came from the
> west because  the
> inspiration of Russia
> was dying and state capitalism was imposed on the
> Russian proletarait and
> peasantry.
> Russia did not need revolution in the west in order
> to survive, the
> insurrection in russia would have had to be
> successful for revolutions in the west to begin"
>

NEIL RESPONDED:

> This cannot be squared with the reality of the mass
> strugglesof the times.
>
> First of all in Germany and Austria and shortly
> afterward  Hungary , Italy
> , Finland, etc attempts at  revolutions and near
> revolutions of the
> insurrectionary  western soviets in these and other
> lands did develop in
> 1918-20, but they were put down pitilessly by
> reaction  and NOT  by lack of
> revolutionary mood or of valor in  their class
> combats. They were destroyed
> by the right-center and 'left' bourgeois reaction,
> in which social
> democrats joined  with white guard like  foramtions
> like the 'freikorps' in
> Germany , etc and smashed up the workers soviets in
> mass blood orgies.
> This work was only made easier by the fact the
> Germany, Italy, Austrai ,
> etc lacked the kind of Steeled Bolshevik
> party organization that could have fought inside the
> soviets to expose the
> deadly manuevers of the social democrats and their
> rightist white guard
> reactionary allies..

yes. this is all true. but it's missing part of the
point, which my statement was trying to get at... why
weren't the insurrections in those countries bigger?
why weren't they more wide-spread? there are documents
from folks participating in those insurrections
decrying the fact that, all-in-all, they were
relatively small compared to the russian
insurrection(s). one of the reasons given was the
people were still waiting to see what happened in
russia. they were unsure and such, esp when the news
of the bolsheviks crushing dissenters started leaking
out.

this, anyway, is one reason which is given in some
accounts of the insurrections you mention which
supports my statement.

sucessful revolution in russia would have leaked into
the other countries. which is why the white armies
attacked. but to say that the white armies caused the
bolshekik counter-revolution is ahistorical. lenin
stated, from day one, that he wanted to build state
capitalism in russia. to do this he would have to
build a strong state. this he did. and this was
resisted in the soviets, so they destroyed the power
of the soviets. attempts to counter act this (such as
krondstat) were violently crushed by a
counter-revolutionary organization, who were now a new
ruling class (complete, with state power and all).

the invasion of the white armies only provided the
bolshevik capitalists with a good excuse. a nice
propaganda tool to hide their actions.

> In fact these very insurrections in the west ,  were
> aborted  not by
> western bolsheviks 'centralizers' , but  by both the
> power of reaction
> itself--and the un-coordinated  helter-skelter type
> tactics that were used
> in the western insurrections-- which had its base
> partly , a kind of 'each
> soviet city for itself'--decentralization attitude.

marx's notion of "non-hierarchical centralization" and
the anarchist notion of "decentralized organization"
are the exact same thing (read _the civil war in
frace_ and then compare it to any anarchist notion of
organization, and you'll see what i mean). so it's not
a question of centralization vs. decentralization, but
one of organization. we need organization. period.
everyone knows that.

now, why were the workers' councils isolated.
partially from a lack of understanding organizational
needs, true. but also because they were not big
enough. many of these insurrections were not properly
mass insurrections. they were not big enough to
include many people with many organic links which
would link them to other soviets on a rudimentary
level. also because they were not big enough to fight
off a military onslaught. thus, even in places where
there was good organization, they didn't have the
power to fight effectively. etc. etc. so, again: why
was this?


=====
commie00
---------------------------------
http://www.geocities.com/commie00
---------------------------------

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35
a year!  http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/


     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---