Re: Anarchism vs. Marxism-Leninism

[Sam Pawlett <rsp@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jamal Hannah wrote:
>
> Good god.. are you insane?  Are you aware of the mass-murder and human
> suffering of working-class people and ardent revolutionaries that Trotsky
> and Lenin were responsible for?

Richard Pipes and Ronald Reagan anyone? Lenin and Trotsky were
responsible for the 20+ nation invasion of the USSR? They were
responsible for the international economic blockade? The failure to
deliver reparations and aid to the USSR guaranteed by Brest-Litovsk? Who
pulled Russia out of WWI? Kornilov and his Cossacks? They were
responsible for the massive economic sabotage carried by the Russian
ruling class?

 At Kronstat they murdered members of
> their own Communist Party who disagreed with them, and many soldiers
> were switching sides.. no, not to the white army, but to the side
> of the Kronstat rebels. And then there was the Ukraine, where Lenin showed
> his trechery against Makhno, who helped the Bolsheviks fight the whites.
> How can you support a man (Lenin) who said such things as "Socialism is
> nothing more than state-capitalism."

What would have happened otherwise? Where and when did Lenin say that?
Have you read State and Revolution?

  The Russian revolution was a real
> revolution, at first.. but it was destroyed by Communist Party.

How and when?

> The USSR was a horrible place to live.

Did you live there? Pretty nice compared to what it looks like now. IT
was indeed paradise compared to the situation most people in the
southern and increasingly the northern hemisphere's live  in.

  >Human will was crushed.

What is human will and how was it crushed? Ever heard Richter or Gilels
or Mavrinsky? What about Shostakovich and Prokofiev? Ever seen the films
of Tarkovsky? The Russian ballets? How about the state of the sciences
in the USSR? They got a rocket into space before the USA did. Human
creativity  flowered in the USSR.

> You dont need to read capitalist propaganda to know this, but the
> testimonies of real people who were there, in Russia, while it was all
> happening.  A persons zeal to fight capitalism must not justify any act of
> terror.

Anarchist deontology. The ends never justify the means. You will always
lose.

  The people would have been better off if the Bolsheviks never
> came to power in Russia and China and they had become social democracies.

Ha, standard conservative propaganda. How do you know this? Why didn't
they become capitalist social democracies? What you are arguing for is
social democracy. Judging by its pre-revolutionary economy, Russia would
have become another India or Brazil. 90% of the population in 1917 was
illiterate. Same with China. Starvation was eliminated and life
expectancy rose. No small feat with such a large population and small
economy.

>
> To say that anarchist theory is ripped off from Marx suggests that:
>
> 1) You have so little faith in humanity that you do not think different
> people can come to _some_ simmilar conclusions, while diverging greatly on
> others.

No. Bakunin's theories are all ripped of Marx. Read his stuff. B was
hired as a translator of Marx into Russian but never finished because he
was so lazy.

>
> 2) You are a dogmatist who believes that the word of Marx is the word of
> God and anything that reminds you of it is obviously (to you) ripped off
> from it.

Nope.
>
> Statism and authoritarianism ruined the revolution.

Without statism and some degree of authoritarianism in the army the
counter-revolutionaries would have triumphed. But I guess that's fine in
your book. Read *Conquered City* by Victor Serge.

> The same could be said for Marxism. There were clearly marxists who were
> insane,

Who?

SP