https://newsocialist.org.uk/the-bolsheviks-dared-interview-with-lars-t-lih-on-lenin/
^^^this is a deep dive into the pre-revolutionary technicalities of bolshevik debate in the actual context they faced but lars t lih is probably the leading living non-sectarian lenin scholar and i think always interesting
(also he's a professor of music history at mcgill which is… unexpected)
― mark s, Wednesday, 7 March 2018 14:15 (six years ago) link
Everybody need a side hustle nowadays
― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish), Wednesday, 7 March 2018 16:51 (six years ago) link
this is still the most famous guy i've ever seen in person.
― treeship., Wednesday, 27 November 2019 03:03 (four years ago) link
the most famous guy corpse
― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, 27 November 2019 03:54 (four years ago) link
thank you for clearing that up
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, 27 November 2019 04:03 (four years ago) link
In my second grade classroom I won more gold stars than Karen Karpen, who was my toughest competitor.
― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, 27 November 2019 04:05 (four years ago) link
responsible for tankies and trots. so d
― #FBPIRA (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 27 November 2019 17:53 (four years ago) link
That's like blaming ABBA for the Brotherhood of Man.
― 'Skills' Wallace (Tom D.), Wednesday, 27 November 2019 18:06 (four years ago) link
Revolutions podcast has reached Lenin’s appearance on the scene.
― Bidh boladh a' mhairbh de 'n láimh fhalaimh (dowd), Wednesday, 27 November 2019 18:07 (four years ago) link
xp. could also say this about marx wrt lenin
― #FBPIRA (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 27 November 2019 19:17 (four years ago) link
could also say this about marx wrt lenin
otm. We should blame engels.
― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, 27 November 2019 19:21 (four years ago) link
I'm blaming Engels instead
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 27 November 2019 19:22 (four years ago) link
A LOL from Fred, that's something you don't see every day.
― 'Skills' Wallace (Tom D.), Wednesday, 27 November 2019 19:36 (four years ago) link
I'm thanking Engels instead.
― Simon H., Wednesday, 27 November 2019 19:38 (four years ago) link
― A victim managed to capture evidence of the gimp (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 27 November 2019 20:32 (four years ago) link
More classic as the world gets shittier to live in.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 27 November 2019 22:17 (four years ago) link
kind of ironic how revisionist and rightist the NEP was. his followers would have put him in the gulag
― #FBPIRA (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 27 November 2019 22:20 (four years ago) link
happy 150th, old fellow
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 08:42 (four years ago) link
"Communism and no malarkey" -- Uncle "Joe" Biden
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 22 April 2020 09:39 (four years ago) link
this guy killed the revolution, leftists need to stop copying his shit theory and his pompous pedantic writing style
― fuck it (Left), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 13:02 (four years ago) link
there are weeks where decades happen, and also weeks where it's your birthday!
― k*r*n koltrane (Simon H.), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 13:07 (four years ago) link
there would be no tankies or trots without this man
― COVID and the Gang (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 16:56 (four years ago) link
saved capitalism & turned anti capitalism into a joke, what a legacy
― fuck it (Left), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 17:07 (four years ago) link
Tankies or trots are things to troll ilx libs, nothing else.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 22 April 2020 18:14 (four years ago) link
Today we celebrate 150 years since the birth of revolutionary and theorist, Lenin. His legacy and the legacy of the Russian revolution still inspires millions around the world to fight. For peace and socialism! pic.twitter.com/6YEArZ13U1— London Young Labour (@LDNYoungLabour) April 22, 2020
Lol hope us where you find it
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 22 April 2020 18:39 (four years ago) link
lol
You don't need to be a Communist or even a Socialist to recognise the positives as well as the evils in Lenin's rule. Not least, his New Economic Policy established pragmatic market socialism which eventually succeeded in Deng's #China https://t.co/p5ue5pIca8— Vince Cable (@vincecable) April 22, 2020
― fuck it (Left), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 18:58 (four years ago) link
fuck me
― COVID and the Gang (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 18:59 (four years ago) link
tankies & trots are still a real problem in some circles even if liberals tend to identify anyone left of gordon brown as one
― fuck it (Left), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 18:59 (four years ago) link
many twitter "marxist leninist maoists" agree with comrade vince here including the deng bit
― fuck it (Left), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 19:01 (four years ago) link
Russia was such a dire mess by late 1916 that a collapse into some form of chaotic violence was more or less inevitable. It was a "failed state" as we now use the term. Lenin happened to be the head of the best organized and most ruthless faction and was able to seize the reins of power. The fanatically ideological basis of the new government was of huge value, not just in creating the cadres who drove the revolution, but in acquiring the consent of the governed and restabilizing society. China's revolution also arose out of a failed state collapsing during a World War. It's harder to fault Lenin and Mao when you grasp out of what chaotic conditions they forcibly created governance.
― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 20:14 (four years ago) link
I'm a bit of a melt when it comes to NEP (not that I agree with Laying Cable). It was a new state and frail from the ravages of civil war and rife with starvation, cannibalism etc.. I think Lenin wanted it to run for much longer than he managed to live, but I think you had to be there or something!
― calzino, Wednesday, 22 April 2020 20:32 (four years ago) link
he's no V.I. Warshawski
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 20:36 (four years ago) link
it’s easy to fault lenin & co for not abolishing capitalism
― fuck it (Left), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 20:44 (four years ago) link
An open goal, how could they miss.
― The Corbynite Maneuver (Tom D.), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 20:46 (four years ago) link
i know no human is singularly responsible for all the bullshit but he comes across as such a dickhead in his writings & actions I blame him anyway
― fuck it (Left), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 20:46 (four years ago) link
the bolshevik revolution could be more fairly described as a coup. the majority of the toiling masses of the Russian empire were peasants, they supported the SRs. the bolsheviks had their support in the cities, and that won them the day. Lenin (and Trotsky's) response to the anarchists, the SRs, the worker's opposition, the Kronstadt sailors etc. give you the absolute measure of them both.
― COVID and the Gang (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 20:47 (four years ago) link
all power to the soviets just kidding lol
― fuck it (Left), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 20:47 (four years ago) link
tbf Lenin & co were pretty busy abolishing people
― Ira Einhorn (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 20:55 (four years ago) link
he didn't really care about the proletariat except as an "agent of historical change." that is, he cared about them as a class; not about the lives of individual workers. and if anything he was negatively disposed toward russia, calling it a backwards peasant country and things like that. there is no way to see the world that is more alienating than how lenin saw it.
there is still something fascinating about the bolsheviks though, and the way they bent theory self-survingly while still being pedantic dogmatists. the debates they had, read today, seem like those of medieval theologians. so deep in an insular discourse.
― treeship., Wednesday, 22 April 2020 21:00 (four years ago) link
Whomst among us has not referred to Russia as a backward peasant country, tbf
― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 21:02 (four years ago) link
Seems like fair comment in 1917, no?
― The Corbynite Maneuver (Tom D.), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 21:04 (four years ago) link
Trotsky's attention to and love for literature helped him position theoretically how Bolshevism was intrinsic and inevitable in the nation of Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky. It didn't make him any less dogmatic or malevolent.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 21:05 (four years ago) link
it's too bad orwell has been appropriated by conservatives because he essentially had it right. the icy, inhuman way people like lenin wrote about the world wasn't just a quirk, it was a hint at the underlying brutality, or capacity for brutality. bertrand russell saw the same thing when he went over to the ussr in 1920 or thereabouts.
however, if i was a russian factory worker when lenin swung into town in 1915, i would likely have joined the bolsheviks. by that point, the soviets were de facto controlling petersburg anyway. kerensky's government had no real authority except through the soviets and they were threatened all the time by deeply reactionary forces such as the black hundreds. "all power to the soviets," in that moment wasn't really an abstract experiment. it was already happening, why not formalize it?
but then, yeah, the soviets didn't end up actually being allowed to govern.
― treeship., Wednesday, 22 April 2020 21:07 (four years ago) link
treeship, you write so crisply here. I could keep reading you in this and the Shelley threads. Please follow this lead in the politics threads!
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 21:11 (four years ago) link
It is precisely now and only now, when in the starving regions people are eating human flesh, and hundreds if not thousands of corpses are littering the roads, that we can (and therefore must) carry out the confiscation of church valuables with the most savage and merciless energy.a very large number of local clergyman and bourgeois must be arrested and put on trial. The trial must end in no other way than execution by firing squad of the most influential and dangerous Black Hundreds in Shuya, and to the extent possible, not only in that city but also in Moscow and several other clerical centers.... the greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in executing for this reason, the better. We must teach these people a lesson right now, so that they will not dare even to think of any resistance for several decades.
a very large number of local clergyman and bourgeois must be arrested and put on trial. The trial must end in no other way than execution by firing squad of the most influential and dangerous Black Hundreds in Shuya, and to the extent possible, not only in that city but also in Moscow and several other clerical centers.... the greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in executing for this reason, the better. We must teach these people a lesson right now, so that they will not dare even to think of any resistance for several decades.
we've all fired off ruthless and bloodthirsty emails to the politburo after that 2nd bottle of vodka - don't judge!
― calzino, Wednesday, 22 April 2020 21:27 (four years ago) link
xpostlol that is the most professorial post I've ever seen on this site!
― dip to dup (rob), Wednesday, 22 April 2020 21:31 (four years ago) link
I didn’t know about the sex worker genocide thing. Amazing what they don’t teach us in school.— Don Hughes 🦌 (@getfiscal) April 22, 2020
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 23 April 2020 10:23 (four years ago) link
tankies totally a real issue on the left ftr, baffling how many otherwise right on ppl will go to bat for North Korea and, more bafflingly to me as it clearly bears almost no traces of a communist nation in 2020, China as well
― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 23 April 2020 10:56 (four years ago) link
I don't know where you come across all these people.
― The Corbynite Maneuver (Tom D.), Thursday, 23 April 2020 11:27 (four years ago) link
lol I know some IRL, I was at lunch last year where one friend suggested North Korea was up to some shit and my tankie friend rolled his eyes and really condescendingly said "oh, that's not true" about whatever shit Kim was up to that week
― she carries a torch. two torches, actually (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Thursday, 23 April 2020 11:37 (four years ago) link