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Chomskyist wrote

Isn't Lenin a huge tankie though?

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SpiritOfTito OP wrote (edited )

This....doesn't make sense.

A tankie is a communist that supported the 1956 invasion of Hungary by saying "roll the tanks in!" to crush the revolution occuring.

Even if you're using it in its other sense (IE. A stalinist) Stalin doesn't come to power until after Lenins death.

And even if you were referring to Lenin as a stalinist this is again, wrong, because Lenin wrote on his death bed not to let Stalin near too much power and not to let him into leadership.

In short, what are you talking about?

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Defasher wrote (edited )

Lenin brutally destroyed any anti-capitalist idea or group not under the direct control of the Bolshevik vanguard party.

"Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder" shows how absolutely petty, egotistical and totalitarian he was, and the way he crushed the Kronstadt rebellion demonstrates his flawed politics in action.

He was the creator of a form of state capitalism, NOT communism. His spearheading of the rapid industrialisation of Russia fucked over so many people that didn't want to spend their lives toiling in factories.

His insistence that the vanguard party was the end-all be-all revolution that could never be challenged, his treatment of any competing revolutionary factions as counter-revolutionaries that needed to be put to death, his secret police force who imprisoned and / or executed these anti-vanguard dissidents...

The guy was a proto dictator, pure and simple. He created the conditions that allowed Stalin to take power.

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SpiritOfTito OP wrote (edited )

Have you actually read Left wing communism : An infantile disorder?

In it he chides left communists that were refusing to take part in bourgeois elections as well as refusing to work within existing trade unions?

He was right of course. Cutting off working where the bulk of workers are (bourgeois parties/bourgeois trade unions) just leaves those instruments open.

Left wing communism was a fantastic pamphlet. I fail to see whats petty about it

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Defasher wrote

He might have made some good points, but that doesn't make every point he makes right. That's what you MLs miss when you name yourselves after your idols. Humans are flawed and treating their words like gospel creates disaster.

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ziq wrote

I appreciate Lenin's writing, even if his political accomplishments didn't ultimately match up to his ideas.

Glorifying Stalin is a bad trip and only serves to undermine the left, but being a proponent of Lenin's written work is logical I think. Even a lot of die-hard Marxists like leftcoms embrace much of Lenin's works.

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