Ask A Red V: The Five-Year Plan

[Antilogic]

The Russian Revolution, 1917 by Rex Wade is one of the standard undergrad texts, and I'd recommend it. Covers the February Revolution to the dissolution of the constituent assembly. Particularly worthwhile in that it spends a lot of time discussing the attitudes and aspirations of the various social and national groups involved, which more narrowly political histories can miss. Not a great deal of pictures, but the ones that are there are of very good quality and are built into the text very well.

I'll also second Cheezy and RT on Reid's Ten Days, which although not totally reliable factually (it's essentially long-form journalism, which has obvious limitations), does an unrivalled job of catching the mood of the October uprising. (Additionally, the ground-level perspective from which most of it's written means it avoids privileging the big names at the expense of the workers who actually made the revolution.)

Thanks, though I'm looking more for books on how the revolution affected the individual people in society rather than a 'macro-history'.

I'm looking to improve on my very limited theoretical marx/socialist concepts. Now i have the time to fully read up on them, is there any books/essays/other literature that you suggest?

Along these lines (and I'll apologize if I asked this question or discussed it in a prior AAR or book thread), what do the Reds think of Orlando Figes' A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924? I ended up using this as my primary reference in the Tavern thread. It managed to cover the political history and hit the high points of the military conflict, but also focused on the social and economic issues in Russia leading up to the Russian Revolution. Struck me as a fairly comprehensive history on the subject.

 

[Hygro]

Subscribed, and honored as always to be included on the panel.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I'm immediately skeptical of a book with such a loaded title, but I've seen it referenced by scholars I respect, so at least for the sake of historiography I may have to give it a read. Natasha's Dance, his book on Russian culture, is supposed to be authoritative on the subject, but then being good on imperial culture doesn't not make one a hack at communist history.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

I'm looking to improve on my very limited theoretical marx/socialist concepts. Now i have the time to fully read up on them, is there any books/essays/other literature that you suggest?

"The Communist Manifesto and other Revolutionary Writings" seems like a good start (i have read the communst manifesto mind you). I'm reading in defence of october and other (old) militant pamphlets.

I posted a recemmended post back in Ask a Red III. But as far a theoretical works, try Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness and Lenin they are good for starters.

 

[Antilogic]

I'm immediately skeptical of a book with such a loaded title, but I've seen it referenced by scholars I respect, so at least for the sake of historiography I may have to give it a read. Natasha's Dance, his book on Russian culture, is supposed to be authoritative on the subject, but then being good on imperial culture doesn't not make one a hack at communist history.

Why do you say the title is so loaded? Is it because you associate the tragedy with the Soviet Union? I figured it referred to the suffering of the people during WW1 and the ensuing civil war.

I read on Orlando Figes' wiki page that his book is criticized by some communist/socialist historians because it is not very charitable towards Lenin, but after reading it (this was just over a year ago, my memory is a bit foggy) I did not come away with the feeling that it was charitable towards Kerensky either. You could say that it views the imperial family sympathetically but it does not sugar coat the mass killings in the streets following the Russo-Japanese War or the other terrible acts taken by the government.

 

[Ghpstage]

Ah. Sounds cool! Check out Edmund Wilson's To the Finland Station when you're done. It's a history of 19th century revolutionary thought, with a big central portion on Marx, Engels, and their body of work.

Thanks! Seems to be just what i'm looking for.

I read that a couple years ago, and the included essays by Kropotkin and Bakunin were excellent.

When I originally bought it I was jsut looking to see if I would be interested in these kinds of philosophical/political writings I chose it largely due to the low price tag, and have been pleasantly suprised by a lot of it.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Why do you say the title is so loaded? Is it because you associate the tragedy with the Soviet Union? I figured it referred to the suffering of the people during WW1 and the ensuing civil war.

Yes, I think it does refer to the communist takeover, because of the term "peoples' republic" reflected in the title not as republic, but as tragedy. It's supposed to be both ironic and a statement about the Bolshevik regime. We are not amused.

 

[Traitorfish]

I don't think you even have to see it as a jab at the Bolsheviks to see it as a loaded title. My problem is that it seems to present it as something which the Russian people experienced only as imposed suffering, as helpless victims, but any serious history has to begim with the awareness that it was a process in which they were fully involved. It suggest a pretty conservative take, more concerned with affirming the essential badness of the revolution than actually explaining it. This might turn out to be unfair, and certainly I'm more curious to take a look at now, but you can see my skepticism.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

I read bourgeois versions of Revolutionary History all the time.. I don't need another one....

Adam Ulam's The Bolsheviks is fairly more revolting than Payne's Life and Death of Lenin or The Sealed Train by David Pearson.

Noteworthy, how rarely do you see a bourgeois history so critical of capitalist/ imperialist debacles...

 

[Hygro]

I read bourgeois versions of Revolutionary History all the time.. I don't need another one....

Adam Ulam's The Bolsheviks is fairly more revolting than Payne's Life and Death of Lenin or The Sealed Train by David Pearson.

Noteworthy, how rarely do you see a bourgeois history so critical of capitalist/ imperialist debacles...

If someone is writing a history book doesn't that process perform the very ceremony required to be more bourgeois than not?

 

[ReindeerThistle]

If someone is writing a history book doesn't that process perform the very ceremony required to be more bourgeois than not?

Yes, tbh, all history is biased. But I have noticed Communist critics of.socialist regimes to be more honest than bourgeoisie critics of capitalist systems. That's all.

 

[Hygro]

Hm, how are we defining "honest"?

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Hm, how are we defining "honest"?

As in "not lying."

Read Correo de Orinoco and Granma International... they are actively criticizing corruption and being open about the material problems of the BRV and Cuba and these nations are solving those problems.

We have a policy against lying because it is a closed strategy... and no lie lasts forever. People still MAY lie, but they are disproven in practice.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I don't think you even have to see it as a jab at the Bolsheviks to see it as a loaded title. My problem is that it seems to present it as something which the Russian people experienced only as imposed suffering, as helpless victims, but any serious history has to begim with the awareness that it was a process in which they were fully involved. It suggest a pretty conservative take, more concerned with affirming the essential badness of the revolution than actually explaining it. This might turn out to be unfair, and certainly I'm more curious to take a look at now, but you can see my skepticism.

That kind of supposes he's going for the popular meaning of tragedy, rather than the traditional one, doesn't it?

 

[ReindeerThistle]

A tribute to my fallen comrade, who lost his battle with cancer this morning. He was the embodiment of revolutionary spirit, and he leaves behind an army who will step in his place and carry the fight forward.

RIP Comrade!

From JV Stalin "On the Death of Lenin"

Comrades, we Communists are people of a special mould. We are made of a special stuff. We are those who form the army of the great proletarian strategist, the army of Comrade Lenin. There is nothing higher than the honour of belonging to this army. There is nothing higher than the title of member of the Party whose founder and leader was Comrade Lenin. It is not given to everyone to be a member of such a party. It is the sons of the working class, the sons of want and struggle, the sons of incredible privation and heroic effort who before all should be members of such a party. That is why the Party of the Leninists, the Party of the Communists, is also called the Party of the working class.

DEPARTING FROM US, COMRADE LENIN ENJOINED US TO HOLD HIGH AND GUARD THE PURITY OF THE GREAT TITLE OF MEMBER OF THE PARTY, WE VOW TO YOU, COMRADE LENIN, WE SHALL FULFIL YOUR BEHEST WITH HONOUR!

DEPARTING FROM US, COMRADE LENIN ENJOINED US TO GUARD THE UNITY OF OUR PARTY AS THE APPLE OF OUR EYE, WE VOW TO YOU, COMRADE LENIN, THAT THIS BEHEST, TOO, WE SHALL FULFIL WITH HONOUR!

Burdensome and intolerable has been the lot of the working class. Painful and grievous have been the sufferings of the labouring people. Slaves and slaveholders, serfs and serf-owners, peasants and landlords, workers and capitalists, oppressed and oppressors — so the world has been built from time immemorial, and so it remains to this day in the vast majority of countries. Scores and indeed hundreds of times in the course of the centuries the labouring people have striven to throw off the oppressors from their backs and to become the masters of their own destiny. But each time, defeated and disgraced, they have been forced to retreat, harbouring in their breasts resentment and humiliation, anger and despair, and lifting up their eyes to an inscrutable heaven where they hoped to find deliverance. The chains of slavery remained intact, or the old chains were replaced by new ones, equally burdensome and degrading. Ours is the only country where the oppressed and downtrodden labouring masses have succeeded in throwing off the rule of the landlords and capitalists and replacing it by the rule of the workers and peasants. You know, comrades, and the whole world now admits it, that this gigantic struggle was led by Comrade Lenin and his Party. The greatness of Lenin lies above all in this, that by creating the Republic of Soviets he gave a practical demonstration to the oppressed masses of the whole world that hope of deliverance is not lost, that the rule of the landlords and capitalists is short-lived, that the kingdom of labour can be created by the efforts of the labouring people themselves, and that the kingdom of labour must be created not in heaven, but on earth. He thus fired the hearts of the workers and peasants of the whole world with the hope of liberation. That explains why Lenin’s name has become the name most beloved of the labouring and exploited masses.

DEPARTING FROM US, COMRADE LENIN ENJOINED US TO GUARD AND STRENGTHEN THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT. WE VOW TO YOU, COMRADE LENIN, THAT WE SHALL SPARE NO EFFORT TO FULFIL THIS BEHEST, TOO, WITH HONOUR!

...
DEPARTING FROM US, COMRADE LENIN ENJOINED US TO STRENGTHEN WITH ALL OUR MIGHT THE ALLIANCE OF THE WORKERS AND PEASANTS. WE VOW TO YOU, COMRADE LENIN, THAT THIS BEHEST, TOO, WE SHALL FULFIL WITH HONOUR!

The second basis of the Republic of Soviets is the union the working people of the different nationalities of our country. Russians and Ukrainians, Bashkirs and Byelorussians Georgians and Azerbaijanians, Armenians and Daghestanians, Tatars and Kirghiz, Uzbeks and Turkmenians are all equally. interested in strengthening the dictatorship of the proletariat. Not only does the dictatorship of the proletariat deliver these peoples from fetters and oppression, but these peoples on their part deliver our Republic of Soviets from the intrigues and assaults of the enemies of the working class by their supreme devotion to the Republic of Soviets and their readiness to make sacrifices for it. That is why Comrade Lenin untiringly urged upon us the necessity of the voluntary union of the peoples of our country, the necessity of their fraternal co-operation within the framework of the Union of Republics.

DEPARTING FROM US, COMRADE LENIN ENJOINED US TO STRENGTHEN AND EXTEND THE UNION OF REPUBLICS. WE VOW TO YOU, COMRADE LENIN, THAT THIS BEHEST, TOO, WE SHALL FULFIL WITH HONOUR!

You have seen during the past few days the pilgrimage of scores and hundreds of thousands of working people to Comrade Lenin’s bier. Before long you will see the pilgrimage of representatives of millions of working people to Comrade Lenin’s tomb. You need not doubt that the representatives of millions will be followed by representatives of scores and hundreds of millions from all parts of the earth, who will come to testify that Lenin was the leader not only of the Russian proletariat, not only of the European workers, not only of the colonial East, but of all the working people of the globe.
DEPARTING FROM US, COMRADE LENIN ENJOINED US TO REMAIN FAITHFUL TO THE PRINCIPLES OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL. WE VOW TO YOU, COMRADE LENIN, THAT WE SHALL NOT SPARE OUR LIVES TO STRENGTHEN AND EXTEND THE UNION OF THE WORKING PEOPLE OF THE WHOLE WORLD — THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL!

 

[Traitorfish]

That kind of supposes he's going for the popular meaning of tragedy, rather than the traditional one, doesn't it?

Now there's a point.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Bump-di-Bump

Spoiler :

Okay thank you for your responses, that was helpful.
The whole theory of surplus value (at least as it was conceived my Marx himself) rests on the assumption that monetary value reflects labor time invested.
So for a worker to not be exploited, he needs to be able to buy as much labor time from others with his wage as he sold to a given business. Correct?
For this to work, wouldn't you need to set in stone that a price also actually does reflect invested labor time?
As otherwise, different businesses will still be more successful, right? And will this not mean that some labor time will be rewarded better than other labor time? In effect stealing from those less successful and giving to those with more, aka surplus value (just in a different context)? So outlawing profits itself will not put an end to surplus value, but just will mean that workers will have to earn their surplus value by being more successful on the market. Agreed?

 

[plarq]

Generally speaking, how strong is Marxism in the academia clan in the west? (Ditto other radical left ideologies)

 

[ReindeerThistle]

We recruited a Marxist philosophy Prof, the son of a Marxist economics prof and are set to recruit a Marxist econ prof by New Years'. They are all over...

 

[Traitorfish]

Generally speaking, how strong is Marxism in the academia clan in the west? (Ditto other radical left ideologies)

Very marginal. Academic Marxism is mostly a phenomenon of the 1960s through '70s, and while you'll still get a not inconsiderable number of academics in certain fields who identify as in some sense theoretically Marxian, they've almost all of them jettisoned the political baggage.