So he predicted it would make the average citizen richer than ever before, in direct contradiction to Marx's prophecy of ever increasing exploitation and misery? He predicted that capitalism would triumph and his experiment fail?
You really don't understand the words you talk about, I see.
He predicted that the major capitalist power would actually press for decolonization?
I don't believe Lenin spoke about
native resistance to colonial rule making continued governing untenable, no.
You flatter yourself to think your apologetics of mass murderers provokes any reaction like that. As far as I care you and your ilk are like people from Stormfront; morally abhorrent but largely harmless.
And you that your emotional invectives affect me.
Any one? Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, East Germany... they seem to be doing far better than at any point under communist tyranny. Ask their citizens, look at the economic numbers.
Indeed, let's ask the citizens.
http://www.pewglobal.org/2009/11/02/end-of-communism-cheered-but-now-with-more-reservations/
http://rt.com/news/ussr-collapse-mistake-poll-585/
I love how you justify atrocities and
terror by "historical circumstance"
But seriously, yeah, time and circumstance
do matter. How do I justify hangings and terror? By pointing out that they were directed against saboteurs and counter-revolutionaries. We're talking about people who were blowing up telegraph offices, attacking rail lines, organizing counter-revolt against the government, agents of imperialist armies who were supporting the rebels, and of course people who tried to assassinate Lenin himself, along with numerous other government officials around the country (many of them they succeeded at).
People try to equate Leninist and Stalinist terror because "ermagerd lots of commies killed people!" But they're not that similar at all. At all points, the Red Terror was kept both restrained and specific. And when it started to outrun Central control, you know what happened? The Cheka was disbanded by Dzerzhinsky himself, and reformed with a new structure and new officers, and was still never given the authority or trust it had had before.
@RT & Cheezy - I'm assuming you guys don't regard Lenin as some sort of god, or think that he was the pinnacle of your movement, so I'm curious to know what are some of things you think he did wrong?
Wrong? Well Lenin made many mistakes, as all people do. In fact, my dissertation is about one of his mistakes:
korenizatsiya. Like most things from that time, it resulted from extant circumstances: the Bolsheviks were trying to outflank bourgeois ethnic nationalism, which was in vogue after WWI, but also believed it was a necessary step toward pulling them away from feudal or pre-industrial society. It turned out to be the Soviet Union's undoing. I'm not daft enough, like some people in this thread, to assume that because something failed, that it is inherently disproven, or that because something turned out a certain way, it must always do so in all possible situations. Everything is shaped by time and circumstance, both countries and people are. Lenin did things, as all people do and have done, which probably made sense at the time, or for which there was little other choice. However, Lenin, being of colossal mind, seems to have had the best record of any Soviet leader for not choosing any obviously worse choices.
We have to remember that in those days, no one really knew how things were supposed to proceed. The Bolsheviks, and Lenin, were trail-blazers, feeling their way through the dark for the benefit of everyone who came after them. I will be among the first to heap opprobrium on guilty parties who I think did stupid things, no matter who they are, but with Lenin I really don't see much which merits it. He was everything he needed to be when he needed to be it: cautious or daring, patient or impetuous, trusting or skeptical, and always willing to force people to work together, rather than let petty bickering get the best of them.
If you want to see the greatest evidence of the greatness of Lenin:
look at what happened in his absence. He was absent from Petrograd during the February Revolution: the Bolsheviks were tiny, unorganized, and unprepared for the situation. After he died, the party which he had worked so hard to make work together on problems degenerated into factionalism despite his explicit ban on it while still alive, and the democratic, dialectic structure of the party fell apart when he was no longer able to moderate and mediate between competing ideas and people.
Wasn't that old hat by the 20th century? I thought Marx himself discussed the topics of imperialism and capitalism, and thought it endemic to the system of modern industrial production.
Nope, Marx did not discuss imperialism such as it had arisen by the time Lenin was writing. Lenin's greatest contribution to Marxist economic theory was to take Hilferding's analysis of finance capital and marry it with the political implications of European imperialism; not just in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, but even in the extremities of Europe: Spain, Italy, Sweden, Greece, and the Levant.
Marx did talk about imperialism as a political force, but not as an economic force. The concept of commodity dumping in developing [created] markets was not around when he was alive.
I'm also not quite convinced you are presenting Marx's "prophecy" correctly, but I'll let the reds tackle that.
I would not cast pearls before swine, but I appreciate the confidence.
