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1. A specter is haunting world capitalism: the specter of the Russian Revolution.
This year marks the centenary of the world-historical events of 1917, which began with the February Revolution in Russia and culminated in October with “ten days that shook the world”—the overthrow of the capitalist provisional government and conquest of political power by the Bolshevik Party, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. The overthrow of capitalism in a country of 150 million people and establishment of the first socialist workers’ state in history was the most consequential event of the twentieth century. It vindicated, in practice, the historical perspective proclaimed just 70 years earlier, in 1847, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto.
In the course of one year, the uprising of the Russian working class, rallying behind it tens of millions of peasants, not only brought to an end centuries of rule by a semi-feudal autocratic dynasty. The extraordinary leap in Russia from “Tsar to Lenin”—the establishment of a government based on workers’ councils (soviets)—marked the beginning of a world socialist revolution that raised the consciousness of the working class and the masses oppressed by capitalism and imperialism in every part of the planet.
The Russian Revolution—which erupted in the midst of the horrifying carnage of World War I—proved the possibility of a world beyond capitalism, without exploitation and war. The events of 1917 and their aftermath penetrated deep into the consciousness of the international working class and provided the essential political inspiration for the revolutionary struggles of the twentieth century that swept across the globe.
2. The Bolshevik Party based its struggle for power in 1917 on an international perspective. It recognized that the objective basis for the socialist revolution in Russia was rooted, in the final analysis, in the international contradictions of the world imperialist system—above all, in the conflict between the archaic national-state system and the highly integrated character of modern world economy. Therefore, the fate of the Russian Revolution depended on the extension of workers’ power beyond the borders of Soviet Russia. As Trotsky explained so clearly:
The completion of the socialist revolution within national limits is unthinkable. One of the basic reasons for the crisis of bourgeois society is the fact that the productive forces created by it can no longer be reconciled with the framework of the national state. From this follow, on the one hand, imperialist wars, on the other, the utopia of a bourgeois United States of Europe. The socialist revolution begins on the national arena, it unfolds on the international arena, and is completed on the world arena. Thus, the socialist revolution becomes a permanent revolution in a newer and broader sense of the word: it attains completion only in the final victory of the new society on our entire planet. [The Permanent Revolution (London: New Park Publications, 1971), p. 155]
3. The fate of the Bolshevik Party, the Soviet Union and the socialist revolution in the twentieth century hinged on the outcome of the conflict of two irreconcilable perspectives: the revolutionary internationalism championed by Lenin and Trotsky in 1917 and during the first years of the existence of the Soviet Union, and the reactionary nationalist program of the Stalinist bureaucracy that usurped political power from the Soviet working class. Stalin’s anti-Marxist perspective of “socialism in one country” underlay the disastrous economic policies within the Soviet Union and the catastrophic international political defeats of the working class that culminated in 1991, after decades of bureaucratic dictatorship and misrule, in the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism in Russia.
But the end of the USSR did not invalidate the Russian Revolution or Marxist theory. Indeed, in the course of his struggle against the Stalinist betrayal of the revolution, Leon Trotsky had foreseen the consequences of the national program of “socialism in one country.” The Fourth International, founded under Trotsky’s leadership in 1938, warned that the destruction of the USSR could be prevented only through the overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracy, the reestablishment of Soviet democracy, and the renewal of the struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of world capitalism.
4. The imperialist leaders and their ideological accomplices greeted the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991 with raptures. The fact that virtually none of them had foreseen this event did not prevent them from proclaiming its “inevitability.” Seeing no further than their own noses, they improvised theories that reinterpreted the twentieth century in a manner that suited their collective class arrogance. All the self-deluding nonsense and stupidity of the ruling elites and their academic hirelings found its quintessential expression in Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” thesis. The October Revolution, he argued, was nothing more than an accidental departure from the normal and, therefore, timeless bourgeois-capitalist course of history. In the form of capitalist economics and bourgeois democracy, humanity had arrived at the highest and final stage of development. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there could be no thought of an alternative to capitalism, let alone one based on workers’ power and the socialist reorganization of world economy.
Endorsing Fukuyama’s revelation, historian Eric Hobsbawm, a lifelong Stalinist, dismissed the October Revolution and, for that matter, the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary upheavals of the twentieth century, as unfortunate accidents. The years between 1914 (which witnessed the outbreak of World War I) and 1991 (the dissolution of the Soviet Union) were a misguided “age of extremes” that comprised the “short twentieth century.” Hobsbawm did not claim to know what the future would bring, or whether the twenty-first century would be short or long. He was certain of only one thing: there would never again be a socialist revolution in any way comparable to the events of 1917.
5. Twenty-five years have passed since Fukuyama proclaimed the “End of History.” Supposedly liberated from the menace of socialist revolution, the ruling class has had an opportunity to demonstrate what capitalism could accomplish if allowed to plunder the world as it pleased. But what is the outcome of its orgies? A short list of achievements would include: the filthy enrichment of an infinitesimal portion of the world’s population, vast social inequality and mass poverty, endless wars of aggression that have cost the lives of millions, the relentless strengthening of the repressive organs of the state and the decay of democratic forms of rule, the institution of murder and torture as basic instruments of imperialist foreign policy, and the general degradation of every aspect of culture.
6. A quarter century after the fall of the Soviet Union, it is impossible to deny that the entire world has entered a period of profound economic, political and social crisis. All the unresolved contradictions of the past century are reemerging with explosive force on the surface of world politics. The events of 1917 are acquiring a new and intense contemporary relevance. In countless publications, bourgeois commentators are calling attention nervously to parallels between the world of 2017 and that of 1917.
“Bolshiness is back,” warns the Economist’s Adrian Wooldridge in the magazine’s preview of the New Year. “The similarities to the world that produced the Russian revolution are too close for comfort.” He writes: “This is a period of miserable centenaries. First, in 2014, came that of the outbreak of the first world war, which destroyed the liberal order. Then, in 2016, that of the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest conflicts in military history. In 2017 it will be 100 years since Lenin seized power in Russia.”
None other than Fukuyama now describes the United States, which he once hailed as the apotheosis of bourgeois democracy, as a “failed state.” He writes, “The American political system has become dysfunctional,” and “has undergone decay over recent decades as well-organized elites have made use of vetocracy to protect their interests.” Finally, Fukuyama warns: “[W]e cannot preclude the possibility that we are living through a political disruption that will in time bear comparison with the collapse of Communism a generation ago.”
7. For world capitalism, 2016 was the year from hell. All the structures of world politics established in the closing years of the Second World War and its aftermath are in an advanced state of disintegration. The contradiction between the inexorable processes of economic globalization and the confines of the national state is driving world politics. 2016 was the year of the accelerating breakdown of the European Union, exemplified in the Brexit vote and the growth of extreme right-wing nationalist parties.
The past year also witnessed the relentless intensification of military tensions, to the extent that the possibility—even the likelihood—of a Third World War is openly discussed in countless books, journals and newspapers. The innumerable regional tensions throughout the world are developing into an increasingly direct and open confrontation involving the major, nuclear-armed powers. No one can say for sure who will fight whom. Will the United States move first against China, or must that conflict be delayed until after accounts have been settled with Russia? This question is presently the subject of bitter strategic debate and conflict within the highest echelons of the American state. Even among the closest post-World War II allies, the friction of geopolitical and economic competition is fraying alliances. Germany is seeking to translate its economic strength into military power and discarding the last vestiges of its post-Nazi “pacifism.”
8. The crisis of the global capitalist system finds its most advanced expression within its very center, the United States. More than any other country, the United States imagined that it would be the prime beneficiary of the dissolution of the USSR. The first President Bush immediately proclaimed the birth of a “new world order,” in which the United States would function as the unchallengeable hegemon. Unmatched in its military power, the United States would exploit the “unipolar moment” to restructure the world in its own interests. Its strategists harbored dreams not simply of a new American Century, but of American centuries! In the words of Robert Kaplan, a leading foreign policy strategist:
The more successful our foreign policy, the more leverage America will have in the world. Thus, the more likely that future historians will look back on the twenty-first century United States as an empire as well as a republic, however different from that of Rome and every other empire throughout history. For as the decades and centuries march on, and the United States has had a hundred presidents, or 150 even, instead of forty-three, and they appear in long lists like the rulers of bygone empires—Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman—the comparison with antiquity may grow rather than diminish. Rome, in particular, is a model for hegemonic power, using various means to encourage a modicum of order in a disorderly world… [Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos (New York: Random House, 2002), p. 153.]
9. Kaplan’s ode to empire, written in 2002, testifies to the semi-deranged state of mind that prevailed in the American ruling class as it launched its “war on terror” and prepared for the second invasion of Iraq in 2003. The American ruling class mistook the approaching abyss for a rainbow. The “unipolar moment” proved, indeed, to be little more than the briefest of historical interludes, and the new “American Century” lasted considerably less than a decade.
The euphoric response of the American ruling class to the dissolution of the Soviet Union expressed a disastrous misreading of the historical situation. The ruling elites convinced themselves that they could employ military power—undeterred by the danger of Soviet retaliation—to reverse decades of erosion of the economic supremacy of the United States. This miscalculation formed the basis of a massive escalation of American military operations throughout the world, which has led to one disaster after another. Fifteen years after 9/11, the fraudulent “war on terror” has left the Middle East in chaos, culminating in the debacle of America’s regime-change operation in Syria.
10. The military disasters of the past quarter century have been compounded by the deterioration of the global economic stature of the United States, which has found ever more direct expression in the decline in living standards for broad masses of the population. According to a recent report by economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the pretax share of national income received by the bottom half of the population in the United States has fallen from 20 percent in 1980 to 12 percent today, while—in an exact reversal—the share of the top one percent has risen from 12 percent to 20 percent. For four decades, the real incomes of the bottom half have remained flat, while the incomes of the top one percent have risen by 205 percent, and for the top .001 percent by a staggering 636 percent.
The younger generation of Americans is drowning in debt, unable to make enough to start a family or move out of their parents’ homes. While in 1970, 92 percent of 30-year-olds made more than their parents did at a similar age, only 51 percent did so in 2014. Millions of Americans are suffering from inadequate health care. For the first time in more than two decades, overall life expectancy fell in 2015 due to the shocking rise in mortality from suicide, drug abuse and other manifestations of social crisis.
11. As American society has become more unequal, it has become increasingly difficult for its ideologists to maintain the pretense that democracy still prevails. One of the essential functions of identity politics—centered on race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality—has been to shift attention away from the deep class divisions within the United States. The election of Donald Trump has exposed, in all its disgusting nakedness, the reality of oligarchic rule in the United States. It must be stressed, however, that Trump is not some sort of monstrous interloper in what had been, until Election Day 2016, a flawed but essentially decent society. Trump—the product of the criminal and diseased couplings of the real estate, finance, gambling and entertainment industries—is the genuine face of the American ruling class.
12. The incoming Trump administration, in its aims as in its personnel, has the character of an insurrection of the oligarchy. As a doomed social class approaches its end, its effort to withstand the tides of history not infrequently assumes the form of an attempt to reverse what it perceives as the longstanding erosion of its power and privilege. It seeks to return conditions to the way they once were (or as it imagines they were), before the inexorable forces of social and economic change began gnawing away at the foundations of its rule. Charles I blocked the summoning of parliament in England for 11 years prior to the outbreak of revolution in 1640. When the Etats-General assembled in Paris on the eve of revolution in 1789, the French nobility intended to reestablish privileges that had been ebbing away since 1613. The Civil War in the United States was preceded by the effort of the Southern elite to extend slavery throughout the country. The firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861 marked the beginning of what was, in effect, a slave-owners’ insurrection.
Trump’s pledge to “Make America Great Again” means, in practice, the eradication of whatever remains of the progressive social reforms—achieved through decades of mass struggles—that ameliorated conditions of life for the working class. In Trump’s own mind, “making America great” entails returning the country to the conditions of the 1890s, when the Supreme Court ruled that the income tax was communistic and unconstitutional. The institution of the income tax in 1913 and all the ensuing social legislation and regulation that placed limits on the exploitation of workers, the broader public, and the environment, represented, as far as Trump is concerned, an assault on the right of the rich to make money as they pleased. The funding of public education and the establishment of the minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social welfare programs sanctioned the diversion of financial resources away from the rich. Assembling a cabinet comprised of billionaires and multimillionaires, Trump intends to lead a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.
Alongside his rich cronies, Trump has brought into his cabinet and selected as his principal advisers a cabal of ex-generals and outright fascists. Their task will be to develop a foreign policy based on the unbridled assertion of the global interests of US imperialism. This is the real significance of the revival of the slogan of “America First.” It is the deterioration of America’s economic dominance that imparts to its imperialist agenda an increasingly savage character. The Democratic Party—that corrupt alliance of Wall Street financiers and state intelligence agencies—has concentrated its criticism of Trump on his alleged “softness” toward Russia. It need not worry. The Trump administration will continue and escalate the conflict with all countries whose interests—geopolitical and/or economic—clash with those of American imperialism.
13. Both in their international and domestic manifestations, the policies of Trump reflect a convulsive movement of the capitalist ruling elites to the right. The rise of Trump is paralleled by the growth in the political influence of the National Front in France, Pegida in Germany, the Five Star Movement in Italy and the UK Independence Party, which led the campaign for Brexit. In Germany, the ruling class is using the Christmas Market attack in Berlin to escalate the anti-refugee campaign led by Alternative for Germany. The political and economic essence of this process is embedded in the nature of imperialism, as explained by Lenin:
The fact that imperialism is parasitic or decaying capitalism is manifested first of all in the tendency to decay, which is characteristic of every monopoly under the system of private ownership of the means of production. The difference between the democratic-republican and the reactionary-monarchist imperialist bourgeoisie is obliterated because they are both rotting alive… [“Imperialism and the Split in Socialism,” in Lenin Collected Works, Volume 23 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), p. 106]
All the major imperialist powers are preparing for war, as states representing gigantic corporations and banks battle for control of resources, trade routes and markets. At the same time, the resort to nationalism is aimed at creating the framework for the violent suppression of class conflicts within each country.
14. The same capitalist crisis that produces imperialist war also produces the political radicalization of the working class and the development of socialist revolution. Trump will preside over a country riven by deep and intractable class conflict. Similar conditions prevail throughout the world. A recent study found that a quarter of all people in Europe, or 118 million, suffer from poverty or social exclusion. The poverty rate in Spain is 28.6 percent, and in Greece it is 35.7 percent. These are countries that have been targeted for brutal austerity measures dictated by the European Union and the banks. The number of unemployed young people worldwide rose to 71 million this year, increasing for the first time since 2013. In Venezuela, mass poverty and hyperinflation have led to food riots. In China, growing working-class militancy is expressed in a sharp increase in strikes and other forms of protest. Within Russia, the shock of capitalist restoration and the ensuing demoralization of the working class are giving way to renewed social militancy. The extreme social inequality and the kleptocratic character of the capitalist regime led by Putin are encountering ever-greater opposition.
15. Up until now, the political right, using the demagogic slogans of chauvinism, has exploited social discontent within the working class and broad sections of the middle class. But the initial successes of the reactionary parties of the chauvinist right have depended upon the political cynicism, deceit and bankruptcy of the organizations of what passes for the “left”—the Social Democrats, the Stalinists, the trade union bureaucrats and the array of petty-bourgeois anti-Marxist parties such as the Greens, the Left Party in Germany, Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain. To these one must add the many state-capitalist and Pabloite organizations, such as the International Socialist Organization (ISO) in the United States and the New Anti-capitalist Party in France (NPA). All the political energies of these reactionary organizations of the middle class are expended on falsifying Marxism to disorient the working class and impede the development of its struggle against capitalism.
16. But the pressure of events is driving the working class to the left. Among the billions of workers and young people around the world, there is a growing mood of anger and militancy. There are signs of both a resurgence of class struggle and a renewal of interest in socialism and Marxism. In the United States, 13 million people voted for a supposed socialist, Bernie Sanders, in the Democratic Party primary elections not because of his opportunist politics, but because of his denunciations of the “billionaire class” and his calls for a “political revolution.” This is part of an international process, which is dictated by the very nature of global capitalism. The class struggle, as it gains in strength and political self-awareness, will tend more and more to sweep over the borders of nation states. As the International Committee of the Fourth International noted as far back as 1988, “It has long been an elementary proposition of Marxism that the class struggle is national only as to form, but that it is, in essence, an international struggle. However, given the new features of capitalist development, even the form of the class struggle must assume an international character.”
17. Confidence in the revolutionary potential of the working class, however, is not a justification for political complacency. It would be irresponsible to ignore the fact that there exists a vast disparity between the advanced stage of the international crisis of capitalism and the political consciousness of the working class. It must be acknowledged that herein lies a great danger. Without a socialist revolution, the very survival of human civilization is in question. The fundamental political task of this epoch consists of overcoming the gap between objective socioeconomic reality and subjective political consciousness. Can this be accomplished?
18. This question can be answered only on the basis of historical experience. Amidst all the massive upheavals of the twentieth century, there exists one example of the working class rising to the level of the tasks posed by history: the October Revolution. In confronting the great problems of this epoch, it is necessary to study that historical event and assimilate its lessons.
In this centenary year of the Russian Revolution, there is a profound intersection and interaction between contemporary politics and historical experience. The 1917 Revolution arose out of the imperialist catastrophe of World War I. In the political maelstrom that followed the overthrow of the tsarist regime, the Bolshevik Party emerged as the dominant force within the working class. But the role played by the Bolsheviks in 1917 was the outcome of a long and difficult struggle for the development of socialist consciousness in the working class and the working out of a correct revolutionary perspective.
19. The critical elements of that struggle were: 1) the defense and elaboration of dialectical and historical materialism, in opposition to philosophical idealism and anti-Marxist revisionism, as the theoretical basis of the education and revolutionary practice of the working class; 2) the unrelenting struggle against the many forms of opportunism and centrism that obstructed or undermined the fight to establish the political independence of the working class; and 3) the working out, over many years, of the strategic perspective that oriented the Bolshevik Party toward the struggle for power in 1917. In this latter process, the adoption by Lenin of the Theory of Permanent Revolution, developed by Trotsky during the previous decade, was the critical advance that guided the strategy of the Bolsheviks in the months leading up to the overthrow of the provisional government.
20. The victory of the socialist revolution in October 1917 proved that the conquest of political power by the working class depends, in the final analysis, upon the building of a Marxist party in the working class. No matter how large and powerful the mass movement of the working class, its victory over capitalism requires the conscious political leadership of a Marxist-Trotskyist party. There is no other way the victory of the socialist revolution can be achieved.
The recognition of this political imperative will guide the work of the International Committee in this centenary year. As the development of the international class struggle creates a broader audience for Marxist theory and politics, the International Committee will do all that it can to expand knowledge of the Russian Revolution and educate new layers of the working class and youth, politically awakened and radicalized by the crisis, in the “Lessons of October.”
As 2017 begins, we call on the many thousands of readers of the World Socialist Web Site to become active in the revolutionary struggle and to join and build the Fourth International as the World Party of Socialist Revolution. This is the most appropriate and effective way to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution and the victory of October 1917.
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Actually, it’s kind of refreshing to know these people are still out there. But what about James Burnham’s argument, when he was still a Trotskyite, that the class closest to the means of production was no longer the workers, but the managers? He wrote in 1940–which class (in Marxist terms) is closest to the means of production in 2017?
Is it posssible to place a big bet on, or rather against, these comedians getting their project off the ground?
In their almost number free article they say nothing about the absolute or relative size of the “working class” in the early 20th century and now, of its rate of reproduction in the industrialised world or its potential for generosity to the poor of other nations. Not surprising because they don’t seem to have noticed how capitalistic forms of economic organisation have transformed the material welfare of hundreds of millions of Japanese, Koreans, Chinese and even Indians.
For every provocative truth or plausible assertion (e.g. that the US should not be regarded as a democracy) there is a sea of irrelevance and anachronistic unrealism.
This is a joke, isn’t it?
It is hard to believe that there are still people dumb enough to believe this garbage. A nationalist, non-imperialist approach to government is what is needed.
The author seems to have no idea that granting any government the power he advocates would inevitably result in a worldwide prison. Is he truly that unaware of the fallibility of basic human nature?
“16. But the pressure of events is driving the working class to the left. Among the billions of workers and young people around the world, there is a growing mood of anger and militancy.”
No.
The left hates the working class and loves elite perverts.
The workers of the world are fleeing you.
BTW – Do you have a 19th century mechanical answer to 21st century automation?
I suppose this is Unz.com being a source of alternative views. Vanilla Marxists need to get a life, while cultural Marxists must be fought.
This reads like a parody.
I commend the editors for publishing this piece.
Not because I agree with communism (completely the opposite) but because I believe Marxism is the greatest threat to civilization, and it is important for defenders of Western Civilization and Christendom to understand how our enemies think.
This piece, written by traditional economic Marxists, also demonstrates the differences between them and the cultural Marxists. At least the authors of this piece profess some sympathy for the working class! In contrast, cultural Marxists lost interest in the working class when they realised there were more efficient ways to achieve their true goal, which is the destruction of traditional Christian society.
I think the civil war that followed the Russian revolution is more historically interesting and relevant to modern politics. The urban Reds won the civil war because they controlled the centre of the country, including the lines of communication and transport. The rural Whites lost because they were unable to launch coordinated attacks on strategically important targets.
That’s a similar story to the cultural battle between cosmopolitan liberalism and conservatism/nationalism in the US. The liberal control the big cities, central government, and the media, and the geographically scattered conservatives have been unable to launch a coordinated fightback.
However, circumstances are beginning to turn against the urban liberals. The MSM media is now losing power to the de-centralised independent media. The conservatives and nationalists have finally realised that urban right-wing liberals are allied with the urban liberal left, and suburban and rural whites are becoming increasing resentful of increasing amounts of their shrinking incomes going to fund the wages and welfare checks of urban yuppies and the urban underclass.
21. here is a much better summary:
https://mises.org/library/yuri-maltsev-why-socialism-endures
The dissolution of socialism in Russia is not complete, some features still remain. The collapse of the USSR was due to the a) domestic class struggle (rise of Russian bureaucracy) b) national inequality – existence of not-so-evolved, archaic and feudal-in-mindset nations inside USSR and Soviet bloc that corrupted the system and c) system was surrounded by still not-conquered capitalism – aka ‘peaceful coexistence’ with fascists, monarchs, sharks of imperialism etc.
One very important contradiction is between the advanced nature of Socialist state represented by USSR as frontier of human social evolution, and the traditional nature of Third Rome of Russia – the eternal structure responsible for all humankind, with function not to develop, but to preserve humanity. We Russians could not struggle and work for the rest of humanity any more and longer. When we tried to develop and evolve Polish and Chezh peasants (presumably developed enough almost to the level of ourselves), they revolted, striving to be consumerist slaves and bordellos of Germans and Americans instead of free and just national states. When we entered Afghanistan to build powerplants, schools and hospitals, we found a bunch of barbarians, enjoying their archaism, and shooting us for a couple of bucks. So Russians switched back to the Keeper scenario.
The ‘Pax Americana’ concept and insistence of US historical academism on Athenian democracy – Roman Republic – then U.S. republican legacy is fundamentally wrong and is an element of propaganda. USA is no Rome and never was close, it is pure Carthage – the maritime trade oligarchy, with public positions sought and bought by the rich, with hired war professionals, and makeshift military coalitions. The origins of USA are just the same as Carthaginian – religious dissidens of another trade maritime oligarchy (Phoenicia). The European states represent only the barbarian kingdoms of the past, and will dissolve with dissolution of their genetic basis. And only Russia is legitimate Third Rome, the only Empire that should stand until the end of times.
The uprising of the Russian working class, aka Bolshevik rule, rallied precisely 24% of the Russian population (and a solid majority only in modern day Latvia) according to the sole quantitative test of its legitimacy, namely, free and fair elections. Considering that this result was achieved around the peak of the Russian state’s breakdown and before the Bolsheviks began to show their true face to the world makes it all the more unimpressive.
Trotskyists are political parasites of the lowest order, and Stalin’s purge of them is one of the few things I’d be perfectly happy to toast him for.
This is why ideology is comedy.
Same lame talking points about the bourgeoisie.
It’s the same old song.
“The overthrow of the capitalist provisional government and conquest of political power by Bolshevik Party” – Bolshevik Revolution was not against provisional government; it was against other Socialist Parties. Particular against SR (Socialist Revolutionary) Party. May be you don’t know that the Bolshevik Revolution started when the election in the Constitutional Assembly was under way. The provisional government was supposed to be replaced by a new government created by the Constitutional Assembly; that is why it was provisional. SR got 58% of the votes. Bolsheviks got 25%. That was the reason for the Bolshevik Revolution. After taking the power in Petrograd (it was the capital), Bolsheviks dissolved the Constitutional Assembly and triggered the Civil War. Pro-establishment forces of course joined the battle on the side of SR. SR was divided in the left and right (Red and White). Real bloody mess started. Russian Cossacks joined the White. Ukrainian Cossacks joined the Red. Soviets were dissolved by Lenin. After the Civil War, Bolsheviks recreated the Soviets under their strict supervision; it was the profanation of the idea. Yes, Bolsheviks won the Civil War, drowning the country in the blood and organised the terror regime (because they never had support of majority). Bolsheviks had support of the town proletariat. SR had support in the countryside. That is why the terror against the countryside was organised the same as against the supporters of the old establishment.
Well, that was illuminating. So the problem with the USSR was Stalin’s takeover after the death of Lenin. It wasn’t the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, that actually gave total control to Lenin and his pals that was the problem. It was just this bad guy Stalin. Odd that the authors don’t mention any of the other socialist revolutions humanity has been blessed with over the years. No mention of China, Korea or any of the horrors in Africa and the Americas, South and Central. Presumably they all turned out so poorly simply because of the personalities involved.
As Chance, the gardener would say, “I understand.”
And so it goes…
Any socialist movement in the USA will have a long row to hoe. Capitalist propaganda is relentlessly shoved into the eyes and ears of the general population. Even many of the most downtrodden laborers have been convinced that through “hard work” and “personal sacrifice” they will be lifted into financial heaven by the loving arms of the corporate state. The reality however, is that if you work 60, 70, or more hours a week, you are likely to find yourself exhausted and resentful.
The Socialists are long on descriptions of the “sins” of capitalism and bourgeois society but short on the details of the socialist “solution”.
Short version: socialism can only function with power concentrated at the top. To believe that those at the top will not be corrupt and self serving is to deny human nature.
The crisis we are approaching is a crisis of human population density. The human ecosystem is not “intended” to be stable in the first place – utopia is not possible – and the conflicts inherent in human society have been grossly exacerbated by crowding from the mixing of different populations. Notice that the most crowded nations that do function reasonably well are ruthlessly dominated by one ethnic group, and even those crowded nations are beginning to show strains.
I’m old enough (70 y o) that I will not likely survive to see the worst of it, but I tell my children to be prepared and I’m working on a diary for the next generation. One can be swept up in some great movement to try to forestall the inevitable or one can try to increase one’s odds of being a survivor. This will likely be a long drawn out century of conflict (barring an all-out nuclear launch), and the socialists do not have an answer.
Making allowances for your socialist ideology, even within that framework your analysis of the Trump phenomenon is intellectually dishonest. He clearly doesn’t fit into your narrative, and looks stuffed into it like a fat woman in a slinky dress. Trump doesn’t represent the oligarchy, the crony capitalists, the ruling elite, whatever you’d like to call them. If he does, someone ought tell them so.
General question, somewhat related: does socialism even allow for the existence of a right-wing working-class revolt, and if so, are they necessarily and always a tool of the capitalists? I guess the authors would think so.
The tide of third world immigrants competing with our own working class and poor for employment and benefits is not a “progressive social reform”. It was a betrayal of that class, and the only “struggle” was deceiving rubes about its supposed benefits in your universities, where socialists are protected by tenure and watered and fed by tax dollars. Letting weeds take over your garden isn’t a struggle, it’s just what happens when you do nothing.
So now there’s gonna be a big, beautiful wall to protect our workers, our working class, our proletariat. Which the crony capitalist oligarchy despises. America was the greatest nation of its age, or any other, until the socialists came and infected the intelligentsia like a cancer; never cured, but going into and out of remission.
Apologizing for the nature of this scattershot comment, I’d like also to add that I enjoyed the description of the American elite’s euphoria at the fall of the USSR. I’m not old enough to remember the event. It’ll add a new element of humor the next time I watch The Big Lebowski, released in ’98 but set in ’91:
Excepting, perhaps, regions relatively untouched by the heavy Imperial hand. China and Russia come immediately to mind and many eyes are cast in that direction.
A word or two considering the eventual rise of Stalin being partly the result of the United States and other democracies having invaded Russia to influence the revolution might be helpful.
http://robertmagill.wordpress.com
Ask Eastern Europeans about Marxism.
They will tell you they never want to hear about it ever again.
Marxism only lives because useful idiots in universities keep the apologies printing.
You have to love it when the explanation for their failure is contained in their perception of what they think is needed to succeed. Earth to Leon….it doesn’t work!! Seriously, reading Trotsky is tedious. It feels like an icepick in the ear.
“unfortunate accidents”
– How many more need to die in these unfortunate accidents before you give up your socialist/communist fantasy?
Theyre still fawning over Trotsky. Read into that what you will.
‘…Trotskyists are political parasites of the lowest order, and Stalin’s purge of them is one of the few things I’d be perfectly happy to toast him for…’
Trots were and are an unimportant group (see the article above). If Stalin had devoted the effort in 1940 he spent trying to kill an old man in Mexico (success!) in doing more important things a lot of lives would have been saved.
What % of the Russian population voted to continue being ruled by a semi-feudal autocratic dynasty?
Unlike many other “outsiders” Unz has published to feed debate, people who dream or like to tell they have dreamed of killing Trump, and “only whites are racists” The Nation folks, I respect the authors of this article, and, partially, their ideas.
This said I think all what they wrote is wrong, and to a nightmarish degree. But it’s great they are free to write it and have it published. If they “won”, no-one could be saying they are wrong.
This is one of several fundamental reasons why what we have now is better than what is in their hopes.
It’s refreshing to read earnest, honest socialism. Not the snarky, PC, Cultural Marxist stuff.
Whatever you all think of the article, it’s hard to quibble with this:
The problem with Marx wasn’t his ability to diagnose, but his prescriptions. Same here.
A considerably larger one.
The problem with Marx wasn’t his ability to diagnose, but his prescriptions.
The problem with the right wing isn’t their ability to diagnose, but their poor prescriptions or the lack thereof.
People who think Democrats are “the left” are in over their heads with this article.
Brilliant!
“the eternal structure responsible for all humankind, with function not to develop, but to preserve humanity.”
Of course! I was wondering why Merkel let in a million refugees last year and was arresting anyone who protested. Taking a million people prone to violence and without any skills is necessary to build a movement against them. It was all so that they could start killing Germans, in which case she could strengthen the anti-refugee movement led by Alternative for Germany. Makes perfect sense now.
I agree with what you said.
Duplicate of my post from other thread:
I had a colleague back in USSR, senior than me, who in approx. 1960 was allowed to visit USA on scientific (STEM) business. He managed to visit Hoover Institute at Stanford University, and was extremely lucky to meet there in person A. F. Kerensky (1881-1970): the last Prime-Minister of Russia before Bolshevik coup, October of 1917.
*
Kerensky told to my astonished colleague: “You in Russia are so lucky, that Trotsky did not come to power. In comparison with Stalin, he would do much more harm to Russian people.”
*
Disclaimer: I, I.f.f.U., consider Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin
as bunch of greatest scoundrels and tyrants in history.
Let me repeat: on October of 1917 (old Russian calendar) a coup was performed
(большевистский переворот), not the Revolution.
The Revolution took place in January-February of 1917.
I read the complete post before any comments appeared.
I tried Sailer’s / Derbyshire’s test: “ctrl-F” “immigr”, with zero responses.
Now I understand better (without approving it) terminology of Soviet times:
“космополит”. Looks like there is no place in trotskiste ideology for
“people”, “nation”, “motherland”,
and therefore you do not have the problem of immigration.
With all this, I am still “Immigrant from former USSR”,
grateful to new Home of my family and of myself : USA.
“6. A quarter century after the fall of the Soviet Union, it is impossible to deny that the entire world has entered a period of profound economic, political and social crisis.”
As this is historically illiterate, one may stop wasting time at this point.
AFAIS, Fukuyama, following Kojeve following Hegel, more convincingly explains the present. Marx, Lenin, Trotsky were and are wrong. Apparently the modern industrial world + private ownership thereof staggers along as the years roll by. The prediction of the contradiction between the owners and the rest of us leading to catastrophic collapse is confirmed in this article by such rhetoric as reproduced above.
Socialist-Revolutionary Party (SRs) 17,943,000 40.4
Bolsheviks 10,661,000 24.0
Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionary Party 3,433,000 7.7
Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets) 2,088,000 4.7
Georgian Social Democratic (Menshevik) Party 662,000 1.5
Musavat (Azerbaijan) 616,000 1.4
Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutiun) (Armenia) 560,000 1.3
Left Socialist-Revolutionaries (Borotbists) 451,000 1.0
Alash Orda (Kazakhstan) 407,000 0.9
Various liberal parties 1,261,000 2.8
Various national minority parties 407,000 0.9
Various socialists 401,000 0.9
Unaccounted 4,543,000 10.2
Could you add the totals for the Tsarist parties for me? I am not a math whiz, plus for all I know some of the socialists-revolutionists could have been closet aristocrats.
This article originally appeared in The Onion………
Members of the Church of the One True Leftist practicing their religious rituals:
Video Link
Not surprisingly, this rather comic article fails to mention that one small minority group made up 85% of the Bolshevik leadership……and they weren’t exactly the Workers of the World…
The link was to the 1912 elections when moderate right and nationalist parties took almost half of the Duma seats (the last election held under “normal” conditions – by 1917, it is true those forces had become discredited, and some sort of leftwards shift was inevitable, but not in the form of the Bolsheviks).
two things:
1. re:
Nonsense.
Wooldridge bleats nonsense, in part, because he failed to recognize that 2017 is the 500th anniversary of Luther’s 95 Theses. The Economist’s weltanschauung may be that Christianity, or man’s spiritual quest, is not a significant cultural driver, but try as their occupiers might have done, the glimmer of Christianity was not extinguished from the German soul; the Lutherian quincentenary may be the spark that revitalizes it.
2. It is my impression that Putin is attempting to shift Russian culture from the era of the Marxist imposition, back to a more uniquely Russian — and Orthodox Christian– perspective.
This short story by Anton Chekhov offers a glimpse into what might have been called, in Germany, volkish Russian Christian culture:
Art
Imagine the anti-Lennon:
Imagine the Russian people once again chipping a hole in the ice to dip the cross not into urine, but into the frigid water, in order to make an ice Crucifix for their Jordan; imagine the villagers and artists joining their efforts to carve a dove out of ice.
Imagine the German people chipping away the excrescence of almost a century of demonization of their cultural icons, their Christian beliefs, to give breathing space once against to two Christian reformers, Martin Luther and then Walter Grundmann, who led a movement to discover a Jesus figure that spoke to the German spirit.
What the German and Russian people had in common was anti-Bolshevism; what can unite them going forward is revitalized authentic Christianity “each at peace under his own vine and fig tree.”
Imagine.
Capitalism in its current form that is post 18 or even post 17 century can’t claim to be a success unless we ignore the sufferings of the people of the past colonies from Ireland to Philipnes to Argentina to Niger . On an aggregated scale it has wrought more havoc than it has cured ,or corrected . Now the capitalism like the revolution is devouring its own . The middle class which is the benchmark and the yardstick to measure any political system is in disarray is in retreat,and is dying .Polemic scapegoating and atavistic behaviors – all that it can conjure up as the ticket to the good old days of 60 is the yearning to go back to the basics that never again would be permitted by the rest of the world
Capitalism based on drug enriched Britain ,empowered Britain and underwrote other developments . Today drug is a crime business that empowers the same forces that built their whole reputation and strengths on drug running few decades ago and they still undertake the drug cultivation and selling when it suits them.
Armaments ammunition and other deadly arms supply business have replaced drug as business . In America ,instead of drug it was slavery wars and now arms, , outsourcing that havecbuilt its capital.
How would the capitalism have evolved from Middle Ages without colonization,drug,slavery,and arms business ,we don’t know .
We don’t exactly know what drove socialism of Soviet to death . Was it the rigidity ? Was it corruption? Was it arms race? Was it central planning without feedback from the consumers? Was it scarcity of food supply? We don’t know also why Cuba is many time better than Haiti,Columbia, Hondurus ,El Salvador or Guatemala. N Korea is in shambles but S Korea is not .
Human being is intrinsically capitalist but that capitalism is more of Adam Smith type . Society has the character of socialism built in it but that socialism is the realm of religion, morality,ethics,collegiality ,nationalism . Industrialization changed them both.
May be we are in the throes of another revolution that would address the post Neo liberal stress we are facing .
This is irrelevant. At this point in time, we know that history can be summed up in 2 words: IQ. This is related to race, so the critical issue is to divide the low IQers from people with IQs of 90+. The economic/class arguments are second to this. This is the ideology for the 21st century. So as we historically recognize what happened in 1917, we must now start the new revolution in 2017. We can see that in 1917 a Jewish minority hijacked Russia (aided and abetted by the Western bankers). Many lessons can be learned from this for Caucasian Christian-Europagan peoples-the peoples of the West. This is the new struggle.
Winner! Winner!
New Unz record.
All the way down to #40 before we get to: dem Jews what done it.
Who chose the image with the movable toy soldiers at the beginning of this article?
Is this a parody/hoax?
It’s 2017 and impossible to tell.
The authors do not mention that under currently existing capitalism over half the world is middle class for the first time in history. World poverty is declining, not rising.
Wars are being fought by the Trotskyite/Wilsonian US political class under the banner of liberal benevolent hegemony. Nevertheless, most of the world is at peace. The Marxist FARC surrender in Columbia is not mentioned, while the failure of Socialism in Venezuela is portrayed as a failure of capitalism.
As a libertarian I am not so sure that nationalism is the solution as advocated here. But I support Putin, because a multi polar world is preferable to any one world government, whether run by the UN or by central banksters.
We live in interesting times.
Would a campaign to send dozens — hundreds — thousands of ice picks with Michael Ledeen’s name on them to Donald Trump’s White House communicate the appropriate message?
Google (numbers are correct there) Russian Constitutional Assembly 1917 or read my post above. They put the right and left SR separately, but the major separation among them happened in time of the Civil War. SR got 58% of the vote. Bolshevik – 25%.
You can google Russian Constitutional Assembly 1917 and see the result of the election.
idiotic nonsense.
libraries have lots of books.
expand your horizons.
There was no Russian Revolution. It was a Bolshevik (Jewish) coup.
ya, this guy James Traub is a breath of fetid air, still pining for Wilson and Bolshies triumphant
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/03/donald-trump-is-making-the-world-safe-for-dictators/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=FP%20Jan%204&utm_term=Flashpoints
Should someone break it to him gently or use the sledgehammer approach to tell him he’s living in the past, his day is past, his tribe’s century is over.
Even Andy Warhol had the good sense to put his tchotchkes in storage.
I agree, see my comment # 35 above. Also,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution From there:
And ironic to learn then Lenin and co. was financed by “rich white men” like Olof Aschberg and some others but the commies might said it was a urban legend.
https://archive.is/bB572
http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/10/wall-street-and-the-november-1917-bolshevik-revolution/
http://www.wildboar.net/multilingual/easterneuropean/russian/literature/articles/whofinanced/whofinancedleninandtrotsky.html
From Wiki entry on Socialist Revolutionary Party:
The intention was to widen the concept of the ‘people’ so that it encompassed all elements in society that opposed the Tsarist regime.
SR got 58% of the vote. Bolshevik – 25%.
That’s 83% of the vote against aristocracy, not counting the other minor socialist/revolutionary parties.
The election of 1917 is billed as the only free election.
Again, from Wiki:
As it turned out, this would be the last even partially free election held in Russia until the 1990 republic election.
My point is that you can’t use the election of 1917 to “legitimize” the aristocracy or to “de-legitimize” the Bolsheviks.
The Bolsheviks seized power and did away with any democratic opposition. They actually received 24-25% of the vote in 1917.
When the Tsars set themselves in power centuries ago, what % of the vote did they get?
This is a joke, right? You started off saying that the Bolsheviks got 24% of the vote, which they got in 1917, not 1912. Then someone asks how much of the vote the Right got (presumably meaning in 1917), and you give a link to the results of the 1912 election, not the 1917 one. Are you always this much of a pathological liar?
One of the basic misconceptions in the west – thanks primarily to American propaganda – is that October Revolution in Russia happened because of some kind of inherent evil on the part of the Russians aspiring to destroy the world with communism. Nothing can be further from the truth. Russia never wanted to destroy western civilization with communism. They always admired the west and tried to emulate their civilizational achievements. The reason why they always lagged behind the new western civilizational trends was the Mongol yoke which set them back some 200 years behind Europe and they’ve been playing catch up ever since.
When the ideas of communism started flowing in the west in the mid 19th century, the Russians thought that this is going to be the new direction that the western civilization will take. Being tired of always following the lead from the west, this time they decided to jump ahead and follow from the front for change. But instead of jumping ahead, they simply jumped the gun. The expected communist takeover of the world – at least the developed one, never happened and Russia found itself pretty much isolated and mistrusted.
It really is tragic, the only time that they decided to take the lead, turned out to be a mistake. Marx was probably right when he said that the evolution into communism should first happen in the most developed capitalist countries. It seems logical, you move to the next socio-economic system after reaching the pinnacle in the previous one. Perhaps this time the Russians would have done better waiting for communism to arrive first in the most developed countries and then follow and learn from their experiences.
It still might happen – the progression into communism, but probably it won’t be via a world-wide revolution. It might be a gradual process, where more and more socialist elements start flourishing on the decaying corpse of capitalism. Sort of what was happening in Scandinavia, still capitalism but with very strong socialist elements. It does look like the days of pure capitalism are numbered. We live on a fragile planet, and the system which can prosper only with constant expansion of exploitation of resources and which requires frequent refueling from needless wars cannot be allowed to have a future if we are to have any future.
Manufacturing workers, who were Marx’s principal concern, now compose less than 15% of those in work. They now have to support a large welfare class as well as a large state salariat. Many of the companies they work for have offshored factories, reducing employment for home manufacturing workers.
They need a national solution to their problems – one which stops, indeed reverses offshoring, and removes the burden of parasitic welfare and salariat groups. This will not be achieved by any “Socialist Revolution. ”
It is not about Bolsheviks against The Aristocracy. It is about Bolsheviks against SR. The point is – SR won the election to The Constitutional Assembly. Bolsheviks started revolution against SR – not against Aristocracy. Aristocracy, or rather pro-establishment forces, had their revolution in summer 1917 under leadership of Kornilov – it was crashed quite easy.
This is plain Western propaganda. Russia never lagged behind, as social reforms of Ivan IV, and later tzars were most advanced social projects and experiments on the planet. Just think of establishing a couple of new social classes, or the government system from scratch, by the ruler’s decree, somewhere in renaissance Europe. In Russia, cruelty and mass executions by Henry VIII, pyres of inquisition or Bartholomew’s day massacre were unthinkable and perceived like barbaric and pagan cruelty by contemporary thinkers. Russian gunpowder and iron were best in Europe long before Peter the Great, etc. Russia was less inhabited and lacked the western primary accumulation of capital, because it never enslaved or pillaged other-colored nations and whole continents like Europeans. On the other hand, due to Russia keeping the Mongols and Turks in check, Europe was allowed to prosper.
The Great October Revolution was only a step of Russia getting its true magnitude in consciousness – being and thinking of itself not as part of a decaying, post-Christian West, but a as a major civilization, the only Way and the only hope for the rest of the world. Those who ‘admire the West’ made no progress in Russian development, and look miserable today.
There were no Mongol yoke or Mongol conquest of Central Russia. The story is fabricated. Morden genetics prove it very simple. Russians have no y-haplogroup C. Russian haplogroup N also of European subclade – not Siberian. Tatar N also European. By the way, Tatars moved to Volga river from South – not from East. If you compare Tatar genetics and Russian genetics to, for example Italians – Tatar genetically closer to Italians than Russians to Italians. The same about French. Particular remarkable that the genetic researches of last twenty years fit much better to Fomenko version of History than to, so called, traditional.
First ever regular Mongolian Army was created by Soviet general Rokossovsky.
> This reads like a parody.
The parts that I scanned surely did, but at 4,200 turgid words, it’s tl,dr.
The mises.org piece that ‘Chris’ (#10) recommends has this summary:
I suppose that makes Maltsev a wrecker and a parasite, standing as he does athwart the inevitable progress of scientific socialism under the inspired guidance of the rightful heirs of our Dear Leader, Leon Trotsky.
What garbage. Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great were responsible for many thousands of deaths, unlike Henry VIII who mainly predated some of his court circle, not the general populace.
The Bolshevik Revolution and Communist rule nearly resulted in the demise of Russian Civilisation. 10 or 20 years more rule would have brought disaster. And it was the Bolsheviks who “admired the West.” Marxism is a Western European import, all the way from London Town via Germany.
Russian living standards and technological level have always been below that of Western Europe, certainly since the Later Middle Ages. The differences are less now that Russia has industrialised and urbanised.
A sensible Russian Government should follow policies that are beneficial for the Russian People – not the World Proletariat – and respect Russian Civilisation – not promote World Revolution. V V Putin, for all his faults, seems to be doing just that.
Cheers!
I think I understand the basic outlines which is why I wrote:
The Bolsheviks seized power and did away with any democratic opposition.
Yes and no.
AK pooh-poohed working class support for socialism by writing this:
The uprising of the Russian working class, aka Bolshevik rule, rallied precisely 24% of the Russian population
I wrote:
What % of the Russian population voted to continue being ruled by a semi-feudal autocratic dynasty?
AK wrote:
A considerably larger one.
We all know this is incorrect.
AK has no more use for the SR than he does the Bolsheviks.
AK supports the aristocracy. I just wanted to make it clear that he couldn’t use the 1917 election to bolster his argument.
We don’t know what would have happened if the Bolsheviks had not seized power.
We do know that they did away with the aristocratic ruling class.
The year is clearly given in both the hyperlink and the title.
My point was that 1917 was a year when electoral preferences veered sharply left, yet even so, the Bolsheviks still only managed 24% – far less than what what the Right and nationalists got in 1912, a “normal” year.
I think the whole concept of an international working class revolution is just another example of Marxism being incompatible with human nature. People most identify with and feel loyalty towards others of the same race, ethnicity, religion, language, customs, etc. The idea that the Russian factory worker would identify more with the French or German factory worker than with other Russians in different occupations? Humans are not like that.
The best situation for the working class might actually be in a homogeneous nation-state. It’s often been said that the famously generous Scandinavian welfare states are only possible because of the ethnic homogeneity. People don’t mind paying the high taxes because it’s like you’re just helping out your big extended family. Also, whatever else you can say about National Socialist Germany, the way I understand it they actually did deliver a decent standard of living for the working class.
Conversely, I also think that when the capitalist class is predominantly of a different ethnic group than the majority, that’s when you can get a more exploitive form of capitalism. It’s easier to not care as much about people of another group – human nature again. This is apparently the situation in some Southeast Asian countries with the rich Chinese minorities.
The “right wing” has had an IMMENSE problem with its ability to diagnose. The farrago of cultural Marxist propaganda hasn’t helped. We can leave discussions of its prescriptions to another time.
Marxists are clear and straightforward in their thinking and analysis, from my experience. A lot of cultural conservatives simply have no concept that their enemies hate them and want to destroy them.
Thanks to pushing identity politics, that has started to change.
If describing Russia in 1917 as “semi-feudal” is already somewhat ahistorical then this takes it into the realms of absurdity.
That said, to answer the question anyway, the first Romanov was voted in unanimously by a land assembly, as such things were done back then.
The “median” point of public sentiment prior to the war was approximately between as-is (Right and nationalists) and constitutional monarchy (Octobrists). That median point shifted radically left by 1917, yet even so it remained firmly in non-Bolshevik terroritory, corresponding to the positions of the Social Revolutionaries, and of their main (“Right SRs”) faction – aka basically the equivalents of European social democrats – in particular.
Quite a vision. Before the disaster of the second 30 years’ war from 1914-1945, Russia was industrializing and integrating into the German capital structure. The Anglo-American empire would not have had an easy time contesting with a Russo-Teutonic order.
Makes Kaiser Wilhelm one of the worst people to have ruled a nation. Had the Drei Kaiser Bund held, we would be living in a different world.
After Lenin’s death the Bolshevik left, led by Trotsky, wanted a foreign policy based on “exporting revolution”, which risked involving the Soviet Union in the miseries of a foreign war, and a domestic policy of collectivization/de-kulakization, certain to cause mass-misery in the countryside. (A program more antithetical to the slogan “Land, peace, bread” is difficult to imagine.) Kamenev and Zinoviev adhered to the left position. The Bolshevik right, led by Bukharin, advocated a foreign policy based on “socialism in one country” and a domestic policy based on the continuation of the NEP. In essence, the right policy was designed to give rural Russians and Ukrainians a reprieve from the miseries inflicted upon them during the civil war. Stalin adopted a centrist position which enabled him to play the right and left factions off against each other, and thus consolidate his own power. Once this was acheived, Stalin proceeded to implement the domestic policy advocated by Trotsky and the foreign policy advocated by Bukharin. Of Lenin’s 5 most important successors, therefore, all three Jews supported the cruel left position, the Russian supported the humane right position and the non-Russian/non-Jew supported a position between these two extremes.
From Wiki:
However, Nicholas II was determined to retain his autocratic power (in which he succeeded). On April 23, 1906 (O.S.), the Tsar issued the Fundamental Laws, which gave him the title of “supreme autocrat”. Although no law could be made without the Duma’s assent, neither could the Duma pass laws without the approval of the noble-dominated State Council (half of which was to be appointed directly by the Tsar), and the Tsar himself retained a veto.
I don’t know what the suffrage was for the 1905 election was, in light of the above, I don’t think that it matters all that much.
I hit a nerve again with IQ and getting past the left/right divide. In 1917 a tiny minority (Jewish) took over a European Christian country with help from Western bankers. There are books and youtubes on this. I suggest you look them up and read/watch them. An ethnic minority/majority of any kind in a foreign land will be hostile to the indigenous peoples. So we know that much. Next IQ. In 2017 we are dealing with black/Asian/Muslim invasions. These are supported by the Roman Catholic Church, Zioevangizers and Jews. These are facts. So in 2017 we need to deal with racial/IQ realities. The most important thing learned from the Bolshevik takeover is that it was dominated by Jews-hostile to Orthodox Russians. Today there is no right-left divide, it is race/IQ. We saw it in Russia and we see it today. What is required is action from Caucasian/European Christian/Europagan peoples to get rid of our present day “Jews.”
Completely ignores who voted for Trump.
“Trotskyists are political parasites of the lowest order, and Stalin’s purge of them is one of the few things I’d be perfectly happy to toast him for.”
Yeah, and he set the example for “droning,” in Mexico City in 1940.
I’ve thought that for a long time, and although I loathe the dude and the fact that FDR appeased and supported the monster, I agree that he at least got that right.
“right wing working class revolt” prompts a question just a bit OT.
Was the support for the Nazis proportionately greater amongst the blue collar working class or amongst some, and which, parts of the middle class? In 1933? In 1938? In 1943?
And how did they respectively rate as 1. Anti-semites; 2. Homicidal anyi-semites?
Where have you been this last 40 years? Hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty!
If you rig the elections, you can get any result that you want.
This article reveals all the downsides of ideological thinking. It mocks Fukuyama’s End of History theory but is trapped in its own ideological straitjacket. I mean Communism is so dead. And Marx was wrong for the simple fact that it’s a fool’s errand to try to predict the distant future. Marx failed to see how capitalism would change and would produce new revolutions that would change class dynamics. I mean who among us can accurately predict what the world will be like in 2100?
To better understand history, we need to move away from ideology and think more freely. Also, what thinkers, activists, and leaders often say mask what they really mean.
First, the article blames the failure of the USSR totally on Stalin. It says the Trotskyite line was the correct one. In other words, communism/socialism must be international than national. But when we look at Trotskyitism more closely, it was not about internationalism but German-ism. Trotsky had contempt for the Russian masses. He saw them as useless, lazy, and backward. He admired the Germans who were industrious and capable and had already constructed a modern industrial society. So, his so-called ‘internationalism’ was really a fixation on Germany.
When Russia turned communist, it was not due to any Marxist prophecy. Marx said communism would first happen in advanced capitalist nations with a large proletariat. He hoped it would happen in UK, US, or Germany first. But no revolution happened there. Also, the ONLY reason Russia turned communist was because of the power vacuum created by WWI. If Russia had stayed out of that war, there would have been series of reforms than a radical revolution.
Anyway, when Russia turned communist, there was one huge problem. Russia was semi-industrial, with the majority of people being farmers. Marx said communism would follow and inherit the rise of capitalism. In Russia, a modern industrialized state had yet to be created. According to Marxism, communists would just inherit the economic bounty created by capitalism. Even as Marx denounced capitalism, he admired it as the most revolutionary, productive, and transformative force in human history. Only capitalism could create the modern industrial state via the enterprise of the bourgeoisie. But he predicted that capitalism would eventually fail due to its contradictions, and when the bourgeoisie fell from power, the proletariat would inherit the great wealth.
Things were different in Russia because most Russians were dirt poor peasants. They had no industrial society to inherit. So, Soviet communism had to BUILD a modern industrial state.
This is what troubled Trotsky. The communist revolution first took place in Russia, but it was not an ideal nation for communist revolution because its capitalist development was incomplete. And that was what Trotsky’s ‘internationalism’ was about. Trotsky was really fixated on Germany, a real industrial-capitalist economy where the majority of the people were working class or middle class of urban centers. Trotsky thought that unless the revolution spread to Germany, it would fail because Russia was too backward and because Russians were too lazy, drunk, ignorant, barbaric, and ‘asiatic’. Trotksy’s ‘internationalism’ focused almost entirely on winning over Germany to the revolution. Trotsky didn’t much care about spreading revolution to Greece, Turkey, or Persia. It was all about the German fixation.
But as events turned out, communist fire simply didn’t catch outside Russia. There was a brief communist putsch in Germany, but it soon burned out. Communists had Hungary for awhile, but it failed there too. Poles hated communism. Indeed, all Eastern European nations preferred right-wing nationalism over communism that was largely led by Jews and radicals who destroyed churches and committed mass murder with secret police. And Trotksy was all for the secret police and rule by terror. He was agreed with Stalin in the use of ruthless terror to maintain communism.
Anyway, because the Soviets failed to win over Germany, Stalin came up with a different line, the only pragmatic one at the time. He felt that Russia should stop wasting time and energy on trying to win over other nations to communism. It simply wasn’t working. If anything, the Soviet effort was making other nations only more anti-communist and only more hostile to Moscow They saw it as a foreign-Russian-Jewish-Bolshevik menace.
So, Stalin figured that the right course of action is to build socialism in one country first. And he figured this was possible in the Russian Empire called the Soviet Union since it was huge, had lots of people(as fodder for new industry), and tremendous natural resources. Even if all the capitalist, reactionary, Islamic, and Asian nations encircled and tried to strangle the Soviet Union, it could survive because it was a world unto itself. When US stopped selling iron and oil, Japan couldn’t carry on with its empire. But the USSR had immense territory, natural resources, and people. The Soviet Empire could not only survive encirclement by hostile nations/empires but build its own industry. And Stalin went about doing this, and at tremendous human cost, he built an industrial giant. On the eve of WWII, USSR had more industry than Germany. Stalin figured building socialism in one country first was preferable to squandering Soviet time and energy on spreading communism in nations that didn’t want communism and saw it as alien menace. Indeed, communism never caught on Europe outside Russia. Even Finland with lots of radical leftists didn’t turn communist. The ONLY reason Eastern Europe turned communist was by Soviet Invasion as the Germans failed in their Russian campaign. But even then, Eastern Europeans hated Russian-Soviet domination and revitalized nationalism to roll back communism. Eastern Europe remained communist until 1989 only because of Soviet tanks. Once Gorbachev told Eastern Europe to go its own way, every nation dropped communism like a hot potato.
Another thing. Despite much romanticization of Trotksy as the ‘humane communist’, he was no less ruthless than Stalin. Just ask the Kronsdadt Sailors. Also, it’s generally agreed that Stalin’s greatest crime was the Great Famine that resulted from forced collectivization of agriculture. Trotsky in exile, despite his animosity to Stalin, fully endorsed the policy and, if anything, complained that Stalin didn’t go far enough. So, when it came to sacrificing human lives for the revolution, Trotsky was no different from Stalin. He was surely a first-rank intellectual who wrote interesting essays about history, art, literature, and etc. but he was a hardline radical just the same.
Also, the great tragedy of the 20th century is the failure of fascism and national socialism as they held the better promise for mankind. Mussolini was once a radical leftist syndicalist, but he came to his senses and chose nationalism. He also decided that it’s better to find compromise between tradition and modernity, between church and secular power, between the owner class and working class. He came to understand that there is no single formula for utopia. He came to value Italian heritage and culture. He cared about the workers, but he understood that economy is better run by those who can do business.
When we compare Italian Fascism and Soviet communism, the former comes across as more humane in every way. Mussolini, though an atheist, made a compromise with the church. In contrast, Soviets committed mass-killings and mass destruction of churches. Mussolini did have a squad of goons, but their violence was minuscule compared to horror shows carried out by Lenin and Bela Kun. Also, most of Mussolini’s victims were sent on exile than killed or sent to forced labor camps.
Mussolini did invade Africa, but he was aping British and French imperialists who held most of the world. The fatal flaw of Italian Fascism was the cult of the Duce. Italians became so enthralled with Duce’s charisma that they followed him even he made the fatal alliance with Hitler the pathological nut. Anyway, Italian Fascism was not a racial-supremacist ideology, and it had a large number of Jews.
National Socialism, like Italian Fascism, sought to find the Third Way between right and left, capitalists and workers, tradition and modernity. And it did lots of good things, and Germany from 1933 to 1939 was infinitely more humane than USSR. The number of victims were in the 1,000s, if that. In contrast, by 1939, the USSR had already killed millions. But National Socialism had its own fatal flaw. The cult of mighty leader made Germans mindlessly obedient to Hitler, just like Russians worshiped Stalin and Chinese later did with Mao. Such cult-worship is always dangerous, especially as megalomaniacal leaders tend to be pathological. Also, Hitler, unlike Mussolini and Franco, believed in a radical racist theory that was truly frightening. As long as National Socialism remained inside Germany, it was Germany for Germans, and it did little harm to anyone unless one was Jewish. But once Nazi Germany turned imperialist and invaded nations inhabited by people deemed to be inferior, it was bound to create hell on earth.
But here’s the thing. If National Socialism had been more like Italian Fascism and Ataturkian nationalism — no radical racist ideology — , it could have worked, indeed very well. In contrast, communism was bound to fail because the idea of state monopoly of everything — economy, education, media, land, culture, etc — was too much. It didn’t allow for pluralism and went against the nature of man.
But if there was one good thing about communism, it was the idea of favoring community over individual vanity. For this reason, the social and national ethos of communist nations remained more conservative and patriotic than in Western Liberal Democracies where hedonism, narcissism, nihilism, egotism, and eternal-youthism became the main modes of thought and behavior.
Also, we cannot overlook the ethnic factor in the developments of the 20th century. Whether it’s communism or capitalism, there will be ethnic imbalances of power because different groups have different talents. Consider the Jews. Because of their higher IQ and ambition, early Bolshevism was largely dominated by Jewish figures. It’s like what Yuri Slezkine writes in THE JEWISH CENTURY. So, even though communism was about the brotherhood of man, such ethnic imbalances did lead to suspicion and resentment.. and eventually anti-Jewish measures in the communist world. This was especially so after Zionist Socialists, despite support from the USSR, decided to throw in their lot with capitalist US. Soviets figured that if Jewish Socialists were given a choice between Jewish Identity and Universal Socialism, they will opt for the former. So, Stalin turned especially anti-Jewish after Israel leaned to the US.
But we see the same thing in the capitalist West. Jewish capitalists have different interests than Iranian capitalists who have different interests than Saudi capitalists who have different interests than Turkish interests. In the US, Jewish-American capitalists use their immense wealth and power to steer US toward agendas that favor Jewish power and Israel. Black capitalists care more about black identity and interests. And Muslim-American capitalists resent Jewish-American capitalist power that did so much harm to the Middle East.
While capitalism, via globalism, has done much to weaken national and cultural bonds, it is still used by dominant ethnic groups to favor their own interests over others. Notice how AIPAC, funded by rich Jews, apply pressure on all US politicians to pledge to Israel.
Also, due to racial differences, we are gonna see differences of result even in a free world. Look at the US where all peoples are protected by the Constitution and rule of law. But different races have different rates of success and failure in different fields. It’s been said a Jewish guy is more likely to own a NFL team than play in one. Blacks, being less intelligent and more impulsive, tend to do less well in school. But they excel in sports because they are naturally more muscular and can beat up white guys. And they dominate pop music because they have louder voices and faster dance rhythms.
East Asians do well in education but lose out in sports and pop culture cuz of their lack of color. And Mexicans in America tend to remain in menial jobs because they have mediocre talents.
Now, socialist ideologues will stick to dogma, pretend all people are the same, that ‘race is just a social construct’, and etc. They will stick to the fantasy that the world would have been SAVED if USSR had stuck with Trotsky than with Stalin.
But that is ideological thinking. It lacks the courage and integrity to deal with the world and humanity as they really are.
What the world is neo-fascism. Old Fascism failed because of cult of the great leader. That led to blind obedience. Such blindness will fail whether the leader is Hitler or Mao. Germany blindly obeying Hitler failed in WWII. Chinese blindly obeying Mao failed with Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
So, neo-fascism must be leery of cult of personality.
Also, neo-fascism must steer clear of radical theories like Hitler’s Aryan theory. While races do exist and racial differences are real — for example, blacks are physically tougher and more aggressive, and that is the reason why most racial violence in America is black on non-black — , every race should have the right to survive and flourish in its own homeland without imperialist domination by others.
In other words, the Vietnamese and Algerians were right to drive out the French imperialists who imposed forced Diversity on their homelands. But likewise, the European patriots must repel and expel all those Muslim and African invaders. Diversity is the product of imperialism and invasion. Look at Latin America. All that diversity is the result of invasion, slavery, and imperialism.
Just as Europeans had no right to invade and rule other peoples, other peoples have no right to invade and displace Europeans in their own homelands
Imperialism is wrong whether whites direct it at non-whites or non-whites direct it at whites.
Anyway, neo-fascism is the only hope since fascism in the truest sense is anti-radical. Libertarianism is a radicalism that only prizes the individual. Communism is a radicalism that only prizes the collective.
But fascism is an effort to interweave different themes and concerns into a rich fabric. After all, the German experiment was called ‘national socialism’. It showed that nationalism, socialism, and capitalism could co-exist. The fatal flaw was that Hitler and his most radical cronies turned into racial-supermacist imperialism. Had National Socialism stuck to its original vision of Germany for Germans, it wouldn’t have done any harm to its neighbors. After all, Ataturk the Turkish quasi-fascist was for Turkey minding its own business. As such, Turkey played no role in the craziness of WWII. It’s too bad Hitler wasn’t like Ataturk. Then, history would have been very different.
Not unlike present day America !
Maybe not.
The Tsar didn’t have Executive Orders to drone American and others at will anywhere in the world. Or bomb Libya and Syria just because he wanted to.
Obviously, the Tsar was a constitutional ruler and the POTUS PETAST Obama isn’t.
I don’t know what the suffrage was for the 2o12 election, in the light of the above, I don’t think that it matters all that much.
TOUCHE !
Apart from other problems your Mongolian explanation for Russian backwardness compared to the rest of Europe doesn’t stack up when you pose your 200 years against the time other countries have taken to modernise: Japan, South Korea, China just for recent examples. If you argued that the Russian ruling class response to Mongol invasion may have had something to do with perpetuating feudalism and other primitive ways you might have a point. The competitive polities and institutions of the West freed up creativity and enterprise whereas Russian institutions did not.
Bravo, excellent article and analysis of the current situation. Most of the folks here have no clue what they are talking about. Capitalism has become the very threat to humanity survival..
Interesting perspective but still, like most commenters anywhere on anything, you omit the great demographic revolution of the 20th century. Thanks to 2 million Germans and 5 million Russians being born in 1913 lebensraum still looked important till the 1940s. If we really used our secular brains we would have been paying Africans to educate their girls and not to have more than 2 babies – and then not as teenagers… We haven’t fully recognised the big change – indeed have,collectively, hardly recognised ot at all.
Ethnic minority ” will be hostile to the indigenoue people”? British in India? Manchus in China? You need to refine your analysis.
Thanks Sergey, Follow us at wsws.org, and contact us if you want to join.
@with help from Western bankers
And, lo and behold, those bankers were Jewish too!
It would be tedious to try and work out how you define the “capitalism” that you think so ill of by reference to the article you are commenting on. So please just tell us what your “capitalism” is and, in particular, what ate its threatening features not shared by your favoured alternative.
Are you denying there’s “mass poverty?” I haven’t and won’t deny that more people now live at the level of income (10K per capita a year) where money begins to lose its marginal attractiveness. According to this article, “the global median income is just $1,225 a year, meaning that the world’s emerging middle classes are very far from reaching a level of wealth which would make them well-off by western standards.”
I’d say 50% of the planet, over 3.6 billion people, making less than $4 a day is “mass poverty.” What term would you use?
Yes, a global perspective would have made for a different outcome. Note that we STILL seem to want to pick fights with the Russians while demographic waves threaten to overturn both boats.
Of course, Germany has 25x the population density of Russia, and is FAR above Namibia and a lot of African nations. 4 Billion Africans looks like a lot crammed into tiny Europe, but there’s a lot of room for them in Africa. Perhaps the West ought to restrict making itself more crowded until Africa reaches the density of Germany?
Given the numbers and the VAST land area of the Russian Federation, there was plenty of Lebensraum for ALL the Germans and Russians. Making the whole killing fest even more tragic.
I vote for comedy. Marx wrote that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. I think it was he anyway. Maybe somebody knows his raferents.
1917 had a large racial character with the jews running out the Germans who were a large part of the Russian bureaucracy, and of course their attacks on the church. Anti-White and anti-Christian. Thus, like the French Revolution there was significant race conflict as well as democratic lunacy unleashed. Jews hate everybody. That is a simple enough thesis.
The First Time meaning perhaps 1789, the second time as 1917, and now being the farce of Racial Equality Now! and its armies of the night attacking human nature’s Inequality, individual, and racial.
I am interested in discovering what Solon did with his first laws that brought some social and political peace to the Greeks in the 6th century. Something to do with the establishment of maybe 6 social categories of people/Greeks?. Lawful discrimination having to do with quality…. anyhow to stop class warfare. Six classes or castes.
Of course, now we got race warfare, which will never be settled except by force with any settlement demanding absolute submission/subaltern status of coloreds. Or else they are relocated or subjected to warfare.
1789 on its last couple decades, moribund. I will send along a WSJ review of France.
Joe Webb
WSJ , Dec 31-Jan 1, 2017, page C7. Prisoners of their own Heritage..( a book ,., on France and it’s 1789 Impossible dream, which is falling apart fast )
French history, more than any other western country, because 1789 happened there, is a continual unraveling of The Democratic Revolution, which enshrined Equality and Fraternity and, what was the other one?? O yeah, Liberty which is today expressed thru No Free Speech for racists, or holocaust deniers.
“The author reiterates how, since the Revolution, France’s history has been enmeshed in almost continuous violence, both political and civil….from revolution to terror. He calls the political class “feckless” with regard to the current terrorism. (My mother liked to use the word ‘ineffectual’ in her often repeated attacks on men.
“The demands of an evolving borderless world have not yet forced the French to adapt.” Say what? He mentions nothing in regard to this statement. Does he mean guns at the border, or what? He continues with France “…as the European power with the most ethnically diverse population of the region. He further states that the “rewriting of history..in textbooks, in popular literature, and later in film..” has been a prominent feature of French culture. (Culture Again. as in lies repeated over and over.)
As a result of decolonization, “…The French have become prisoners of the heritage of their past…With the largest Arab, the largest African, the largest Jewish and one of the largest Asian populations in Europe.” This is all particularly…” “ironic”….as the “human rights” principle is sooooo French..
Jewish? Now that is funny. An oversight I am sure…a slip of the unconscious…seeing jews as Others?
More…
“In an admirable effort to remove religion and its institutions from politics….{it has achieved secularization but} it has handled clumsily the ethnic and religious diversity that now defines the nation. Rather than draw on that human potential [secularization ] to create a new idea of “Frenchness [ note ‘human potential’ and ‘new idea’ ..so French…Ideas like Equality, etc] a vestigial stubbornness remains among both progressive and conservative Frenchmen. It illegal to ask officialially what ethnic group one belongs to {born in France you’re French]…But the popular–and thus often political–conception of Frenchness is so shackled by history that this regulation, rather than inspiring a sense of equality, has effectively marginalized those who don’t “look French.” Ho ho ho…Whiteness Again. Nature, not Ideas and Words.
Phenotype trumps all the Human Rights, Dignity of Man, Words, words, words of the Equality Warriors. What people look like is Race. Race is the Natural World’s contribution to, you could say Diversity, or better, Variety of Experiments to assure a future for homo sapiens. Just like genetic diversity in plants and animals. Just in case of Words morphing into monsters…which is what we got now.
The author concludes with lots of Words that should triumph over Genes, (a word that does not appear in the piece). We need to ” reconfigure one’s sense of what being a 21st century nation entails.” 1789 Reconfigured the world…and its Democratic Revolution, if you include communism, has murdered over 100 million folks. Trotsky to Pol Pot to Mao, and counting. MLK will be added to the list when the Darkies start their killing…of course, they already have. Globalism reconfigures the world, turns it into a Big Mac, Apple maul. (Now jewboy revolutionary from Facebook want to run for president. Or bitch Megan Kelly, the most hated gal at Fox News. The White Oprah.)
Oh,the capitalist globalist pigs talk 1789…equality , fraternity, liberty, Free Trade. Lies as Terror. Step out of line….the guillotine waits for you.
Joe Webb
and here is Pat Buchanan with some political science, not political fantasy. JW
Is Liberal Democracy an Endangered Species?
Pat Buchanan, American Renaissance, January 6, 2017
“European peoples are largely fleeing from the future America preaches and promises.”
“As we begin 2017, the most urgent threat to liberal democracy is not autocracy,” writes William Galston of The Wall Street Journal, “it is illiberal democracy.”
Galston’s diagnosis is not wrong, and his alarm is not misplaced.
Yet why does America’s great export, liberal democracy, which appeared to be the future of the West if not of mankind at the Cold War’s end, now appear to be a church with a shrinking congregation?
Why is liberal democracy losing its appeal?
A front-page story about France’s presidential election, in the same day’s Journal, suggests an answer.
In the final round next May, the French election is likely to come down to a choice of Marine Le Pen or Francois Fillon.
Le Pen is the “let France be France” candidate of the National Front. Fillon is a traditionalist Catholic from northwest France, home to the martyred resistance of the Revolution — the legendary Vendee.
Fillon won practicing and nonpracticing Catholics alike by a landslide, and took 3 in 5 votes of those professing other faiths.
Le Pen wants France to secede from the EU and move closer to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The five million Arabs and Muslims currently in France, the prospective arrival of millions more, and recent Islamic terrorist atrocities have all propelled her candidacy.
Fillon succeeded in his primary by identifying himself as a man of Catholic beliefs and values and an opponent of same-sex marriage and abortion. He does not repudiate secularism, but believes that the France that was “the eldest daughter of the church” should also be heard.
Together, what do the Le Pen and Fillon candidacies tell us?
France and Europe may be moving inexorably away from a liberal democratic, de-Christianized and militantly secularist America. If we are the future, less and less do France and Europe appear to want that future.
While our elites welcome the Third World immigration that is changing the face of America, France and Europe are recoiling from and reacting against it. The French wish to remain who and what they are, a land predominantly of one language, one culture, one people.
America preaches that all religions are equal and should be treated equally. France does not seem to share that liberal belief. And just as the Middle East seems to want no more churches or Christians, France and Europe appear to want no more mosques or Muslims.
Where America’s elites may celebrate same-sex marriage and “reproductive rights,” more and more Europeans are identifying with the social values of Putin’s Russia. Pro-Putin parties are surging in Europe. Pro-America parties have been facing losses and defections.
“Because human beings are equal, any form of ethnocentrism that denies their equality must be rejected,” writes Galston.
That may well be what liberal democracy commands.
But the 24 nations that emerged from the disintegration of the USSR, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were all built on ethnonational foundations — Croatia and Serbia, Estonia and Latvia, Georgia and Armenia, Azerbaijan and Moldova.
And was it not their unique ethnic identities that caused South Ossetia and Abkhazia to break free of Georgia?
Indeed, if what America has on offer is a liberal democracy of 325 million, which is multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual, which celebrates its “diversity,” then where in Europe can one find a great party preaching this as the future their country and continent should embrace?
European peoples are largely fleeing from the future America preaches and promises.
Europe’s nations are rising up against what liberal democracy has produced in the USA.
Galston contends correctly that, “few leaders and movements in the West dare to challenge the idea of democracy itself.”
True, so far. But worldwide, Caesarism appears on the march.
Russia, China, Turkey, Egypt and the Philippines exemplify the new popularity of the strongman state. Western liberals initially cheered the Arab Spring, but what it produced curbed their enthusiasm. Free elections in Palestine and Lebanon produced victories for Hamas and Hezbollah.
Though Galston chastises the Polish and Hungarian governments as illiberal democracies, they seem to remain popular at home.
What, then, does the future hold?
The present crisis of Europe has been produced by the migration of tens of millions of Third World peoples never before assimilated in any European nation, and by the pollution and poisoning of these nations’ traditional culture.
This has caused millions to recoil and declare: If this is what liberal democracy produces, then to hell with it.
And if Europe is moving away from what America has become and has on offer, what is there to cause Europeans to turn around and re-embrace liberal democracy? Why not try something else?
In Brexit, the English were voting against the diverse liberal democracy that their capital of Londonistan had become.
Donald Trump’s victory represented a rejection of Barack Obama’s America. And whether he succeeds, what is there to cause America to look back with nostalgia on the America Obama came to represent?
Our Founding Fathers believed that democracy represented the degeneration of a republic; they feared and loathed it, and felt that it was the precursor of dictatorship. They may have been right again.
thanks Pat
“Third Rome”?
Carthage?
“the barbarian kingdoms of the past”
and
“…the only Empire that should stand until the end of times”
I’m guessing: the Aeneid; Zeus’s promise to Aphrodite?
That where this is coming from?
amirite?
Well, although it’s absolutely true that many hundreds of millions worldwide have been lifted out of poverty over the last few decades, the claim is actually a bit misleading. Here’s a relevant paragraph from a 2012 article of mine:
https://www.unz.com/runz/chinas-rise-americas-fall/
So world poverty has totally collapsed in China but gone up (slightly) everywhere else.
Now since China is still nominally Communist, I suppose people focused on the main topic of this article can debate about whether or not such very good results can be at least partially chalked up to that residual doctrine.
Thank you for this, Ron, and for the excellent site. I had a sense that more people were not poor than ever before, but that with population growth, there were perhaps more poor people than ever, also.
Is India still the jewel in the crown of the British Empire or did Ghandi do something about this? Yet, we are supposed to import low wage Indian workers into the West.
I have no interest in China.
Romanov dynasty and aristocratic ruling class lost power after February Revolution. That is why provisional government was created. It was supposed to work until Constitutional Assembly would create a new state power. In time of Bolshevik Revolution, socialists and liberals had already enough authority. Situation was complicated because of the war.
Garbage is your propaganda ‘per’version of history. Even BBC history site estimates between 57,000 and 72,000 were executed by Henry VIII – from sack of the monasteries to hungry peasants he hanged on the trees after dispossessing them. Almost any beggar or catholic could be be hanged during his reign. Ivan IV is so far from this, for he was the ‘Terrible’ only for Tatars he defeated, a couple of Boyar families and Westerners jealous for his might. When compared to contemporary Tudors and Valois, he seems a pacifist and most kind monarch in Europe. You are mistaken seriously on the living standards too. Russian peasants were far less exploited, being wealthiest and cleanest in Europe. When Russians entered Baltic states and Poland, they despised dirty local populace (like plica polonica, and estonians dwelling as cattle). Even Black Death of 1348 caused little mortality in Russia due to high hygienic standards (communal baths, access to food, decent clothing). Almost any Russian ambassador was shocked observing Western European communities, and Peter the Great after visiting France said ‘their arts are just fine, but Paris stinks’ (literally, referring to the smell).
Russian have their own Plekhanovs, Bakunins and Kropotkin, that helped revolutionize Europe before Marx and created the class of revolutionairies. With Lenin and Stalin, who needs Marx?
We argued about this on Russia Insider, hence no sense to continue.
Here is my final theory about how capitalism might face its demise – at least the American version of it. Picture this – it is 1929, the great depression, capitalism is on the verge of collapse. Plus the Russians set the dangerous precedent with their revolution only 12 years before.
Capitalists are getting scared that people in the slums might get some ideas as a result of that Revolution, so Roosevelt introduces the New Deal – pure socialism as far as the die-hard capitalist are concerned. They can never forgive the Russians for this – for forcing them to accept a bare minimum of socialist reforms, but they still portray the whole thing as pure altruism on their part – a great love for the working class.
The “socialist” reforms seem to be working, revolution is averted, and capitalism is slowly recovering, but it only fully recovers with the start of ww2. What conclusion do the capitalists drew from this? You need little bit of socialism and a lot of war to make sure that the capitalism not only survives but thrives. You need war to keep demand for goods that otherwise would probably not be needed – war creates business. And you need little bit of socialism to keep the great unwashed happy, otherwise capitalism is hardly bearable for them.
It all works fine, ww2 ends, but capitalists are quick to invent the bogeyman – USSR and arms industry continues to thrive thanks to this “threat”. Then Soviet Union collapses and the good old capitalists are starting to get ideas – “Hmm, maybe we don’t really need all that much of socialism to keep the working class happy?” We’ll just keep bringing third world immigrants and show the local “proletariat” that they are replaceable – we can outsource their services to third world immigrants who will be more than happy to put with the declining living standards – as viewed by the locals – but for a third world immigrants it still looks like paradise – because they don’t know any better.
How on earth can anyone think that US has too much socialism is beyond me, but then again these are the same people who thought it would be a great idea to recreate the conditions under which the original democracy was born – in slave owning societies of antiquity – so they brought back slavery to make democracy look really authentic. I guess that’s what Trump is talking when he promised to make America great again – get rid of all socialist elements and bring back the original capitalism that so many seemed to enjoy in the good old idyllic days.
Yes, it was Marx. He said that in his essay of 1852 “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon” referring respectively to the coup of 18 Brumaire 1799 which made the General Napoleon Bonaparte the ‘dictator by plebiscite’ of France (and then Napoleon I, Emperor of France) and to the coup of his nephew Louis Napoleon (who was President of the Second French Republic established in 1848), of 2 December 1851, which led eventually to the proclamation of the Second Empire (Napoleon III).
Now obviously, the ‘Russian’ Revolution and the foundation of the 3d International (the Comintern) was an unmitigated tragedy. The appeal to ‘join and build the 4th International’ is an unmitigated farce! The people propounding this farce are lunatics escaped from the bedlam.
Ron you support my objecting to Tom Schmidt’s formulation of his objection to capitalism as orgies creating mass poverty. After all you leave him with nothing but the increase in numbers of the poor (but by definition living and eating enough, as it happens, to live longer and bring up more children to adulthood than in earler generations).
So, if it distresses him enough to use strong language perhaps he should be blaming the do-gooding missionaries, especially the medical ones, modern medicine profligately and promiscuously spread amongst the poor and the truly wicked pharmaceutical companies which cynically calculate that if more poor people live welfarist governments and charitable foundations can be induced to swell their profits.
And while I have your eye, completely off this topic but one you have yourself raised….. A Cathay Pacific pilot has just drawn my attention to what he believes is the explanation for the MH370 disappearance. He believes it was the combustion of 400 pounds of lithium batteries in the cargo. Electronics knocked out, toxic fumes knock out the pilots just after they have made a turn towards an available airfield and there isn’t much left to explain. In support would appear to be the faults which led to the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphone being taken off the market last year. Also this pilot friend spoke well of the Malaysian Airlines senior pilot who he said was a pilot instructor and was doing nothing notably unusual in having on his own computer a simulation of flight to the south Indian ocean. Whatever the validity of the last point you might like to tap one of your scientist friends to look at the lithium battery theory. (Sorry if you have dealt with that and I missed it).
The small number of Brits living in India and ruling it mostly loved the country and even its people long after being there was making them 18th century style East India Company fortunes. I am aware, probably more than you, of Anglos with a great distaste for much of what they perceived India and Indians to be, but not so as to support your original generalisation.
I’m happy to look at your previous statements. Some citations please.
It is unbecoming of a gentleman and scholar to use liberal democracy’s methods in order to destroy it. An election provides the means for the peaceful transfer of political power among political groups who believe in and accept liberal democracy. It is not meant as a means for authoritarians, whether of the right or left, to eliminate democracy.
It is deceitful and dishonest, on the one hand, to deny the reality of inalienable rights of the individual and the social contract, and on the other, to use a presumption of those rights in order maintain or achieve political power and to destroy the framework of liberal democracy.
An appeal to the sole right of the existing power structure, for example, an assembly of the landed aristocracy, to decide what political changes are allowed, denies the validity of the social contract. If I reject the contract that an aristocratic oligarchy presents to me; I am not bound by its terms.
One can believe in rule by a vanguard of illuminati, rule by an oligarchy chosen by the Fates, or by the majority within a liberal democracy, you can’t believe in all three at the same time.
Well, considering the nature of the human mind, you can, but that is a different comment.
English section of Wikipedia will be enough even for brainwashed westerners, receiveing their Bankster version of history. It is cosmopolitic banking capital that promotes the ideas of Greece and Rome in USA (fake legacy), just think of ‘Loeb classical library’ titles. West is no heir to the Greece and Rome. What is Aeneid to you, barbarian? ‘What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba’ – that was enough to comprehend even for mediocre British playwrighter. West is the biblical New Babylon, spiritually related to old Babylon, Tyre and Carthage. ‘Urbs antiqua fuit, Tyrii tenuere coloni, Karthago’ – thats ‘mayflower pilgrims’ etc. erecting their pagan statue of their Great Harlot.
Just search wikipedia for thalassocraty, and find all resemblancies you want and more. American military history can not name any military hero, as Carthage and British Empire could not too. Yet Greece, Rome and Russia have a long tradition of heroes. Then read about the Third Rome of Moscow.
“First, in 2014, came that of the outbreak of the first world war, which destroyed the liberal order. Then, in 2016, that of the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest conflicts in military history”
Some minor corrections.
“First, in >19141916<, that of the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest conflicts in military history"
Just in case a Leno interviewee happens upon the original.
I will look for the short summary.
Lol. It is possible to use reason to refute the kind of religious fundamentalism on display in this article, but it is much easier to do it with camps and ovens (in theory at least, because it’s never *actually* been tried yet.)
I was intrigued by your essay when I began reading it.
Until I got to your diatribe about Hitler and Germany, where you are completely wrong. Hitler’s “invasions” were strictly reactive to the British actions of encirclement. This apart from regaining German territory stolen via the diktat of Versailles.
For information on this read: Churchill and Hitler, the Unnecessary War, and The Myth of German Culpability. HdC
That reminds me of an article I saw on Return of Kings about going beyond capitalism vs socialism dichotomy. http://www.returnofkings.com/111430/its-time-to-go-beyond-the-capitalism-vs-socialism-dichotomy
@Anon,
A little humility would have cost you nothing in your answer.
A rush to sweeping judgment on a stranger behind a cyber curtain betrays much, including that this gentle admonition probably comes too late.
More nonsense and half truths.
The BBC History article does say that 57,000 to 72,000 persons were executed during Henry VIII’s 37-year reign and then says the figure is “likely exaggerated . ” Most historians would accept a much lower figure. Most of those executed were common criminals. The sentences may seem harsh by modern standards, but ultimately they were successful as Steve Sailer has accepted.
Ivan the Terrible was responsible for as many as 220,000 deaths. The lowest estimate from modern historians is 66,000, but has been criticized as far too low, as Ivan’s secret police, the Oprichniki, are credited with 40,000 alone.
There was no sack of the monasteries. They were dissolved. Most monks were compulsory retired and given a pension.
Between 1347 and 1380, Black Death and complications thereof reduced the populations of European countries by 30 to 60%. The least affected areas were those with limited external trade, e.g. Poland, Basque Country, Alpine Europe etc. Russia wasn’t one of these areas and loss of population seems to have been about average.
Living standards have been higher, often much higher, in Western Europe than in Russia, since at least the Later Middle Ages. No sane historian would deny this. You babble on about Polish and Estonian peasants, rather than accept the facts.
Bakunin and Kropotkin were exponents of Anarchism – another West European Import – and one with absolutely minimal impact on European or other history. The Doctrine of the Soviet Communist Party was Marxism-Leninism, that is the ideas of Karl Marx as modified by V I Ulyanov.
You really are an irony-free zone.
Before World War I, Britain was not a democracy, liberal or otherwise. The vast majority of adults could not vote. Less than 66% of men over the age of 21 could vote. The main political parties had no interest in extending the franchise. The last extensions had been in the 1880s.
Yet it was a free society, much freer in most ways than today.
In America, this paradox was grasped by H L Mencken. Democracy and Freedom weren’t partners; Democracy would curtail and cramp Liberty. ” Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted, ” he said, long before SJWs wanted to ban it as “hate speech.”
Extending the franchise, introducing democracy, has been harmful to Liberty, whether in Britain or North America.
“Until I got to your diatribe about Hitler and Germany, where you are completely wrong. Hitler’s “invasions” were strictly reactive to the British actions of encirclement. This apart from regaining German territory stolen via the diktat of Versailles.”
What? UK even said OK to Germany taking Czech land. Hitler promised NO MORE. But then, he connived with Stalin to divvy up Poland.
And then, he attacked his ally, USSR.
Gimme a break. Hitler was a pathological nut.
Thank you for this. But, a question:
Is the increase in 13 million relative to population increase in general or it just a raw number? That is, if outside China there are were 13 million more people living in dire poverty in 2008 vs. 1980, but 200 million more people (I don’t know this number and am making one up) living not in dire poverty, the dire poverty rate has declined even though the number has increased.
thanks Seraphim, Joe Webb
About the Bolshevik revolution there is only one interesting question: Who paid for it and how much?
How come Leon Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronstein) left New York for Canada with undisclosed amount of gold and money and number of activists and was detained in Canada on behalf of UK but then received American passport and was released so he, the gold and the activists could proceed to Russia?
How come Vladimir Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) with unspecified amount of money, his wife, his lover and number of supporters was sent by German government in a sealed train under German military escort from Switzerland, through Germany so he could proceed to Russia and start his revolutionary activities?
How much money was spent on publications, on bribing police and Okhrana in Russia to allow their activities and not being arrested?
How much money was spent to pay salaries to induce workers in Russia to keep striking? Was it more or less than what was spent on Maidan in Kiev in 2014? I am only asking because I want to know if revolutions are getting less or more expensive.
The rest about Bolshevik Revolution as about any other revolution that ever took place in world that some, like the authors, try to discuss in Marxist terms as a social strife and class warfare is a complete BS.
These are no facts but propaganda and whishful thinking of modern English-speaking ‘historians’ a.k.a. British scientists. Like ‘72000 is likely exagerrated because people could not tolerate this’, and ‘Ivan was responsible for 220 000 deaths since he was ‘the terrible’ etc. Actually, you can hardly sum up to these thousands, even if you count war casualties during his reign.
Most infamous actions in British history are not present in the popular books, wikis or tv shows. Such as bloody atrocities of hundred years war (esp. by edward iii), supression of uprising with numerous casualities, sack of the monasteries (you say like Hitler ‘simply dissolved’ synagogues and provided their attendants with pensions, but we don’t believe), then religious intolerance against Roman catholics. Such level of intolerance and hatred is unthinkable neither in modern times nor in Musqowy or Imperial Russia, and that explains many things.
@Who paid for it and how much?
1. Jacob Schiff the head of Kuhn, Loeb &Co:
“a bulge bracket investment bank founded in 1867 by Abraham Kuhn (b. June 20, 1819, d. May 30, 1892 in Frankfurt, Darmstadt) and Solomon Loeb. Under the leadership of Jacob H. Schiff, it grew to be one of the most influential investment banks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, financing America’s expanding railways and growth companies, including Western Union and Westinghouse, and thereby becoming the principal rival of J.P. Morgan & Co….
Famous partners of the firm included Otto Kahn, Paul Warburg, Felix Warburg, Mortimer Schiff, Benjamin Buttenwieser, Lewis Strauss, and Sigmund Warburg, founder of S.G. Warburg.
In its early years, intermarriage among the German-Jewish elite was common. Consequently, the partners of Kuhn, Loeb were closely related by blood and marriage to the partners of J & W Seligman, Speyer & Co., Goldman, Sachs & Co., Lehman Brothers and other prominent German-Jewish firms. Prior to the Second World War, a particularly close relationship existed between the partners of Kuhn, Loeb and M. M. Warburg & Co. of Hamburg, Germany, through Paul and Felix, who were Kuhn, Loeb partners. Later on, following World War II, their cousin Sigmund Warburg would briefly continue this the firm lost its independence in 1977 when it merged with Lehman Brothers, creating Lehman Brothers, Kuhn, Loeb Inc. The combined firm was itself acquired in 1984 by American Express, forming Shearson Lehman/American Express and with that, the Kuhn, Loeb name was lost”. (Wikipedia)
2. Leon Trotsky was given $20 million in Jacob Schiff gold to help finance the revolution, which was deposited in a Warburg bank, then transferred to the Nya Banken (Nye Bank) in Stockholm, Sweden. According to the Knickerbocker Column in the New York Journal American on February 3, 1949: “Today it is estimated by Jacob’s grandson, John Schiff, that the old man sank about $20,000,000 for the final triumph of Bolshevism in Russia.”
Bolsheviks repaid the loans by granting concessions “for the creation of new enterprises necessary for the systematic development of the still unutilized productive resources of Russia according to a general plan”.
The Soviet Union is a perfect example of the Law of Unexpected Consequences, possibly the only law concerning human events.
The Germans needed a Russian Government which would negotiate with them, cede them large amounts of territory gained and permit them to concentrate on the Western Front to bring the War there to a successful conclusion.
The only Russian political faction that was willing to countenance this were the far left Bolsheviks. The German Plan was to aid them to overthrow the Provisional Government and form a new government.
The German Plan very nearly worked. The Soviets ceded Poland, the Baltic States and the Ukraine in March 1918 ( Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ) and they left WWI. The Germans weren’t able to take advantage, due to a variety of factors including war exhaustion. At the end of the war, after the German withdrawal, the Soviets were able to re-occupy the Ukraine. Poland and the Baltic States became independent.
Timing, in history as in life, can often be of the utmost importance. My old History Professor used to say if the Bolshevik Revolution had been in October 1916, then the Germans would have won the War. The Soviet Union, if it existed at all, would have been subject to a massively expanded Imperial Germany. Indeed, the Germans might have partitioned it up further.
You asked who funded the Bolshevik Revolution. The vast bulk of the money came from the German Government. It was part of their plan to win the war and it very nearly worked.
Your perception is what you get by relying on court historians and the MSM: A comic book perspective.
Read the 2 books I mentioned in my earlier post, above. There is a third book that’s informative: Witness to History. HdC
get rid of all socialist elements and bring back the original capitalism that so many seemed to enjoy in the good old idyllic days.
1:31a And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good, but then he thought of something even better. God created private property, and people with good title thought it was the bees’ knees. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
2:2a And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. God intimated that the seventh day should be a day of rest for everyone, except, of course, for the workers called in for mandatory overtime, and the property owners with good title saw that it was exceedingly good for profits.
Trotsky: Let us rule the world, and exterminate its peasants.
Stalin: Let us rule the USSR, and exterminate our peasants.
Trotsky: Not very Marxist, you seminary peasant, never been to Europe; you shall be liquidated.
Stalin: You are liquidated.
Both Stalin and Trotsky were murderous. Stalin won because he had horse sense.
The semi descendants of Stalin are the Chinese CP leaders who are mainly focused on China.
The semi descendants of Trotsky are the neocons who control the USA and push for endless wars on world peasants.
The writers of this article are blind, or pretend to be. They can’t recognize victory. No horse sense.
You are a rambling, barely coherent conspiracy theorist. Your spelling and syntax are poor. I’m not going to dignify you with a reply. Get back down the hole whence you came !
The occupation of Ukraine, far from releasing the troops necessary for the Western offensive, presented Germany with an additional burden. Their intention was to exploit the food resources of Ukraine to feed the starving population of the Central Powers. But the peasants would have none of it, hid the food, resisted the requisitions and started looking back at Russia. A million troops remained immobilized in the East to prop the successive puppet governments in Kiev, expand in the direction of the oil fields of Baku, preparing the annexation of Crimea, of the Baltic provinces. It was estimated that half of them would have been sufficient to tilt the balance on the Western front, but they lacked at the crucial moment. Actually, the German command did not dare to transfer them to the West, because ‘they became rotten with Bolshevism’ and therefore ineffective if not downright dangerous.
Another unexpected consequence was the return of the prisoners, thoroughly infected by the revolutionary spirit. They joined the open defeatist propaganda emanating from the newly opened Soviet Embassy in Berlin, in support of the Socialists and Spartakists and participated in the mutinies which brought down the Imperial Germany. That was the real “Stab in the back” (Dolchstoss) self-inflicted by the German High Command.
History repeats itself. Ukraine will bring down the imperial EU dreams once again.
Seraphim and Verymuchalive:
One sided. Not good enough. It was not just Germany. Perhaps the knuckleheads in German military were scheming something but there was much bigger plot to destroy Russia that had not that much to do with WWI, or bringing America to WWI or Zionist scheming to get Palestine, etc. Certainly there was a Jewish hand in it. The hand of bankers.
Bolshevik revolution is not the example for the Law of Unexpected Consequences. Quite the opposite. It all worked as charm. Perhaps there was only one snag: Stalin took over and resurrected Russian nationalism and proceeded with mass industrialization.
It was about Russia and about the future of Anglo-American empire and threats Russia posed to it. Already Alexis de Tocqueville in 1830s predicted that the future will belong to America or Russia or both:
“There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and whilst the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the front rank among the nations, and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time.”
“The American struggles against the obstacles which nature opposes to him; the adversaries of the Russian are men. The former combats the wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilization with all its arms. The conquests of the American are therefore gained with the ploughshare; those of the Russian by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of the people; the Russian centres all the authority of society in a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.”
Russia had many enemies also because it was the last truly Christian kingdom with independent banking system but it is possible that her greatest enemy was the US empire in the making because of Russia’s potential.
If reforms started in Russia after 1905 succeeded; if Pyotr Stolypin was not assassinated; if Russia did not enter into WWI, Russia development could have matched that of the US in the same time.
You haven’t read my post at 121.
Yes, I did. I do not agree with you, that’s why I wrote this:
“Bolshevik revolution is not the example for the Law of Unexpected Consequences. Quite the opposite. It all worked as charm. Perhaps there was only one snag: Stalin took over and resurrected Russian nationalism and proceeded with mass industrialization.”
The objective was to destroy Russia. German calculations failed but they were not in the driving seat.
Where sources have led you to your comments? I find them interesting enough to find out more. Thanks
But the ‘unintended consequences’ were for the Germans. There is no doubt that their ruling class has been pushed into the war against Russia by the “Free Masons and the Jews” who exploited the ‘Napoleonic complex’ of the German High Command, as the hapless Kaiser belatedly admitted. The aim of the war was indeed the partition of Russia. Even after the conclusion of the peace, the Kaiser was writing to the Hetman of the Don Cossacks, outlining the plans for the ultimate partition into four independent states – Ukraine, the Union of the South East, Central Russia and Siberia. Of course, one should not forget the Jewish plan submitted to the High Command in 1914, for the creation of a League of East European States in the region of the former Pale of Settlement, under German hegemony and in which Jews would have played the dominant role as ‘representatives of German culture’. And you have noticed that the ‘bankers’ were all ‘German’. But Germans lost all.
An unforeseen consequence was indeed the resurgence of Russian nationalism. The bankers had to start all over again. And they managed to make the Germans make the same mistakes as in the previous war, with even worse consequences for them.
I don’t agree with everything you say, particularly about WWII, but on the whole good. Your exposition of the events in the Ukraine is lucid and excellent. Let’s hope Ukraine 2017 will result in the demise of the EUSSR !
Food was always going to be main problem for Germany if it had to fight a prolonged war. Food production per acre had not risen as quickly as other commodities. Mechanisation was now established, but artificial fertilisers were in their infancy. Indeed, it was in the post-WWI period that the great leap forward in European agriculture occurred. Between 1920 and 1960 in W. Europe cereal yields per acre increased 2.5 to 3 times, largely due to artificial fertilisers.
However, the only country that might stop Germany getting imports of food was Britain, whose fleet was strong enough to blockade all German ports. So the obvious essential for Germany was to avoid war with Britain.
In the event, Germany attacked the only European country apart from Portugal whose sovereignty was guaranteed by Britain – Belgium. If Germany had attacked France, but not Belgium, Britain might have never gone to war since there was no defence treaty between France and itself. In fact, many think it was likely that Britain would have remained neutral.
By the Turnip Winter of 1915-16, the writing was on the wall. Hundreds of Thousands died as a result and the effect on morale was beginning to penetrate. Hungry populace and soldiers = discontent and rebelliousness.
Brest-Litovsk was a year, maybe years too late for the Germans.
Mr. Unz,
I want to extend my gratitude to you for your eminently useful work as a publisher. I want to thank you in particular for having the guts to publish this perspective — perhaps most controversial of them all! After all, race-realism has a (small) cohort of fans. Cultrual Marxism (really no Marxism at all) has the support of the whole Academe and MSM. Ethno-nationalism is on the rise as well (cf Trump). Yet this perspective on the Russian Revolution, cogently argued, is reviled everywhere! Just look at the comments here!
So I have great respect for you, Mr. Unz, for your intellectual honesty. The perspective you published here is in fact “interesting, important, and controversial […] excluded from the American mainstream media.” I would humbly as you to consider publishing additional important material from the WSWS on occasion.
I can hardly take any credit for the ‘excellence’ of my exposé of the events in Ukraine. It was taken from a contemporary analysis of the effects of the Peace of Brest-Litovsk. I did not specifically quote it because it was ‘re-discovered’ and debated again in relation to the recent events in Ukraine and myself referred often to it.
The book in question was published in 1938:
” Brest-Litovsk, The Forgotten Peace, March 1918″, by John W. Wheeler-Bennett. London: Macmillan, 1938; 5th printing, 1963. xx + 478 pp.
Despite numerous reprints, it was rather ‘forgotten’, perhaps because his exposition of the events of WWI and predictions for the future was based strictly on archival sources and deprived of the ideological grille which surrounds the usual interpretations of the World Wars. It was rather an analysis of a particular moment in the centuries old dynamic of Russo-German relations. Perhaps one of the reasons for this ‘oblivion’ was his acceptance of the guilt of the Old Bolsheviks in the treason trials of 1936-37.
Nicely played.
Re. 1 and 2: I don’t know, you tell us.
The Forced War by Hoggan is also quite useful, esp. regarding British rearmament which far outstripped Germany’s. Britain’s foolish guarantee to Poland encouraged Polish intransigence towards reasonable German demands, and is far more to blame for WW2 than the myth of lebensraum.
I don’t know but now and again some UR commenter knows a subject and is judicious in his handling of evidence; so we can hope.
My impression is that it was the middle and lower middle classes, including those whose savings had been wiped out by the 1922 hyperinflation, who were probably most susceptible to Jew-related explanations for their pain. A lot of the working class were probably protected to some degree by their communist sympathies from becoming early Nazi anti-Semitic ideologues.
Are you saying that Hitler’s desire to expand Germany’s boundaries to the East and other reasons for antagonism between Nazi Germany and Communist USSR wouldn’t have led to war between the USSR and Germany if the Poles had just given in on the Danzig Corridor?
Assuming you wouldn’t be so ill informed or naive about both Hitler and Stslin are you imagining an alternative scenario in which Stalin and Hitler just slug it out while the rest of the world just stands back so that it arguably never becomes WW2?
If so, how does your scenario play out? Presumably America, France and Britain sell arms to both sides and there is s bit of naval roughing up on the supply routes. Presumably America still doesn’t want Japan to have a free hand in China…. so…..?
You remind me of Rehmat – or as I think of it with reason the Rehmat syndicate – which often features the ramblings and rants of enthusiastic young ignoramuses who leave the Rehmat brand with no credit. As another commenter has observed your English is so poor that you can’t surmount even the first obstacle to your persuading anyone of anything. If you are offering the publication of your comments as some proof of your employability by someone seeking to create a team of trolls or propagandists the question would arise “who could possibly think it in their interests or that of their country or cause to have such grating rubbish thrust upon others”? Since persuasion or relieving ignorance are not plausible as aims it must be, I suppose, to irritate and annoy by wasting people’s time. And why would that be anyone’s aim? Only someone hostile to Ron Unz’s public spirited enterprise it would seem. That is someone who discerns threads of UR arguments which they would rather were not widely read. But you must fail because posting as Anon doesn’t protect you from being automatically ignored: your themes, barbarous style and primitive argumentative mode will make you almost instantly recognisable. (Note to Ron: could some type of tagging of the Anons, anons etc. be tried without destroying the intended protection of anonymity?)
Is your “Law of Unexpected Consequences” just a slip when “Law of Unintended Consequences” – a now commonplace trope** – was intended?
Certainly what you say about it makes “unexpected” apt if one wants to acknowledge the necessary absence of complete certainty in human affairs.
**I’ve done it! Used a word which has become fashionable in my adult lifetime after I was first set in my linguistic ways. But maybe cliché would have been safer than trope.
Yes and it is a pity that a semiliterate ranter is also using the Anon pseudonymon this thread
Well, in case you haven’t noticed, I don’t subscribe to the boogeyman theory of history. Both Stalin’s and Hitler’s crimes, though real, have been exaggerated. Hitler did not want war with the West, and there was no reason at all the situation in the east had to become a global conflict. The main German error was underestimating the opposition Britain had to a competing power on the continent. Indeed, the West would have been better off letting the Nazis and Soviets fight themselves to exhaustion, certainly Bolshevism was a greater threat than Naziism anyway.
Re. German objectives in the east, there is no evidence colonial interests played a role in the German decision to attack. Hitler spoke of Lebensraum in the 20’s (i.e. before he came to power), in the context of the post-revolutionary chaos in the SU. Since the Soviet leadership was dominated by Jews, and Hitler regarded Jews as ill-suited for stable rule, he anticipated the SU would collapse and there would be opportunities for German expansion. He may have been proved right had Stalin not routed the Trotskyites, but at any rate none of this was relevant in 1941.
We understand your pain, and the royal pains of your western kin, when your mythos are debased. The Glorious West concept as some universally beneficial role-setting model, or ‘more perfect’ sample of humanity is what you stand for, and this is all same good ol’ fascism or racism, with roots deep in heresy of Protestantism. Only the marxists here have the dignity of seeing and speaking of contradictions. You seem to have no contradictions, but only dogmas. It is not substantial what exactly you dogmatism is based on – since the likes of you praised ‘true faith’ in XVI-XVIII AD, then ‘Nordic face and blond hair’ in XIX-XX. Today you worship IQ and genes, for the same fascist purpose. It makes a pleasure of any honest person to destroy your nasty Western house of lies and pseudohistory. You cry propaganda like MSM and call for censorship like ADL, when the nature and origins of such ideology are exposed. And when you hear some shameful facts from your past, you feel like loosing the basis for Western cultural primacy. This primacy is illusory, in Marxist terms it is false-counsciosness imposed by financial elites that exploit you.
BTW Wiz, I’m impressed by the amount of time you apparently have on your hands.
You are so far detached from reality that “mad” seems to be the accurate description of you and your rambling nonsense. But maybe you are a team like the Rehmat crew? So…. several mad people: a veritable asylum.
Oh, yes, we had been detached from your ‘reality’ for 70 years. Enough for growing 3 generations of free citizens, with no usury, indebtness or exploitation. Keep living inside a banksters-created matrix and buying any lie they sell you since your childhood. When I learned English, it was so hard to understand i.e. what is ‘mortgage’ since in our reality citizens received their apartments and land for free, and some still receive. E.g. in Russia ANY orphan is still provided with apartment (no lease, but ownership) from the state, families with 3 kids and more receive 1500 square meters of land for housing, anyone may receive a hectar of land for farming in Far East etc. etc. Being a slave of financial capital, you have no freedom, no justice, but only you illusions of superiority over ‘less developed nations’ who had been exploited much harder for centuries.
I don’t know who is rehmat you refer to.
I don’t know but now and again some UR commenter knows a subject and is judicious in his handling of evidence; so we can hope.
My impression is that it was the middle and lower middle classes, including those whose savings had been wiped out by the 1922 hyperinflation, who were probably most susceptible to Jew-related explanations for their pain. A lot of the working class were probably protected to some degree by their communist sympathies from becoming early Nazi anti-Semitic ideologues.
This was previously sent in error as a reply to myelf.
Thank you very much, mate.
I did study WWI in the History Department of one of the world’s better known universities. ( I was amazed recently to see it’s still placed in the world’s top 40! But, most western universities have been going downhill for years, so that doesn’t mean my alma mater’s standards have been maintained )
My lecturers – none of them E. European specialists – claimed at the time that the Germans had to wait until Brest-Litovsk ( 3 March 1918 ) until they could move troops from the Eastern Front to the Western Front. This was probably too late, as by the time they were transported to the West they had to face the Allies reinforced by the Americans. Also, there were major logistical problems in moving them west. It seemed plausible to me at the time.
Must get a copy of Mr Wheeler-Bennett’s book. ( Never heard of him )
Thanks
@there is no evidence colonial interests played a role in the German decision to attack
There is evidence that the goal of expansion into what Germans (not only Hitler) considered their ‘Lebensraum’ never left their minds because it was indeed absolutely vital for Germany, if only for the Russian and Romanian petrol. In the summer of 1940, Germany grew increasingly dependent on Soviet imports. In August 1940, the Soviet Union briefly suspended its deliveries under their commercial agreement creating significant resource problems for Germany in the context of the continuation of the war against England. Direct German control over these resources was an imperative, exactly in the same way as in WWI. As it should be known, the attempts to bring USSR into the Axis have stalled due to mutual distrust, shrewdly exploited by British Intelligence. The long-term objectives of Britain were to exhaust Russia and Germany and then bring the Americans to Europe.
From ” Brest-Litovsk, The Forgotten Peace, March 1918″, by John W. Wheeler-Bennett, pp. XVII-XVII:
“With the Drang nach Sud-Osten well under way, the first steps have already been taken to direct the political
thought of Germany towards the possible advantages of expansion into Russia. German “colonization” in Russia was proposed by Dr. Schacht at a conference in Rome in November 1932, even before the advent of Hitler to power, and the subject was revived in Herr Hugenberg’s famous memorandum to the World Economic Conference in June 1933. The Führer himself made plain reference to it during his speeches against Communism at the Nürnberg Parteifest of 1936. “If the Urals with their incalculable wealth of raw- materials, the rich forests of Siberia, and the unending cornfields of the Ukraine lay within Germany, under National Socialist leadership the country would swim in plenty. We would produce, and every single German would have enough to live on”, he told representatives of the Arbeitsfront on September 12. No purer example of Brest- Litovsk psychology could be required than this virtual incitement to plunder. The speech might well have been inspired by the Press Department of the Great General Staff in the early weeks of 1918.
The nearing of the completion of German rearmament brings to a close the first stage of the Nazi development towards Gleichberechtigung. The second, which overlaps the first, has already begun, and Germany is well on the way to the establishment of her desired hegemony. With each step forward the burden of the psychology of Brest-Litovsk weighs more heavily upon Germany’s mentality and makes more inevitable the ultimate effort to fulfill her destiny.
Europe has been treated to one display of the effects of this psychosis, and, should Germany succeed in re-establishing the situation which existed for a brief moment after Brest- Litovsk, the results would be even more threatening than they were then. For an industrialized Russia exploited bv the organizing genius of Germany conjures up a vision which no Western European can contemplate with equanimity. But in 1918 the will-o’-the -whisp of ambition lured Germany into a slough of dilemma from which extrication proved impossible, and the rest of Europe remembers, what Herr Hitler may have forgotten, that disaster followed in the train of transient glory”.
Question: Weren’t some of those “logistical problems” alleged to be sabotage by communists and part of the “knife in the back?”
It is available on the net:
“Full text of “Brest_Litovsk_The_ForGotten_Peace_March_1918”
@https://archive.org/…/brestlitovskthef018745mbp/brestlitovskthef018745…
It is badly printed, but manageable.
That’s rather my point: the massing of Soviet forces along its Western border in offensive (not defensive) formations, including clear hostile intent towards the critical Ploesti oil fields, played far more of a role in the German decision to attack than expansionary ideology.
Hear! Typical fascist blabber ‘Russians did it’, with flavor of Romanian inferiority complex. Bessarabia was ceded to USSR in 1939, with populations peacefully relocated, newsreels exist on Youtube. There were no ‘massing’ in SW and Odessa military district and you seem to be ignorant on formations and military echelons. How about clear hostile intent of Baltic Fleet towards the amber riches of Koenigsberg? Poor nazis with their expansionary ideology, you imply they just defended themselves. Take the next step, admit that Germans and Romanians burned people alive because they were all out of firewood to warm themselves up.
I see that you adopt the views of Suvorov that the Plan Barbarossa was a preemptive attack.
The Soviets had no need of the Romanian petrol fields. Germany had already occupied them in October 1940. In November Romania joined the Axis. The Soviets were concerned more by the designs of Germany and Italy in the direction of the Balkans, insisting that the security of the USSR cannot be ensured “without securing tranquility in the area of the Straits”. Also by the presence of German troops in Finland.
Interestingly, the Soviets tried to woo Bulgaria that, if it permitted the Soviets troop transfer access, the Soviets were prepared to drop their objections to Bulgaria’s entry into the Axis and, most surprisingly, stated that it likely would not be an issue as it would “very probably, almost certainly” lead to the Soviets’ own entry into the Axis. They also promised during the November German-Soviet negotiations a significant increase in deliveries (2.5 million tons of grain—1 million tons above its current obligations).
There were always in Germany two camps in relation to Russia. Eventually, Hitler fell back on his views exposed in Mein Kampf (which have been also the ones of Ludendorff and Hindenburg) that Germany ‘must begin again where we left off six centuries ago”, i.e. expansion in the east and south-east of Europe, in the territories of the older German colonization.
I really can’t understand what “the Romanian inferiority complex” has to do with all that. Bessarabia was not ‘ceded’ in 1939. The Article III of the Secret Additional Protocol of the so-called ‘Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact’ of August 1939 said only that: “With regard to Southeastern Europe attention is called by the Soviet side to its interest in Bessarabia. The German side declares its complete political disinterestedness in these areas”.
The real occupation of Bessarabia occurred only in July 1940. (Wikipedia):
“The Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina was the military occupation of the formerly Romanian regions of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and Hertza by the Soviet Red Army during June 28 – July 4, 1940. These regions, with a total area of 50,762 km2 (19,599 sq mi) and a population of 3,776,309 inhabitants, were subsequently incorporated into the USSR.
The Soviet Union had planned to accomplish the annexation with a full-scale invasion, but the Romanian government, responding to a Soviet ultimatum delivered on June 26, agreed to withdraw from the territories in order to avoid a military conflict. Germany, which had acknowledged the Soviet interest in Bessarabia in a secret protocol to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, had been made aware prior to the planned ultimatum on June 24, but had not informed the Romanian authorities, nor were they willing to provide support. The Fall of France, a guarantor of Romania’s borders, on 22 June, is considered an important factor in the Soviet decision to issue the ultimatum.
On August 2, 1940, the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed as a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, encompassing most of Bessarabia, as well as a portion of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, an autonomous republic of the Ukrainian SSR located on the left bank of the Dniester (now the breakaway Transnistrian state). The Hertza region, and the regions inhabited by Slavic majorities (Northern Bukovina, Northern and Southern Bessarabia) were included in the Ukrainian SSR. The Soviet administration was marked by a series of campaigns of political persecution, including arrests, deportations to labour camps, and executions.”
This is a problem which will never go away as long as the terms of ‘Bessarabia’ and ‘Moldova’ are conflated and used interchangeably.
Indeedy Doody
Aww, you’re so sweet.
I agree with this.
The Establishment media is more or less a constant echo chamber. It’s purpose is to leave a deceptive narrative for the status quo.
Whatever its other flaws may be, at least the Old Left cared a great deal about the economic well-being of the working class. After all, they rely on the working class to carry out their dreams of a political revolution.
The US in its modern form makes it difficult because of the current economy, which forces people to work longer for less money. It’s essentially a system of kleptocracy, where the very wealthy and the Establishment take all the gains. Meanwhile most people struggle to survive.
I am sympathetic to the ideals of socialism, although not Marxism. I do not like the Social Justice Warrior/ intersectionalist / postmodern types. They don’t seem to care about anything other than identity politics for metropolitan upper middle class people. In many ways, the split between Sanders and Clinton on the Democratic side was a split between those who want economic issues brought to the center, versus those who wanted to make identity politics the main issue.
In reality, the Clinton faction was little more than useful idiots for the Establishment and Wall Street. The SJWs were willfully ignorant of Clinton’s pro-war, pro-Wall Street stance, including her outright corruption at times.
I’ve been reading Unz.com for a long time and I’m tired of hearing how Putin’s Russia is socialist and nationalist, how Putin is against oligarchs and for people, but finally good ol’ Marxists nailed it. Never thought I’ll ever hear that naked truth here.
The remaining 4185 or so words are not really that important if at all, just usual ritual Marxist mumbo-jumbo. It’s read like a Marxist propaganda from 1967 about the fall of capitalism and the global victory of communism by 2017. In 2167 or 2117 Marxists of the future might have written the same piece, they even would not have to change much, just names and dates here and there.