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Comment by linschn | Hacker News Reader

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That was kind of an occupational hazard; Trotsky didn't have any qualms, when he was in charge.

He did in fact have lots of qualms. The history of the various Communist Internationals are all about left/right wing conflict within the party. Even during the revolution there was constant dissent and debate, which some might regard as healthy - until the right-wing of the party (Stalin & friends) laid waste to democratic processes.

I meant to say that he didn't have any qualms with the 'counter revolutionaries', party internal discussions were a different thing altogather. Also you can't just label these discussions as 'democratic processes', this was a Leninist party 'of the new type'; everyone was supposed to stick to the party line without questions, once a decission was made.

You are referring to democratic centralism, which is a form of democracy.

Democratic centralism is a form of democracy, that only gives a voice to a very limited number of cadres, which is the exact opposite of a democracy. It excludes anyone who is not a communist party member by its definition, even in it's most inclusive form. This is motivated by the 'vanguard' role of the party - you see that it is a very insincere form of democracy, as such. The inevitable result of this this form of democracy, as you call it, is the concentration of all power in a very select cirlce of leaders. In other words, the result is a stalinist nightmare, and it doesn't matter who is in charge of the show, the end result is always the same.

i think that this story should really be taken as a warning to everyone: if you start to curtail democracy by limiting its domain, then you really end up with the exact opposite of it.

Trotsky and the people he followed were brutal and violent, Trotsky reaped what he sowed. Just because Stalin was more brutal and violent doesn't mean Trotsky was innocent. Please look up Decossackization, or read any of a number of serious critiques of Lenin. And then let's be honest about the rhetoric that Marx had to describe 'Capitalism' and what any Marxist revolt would likely entail... Marxism was rotten from the start.

I'd be interested in pointers to any of the serious critiques you mention.

I find reading the early revolutionary sources for the French, American and Russian revolutions that they're really not asking for anything we modern folk would consider too wild, since they were basically reacting against monarchy, aristocracy or a proto-capitalism run largely by the aristocaracy.

Comparing Russia against America with its long, if flawed, history of Socialist (yes really) and Republican (as in anti-monarchy) Democracy seems to make much less sense when the revolutionaries that apparently should have known what Marxism or "The Terror" would lead to were asking for that same basic stuff as the American ones.

I mean the basic point of this python joke (other than punning on 'class') hinges on "all men are created equal"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_men_are_created_equal

And the famous Animal Farm seems to take a similar view:

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/a/animal-farm/critica...

Well in both the French and Russian revolutions the people who were advocating for sensible reforms and who started the revolutions were not the same people who ended up in charge and who perpetrated the red terror. The Bolsheviks did not overthrow the Tsar, they came to power after ousting a (highly ineffective) liberal-socialist government, much like the Jacobins who replaced relatively more moderate republicans.

Is that true though?

The Jacobins got executed and replaced by the Thermidorian Reaction, which was a shift "rightward" and may have paved the way for Napoleon. And France generally also had to fight wars against the combined monarchies of Europe (which they generally did and won) which again, paved the way for Napoleon to become emperor.

I'm still at the early stages of reading up on Russia, but the Bolsheviks at the time are "radical" but aren't really calling for more than what we'd view as actual democracy. By "sensible reforms" I assume you mean people who advocate mostly just leaving concentrated wealth concentrated, and then obviously you've got wars and outside empires there too as well as the remains of the concentrated wealth.

I dunno, it feels like there's centuries of cultural and political propaganda that gets in the way of objective views on this.

I just meant that Jacobins did not start the revolution, moderate constitutional monarchists (and the mob in Paris) did. Of course things went out of hands and by 1794 most of the original leaders from 1789: Duc d'Orléans, Lafayette, Mirabeau, Sieyès, Necker etc. were all out of power, dead or in exile. All of them were considered to liberals when the Estates-General were initially convened however compared to the Jacobins they might as well had been ultra-conservatives.

The Bolsheviks publicly called for whatever was popular at the time and what they thought would allow them to get into power. In 1918 they basically copied the entire Socialist Revolutionary programme (ending the war and distributing all land to the peasants without compensation to previous landowners and giving controls of the factories to their workers) and promised to end the war which basically guaranteed that most soldiers and ordinary people would not oppose them (they never had mass public support prior to the October revolution, at best a plurality in Major cities and approximately 0% in the countryside). However after they ousted the socialist government they proceeded with a policy of collectivization and centralization instead.

"aren't really calling for more than what we'd view as actual democracy"

No, the Bolsheviks lost the first democratic elections in Russian history, decided they don't like the results and dispersed Russian Constituent Assembly 13 hours after it convened. Unlike most other socialists in Russia at the time Bolsheviks were totally anti democratic from the outset, which is why they were so effective at gaining and holding power. While other socialist or liberal parties were organizing peaceful public protests, strikes or walkouts expecting that the masses would rally around them the bolsheviks simply sent in their troops.

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