scobienz wrote: ↑Fri Oct 02, 2020 7:26 pm
I’m not entirely sure political philosophy is visser’s strong point. Dismantling the state and replacing it with communism seems a contradiction in terms.
I have no interest in quibbling over whether Lenin was a true Marxist or not but he certainly was steeped in Marxist thought and under his leadership, the Bolsheviks dismantled many of the institutions that had continued from the Czarist days. After overthrowing Kerensky, the Bolsheviks immediately began work on restructuring society and the organization of labor and production. Many of the bureaucrats who had worked under the Czar were shot or removed from positions of power and influence. Many of the more crucial institutions and many of the more useful bureaucrats were spared but all of them were made to serve the interests of the Soviet state and people.
In his autobiography, the anarcho communist Victor Serge mentions how people with college degrees were treated with suspicion by the NKVD because a degree was an indicator of the holder's status under Czarist rule. This shows the zeal of some of the Bolsheviks for going after anyone who had obtained any level of distinction in Czarist Russia. When Lenin discovered that the NKVD was using this as criteria to assess whether or not someone was a potential counter revolutionary, he became infuriated as he and many of his goons were themselves from bourgeoise backgrounds and had attended university. In the late 20s and towards the end of his autobiography, the imprisoned Leftist Oppositionist Serge complains when he realizes that the Soviets had retained prison guards from Czarist times.
The Russian Revolution and the post Lenin years into the early 1930s brought about a radical transformation of society where in some cases, entire classes were liquidated or sent to labor camps and entire villages were deracinated and compelled to relocate.
So my point is that the Bolsheviks did dismantle the Czarist state and they replaced it with the Soviet state.
Many antifa members are self described anarcho communists and they draw on the works of Bakunin and Kropotkin and Emma Goldman. I also consider building communism and doing away with the state to be a contradiction in terms as did Marx more or less. That is something you will have to take up with them. These types of morons are what prompted Lenin to write "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder"