/marx/ - Marxism

>>2573

He went wrong when he gerrymandered and forcibly disbanded non-bolshevik soviets. He crushed worker's democracy.

>>2574

That assumes you think the Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries and other petty-bourgeois and counter-revolutionary groups actually cared for workers' democracy. It assumes that the form of an organ of power is more important than its content.

To answer the original question, Lenin didn't "go wrong."

>>2576

>It assumes that the form of an organ of power is more important than its content.

Both are imporant insofar as they dialectically determine each other. Thinking of form as independent of content is pure metaphysics.

Lenin also went wrong with the whole Working Group fiasco, by the way.

>>2577

No they don't, otherwise the Soviet revisionists would have been obliged to abolish the form of soviet power following Stalin's death. In reality they emptied it of all content, and transformed the state power into one led by a dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie.

If a soviet has at its head fundamentally anti-soviet elements, it is not an organ of workers' democracy.

>Lenin also went wrong with the whole Working Group fiasco, by the way.

As Lenin pointed out, the "Workers' Opposition" (presumably that's what you mean by "Working Group") was a syndicalist deviation. It represented primarily the interests of the trade union bureaucrats who resented the leading role of the party.

>>2574

>>2576

From my understanding the actual soviet councils were not really organs of worker control of production in the first place, but more local governments. Is this a correct view?

Also, obviously Lenin was pretty good but there's certainly something he could have done differently. I think he should have crushed Makhno in the beginning so I didn't have to listen to Anarchokiddies ramble about how evil he was for "Betraying" Makhno. :^)

>>2581

There were various sorts of soviets for factories, towns, districts, peasant villages, etc. They weren't synonymous with workers' control, although obviously the vast majority of those in urban areas consisted largely of workers. Local soviets were elected by those in the area or workplace, and in turn those soviets sent delegates to higher levels of soviets representing larger populations, and eventually you ended up with delegates to All-Russian (or, after USSR was formed, All-Union) congresses and conferences of soviets.

>>2585

>>2585

From my understanding there was a small percentage that actually was involved in orchestrating production, and very few of the groups labeled as "Factory Comitees" were engaged directly in organizing production.

>>2586

Yes, this.

If you want a good overview of the Soviet economy I highly recommend a book I scanned a few months back: https://archive.org/details/SovietEconomicDevelopmentSince1917