Comments by "OscarTang" (@oscartang4587u3) on "Lenin before the Russian Revolution" video.
-
TIK sources are quite balanced here. Out of 20 sources listed in the Bibliography of this video, 6 sources are from anti-Communists like Melgunov, Mises, Popper, Peikoff (objectivist), and Ayn Rand, and order 6 are from Marx, Lenin and Stalin.
The other 8 sources seem to be pieces from historians.
In this particular, this video referenced two Lenin’s works, they are “Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution" ,1905 and "What Is To Be Done?", 1902, respectively.
4
-
3
-
3
-
Because Karl Marx said so in the Preface to The 1882 Russian Edition of Communist Manifesto.
“The Communist Manifesto had, as its object, the proclamation of the inevitable impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property. But in Russia we find, face-to-face with the rapidly flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, just beginning to develop, more than half the land owned in common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West?”
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
@DoktorDoomJr Hold it right there, neither I nor Gellatelys claimed that [nazism is "left-wing”.]
He stated that:
“Nolte was not alone in dismissing the "socialism" of National Socialism, which others have characterised as either "fake" or the enemy of the socialist idea. German writers commonly identify "genuine socialism" with the established left-wing parties of those times and today. Yet it is worth recalling that socialism came in infinite varieties that stretched back into the nineteenth century. By the early twentieth century, numerous parties around the globe declared that they were the "real" socialists, and they damned all the others.” (Gellately, R. “Hitler’s True Believers: How Ordinary People Became Nazis.” p7. )
The most notable example of those “Real” Socialists was Lenin, who wrote “"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder” to attack the leftist critics of the Bolsheviks, the majority of whom later became the left communists or council communists.
If you really want to argue that Socialism must be “left-wing”. Then I must ask what is your definition of “left-wing”, as it seems the definition of “left-wing” can be very flexible when it comes to Communist States history.
Like one can commit the Cambodian Genocide, which targeted racial minorities, people speaking French, and people wearing glasses;
orchestrate the National Operation, which targeted people of different nationalities within the USSR; or
implement legislation (《关于划分农村阶级成分的决定》) that systematically discriminated against people from specific family backgrounds (Five Black Categories) within PRC,
and can still be classified as “left-wing”.
3
-
@DoktorDoomJr
Regarding the Strasserites.
The definition of Socialism is an ideology that advocated “Social Ownership of means of production”, which appropriate the surplus product, produced by the means of production or the wealth that comes from it, to society at large or the workers themselves. ("Theory and Practice in Socialist Economics")
Even after ditching Otto Strasser, Nazi economic system did able to achieve social ownership of means of production.
The surplus product produced by means production, and the wealth derived from it, were still appropriated to society as a whole by a the State and to workers by DAF. The way how Nazi Germany appropriated the surplus product met the description of two principal variants of social ownership of the mean of production according to the following source.
"Here again there are two principal variants of such social claims to income, depending on the nature of the community holding the claim: (1) Public surplus appropriation: the surplus of the enterprise is distributed to an agency of the government (at the national, regional, or local level), representing a corresponding community of citizens. (2) Worker surplus appropriation: the surplus of the enterprise is distributed to enterprise workers." (Toward a Socialism for the Future, in the Wake of the Demise of the Socialism of the Past, by Weisskopf, Thomas E. 1992. Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 24, No. 3–4, p. 10)
Nazi Germany did gradually eliminate unemployment, the taxes were levied against the rich, the corporations, and foreigners like the Jews. They weren’t levied against the poor, who had their food, rend, clothing, and recreational activities (plus others) subsidized by the State. ( Aly, “Hitler’s Beneficiaries,” see Chapter 2.)
“Family and child tax credits, marriage loans, and home-furnishing and child-education allowances were among the measures with which the state tried to relieve the financial burden on parents and encourage Germans to have more children.” (Aly, “Hitler’s Beneficiaries,” p38-39.)
In addition to this, there were price controls, wage controls, rent controls, and centralised distribution of goods - materials could only be bought with certificates which had to be obtained from one of the various central planning boards which distributed said materials.( Reimann, “The Vampire Economy,” p51-52, p67-70, p251-254.)
DAF in real live was not pro-capitalist. Capitalists were also being regulated by the DAF. Under the new National Socialist regulations (enforced by the DAF), the concepts of “employers” and “employees” were done away with, being replaced with the terms “leaders” and “followers”. And while some “followers” did complain about the new system, saying it was benefiting the “leaders” at the expense of the “followers”, their “leaders” also complained about the new system.
(Evans, “The Third Reich in Power,” p107. Lindner, "Inside IG Farben,” p70, p83. Shirer, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” p327-329.)
“Yes, I am the ‘leader’ in my factory; my workers are my ‘followers.’ But I am no longer a manager...
(Herr A. Z. quoted from Reimann, “The Vampire Economy,” p107.)
I cannot decide what is allowed or forbidden in my own factory...
(Herr A. Z. quoted from Reimann, “The Vampire Economy,” p109.)
There have been cases where managers were removed by the Party of Labor Trustees and replaced by ‘kommissars.’ ”
( Herr A. Z. quoted from Reimann, “The Vampire Economy,” p116.)
Furthermore, the “private profit” of those private companies would still be forced to redistribute among the workers ( to further the Nazi goal) by the DAF, the party subordinates, or directly by the Nazi Government.
"A year or so ago I was ordered to spend social evenings with my 'followers' and to celebrate with them by providing free beer and sausages. The free beer and sausages were welcome enough ... Last year he (The Labor Front secretary) compelled me to spend over a hundred thousand marks for a new lunchroom in our factory. This year he wants me to build a new gymnasium and athletic field which will cost about 120,000 marks." (Reimann, The Vampire Economy, p. 112)
3
-
3
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
@KamikazeMedias According to Karl Marx, the spectrum of Socialism can include any state run by a Bourgeois, building roads and having social healthcare, and Proudhon’s Anarchism as Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism, as Karl Marx said in the Manifesto that:
“
…
We may cite Proudhon's Philosophie de la Misère as an example of this form.
The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat.
…
A second, and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations”(2. Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism, III. Socialist and Communist Literature, Manifesto of the Communist Party)
1
-
1
-
Karl Marx did put any state run by a Bourgeois, building roads and having social healthcare, and Proudhon’s Anarchism as Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism, as Karl Marx said in the manifesto that:
“
…
We may cite Proudhon's Philosophie de la Misère as an example of this form.
The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat.
…
A second, and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations”(2. Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism, III. Socialist and Communist Literature, Manifesto of the Communist Party)
1