Saturday, November 28, 2020

Autocracy - A History


To see how autocracy – the alternative to early democracy – functioned, we can find no better example than that of Imperial China. China’s earliest historical dynasties, the Shang and the Zhou (from the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE), had kings who ruled through an army and a bureaucracy, and there is no evidence of councils or assemblies of the people. Autocracy has been a near-constant feature of rule in China, suggesting that it wasn’t some aberration but instead simply a different path of political development from Western European societies. The culmination of the Chinese model, achieved during the Tang and Song dynasties (7th to 13th centuries CE), involved the incorporation of the political elite into the state via a system of meritocratic recruitment based on a civil service exam. The Chinese civil service exam – which Europeans with their weak states later marvelled at – served a purpose not so different from a parliament but in a fundamentally different way because it was not local people who chose the representatives.

Thursday, November 26, 2020

Leninism

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Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party, as the political prelude to the establishment of communism. The function of the Leninist vanguard party is to provide the working classes with the political consciousness (education and organisation) and revolutionary leadership necessary to depose capitalism in the Russian Empire (1721–1917). 

Leninist revolutionary leadership is based upon The Communist Manifesto (1848) identifying the communist party as "the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country; that section which pushes forward all others." As the vanguard party, the Bolsheviks viewed history through the theoretical framework of dialectical materialism, which sanctioned political commitment to the successful overthrow of capitalism, and then to instituting socialism; and, as the revolutionary national government, to realize the socio-economic transition by all means.

In the 19th century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) in which they called for the political unification of the European working classes in order to achieve communist revolution; and proposed that, because the socio-economic organization of Communism was of a higher form than that of capitalism, a workers' revolution first would occur in the industrialised countries. In Germany, Marxist social democracy was the political perspective of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, inspiring Russian Marxists, such as Lenin.

In the early 20th century, the socio-economic backwardness of Imperial Russia (1721–1917) — combined and uneven economic development – facilitated rapid and intensive industrialisation, which produced a united, working-class proletariat in a predominantly agrarian society. Moreover, because the industrialisation was financed mostly with foreign capital, Imperial Russia did not possess a revolutionary bourgeoisie with political and economic influence upon the workers and the peasants, as had been the case in the French Revolution (1789–1799), in the 18th century. Although Russia's political economy was agrarian and semi-feudal, the task of democratic revolution fell to the urban, industrial working class as the only social class capable of effecting land reform and democratization, in view that the Russian bourgeoisie would suppress any revolution.

In the April Theses (1917), the political strategy of the October Revolution (7–8 November 1917), Lenin proposed that the Russian revolution was not an isolated national event, but a fundamentally international event – the first socialist revolution in the world. Lenin's practical application of Marxism and proletarian revolution to the social, political, and economic conditions of agrarian Russia motivated and impelled the "revolutionary nationalism of the poor" to depose the absolute monarchy of the three-hundred-year dynasty of the House of Romanov (1613–1917), as tsars of Russia.

In the aftermath of the October Revolution (1917), Leninism was the dominant version of Marxism in Russia and the basis of Soviet Democracy, the rule of directly elected soviets. In establishing the socialist mode of production in Bolshevik Russia—with the Decree on Land (1917), war communism (1918–1921), and the New Economic Policy (1921–1928)—the revolutionary régime suppressed most political opposition, including Marxists who opposed Lenin's actions, the anarchists and the Mensheviks, factions of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. The Russian Civil War (1917–1922), which included the seventeen-army Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War (1917–1925), and left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks (1918–1924) were the external and internal wars which transformed Bolshevik Russia into the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR), the core republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

As revolutionary praxis, Leninism originally was neither a proper philosophy nor a discrete political theory. Leninism comprises politico-economic developments of orthodox Marxism and Lenin's interpretations of Marxism, which function as a pragmatic synthesis for practical application to the actual conditions (political, social, economic) of the post-emancipation agrarian society of Imperial Russia in the early 20th century. As a political-science term, Lenin's theory of proletarian revolution entered common usage at the fifth congress of the Communist International (1924), when Grigory Zinoviev applied the term Leninism to denote "vanguard-party revolution." The term Leninism was accepted as part of CPSU's vocabulary and doctrine around 1922, and in January 1923, despite objections from Lenin, it entered the public vocabulary.

Communism: The principle of state capitalism during the period of transition to communism: “The authorities pretend they are paying wages, workers pretend they are working.” Alternatively, "So long as the bosses pretend to pay us, we will pretend to work." ~ Russian political joke [persisted to the '80s].

According to Marxist–Leninist theory, communism in the strict sense is the final stage of evolution of a society after it has passed through the socialism stage. The Soviet Union thus cast itself as a socialist country trying to build communism, which was supposed to be a classless society.

Russian political jokes are a part of Russian humour and can be grouped into the major time periods: Imperial Russia, Soviet Union and finally post-Soviet Russia. In the Soviet period political jokes were a form of social protest, mocking and critisizing leaders, the system and its ideology, myths and rites. Quite a few political themes can be found among other standard categories of Russian joke, most notably Rabinovich jokes and Radio Yerevan.

Socialist economics comprises the economic theories, practices and norms of hypothetical and existing socialist economic systems. A socialist economic system is characterized by social ownership and operation of the means of production that may take the form of autonomous cooperatives or direct public ownership wherein production is carried out directly for use rather than for profit. Socialist systems that utilize markets for allocating capital goods and factors of production among economic units are designated market socialism. When planning is utilized, the economic system is designated as a socialist planned economy. Non-market forms of socialism usually include a system of accounting based on calculation-in-kind to value resources and goods.

Socialist economics has been associated with different schools of economic thought. Marxian economics provided a foundation for socialism based on analysis of capitalism while neoclassical economics and evolutionary economics provided comprehensive models of socialism. During the 20th century, proposals and models for both socialist planned and market economies were based heavily on neoclassical economics or a synthesis of neoclassical economics with Marxian or institutional economics.

As a term, socialist economics may also be applied to the analysis of former and existing economic systems that were implemented in socialist states such as in the works of Hungarian economist János Kornai. 19th-century American individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker, who connected the classical economics of Adam Smith and the Ricardian socialists as well as that of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Karl Marx and Josiah Warren to socialism, held that there were two schools of socialist thought, namely anarchist socialism and state socialism, maintaining that what they had in common was the labor theory of value. Socialists disagree about the degree to which social control or regulation of the economy is necessary; how far society should intervene and whether government, particularly existing government, is the correct vehicle for change are issues of disagreement.
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On 15 May 1943 Stalin dissolved the Communist International, known as Comintern, that aimed to promote worldwide communism. 

The Comintern, also known as the Third International, was formed in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917. This had seen the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, seize power in Russia and establish the world’s first socialist state. Fearful that the world’s capitalist countries might crush the fledgling communist government, the Bolsheviks sought to spread the ideals of communism and support revolutionary movements in other countries.

The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was an international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism, and which was led and controlled by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress in 1920 to "struggle by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and the creation of an international soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the state". The Comintern was preceded by the dissolution of the Second International in 1916. Vladmir Lenin and Leon Trotsky were both honorary presidents of the Communist International.

The Comintern held seven World Congresses in Moscow between 1919 and 1935. During that period, it also conducted thirteen Enlarged Plenums of its governing Executive Committee, which had much the same function as the somewhat larger and more grandiose Congresses. Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, dissolved the Comintern in 1943 to avoid antagonizing his allies in the later years of World War II, the United States and the United Kingdom. It was succeeded by the Cominform in 1947.
During its existence, the Comintern provided financial and ideological support to communist parties in around the world, and helped them to organise campaigns for proletarian revolution. It also served as a forum for debate and discussion among communist leaders and intellectuals.

However, the outbreak of World War II and the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany saw the Comintern’s influence began to wane. When Germany invaded the USSR two years later, Stalin begin actively seeking to improve relations with capitalist powers in order to focus on the war effort against the Axis forces.

In this context, the decision was made to dissolve the Comintern in May 1943 as a gesture of goodwill towards the Western Allies, particularly Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. He also sought to demonstrate the Soviet Union’s commitment to cooperation in the fight against fascism. While the dissolution of the Comintern was a prudent move in the context of the Second World War, communist parties across the world continued to maintain close relations with each other and established the Cominform in 1947.

The Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties (Информационное бюро коммунистических и рабочих партий, Informatsionnoye byuro kommunisticheskikh i rabochikh partiy), commonly known as Cominform (Коминформ), was a co-ordination body of Marxist-Leninist communist parties in Europe during the early Cold War that was formed in part as a replacement of the Communist International. It worked to ensure that communist governments in the Soviet bloc operated according to Stalinist principles, rather than those of alternative forms of communism. The Cominform was dissolved during de-Stalinization in 1956.

Cold War Communist Disunity

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Extremist Frenemies - Myth of Communist Unity during the Cold War - Cold > .
23-10-31 Worst Economy in Europe: Moldova - Casual Scholar > .
23-9-17 How the Rich Ate Moldova - Asianometry > .
22-2-4 5 Questions for Stephen Kotkin - Hoover > .

Differences existed between Yugoslavia, USSR, and China, both ideologically and economically.

1848-2-21 Communist Manifesto


On 21 February 1848 the Communist Manifesto was anonymously published in London, although the text by Karl Marx, supported by Friedrich Engels, was in German.

Marx was born in Prussia in 1818, but was living in Brussels when the Communist League's Second Congress commissioned him and Engels to write the League’s manifesto in December 1847. It wasn’t until the League’s Central Committee sent him an ultimatum to submit the completed manuscript by 1 February that he did any significant work on it. The pamphlet was modelled on Engels’ 1847 Draft of the Communist Confession of Faith but Engels had little input to the manifesto itself.

Officially called The Manifesto of the Communist Party, the original pamphlet was just 23 pages long but went on to become a highly influential political document alongside Marx’s more substantial Das Kapital. Ending with the now-iconic words, ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ publication of the Manifesto coincided with the outbreak of the 1848 revolution in France the next day. The revolution spread across Europe, but the Manifesto had little connection to this: only in Cologne did the Communist League play any major role.

The Manifesto gradually drifted into obscurity until its resurgence in the 1870s after Marx formed the First International. An updated edition was printed in 1872 and translated into six languages. The standard English version was first published in 1888 with a translation by Samuel Moore, but Marx himself had died penniless four years previously. His ideas lived on and directly led to 1917’s Bolshevik revolution in Russia, the world's first socialist state to be founded according to Marxist ideology.

Communist War on [Rival] Religion

.Vladimir Lenin and the Communist War On Religion | B2W, Spring 1922 > .
22-2-4 5 Questions for Stephen Kotkin - Hoover > .

Vladimir Lenin founded the Bolshevik Party, orchestrated the October Revolution, and led the world's first communist state to victory in the Russian Civil War. He is now gravely ill and close to death, but he still has one more enemy he wants to crush.

sī vīs pācem, parā bellum

igitur quī dēsīderat pācem praeparet bellum    therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war sī vīs pācem, parā bellum if you wan...