Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 00:35:55 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Socialism or Bobbitism



The description of Bolshevik nastiness in the so-called proletarian 
dictatorship won't get any argument from me, but to uphold democracy vs. 
dictatorship gets nowhere. As long as we're referring to Russia as the 
great paradigm (we can throw in Austro-Deutschland too), you have to 
recognize the Social-Democratic role in ruining the revolution (even 
leaving aside the Social-Democrats' support for the imperialist war, 
which by itself revealed their definitive bankruptcy). The right wing 
(i.e., the mainstream) of German Social-Democracy crushed the workers as 
effectively as the Bolshies at Kronstadt. And in Russia, the "moderate 
socialists"--Mensheviks, Right S.R.'s, and Kerensky's 
"Trudoviks"--attempted to keep the butchery of the trenches going. 
Kerensky came into power very popular, and blew his popularity down to 
about zero within a couple of months. The Constituent Assembly--what was 
so great about it? All power to the soviets (but not the Soviets). The 
tragedy of the Russian revolution is that the peasants and workers didn't 
toss off *all* the political parties.

Even at its best (say, the Nordic welfare-states) Social Democracy has, 
um, fallen short of inaugurating a new world. And perish the thought of 
even *that* coming to pass in the United States. If a Soc-Dem gov't were 
elected in the USA, the ruling class wouldn't allow it to happen. A 
Soc-Dem gov't here would probably suffer the fate of Allende in Chile and 
what would have happened in Russia if the Kornilov putsch had succeeded.

As for militias (i.e., direct armed power of workers)--I don't see what's 
wrong with that. That's the reason why Kornilov failed, why the 
Makhnovshchina in Ukraina caused such headaches for White and Red 
authoritarians alike. It's what kept the Spanish Revolution going (for a 
while). The thing about the Red Army was that it *wasn't* at all a 
people's army. It was a standing, professional army--whose top officers 
actually *were* former czarists (just as the Bolsheviki loved to slander 
anyone who disagreed with them as agents of the White Guards, etc.). If 
workers in insurrection depend on a Social Democratic gov't (e.g., an 
Allende) to defend them, instead of doing it themselves, then the 
reaction will win always--that is, if the Social Democratic gov't itself 
doesn't call in the reaction, as it did in Germany 1918.

As for the meaning of "Bobbitry and Red Terror": well, there had to be 
some way of tying these two fine threads together, and the image seemed 
sufficiently bloodthirsty...and not without a certain black humor.


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