I don't want to repeat everything I've already posted but this " the political spectrum is a big circle and the extremes of left and right meet up in the middle" is just way too fucking simplistic. It's a pat response given, sorry to offend anyone, generally by people who haven't read to much about politics or political history.
And it's what those with pretty fucking large interest in the status quo would like, to reduce politics to - a four yearly coice between one bunch pf cunts that don't give a fuck about anyone but themselves, and another bunch who are exactly the same on every fucking point but wear a different coloured badges.
The one basic point I'll stress again is this:
Every fascist government was intended to be a dictatorship from the outset. Adolf, Benito, Franco; strong leaders taking absolute power.
The Bolsheviks on the other hand set out with some rather admirable democratic intents. They wanted a true functioning, participative democracy, that involved everyone having a forum to express their views. But they failed absolutely.
Almost inevitably in a country as backward as Russia in 1917, the state was force to rely on a small group of individuals, drawn from the political leadership and from the old Tsarist regime, bascially because they were the only people that could read. the majority of the population were uneducated peasants, illiteracy rates were over 90%.
Obviously it didn't take long for a power base to develop and solidify these people into a cast of bureaucrats, which then operated to protect their own interests, and soon enough a nasty totalitarianist regime at least as bad as Hitler's.
But there's still a difference.
Good intentions with poor execution leading to tyranny is one thing, setting out to have a one party state and a thousand year empire to rule the world is another.
Incidently - The original bolshevik political theorists Lenin and Trotsky, never expected the 1917 revolution to be successful. It was anticipated that the new workers state would fall pretty quickly, due to the underdeveoped nature of Russia, the comparitive weakness of its industrial working class etc.
The intent was not so much to take power in Russia but too trigger off the revolutions in the more developed Western Europe, which would then be able to help modernise Russia. Which all went a bit pear-shaped when Karl L and Rosa L made a bit of bollock of the German revolution in 1918 and the whole SDLP leadership ended up a bit dead.
Never mind eh.
i dunno lumpy. what you say is true, but, Lenin wasn't just taking the marxist ideal of an evolving state, instead didnt he tweak it 'marxist leninist'? in doing so the all out democracy you mention was never going to happen, certainly not in Lenin's lifetime.
infact the Bolsheviks opressed and indoctrinated as much, if not more than the Nazis. little octobrists and the like examples of youth movements (similar to the Hitler youth) where kids were shown how to tow the party line from a very early age.
the Cheka probably 'got rid' of more opposers than the Gestapo did in germany, but thats not for certain.
the nomenklatura system meant that only vetted communists could gain jobs of any importance.
all this shows that saying the Bolsheviks wanted a democracy eventually is ludicrous.
because they terminated any form of opposition- therefore there's no way a genuine democracy can take place.
perhaps they wanted a democracy in a hundred years, but that doesnt excuse, nor does it change the fact that the Bolsheviks were as extreme as the Nazis and infact carried out much the same things that they did. despite being the complete opposite side of the scale??
me say circle
