Planning; or marx versus lenin versus lenin

Mr P.A. Van Heusden pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk
Wed Sep 1 04:08:59 PDT 1999


On Wed, 1 Sep 1999, rc-am wrote:

[snipping out the whole discussiong]


>
> i meant that after 1919, there is no recall.

That you choose the year 1919 for your 'breaking point' is interesting. I have yet to come across anything that I could judge to be a complete documentation, from primary sources, of the Russian Revolution (it would, of course, be an enormous project).

As you no doubt know from various anarchist writings, one of the criticisms put forward against the Bolsheviks is that they already in 1918 started building the framework of what would become the 'workers' state' of 1919 and onwards. Immediately on taking power in 1917, the Bolsheviks faced an immense crisis in production, made much worse, of course, by Brest-Litovsk. It seems pretty clear that much of the impetus towards centralisation, and beaurocracy was a result of this crisis. So I find it interesting that you mention specifically 1919 as an important year - why is that?

Peter -- Peter van Heusden : pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk : PGP key available 'The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions.' - Karl Marx



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