Come to think of it, Russia had a long history of local "council democracy" going back to the veche system. Everybody in Russia in the 1800s knew that the Cossacks were locally democratically governed as part of their deal with the state (we give you soldiers and you don't tax us, interfere in local affairs, touch our deviant religion, etc.). The narodniki appealed to it. It wasn't novel in 1905, not even counting the Decembrists 70 years earlier.
----- Original Message ---- From: Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Tue, April 20, 2010 1:35:00 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] what is to be done
That's not why they were called the Bolsheviks though, and they definitely weren't for majority rule.
----- Original Message ---- From: c b <cb31450 at gmail.com>
Bolshevism means "majorityism" in Russian. Majority rule in democracy. Democracy is a novel concept in Czarist Russion, unlike the US which had it for over a hundred years in 1905.
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