[lbo-talk] what's left

[Chris Doss]

In the Russian Revo (more precisely, in the Russian Empire from circa 1917 to circa 1920) you had Bolsheviks, EsErs, anarchists, Ukrainian nationalists, Polish nationalists, an internally fractured White movement (some devoted to reinstating absolutism, some partisans of one or another national independence movement), various other independence movements (Georgian, Cossack, "Mountaineer," Polish, Finnish), religious movements in greater or lesser overlap with the one or more of the above, etc. The Chechens started out shooting Whites and within 5 years' time were shooting Bolsheviks. Which side were they on?

----- Original Message ----
From: Marv Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca>
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Sent: Mon, April 26, 2010 11:32:44 PM
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] what's left

On 2010-04-26, at 1:41 PM, Chris Doss wrote:


> There were only two sides in those conflicts?

Yes. The centre doesn't hold. The traditional parties lose their mass base. The intensification of social conflict propels followers of liberal parties - especially the propertyless alluded to by Mike Ballard earlier today - further to the left. Conservatives move farther right in reaction, drawing on the more tradition-bound small propertyholders and atomized unemployed and unorganized labourers as their foot soldiers. This is not universally the case; some tea party followers would move left, for example, as has been argued here, but not most. History has shown that some liberals, social democrats, and Marxists, especially within the intelligensia, would cross over to the right for any number of reasons, but again not as a rule.