Carrol
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Marv Gandall Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2013 1:00 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Bruce Bartlett: " I think it is only a matter of time before the Tea Party morphs into unapologetic fascism"
On 2013-11-12, at 1:14 PM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Joanna: "Trotsky and Lenin were keenly aware of this, and a good deal
> of organizing went on to make sure that they would have the support of
> the military."
>
> [WS:] My point exactly. Whether they called themselves "Marxist" is
> irrelevant to my argument which pertains to Marxist theory explaining
> historical event purely in terms of broadly defined classes.
I didn't understand that to be your point. I understood you to be suggesting, as you have done previously, that the military - meaning the military high command - drove radical political change from the top, rather than it being the result of class struggles from below.
In fact, in successful revolutionary situations, it splits along class lines, with junior officers and the ranks typically refusing to obey the instructions of the general staff to repress an insurgency.
This was well understood by Marx, Engels, and subsequent generations of Marxists, who regarded the conduct of revolutionary agitation within the armed forces as decisive. I'm sure Joanna's reference was not to the military as a whole in the Russian Revolution but to its lower ranks, who were urged by the Bolsheviks to "turn their guns" against the Tsar's commanders. Where insurrections failed, it was mostly owing to the inability of the revolutionary leadership to entice the mostly peasant conscript armies to their side.
Where class struggles have erupted, they have been mirrored inside the armed forces. "The military" is no more monolithic an institution than is "the nation".
> --
> Wojtek
>
> "An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."
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