Not surprising? For once the FBI right.
#Stop the presses: The FBI established a fact!
1 Like
This is an incredibly simplified (and possibly not entirely correct) version of what happened and doesnāt include every movement. If anyone wants to correct anything then please do. There are plenty of people out there who know more about this than I do
In Ukraine and Kronstadt it looks like they were outnumbered by the Red Army by a huge amount.
In the Spanish republic the Stalinists had control of the supply of weapons, they kept the best weapons then distributed the rest to the Republican capitalists, Trotskyists and anarcho-syndicalists in that order. George Orwell wrote about the crappiness of the equipment his comrades had in Homage to Catalonia (he was fighting alongside POUM, the trotskyists, but took a liking to CNT-AIT, the anarchists.) When the Barcelona May Days happened it was amazing that the Trotskists and anarchists lasted as long as they did.
The Spartacus League and the Bavarian Council Republic were defeated by the Freikorps. Many members of the Freikorps would later join the Nazi party willingly.
The council communists were crippled by the Nazis, although they did come back to some extent in the 60s and there are some still around.
Iām going to stop now, Iām feeling fatigued.
5 Likes
Itās not so much about the particulars of Seegerās beliefs.
The fact that he took part in a turn about face June 22 1941, and started advocating for war just hours after the last time he was advocating for US neutrality in the war, is reason enough to suspect he was taking orders first, and reconciling them with his beliefs afterwards. That matters a lot more than which faction he did or did not belong to.
1 Like
I think right there is the big answer as to why, at least in the 20th century, Marxist-Leninist groups were so successful vis-a-vis other socialist and communist movements: with the Soviet Union they managed to establish themselves early on, which meant that they became a major source of resources for associated movements. (Be it via funding; providing personnel, supplies, and training for those situations that called for them; or just influence in general.) This allowed them to push certain groups at the expense of others, resulting in increased visibility for those groups and permitting them to draw in new members who might otherwise have gone to other movements.
(Edit: Effectively, it could be viewed as a type of Matthew effect.)
1 Like
nobody joined the Communist Party because they were in favor of prison camps and starvation, and most left the party when that became evident.
Unless you were in a country run by Communists. Then you joined specifically to avoid being on the receiving end of prison camps and starvation.
1 Like
Communism allowed for religious type fervor without the association with reactionary Old Guard state sponsored religions. In most ways Communism took its cues from the state established churches. It has its own form of theology/apologia (Communist Dialectic). It had its own form of worship, priests and idolatry.
Under dictators like Stalin, Pol Pot, The Kims, Ceaucescu, or Hoaxha, Communism was indistinguishable from a religious cult. With their own brand of fundamentalism, irrational beliefs taken as āgospel truthā and veneration of leaders. Plus they had the fundamentalist religious need for ācrusadeā or ājihadā. Accepting no alternatives to their views.
In early stages, likely yes. In later stages it was more about careers or getting children to university or so on. Nothing wrong on that, Iād say.
3 Likes
Sometime you joined in order to run the prison camps and starve people. Sadistic thugs seldom cared what kind of dictator was handing out the paychecks. Gestapo thugs easily made the transition to the Stasi (Former Gestapo chief Henrich Muller once stated he learned the tricks of the trade from the KGB). Work is work. One never lets ideology get in the way of government sanctioned mayhem.
1 Like
Again, itās worth remembering that their ideologies were all derived from Marxist-Leninism.
I know that the Libertarian Socialists I have been in contact with are very wary of anything that might seem like hero worship. I donāt know about the Spartacus League, but as they dragged their leaders into a revolution they felt they werenāt ready for (getting them arrested and executed as a result) I doubt they had the same problems as the Marxist-Leninists.
1 Like
Is it helpful to add Pol Pot to the list of communistic dictators?
He called himself a communist, but the governmental form in Cambodia was weird and very distinct to other communistic regimes. Deindustrialisation, ruralisation* and implementing subsistence agriculture as economic system are not the typical ingredients of the communistic cookbook.
* what the heck is the opposite of urbanisation?
He seemed to believe in a form of primitivism, where the only way the party could achieve communism was by going back to a time before feudalism and capitalism.
Iām only using this wikipedia article as a reference to what I mean by primitivism, there is absolutely no way you could claim that Pol Pot was an anarchist.
1 Like
Its worth noting that a dictatorās ideology beyond, āeverything is mineā is purely there to justify their existence as dictator. Be it Marxism/Leninism, Islamicism, Fascism. It all ends up being merely reflection of the same autocratic impulses.
Libertarian Socialists generally work in a democratic setting and little to do with dictatorships. The Spartacist League eventually adopted armed force to seize power from a democratic nation. Putting them in the same boat as any other supporter of dictatorship. Like their rivals the Freikorps.
I find no fundamental difference between types of dictatorships. Its hair splitting at best. Ideology is a means to an end to one, not a fundamental driving principle. In the end, they all rule according to their personal idiosyncrasies and little else.
People only start to take apart an alleged ideology after the fact.
Pol Potās desire to empty out the cities, kill people with glasses and force people into agrarian slavery is no more rationally based than the Revolutionary Leader in the film Bananas who declares all people must wear underwear on the outside and the official language is changed to Swedish.
1 Like
I agree. But you wrote about communistic dictators : )
This is still regarded as communism? Live and learnā¦
My understanding is that Marxā/Engelsā manifesto is still the āofficialā foundation for the communistic system - and they used the working class as base, without destroying them first.
Such positions of authority attract certain personalities, in every regime, left or right or center.
4 Likes
āPrimitive communismā is what Iāve sometimes heard used to describe Pol Pot. Iāve never been a fan of it though, as it can cause confusion between his particular ideology and primitive societies that practice something that could be described as communism.
(Communist or Marxist primitivism would probably be a better term, as it would make clear that the primitivism is a goal of the ideology, rather than the state it arises from. I doubt theyāre actual terms though.)
2 Likes
Pot Pot was as communist as Mao, whom is universally recognized as a communist dictator 
China considered him to be one of theirs. Even to the point of trying to help out Pol Potās regime from invasion by the Vietnamese.
Ironically, those who joined, and who rose through the Communist ranks, may well have run a higher risk of receiving what the NKVD called āoneās ration of leadā than did the average non-party member.
1 Like
Realpolitik is a bitch ; )
It would be interesting to learn if Mao said about Pol Pot something like āHeās a bastard but heās our bastard.ā
4 Likes
Marxist Primitivism would be better, Communist Primitivism is ambiguous as the anarcho-primitivists also see themselves as communists.
1 Like
