Unsure where the author of this meme has heard either Lenin or Stalin call for left unity? Both were pretty clearly and consistently hostile towards Anarchism/Libertarian Socialism as well as what we’d call modern Social Democratic tendencies.
Only not including Mao because I havent read enough Mao and Khruschev because I honestly don’t expect him to have written or spoken in particular about left tendency conflicts.
Really funny to just put “intellectuals” under Mao though.
If they wanted a remotely accurate meme they should have put “no unity with counter-revolutionaries” as the dialogue, since that at least gets at the core divide and argument of the conflict, both then and now.
Edit: Actually the more I look at it the funnier it gets, like theres no Kronstadt? You put “factory councils” over like the one specific thing everyone gets to hear about and have to have an opinion on? What is this, a crypto-Trotskyist meme?
One of the (more legitimate) grievances put forward by the anarchists is that the bolsheviks ended elections in the soviets and replaced elected delegates with Bolshevik appointees. During the Civil War and consolidation it made sense, but the fact that the soviets weren’t democratize again during peace time was a failing (although, obviously, the time between the Civil War and the German invasion was brief). I think that’s probably what it was in reference to?
Lenin did kind of revere Kropotkin, but you are right that it was explicitly part of their organization that “there is one party line, not two” and that the vanguard must behave in a unified fashion following the results of a vote or other method of decision-making.
Mao was an anarchist for a minute and actually tried to set up a representational system where multiple anti-capitalist parties could hold office, but no liberals (it was during the Civil War and lasted about 5 minutes before getting replaced by a single party system)
tbf he did seem to incorporate some anarchist principles into his theory and he wasn’t some kind of anarchist-hunter as the head of the CPC, he just concluded that they were substantially in error (as he separately said of many ML contingents).
Unsure where the author of this meme has heard either Lenin or Stalin call for left unity? Both were pretty clearly and consistently hostile towards Anarchism/Libertarian Socialism as well as what we’d call modern Social Democratic tendencies.
Only not including Mao because I havent read enough Mao and Khruschev because I honestly don’t expect him to have written or spoken in particular about left tendency conflicts.
Really funny to just put “intellectuals” under Mao though.
If they wanted a remotely accurate meme they should have put “no unity with counter-revolutionaries” as the dialogue, since that at least gets at the core divide and argument of the conflict, both then and now.
Edit: Actually the more I look at it the funnier it gets, like theres no Kronstadt? You put “factory councils” over like the one specific thing everyone gets to hear about and have to have an opinion on? What is this, a crypto-Trotskyist meme?
One of the (more legitimate) grievances put forward by the anarchists is that the bolsheviks ended elections in the soviets and replaced elected delegates with Bolshevik appointees. During the Civil War and consolidation it made sense, but the fact that the soviets weren’t democratize again during peace time was a failing (although, obviously, the time between the Civil War and the German invasion was brief). I think that’s probably what it was in reference to?
the german invasion kinda fucked up the soviet union permanently, didn’t it
Lenin did kind of revere Kropotkin, but you are right that it was explicitly part of their organization that “there is one party line, not two” and that the vanguard must behave in a unified fashion following the results of a vote or other method of decision-making.
This is democratic centralism: Freedom of debate - Unity of action.
Mao was an anarchist for a minute and actually tried to set up a representational system where multiple anti-capitalist parties could hold office, but no liberals (it was during the Civil War and lasted about 5 minutes before getting replaced by a single party system)
Didn’t mao write scathing critiques of anarchism after his experience with it?
tbf he did seem to incorporate some anarchist principles into his theory and he wasn’t some kind of anarchist-hunter as the head of the CPC, he just concluded that they were substantially in error (as he separately said of many ML contingents).
mao really was his own thing wasn’t he lol