/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

in the first week of Feb 1917 the bolsheviks had no more than a few hundred members in Petrograd, with maybe a thousand more scattered across the rest of Russia that wouldn't be participating in the revolution

>membership of popular party is low when it is illegal to be a member
>membership of popular party explodes when it becomes legal
who could have predicted this

>>2827865
Wonder what happened between 1914-17 to radicalise so much people.

>>2827991
This, plus the hardship caused by the war caused the party's popularity to explode, plus the February revolution and subsequent failures of the provisional government shattered the legitimacy of the Tsar and other parties, and opened up ideological space for radical thinking.

>>2827991
>popular party
They literally lost the first free elections in russia and then overthrew the government using the red guards cause the majority of the proleterians in russia didnt like them.
ML's have always been little children who threw trantrum when things dont go their way and instead of self-reflection as to why they failed they blame everybody else and get violent

>>2828022
>They literally lost the first free elections in russia and then overthrew the government using the red guards cause the majority of the proleterians in russia didnt like them.
That's not accurate. They lost the elections to the Constituent Assembly which was a general election in which everybody could vote, including porkies, landowners, petty bourgeoisie, etc. However the Bolsheviks won a landslide in the Petrograd Soviet elections in which only wage labourers could vote. They were overwhelmingly popular with industrial workers, its just that this was a minority demographic.

>>2828023
>landowners, petty bourgeoisie, etc.
So like 5% of the population?
The bolsheviks lost brcause they didnt have the majroity of the peasants on their side
The peasantry as a whole was a huge blindspot for most early marxists its very weird how they thought they could achieve a revolution and overthrow society with only 10% of the population on their side.

>>2828026
>very weird how they thought they could achieve a revolution and overthrow society with only 10% of the population on their side.
at the very least since 1905 did lenin argue for worker-peasant alliance

>>2828026
Thats exacly what they did ?

>>2828026
Communism is not a popularity contest nor does it concern itself with vulgar populism and majoritarianism as liberals do. With the exception of the impoverished proletariat the vast majority of any given population will violently oppose communism, necessitating party command of military force

>>2828026
It's true that they lacked support among the peasantry, although even that began to change after the provisional government shat the bed and kept conscripting peasants to die in an overwhelmingly unpopular war.
>The peasantry as a whole was a huge blindspot for most early marxists
That's true, but that's because they were working under Marx's observation that the peasants were a dying class that capitalism would make extinct. Though of course it took another century after Marx for that process to be complete even in Europe, and its still ongoing in the rest of the world. Nobody was expecting how the development of social democracy and imperialism would lead to peasants displacing workers as the most exploited class. To their credit though, the Bolsheviks were the first Marxists to seriously address that question and begin thinking of the peasants as a revolutionary subject. It was on the basis of their work that you get Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevera, and Mao, who put an even greater emphasis on the peasantry.
>its very weird how they thought they could achieve a revolution and overthrow society with only 10% of the population on their side
Well, the decision to seize power had a lot more to do with the weakness of the provisional government than anything else. They did also actively try to bring peasants into the revolutionary coalition. Plus they were expecting revolution to break out in the rest of Europe.

For the record, early petrograd soviets were menshevik-led and the bolsheviks were against the february revolution, and after the february revolution, the siberian exiled bolsheviks which returned took up a defense of the fatherland line, only after lenin returns they take up revolutionary defeatism and only after the failure of provisional government to govern, and after menshevik collaboration with the PG was exposed and soviets taken over by bolsheviks, did lenin call for all power to soviets. is this opportunism?

>>2828040
>is this opportunism?
No, opportunism is sacrificing the class and revolutionary integrity of your movement or party for short term political gains. An example would be supporting a reaction war just because its popular, in the hopes that it will get your party more votes.

>>2828022
The Tsardom would have been restored if the peasantoids were given a voice

>>2827865
they let the ideologically confused peasants and military men in so they could win a civil war while maintaining a nucleus of highly ideological vanguard.

>>2828032
>Communism is not a popularity contest nor does it concern itself with vulgar populism and majoritarianism
wait until you learn what bolshevik translates to

>>2828026
>The peasantry as a whole was a huge blindspot for most early marxists its very weird how they thought they could achieve a revolution and overthrow society with only 10% of the population on their side.
they thought stolypin would turn all the peasants into proles. when that didn't happen they began courting the peasants and did it themselves through rapid industrialization after winning the civil war

>>2828032
>Communism is not a popularity contest nor does it concern itself with vulgar populism and majoritarianism as liberals do.
This sort of apophatic theory where you can only say what Communism is not is so tiring.
> With the exception of the impoverished proletariat the vast majority of any given population will violently oppose communism, necessitating party command of military force
well obviously force must be used to carry out a revolution, there are plenty of countries that have an impoverished proletarian majority, and those are the countries where revolution is most likely to succeed. because surprise surprise, it's easier to carry out your political program when you aren't seen as yet another ruling minority that rules at the expense of a majority, which, surprise surprise, even most impoverished proles dislike seeing. Unless you think the proles are sadistic little gremlins who enjoy it when the peasantry, petty bourgeoisie, lumpen also get stomped into dust by the ruling class.

>>2828022
They were a very popular party. In what world is a party winning 25% of the popular vote not popular? Millions of people voted for them so it's only natural that hundreds of thousands would join the party. Returning to the OP, this can also be seen in Duma elections under the Tsar where the estate-based unrepresentative electoral system set aside only a small fraction of seats to be elected by workers (with a restrictive franchise at that), the Bolsheviks won all the seats in the workers curia even then under conditions of repression and illegality. So while the party membership number may create an illusion (often repeated by modern leninists of all stripes) of the bolsheviks being this elite tiny vanguard that explodes in popularity in the revolutionary situation based on their correct theory, the truth is the bolsheviks has been the deeply entrenched party of the russian proletariat for two decades at that point, with their papers having substantial circulation and winning deputies even under the insanely unrepresentative duma electoral system. If anything the notable thing in 1917 is the growth of Bolshevik support among peasants based on their opposition to the war and support for land seizures which helps peel of the bulk of the SRs to the side of the soviets.
As for the constituent assembly elections, they obviously didn't have the support of a majority of the entire population but they absolutely did have the support of a vast majority of proletarians actually who overwhelmingly voted for the Bolsheviks, hence their very large majorities in urban constituencies, also large majorities in army and naval garrisons reflecting their overwhelming support among soldiers and sailors. The demographics of russia being as they were even getting every single proletarian behind you wouldn't be close to enough to reach 50% of the vote, the country was majority peasant and the peasants though many voted for the Bolsheviks too, overwhelmingly backed the SRs and the fate of the constituent assembly had far more to do with the Socialist Revolutionary party than the bolsheviks, since the party split during the elections with a majority of the party's base and activists being expelled for their support of soviet power and the revolution, while the rump party leadership, which in reality had now very little support reduced to the progressive intelligentsia and wealthier farmers, had written up the electoral lists and the deputies elected for the SRs didn't represent the factional split in the party. Had the Left SRs not boycotted the constituent assembly with the Bolsheviks as illegitimate and supported the Congress of Soviets instead things would certainly have developed differently. Ultimately the constituent assembly wasn't representative and ordinary people didn't care for it, the Right SRs and Kadets entirely overestimated its legitimacy in the eyes of the masses by harping relentlessly on its authority.

>>2828177
It's also worth noting that the Bolsheviks were aware of the limits of their popularity and sought to address this issue by offering the SRs a coalition.