In 1898, the Marxists decided to organize and form a political party called the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. The idea behind the Marxist Party in Russia was that as capitalism would progress, the party would help organize proletarian factory workers who'd be thrown out of the peasant life. Unsurprisingly, given their ideology, theMarxists had very little support outside of the big urban areas.
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The leaders of the Russian Revolutions of February and October 1917 sought to establish socialism: a deeply democratic economic and political system where the employee/employer relationship is abolished, and where workers control their workplaces, the means of production and the government via the “free association of the producers”.
Instead the revolutions resulted in the establishment of the Soviet Union: an authoritarian state where the government became the sole employer and the state controlled the workers instead of the other way around.This then became the model for “communist” countries around the world.
Why did the Soviet Union fail at socialism?
What can we learn about this failure to apply to our political struggles in the present and future?
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