#1
That’s the kind of people, frenzied, restless, today they would be called misfits, who were the material for the most revolutionary organization of the beginning of the century Russia. And for all revolutionary organizations in essence. Not only of Russia. Precisely frenzied, restless, changing places of study, service, work, place of residence and even life style. These are all the first characteristics of misfits. Misfits were also the Great Leaders of future powerful political movements that had blown up Europe. Before becoming a corporal and then chancellor of Germany Adolph Hitler bummed in Vienna seven years, lived in shelters, made drawings of Vienna’s sightseeings, walked around in a long coat to the heels like Lautreamont (Hitler, by the way, looks like Edgar Poe, did anybody beside me remark it?), shared his den with a bum, who sold his drawings. All of this is usually omitted in biographies but it is precisely the youth, the years that form a person that are important. There, in Vienna, in the shadow of magnificent cathedrals, among splendid museums, near the luxurious burgers mansions, how he must have suffered, the unknown to everyone vagrant Adolph! And how he started to hate Vienna and how after as a reichchancellor in 1938 he must have rejoiced driving into the hostile at a time city accompanied by the welcoming shouts of the million-size population. The young Stalin was also a misfit, it suffices to look at his early picture – young, with a small beard, in a flimsy scarf drawn into the little jacket. Benito Mussolini, a loud-voiced socialist from the little village of Predappio bummed in the wealthy Switzerland, spent the nights under bridges, was arrested by the police, worked as a construction worker, worked on a can plant, walked, stared, envied, hated. Later he affirmed that he met with Lenin in Zurich and Geneva. Mussolini is a big mouthed Italian… They all avidly read, wrote, studied bit by bit, vagabonded, wrote poetry and searched a long time what to do. Vladimir Lenin did not bum but he too was not the quietest jury attorney, brother of the executed for an unsuccessful regicide older brother, a professional revolutionary almost from 17, at 27 already an exiled, at 30 an immigrant, a cruel and strange weirdo. When in Russia the February revolution happened he wanted to fly over the military fields of Europe in a balloon! Or to ride a train with the documents of a deaf-mute Swede! Say, what a type! In humiliations, in poverty, in sufferings the leaders of the Great parties had experienced enlightenments: illuminations about their mission.

And the brothers-in-arms of the Leaders of the Great Parties of Europe! Around them joined poets, provincial journalists, writers (at random: Goebbels, Trotsky, Marinetti, Lunacharsky), strange women (the first to come: Inessa Armand, Anjelica Balabanoff, Kollontai, Leni Rifenschtal, Larisa Reisner), strange military (Ludendorff, Ernst Rem, the count Ciano, Tukhachevsky, Fruntze), psychopaths, countless extravagant types of half-thugs half-revolutionaries (at random: Kotovsky, Dzerjinsky, Camo, Horst Wessel).

Lenin possibly clearly saw this paradox: the first proletarian revolution was organized and performed not by the proletarians but by misfits, hysterical people, tramps, demagogues, orators, half-educated people, bums and all kind of rolling stones. Later the sailors and the peasants and the workers dared to arrive at what already happened, yes. However, they were not the first in the revolution business, they are not its fathers, - they joined later.

And here a mistake was committed. Lenin himself is guilty here because nobody except him could have done that. As a founding father, he should have left tables where he should have stated clearly, according to which criterias should diamonds be chosen in the dung. Like Buddhists have special criterias of selection of the dalai-Lama and the Panchen-Lama. He should have said in his tables: “In the future for purposes of public service look for the talents among misfits, among weird, hysterical, poetic people, among lunatics, but not among the workers or some peasants, unless you’ll fall on a really unusual exemplar. God forbid you, comrades successors, to look among the stable classes of the population”. However, Lenin did not keep any such instruction. The insolence and honesty to declare that only a party consisted of talented misfits, poets, prophets and psychopaths is capable of carrying out a revolution lacked to Lenin. The magic of the absolute justice of the revolution in the name of the majority forced him to preserve and support the ideological lie: a proletarian, fourth estate revolution for the sake of the majority (of the workers). (Accordingly the fascists in Germany affirmed that they made their 1933 revolution for the volk – the people, the Italian fascists did theirs for the Italian nation.) But they just had to admit that the majority (proletariat, volk, nation) is untalented and is not capable to win or to defend its interests. Later this ideological lie had disastrous consequences, it catastrophically reflected on the quality of the party staff who came to replace the first heroic staff of misfits. The official lie about the special revolutionary character of the proletarians (after them the most revolutionary were considered the peasants and the third were the soldiers, who know why) became branded with glowing red letters in the legacy of the Bolsheviks’ communist party.

The leaders were selected and promoted among them, the workers and peasants by origin were encouraged.

They were not interested or forgot the data about the estate origin of the SRs Combat Organization personnel or the personnel of the Central Committee. The party believed that the proletariat is the crown of creation when it was just a pretext for the seizure of power by the best – the misfits, psychos, outcasts. To what this has lead is common knowledge: a total nobody came from the country – the little son of a kolkhoz director, the dumbhead Misha Gorbatchev and then the Sverldlov dumbhead – Boris Yeltsin, and the State created by the genius of madmen, sadists, poets, butchers, the extraordinary State collapsed. That’s what a wrong personnel policy means.

One should have tracked in workshops of bohemia, in prisons, in asylums – strange individuals – that’s what should have been done. Possessed, composing poetry, talking in sleep on unknown languages. One should have taken in the 70s in the Central Committee Vladimir Bukovski, Natan Sharansky, Eduard Kuznetsov and Volodia Gershuni! (I knew the grandson of the terrorist in 1968-70. We even lived for some time under the same roof. Half of Volodka’s life was spent in prisons and asylums. Regardless of the ideological divergences I respected him. With Savinkov we are tied through Kharkov, place of his birth and I spent there my childhood and early youth.) But to take such delinquent, but vigorous people those who would have taken them in the CK should have been geniuses themselves! It is a paradox but to save a rapidly aging elite and State could only those who attacked it the most furiously…

Looking at our NBP regional organizations we can see with great satisfaction that they are headed by provincial journalists, poets, rockers, punks, half-educated students. There are also a few workers, they are great guys, but they are temporary, accidental workers (and have already become professional revolutionaries) but they are the black sheep of their class and as an exception just confirm the general rule. That is why NBP is not involved with the masses, does not try to make zombies out of the working people (we cannot equal the TV-empires’ ability to propagandize and besot the people). However, NBP conducts a selective propaganda, recognizing and organizing the active minority – the misfits. In the 60s-70s the European leftists also turned to the proletariat – they stayed near the factories entrances flooding the workers with propaganda leaflets but after looking on themselves in the mirror, after comparing themselves with the proletarians and after reflecting on who they were they put forward the theory that the most revolutionary class are students. We, the NBP, though among the members of the party a part are students, we don’t think that the students is a special revolutionary class. To this day the pupils of senior classes of schools beat them and leave them far behind by revolutionism. But even this is not a truth in last instance. The revolutionary classes do not exist at all. A revolutionary character is either is or is not. So the most revolutionary type of individual is the misfit: a strange, unorganized person living on society’s margin, a talented pervert, fanatic, psychopath, unlucky fellow. One should not think that there are too few of those for a revolutionary party. There are hundreds of thousands of marginal persons if not millions. This is a whole social group. A part of misfits fills the ranks of the criminal word. The best have to be with us.

Edited by Impper ()

#2
Much of what you say is factually accurate. But why does change have to be within a particularly physically-violent way? Why is the misfit-party-state model the only model? Maybe there is an alternative in the form of making deals with existing institutions, to corrupt them towards your goals, all largely riding the bounds of bourgeois respectability? A misfit reformism?
#3
lets kill millions of people cuz im bored and lazy waugh
#4

getfiscal posted:
Much of what you say is factually accurate. But why does change have to be within a particularly physically-violent way? Why is the misfit-party-state model the only model? Maybe there is an alternative in the form of making deals with existing institutions, to corrupt them towards your goals, all largely riding the bounds of bourgeois respectability? A misfit reformism?


there is no misfit reformism because the dominant organization of society does not tolerate misfits, that is, there is no equity for the misfit except after total revolution

#5
nope sorry there is lots of options for misfits in any society.
#6
there are lots of options, but never shall you have power except when all of society is under the yoke of your totalitarian regime
#7
why conflate misfitdom with a very narrow definition of power
#8
because i can only think in terms of the early 20th century
#9
i have seen the future and it is tony blair speaking mildly forever
#10
shoot me now. i'm too cowardly to do it myself. help yourself to my wallet afterward, and my phone, and my keys
#11
power is for perverts and losers
#12
impper maybe you should give me a lot of money. just an idea. i'll use it for living expenses and trips and maybe grad school or something.
#13
i have just about enough to only finance my own trips and maybe grad school. if you really want money though i guess i can give you a very small amount
#14
no i'm just being clownish because i thought you had big dough
#15
don't go to grad school you idiots
#16
in a way i do but in another way i dont. i make p good money but also family is in financial hole so my savings is like half what it "should" be, not that i really mind since i dont spend any of it. if i ever sell my books and become famous ill be glad to give you enough money to globetrot or whatever, but you know what they say about pipedreams and promises...
#17
[account deactivated]
#18

germanjoey posted:
don't go to grad school you idiots



what if i make communism in the grad school

#19
[account deactivated]
#20
what if i learn valuable skills such as lawyering and put muslims like bf and discipline in prison for their multiple crimes
#21

getfiscal posted:
what if i learn valuable skills such as lawyering and put muslims like bf and discipline in prison for their multiple crimes



pledging $5 for getfiscal :awesome:

#22

germanjoey posted:
don't go to grad school you idiots



didn't u get ur phd or something

#23
no one who has been to grad school thinks it's a good idea

sometimes i think about going to law school to be an arguer for and defender of people who i agree with but a part of me is quite afraid i'll just become getfiscal in the process
#24

drwhat posted:
part of me is quite afraid i'll just become getfiscal

#25

animedad posted:

germanjoey posted:
don't go to grad school you idiots

didn't u get ur phd or something



biggest mistake of my life

#26
i just sort of want a social role. like right my role is "disabled fatlord." it'd be cool if i could go "i'm a researcher in this field" or something. instead i'm like low-undergrad-level trained in like four areas and not much to show for it. i just wish i had like mentors and seminars and shit for my own research, so that i could "kick it up a knotch" and actually spend a few years working through some things. the pursuit of knowledge in itself is cool to me, i don't worry as much about career per se outside of role, and i can live off of a fairly low income.

also someone said something once like "the guitar rule." yeah, you say you're gonna teach yourself guitar, but you probably won't. that's why lessons help, same with school.
#27
i taught myself guitar
#28
everyone teaches themselves guitar so it isn't a great point but it sorta makes sense in my brain.
#29

getfiscal posted:
just wish i had like mentors and seminars and shit for my own research, so that i could "kick it up a knotch" and actually spend a few years working through some things.



yeah that would be really cool. too bad grad school is like the complete opposite of that. oh well.

#30
sorry for derailing your thread impper. *zips lips*
#31
every thread is essentially about me
#32
grad school is the goddamn worst
#33
i actually dont believe in thread derails, or care about them - if the conversation turns, well, then it turns! that's good. better than a dead thread! i too yearn for a "role" sort of like getfiscal does. i go out a lot and meet a pretty good amount of people, and if i'm reasonably certain i'll never see them again, i've taken to making up lies and stories about myself, just because it's pretty fun to do and i feel a lot of uneasiness talking about "wat i do" in casual social situations. i was a tow truck driver last weekend
#34
however i am very disappointed that noone else saw the humor in casting the entire 20th century gang not as power-hungry sociopaths tapped into an infinite wellspring of evil and darkness but rather hysterical nutcases and disaffected bums waging war in the name of poetry and aesthetics
#35
i always assumed the latter was true so it didn't faze me
#36
i mean it's true if you look at it, but almost everybody puts a kitsch as hell grand narrative on it. it was refreshing to read about lenin being a "strange and cruel weirdo"
#37
what are some good biographies about lenin/stalin/trotsky/mao and co that arent concerned with waging ideological warfare against communism
#38
so ones without facts you mean
#39
exactly
#40

Impper posted:
it was refreshing to read about lenin being a "strange and cruel weirdo"



this made me actually go read the OP (i hadn't, because when i originally found this thread it was very late / early)

it's interesting to think of all the non-capitalist modes of social organization as just accidents, random ideas chopped up and taped together by poetic revolutionaries whose only real foundational concepts were that "things are wrong and they must become different". it's a lot harder to conceive of them as horrific threats to our beloved way of life that way though