Shadow Minister ; Did Lenin literally "kill four million people" or did that happen as a by-product of the Civil War? Where, when, how were those people killed? How are those figures substantiated?

Lenin was Machiavellian and ruthless but I don't think he was ever a Stalin-like monster - despite Stalin's attempts to misappropriate him. In that sense he's in a comparable boat as Churchill - although Churchill would be appalled at the comparison. But take Churchill's sinking of the French Fleet in 1940. Surely that's in a similar vein to Trotksy's attack on Kronstadt.

Interesting that you mention Chiang Kai-Shek, though. Many 'anti-communists' were just as bad as the Stalinists they opposed.

I think unions should have the full suite of industrial liberties ; withdrawal of labour, pattern bargaining and secondary boycott - so long as it can be argued convincingly that such action is "in good faith". I also think they should have access work-sites for organisational purposes. And political industrial actions should be allowed as well. If faced with a genuine totalitarian government unions could imaginably be 'a last line of defence'.

Tristan,

Look up the red terror. It is clear that Lenin was nearly as bad as Stalin. Particularly with respect to the Kulaks who he executed publicly in the hundreds to terrorise them.

So you are quite happy for unions that blockade companies, assault and intimidate workers that don't want to strike get prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Many Kulaks were executed for hoarding grain while people were starving to death in the rest of the country ; Though the Bolsheviks made the calculated decision that it was worth it to requisition most grain to shore up support in the cities. In the context of War Communism it was a big mistake. NEP came too late for some. But its a long way from '4 millions' to 'hundreds'. Again: Churchill also made 'tough' decisions - like sinking the French Fleet in 1940.

re: industrial struggles - yes there will be passions ; strike-breakers will be abused ; picket lines will be fought over ; there will be conflict. There will be boycotts. The question is how far do you allow things to go? Keep the conflict relatively low intensity if possible (ie: no-one gets maimed or killed, or incarcerated) and accept that certain kinds of civil disobedience are part of democracy. But keep in mind escalation might meet with escalation.

Tristan,

No matter how hard you try and polish the turd it is still a turd.

The red army took by force without compensation nearly all the grain the Kulaks possessed, the result of which is hundreds of thousands of Kulaks starved.

The tactics used included rounding up kulak leaders of any area that showed dissent and publicly executing 100s at a time, even those not directly involved.

As for union action, the laws that apply to everyone else needs to be applied to them. ie.
Pickets and boycotts are OK, blockades and vandalism are not.
Verbal abuse is OK, physical abuse and direct intimidation is not.

The ABCC is simply to ensure that if union thugs do the crime, they pay the consequences.

War Communism was arguably a mistake ; the extreme context was not enough food to go around and the conventional economy in a state of partial collapse; Grain hoarding and the black market meant other people would starve. It was a terrible situation. The situation would not have existed were it not for the Civil War. To say this is not 'polishing a turd' as you put it. It was a bad situation with a wide variety of interests to blame.

What's the difference (as you see it) between a picket and a blockade?

Tristan,

Firstly the contribution of outside anti communist forces was minor, and secondly the purpose of the red terror was to completely subjugate populations that they had conquered by mass executions, torture and starvation (today called genocide).

"The stated purpose of this campaign was struggle with counter-revolutionaries considered to be enemies of the people. Many Russian communists openly proclaimed that Red Terror was needed for extermination of entire social groups or former "ruling classes.

Lenin had announced in advance that he would use terror to accomplish his revolutionary ends. In 1908 he had written of "real, nation-wide terror, which reinvigorates the country."[1] Marxism-Leninism, Lenin's revolutionary revision of Marx's class struggle, made clear that they were in an all-out war with the "forces of reaction."

Bolshevik leader Grigory Zinoviev seemed to be advocating genocide when he declared in mid-September of 1918:
To overcome of our enemies we must have our own socialist militarism. We must carry along with us 90 million out of the 100 million of Soviet Russia's population. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated."

Could the soviet government been established without the murder of millions, certainly. That is why Lenin ranks just below Stalin and Hitler as mass killers. And that is why I consider your white washed version of communism as a polished turd.