Col,

Your line of argument can be summed up thus:

The Russian Revolution, the only revolution in which the working class took power, ended in Stalinism. Therefore IT IS INEVITABLE THAT every other revolution in which the working class takes power is destined to end in Stalinism. Therefore, the working class should not bother to again attempt to gain control of their lives.

Which is analogous to:

The space shuttle flight ended in burning up on re-entry. Therefore, IT IS INEVITABLE THAT every other space shuttle flight is destined to burn up on re-entry. Therefore, we should not bother to again attempt to send humans into space.

Even more simply:

Col is from England and he is obnoxious. Therefore IT IS INEVITABLE that all English people are obnoxious. Therefore, don’t bother talking to English people

In all arguments, the result of one incident is being generalised to all potential occurrences.

But this attempt at drawing an inference is not the most sound logic. We wouldn't accept it in relation to the space program or English people, so why would we accept it in relation to socialism?

Just as in the space program, where NASA goes back and examines what went wrong, and attempts to address the causes of the problems, so should the working class go back and examine what went wrong, and attempt to learn the lessons of the October Revolution.

And just as in the space program, one setback does not put an end to space travel, neither should one defeat mean that the working class do not try again.

“Honesty-is-what-tao-cannot-tolerate,-he-knows-the-truth-yet-his-arrogance-demands-he-defend-the-indefensible”

I would be foolish if I judged all English people on the basis of my experience with you Col, I would have missed out on the company of a lot of very pleasant English people.

Equally, I, and anyone else, would be foolish to take advice from you on the basis of your logic illustrated above. But you are arrogant enough to think others should.

Tao. To use your exploration of space analogy. After the shuttle failed astronaughts were not expected to climb aboard the next one until there was certainty (within the limits of human endeavour) that the past problem had been identified and corrected. In simple words the next flight was not to be a wild gamble with astronaughts' lives even if they were brave enough to jump on board with a burning desire to futher the interests of mankind.
I am happy for the goal to be freedom for the working class. That freedom includes escape from the perverse behaviour of some but not all capitalists. Remember your jibe about not characterising all Englishmen on the basis of meeting one or even several of them. It also includes freedom from the behaviour of the sorts of people who, at multiple levels of seniority, ended up controlling the daily lives of individuals in the various "communist" states.
You keep talking about studying past errors and pursuing the goal. I keep asking what conclusion have you drawn from your study and what plausible solution do you have for correcting past problems. I am not obliged to do the study for you and to find the solution to why past revolutions have failed. Revolution is not a line of endeavour that I see as being productive.
Thus far you have remained silent on offering a solution. You have limited yourself to abusing people like myself who accept incremental change (I think you called it tinkering). You have labelled my ilk (social democrats)as gullible fools who inadvertently do the dirty work for our capitalist masters. Again your propensity to lump everyone into a basket that suits your line of argument.
Your earlier statement that if I was not interested in a revolution I should not have joined this thread was arrogant. I am entitled to join it to try and convince others that the pursuit of revolution is unwise and that our efforts may be better directed.
(continued)

I again challenge you to put forward a plausible non-violent mechanism whereby a socialist state can protect itself from the incideous effects of the black markets that would seek to undermine it.
As a self professed civil libertarian (see my thread regarding freedom of the press versus civil liberties)your solution cannot include the argument that the violence of any new socialist state would be less than the violence of the existing capitalist regime. That is a very slippery slope to the concept of "The ends justify the means". We have all seen where that leads us.

Sorry about the gh in astronauts. What was I thinking about? Also got incidious wrong.

Logical

”-I-am-not-obliged-to-do-the-study-for-you-and-to-find-the-solution-to-why-past-revolutions-have-failed.-Revolution-is-not-a-line-of-endeavour-that-I-see-as-being-productive.”

“I-am-entitled-to-join-it-to-try-and-convince-others-that-the-pursuit-of-revolution-is-unwise-and-that-our-efforts-may-be-better-directed.”

Of course you are “entitled” to join this thread. But if you don’t believe revolution is necessary or possible, then why do you even bother to? I would suggest that the only reason to do so is because you think it might be possible, and that people might think it is necessary, and you want to make sure that they don’t.

Whether you are “obliged” to study “for yourself’ and “for others” all depends on whether you really aspire to a fairer distribution of wealth or whether you just wish to pay lip service to the concept.

You don’t feel obliged to study what happened to the first revolution in which the working class took power, and how they were defeated. But you still feel that you are entitled draw a conclusion from your limited knowledge of it, and to convince others of your unstudied view on revolution. And you call me arrogant!!

You say you want a “fairer distribution of wealth” and that “incremental” change via social democracy within capitalism is the way to do it. Given that social democracy has been in operation for over a century, you must be arguing that it “works”. Well here are some figures that illustrate how capitalism and social democracy “works” to redistribute wealth “incrementally”.

Earlier this year he Australian National University’s Centre for Economic Policy Research released a paper The Distribution of Top Incomes in Australia tracking the history of income distribution of top income “earners”.
During the period 1921 to 1980 the share of income going to the wealthiest taxpayers declined e.g. from the top 1% receiving 10% of total income in the 1920s to 5% in 1980. The share if income received by the top 0.5% fell from 9% to 2.95%. The top 0.1%’s income dropped from 4% to 1%.
But from 1980 to 2002 the share of the top 1% rose from 5% in 1980 to 9% in 2002. The top 0.5%’s share doubled from 2.95% to 6% and the top 0.1%’s more than doubled to over 2% by the end of the 1990s.

The authors noted that within the general income distribution trend from 1980 on, “there is a distinct spike in 1988, following a large reduction in the top marginal tax rate (from 60 percent in 1985-86 to 49 percent in 1987-88) and the property price boom of the 1980s”. The Hawke-Keating governments cut the top marginal personal tax rate even further in 1990, down to 47 percent.
The introduction of the “imputation system” in 1987 by the Labor government was another major factor in the enrichment of the top 10 percent of taxpayers. In this system, the report explained, “part of any corporation tax paid is treated as a pre-payment of personal income tax”.
The imputation system, combined with a subsequent cut in the corporate tax rate from 47 percent to 36 percent meant that billions of dollars flowed to the wealthy, who rapidly increased the proportion of income they derived from non-salary sources such as dividends, and reduced the proportion coming from salary and wages. The increasing non-salary income underpinned the overall increase in the share of income going to the top 10 percent.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/sep2006/ineq-s18.shtml

The trend has now continued under the Howard Government.

So from an overall decline in the preceding 60 years, in just over a third of that time, due to the policies instigated by a “Social Democratic” government, the top income earners have restored their share of income, and the trend continues. That is some “incremental” change.

If you are “not obliged-to-do-the-study-for-you-and-to-find-the-solution-to-why-past-revolutions-have-failed” then are you at least obliged to find out why a Social Democratic government has facilitated a massive increase in wealth to the top 10% before championing Social Democrats as being able to deliver a “fairer” distribution of wealth? Why has Social Democracy failed? And why should anyone believe that it is the solution to our problems?

No doubt there are other "reasons" we should consider for these remarkable statistics.

More on the prospects for revolution later.