Talk:Dual power

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jen co16, Sbrinkman50, Mmathie, Mikejr97. Peer reviewers: Mfili5, Kirbykarpan.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:53, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

A Proposal

The entire second section here should probably be merged into the Zapatista article since that is its main relevance. Thoughts? --Mashford 23:23, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree

This needs cleaning up. I'd also like to see the ideas broken up into subheadings for easier reading and consistency. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.189.177.154 (talk) 04:56, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Left-Liberal groups listed as examples

A bunch of NGOs with little or no relation to the topic were listed as examples. Replaced that with an actual current instance of dual power. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 07:37, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

All wrong

This is all wrong. This refers much much more to prefigurative politics than to dual power. I'd propose that this be merged in with prefigurative politics page and this should either be shut down or rewritten.

Dual power refers to a specific period during the Russian Revolution, between the overthrow of the Tsar in February 1917 and the overthrow of the Provisional Government in October 1917. During that period there was a competition for political legitimacy between the power of the working-class and peasantry, embodied in the Soviet, and the Russian capitalists embodied in the Duma (or parliament). The famous call for "All power to the Soviets!" was a claim related to the concept of dual power. It was a call for resolving the dual power contradiction by putting the power of the working-class in charge.

It doesn't make sense to say that workers coops, or TAZs are comparable. One couldn't conceivably call for "all power to the workers co-ops" or "all power to the TAZs."

A far better modern comparison would be the General Assembly of the OWS movement.

I'd suggest checking out the part on dual power in Trotsky's history of the russian revolution http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch11.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.18.24.123 (talk) 20:18, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

This Article On Dual Power Solely Portrays the Anarchist Conception and Completely Purges to Original Socialist Conception of It

The concept of Dual Power was originally conceived by Lenin in 1917 during the Russian Revolution. Here are two sources from that time period.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/09.htm http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/may/20.htm

Here is a classic treatise on it by Trotsky from his History of the Russian Revolution (1930)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch11.htm

Not only does this article omit all this historical information, it completely purges the origins of this concept within socialism and presents it as purely an anarchist strategy. Worse than that, I browsed through this page's history and previous versions did contain this information so this purging may have been deliberate.

Despite the origins of this concept from socialist thinkers, it has relatively recently been picked up on by some anarchists who see it as a strategy for creating liberated spaces that prefigure the future society and gradually eclipse capitalism. This is in contrast to the socialist conception of dual power where it is not a strategy but an unstable, temporary situation which emerges in revolutionary moments where workers' councils compete with the State for power, with one ultimately winning out over the other.

Completely wrong, dual power was first conceptualised by Proudhon, and the Bolsheviks bastardized it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:EmilePersaud 02:47, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

This is all wrong

but not because of any party-line squabbling. The SCOPE of this name space is diarchy, not a specific historical instance of it during a few months of Russian history or a Communist doctrine regarding establishing and then supplanting a diarchy formed with an established bourgeois government. Moved. — LlywelynII 03:25, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Move to Dual power (socialist)?

This page covers both historical and contemporary left usages of "dual power". I propose a move to Dual power (socialist). Comments? --MilkMiruku (talk) 18:33, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Short take: anarchists aren't all socialists, but may use this term. So, perhaps Dual power (leftist theory).

Longer take: I suspect this is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for dual power rather than the currently redirected Diarchy. So we could just rename it Dual power and insert a hatnote to Diarchy.--Carwil (talk) 19:33, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

• Based on the sourcing, I don't see why the relevant (sourced) paragraphs aren't just merged to the existing sections of diarchy, where they can expand and split summary style. The article right now is a weird mix of Russian history (fits within Russian section of diarchy), a theoretical presentation on "dual power" (unreliable source, now offline, either needs to be reliably sourced or deleted), and the Zapatistas (merge to diarchy). The latter still needs massaging to show what exactly are the co-powers, or if it's supposed to follow the Russian supposition that one side of the co-power relationship will shrivel away, the section makes no effort to explain this. In all, I don't see quite what the article's scope is intending to do or why it need be separate from its respective sections of diarchy. czar 05:51, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Having one power actively working to undermine and the supplant the other is just a fundamentally different concept than diarchy, so I would oppose a merge there. But (as an anonymous commenter has noted above), there's a lot to improve here, including an outside-the-theory perspective on the role of "dual power" in contemporary anarchist theorizing, and a succinct summary of the Lenin/Trotsky argument about dual power in the Russian Revolution. For evidence of the notability of dual power within anarchism, see [1] [2] [3] [4] [5].--Carwil (talk) 12:28, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

History vs. Theory/New Groups

We're students editing this page for an assignment for a college Russian Revolution course, and have found that parts of this page stray from the topic of the Russian Revolution. The first paragraph seems to be helpful, but the rest seems to less relevant to the topic. We are hoping to add more historical background, and believe that the Zapatista movement section could be added as an effect rather than a large section of the article. Feel free to help us edit/improve this page, we are very open to suggestions, but believe this article needs work. Jen co16 (talk) 17:03, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Suggestions

Overall, the article is solid and does not have many mistakes. There are a few things that stuck out to me as I read the article, however. There are some transitions such as "yet" in the article that do not belong here. There is one sentence in the Effects on the Zapatista movement headline that does not make much sense at the end. "On February 3, 1994, Manuel Camacho Solís, the conciliator between the government and the Zapatistas, announced the creation of two free zones in which the International Red Cross would operate and the militaries would not, unwittingly providing the Zapatista communities with a bit of national territory." I feel there could be an addition of another word after "militaries would not" and the sentence would make more sense. All of the links for the citations work except #14. The article seemed neutral to me, there seems to be sufficient information, and the information is not out of date.

Mfili5 (talk) 19:05, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Student Editing Final Description

Hello three of us had the task to edit this page for a college assignment. We added a few new chapters including Provisional Government, July Days, and Bolshevik takeover. We decided to get rid of the "Zapatista movement" chapter since this page is about Dual Power in the Russian Revolution, and not about the Zapatistas. We tried to include many reliable book sources, and mainly used two books assigned for our classes. We also attempted to remove any biased writings, and when adding our own we tried to write it in a non-biased way. Overall we believe that this page is much more relevant and in depth than it was before. Sbrinkman50 (talk) 18:28, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

POV Dispute - Dual Power & Verification Template

I added the POV tag to this page as it appears to display a large bias towards the Leninist usage of the term which, while relevant and historically important, nonetheless neglects the modern usages of it by other political groups either inspired by or not directly related to the original Leninist version of the term. This article would do well to be reformatted to be more unbiased and to give the different utilizations their own due weight.

In addition, this article needs more sources, as it contains many large paragraphs that either only have one source to back them up, or have none to verify them. The prior removals of different sections for a lack of sources displays an intersection of the POV dispute and verification - individuals are only removing sections for citations that go against the Leninist usages of the terms, and are neglecting the fact that the whole article could do well with new sources to back up all the claims within. WhatIsAPoggers (talk)04:06, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

I do tend to agree with this, though the scope here is a little weird. I don't personally buy that the article should just be about the Russian historical context, I think there's room to add more modern contexts provided it's well-sourced.--Unionhawk ^Talk 05:15, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

I am now noting the fairly colorful move history here, which is probably where the scope weirdness comes from here. I'm not sure what the best move is, since I'm not convinced Diarchy is correct here, but another entry in the Template:About redirecting folks looking for the general concept rather than the specific historical context is probably roughly ideal. Unionhawk ^Talk 06:12, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Metaphetamine Welso (talk) 08:45, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Libya

Why is Libya given as an example of this? CicolasMoon (talk) 22:41, 5 November 2023 (UTC)