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"Just in case anybody was taking this seriously, several of the links provided are to alt-right (read, fashy) sources." Explain how? Because they're scientific sources that you need an account to go to?

"Also worth noting that this is a poster to r/the_dimwit who has a frog meme as their banner, so I doubt that this is a good-faith effort to engage." Uh no I never posted to that subreddit unless you're just trying to do an ad hominem here.

"And just to counterpoint their thesis: intra-racial genetic diversity is higher than inter-racial diversity. That is to say, there is on average more variation within "black people" than there is between any given black population and white population. Turns out, skin color is kind of a shitty indicator." Ok, are you making the common argument against the taxonomic validity of race is that there is more genetic variation within than between races and so races must not be genetically different enough to be subspecies? This argument comes from a 1972 paper by the Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin (Lewontin 1972). As will be shown, Lewotin’s argument fails because the metric of genetic differences he used has no obvious relevance to subspecies and because human races are equally or more genetically differentiated than recognized subspecies from other species are.

To understand Lewontin’s argument you have to have a conceptual grasp of a metric used in population genetics called an Fst value. Say we take two random animals from the species and look at what variant they have for some specific gene. There will be some probability, called the species’s total heterozygosity, that these gene variants will not be the same. Now say we do the same thing, but this time the two people are picked from the same sub-population within the species. This time the probability that their genes variants will not be the same will be called the sub-population heterozygosity. To calculate an Fst value you subtract a the sub-population heterozygosity from the total heterozygosity and then divide by the total heterozygosity:

Fst = (Ht-Hs)/Ht

In other words, an Fst value tells us how much the probability of picking different gene variants increases is the gene variants are picked at random from the entire species instead of the same sub-population. When calculating an Fst value, geneticists run this analysis for many genes and then find the average increase in heterozygosity.

When an Fst value is calculated for a species with multiple proposed sub-populations the values are averaged. So, for instance, if we conducted a study and found that two people having different gene variants was 10% less likely if they were both picked randomly from the Asian population instead of humanity at large, 8% less likely if they were both from the European population instead of humanity at large, and 6% less likely if they were picked from the African population rather than humanity at large, we might assign humanity an Fst value of (10%+8%+6%)/3% = 8% under this 3 race model. And this is what we would mean if we said something like “Only 8% of human genetic variation is between races while 92% is within them”. (The proportion of variation within groups is just 1 – the Fst value.)In 1972, Richard Lewontin became the first person to empirically measure the human Fst value and found it to be 6.3%. Based on this finding, Lewontin  declared that categorizing humans racially has no “genetic or taxonomic significance”.

Unfortunately, Lewontin never explained why an Fst value of 6.3% should mean races have no taxonomic or genetic significance. And it isn’t obvious that it should. In fact, Sewall Wright, a founder of population genetics and the man who invented Fst values, thought that they had nothing to do measuring taxonomic significance and continued to believe in Human races long after Lewontin’s famous article (Wright 1984).

That Lewontin’s idea never took hold in the world of biology can be seen by looking at a 2006 report be the U.S Geological Survey which reviewed more than a century of popular proposed criteria for when a population counts as a sub-species. It never mentioned Fst values let alone Lewontin’s paper (Haig et al. 2006).

Since Lewontin’s paper, research has suggested that the Human Fst value is actually about twice as large, 12%, as what Lewontin suggested (Elhaik 2012). This has not altered the stance of Lewontin on races. Indeed, it isn’t obvious that his stance is open to changing because he has never said how high an Fst value would need to be in-order for a population to be of taxonomic signficance. Instead, he has just said that the human Fst value is too low.

Furthermore, Lewontin has never adressed the fact that there are many species with recognized subspecies which have Fst values lower than Humans. As can be seen below, I was easily able to find 8 other species with recognized subspecies which have Fst values no higher than humans.  In fact, it isn’t hard to find researchers in the nonhuman literature taking any Fst value greater than zero as evidence that a population is a subspecies. See, for instance, Lorenzen et al. 2007 and Williams, Homan, Johnston, and Linz, 2004. Given this, it is clear that most biologists do not use Lewontin’s criteria, whatever exactly that is, for subspecies. And given that he has never made any argument for using it, neither should we.

Jackson et al. 2014, Elhaik 2012,  Lorenzen, Arctander, and Siegismund, 2008, Pierpaoli et al. 2003, Lorenzen et al. 2007, Jordana et al. 2003, Hooft, Groen, and Prins, 2009, Schwarts et al. 2002, and Williams, Homan, Joshston, and Linz, 2004.

Instead, many biologists use a criteria of subspecies based, in part, on the idea that a population can only be a subspecies if you can analyze the traits of an organism in that species and accurately predict whether or not it is a member of a proposed subspecies.

Based on this traditional understanding of subspecies taxonomy, multiple geneticists have pointed out that an Fst value of 6% is just the average increased probability of a single gene being different and that, by combining data from multiple genes at once into our analysis, we can very accurately predict whether or not someone will be a member of a given race (Mitton 1977). To get a conceptual understanding of what this means, imagine that you were told to guess whether a person was a male or a female based on whether they were taller or shorter than average, or hairier or less hairy than average, or whether their voice was higher or lower pitched than average, etc. If only one of these facts were told to you, you could make an educated guess but there would be a decent chance that you would be wrong. But if you combined data on, say, 20 such sex differences, your chances of correctly guessing the person’s sex would become quite high. By the same principle, a singe gene might not be a very good predictor of someone’s race, but that doesn’t mean that the combined data of many genes wont be.  It was on this basis that the famed population genetic A. W. F. Edwards dubbed this argument against race “Lewontin’s Fallacy” (Edwards 2002).

Well I don't know that "following" Stalinism in 2019 would require you to be homophobic, as if Stalin's homophobia logically follows from the rest of his thought or from Marxism-Leninism generally rather than just him being characteristically bigoted. It was also the case that homosexuality was illegal in much of the United States, with the first state to decriminalize it being Illinois in 1962 -- punishment being imprisonment and/or hard labor prior to that (my state decriminalized it in 2003 and only because the federal government forced it to). Incidentally, I'm gay and I would've probably found it personally difficult being in any communist party at the time that supported discrimination against gays -- or any of the few communist parties in the world that still do. But generally IMO if you look at the history, the communist parties were usually ahead of the curve on this.

But I don't think it's so much of a communism vs. capitalism question, but is really one of a political demand by the LGBT community directed at the straight population.

Stalin's conservative "turn" is interesting though and I would recommend the book "Stalinist Values" by David Hoffmann. A review from the Amazon page:

>David Hoffmann's book "Stalinist Values" discusses a widely noticed but not often fully analyzed phenomenon in Soviet history: the shift away from avant-garde, progressive socio-cultural values to traditionalist cultural conservatism in the 1930s. For many opponents of Stalin and his government on the left this has been seen as one of the proofs for Stalin's alleged betrayal of real socialism; for some rightist critics, of whom Hoffmann interestingly cites some examples, this has been interpreted as a necessary and obvious move away from untenable avant-gardism. But the shift itself has not been much analyzed from the point of view of Stalin c.s. themselves, and that is particularly what this book is about.

>Hoffmann's thesis is that the conservative turn (to coin a phrase) should not be read as a move away from socialism, because the people involved did not perceive it as such. The book studies all the different fields in which the shift presented itself noticably, from family relations and sexuality to artistic and literary endeavours, and in each case Hoffmann tries to show that the Soviet leadership saw their move as one consolidating the reality of socialism rather than a move away from it. His thesis rests strongly on the fact that Stalin declared in the early 1930s that 'socialism had been achieved'. This implied that where before this period avant-gardism, strongly progressive social reforms and general anti-authoritarianism in social relations were positive for socialism and warranted, from the moment of socialism being 'achieved' on this was no longer the case. Any kind of conservatism would now not be a conservatism maintaining capitalist relations, but a conservatism maintaining socialist relations stably as they were, and therefore now a good thing. Accordingly, things that were perceived as tending to individualize people and undermine unity and stability were now a bad thing. This, according to Hoffmann, explains how the Soviet leadership could re-ban homosexuality and abortion, implement strong restrictions and guidelines on artistic expression, and so on, without seeing this in any way as contradictory to socialist goals (although even at the time many did).

...

>The thesis is a strong and interesting one. Its main flaw is that Hoffmann does not really analyze or contextualize the central concept itself, namely Stalin's idea of having 'achieved socialism' in the early 1930s. Based merely on the works of Marx and Engels, or even those of Lenin, this is a very odd claim indeed and if it played ao central a role in Soviet policy shifts as Hoffmann makes it seem, it deserves more thorough political and historical scrutiny. Moreover, there are a couple counter-examples that the author mentions himself; for example, Lenin himself and many others close to him in governing circles disapproved of the avant-gardist tendencies in art and probably of many sexual and family reforms too, as has been shown in Richard Stites' fantastic work on the Soviet values of the 1920s (Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution). Yet, they did not implement prohibitions on this nor did they seriously attempt to politically repress them, since they generally seemed to see this as part of the socialist transformation, even if sometimes distasteful or unnecessary. This fact works somewhat in favor of the 'Stalinist betrayal' school. Also, Hoffmann cannot explain entirely why the Stalin government of the 1930s did keep some of the social reforms, such as relatively extremely liberal divorce laws and a commitment (not always fulfilled in practice) to female participation in the labor force. Finally, the book puts some of the 1930s 'reversals' into a comparative context, showing that other European nations, fascist and liberal, were implementing many of the same restrictions and pro-natalist policies during the same period and much for the same reasons. It is an excellent and long overdue thing to place such controversial subjects of Soviet history into a larger comparative context, and Hoffmann should be praised for doing so, but it also to some extent undermines his case that the reversals were due to a very Soviet Union-specific political shift (the 'achievement of socialism').

> What are your thoughts on why this "revolution" has been ongoing for 50 years with little to no success and declining support?

there are many reasons, and I assume to most important are three: first the reconsolidation after the fall of the Soviet Union - though they were politcal independent, I guess they at least had some economic advantages. Second the fall of China under Mao and the win of revisionism with the election of Deng Xiaoping and other betayers. As the CPP NPA are Maoist they had to become at 1972 also independent from China as they betrayed the whole communist movement worldwide. Third and last the developement of the Maoism. Maoism was not Maoism before 1988 i.e. 1993: Maoism was as a concept first collected and organized by the Communist Party of Peru when they declared peoples war to the Peruvian government in 1988 which was also the first time a Party called themselves Maoist (which the NPA CPAA does also). Then 1993 which the declaration of the RIM, (revolutionary international movement - the first Maoist-world-organisation) when declaring that from now on Maoist is the guiding ideoligy. (Here a link to the text if you are intersted: http://www.bannedthought.net/International/RIM/AWTW/1995-20/ll_mlm_20_eng.htm )
What I am saying is there are literally very many struggles inside the whole ideological, political and economic processes. And all these struggles had been fought during (!) the people's war against the Philippines government. There were decades where they lost much of their support from outside of the Philippines and it's certainly a strength to be able to keep on fighting after 50 years of hard struggle which were of course not in favour of their fights. It just shows off how strong their political line is and how strong their leaders are and all their fighters!

> Wouldn't it make more sense to promote the political organizations of the NDFP rather than the militias?

As far as I know, they also have their democratic front, the NDF. However, we communist do not rely on elections, we do not trust in democratism INSIDE capitalism. Real democracy can only develop in socialism where people are freed from being slaved to exploitation. However, maybe so-called revolutionary parties relied on elections and literally, everyone gave up their revolutionary struggles as soon as they had some power, meaning money. All became betrayers social demoratic, but no more communist. The developer of Communism - Marx and Engels - already wrote in the manifest that only classwar will overthrow capitalism and not election (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm ; http://activistmanifesto.org/assets/original-communist-manifesto.pdf). I mean, you cant devote private property right? Its in most constitutions and cant be erased from whatever you say and do and however many votes you get.
So what I am trying to say is: its good to have some support from legal organisations inside democracy but you cannot completely rely on them! Lenin once said something like: you can take part in elections but just to get more known by the proletarians. Not to really believe in changes. Still, legal organisations can provide you with resources (weapons, meals, etc.) and help you, but it must be under the control of the Communist Party. And the Party is necessary a clandestine one - a party of the new type (Lenin). You cannot downvote exploitation.

> The United States and European Union both had designated the CPP/NPA as a terrorist organization prior to the Duterte government, how do you increase foreign support for these groups if you can be charged with providing resources/donations to a terrorist organization (USA for example)?

The way Mao told us to: 1. become independent from anyone - even from peasants. That's why the Peoples Army has to do everything (!) their self, they are constantly on the move and provide themselves with everything they need. 2. to convince the exploited and poorest, peasants and proletarians. You do not need the U.S. or the E.U. Just look at China when they made a revolution: they had no help at all, look at Peru 1988 - all was done by theirselfs. There was no dependent on anyone but their self. Admittedly this will make revolution much much harder, but on the other hand it will ensure not to fail because you get betrayed or the organisations you rely get banned or destroyed. Also its important to not (!) exploit the peasants, you do not steal their resources nor do you ask them to help you. Its one of the Maoist manifests that you dont take anything from the ones that are already so exploited they dont have something for themselfs. No, the other way round: the Army HELPS and SUPPORTS the exploited, on the fields, teaches them write and read, gives aids and stuff. This way the peasants will become trustful to you and either support you because they want to or enter the army and the fight. The people's army has the support of the people because they support all the people in need and dosnt take anything like the capitalists does. You EARN the trust.
So what I am trying to say here is: fuck US, fuck EU - you dont need the capitalist pigs for your fight. History has shown the our power is way enough. Sure, its hard, but its everything but impossible.

I hope I could answer your questions. If there are more I am willing to answer them all :)

Edit: Links and correct spellings
Edit2: everyone that is really intersted in why Maoism is the new stage of communism I suggest you this great book of a canadian professor of philosophy: https://www.amazon.com/Continuity-Rupture-Philosophy-Maoist-Terrain/dp/1785354760/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523867005&sr=8-1&keywords=continuity+and+rupture Its well written that even non philosophers will understand and gives a brief history of how Maoism developed over time!

Lol, I totally understand. Still, I think there's considerable value in his works, particularly from the 80s. When he's working to synthesize the experience of socialism and advance its theory, it's pretty good stuff. When he's trying to convince people he's the only hope for the world, not so much.

Some other sources I've found useful:

A World to Win magazine had a number of important articles which are well worth digging into.

Corrigan, Philip, Harvie Ramsay, and Derek Sayer. 1979. For Mao: Essays on Historical Materialism. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press.

Starr, John Bryan. 1979. Continuing the Revolution: The Political Thought of Mao. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

(These are from academics and focus more on the theoretical aspects. They're the best academic works I know of on Mao though and are very nice overviews.)

Another academic work which has an excellent chapter on Mao (though the bulk of it deals with other aspects) is Martin, Bill. 2008. Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation. Open Court.

Badiou has a nice analysis of the GPCR in Badiou, Alain. 2008. The Communist Hypothesis. Verso.

(Some journalistic/historical accounts of Maoism in practice/development in China):

Belden, Jack. 1949. China Shakes the World. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Han Suyin. 1976. Wind in the Tower: Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Revolution, 1948-1975. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

Hinton, William. 1966. Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village. New York:
Vintage.

Horn, Joshua S. 1969. Away with All Pests: An English Surgeon in People’s China, 1954-1969. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Hunter, Iris. 1986. They Made Revolution Within the Revolution: The Story of China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Chicago: RCP Publications.

Milton, David and Nancy Dall Milton. 1971. The Wind Will Not Subside. New York: Pantheon.

Myrdal, Jan. 1965. Report from a Chinese Village. New York: Signet.

Finally, Li Onesto has good book on the Nepalese revolution which unfortunately was betrayed by the leadership.

Communists don't want to just take your wealth. Personally I would put a maximum wage and expropriate all wealth over let's say 50-100 million. Even if we took all wealth over 300 million that's an unbelievably large sum. And people with that much wealth would live 10 lifetimes on it.

For people at your level we just need more progressive tax rates, better regulation of industries, stronger social welfare and a stronger welfare state and greater unionization. Greater opportunities for all would be the result and inequality would be decreased dramatically. Unfortunately the ruling class won't allow the delicate balance of power to be upset in that way.

You're petit bourgeoisie but the terms don't mean what they used to. I'm petit bourgeoisie but a socialist. These days a lot of these categories are more complex. The point is provide equality of opportunity. More equal outcomes follow naturally from that. To do that you need to correct structural inequality.

And by the way nobody is rich by their own hand. You're affected by a confluence of influences completely out of your control. It's absurd to say you did everything you did without profound influences both unconscious and external that you have no awareness of but which strongly affects decision making. Not to mention the fact that 2/3 of all wealth is in home equity and you benefit from structural inequality

https://www.amazon.com/Success-Luck-Good-Fortune-Meritocracy/dp/0691167400

My impression is that the most prominent objection of an orthodox Marxist to characterising what they believe as "religion" would be that they are operating with objective, materialist, ontological naturalist, scientific criteria, and that reject revelation, faith, spirit, supernaturalism and mysticism. Under orthodox Marxism, the concept of science encompasses a much broader definition than most modern philosophers of science or scientists accept, particularly those working in the analytic tradition. Here's non-Marxist radical socialist Noam Chomsky on the concept of "Marxism".

The various definitions and connotations that terms like "religious" hold are situated in a social and cultural context which changes over time. It's matter of semantics, and comes across from the Latin root of the word "religion" in "religio" meaning "obligation, bond, reverence" and "religare" meaning "to bind" . For example, existentially speaking, committing oneself wholly to the revolutionary cause would be considered religious form of life in Kierkegaardian terms. If you aren't already familiar with what I mean, I suggest looking up Kierkegaard. Sartre was attacked by many orthodox Marxists for trying defining the purity of Marxist philosophy with his existentialist philosophy.

Some Christian philosophers, like John Macmurray, endorse Marx's critique of religion as a valid critique of institutional and established religion as false-religion, much in the same way that Kierkegaard rejected the established church. Atheist Marxists like Zizek and Badiou claim that Christianity is the foundation of the only true form of atheism, that Calvinist soteriology provides the model for earthly salvation, and that the Saint Paul the apostle is the founder of universalism and the left tradition. Terry Eagleton is another prominent Christian Marxist who emphasises the political revolutionary character of Jesus. I'd recommend his Reason, Faith, Revolution and Why Marx Was Right as better introduction to Marxism for where you are coming from than simply diving into Capital etc.

It's often pointed out that Marx was an eschatological thinker. However, these tend to gloss over Marx's view of theory of praxis as dynamic. Even so, many Marxists and anti-Marxists alike take their cues from Carl Schmitt in viewing all political traditions as being historically derived from theological traditions.

When speaking of Marx and "Marxists", it always pays to remember Marx's famous quote: "what is certain is that I myself am not a 'Marxist' ".

south korea also got a 99.x% literacy rate after they were colonized by japan... that's how colonization works.. an empire colonizes, brings it's technology and literacy standards and state institutions and all that... you're literally giving me arguments in defense of colonialism right now with these kinds of statistics that are the same ones used to justify nation-building, colonizing, democratizing missions by USA, Britain, Russia, Japan etc.. of especially the past centuries.

afghanistan, on the other hand, it could be argued, has a much lower literacy rate than the surrounding region, perhaps precisely because it's so geographically isolated, and no empire has successfully conquered it in history.

so yeah, just a friendly heads up, post-colonial theory is decades ahead of where you are thinking right now. if you wanna check out something fairly current, i'd really recommend this short collection, from 2016. anthropocene or capitalocene? you don't really need to be familiar with the concept of anthropocene at all, as this book is a critique of it, and describes it in very good detail.

to answer your more direct question "what did USSR/Russia get out of it", the got most of central and all of norther n east asia under their sphere of influence. that's a gigantic part of the world, with so many diverse cultures and peoples..

just saying, russia did pretty much the exact same thing as the US did, expanded east/west- ward, killing native peoples, and bringing them under their control. both countries are STILL engaged in this enterprise to some degree or another.. and i guess, the question i ask myself a lot, is which one of these empires, right now, in the current world.. has more forward inertia? (a decent formula for measuring this being ehrlichs I=PAT (Impact = population x affluence x technology) and, trying to calculate that formula, the answer is in every case russia...

>P - russias population is about half that of US, but if we calculate the entire russia sphere of influence, which includes most of asia, lots of eastern europe, huge swaths of middle east and africa.. and well, also china, since the two of them are still very much playing in concert together.. that hugely outweighs the US 300 million plus western europe and maybe south korea and part of japan (japan can't be considered to be full vassal state of US like germany can, as Japan is currently very much in the process of refitting it's own imperial war engines)...

>A - if we take affluence, russia kills US on every measure. their budget is balanced despite the sanctions while almost half of US assets are owned by china.. the russian gov't currently hold huge sway on all three branches of the US government, and look very much poised to politically and economically dominate the united states in the coming decades..

>T - if we take technology, it's well known that US has a very advanced tech sector, especially having defeated the nazis in WWII and gotten their hands on the most advanced tech every created.. but, while the US is using that tech legacy to make 5th generation fighter jets and aircraft carriers it doesn't even need, basically pissing the military budget into the sea, so that wealthy lobbiests and bureacrats stay wealthy... Russia are managing their military much, much more prudently... neither they nor china have an operative aircraft carrier or an operative 5th generation fighter jet (US have 2 operative 5th generation fighters and over 2 dozen state of the art carriers)...
so, while it may seem that US has the slight edge here in tech, in that the US military of the 1970s could probably take on both Russia and China in a full scale war and win.. it's not quite the case, i'd say
russia and china may not have carriers or high tech jets, but russia and china (soyuz) still have the only viable human spaceflight craft currently in operation. and they have gigantic tech sectors that are huge economically out competing the US.. especially in future models..

>I - I think we can judge from that analysis, that without a doubt Russia's impact is more forceful currently than the US, and this trend will only continue to increase if other circumstances do not.


so yeah, US is pretty much fucked either way we look at it... question is, what do we do, how to allow for the best results from this sunset period of US empire in the world, going into a long period of chinese hegemony (or rather, the world snapping back to it's usual state of chinese economic and imperial hegemony after a 5 century or so break caused by contact with europe)?

Obviously as Marxists, we should all be supporting PFLP.

I don't think it makes sense to preclude violence right off the bat. We don't do that for any other movement, so we shouldn't preliminary exclude it here. Of course, it's important to distinguish what kind of violence.

The PFLP, however, does have a really good formula for this. They have been open about their participation in the recent armed struggle, and have basically taken a book out of Che's "Guerrilla Warfare": on the ground fighting only, no indiscriminate rocket fire, and absolutely no killing civilians, not even off-duty reservists.

I happen to believe that the four pillars of the ANC (nonviolence, international support in the form of BDS, sabotage, and armed struggle, which were all equally important) is a good framework for the Palestinian fight to end the occupation. Obviously a strategy like this needs to be highly sensitive to timing, but each pillar has a role to play here.

There should also be a pretty strong emphasis on Guevarist fighting tactics, because as it stands, most of the IDF is made up of silly teenagers who conflate military service with day camp. If you have a group of guerrillas that draw out more and more soldiers in hit and run attacks (it's harder to employ rural warfare, but certainly doable--even urban guerrilla warfare suffices) rather than stones alone, it will impress upon the Israeli populace that there are two choices: serve in the IDF and face a terrifying and relentless opponent, or take your chances and deny service.

Of course, the only place where I would diverge from the ANC framework is the platform. There exists an economic apartheid in contemporary South Africa just about as racial as it always has been, and it's all because

1. Regime supporters were not prosecuted and were even allowed to hold all the assets they gained in an unfair way.
   
   
2. There was no implementation of even basic socialism, and the free market is more or less allowed to dominate. Since the accumulation of labour is already entrenched, nothing really changes except for appearances.
   
   By supporting a Marxist-Leninist Palestinian political party, there will still be problems with implementation, internal disagreements, corruption, etc., but at least the foundation of a Marxist solution has been laid.
   
   The good news is also that PFLP is a secular one-state party, so in theory, everyone would be welcome to live in equality, regardless of religion.
   
   I would also read "Gaza in Crisis" by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe. Although the former isn't quite a Marxist (pretty sure he's an anarchist, but Chomsky always changes his mind), he does have some interesting stuff to say about states in this context.

Russia in Revolution by SA Smith just came out and it's pretty good although not exactly left-wing. Rather refreshingly he doesn't shy away from pointing out that the non-Bolshevik parties brought their banning on themselves by boycotting the soviets and starting revolts.

Lars Lih's biography of Lenin is also pretty good.

This one https://www.amazon.com/Russia-Revolution-Empire-Crisis-1890/dp/0198734824