Are you ashamed to be American at the moment?

[Wilson23]

Fourth, what did that actually accomplish?

Bolshevik organizers worked inside workplaces [factories, shops] to turn economic grievances into political action. In the process, factory committees became schools of politics and organization, training workers in collective decision‑making, strike tactics, and linking economic demands to political aims. Participation required workers to debate policies, elect delegates, and to confront questions of state power. Practical politics in worker councils educated faster and deeper than classroom lessons. Beyond protests, workers exercised power. In soviets [committees], they learned about leadership, mandates, recall, the international character of class struggle, and in so doing became themselves – leaders.

There were mass literacy campaigns, evening classes, and technical training so workers could access political literature, read newspapers, and debate – all solidly broadening their horizons and enabling independent judgement. Bolshevik newspapers, leaflets, mass meetings and disciplined agitators put Marxist analysis into everyday language. Study circles and ‘political education’ schools [at times, improvised in barracks and factories] taught history, basic political economy, and tactics. Agitprop turned abstract theory into immediate, actionable slogans and explanations.

By linking trade-union activity, strikes and workplace organization with the goal of overthrowing the bourgeois state, the party raised trade‑union consciousness into socialist political consciousness. The crucial question is not the social origin of each member in isolation, but whether the party rooted itself in and raised the political capacity of the working class. The Bolshevik party [through factory work, soviets [committees], agitation, education and the promotion of worker cadres] materially raised proletarian consciousness and organization.

So why did all that grassroots action create such a top-down kind of STATE?

 

[Holy_Seduction]

‘why . . . ?’

In a word, Stalin.

 

[Wilson23]

In a word, Stalin.

Kinda centralized even under Lenin, wasn't it? For some reason, nothing ever did come of "All power to the soviets!" And the Kronstadt Rebellion says nothing good about that stage of the regime.