If you could go back in time and be an advisor to a political ruler, who would you pick and what would you do?
No deposing or coup, but some deception is allowed.
Also, remember the 25 year rule.
Pic unrelated
>>524752
>Battle of Tolouse 721
Advise Al-Samh on how to use heavy armour.
Easy Mode: I advise Napoleon not to invade Russia.
I'd advise Pope Urban the second. But i'd advise his crusade not for the holy land,but for Spain and help in the Reconquista. Then go for Jerusalem,it would've been interesting to see what the Iberian's could've done if released earlier historically.
>>525410
If you want wanted the Umayyads to win that battle it would be more effective to advise them to wait till after the enemies are defeated before beginning the plundering
>>524752
Dekanawidah
Learn magic
????
Profit
>>525426
Mother fucker how did you know?
Id tell sadam several things.
>dont execute your own men, use military recon
Use scout snipes to impede wnemy actions and harass supply lines
>be more aggressive with diplomacy, allow kuwait to keep its government in full if it accepts annexation
>make an example out of iran by bolstering their economy after conquering it, invest heavily into roads and stimulus injection
>eventually annex all of the middle east , allow them to keep their government, but they must send representatives to federal forums and follow anything that passes with 2/3 majority
>buy some set of islands from canada and exile the jews to them
Go back to 1945 and tell Truman that the Chinese civil war is far more important than he realizes.
The PLA loses and the ROC assists the US in Korea and Vietnam. The Korean peninsula is unified, the Vietnam war isn't a catastrophe, and Soviet power in the region is practically nonexistent.
>>524752
Hitler. Jewish question. Final Solution.
>>525492
Kek
Have you got more info on that?
>>524752
Go to Stalin in 1922, bring him round to Trotsky's ideology. Impress the importance of stability for the wellbeing of the state, keep the purges minimal, within the party and ban gulags. Don't fucking starve the Ukraine. Figure out economic bottle necks like infrastructure and focus on those.
Start instigating communist uprisings in other countries, make the Comintern more important than the USSR, or alternatively make USSR members genuinely equal, and get everyone to join this federation.
Subvert Germany
Subvert Japan
Subvert Turkey
Subvert India
(In addition to China, eastern europe and Turkestan)
Allow them all to implement communism in whatever independent non-Leninist ways they want to.
Start experimenting with democracy very very cautiously, one small region at a time, building up over 30 years until the whole nation is democratic.
>>525512
>iran by bolstering their economy after conquering it
and how the fuck would he conquer iran, dumbass?
>>524752
I don't think I'd be the man to do it but I'd be interested to see what would happen if someone become Hitler's bro, prevent him from going into and romanticizing the army, and generally supporting him and his mediocre art. Maybe introduce him a club in France where all the other Vienna Academy rejects hung out. Could have started a new art movement, maybe. "Hitlerism".
Seriously though, wonder what would have happened both to the modern world and Hitler's legacy if he ended up being substantial but not in the "I'm the holocaust guy" kinda way.
>>526076
>you know about Soviet history
>you know about Trotsky's ideology
>you wouldn't be purged by Stalin
None of what you suggest has basis in what we know about the Soviet era or Stalin. This sounds like you'd just wave some kind of magic wand and make everything better. Try reading up on the nature of the Soviet government after the revolution, the character of the personalities involved, and what Stalinism vs Trotskyism are.
>>526124
>Try reading up on the nature of the Soviet government after the revolution, the character of the personalities involved, and what Stalinism vs Trotskyism are.
I'd very much like to do this. What books would you recommend?
>This sounds like you'd just wave some kind of magic wand and make everything better.
You're saying parts of the post are implausible? Mind expanding on this, aside from Stalin's personality?
>None of what you suggest has basis in what we know about the Soviet era or Stalin.
There's not really any point to criticism that isn't specific, unless you just want to express yourself.
>>526195
>I'd very much like to do this. What books would you recommend?
*Simon Pirani. Trotsky's 3 volumes. Victor Serge. Voline. Short Course History of the CPSU(b). *Sheila Fitzpatrick. *Victor Andrle. Robert Conquest.
* = modern secondary source.
>>524752
Go to 140BC
Resolve the Grachus incident without setting the precedent for assassination.
Wait for it to be possible to find Sulla.
Make sure he never gets into a position which would allow him to create the first roman coup.
>>526076
>Go to Stalin in 1922, bring him round to Trotsky's ideology.
Stalin was anideological. Trotsky's ideology wouldn't cement nomenklatura rule (Ðilas, The New Class &tc.).
The purges were essential to the stability of the state, read Robert Conquest on the Engineers' Foreigners, Specialists trials.
GuLag was established by Dzhershinsky and was a sensible detention environment (early history of Slon).
>Don't fucking starve the Ukraine.
Ukraine was starving the urban centres (Scissors crisis debate, Ural-Siberian Method). If the Agricultural regions weren't harshly expropriated and the peasants reduced to servitude THEN the urban workers would have overthrown the nomenklatura by 1932.
>Figure out economic bottlenecks
The only bottlenecks were in consumer goods and agriculture. And agriculture was insoluable (read this for both: https://www.marxists.org/archive/strauss/ )
>Start instigating communist uprisings in other countries
They did. They failed.
>make the Comintern more important than the USSR, or alternatively make USSR members genuinely equal, and get everyone to join this federation.
And you just lost nomenklatura/bolshevik rule to the 3rd revolution.
>Subvert Germany
Did. Failed. Backed the wrong horse. Read about the KAPD and AAUD.
>Subvert Japan
Did. Failed. Showa was just too powerful.
>Subvert Turkey
Did. Failed. nationalist revolution.
>Subvert India
Did. Failed. See 1946 RAF mutinies.
>Allow them all to implement communism in whatever independent non-Leninist ways they want to.
Oops: 3rd revolution. Hungary '56 almost caused the nomenklatura to fracture, there were strikes in regional areas, urban and student protest in the soviet union.
>Start experimenting with democracy very very cautiously
See the 1936 constitution, Radek wrote it. He got a tenner. Was murdered in Gulag on orders.
Democracy means Kronstadt.
>>526294
Thanks for the reading material, I'll be sure to get into those when I have time.
Just out of interest, how would you proceed from 1922 if you had and could maintain sufficient clout within the party to influence decision making, navigating party politics for whatever reason isn't a big issue, and you wanted to make the USSR succeed as much as possible in the long term?
>>526393
By 1922 it is a lost cause without a revolution by the proletariat internationally and within the Soviet Union. By 1922 my kind of person was dead.
>>526441
But surely for the proletariat to genuinely run things they need to be educated on how to do so first, and that is best done within the system rather than creating needless instability with an additional revolution? Didn't you warn against letting a third revolution happen yourself in your previous post? Am I missing something?
Surely if you have basically supreme power like in this scenario, you could implement whatever policies you want in order to try to achieve success for the ussr/comintern? You could even change the power structures, the culture of the people in government, etc.
>>526519
>But surely for the proletariat to genuinely run things they need to be educated on how to do so first
Wow. You're very bolshevik. Proletarian praxis arises from production itself, not from education. Class consciousness cannot be "injected."
>Didn't you warn against letting a third revolution happen yourself in your previous post? Am I missing something?
My previous posts were predicated on your approach to Stalin and your desire to maintain the Soviet Union. A third revolution would overthrow the nomenklatura, a class with very different interests to the proletariat.
>Surely if you have basically supreme power like in this scenario, you could implement whatever policies you want in order to try to achieve success for the ussr/comintern?
Policies are charity, not class conscious praxis.
>the culture of people in government
The abolition of government is the aim of the communist worker.
>>526526
As you can probably tell, I'm not well acquainted with Marx at all, and unfortunately this extends to his use of terminology. But in general I believe that you should always analyse each idea on its own merits. There are a few things in your post that I have not made the jump to understanding.
Ideally how does the proletariat revolution go? They seize the means of production, and how does it go from there? I can't grasp how they would get the information on how to run the factories. Also wouldn't it be a waste if all the russian institutions are dismantled without passing their knowledge on to the new proletariat rulers? How does it work without an intermediate government?
Do they establish such a government, or else what new structure might they establish in its place? Is the awakening of class consciousness supposed to be a pure thing unfettered by inheriting anything with the blessing of the old order? What new form of society would they create if they abolish government? It would basically be an anarchy right? Do they have a military to fend off a potential invasion from an outside state during this delicate period? Or does the revolution only function if it spreads worldwide in one event?
>>526526
>>527191
For the scenario I'd prefer to just go with being the undisputed leader of the soviet union from 1922 if you don't mind, as opposed to being Stalin's advisor.
Personally I wouldn't be opposed to the USSR just focusing on transitioning into a liberal democratic state-capitalist state after 1922, and then once that's done spend the next 200 years gradually and carefully establishing economic communism, all the while testing out any new projects in small regions first before going large scale. Although they can adopt the social principles of communism (equality etc) fairly quickly.
Also modify the economic system early on to become decentralised and operate on "nodes" (by region and by industry), with each node running on rules which are established by the centre, but so that moscow doesn't end up directly controlling each node, but they run by themselves, with the resultant economy emerging from the nodes, and being decentralised. There are some fairly simple algorithms by which optimal price based on supply/demand can be calculated, which can be done by hand i.e. without computers.
I think the Mensheviks are also an overlooked option, purely because of the smooth transition they provide, without compromising the Duma's checks and balances (and with the additional benefit of not creating an association between communism and subversive insidious revolution in the minds of western leaders and subsequently most of their population).
>>526526
>>527191
>>527208
In general I think revolution is overrated and brings only needless chaos and instability. I see Marx writing that there has to be a revolution in order for the proletariat to seize power as very much a product of the extreme inequality of the time that he lived in (we're probably all guilty of having a distorted worldview that over-emphasises local and contemporary phenomenon). He probably expected the economic pendulum at some point to swing sharply to the opposite side and to remain there. Perhaps he saw this as the only road to progress. But he did not forsee the welfare state and gradual shift to a liberal form of socialism as in scandinavia and canada, which I think is a more natural form of the long path to communism.
go back in time
win ww2 as uncle adolf
at the end when I give my victory speech I admit I was wrong and in act jews are the master race, instruct everyone to commit suicide then shoot myself
Show Danton what robesspierre will do before the national assembly even forms.
>>527212
kek
You'll just get coup'd by someone in the party, there'd be no stopping the train at that point
>>527191
Well a proletarian revolution would see all wage labourers compose themselves as a society, expropriate the means of production (the useful doing things) and resist attempts to take them back.
Workers currently run the factories themselves. Skill is diminished by mechanisation and skill in the planning of machines is constantly proletarianised (reduced to wage labour).
>wouldn't it be a waste
Well the bolsheviks took over the repressive institutions of the tzarist state intact, they weren't "useful" for the working class, they were useful for the bolsheviks in repressing the working class.
>an intermediate government
That'd be the factory councils themselves.
Most of the Red Army were workers militias and mutinied working class and peasant sections of the tzarist military.
>does the revolution only function if it spreads worldwide in one event?
Large enough to be more productive than the remaining capitalism. If the Russian countryside had been fully proletarianised, not just in sections of the Ukraine and cotton and fruit producing regions, then maybe the Soviet Union would have stood a chance to be a longer term workers' council run society. But it wasn't. And the bolsheviks crushed the representatives of the Ukrainian rural proletariat (makhnovism).
>>526020
Basically by most modern analysis of the battle the Arabs were too busy looting to forsee Odo's advance and the arrival of Martell's forces.
Also, at Tours the Muslim army started to retreat in disarray when they heard that the Christians were attacking their camps and taking their loot- and Abd Al rahman was killed in the panic that ensued
>>524752
Ludendorf, may 1917.
"The French army is in the middle of a mutiny, go kill them."
>>524752
I would advise Isabel and Fernando that Hassburgers a shit.
>>527599
Lol
Have you got a source for that?
>>524752
> who would you pick
Polish King Boleslaw III Wrymouth 1107–1138 A.D.
> and what would you do?
Convince him to reform the inheritance and succession laws the day he assumes the throne, so that the kingdom automatically goes to the 1st born son, instead of the old Slavic method of each son getting a piece of the pie which inevitably leads to civil war.
This would save Poland from several generations of grief and insure that the kingdom remains independent later in its history and a strong Poland means all kinda other bad shit in Europe doesn’t happen (i.e. militant Germany).
I don't know, maybe some court (like versailles) that was living really lavish and degenerate lifestyle.
>>527955
Not him, but contemporary sources depict the muslim campaign as a large raiding expedition. It eventually reached some point inbetween Tours and Poitiers where a large frankish infantry force commanded by Charles Martel set up defensive positions. Al Gafiki was hesitant to attack at first, as after all they were there for looting, but after some days he finally decided to attack. The muslim forces consisted of cavalry basically while the franks were depicted as infantry forming in tight squares. The muslims charged repeatedly but the frankish infantry managed to hold the lines and then, upon hearing that Odo's men were sacking their camp, with all the loot, the muslim forces retreated disorderly to their camp and the day after they just left.
>Yo Caesar you gon get stabbed
>>528315
Thanks but that's not a source.
