Workers were never in charge in Russia. In fact the Bolsheviks killed all the people that tried to make that happen.

More that Stalin killed the Bolsheviks.

What can we say, Paul is a man of many trades :upsidedow

True.

I think things would have been pretty much the same under Trotsky or if Lenin had lived longer but that's debatable.

It was the anarchists I was referring to who didn't want the state to take over for a "transition period" which usually results in dictatorships. That's probably the major reason I don't agree with the Communist Manifesto.

Give a man all that power and he will never give it up.

I think it would have been very difficult to have built a democratic socialist state in Russia, but I think if democracy had not been totally destroyed in and outside of the party, land reform taken more slowly, build more cooperatives, give power to real soviets and trade unions...

Sadly History is what it is and not "what ifs".

We live in a dictatorship of the markets, the 1% control the world, political power and the media.

How do the majority take that power off them without structures, like political parties that risk dictatorship ?

In Egypt we see the weakness of idealistic movements without political structures ready to take power and make change.