The Struggle Against Fascism Begins with the Struggle Against Bolshevism (1939)

[GracchusBabeuf]

.

[mykittyhasaboner]

Oh boy, here we go again.

[Martin Blank]

In b4 MLs, Trots and Maoists:...

INCOMING! FIRE IN THE HOLE!

[Psy]

By 1939 the Bolshivks were purged from Russia so I fail to see the point of struggling against a fraction that was dead at the time. Stalin crushed the Bolshivks, fighting against Bolshivkism in 1939 would have just been beating a dead horse.

[Agrippa]

By 1939 the Bolshivks were purged from Russia so I fail to see the point of struggling against a fraction that was dead at the time. Stalin crushed the Bolshivks, fighting against Bolshivkism in 1939 would have just been beating a dead horse.

Yeah, I remember when Stalin lead the Menshivik/anarchist uprising to topple and overthrow the Bolsheviks....:laugh:

[Agrippa]

My point in posting this was to start a discussion on this quite old text by Otto Ruhle, a German Marxist. I don't think it has been discussed before.

I believe mykittyhasaboner is referencing a rather pointless M-L vs. anarchist back-and-forth that he/she had with myself. I linked to The Struggle Against Fascism Begins With the Struggle Against Bolshevism, and mykittyhasaboner complained that the text didn't have enough citations or footnotes. So, I think that's typical of the "dicussion" this article will provoke from the M-Ls. Considering the poignance of Ruhle's writing, they'll mostly be interested in evading the discussion


I believe Psy is talking about the murder of Old Bolsheviks by Stalin.I know, I was joking. Stalin was a Bolshevik. If Germany had won the war and Goebbels had somehow staged a coup that disposed of Hitler and Himmler and put Goebbels in power, would that have meant the end of Nazi rule?

[mykittyhasaboner]

I believe mykittyhasaboner is referencing a rather pointless M-L vs. anarchist back-and-forth that he/she had with myself. I linked to The Struggle Against Fascism Begins With the Struggle Against Bolshevism, and mykittyhasaboner complained that the text didn't have enough citations or footnotes. So, I think that's typical of the "dicussion" this article will provoke from the M-Ls. Considering the poignance of Ruhle's writing, they'll mostly be interested in evading the discussion
Nice, I'm flattered. :rolleyes:

I wasn't even talking about that, I was "referencing" the endless stupidity of somehow claiming Bolshevism is any kind of equivalent to fascism, which has been discussed time and time again.

I disregarded your reference to this load of nonsense, because its a waste of time.

[Agrippa]

You're aware that Ruhle wrote that essay before WWII, before international support turned against the German and Italian fascists, and before the word "fascism" became synonymous with "evil" in mainstream political discourse, right?

He was clearly not making the argument to create emotional resonance. He was making the argument because at the time he was observing obvious, legitimate material similarities.

[Q]

I know, I was joking. Stalin was a Bolshevik. If Germany had won the war and Goebbels had somehow staged a coup that disposed of Hitler and Himmler and put Goebbels in power, would that have meant the end of Nazi rule?
Stalin simply betrayed any Marxist idea and led the counterrevolution that installed a totalitarian bureaucratic dictatorship. So no, I wouldn't say he was a Bolshevik after 1924, when he turned to the absurd idea of "Socialism in one country".

But of course you're not interested in any scientific analysis, will claim the Bolsheviks were inherently evil and it was all the fault of Lenin, Stalin and others. Right? :rolleyes:

[Agrippa]

Stalin simply betrayed any Marxist idea and led the counterrevolution that installed a totalitarian bureaucratic dictatorship.

My point is that the Soviet Union was always a "totalitarian bureaucratic dictatorship". Yes, Stalin helped install it, when he was still Lenin's and Trotsky's friend.


So no, I wouldn't say he was a Bolshevik after 1924, when he turned to the absurd idea of "Socialism in one country".

I guess there was no problem with the Bolshevik regime before 1924...


But of course you're not interested in any scientific analysis, will claim the Bolsheviks were inherently evil and it was all the fault of Lenin, Stalin and others. Right? :rolleyes:

I don't believe in inherent evil, but in my mind Stalin did what Lenin and Trotsky set out to do.

[Prairie Fire]

Whether party “communists” like it or not, the fact remains that the state order and rule in Russia are indistinguishable from those in Italy and Germany.

in·dis·tin·guish·able (in′di stiŋ′gwis̸h ə bəl)

adjective
that cannot be distinguished as being different or separate
that cannot be discerned or recognized; imperceptible


Though certain ideological differences exist between these countries, ideology is never of primary importance.




Furthermore, the fact that private property still exists in Germany and Italy is only a modification of secondary importance.


He says these systems are indistinguishable, and then goes on, almost immediately, to distinguish a few of the concrete differences between the two.

" Despite the fact that these states have nothing in common, they are essentially identical."

Sounds like a logical paradox that you say to a sentient computer in a Sci-fi series, to make it short circuit and over-load.

Okay, so essentially this guy is repeating the tired "Totalitarianism" argument, with almost nothing to back it up might I add. Just like your run of the mill revleft noob, he is making bold statements that are conductive to bourgeois political analysis, but he see's no reason what-so-ever to explain or back them up.


A few examples:


Russia was the example for fascism

First of all, for a "Marxist" (is that what we are calling this persyn now?), he takes a view of history devoid of class struggle.

He assumes that the German and Italian fascists simply emulated another system on whim, rather than that the specifics of the system in Germany and Italy were tailored to the demands of the ruling class at the time in each respective country.

In Germany and Italy, faced with mass discontent and the popular proliferation of communist sentiments (in Germany, there was a revolution that was ultimately over-turned), the order of the day was a system to preserve bourgeois rule at all costs, so the mechanisms of German fascism and Italian fascism specifically arose to suit the demands of the times.

While it is possible that some features were no doubt emulated (The concentration camp was invented in South Africa during the Boer War, by the British), this was done on the basis of using tried and true methods to preserve bourgeois rule, by emulating other bourgeois states.

Secondly, even if (and this is purely hypothetical,) some of the various methods of the USSR were emulated by the fascist regimes of Germany and Italy, this means nothing in the context of global class struggle. To view the USSR and the fascist regimes of europe in the class vague sense of "dictatorships", presumably dictatorships of individuals, is un-Marxist and un-scientific.

These states, as all states in existence, were dictatorships, but dictatorships of classes. From the point that this is aknowledged, you can see that the entire rest of the analysis of this "Marxist" becomes a silly comparrison of apples and oranges.

The bourgeoisie use armed forces with guns as part of their state apparatus, to maintain their dominance over the proletariat. Using the analyisis of our German "Marxist", we can therefore conclude that the bourgeoisie of any country were the example for all communism, because communists and revolutionary workers also take and hold political power with armed forces with guns.

You see the inherent absurdity of this analysis, when class and class interests are left out of the equation? It is not the methods that are employed, it is what class those methods serve.

In addition to our "Marxist" completely dispensing with a class-struggle view of history, he takes a liberal/libertarian definition of "dictatorship", which supposes that the alternative to these dictatorships (he doesn't seem to include the bourgeois states as dictatorships, and uses the phrase "total state") is a Laissez-faire market economy.


The duplication of systems here is not apparent but real.

The duplication, he says.

Later on he is forced to aknowledge that these states are not duplicates in terms of economic relations, so if he is refering to similar methodology employed by the state apparatus, again this becomes anti-Marxist nonsense without class analysis.



Whether party “communists” like it or not, the fact remains that the state order and rule in Russia are indistinguishable from those in Italy and Germany.


The infantile jab at Leninism aside, the state order and rule in Russia was easilly distinguishable.

In the third Reich, the bourgeoisie still held state power, as well as the means of production.

In the USSR ,what ever you think of the Stalin period, there was no bourgeoisie. There was no class living off of exploited profits of others, the means of production were socialized, and the party of the working class was subject to mass consensus and popular participation, unlike the
German Nazi party or the party of the Italian fascists.


Ideologies, furthermore, are changeable and such changes do not necessarily reflect the character and the functions of the state apparatus.

True, but even ideologies trying to maintain a deceptive facade, tend to reflect the aspirations of the class interests that they represent.

While the USSR claimed to still be "socialist" during the Kruschev era, you can see that their "Marxism-Leninism" began to adopt thesis's that not only contradicted the theory but served the ruling class ( "Peaceful co-existance", Specialization of the socialist camp, etc).

As for the ideology of the Soviet Union circa 1917-1953, while there were theoretical hiccups advanced by various revisionists within the party and some mistakes were made in the process, the ideology continued to un-waiveringly reflect the aspirations of the working class for emancipation and the expropriation and suppression of exploiting classes.



Furthermore, the fact that private property still exists in Germany and Italy is only a modification of secondary importance.

It is a modification of great importance, actually.

" ...All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.

The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."

- Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the communist party

Apparently we are dealing here with a "Marxist" who never read the most basic pamphlet of Marx.

As long as private property still exists (ie. private ownership of the means of production, private property in land), the means for the exploitation of labour and existence of the bourgeoisie as a class are still in place.

To note that there is private property still in existence in the fascist regimes is to note that the bourgeoisie and exploiting classes still exist and hold power in the fascist regimes.

This is no small detail, but the defining difference, as the class relations to power in a state are what sets a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie apart from a dictatorship of the proletariat.




What actually determines a socialist society is, besides the doing away with private property in the means of production, the control of the workers over the products of their labour and the end of the wage system.


But what consitutes control? An individual worker may not have the direct say over where the shoes that he makes are distributed, but by controlling the state itself, the workers have control over the products of their labour and guarantee that the needs of all are met.

They control the state, therefore they control the means of production that the operate, and control the surplus generated by their labour. The fruits of their social production become the social benefits of all, through the instrument of their party and state.

As far as wage labour is concerned, after socialism some of the "water-marks" of capitalism persist, in this case currency.

Still, this is not the same scenario as capitalist/fascist relations to political power, because the surplus that the workers
generate from their labour in a socialist country is applied to public purposes, in contrast to a capitalist society where that surplus goes to a tiny minority of exploiters who survive upon it.


Though some may assume that Russia is one step nearer to socialism than the other countries, it does not follow that its “soviet state” has helped the international proletariat come in any way nearer to its class struggle goals.

I'll cut him some slack, because he wrote this in 1939.

Still, he seems to be ignoring the material and military support provided by the USSR to the Spanish Republicans during their civil war (1936-1939).

"In total (the) USSR provided Spain with 806 planes, 362 tanks, and 1,555 artillery pieces"
Academy of Sciences of the USSR, International Solidarity with the Spanish Republic, 1936-1939 (Moscow: Progress, 1974), 329-30


This delusion hinders a complete and determined break with fascism, because it hinders the principle struggle against the reasons, preconditions, and circumstances which in Russia, as in Germany and Italy, have led to an identical state and governmental system. Thus the Russian myth turns into an ideological weapon of counter-revolution.

Again, the state and governmental systems of these countries were not "identical" in the least.

For the sake of argument, supposing that they were (hypothetically,), again this becomes a comparrison of apples and oranges if you ignore class relations to political power.

Listen, Communism has no "Do on to others.." clause. In the scientific struggle of antagonistic classes, the proletariat has, as a condition to it's emancipation and the creation of a classless society, to expropriate private property and political power from the bourgeoisie, and suppress them through their state apapratus ( the dictatorship of the proletariat, as advocated by Marx).

The methodology is not the issue; the issue is the class relations to political power.


It is not possible for men to serve two masters. Neither can a totalitarian state do such a thing. If fascism serves capitalistic and imperialistic interests, it cannot serve the needs of the workers. If, in spite of this, two apparently opposing classes favour the same state system, it is obvious that something must be wrong. One or the other class must be in error.

Noooooo, one German "Marxist" must be in error, because even though he himself aknowledges at least some of the more overt differences between these states, he continues to refer to them as "identical" and "the same".


No one should say here that the problem is one merely of form and therefore of no real significance, that, though the political forms are identical, their content may vary widely. This would be self-delusion. For the Marxist such things do not occur; for him form and content fit to each other and they cannot be divorced.

...as can be seen in both the USSR and sharp contrast in the fascist regimes.

His stubborn refusal to abandon his silly reductionist point of view is his own delusion and no one elses.


Now, if the Soviet State serves as a model for fascism, it must contain structural and functional elements which are also common to fascism.

Yes. The suppression of one class by another.

Ignoring the unsubstantiated conviction of this "Marxist" that not only was the USSR 'fascist', but that it was the original fascist power on which other states were modelled, again we get back to Marxism 101:

Fascism is the socio-economic system utilized by the bourgeoisie class when they are in crisis, and in danger of proletarian revolution.

Socialism (the dictatorship of the proletariat) is the socio-economic system utilized by the working class to expropriate power from the defeated bourgeoisie, and concentrate and wield it in their own hands.

The similarity is that in both cases a class holds political power undivided in their own hands, and supressed another class to maintain their class interests through the organs of the state that they hold.

If this silly persyn had ever read any Marx, he would have known that this was the game plan from the very beggining, and the struggle of two antagonistic classes, exploiter and exploited, could have it no other way.


Instead, the struggle against fascism must begin with the struggle against bolshevism.

"First it is necesary to struggle against any manifestation of workers political power, then we can focus on struggling against manifestations of bourgeois political power." :rolleyes:


From the beginning bolshevism was for Lenin a purely Russian phenomenon.

From his inability to grasp Marxism, he is un-able to grasp material -conditions of development.

Russia, at the time, was not at the same stage of development as most european countries, hence in some cases specific measures where applied that would not be applied in other countries.

Just as Marxism initially advocated a revolutionary alliance between the Proletariat and lower peasantry, this would no longer be the case for revolutionaries in a country like mine, because my country doesn't have a peasantry. This is just one example of how Marxism-Leninism must address the conditions at hand.

On the flip-side, this is un-true, as the Leninist (bolshevik) party model has proven to be universal in it's application and functioning.


Lenin was concerned only with Russia.

Obviously not a man familiar with the works of Lenin.

http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/LAW18.html (http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/LAW18.html)
http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/LBW20.html (http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/LBW20.html)
http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/IRA20.html (http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/IRA20.html)
http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/LGFW20.html (http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/LGFW20.html)
http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/LWEA19.html (http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/LWEA19.html)
http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/GHW19.html (http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/GHW19.html)
http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/TAW19.html (http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/TAW19.html)

etc, etc...

If the Bolshevik party and V.I. Lenin (as party leader) were consumed with Russia it was because they were leading and implementing an actual proletarian revolution.

Tangible political work for the emancipation of the proletariat has been known to impede the writing of polemics.

Moving on.



His goal was the end of the Czarist feudal system and the conquest of the greatest amount of political influence for his social democratic party within the bourgeois society.

Which is exactly why the Bolshevik party overthrew the Kerensky government and criticized the capitulationism of other socialist organizations.:rolleyes:


By helping to drive the German workers back into the parties, trade unions, and parliament, and by the simultaneous destruction of the German council (soviet) movement, the Bolsheviks lent a hand, to the defeat of the awakening European revolution.

Source? Like a 16 year old revlefter, this guy makes one bold statement after the other without explaining himself.

Anyways, if he is refering to the comintern, It is possible that they were given a mistaken line. The comintern can be blamed for many mistaken lines, but this is the fault of Zinoviev.



The Bolshevik Party, consisting of professional revolutionists on the one hand and large backward masses on the other, remained isolated. It could not develop a real soviet system within the years of civil war, intervention, economic decline, failing socialization experiments, and the improvised Red Army.

It could, and it did. I recommend 10 days that shook the world ,by John Reed.


Though the soviets, which were developed by the Mensheviks, did not fit into the bolshevistik scheme, it was with their help that the Bolsheviks came to power.

They certainly did not fit into the Bolsheviks scheme. Probably why the Bolsheviks called for "all power to the soviets". :rolleyes:

Did this guy do any research? I know he obviously hadn't read Marx, but his study of Russian history is either incomplete and mislead by falsehood, or he knows the truth and is a shameless liar.



This council movement Lenin could use no longer in Russia. In other European countries it showed strong tendencies to oppose the bolshevik type of uprisings. Despite Moscow’s tremendous propaganda in all countries, the so-called “ultra-lefts”, as Lenin himself pointed out, agitated more successfully for revolution on the basis of the council movement, than did all the propagandists sent by the Bolshevik Party. The Communist Party, following Bolshevism, remained a small, hysterical, and noisy group consisting largely of the proletarianized shreds of the bourgeoisie, whereas the council movement gained in real proletarian strength and attracted the best elements of the working class. To cope with this situation, bolshevik propaganda had to be increased; the “ultra-left” had to be attacked; its influence had to be destroyed in favour of Bolshevism.


Greater popularity does not equal correct theory.

As for the Bolshevik propaganda against ultra-leftism,yeah.... and?



Since the soviet system had failed in Russia

Apparently this stance that he has taken is not up for discussion or debate, it is now an empirical fact that he does not have to explain.


Against this competition Lenin wrote his pamphlet “Radicalism, an Infantile Disease of Communism”, dictated by fear of losing power and by indignation over the success of the heretics.

Lenin, in this narrative, is prone to cartoony jealousy at the theories of other revolutionaries garnering more popularity. :lol:

Could it be, in reality, that Lenin was simply criticizing a bourgeois ideological trend, as he had been doing for the entire length of his political career? No, that's crazy talk. The only explanation is theoretical envy, and
fear that an impotent political outlook (that still has yet to materialize) would sweep him and his contemporaries out of "power".

:lol:



This aggressive, crude, and hateful papal bull was real material for any counter revolutionary. Of all programmatic declarations of Bolshevism it was the most revealing of its real character. It is Bolshevism unmasked.

Most revealing of it's scientific nature, as opposed to utopian childishness?

Yeah I suppose so.



When in 1933 Hitler suppressed all socialist and communist literature in Germany, Lenin’s pamphlet was allowed publication and distribution.


While I would like to see a reference for this part, why is this damning against Lenin/the bolsheviks? Considering that the rest of Nazi literature and criticism revolved around eugenic purity and scapegoating of various demographics, why wouldn't they adopt an intelligent criticism to rationalize their liqidation of one of the many trends of the political left?

The author ignores the fact that the Leninists/bolsheviks were the first ones to go in Hitlers Germany. I guess that is inconvenient to the parrallels that he is trying to draw here.



After the London split in 1903, the Bolshevik wing of the Russian social democracy was no more than a small sect. The “masses” behind it existed only in the brain of its leader.


But armed with the correct theory and practice, this small sect mobilized millions!


(yawn). Tired. Maybe I'll finish this in the morning, maybe not.
I see little of substance here.

Continued (?)....

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

What a lot of bullshit. Some self-declared "Communists" apparantly still have difficulties with the fact that the Bolsheviks and their offspring were the only Communists to ever be succesful.

[Comrade in arms]

Stalin was actually my hero for first helping the revolution in Russia but that changed when i found out what happened after :(, also Lenin made some dissapointing decisions like killing the romanovs but he was still a great leader. Russia would have been great under him.

[Invariance]

If you're disappointed about the killing of the Romanovs you're on the wrong side of the political spectrum.

[Glenn Beck]

Stalin was actually my hero for first helping the revolution in Russia but that changed when i found out what happened after :(, also Lenin made some dissapointing decisions like killing the romanovs but he was still a great leader. Russia would have been great under him.

Alright, Gandhi

[Agrippa]

in·dis·tin·guish·able (in′di stiŋ′gwis̸h ə bəl)

adjective

that cannot be distinguished as being different or separate
that cannot be discerned or recognized; imperceptible


He says these systems are indistinguishable, and then goes on, almost immediately, to distinguish a few of the concrete differences between the two.

But Ruhle's point, which is 100% correct, is that minor differences, such as differences in ideology, or slight alterations in the strategy and method of accumulating capital, are not "concrete differences".


"Despite the fact that these states have nothing in common, they are essentially identical."Minor, mostly ideological differences ≠ "nothing in common"


Okay, so essentially this guy is repeating the tired "Totalitarianism" argumentThere was nothing at the time that was "tired" about that argument, in fact Ruhle was one of the first among the radical Left brave enough to point out what was apparent.


with almost nothing to back it up might I add.Other than his experience as a member of the Comintern during the time of the Russian Revolution?


Just like your run of the mill revleft noobIs the run-of-the-mill RevLeft noob typically engaged in militant struggle against the 3rd Reich?


he is making bold statements that are conductive to bourgeois political analysisHow is left-communism "conductive to bourgeois political analysis" when it is the only branch of Marxism that consistantly denounces all factions of the bourgeoisie? From my perspective, Leninism is "conductive to bourgeois political analysis". If Ruhle was suggesting that communists support the 3rd Reich, you might have a point. You seem to be implying that Ruhle was secretly preparing pro-Western Cold War propaganda decades before the Cold War began.


He assumes that the German and Italian fascists simply emulated another system on whim, rather than that the specifics of the system in Germany and Italy were tailored to the demands of the ruling class at the time in each respective country.

The ruling class did not "demand" fascist uprising in either country any more so than the Romanovs "demanded" the Russian Revolution. Fascism is not a conspiracy "tailored" by the bourgeoisie, that's ridiculous. Fascism is typically a movement spearheading the interests of petit-bougeoisie, oppertunistically exploiting the radical sentiment of declassed workers.


In Germany and Italy, faced with mass discontent and the popular proliferation of communist sentiments (in Germany, there was a revolution that was ultimately over-turned), the order of the day was a system to preserve bourgeois rule at all costs, so the mechanisms of German fascism and Italian fascism specifically arose to suit the demands of the times.You're reading of history makes it sound like the liberal democrats of the Weimar Republic financed the Nazi Party, or at the very least that they were the same political force. The Nazis siezed control of the state legislature through a campaign of combined violence and parliamentarianism. Hmm...just like the Bolsheviks.


While it is possible that some features were no doubt emulated (The concentration camp was invented in South Africa during the Boer War, by the British), this was done on the basis of using tried and true methods to preserve bourgeois rule, by emulating other bourgeois states.Yes, and it was also emulated by Soviet capitalists. Your point?


Secondly, even if (and this is purely hypothetical,) some of the various methods of the USSR were emulated by the fascist regimes of Germany and Italy, this means nothing in the context of global class struggle.

Yes, it does.


To view the USSR and the fascist regimes of europe in the class vague sense of "dictatorships", presumably dictatorships of individuals, is un-Marxist and un-scientific.Not an argument Ruhle is making. So, I'll ignore the Strawman.


These states, as all states in existence, were dictatorships, but dictatorships of classes. From the point that this is aknowledged, you can see that the entire rest of the analysis of this "Marxist" becomes a silly comparrison of apples and oranges.He is comparing apples and apples, since both the 3rd Reich and the Soviet union were dictatorships, not just of classes, but of the bourgeois class.


The bourgeoisie use armed forces with guns as part of their state apparatus, to maintain their dominance over the proletariat. Using the analyisis of our German "Marxist", we can therefore conclude that the bourgeoisie of any country were the example for all communism, because communists and revolutionary workers also take and hold political power with armed forces with guns.Ruhle is obviously not suggesting that the similarities between Bolshevism and fascism end with the use of armed force, even if that is the only similarity you allow yourself to see.


You see the inherent absurdity of this analysis, when class and class interests are left out of the equation?The only one leaving class interests out of the equation is yourself. Which class did the Soviet Union serve the interests of, the proletariat, or the intelligentsia?


It is not the methods that are employed, it is what class those methods serve.Exactly. What class did the methods of the Soviet bureuacrats serve? That's exactly the question Ruhle is answering. It is no fault of his if you are not prepared to answer.


In addition to our "Marxist" completely dispensing with a class-struggle view of history, he takes a liberal/libertarian definition of "dictatorship",No he doesn't. Also, I wouldn't be prepared to wage a war of semantics against Mr. Ruhle unless I spoke German and had an available copy of the original German text, if I were you.


which supposes that the alternative to these dictatorships (he doesn't seem to include the bourgeois states as dictatorships,He doesn't specifically exclude them either.

Regardless, just because he's pointing out conditions held in common by both fascist and Marxist-Leninist modes of capitalism that aren't nessicarily held in common by liberal democratic and conservative modes of capitalism, doesn't mean he is supporting the latter. By this logic, if I wrote an essay pointing out the similarities held by Marxism-Leninism and liberal democracy, I could be called an advocate of fascism.


s a Laissez-faire market economy.To my knowlege none of the German ultra-Leftists ever advocated "a Laissez-faire market economy", unless by "a Laissez-faire market economy", you mean "a federation of autonomous worker-controlled councils"



Later on he is forced to aknowledge that these states are not duplicates in terms of economic relations

He never acknowledges that because it's untrue. He specifically says they are duplicates in the sense that neither guarantees "the control of the workers over the products of their labour and the end of the wage system."


so if he is refering to similar methodology employed by the state apparatus, again this becomes anti-Marxist nonsense without class analysis.If you imagine "the state apparatus" as something that can exist in a classless vacuum. (or that "the state apparatus" in the modern, industrial, centralized sense, can ever exist as a legitimate form of proletarian class-rule)

Anyway, Ruhle's primary criticism of the Bolshevik method is that it failed to result in "the control of the workers over the products of their labour". You may disagree with this statement, but I don't see how you can pretend like he's avoiding the issue of class rather than centering his argument around it.


In the USSR ,what ever you think of the Stalin period, there was no bourgeoisie.Yes, there was. The intelligentsia became the new bourgeoisie, as Bakunin predicted.


There was no class living off of exploited profits of others,Yes, there was. Soviet bureaucrats accumulated a good deal of surplus capital.


the means of production were socializedWhich occured to a lesser extent in Italy and Germany as well. Socialization of the means of production is a vital method of maintaining capitalist stability, it has little to do with communism.


and the party of the working class was subject to mass consensus and popular participation, unlike the

German Nazi party or the party of the Italian fascists

There were systems of democratic mass-participation in place in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, as well as in other bourgeois states such as the US, UK, France, etc. Even most blatant autocracies have some official channel of mass-political participation, because the illusion of "popular participation" in political decision-making is nessecary to maintain


True, but even ideologies trying to maintain a deceptive facade, tend to reflect the aspirations of the class interests that they represent.That's a pious wish, to use the words of your ideological mentor.


While the USSR claimed to still be "socialist" during the Kruschev era, you can see that their "Marxism-Leninism" began to adopt thesis's that not only contradicted the theory but served the ruling class ( "Peaceful co-existance", Specialization of the socialist camp, etc).The contradictions in Marxist-Leninist theory, as well as thesises within M-L, that serve the ruling class, certainly did not "begn" with the Kruschev era.


As for the ideology of the Soviet Union circa 1917-1953, while there were theoretical hiccups advanced by various revisionists within the party and some mistakes were made in the process, the ideology continued to un-waiveringly reflect the aspirations of the working class for emancipation and the expropriation and suppression of exploiting classes. This is mostly rhetoric. Rhetoric cannot alter historical record.


It is a modification of great importance, actually.No, it's of very little importance. Consider in the US that a police department is a "publicly owned" piece of capitalist property, whereas a Wal-Mart is a "privately owned" piece of capitalist property. This distinction has little bearing on the material reality of the situation; the capitalist monopolization of resources.


Apparently we are dealing here with a "Marxist" who never read the most basic pamphlet of Marx.There's a difference between not reading the Communist Manifesto, and reading it and realizing it's a novice piece of literature, and one that contradicts the conclusions of Marx's older, more sophisticated works. Being a Marxist does not mean using the Communist Manifesto as the Ten Commandments. If it did, Marx himself would be correct in saying "I am not a Marxist".


To note that there is private property still in existence in the fascist regimes is to note that the bourgeoisie and exploiting classes still exist and hold power in the fascist regimes. But the distinction of "private" vs. "public" property within the context of a totalitarian state such as the US, the UK, France, Nazi Germany, or the USSR, is utterly meaningless compared to "the control of the workers over the products of their labour".


This is no small detail, but the defining difference, as the class relations to power in a state are what sets a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie apart from a dictatorship of the proletariat.No, what sets the two apart, as Ruhle said is not only the abolition of private property but abolition of wage-labor and the control of workers over the fruit of their labor, neither of which occurred in the Soviet Union under the rule of the Bolshevik intelligentsia.


But what consitutes control? An individual worker may not have the direct say over where the shoes that he makes are distributed, but by controlling the state itself, the workers have control over the products of their labour and guarantee that the needs of all are met. That's not communism. That's democracy. Under that line of reasoning, the workers are also in contol in the US since they are allowed to elect mayors, congressmen, senators, presidents, sheriffs etc., even though they don't control what is done with the fruit of their labor, one of the primary conditions of a communist society


They control the state, therefore they control the means of production that the operate, and control the surplus generated by their labour.There are two problms
A) The workers didn't actually control the state
B) The state alone cannot control economic production and distribution since the state is an organ of class-rule, not the other way around.


The fruits of their social production become the social benefits of all, through the instrument of their party and state.So instead of an individual keeping the fruit of her labor, she is forced to give it away so a bureaucracy can decide what to do with it, in exchange for mock "political participation" such as parliamentary elections. What an obvious scam.


As far as wage labour is concerned, after socialism some of the "water-marks" of capitalism persist, in this case currency. If the "water-marks" of capitalism exist in socialism, it is because socialism is a form of capitalism. Plenty of non-capitalist societies used currency. There's a big difference between currency and wage labor. None of the conditions of social alienation exposed by Marx as a product of capitalism were aleviated during Soviet rule. Alienated toil, was still reality for the proletariat, as was exploitation in the form of taxation, rent, etc.


Still, this is not the same scenario as capitalist/fascist relations to political power, because the surplus that the workers
generate from their labour in a socialist country is applied to public purposes, in contrast to a capitalist society where that surplus goes to a tiny minority of exploiters who survive upon it.Plenty of surplus goes to "public purposes" in "capitalist/fascist" states. Bourgeois ideologues in both the US and Nazi Germany would defend the spending of tax-money on law enforcement as a "public purpose", and the Soviets used the same justification of tax-funded secret police and other law enforcement organs that served the interests of the "tiny minority of exploiters" in Russia.


Still, he seems to be ignoring the material and military support provided by the USSR to the Spanish Republicans during their civil war (1936-1939).The position of ultra-leftists such as Ruhle, as far as I understand it, was that the conflict between the Spanish Republicans and the Spanish Nationalists was an inter-imperialist conflcit, and that the communists should constitute a third, seperate force within the struggle. (A position I agree with)


Listen, Communism has no "Do on to others.." clause. In the scientific struggle of antagonistic classes, the proletariat has, as a condition to it's emancipation and the creation of a classless society, to expropriate private property and political power from the bourgeoisie, and suppress them through their state apapratus ( the
[I]dictatorship of the proletariat, as advocated by Marx).But the Soviet Union was the supression of both the existing bourgeoisie and the proletariat by the class of intellectuals and middle-managers, in the process of upholding the new bourgeoisie. You might as well justify Robespierre's mass-murder of French workers under the pretense of anti-aristoicratic measures.

[Niccolò Rossi]

Whilst I have not read the text quoted in full, I'd like to give some comments. I think Psy makes a good point regarding 'Bolshevism'. In 1939 Bolshevism was dead and buried in Russia. However, Ruhle's use of the term 'Bolshevism' to refer to Stalinism and the soviet state is not merely 'beating a dead horse'. Ruhle uses the term Bolshevism because he saw Stalinism to be in direct continuity with it, seeing the Russian Revolution and the Bolsheviks (from the very beginning) as bourgeois. This a point that sharply separates Rhule from the German/Dutch Communist Left he is often associated with. I think Ruhle also makes a mistake re. the existance of private property in Russia and workers' control.

On the other hand, Ruhle also makes a number of perfectly valid and correct points, namely on the nature of Fascism and Stalinism as being essentially the same, or to use the analogy, two sides of the same coin. Of course Stalinism is not Fascism and Fascism not Stalinism, as Ruhle notes the two differ ideologically, however they both share a fundamental nature and are the expression of the same dynamics of capitalism.

Given I have not read the article I don't make this comment against the theses of Ruhle themselves, but I would be wary of the formula that "the struggle against Fascism begins with the struggle against Bolshevism". Whilst Ruhle is correct in acknowledging Stalinism as the most powerful bulwark against the working class and it's struggle for socialism, there are dangers in the formula that before workers can combat fascism they must first bring down Stalinism. Whilst some leftists heralded the 'collapse of communism' as an achievement and as a spring board for the struggle of the proletariat (the myth of 'really existing socialism' now dead), in reality it ushered in a major defeat for the class. The struggle against Fascism and the struggle against Stalinism are one in the same.

Edit: I wrote this post up a couple hours ago but didn't get the chance to post it. Sorry if any of these points have been dealt with already.

[Agrippa]

I think his choice of title is more rhetorical than anything else. The article itself gives nothing to suggest Ruhle thought Stalinism was a more important threat than fascism, or that one must be defeated before the struggle against the other can begin.

[Psy]

Whilst I have not read the text quoted in full, I'd like to give some comments. I think Psy makes a good point regarding 'Bolshevism'. In 1939 Bolshevism was dead and buried in Russia. However, Ruhle's use of the term 'Bolshevism' to refer to Stalinism and the soviet state is not merely 'beating a dead horse'. Ruhle uses the term Bolshevism because he saw Stalinism to be in direct continuity with it, seeing the Russian Revolution and the Bolsheviks (from the very beginning) as bourgeois.

Violent coups like that of Stalin usually indicates a changing of fractions thus indicates a break rather then a continuation, the fact that Stalin re-written history to bury the ideals of Bolshevism also suggests this. Lenin and Trotsky was outspoken on the growing Russian bureaucracy yet there was no consensus among the Bolsheviks about how to combat the growing bureaucracy while the Stalinsts had a consensus and that was the bureaucracy is good and it had to be defended from the Bolsheviks.

The Bolsheviks were not bourgeois they just became dead locked about how to move forward after the civil-war and really the only real consensus the Bolsheviks had was to hang on till the revolution spread to Germany.



This a point that sharply separates Rhule from the German/Dutch Communist Left he is often associated with. I think Ruhle also makes a mistake re. the existance of private property in Russia and workers' control.

On the other hand, Ruhle also makes a number of perfectly valid and correct points, namely on the nature of Fascism and Stalinism as being essentially the same, or to use the analogy, two sides of the same coin. Of course Stalinism is not Fascism and Fascism not Stalinism, as Ruhle notes the two differ ideologically, however they both share a fundamental nature and are the expression of the same dynamics of capitalism.

Not really. Stalinism is not really capitalists as it represents the bureaucracy of the state and not the capitalist class. The point of production under Stalin was not to create profit even for the state but to industrialize to empower the state. Stalinism shares dynamics of fedualism far more then that of capitalism, Stalinsim restores the fedual idea that the state is at the top of the social order not the property owning class.

[Raúl Duke]

While I'm not a scholar...I'll just add my 2 cents...

Stalin's Russia is not equal to the fascist regimes in Europe during the 20-30s in purpose.

Stalin's rule focused much on the industrial development (some may even say "capitalist development", i.e. the kind of development that moves a nation from feudalistic type with peasants and such to a more industrialized, and some would say in this case, bureaucratic "state-capitalist" type of society) of Russia while fascism (and national socialism) in Europe was a "self-defense move" instigated by a scared national bourgeois class to protect themselves in societies that have been rocked by much instability and the current or previous threat of a strong worker's movement.

The only thing one could say that is "similar" is that both systems were to varying degrees totalitarian and that some say fascism "learned" their totalitarianism out of the Russian example.

[Jack]

What a lot of bullshit. Some self-declared "Communists" apparantly still have difficulties with the fact that the Bolsheviks and their offspring were the only Communists to ever be succesful.

Hm, then what happened to the Eastern Bloc again? A "success" usually doesn't end in absolute failure, buddy boy.

[GX.]

Whether party “communists” like it or not, the fact remains that the state order and rule in Russia are indistinguishable from those in Italy and Germany. Essentially they are alike.

well so much for historical materialism

[Agrippa]

While I'm not a scholar...I'll just add my 2 cents...

Stalin's Russia is not equal to the fascist regimes in Europe during the 20-30s in purpose.

Stalin's rule focused much on the industrial development (some may even say "capitalist development", i.e. the kind of development that moves a nation from feudalistic type with peasants and such to a more industrialized, and some would say in this case, bureaucratic "state-capitalist" type of society) of Russia while fascism (and national socialism) in Europe was a "self-defense move" instigated by a scared national bourgeois class to protect themselves in societies that have been rocked by much instability and the current or previous threat of a strong worker's movement.

The only thing one could say that is "similar" is that both systems were to varying degrees totalitarian and that some say fascism "learned" their totalitarianism out of the Russian example.

You're committing a logical fallacy colloquially referred to as a "strawman argument". That's when you construct and verbally demolish an unfaithful mockery of your opponent's position rather than the position itself.

You're taking two historical events - the policy-changes implemented in the USSR, and the modernization/industrialization that ouccred as a consequence, during Stalin's regime, and the seizure of state-power by the National Socialist Party in Germany - and correctly deducing that comparing the two is non-sensequal.

However, Ruhle is not comparing the two. He is comparing the siezure of state-power by the German National Socialist Party to the siezure of state-power by the Russian Communist Party. Ruhle only uses Stalin's blatant excesses (such as his then-recently-formed alliance with the Nazis) as examples of the consequences of the siezure of state-power by the Russian Communist Party. There is no exact historical parallel to Stalin in German history. We're not looking for exact historical parallels. We're not synchronicity/Illuminati/Da Vinci Code conspiracy-theorists, we're historical materialists. We're looking for the material causes of general trends.

Furthermore, to point out that the development of the Soviet empire represents a transition from a semi-fuedal state to a bureaucratic, "state-capitalist" state, whereas Germany was an industriallyv developed capitalist state, is irrelevant. The two political settings were different. The two justifying ideologies were differet. However, the class-motivations of the Nazi leadership and the Bolshevik leadership were the same. They were both attempts by, as you put it, "a scared [...] class to protect themselves in societies that have been rocked by much instability and the current or previous threat of a strong worker's movement." In the case of the Nazis, this class was the German petit-bourgeosie. (With some elements of the intelligentsia and labor aristocracy as well) In the case of the Bolsheviks, the class was the Russian intelligentsia and labor aristocracy. (With some elements of the petit-bourgeoisie as well)

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

Stalin was actually my hero for first helping the revolution in Russia but that changed when i found out what happened after :(, also Lenin made some dissapointing decisions like killing the romanovs but he was still a great leader. Russia would have been great under him.
A royalist troll?

[Niccolò Rossi]

Violent coups like that of Stalin usually indicates a changing of fractions thus indicates a break rather then a continuation

I would be wary about calling the 'Stalin Coup' (what is meant here? The Great Purge?) a qualitative break. Obviously the Purges did represent a definitive break with the identity of Bolshevism, however the revolution's degeneration began long before Stalin captured the helm and was dead and buried by the time of the Purges.


Lenin and Trotsky was outspoken on the growing Russian bureaucracy yet there was no consensus among the Bolsheviks about how to combat the growing bureaucracy while the Stalinsts had a consensus and that was the bureaucracy is good and it had to be defended from the Bolsheviks.

The problem was much more than the growth of the bureaucracy.


The Bolsheviks were not bourgeois

Just to clarify, I think Ruhle is completely and utterly incorrect in his prognosis that the Russian Revolution and the Bolsheviks where bourgeois.


Stalinism is not really capitalists as it represents the bureaucracy of the state and not the capitalist class.

One could indeed argue that the bureaucracy where not a capitalist class, but a capitalist class by proxy. Of course, you don't mean it in this sense. You believe Russia at the time was post-capitalist, I do not.

[Dimentio]

In Nazi Germany, the NSDAP was a mass party. Like the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, it relied on establishing movements for all social groups in society.

In Sweden until about 1990, the social democrats had the same characteristics. 1 out of 7 Swedes were actually members of the SAP. If you were a member of a labour union, you were automatically a member of SAP.

Having said that, I would claim that both the Third Reich and the USSR were active authoritarian states (i.e states were the ruling class is trying to activate and lead the entire population).

As for the ownership of the means of production.

While the Third Reich kept private property and increased the power of the bosses quite much (workers must have permission to change work, no unions), bosses had to produce what the state wanted them to produce.

I would claim that both the USSR and the Third Reich established economic systems somewhat remniscent of a palace economy.

[Comrade in arms]

What i meant was why kill the children, i mean the czar and his wife would have served as a rallypoint. But killing the young girls and the boy did nothing but lessen morale and put them in a bad position with germany. Also what's wrong with Mahatma Ghandi, gonzeau?

[Psy]

I would be wary about calling the 'Stalin Coup' (what is meant here? The Great Purge?) a qualitative break. Obviously the Purges did represent a definitive break with the identity of Bolshevism, however the revolution's degeneration began long before Stalin captured the helm and was dead and buried by the time of the Purges.

Stalin did more then purge, he sabotaged the Bolsheviks at every turn before he had the power to purge. Cointelpro couldn't have done a better job then Stalin when it came dividing the fractions of the Bolsheviks through spreading disinformation.




The problem was much more than the growth of the bureaucracy.

Stalin represented the interest of the growing bureaucracy.



Just to clarify, I think Ruhle is completely and utterly incorrect in his prognosis that the Russian Revolution and the Bolsheviks where bourgeois.

One could indeed argue that the bureaucracy where not a capitalist class, but a capitalist class by proxy. Of course, you don't mean it in this sense. You believe Russia at the time was post-capitalist, I do not.
No I said it was more feudal meaning Russia become pre-capitalists not post-capitalists under Stalin.

[Crux]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1939/ruhle01.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/idom/dm/04-again.htm

[LeninBalls]

But killing the young girls and the boy did nothing but lessen morale and put them in a bad position with germany.

I thought it was obvious, that the Tsar's children would be prone to start some counter-revolutionary, White sympathetic, western friendly activity in the future if they were allowed to live.

[Agrippa]

They could have been captured, rather than killed, though, and rehabilitated, SLA style.

I don't really give a shit about the Romanovs. There are enough real atrocities committed by the Soviet bourgeoisie for me to care about.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

If the children were left alife, the Whites would very probably have used them for their campaign, wether they wanted it or not. After he all they were the last descendants of the Romanov dynasty, and so as long as one remained alife, the Whites would have tried to set that one on the throne.
It's sad, but that's how it is.

[Dimentio]

They could have been captured, rather than killed, though, and rehabilitated, SLA style.

I don't really give a shit about the Romanovs. There are enough real atrocities committed by the Soviet bourgeoisie for me to care about.

Nah... not during The Civil War.

The execution of the Romanovs is one of the few actions I understand (I do not condone, but I understand the strategic implications). But if they had been converted, it would have been a great legitimisation of the Soviet system.

[Prairie Fire]

The execution of the Romanovs is one of the few actions I understand (I do not condone, but I understand the strategic implications). But if they had been converted, it would have been a great legitimisation of the Soviet system.


"Converted"? Are we Jehova's witnesses now?

This assumes that the basis of our contentions are a clash of ideas, a clash of ideologies, rather than a clash of antagonistic classes in an oppressive paradigm of exploitation.

Anyways, in China, wasn't the former Emporer Pu yi "Converted" to socialism? I don't think that this did anything to legitimize their system.

We don't need the approval of the status quo to legitimize the aspirations of the people. If Aristocrats and exploiters flocked to our banner, that could only mean that we were not representing the will and aspirations of the oppressed and exploited workers.

We don't need the elite to embrace Socialism; we need to smash the elite and their hold on political power into a thousand shards of oblivion, too defeated to ever re-constitute themselves.

Fuck the Romanovs, and fuck Aristocratic apologism. The execution of the Romanovs is now called a "Crime against Russia", but "Bloody sunday (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1905))" and the blood dripping from the hands of the Czars are not mentioned in polite company.

Exploiters deserve their fate, and I think that their apologists deserve similar.

[Comrade in arms]

I see then, we'll have to accept what happens. Lenin must have thought this over completely:( Ah well the world wouldn't be the same today if he hadn't so i'm happy for that point:D

[The Author]

The article referenced in the OP was very poorly written. It is nothing but a polemical piece, and Ruhle makes a sloppy comparison between Marxism and fascism. He never does any research, just throws out opinionated remarks about Lenin and the October Revolution or the German Revolution and how he supposedly did things mechanistically and completely ignored organizations. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The thing is, one must differentiate between autonomism, which is what the Council Communists always argue for but can never implement due to the serious flaws inherent in their ideology in the lack of ability to go from theory to practice and carry out change successfully in the long run, to confusing integration and the ownership of the means of production, to how the class struggle is organized. The heading chosen for this article reminds me of what Hitler said about Bolsheviks in Mein Kampf, and I find it disgusting this asshole likes to equate Bolshevism with fascism. I suppose the 25 million people who died fighting for their lives on the Eastern Front were just "red fascists" who apparently deserved what they got just as much as the brown fascists. :rolleyes: I also suppose the antifas are just "red fascists" envious of the threatening nature of the brown fascists... I mean really, why does one even bother taking such poorly written tripe so seriously? It's idiots like this guy that really help the cause of fascism more than fight against it, much like the Ultra-Lefts who scream loudly but never seriously fight the exploitative nature of imperialism.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

Exploiters deserve their fate, and I think that their apologists deserve similar.
Exploiters deserve their fate (and I include Leninist bureaucrats in that), but shooting 14-year-old kids is fucked up. It may be necessary in some circumstances, but we shouldn't try and deny that it's still essentially really horrible.

I suppose the 25 million people who died fighting for their lives on the Eastern Front were just "red fascists" who apparently deserved what they got just as much as the brown fascists.
You think the German workers conscripted to fight for the Nazi state were "brown fascists" who deserved what they got? What about the victims of the bombing of Dresden?

[StalinFanboy]

Also what's wrong with Mahatma Ghandi, gonzeau?
He placed moral purity before the struggle for liberation. He would have rather seen the Jews during WW2 commit suicide, or willingly throw themselves into death camps than fight back.

Gandhi is a piece of shit.


EDIT: sorry about this little bit being off topic.

[black magick hustla]

What i meant was why kill the children, i mean the czar and his wife would have served as a rallypoint. But killing the young girls and the boy did nothing but lessen morale and put them in a bad position with germany. Also what's wrong with Mahatma Ghandi, gonzeau?

I don't think most of the bolsheviks were particularly crazy about shooting children. I think they saw it as a political necessity. The Romanovs had to die, simple as that. If the children would have survived, the whites would have rallied around them.

[Woland]

Insofar as Russia was an imperialist power during the time of WWII, the workers were, as is the case in the case of all imperialist conflicts, victims of "red fascist" imperialism fighting in an inter-imperialist war for Russia against the "brown fascist" imperialists. In effect the Russian workers were killing German workers, in an inter-imperialist death match. So, no. No worker deserves to be killed in inter-imperialist wars. It is however in the interest of the working class to not take part in any such wars at all. In your bungling capitalist analysis of WWII, you forget to mention who are actually fighting (the workers) and also forget to take a class-based approach to the war. Instead you think the nations of Russia and Germany are entities in themselves and there are no classes in them which is nonsense. Contrary to Stalinist claims of Russian "classless society" and Russia being a working class paradise, the fact that workers were sent to die in inter-imperialist wars proves the existence of classes in the German and Russian states.

You should try telling this to veterans, you piece of shit. To imply that those who died defending socialism, the Soviet (not Russian) people, the workers and resistance fighters, for all their heroism and sacrifice (and not only in the USSR) were actually duped by ''red fascists'' the ''ruling classes'' in their own country to die meaninglessly for unexistant ''imperialism'', that the whole war had nothing to do with destroying fascism once and for all just shows what a fucking loser you are who can only constantly whine about everything. The war had class nature insofar that it were the ruling classes that were once again defeated as all the Vlasovites, white émigrés, nationalists, capitalists and would-be Fifth Columnists were on the side of fascists, you fucking moron.

[Farther Lee]

Oh come on you Leninists, this is all a silly provocative prank. Modern 'fascism' and Nazism havs only ever been the populist militarist clothing of degenerate crisis ridden capitalism.
The resent (post WWII) tradition on the daft 'left' in Britain says that fascism is something worse than 'normal' predatory murderous blitzkrieging warring of imperialism.
Do you really think the pathetic BNP/UVF/NF/Coolum 88 etc could ever out-perform the Labour and Conservative war mongers in their viciousness towards anti-imperialist revolutions? Hitler would have envied modern brain washing TV propaganda and military slaughter methods used by our rulers.

[The Author]

You think the German workers conscripted to fight for the Nazi state were "brown fascists" who deserved what they got? What about the victims of the bombing of Dresden?

A lot of those same German workers were driven by fanatical brainwashing into fighting for the Fatherland and the ideals of the Thousand-Year Reich. Just because they were workers does not mean they are innocent. They fought under the cause of one nation- the German one (or the Japanese or Italian one) and they were willing to fight and die for what they believed in. Even at the very end, there were Germans willing to fight to the death in the streets of Berlin and there were citizens who committed or contemplated committing suicide over surrender to the Red Army because they were too indoctrinated by the Goebbels propaganda machine to think for themselves. They were under a very false sense of consciousness, much past the point of rescue.


Insofar as Russia was an imperialist power during the time of WWII, the workers were, as is the case in the case of all imperialist conflicts, victims of "red fascist" imperialism fighting in an inter-imperialist war for Russia against the "brown fascist" imperialists. In effect the Russian workers were killing German workers, in an inter-imperialist death match. So, no. No worker deserves to be killed in inter-imperialist wars. It is however in the interest of the working class to not take part in any such wars at all. In your bungling capitalist analysis of WWII, you forget to mention who are actually fighting (the workers) and also forget to take a class-based approach to the war. Instead you think the nations of Russia and Germany are entities in themselves and there are no classes in them which is nonsense. Contrary to Stalinist claims of Russian "classless society" and Russia being a working class paradise, the fact that workers were sent to die in inter-imperialist wars proves the existence of classes in the German and Russian states.

The U.S.S.R. was not imperialist, this was not the same war as World War I, and the Soviet people did not have a choice in avoiding war when the Wehrmacht was blasting its way through their lands and homes- it was either fight back or be killed or enslaved or tortured.

Also, I don't think classless society was reached in the U.S.S.R., and especially not in Germany. You, much like the other Ultra-Lefts as usual, have perfected the technique of inventing "facts," twisting the words of others, and judging with the greatest sense of stupidly and not critically at the real facts because your warped sense of reality doesn't grant you the ability. The U.S.S.R. was undergoing the socialist transformation from capitalism and naturally had yet to overcome all of its problems and struggles. Of course remnants of the bourgeoisie existed, and imperialists of other countries around the world tried helping the renegades to take back what they lost. The fact you lot keep dismissing us as "working class paradise" worshippers after repeated explanations to the contrary in other topic discussions shows you don't have the ability to think, but instead are brainwashed and stuck in that ivory tower circle of purism which you will never elude- hence the reason why your ideology has never made (and will never make) any gains for the working class but only hurt them through your empty slogans. As for Germany, the bourgeoisie controlled the nation, and through the worst form of bourgeois nationalism imaginable- national socialism- brainwashed the working class and rallied it to a phony cause of "saving the German nation," "making Germany great," etc.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

You should try telling this to veterans, you piece of shit. To imply that those who died defending socialism, the Soviet (not Russian) people, the workers and resistance fighters, for all their heroism and sacrifice (and not only in the USSR) were actually duped by ''red fascists'' the ''ruling classes'' in their own country to die meaninglessly for unexistant ''imperialism'', that the whole war had nothing to do with destroying fascism once and for all just shows what a fucking loser you are who can only constantly whine about everything.
Yes, many many good people throughout history have been duped into dying for imperialism using a great number of pretty myths. Sometimes it's a myth called God, and sometimes it's a myth called democracy, and sometimes it's a myth called socialism. It's a tragedy, but I really can't see how repeating the same myths that sent them to their graves helps anyone.


The war had class nature insofar that it were the ruling classes that were once again defeated as all the Vlasovites, white émigrés, nationalists, capitalists and would-be Fifth Columnists were on the side of fascists, you fucking moron.
Whaaaaaa? So Roosevelt and Churchill weren't nationalists or capitalists now? :confused:

[Patchd]

You should try telling this to veterans, you piece of shit. To imply that those who died defending socialism, the Soviet (not Russian) people, the workers and resistance fighters, for all their heroism and sacrifice (and not only in the USSR) were actually duped by ''red fascists'' the ''ruling classes'' in their own country to die meaninglessly for unexistant ''imperialism'', that the whole war had nothing to do with destroying fascism once and for all just shows what a fucking loser you are who can only constantly whine about everything. The war had class nature insofar that it were the ruling classes that were once again defeated as all the Vlasovites, white émigrés, nationalists, capitalists and would-be Fifth Columnists were on the side of fascists, you fucking moron.

And those who didn't want to defend your Socialist 'paradise' were shot for it, even on the battlefield, you piece of shit.

[The Author]

Yes, many many good people throughout history have been duped into dying for imperialism using a great number of pretty myths. Sometimes it's a myth called God, and sometimes it's a myth called democracy, and sometimes it's a myth called socialism. It's a tragedy, but I really can't see how repeating the same myths that sent them to their graves helps anyone.

Woah now, defending your home from an invader is not exactly being duped, now is it? Plus, when you come from a society where your parents and grandparents were illiterate peasant farmers who lived in wooden shacks and were forced to pay rent to landlords, but your generation was fortunate enough to be better educated, given better housing, and given job opportunities and the potential to better yourself, that's not exactly a myth, that's a reality. Anyway, I suggest you get off that soapbox because that condescending tone isn't winning you points.


Whaaaaaa? So Roosevelt and Churchill weren't nationalists or capitalists now? :confused:He's referring to the Soviet side of the war, which was the war between socialism and fascism, not to the forces of American or British imperialism, which was another war entirely. It's too simplistic to mix in the US and UK forces with those of the USSR.


And those who didn't want to defend your Socialist 'paradise' were shot for it, even on the battlefield, you piece of shit.

See what I mean comrades about what I said before with "leftists" ignoring what we have to say, demonstrating you can't hold reasonable debate with one-track minded people? Not only do you continue with the "paradise" bullshit, but you throw out that fallacious claim that certain people didn't want to fight and were shot for it. Well, allow me to explain who these people were: those same "Vlasovites, white émigrés, nationalists, capitalists and would-be Fifth Columnists." They were the people who were remnants of the old society, remnants of the old exploiter classes. Those people who carried the Russian Tricolor, the Ukrainian Trident, the nationalist flags of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and other Eastern European states, who fought for their nationalist cause by joining the German side or sympathizing with it. The people who are now considered "liberators" in the bourgeois counterrevolutionary regimes which now run Eastern Europe and the former USSR, who have their veterans demanding pensions in their countries just like their Red Army adversaries- the true liberators- and also monuments and memorials in their countries while Red Army memorials and graves are either desecrated or allowed to deteriorate and fall into disrepair. Yes, these are the forces which didn't wish to fight fascism or imperialism. They're not my "comrades," and they certainly shouldn't be yours.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

He's referring to the Soviet side of the war, which was the war between socialism and fascism, not to the forces of American or British imperialism, which was another war entirely. It's too simplistic to mix in the US and UK forces with those of the USSR.
So the Second World War wasn't the same war as the Second World War? It was just a big coincidence that Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill all happened to end up at Yalta at the same time?

[The Author]

So the Second World War wasn't the same war as the Second World War? It was just a big coincidence that Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill all happened to end up at Yalta at the same time?

The United States and the United Kingdom were aiming for the interests of imperialism for their countries over German imperialism, while the Soviet Union was aiming for not only the defense of its own country but the survival of socialism and the communist movement worldwide. These differences were notable and influenced the actions taken in the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences over the fate of the postwar world, and notable in the fact that the Cold War inevitably and immediately started right after the end of the Second World War. There were contradictions in the ideals of the "Allied forces" in the Second World War which related to ideology vs. imperialism whereas the "Axis" were concerned with just imperialism; whereas the First World War both coalitions of "Allied" and "Central Powers" were concerned with imperialism alone. The two world wars were not the same.

[Patchd]

See what I mean comrades about what I said before with "leftists" ignoring what we have to say, demonstrating you can't hold reasonable debate with one-track minded people? Not only do you continue with the "paradise" bullshit, but you throw out that fallacious claim that certain people didn't want to fight and were shot for it. Well, allow me to explain who these people were: those same "Vlasovites, white émigrés, nationalists, capitalists and would-be Fifth Columnists." They were the people who were remnants of the old society, remnants of the old exploiter classes. Those people who carried the Russian Tricolor, the Ukrainian Trident, the nationalist flags of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and other Eastern European states, who fought for their nationalist cause by joining the German side or sympathizing with it. The people who are now considered "liberators" in the bourgeois counterrevolutionary regimes which now run Eastern Europe and the former USSR, who have their veterans demanding pensions in their countries just like their Red Army adversaries- the true liberators- and also monuments and memorials in their countries while Red Army memorials and graves are either desecrated or allowed to deteriorate and fall into disrepair. Yes, these are the forces which didn't wish to fight fascism or imperialism. They're not my "comrades," and they certainly shouldn't be yours.

Yes, you have so cleverly exposed me comrade! Perhaps now I am eligible for trial in front of the glorious Supreme Soviet?

To be honest, it's just because I've read this debate on revleft a number of times and I can't be bothered to deal with every point in this thread, I've been on here since 2006 and had been lurking for a long period until not too many months ago, so trust me, I've seen enough threads on the Great Patriotic War.

Hmm ... care to back up your belief that all soldiers shot in the Soviet Army who didn't want to put their life on the line for an exploitative and oppressive state were "Vlasovites, white émigrés, nationalists, capitalists and would-be Fifth Columnists." Please, I thought 'Marxist-Leninists' had come away, even slightly, from completely denouncing (as Imperialist-backed counterrevolutionaries) those who didn't want to die for your glorious state. Also can we come away from these nostalgic descriptions, it's like when people continue to use the term "Bolshevik" and "Menshevik" to describe modern day organisations. :rolleyes:


The United States and the United Kingdom were aiming for the interests of imperialism for their countries over German imperialism, while the Soviet Union was aiming for not only the defense of its own country but the survival of socialism and the communist movement worldwide.The USA went to war after they got attacked, surely you could use the same argument to justify their part in the war, afterall, they went in in order apparently to defend itself, itself being a country.

[Woland]

Yes, many many good people throughout history have been duped into dying for imperialism using a great number of pretty myths. Sometimes it's a myth called God, and sometimes it's a myth called democracy, and sometimes it's a myth called socialism. It's a tragedy, but I really can't see how repeating the same myths that sent them to their graves helps anyone.

Damn, were the International Brigadists also duped by a 'myth' of socialism to go and fight fascism in Spain, or were the Anarchists being imperialist when they defended their cities? I doubt Soviet workers were cretins like Palachinov or 'socialist' to stop fighting when their villages were burned and children murdered and instead join the RLA to fight Bolshevism, the real enemy :rolleyes:

[The Author]

Yes, you have so cleverly exposed me comrade! Perhaps now I am eligible for trial in front of the glorious Supreme Soviet?

Sarcasm will get you nowhere. :rolleyes:


To be honest, it's just because I've read this debate on revleft a number of times and I can't be bothered to deal with every point in this thread, I've been on here since 2006 and had been lurking for a long period until not too many months ago, so trust me, I've seen enough threads on the Great Patriotic War.

I agree. I can't be bothered to deal with every thread on this forum dealing with the Great Patriotic War where some "leftist" asshole single-handedly denounces the Great Patriotic War as a mere conflict of two imperialist powers without taking the time to seriously research the actual events or the objective material conditions. It's a waste of time when I confront the apathetic because I know I'm going to get a response from someone who says something along the lines of "I can't be fucked to do any critical thinking right now."


Hmm ... care to back up your belief that all soldiers shot in the Soviet Army who didn't want to put their life on the line for an exploitative and oppressive state were "Vlasovites, white émigrés, nationalists, capitalists and would-be Fifth Columnists." Please, I thought 'Marxist-Leninists' had come away, even slightly, from completely denouncing (as Imperialist-backed counterrevolutionaries) those who didn't want to die for your glorious state. Also can we come away from these nostalgic descriptions, it's like when people continue to use the term "Bolshevik" and "Menshevik" to describe modern day organisations. :rolleyes:


Ivan's War by Catherine Merridale, Poland's Holocaust by Tadeusz Piotrowski, Russian White Guards by George Mordwinkin, and Ukraine during World War II by Yuri Boshyk et al., offer a lot of informative material on the collaborative nature of the "liberators" who sided with the Nazis.

And no, it's not "nostalgia," it's politics. I'm not going to dismiss the past with such an apathetic attitude. It's a part of who we are and where we came from and what we have to fight for.


The USA went to war after they got attacked, surely you could use the same argument to justify their part in the war, afterall, they went in in order apparently to defend itself, itself being a country.

The US government was aware of the impending attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese several months before it actually happened. It needed such an attack as a catalyst to launch an imperialist war against Japan. See Pearl Harbor by Henry C. Clausen and Bruce Lee, and Pearl Harbor Betrayed by Michael Gannon. Taking this argument one step further, although the British and French were under constant attack by the Germans, their governments aspired to maintaining world trade, monopoly capitalism, and exploitation of their working classes and ideologically did not care for working class rights.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

The United States and the United Kingdom were aiming for the interests of imperialism for their countries over German imperialism, while the Soviet Union was aiming for not only the defense of its own country but the survival of socialism and the communist movement worldwide. These differences were notable and influenced the actions taken in the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences over the fate of the postwar world, and notable in the fact that the Cold War inevitably and immediately started right after the end of the Second World War. There were contradictions in the ideals of the "Allied forces" in the Second World War which related to ideology vs. imperialism whereas the "Axis" were concerned with just imperialism; whereas the First World War both coalitions of "Allied" and "Central Powers" were concerned with imperialism alone. The two world wars were not the same.
Can you explain the Soviet invasion of Finland? If the USSR was so thoroughly anti-nazi, then what was the whole Molotov-Ribbentrop pact all about? What's the difference between the USSR fighting for "the survival of socialism worldwide" and the USA/UK fighting for "the survival of freedom and democracy"?


Hmm ... care to back up your belief that all soldiers shot in the Soviet Army who didn't want to put their life on the line for an exploitative and oppressive state were "Vlasovites, white émigrés, nationalists, capitalists and would-be Fifth Columnists."
I'm kind of confused by how those emigres ended up in the Soviet Army. You'd think the emigres would have, um, emigrated.

[Glenn Beck]

:cool:

Russians are so uncool, getting offended when you call them Nazis.

I mean really

[Ismail]

Can you explain the Soviet invasion of Finland?Sure thing.

From a Marxist-Leninist perspective complete with sourced quotes coming at oneself constantly: http://web.archive.org/web/20020903194658/www22.brinkster.com/harikumar/CommunistLeague/CL-FINLANDWAR90.html

From The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War Against Soviet Russia (1946):

The most intimate working relationship existed between the German and the Finnish High Commands. The Finnish military leader, Baron Karl Gustav von Mannerheim, was in close and constant communication with the German High Command. There were frequent joint staff talks, and German officers periodically supervised Finnish army maneuvers. The Finnish Chief of Staff, General Karl Oesch, had received his military training in Germany, as had his chief aide, General Hugo Ostermann, who served in the German Army during the First World War. In 1939, the Government of the Third Reich conferred upon General Oesch one of its highest military decorations...

Political relations between Finland and Nazi Germany were also close. The Socialist Premier Risto Ryti regarded Hitler as a "genius"; Per Svinhufrud, the wealthy Germanophile who had been awarded the German Iron Cross, was the most powerful behind-the-scenes figure in Finnish politics.

With the aid of German officers and engineers, Finland had been converted into a powerful fortress to serve as a base for the invasion of the Soviet Union. Twenty-three military airports had been constructed on Finnish soil, capable of accommodating ten times as many airplanes as there were in the Finnish Air Force. Nazi technicians had supervised the construction of the Mannerheim Line, a series of intricate, splendidly equipped fortifications running several miles deep along the Soviet border and having heavy guns at one point only twenty-one miles from Leningrad. Unlike the Maginot Line, the Mannerheim Line had been designed not only for defensive purposes but also for garrisoning a major offensive force. As the Mannerheim Line neared completion in the summer of 1939, Hitler's Chief of Staff, General Halder, arrived from Germany and gave the massive fortifications a final inspection...

During the first week of October, 1939, while still negotiating its new treaties with the Baltic States, the Soviet Government proposed a mutual assistance pact with Finland. Moscow offered to cede several thousand square miles of Soviet territory on central Karelia in exchange for some strategic Finnish islands near Leningrad, a portion of the Karelian Isthmus and a thirty-year lease on the port of Hango for the construction of a Soviet naval base. The Soviet leaders regarded these latter territories as essential to the defense of the Red naval base at Kronstadt and the city of Leningrad.

The negotiations between the Soviet Union and Finland dragged on into the middle of November without results. In order to reach some agreement, the Soviet Government made a number of compromises. "Stalin tried to teach me the wisdom of Finnish as well as Soviet interest in compromise," declared the Finnish negotiator, Juho Passikivi, upon his return to Helsinki. But the pro-Nazi clique dominating the Finnish Government refused to make any concessions and broke off the negotiations.

By the end of November, the Soviet Union and Finland were at war. "The Finnish nation," declared the Finnish Government, "is fighting for independence, liberty and honor... As the outpost of Western civilization, our nation has the right to expect help from other civilized nations."

The anti-Soviet elements in England and France believed that the long-awaited holy war was at hand. The strangely inactive war in the west against Nazi Germany was the "wrong war." The real war lay to the east. In England, France and the United States, an intense anti-Soviet campaign began under the slogan of "Aid to Finland."

Prime Minister Chamberlain, who only a short time before had asserted his country lacked adequate arms for fighting the Nazis, quickly arranged to send to Finland 144 British airplanes, 114 heavy guns, 185,000 shells, 50,000 grenades, 15,700 aerial bombs, 100,000 greatcoats and 48 ambulances. At a time when the French Army was in desperate need of every piece of military equipment to hold the inevitable Nazi offensive, the French Government turned over to the Finnish Army 179 airplanes, 472 guns, 795,000 shells, 5100 machine guns and 200,000 hand grenades.

While the lull continued on the Western Front, the British High Command, still dominated by anti-Soviet militarists like General Ironside, drew up plans for sending 100,000 troops across Scandinavia into Finland, and the French High Command made preparations for a simultaneous attack on the Caucasus, under the leadership of General Weygand, who openly stated that French bombers in the Near East were ready to strike at the Baku oil fields.

Day after day the British, French and American newspapers headlined sweeping Finnish victories and catastrophic Soviet defeats. But after three months of fighting in extraordinarily difficult terrain and under incredibly severe weather conditions, with the temperature frequently falling to sixty and seventy degrees below zero, the Red Army had smashed the "impregnable" Mannerheim Line and routed the Finnish Army.(3)

Hostilities between Finland and the Soviet Union ended on March 13, 1940. According to the peace terms, Finland ceded to Russia the Karelian Isthmus, the western and northern shores of Lake Lagoda, a number of strategic islands in the Gulf of Finland essential to the defense of Leningrad. The Soviet Government restored to Finland the port of Petsamo, which had been occupied by the Red Army, and took a thirty-year lease on the Hango peninsula for an annual rental of 8,000,000 Finnish marks.

Addressing the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. on March 29, Molotov declared: -


The Soviet Union, having smashed the Finnish Army and having every opportunity of occupying the whole of Finland, did not do so and did not demand any indemnities for expenditures in the war as any other Power would have done, but confined its desires to a minimum... We pursued no other objects in the peace treaty than that of safeguarding Murmansk and the Murmansk railroad...
The undeclared war of Nazi Germany against Soviet Russia went on...

3. In June 1940 the institute for Propaganda Analysis in New York City reported: "The American press told less truth and retailed more fancy lies about the Finnish war than about any recent conflict."

[Pogue]

What a lot of bullshit. Some self-declared "Communists" apparantly still have difficulties with the fact that the Bolsheviks and their offspring were the only Communists to ever be succesful.

This is such a pathetic non-argument. I don't see how you could call what they did 'succesful', unless like Leninists you idiotically see socialism as a faction rather than the self organisation of the working class. You have such bourgeoisie politics, seriously.

[Devrim]

I don't agree with a lot of Rhule's analysis, and I think that he was wrong on many questions particulary the party question. However, I think that his writing needs to be put into perspective. Rhule was not some isolated intelectual knocking out pamphlets with funny names, but somebody who was at the heart of the European communist movement. He was the first deputy, along with Liebenecht, to vote against war credits in the Reichstag, he was a founder member of the KPD, and later when he was in exile ok Mexico served on the Dewey comission that defended Trotsky. He was also a prolific writer who published things on both theoretical issues.
He was one of the few communists who recognized the degeneration of the Russian revolution into a state capitalist regime and rejected the calls to drag the working class into the Second world War in the name of defence of the 'socialist fatherland'.
His contribution must be looked at in that context.
Devrim

[Anarkiwi]

Russians are so uncool, getting offended when you call them Nazis.

I mean really

Uh a war against a cruel nazi army would explain that
30,000,000 soviet citizens died fighting the nazis
so to call them nazis would offend them uh easily

it be like calling a spainish civil war vet a jackbooted francoist.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

This is such a pathetic non-argument. I don't see how you could call what they did 'succesful', unless like Leninists you idiotically see socialism as a faction rather than the self organisation of the working class. You have such bourgeoisie politics, seriously.
There needs to be an organisation of true revolutionaries to maintain the revolution and make it a strong force. History has proven that sudden uprisings without guidance, plans or leadership are doomed to fail.

[The Author]

I don't agree with a lot of Rhule's analysis, and I think that he was wrong on many questions particulary the party question. However, I think that his writing needs to be put into perspective. Rhule was not some isolated intelectual knocking out pamphlets with funny names, but somebody who was at the heart of the European communist movement. He was the first deputy, along with Liebenecht, to vote against war credits in the Reichstag, he was a founder member of the KPD, and later when he was in exile ok Mexico served on the Dewey comission that defended Trotsky. He was also a prolific writer who published things on both theoretical issues.
He was one of the few communists who recognized the degeneration of the Russian revolution into a state capitalist regime and rejected the calls to drag the working class into the Second world War in the name of defence of the 'socialist fatherland'.
His contribution must be looked at in that context.


He was no communist, but a reactionary at the core nicely disguising himself as one. His rejection was akin to calling for the cause of the Reich, the Fuhrer, the Fatherland without distinction except only in words. He made no contribution, he was just a petit-bourgeois writer who latched on to "the cause" merely to discover his own sense of identity and where he fit in the order of things. A writer who is now thankfully reduced to the dustbin of history.

[ComradeOm]

I don't agree with a lot of Rhule's analysis, and I think that he was wrong on many questions particulary the party question. However, I think that his writing needs to be put into perspective. Rhule was not some isolated intelectual knocking out pamphlets with funny names, but somebody who was at the heart of the European communist movementWhich of course bears its own perils. Its no coincidence that the intellectual origins of the totalitarianism thesis date from the 1930s-1940s when contemporary observers, viewing each regime from without, began to draw parallels between Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. However, thanks to the benefit of hindsight, we now know that these superficial impressions were largely false and that there were very real differences between the two societies and states. Today only the most blinkered and politically motivated historians (take a bow Messr Pipes) would claim that "state order and rule in Russia are indistinguishable from those in Italy and Germany". To claim that these regimes shared an "identical state and governmental system" is simply false

[Agrippa]

Which of course bears its own perils. Its no coincidence that the intellectual origins of the totalitarianism thesis date from the 1930s-1940s when contemporary observers, viewing each regime from without, began to draw parallels between Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. However, thanks to the benefit of hindsight, we now know that these superficial impressions were largely false and that there were very real differences between the two societies and states. Today only the most blinkered and politically motivated historians (take a bow Messr Pipes) would claim that "state order and rule in Russia are indistinguishable from those in Italy and Germany". To claim that these regimes shared an "identical state and governmental system" is simply false

I disagree. Ruhle made room for "superficial differences" in his original text. The state order and rule in Soviet Russia was indistinguishable from those in fascist Italy and Germany, in the same sense that all three were essentially indistinguishable from state rule in liberal democratic states such as France, the US, and the UK. All capitalist state rule is ultimately indistinguishable.


Russians are so uncool, getting offended when you call them Nazis.

I mean really

So now we're going to use irrational emotional appeals to national identity politics as a substitute for rational or logical argument...I guess we can't compare Liberian colonialism to South African colonialism because all those black people would be offended by being compared to racist white settlers. :crying:

Or even worse, the popular argument among that the Israeli state (which has killed and forcibly assimilated fewer people, by default, than the Soviet Union) bears some similarity to the Third Reich, should just be dismissed off-hand without considering any legitimacy the argument may have...because we wouldn't want to shock or offend any of those Holocaust survivors in Israel.:crying::crying::crying::crying::crying::cr ying:

[The Ungovernable Farce]

Or even worse, the popular argument among that the Israeli state (which has killed and forcibly assimilated fewer people, by default, than the Soviet Union) bears some similarity to the Third Reich, should just be dismissed off-hand without considering any legitimacy the argument may have...because we wouldn't want to shock or offend any of those Holocaust survivors in Israel.:crying::crying::crying::crying::crying::cr ying:
To be fair, that is a shit argument that should be dismissed, not off-hand, but after considering its legitimacy and realising that it's facile liberal nonsense based on the idea that nice normal liberal nation-states don't commit genocide, only exceptional ones do. Nazi analogies are usually useless, Ruhle's being a rare exception.

[ComradeOm]

I disagree. Ruhle made room for "superficial differences" in his original text. The state order and rule in Soviet Russia was indistinguishable from those in fascist Italy and Germany, in the same sense that all three were essentially indistinguishable from state rule in liberal democratic states such as France, the US, and the UK. All capitalist state rule is ultimately indistinguishableTwo problems with this statement. In the first place it is completely and utterly false to state that "all capitalist state rule is ultimately indistinguishable". That's simply bullshit. Even if one were to accept that the USSR was 'state capitalist', there were/are demonstrable structural differences between the economic models of, say, France, Nazi Germany, USA, and Stalinist Russia. Any 'analysis' that ignores these is hopelessly flawed and so ridiculously broad as to be essentially useless

The second problem with your statement is that Ruhle, to his credit, (unless the original German version was considerably butchered) does not make that argument. He does not mention France, the US, and the UK at all. His comparison is simple - the USSR is to be considered a form of "red fascism" because it shares an "identical state and governmental system" to Germany and Italy. I stress that this was not some broad statement that simply counted the USSR amongst the capitalist nations, but a direct and explicit condemnation of certain "totalitarian states"

[Agrippa]

To be fair, that is a shit argument that should be dismissed, not off-hand, but after considering its legitimacy and realising that it's facile liberal nonsense based on the idea that nice normal liberal nation-states don't commit genocide, only exceptional ones do. Nazi analogies are usually useless, Ruhle's being a rare exception.

Oh, I agree 100%, but the argument isn't "shit" because it threatens to offend Israeli Jews whose ancestors survived the Holocaust, but who now enjoy settler privilege from a racist apartheid state. The argument is shit because, as you said, its based on the flawed, liberal argument that "nice normal liberal nation-states don't commit genocide, only exceptional ones do."


'analysis' that ignores these is hopelessly flawed and so ridiculously broad as to be essentially useless

There's a difference between rhetoric and analysis.


The second problem with your statement is that Ruhle, to his credit, (unless the original German version was considerably butchered) does not make that argument. He does not mention France, the US, and the UK at all. His comparison is simple - the USSR is to be considered a form of "red fascism" because it shares an "identical state and governmental system" to Germany and Italy. I stress that this was not some broad statement that simply counted the USSR amongst the capitalist nations, but a direct and explicit condemnation of certain "totalitarian states"He's making the argument that Leninism and fascism are similar political phenomena - they're similar in the way they seize state power and they're similar in the way they valorize capitalist-rule in times of crisis, by mobilizing a mass-movement around the pretense of confronting the bourgeoisie, for the purpose of perpetuating a political coup rather than a social revolution, and by using state-intervention, etc. Nowhere does his argument imply an "exceptional totalitarianism" shared only by Marxist-Leninist and fascist states that excludes other states such as liberal democracies. (Left-communists actually tended to be more hardline than even anarchists about these things, refusing to side with the French Resistance and the Spanish republicans.) I think you're inferring something about his argument that's not there.

[ComradeOm]

There's a difference between rhetoric and analysisIndeed. Its a lot easier to say "all capitalist state rule is ultimately indistinguishable" than to demonstrate it. I'm actually interested to see where you go with this because the different economic models (alone!) employed in the USSR and US, for example, should be obvious enough to be self-evident. Which is to say nothing of the differences with Nazi Germany!


He's making the argument that Leninism and fascism are similar political phenomena - they're similar in the way they seize state power and they're similar in the way they valorize capitalist-rule in times of crisis, by mobilizing a mass-movement around the pretense of confronting the bourgeoisie, for the purpose of perpetuating a political coup rather than a social revolution, and by using state-intervention, etcWell, no. Leaving aside the rank inaccuracies (both above and in Rühle's piece) his argument goes far further than that and makes a direct comparison between the "systems", or "state orders", of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. The section quoted in the OP is a perfect example. Granted, this does stem from the author's (idiotic) belief as to "the bourgeois character of the bolshevist movement and its close relationship to fascism" but the conclusions drawn by Rühle (that "fascism is merely a copy of bolshevism" and that "he struggle against the one must begin with the struggle against the other") are undeniable. Bolshevikism = fascism and both Nazi Germany and Bolshevik Russia are to be considered "totalitarian states". That most of the tract is devoted to establishing this 'connection' does not detract from the conclusions reached

And I might as well note that in my opinion this polemic is a piece of trash. Inaccurate on countless points, it reeks of both sectarianism and a delusional desire to rewrite history. That Rühle can blame the Bolsheviks for the failure of the German Revolution frankly smacks of the desperate attempt to whitewash his own (and indeed both the SPD's and KAPD's) failures


Nowhere does his argument imply an "exceptional totalitarianism" shared only by Marxist-Leninist and fascist states that excludes other states such as liberal democracies. (Left-communists actually tended to be more hardline than even anarchists about these things, refusing to side with the French Resistance and the Spanish republicans.) I think you're inferring something about his argument that's not there."Russia must be placed first among the new totalitarian states. It was the first to adopt the new state principle. It went furthest in its application. It was the first to establish a constitutional dictatorship, together with the political and administrative terror system which goes with it. Adopting all the features of the total state, it thus became the model for those other countries which were forced to do away with the democratic state system and to change to dictatorial rule. Russia was the example for fascism"

You were saying? In the above, the first paragraph of the work, Rühle distinguishes between the "new totalitarian states" and those that possess a "democratic state system". Given this, and the complete absence of any mention of the Western democracies (outside of mentioning that Bolshevik tactics will not work there), I think its safe to say that you are the one doing the inferring. I am simply drawing on the man's own words